[Tarquinius]

I've been thinking long and hard about how I feel about this year's SDCC.

I think unquestionably, this is the biggest day for Marvel Universe/Legends in the entire year. And as such, we intend to see big surprises on what the remainder of this year and the next year holds for us.

First, I'm struck by how underplayed the entire Marvel line was. Legends only had two waves shown, and Universe didn't stir up much either. I can only conjecture, that MU for the past 3 years has held the Marvel market and it had a lot of press coverage at past cons. Now that we have ML and MU, the spotlight has to be shared. So I think that detracted away from the attention for both.

Second, the lack of novelty or new direction in the MU line is a bit disheartening. For about 3 yrs now, we have had the same getup for the MU line; single cards, comic packs, GB, Masterworks and exclusives. While that is an impressive lineup for any toyline, it is obvious that MU is one of the most sought after and popular toylines out there right now. As such, it strikes me that they haven't expanded there ideas to vehicles. I was really expecting that this year.

Third, the BAF proceedure for ML seems brilliant. It seems like the Hasbro team really brainstormed on how to release more characters while trying to prevent collectors fromhaving to rebuy characters for variants etc. The only problem is that if the distribution continues to suck as bad as this, it will be hard to get either change of a figure, and also complete the primary or secondary BAF figure.

Last, while we may not have received the utmost sought after figure (Ares), we seem to be getting a lot of good figures still.

I break it up into 2 categories:

1) Old figures redone
2) New figures

Hasbro, I think in a good way, seems to be redoing all the old figures. Year 1 Marvel Universe and Year 2 are completely different. The quality of the comic pack is increasing, the sculpts and articulation more detailed. They are making a concerted effort to redo the figures from year 1 and update them. I respect this.

The choice of new figures is also well received in my opinion. Nice mixture of obscure with well known. While there are a lot of the traditional Spiderman, Iron Man figures, it's really not that bad. Hasbro does a magnificent job of giving us new costumes. A Future Foundation Spiderman is a good move I think.

Lastly, I think we all knew that Fin Fang Foom was gonna happen. It'll be interesting to see who the next one will be, because it won't be nearly as obvious. Galactus, Sentinel and FFF all seem to be very clear choices.

All in all, minorly disapointed that Hasbro isn't really being more creative with vehicles, they are still maintaining a strong front.