[Tarquinius]

I've been a long time supporter of MU (since day 1 actually) and I have always...seemingly...taken Hasbro's side on mostly everything, which is an incredibly unpopular stance, I understand. But let me justify...

I wrote a post a few months back justifying why I thought the MU reboot was a good idea. In sum, it comes down to marketing and keeping the image fresh for their consumer base. This makes sense and after MU's extensive history, it's good to change things up once in a while.

In the meanwhile, critics of this move were concerned that the Marvel 3.75 articulation would suffer as evidenced by the decreasing quality of movie figures (that is truly a disappointment, and one of the few areas I disagree with Hasbro). However, we can clearly see that they are continuing the exact same molds used from MU. So I think this criticism is unwarranted at the moment.

But the bigger point in writing this reply is concernign the case assortment. Currently, most of the big box stores that I'm familar with are trying to clearance or get rid of all MU brand figures at the moment. Compounded by this is the fact that the last 3 or so MU waves have not been readily available in the brick and morter stores. This is obviously a distribution problem which is not Hasbro's fault. It is an infrastructure fault. Everything from Hasbro to the production to the shipping to Target/Walmart what have you's Shelfing schedule and everything in between. There is not one single point that can be faulted in this. Every hand in that chain owns a part of the blame. But I digress..

Suffice to say, this year was tough to find MU and the number of waves released was substantially less than other years. I look at this case assortment and I think three things:

1) The Captain America placement is a good thing. That buck, in my opinion, is probably the best MU Cap figure available. And considering how bad distribution was this year, it allows people to get their hands on it. Additionally, cross marketing with the Cap movie makes it a good business move.

2) The Iron Man figure is a disapointment. He has been released several times and is widely available. His appearance is strictly business related and while that sucks, I understand it. Look, toy companies have a two fold job: be a business which entails being able to grow through profit, and put out a good product which gets them profit TO grow. Every toy company has to cut corners in some way and in this instance it is adding in a famous character for children and others to buy because he has immediate brand recognition. The bigger point is, the toy world does not revolve around collectors and we have to stop thinking it as such. There are greater reasons beyond us for these moves.

3) Everything else is brand new. Although the Hulk is a variant, he is an extreme variant with a decent amount of retooling. We have seen worse MU waves come and go with little new stuff. This should excite us that we are getting characters that we havent gotten before.

Bottom line is, this case I think is a very fair balance between trying to keep MU afloat through sure profit bringers and also giving collectors new things for themselves.