Beyond Marvel Legends? The Next Step In Action Figure Evolution

Here are pictures of a line of forthcoming Hyper-Gokin action figures that are in the 8"-10" range, but appear to be hyper articulated, with an internal skeleton for the Hulk & Abomination figures (Iron Man, like his Hot Toys counterpart, is more traditionally engineered). While we're not crazy about another scale, or the movie-based figures (I'd buy a comic version of Abomination in a heartbeat, but the movie version.... not so much). No release date or price point announced yet, but we're very curious...

BitterNews for Friday, March 12th, 2010

• Mattel fuck-up of the day: Fans had to point out that Matty’s pricing on the upcoming 1:6 Peter Venkman Ghostbusters figure was wrong.
• Frank Miller has a website where he’s written about Brittany Murphy’s death. That’s a timely topic. It’ll be great to read about his frustration getting a directing gig after the abomination that was the Spirit.
• Hugo Weaving is the Red Skull. Is the Human Torch going to be Captain America?
• Hasbro is running a fan poll to determine the next bribe figure in the Digital Marvel Subscription plan. The choices are so weak, I cannot be bothered to click twice; Ms Marvel (Dark Avengers costume), Archangel (X-Force costume) or Norman Osbourne (HAMMER uniform). Yawn…
• Pre-order your iTampon today. The Apple store is live with these and delivery/pick-up is April 3rd for Wi-Fi and an unspecified date in late April for 3G version.
• Pink Floyd won their case against EMI, who were selling the bands tracks individually online. The court ruled that this violates a 1967 agreement that no tracks could be sold outside the context approved by Floyd. This just means that more consumers will steal the songs they want rather than be forced to pay for a whole album. So it’s a lose/lose.
• Our picture today is a teaser for the Hot Toys War Machine! YAHOO!

GI Joe: Rise Of Cobra Blu-Ray & GI Joe Resolute DVD Reviews

Against my better judgement, I bought this blu-ray (only $19.99 pre-order from Amazon) after thinking it was pretty limp in the theatres. Nursing a horriffic cold, I only managed to stay awake for about painful 20 minutes before dozing off, mercifully regaining conciousness as the credits rolled. Here are the original notes from my first (theatrical) viewing of the film:

Minuses:
* Fake snake
* Holograms have audible footsteps?
* Wayans awful
* Quaid awful
* Dialogue awful
* Acting awful
* Accelerator suit double awful
* Montage training = world police
* Turning invisible allows you to escape?
* How much did double bubble gum pay for product placement?
* Cobra G3 hummer? Weak.
* Cold breath in arctic is the weakest cgi I've seen outside of syfy
channel
* Cobra commanders mask falling off
* Oh wow! Everyone knows each other!
* Oh wow! Another flashback!
* Shock ending telegraphed so bad

Plus:
* Sienna Miller

It's hard to say this without breaking down into a giggle fit, but Stephen Sommers is no Michael Bay.

Prior to going comatose with the live action film, I watched the "adult" Joe cartoon, "Resolute" written by Warren Ellis, who is clearly not only a whore, but is also losing it. Nothing here that we haven't seen a million times before in the Joe comic book, and why is it "for adults"? Because they kill Bazooka and say "Hell"? An episode of Ben Ten has more drama than this.

A self-congratualtory "extra" featuring a bunch of in-house Hasbro hacks yakking about how ground-breaking this mess is only serves to illustrate how arrogant and out of touch the company is when it comes to their properties, a sin of pride that cause both this cartoon and the feature film to fail miserably.

AND THE TEARS KEEP COMING...

Looks like no one told Hasbro that the Wolverine toys are all going on clearance..

This "Deluxe" (ie; overpriced) series is supposedly coming out - at a higher price point with added crap like Weaon X's fishtank (which at least makes sense) and Deapool's Ridiculously Giant Gun and Sabertooth's unarticulated Pal, The Blob!

Oviously, these will never be released, unless Wal-Mart in Canada accidentally signs for the wrong box from China.

PLEASE DEFINE “HERE”

Nice ad from the latest issue of Diamond Previews seems to indicate that the next wave of Marvel Legends 2-packs are out or at least “here”. Where is here? Because these things are never coming out. Is this a Jesse Falcon quote?

More likely this is wishful thinking on the part of Diamond who were supposed to have these as a co-exclusive with TRU, until a recent Hasbro “interview/PR exercise in saying nothing in as many words possible while still trying to maintain an air of caring about the suckers, oops, I mean FANS who are baffled by our insistence on destroying a once mighty brand” revealed that they were searching for another retail partner.

Which means that TRU has abandoned these.

TRU.

They brought in the pewter Wolverine figure.

That’s how badly Hasbro has clusterfucked this line.

I could sell TRU all my memories of banging Phoebe Cates in her heyday on the back of a unicorn flying through Asgard and they’d be happy to pay, but Hasbro can’t sell ‘em Marvel Legends.

Well done, Pawtucket!

SDCC Marvel Puniverse Update

Pics were shown today of the Captain America (Invaders Version) that is an SDCC Exclusive. Interestingly, it appears that the figure comes on a card has the appearence of being frozen over, complete with slightly glazed bubble. The figure inside appears to be in Black & White deco, but that may be a function of the bubble coloring. Interestingly it comes with a War Department file instead of a Fury File.

And it's an overpriced piece of crap.

Hasbro's Marvel Puniverse Series 5: Suckage Continues

Hasbro unveiled the lineup for Series 5 of the (rightly) maligned Marvel Puniverse figures as follows:

1) Spiderman: (again!!) two more versions: one where the blue on his costume is, ah, navy blue, and another where the blue area is colored black! Apparently someone thinks these are exciting variants. The Navy one will be upside down in package so that you'll realize it's one you don't have already in case you aren't carrying a PMS color chart around Target with you.

2) Iron Man: (again!!) in Centurian repaint, I mean armor.

3) Iron Fist (again!!) this time with a black dragon tattoo and one hand that is actually in a fist, as opposed to version one, which had two open hands. You'd think the minimal requirement for a character with the word "fist" in his name would be a fist, but no, Hasbro is just getting to that now.

4) Smooth Guy #1: Guardian. This is the second time since Hasbro has had the Marvel license that they've made a Guardian figure, which makes two more times than he has appeared in Marvel Comics during the same time period. Why do they love him so in Pawtucket? Because he's a Smooth Guy, and they can reuse an existing tooling with a new paintjob to make him.

5) Smooth Guy #2: Electro. Okay, it's a new headsculpt and forearm. Congratulations for going all out.

6) Smooth Guy #3: Torch. Seriously, this is the 5th or 6th Torch variant that we know about. Why so hung up on this guy, especially after the first figure was a Series 1 Peg Warmer? This time it's the non-flaming form in the John Byrne era costume. It appears they sculpted a new head with some flames added, going the extra mile to spend as little as possible in order to slightly vary an existing figure just enough to pick the pockets of hardcore completist fanboys.

7) The Thing in the John Byrne era costume.

8) Namor in black costume.

So out of 8 figures, four are new characters, four are repaints of older figures and all of them suck. Sorry there are no pics, but if you really use your imagination with help from our suggestions here, you might be able to visualize what the Hasbro product shots look like:

1) Picture figures that are shot from a weird angle so that their limbs look all distorted and they appear shimmery-shiny.

2) Imagine that all the heads are way too big.

3) Imagine paint jobs at least 50% better than any you've seen on a factory Hasbro piece.

4) Think smooth.