fantastic_four

Why does everyone suddenly hate Ser Criston?

Can someone recap the twin-on-twin battle tonight? I wasn't sure which twin survived. I assume it was the assassin, but then why does he kill himself after killing his brother? Guilt over the whole thing? Probably should have worked that out BEFORE killing his brother...

For real! That was a vicious ending. He had no idea who the kid was so what do you do--just verbally describe to Daemon who he killed? I figured he was hacking the head off so that Daemon could identify who he killed, and yep, I guess we got that mostly verified in episode two.

Ah, I forgot Dathomirians weren't native to that planet. The wiki page on the species says they settled on several planets, but the females who settled on Dathomir don't have horns. I guess they evolved out of them or perhaps cross-bred with other human species to lose them, not sure. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Zabrak So the horned girl is a Zabrak not from Dathomir.

I've been wondering the same thing about why you continue to reply to him, and I guess I now have a possible answer. I'm generally enjoying the series so far. The first episode was the best--awesome pacing, fast-paced action, and lots of surprises. I hadn't realized how slow-paced most of the Disney Plus Star Wars shows have been until I saw the quick cuts in this series. I like how the High Republic Jedi have FAR more control over the Force than any other Jedi we've seen until now. Makes sense that controlling the Force would be far more advanced during an era when far more Jedi and Sith are around. Episodes 2 and 3 were less compelling, but I haven't lost interest yet. Two questions--are the "coven" witches related to the Dathomirian Nightsisters? Also how are we seeing a female Dathomirian with horns on the right in the pic below? I thought the females didn't have horns.

I also have to wonder if Hasbro is sharing sculptors between their teams when they do animals because the new Marvel Legends Zabu smilodon is even better than the Joe critters. The second pic show Zabu next to Hasbro's Guenhwyvar black panther from their Dungeons and Dragons line.

What I love most about the GI Joe Classified Series right now are the animals. Hasbro is now making the absolute best articulated animals ever seen in twelfth scale. I have them all--both versions of Timber, the croc, the rottweiler, and the eagle. Here's Spirit Iron-Knife's eagle used with Cap in a Marvel display:

I'm surprised it has done as well as it has. When they started the line I thought they'd get the major characters and a few vehicles out and the line would fizzle, but the quality has been so outstanding that it seems to be a viable line for at least another few years. Military toys haven't done well since the end of the Cold War, but this line is so good that interest has been surprisingly high. Vintage being more popular seems right given the nostalgia factor since Joe was such a huge toy line in the 1980s. I bought Joe toys in the 1980s, and GI Joe #1 was the comic that got me into Marvel and collecting. But I cooled on Joe as I became a late teenager.

Almost certainly not, but the various teams at Hasbro usually do read the most popular forum for their product brand. The Hasbro Marvel Legends team DEFINITELY reads Fwoosh forums because that's the most popular forum for that brand and I've heard them refer to them reading that forum, and they also read the main Reddit sub for action figures as well as the Marvel Legends subreddit at times, although I'm sure they don't see every post since it's so difficult to keep up to date with subreddits since Reddit has no convenient tracking feature for new and unread posts like this forum has. I don't know what the most popular forum is for GI Joe, but I do know Fwoosh has a pretty big one for it that I read once every year or two when they release something I want to use with Marvel Legends: https://thefwoosh.com/community/the-unofficial-g-i-joe-toy-board/

I somewhat get why people complain about this--but in all of my experience with toy lines these are First-World problems in the extreme. ALL toy lines do these things you're pointing out that are people complaining about with this line, and the Classified Series team does a better job with the line than any other line I'm aware of at the $25 price point. So I mostly want to pull out my tiny violin with fans complaining about the same things EVERY toy line fan could complain about while Classified Series fans have it better than all of the other fans of all of the other equivalent lines. Marvel Legends, McFarlane DC Multiverse, Star Wars Black Series, WWE, etc etc etc--they all do the exact same things, and Classified Series figures are better-engineered in many ways than all of the others, and they're doing a great job in releasing great versions of all of the most iconic Joe characters. But to address some of your other specific concerns--could they have predicted the demand for the VAMP better? Maybe; none of us really know. But it's obvious people love that thing since it sold out so fast, and there is NO doubt they're going to make more. The Classified Series team has repeatedly re-released or released similar versions of every product that has sold out fast. I recall the Cobra Trooper Target exclusive and Baroness with the bike Target exclusives being very hard to land upon first release, but in 6 to 9 months they re-released both of them and they're pretty easy to get now. So I have no doubt we'll see the VAMP again later this year or early next year. That jeep was probably bought by far more than GI Joe fans since it looks to be the best military jeep ever made at that price point in the 1:12 scale, so general military fans were probably scooping it up as well. I don't collect Joes, but I may buy one as well. If I do buy it I'll use in Marvel Legends SHIELD displays, so I'm an example of someone who doesn't collect GI Joe who is still interested in the VAMP. That's the same reason I bought the COBRA Trooper and Baroness--I use them as HYDRA goons in Marvel displays. I have the Marvel Legends HYDRA figures, but the Joe figures just make for a more-varied display. Are they changing canon looks? Maybe. But are fans sure they just don't know what the specific reference is for the looks they're choosing? I hear this complaint in every toy line. Almost always the look chosen by Hasbro or most other companies comes from actual reference art, but fans just aren't aware of that art or simply have another look they greatly prefer. But maybe you're right and there is NO reference for the character choices they're making, but I doubt it. All of Hasbro's teams work from reference art for their designs as far as I've seen. But I'm not a huge fan of all of the GI Joe representations in vintage figures, comics, cartoons, and other media, so it's easily possible you or other Joe fans know for sure that specific characters have NEVER had the character design choices that the Classified Series team are making. But I doubt it. I rarely see fans who know every incarnation of every character, but I REGULARLY see fans and even Youtube action figure reviewers incorrectly assuming they know every iteration of every character and being wrong about that.

Nope, every time he goes out of stock the Ebay prices start to rise. People really love this Cyclops. Also Hasbro's engineering on their plastic has become quite exceptional in recent years. They're using some kind of new plastic that makes the joints VERY tight, sometimes a bit too tight but nothing some heat doesn't fix. I have both of the Cyclops figures on this mold, and the joints on both are amazing. Mafex has had some loose joint issues for years, and the 2020 Mafex Cyclops has pretty loose joints. Just because of that this Hasbro version is far easier to work with and pose. Mafex has also mostly solved their loose joint issue from early 2023 on, although I still do get some of their releases with a loose joint or two.

That's the best Cyclops Hasbro has made to date. The best one in the 6-inch scale was probably the Mafex Cyclops, but this one might be better than that one now. It particularly blows away the Jim Lee Cyclops in this same outfit released in 2018 as a part of the Warlock build-a-figure wave. They released this figure in 2022 with an animated cel-shaded paint job, and I rated it as one of Hasbro's best Marvel Legends of 2022. This one is almost exactly the same except that it doesn't have the cel shading and has that awesome optic blast head and effect. The half-smiling head is kinda meh, but everything else about this release is absolutely exceptional. I particularly enjoy how all of his straps are built into the sculpt as opposed to being separate pieces that don't fit very well like most of Hasbro's Cyclops releases have had.

That's correct, Hasbro has to approve all figures and they don't allow any that compete with their own Marvel Legends line. They don't allow any other 6-inch figures, and I've also heard they limit the number of points of articulation other Marvel lines can have which is why Diamond Select figures have far less articulation than Marvel Legends do. I assume that applies to America only since the Japanese figure makers make 6-inch figures with even more articulation than Marvel Legends have.

That confused me as well. Doubt I want statues since I ditched them years ago to get into articulated figures, but I'll check them out. I guess I'll see them at Targets, dunno really, I wasn't clear on whether these are fan channel only or intended for mass retail.

I love how when her powers return her mohawk turns into a full head of hair.

Who were those two blobs supposed to be?

I didn't really enjoy that story in the comics either, so yea, wasn't a fan on-screen either. Hated how Storm blames Forge for "working for the government" at one point. How did she think he got that hand and leg blown off in a war--something he started himself?

WAY too much story compression of the Madelyne Pryor and Inferno stories. Her proclaiming "I shall be Madelyne Pryor!" at the end was goofy and made no sense, plus we got no indication for why she became so enamored with and closely tied to demons. Liked it, just not as much as the trial of Magneto because it felt overly-compressed.

It's not real. You have to be careful about who's publishing a trailer--if it's not the studio making the film then just assume it's fake, or as Screen Culture likes to call them "concept trailers."

Loved it. They better have had a good reason for firing the guy behind this.

Medicom re-released the 2020 Mafex Venom recently that's styled after his original look by McFarlane in Amazing Spider-Man from the early 1990s, and I went ahead and picked it up this time. I skipped it originally because it's a bit short, but I love Thor which is the same size but even smaller than he should be since Thor is supposed to be 6' 6" and Eddie Brock is 6' 3". Brock was also supposed to be 260 pounds, and he definitely looks it in the second pic below, whereas the Mafex looks more around 200 or so. Later artists just kept making Venom bigger and bigger with the symbiote adding a ton of extra height and bulk to its host, so this Mafex version is much smaller than the character is now. The head in the pic below is probably modelled after the cover to ASM #316 shown below. LOVE this guy, very glad I finally got him. This one is better than the 2020 version simply because Medicom has changed their plastic since then and EVERY joint is far tighter than Mafex joints were up until around 2022.

Yea, not sure, I only think about sixth scale stuff every 3 to 6 months, sometimes I ignore that market for a year or more. But 2-3 years ago I looked at the available forums and thought collectorfreaks.com was the one with the most people who discuss Hot Toys and comparable sixth scale figures. Over the last year I seriously considered the Hot Toys Ahsoka figures, but reading through the collectorfreaks threads on them I found that both the Clone Wars and Mandalorian versions have those latex-covered elbow joints that look awesome but are highly prone to tearing if you leave them in bent positions. I really don't want to deal with that kind of headache so I abandoned the idea of buying either. The idea of being forced to leave my figures in vanilla poses to preserve them offends me.

I actually thought Sideshow Freaks WAS Sideshow's forum, but now I'm seeing that's wrong since you go to one but hadn't seen the other.

Linking to other forums is totally fine, never heard any mod complain about it. Have you used the Sideshow forums? I'm guessing those might have more traffic than OneSixthFigures, but I'll definitely check that one out over the upcoming months. OneSixthFigures sounds better for discussing multiple lines though, although Sideshow seems to end up selling most or possibly all sixth scale figure brands anyway so people discuss more than just Hot Toys and Sideshow figures there. https://www.collectorfreaks.com/

Err, I said "HoTo", but I guess it's "Hono". Wonder why they didn't go with Hoto? It's like Hot Toys abbreviated, which is particularly apt for a budget Hot Toys line.