Hasbro decided to mark their first appearance at New York Comic Con with a special preview night, organized quite ably by Hunter PR and held at the very posh Yotel. You might recall a few years back, the Hasbro Marvel team held a similar event at San Diego Comic-Con, when they had first picked up the Marvel license – with all the brands (Transformers, Star Wars, GI Joe, Marvel, and KRE-O) participating, this seemed like an even grander affair.
But we weren’t there for food and drink – we first headed to the first room we saw marked Marvel, and found some movie Marvel Legends.
It should come as no surprise that Hasbro is super-pumped for all the upcoming Marvel movies – first and foremost is the Avengers. What is new and exciting is that this will be the first time in a while that Hasbro has got the 6-inch Marvel Legends line back in the mix, and that they’ll be including movie figures in the Legends line. Having movie support means the movie Legends figures will get lots of uniquely sculpted elements, like you can see on Captain America.
We were struck at how good the likenesses are – Hawkeye has a great head sculpt of Jeremy Renner. We debated whether Hawkeye’s legs are reused from the 2-pack Ultimate Nick Fury, but couldn’t make up our minds. It’s really a moot point, because I think Hasbro has got a very good approach to reuse – with the latest 2-packs, there’s more reuse than I think most people notice, and enough new parts or overlays so that you don’t feel you’re getting that Black Panther sculpt for the 10th time.
With Loki, I think we’re getting another good likeness. Tom Hiddleston really comes through here, and I wonder if Hasbro is utilizing Gentle Giant for these figures and getting head scans done. Unlike Cap and Hawkeye, Loki doesn’t have a torso joint, but I think he does have ball-jointed shoulders with bicep swivels.
We didn’t have members from the Hasbro design or marketing teams on hand, so despite our many questions we didn’t get any further information beyond the standard talking points of excitement over the relaunch of Marvel Legends in 2012 and the Avengers movie – but we do expect to get some more skinny when those folks show up to the con.
[Update from Hagop]
6″ Avengers movie figures are Marvel Legends. But don’t worry! They won’t be “taking the place” of comic figures in the line. They will be retail exclusives that will ship along with Legends, but outside of the “wave” format. They will not contain BaF pieces. So for example, bigbox store ‘A’ will get Legends wave x and also their exclusive movie figure. Look for them in endcaps, etc. I asked whether they would be offered to online retailers and that seemed a little up in the air for the moment. But it does look like they won’t be sold online unless an online retailer is buying them at retail and reselling them.
In the meantime, if you’ve got questions you want to pose to the guys on the show floor, leave a comment here and we’ll see if we can get some answers for you. And stay tuned for a few pics of the Marvel 3.75-inch lines from Hasbro’s preview night. A hint – more movie stuff!
Man these look fantastic! It looks like their hips go into the crotch instead of up into the abdomen, so they might actually be fun to pose and play with! And I’ll be super impressed if they’re able to keep the elbow and knee pins plugged up. If they maintain this kind of commitment to quality I’ll buy these over DCUC any day! I know they’re just protos, but I can hope!
Thanks for the coverage, great pics as always. I really appreciate that you can ask the following:
– Is the Captain America head sculpt still a proto? The one in the pics doesn’t look too movie accurate, it misses something (maybe the blue paint on his cheeks) Even the one of the 4″ figure looks better.
– Will they release a 6″ movie Black Widow?
– Will they rerelease the 6″ Iron Man Mark IV as they did with the Mark VI and War Machine?
Thank You Ron!
No way! Is that Hank Pym in the last pic a BAF?
I’m liking the modern suit jacket/wrist watch look they’re doin’ with him. He’s… oh, wait….