My first stop on San Diego Comic-Con’s Preview Night was the Hasbro booth – I was so pumped after reviewing the Marvel Legends exclusive Uncanny X-Force 3-pack that I wanted to see what was next for the line.
Didn’t get to talk to any Hasbro folks on Preview night, although the tag team of Jesse Falcon and Dwight Stall were spotted around the booth. But there is no BAF for wave 3, dubbed the Epic Heroes wave. Without the BAF, it’s interesting that there are more variants planned, probably to help keep sell-through high. USAgent and Iron Man seem to be the only ones without a variant – even Deadpool seems to be coming out in both X-Force and regular red and black.
Hard to tell, but I think Iron Man is continuing the “a little on the small side” trend, and I think the head sculpts for Dani Moonstar and Mystique are a little disappointing (they need to replace the pinched head that we got for Madame Viper) – but Moonstar’s head looks better in person than it did in the previous press pic. Punisher and Blade are the standouts for me, and I’ll be looking forward to USAgent and an X-Force Deadpool too.
The new Cap, Protector, Sentry, Red She-Hulk, Iron Fist, and Archangel are billed as the first wave in 2013. I’ll need to ask if 3 waves in 2011 was expected because of the relatively late launch of the line. I think we’re seeing awesome reuse here. Cap, Sentry and Iron Fist look awesome to me – the new parts on the existing bodies look fantastic.
Someone had to tell me that Protector is the post-Dark Avengers Noh-Varr. It looks like Red She-Hulk is new – and I hope it’ll be the basis for future big girls in the ML line (as well as a re-do of the original Hasbro She-Hulk). And Archangel in his regular colors is an expected redeco for the X-Force version.
I’ll need to find out what’s behind the absence of a BAF for wave 3. I hope we’ll see a return of the BAF in wave 4. Speaking of wave 4, it’s rumored we’ll see one or two more figures revealed later in the show, probably after the Hasbro Marvel panel. If you had to guess one male and one female character to be revealed in wave 4, who would you pick?
I’d pick 3 figures yet to be confirmed for Wave 4 –
Hyperion (variant to Sentry)
Bulldozer (please make it happen!!)
Enchantress
I’d guess we’ll finally get classic Jean Grey and maybe the BAF.
Ron, If you agree with me, please tell them that the worst thing they can start doing is reusing head sculpts! Each person should have their own unique look.
No build a figure is really disappointing, are we still going to pay the same price for less action figure? As mentioned before Moonstar’s face is a bit wonky and re-using Viper’s head for Mystique makes no sense, they’re already reusing the body give us a new head sculpt, c’mon Hasbro, don’t start trying to pull a fast one on us. My only other gripe is for the Protector, who cares about him? Custom fodder I guess. Other than that everyone else looks great. I’m looking forward to buying most of these.
Why is Iron Fist shooting webs? And is it too much to hope for a Steel Serpent/Phoenix variant?
I think the thing that bugs me most about the Viper head for Mystique is the way they just painted on the skull.
hyperion was already revealed, and if there was a female reveal..i’d bet on a jean grey/emma frost figure, both were after all teasers in the marvel panel before this con 🙂
OMG the deadpool comes out on my b day imma get the grey variant!