Post by Raoul the Great on Nov 12, 2006 23:17:50 GMT -5
I am not one of your bitter internet users who bitch and moan at every little thing, but this has been a topic discussed between my friend and I as of late. Toybiz has done some great things with the Marvel license and likewise many great things were done under the name Marvel Legends. However, Toybiz has done a lot of annoying things with the Marvel license. Here are the 10 reasons I am glad Toybiz has lost the Marvel license:
10. Over-producing characters: I know a lot of companies do this, which is why I rank this at number 10. However, when a store is clogged with Spider-man figures from the last 3 series, they will be less likely to order more. This problem actually comes up again in my griping.
9. Neglected TNA line: I noticed from the start that the TNA line was a small priority to Toybiz when the first series came out. I understand why as ML was Toybiz's bread and butter, but it sucked to see Abyss as a small figure with crappy articulation. Now that Marvel Legends will be gone, it appears Toybiz is finally be giving TNA the attention to detail (sculpting, articulation, plastics quality, paint application) it deserves.
8. Cheaping out on plastic quality and paint application: This hasn't been a huge problem thankfully, but there are times when it comes up. Most recently Marvel Legends 14 featured both cheap plastic and bad painting, as did the Young Avengers box set.
7. Releasing an entire line of fan requested figures only to Wal-mart: I understand the reasoning. Toybiz wanted to release a bunch of fan favorite characters to get some more cash before losing the license. Walmart loves exclusives. Viola! Unfortunately, this became a line made just for scalpers. Now I frequent Walmarts a lot for figures and I even hit approxiametely 20 Walmarts in the state of Michigan searching for this line. Some stores never even got the line and those that did were ransacked immediately by collectors and scalpers. Funny thing was, Walmart had displays for the line, but by sun-up the displays were empty. It wasn't even worth folding the cardboard to make it! This is a sore spot for me. I got the series, but only by purchasing many of the rare ones at a comic con for inflated prices. To this day I still have never seen Kitty Pride, Warbird, or variant Weapon X in stores. That was ridiculous.
6. Creating chase figures of 1st time characters, some that will never be made again: Another sore spot. I don't mind chase figures. I think they're cool. A maskless Wolverine, phasing Vision, white sasquatch, that's fine. But then there's the 1st Red Skull (the only Red Skull for 3 years). A chase of one of the top ever villains in the Marvel universe. What the hell was that? Or Baron Strucker, a "variant" of the Red Skull from the 2-pack with Captain America. That one was only at Walmart, not quite a chase but sure as hell not easy to find. How about Dark Phoenix, who I would consider a seperate character (I mean, she was!). I'm lucky. I got all of these from searching or presents from my wife. But how many of you ever got Absorbing Man or the original Abomination (I will elaborate on them later)? Now I have to hope I can find Destroyer as Toybiz releases it's final series.
5. Laziness with Assembly: I'm sorry, but I should never have to check if my figure has a left AND right hand, or if the legs have different thighs, or if a joint was even assembled correctly. This has been a bigger problem with the TNA line (I have a Wildcat with 2 right thighs and my friend's Nash has 2 right hands), but it has come up in the Giant Man Wave and the Young Avengers box set.
4. Inconsistant articulation: This didn't become an issue until series 4 of Marvel Legends when Elektra, Beast, Gambit, & Punisher all had those awful hip joints. Toybiz has never figured out how to make a good ball-jointed leg, or at least a version they were happy with. Some, like on Spider-man bodies, work great. Others, like on Cable and Bullseye, are weird. And of course those series 4 hips. And it doesn't end there. I was very unhappy to see the lacking wrist articulation on Mr. Sinister, Mystique, and Omega Red. Sinister especially, as I love him. His figure just needed it and it's not there. And I hate hate HATE the hand articulation. Only Spider-man should have it. Nobody else. Ever try to have Punisher hold his gun? It falls out! How about a TNA figure hold a chair? Nope. This is one department I love Jakks about. DA or RA, it doesn't matter. You know what articulation you're getting. It's standard. And it's always good and smooth too.
3. Figures assembled so stiff or loose, I am afraid to use them: Ball joints that don't want to budge. Wrists that as I try to move them, I cringe out of fear it will break off. Or legs that wobble or arms that won't stay put. I know added articulation can bring these problems, but Toybiz is the only company I have had massive problems with.
2. Ruined numerous figures with lame action features: Thankfully Marvel Legends doesn't have action features. In fact, most toy lines don't anymore. But for some reason Toybiz still loves them and injects them into many characters. Unfortunately, they tend to ruin otherwise great figures with these lame action features in series like Spider-man Classics, Hulk Classics, Fantastic Four (movie and Classics) and X-men (movies and classics). Case in point, the recent Elektro figure that many people including my friend were looking forward to. His arms are rendered useless by stupid missile firing spring-loaded action. Shocker was slightly better, but still plagued with an action feature. Hydro-man is pretty much useless because of his, I only bought him to be a character completist. Most movie figures are made with bad or ridiculous action features, like Wolverines who are made to turn at the waist and slash. The Human Torch in Fantastic Four Classics has a spring-loaded arm to help ruin his otherwise cool figure. I hope Hasbro stops this trend and I hope Toybiz stops it with their TNA line. AJ Styles doesn't need a peg in his back.
1. Making bad distributing decisions: My biggest gripe. The thing I am sure Hasbro will get right with it's massive distributing system. Toybiz has released several series in the past that have been so rare, that it has literally driven people mad to find them. (Okay, I can't prove that, but I was really ticked if that counts for anything.) I already mentioned the Walmart exclusive Giant Man wave. I touched upon the 2-pack variants also being Walmart exclusives. But do we remember a little thing called Hulk Classics? It was a bad idea on many levels. First, the movie Hulk bombed and the toy line made for Ang Lee's "art film" was amazingly clogging shelves (whodathunkit?). So as stores tried to dump off these green shelfwarmers, Toybiz decided to release a NEW series of Hulk toys, this time based on the comics. Not surprisingly, stores were not stoked about the idea of more Hulk figures. So, the Hulk Classics line was made to piggy-back on the X-men Classics line, sharing the case of 12. This wouldn't have been so bad if there had been room for the 1st time villain Abomination. But, he was left out of most cases, making him one of the most sought after figures in Toybiz history. (I once saw a man drop $100 for one at a comic con.) Series 2 didn't fare any better for the 2nd villain in the line, the first and only ML version of Absorbing Man. (Toybiz tried to rerelease these 2 villains in 2-packs with Spider-man last year. Odd. I have still never seen one of these 2-packs, so I doubt fans did much rejoicing.) I was also amused last year when Toybiz went to release Fantastic Four Classics amidst the massive leftovers of the FF movie line (history repeats itself!). Likewise, most stores didn't carry the line (I only saw them at Meijer and TRU). And similarly, most fans never got the 1st ever Super Skrull, or either of his variants. Fans that did find the line were usually stuck looking at yet another version of Mr. Fantastic, Thing, and Human Torch. Sadly, nobody is carrying Fantastic Four Classics series 2 because of how poorly the movie figures and FFC 1 sold. I had to buy Kang on eBay, which is sad as Kang is one of the best ML style figures ever and deserves to be in the main line. I'm not sure if I can even get the rest of the line as I would like Dragon Man and that Sue Storm looks sweet. Now I see these newer assortments of Marvel Legends and virtually every series is nothing but shelfwarmers. I can probably build a couple more Mojo's with all the series 14 figures clogging my local TRU. And now series 15 is expected to move in? The line-up there isn't much better. I find it funny that the Giant Man wave was made up of characters that probably would have sold better (at least Havok, Kitty Pride, and Sentry) in the main line while Beta Ray Bill and Falcon might have been better as exclusives. I also never understood why Spider-man characters continually show up in ML when Spider-man has his own long running line. Hopefully Hasbro will make this better and maybe rerelease some of these old figures made rare by bad distribution.
Now, I'm not saying Hasbro will be the answer to everything. They too have a habit of short-packing (like every Batman villain ever!). However, aside from a few GI Joe rubber bands that broke (which were easily fixable), I can't remember a Hasbro figure of mine ever falling apart or snapping from stiff articulation. I hope that quality translates over to Marvel Legends (even though the molds seem to be similar if not the same as the Toybiz molds). But hopefully we will see some cross-over potential such as highly articulated 6 inch Star Wars figures (I would buy them all!) or GI Joe vs Marvel or Transformers vs Marvel.
Just so I don't sound like a totally bitter and ingrateful collector, here are 10 Great Things Toybiz Did with the Marvel license:
- For the first time made Marvel Comics a real line of superhero/supervillain toys with widespread distribution.
- Build-a-figure: Allowed us to get huge, highly detailed and surprisingly articulated figures of characters like Galactus and Sentinel.
- Made a huge catalog of Marvel characters during the late 90's of weird and obscure characters. Quark?
- Helped revolutionize the 6 inch figure format by combining lots of articulation with great sculpting.
- Converted articulation techniques to other licenses like Lord of the Rings and TNA.
- Marvel vs Street Fighter/Capcom, which was awesome.
- Helped create 'chase' figures to boost the secondary market and reignite collecting passions.
- Finding ways of releasing rare characters in box sets, 2-packs, or series (yes, this does contradict my gripe about the Wal-mart line, but box sets don't fly off shelves the same way).
- Listening to fan's suggestions and criticisms.
- Inspired highly articulated and great sculpted versions of other toy lines like DC comics (in both DC Direct and Mattel's DC Superheroes), Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat.
Thoughts, comments, obsenities?
10. Over-producing characters: I know a lot of companies do this, which is why I rank this at number 10. However, when a store is clogged with Spider-man figures from the last 3 series, they will be less likely to order more. This problem actually comes up again in my griping.
9. Neglected TNA line: I noticed from the start that the TNA line was a small priority to Toybiz when the first series came out. I understand why as ML was Toybiz's bread and butter, but it sucked to see Abyss as a small figure with crappy articulation. Now that Marvel Legends will be gone, it appears Toybiz is finally be giving TNA the attention to detail (sculpting, articulation, plastics quality, paint application) it deserves.
8. Cheaping out on plastic quality and paint application: This hasn't been a huge problem thankfully, but there are times when it comes up. Most recently Marvel Legends 14 featured both cheap plastic and bad painting, as did the Young Avengers box set.
7. Releasing an entire line of fan requested figures only to Wal-mart: I understand the reasoning. Toybiz wanted to release a bunch of fan favorite characters to get some more cash before losing the license. Walmart loves exclusives. Viola! Unfortunately, this became a line made just for scalpers. Now I frequent Walmarts a lot for figures and I even hit approxiametely 20 Walmarts in the state of Michigan searching for this line. Some stores never even got the line and those that did were ransacked immediately by collectors and scalpers. Funny thing was, Walmart had displays for the line, but by sun-up the displays were empty. It wasn't even worth folding the cardboard to make it! This is a sore spot for me. I got the series, but only by purchasing many of the rare ones at a comic con for inflated prices. To this day I still have never seen Kitty Pride, Warbird, or variant Weapon X in stores. That was ridiculous.
6. Creating chase figures of 1st time characters, some that will never be made again: Another sore spot. I don't mind chase figures. I think they're cool. A maskless Wolverine, phasing Vision, white sasquatch, that's fine. But then there's the 1st Red Skull (the only Red Skull for 3 years). A chase of one of the top ever villains in the Marvel universe. What the hell was that? Or Baron Strucker, a "variant" of the Red Skull from the 2-pack with Captain America. That one was only at Walmart, not quite a chase but sure as hell not easy to find. How about Dark Phoenix, who I would consider a seperate character (I mean, she was!). I'm lucky. I got all of these from searching or presents from my wife. But how many of you ever got Absorbing Man or the original Abomination (I will elaborate on them later)? Now I have to hope I can find Destroyer as Toybiz releases it's final series.
5. Laziness with Assembly: I'm sorry, but I should never have to check if my figure has a left AND right hand, or if the legs have different thighs, or if a joint was even assembled correctly. This has been a bigger problem with the TNA line (I have a Wildcat with 2 right thighs and my friend's Nash has 2 right hands), but it has come up in the Giant Man Wave and the Young Avengers box set.
4. Inconsistant articulation: This didn't become an issue until series 4 of Marvel Legends when Elektra, Beast, Gambit, & Punisher all had those awful hip joints. Toybiz has never figured out how to make a good ball-jointed leg, or at least a version they were happy with. Some, like on Spider-man bodies, work great. Others, like on Cable and Bullseye, are weird. And of course those series 4 hips. And it doesn't end there. I was very unhappy to see the lacking wrist articulation on Mr. Sinister, Mystique, and Omega Red. Sinister especially, as I love him. His figure just needed it and it's not there. And I hate hate HATE the hand articulation. Only Spider-man should have it. Nobody else. Ever try to have Punisher hold his gun? It falls out! How about a TNA figure hold a chair? Nope. This is one department I love Jakks about. DA or RA, it doesn't matter. You know what articulation you're getting. It's standard. And it's always good and smooth too.
3. Figures assembled so stiff or loose, I am afraid to use them: Ball joints that don't want to budge. Wrists that as I try to move them, I cringe out of fear it will break off. Or legs that wobble or arms that won't stay put. I know added articulation can bring these problems, but Toybiz is the only company I have had massive problems with.
2. Ruined numerous figures with lame action features: Thankfully Marvel Legends doesn't have action features. In fact, most toy lines don't anymore. But for some reason Toybiz still loves them and injects them into many characters. Unfortunately, they tend to ruin otherwise great figures with these lame action features in series like Spider-man Classics, Hulk Classics, Fantastic Four (movie and Classics) and X-men (movies and classics). Case in point, the recent Elektro figure that many people including my friend were looking forward to. His arms are rendered useless by stupid missile firing spring-loaded action. Shocker was slightly better, but still plagued with an action feature. Hydro-man is pretty much useless because of his, I only bought him to be a character completist. Most movie figures are made with bad or ridiculous action features, like Wolverines who are made to turn at the waist and slash. The Human Torch in Fantastic Four Classics has a spring-loaded arm to help ruin his otherwise cool figure. I hope Hasbro stops this trend and I hope Toybiz stops it with their TNA line. AJ Styles doesn't need a peg in his back.
1. Making bad distributing decisions: My biggest gripe. The thing I am sure Hasbro will get right with it's massive distributing system. Toybiz has released several series in the past that have been so rare, that it has literally driven people mad to find them. (Okay, I can't prove that, but I was really ticked if that counts for anything.) I already mentioned the Walmart exclusive Giant Man wave. I touched upon the 2-pack variants also being Walmart exclusives. But do we remember a little thing called Hulk Classics? It was a bad idea on many levels. First, the movie Hulk bombed and the toy line made for Ang Lee's "art film" was amazingly clogging shelves (whodathunkit?). So as stores tried to dump off these green shelfwarmers, Toybiz decided to release a NEW series of Hulk toys, this time based on the comics. Not surprisingly, stores were not stoked about the idea of more Hulk figures. So, the Hulk Classics line was made to piggy-back on the X-men Classics line, sharing the case of 12. This wouldn't have been so bad if there had been room for the 1st time villain Abomination. But, he was left out of most cases, making him one of the most sought after figures in Toybiz history. (I once saw a man drop $100 for one at a comic con.) Series 2 didn't fare any better for the 2nd villain in the line, the first and only ML version of Absorbing Man. (Toybiz tried to rerelease these 2 villains in 2-packs with Spider-man last year. Odd. I have still never seen one of these 2-packs, so I doubt fans did much rejoicing.) I was also amused last year when Toybiz went to release Fantastic Four Classics amidst the massive leftovers of the FF movie line (history repeats itself!). Likewise, most stores didn't carry the line (I only saw them at Meijer and TRU). And similarly, most fans never got the 1st ever Super Skrull, or either of his variants. Fans that did find the line were usually stuck looking at yet another version of Mr. Fantastic, Thing, and Human Torch. Sadly, nobody is carrying Fantastic Four Classics series 2 because of how poorly the movie figures and FFC 1 sold. I had to buy Kang on eBay, which is sad as Kang is one of the best ML style figures ever and deserves to be in the main line. I'm not sure if I can even get the rest of the line as I would like Dragon Man and that Sue Storm looks sweet. Now I see these newer assortments of Marvel Legends and virtually every series is nothing but shelfwarmers. I can probably build a couple more Mojo's with all the series 14 figures clogging my local TRU. And now series 15 is expected to move in? The line-up there isn't much better. I find it funny that the Giant Man wave was made up of characters that probably would have sold better (at least Havok, Kitty Pride, and Sentry) in the main line while Beta Ray Bill and Falcon might have been better as exclusives. I also never understood why Spider-man characters continually show up in ML when Spider-man has his own long running line. Hopefully Hasbro will make this better and maybe rerelease some of these old figures made rare by bad distribution.
Now, I'm not saying Hasbro will be the answer to everything. They too have a habit of short-packing (like every Batman villain ever!). However, aside from a few GI Joe rubber bands that broke (which were easily fixable), I can't remember a Hasbro figure of mine ever falling apart or snapping from stiff articulation. I hope that quality translates over to Marvel Legends (even though the molds seem to be similar if not the same as the Toybiz molds). But hopefully we will see some cross-over potential such as highly articulated 6 inch Star Wars figures (I would buy them all!) or GI Joe vs Marvel or Transformers vs Marvel.
Just so I don't sound like a totally bitter and ingrateful collector, here are 10 Great Things Toybiz Did with the Marvel license:
- For the first time made Marvel Comics a real line of superhero/supervillain toys with widespread distribution.
- Build-a-figure: Allowed us to get huge, highly detailed and surprisingly articulated figures of characters like Galactus and Sentinel.
- Made a huge catalog of Marvel characters during the late 90's of weird and obscure characters. Quark?
- Helped revolutionize the 6 inch figure format by combining lots of articulation with great sculpting.
- Converted articulation techniques to other licenses like Lord of the Rings and TNA.
- Marvel vs Street Fighter/Capcom, which was awesome.
- Helped create 'chase' figures to boost the secondary market and reignite collecting passions.
- Finding ways of releasing rare characters in box sets, 2-packs, or series (yes, this does contradict my gripe about the Wal-mart line, but box sets don't fly off shelves the same way).
- Listening to fan's suggestions and criticisms.
- Inspired highly articulated and great sculpted versions of other toy lines like DC comics (in both DC Direct and Mattel's DC Superheroes), Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat.
Thoughts, comments, obsenities?
I dont know good luck 
