Here’s the thing: San Diego Comic Con is no longer about comics. Yes, I know this is not news. Many, many, many people have pointed out what a shame it is that movie, tv, and toys have taken over the con in the past decade. I am not necessarily one of those people: I enjoy the con more for the broader scope and the inclusion of hollywood. I especially like that SDCC has replaced Toy Fair as the place to celebrate collectors and unveil new toys for the year (although I really wish companies could figure out how to keep a lid on news better so there were more genuine surprises). 

But at its core, SDCC was and is about comics and comic culture. That’s what drives the train. So when huge news breaks, it is a tad disappointing that the major outlets like USA Today, Entertainment Weekly,  and CNN that are covering the con do not highlight it in an appropriate manner (kudos to TIME for recognizing the significance of the news, though). What news is this, you ask? Well the biggest news of the con is this: Fantagraphics will be publishing the Complete Floyd Gottfredson run of Mickey Mouse comic strips, starting in May 2011. This is huge.

Fantagraphics has spent over two years negotiating with Disney over these reprints. And while Carl Barks’ and his Ducks comics are well-known and revered, a much smaller group of people is aware of the seminal work done by Gottfredson on Mickey Mouse. These strips are pretty much the last of the "greats" to be reprinted, in what is now the Golden Age for classic comic strip reprints. What is big about this news is that these strips have NEVER been reprinted uncut before, and many of them not at all. Think about that: for 70 years, Disney has let some of the best work featuring their flagship character go unseen. Can you imagine if Marvel had never reprinted the Ditko Spider-Man issues, except in compilations? Sure, many individual stories have been chopped up into comics over the years, but these stories were heavily edited, rewritten, and relettered. 

While it remains to be seen if Disney can bring themselves to go through with a hands-off policy, Fantagraphics has the best shot ever to not only show these strips as they were originally seen (and from all accounts, Disney keeps excellent copies of everything in their morgue, so they’ll look better than anyone has seen them) but do so in a great presentation, judging by their treatment of Peanuts and Popeye among others. I’m just hoping that Disney sees that these are of historical value and let’s Fantagraphics reprint EVERYTHING, warts and all.

Now where are those Gottfredson Mouse & Friends toys?!?

OK, it’s been a bit of a roadblock lately with me trying to get back to my series of blogs looking back to earlier blog entries, but I think I’m finally over the hump at work. With that said, I’ll be trying to catch up and post a few more "sequels" over the next week or so. So for this post I’m once again revisiting our look at how DC Universe Classics is reviving the 1980s touchstone toy line Kenner Super Powers Collection. 

Of course, I’ll first need to update that iconic pic of the 33 basic Super Powers characters again:

Wow.  We’re only one figure away from having the whole line announced. I don’t think anyone saw this coming in their wildest dreams a couple of years ago when the line started, nor that it would happen this quickly. Sure, Scott and the Four Horsemen are big Super Powers fans, but the red tape involved has held back revisiting this line for quite some time. Not to mention DC Direct and Hasbro not having the confidence to look at it when they’ve had the chance. So for all the crap I and others give Mattel, my hat is off to them BIG TIME. No matter how flawed some of the execution might be, I still will take it over not getting these figures. Same goes for the hassle of getting con exclusives.  I’m going to guess we’ll see Samurai in either Wave 16 or 17. And then…the circle will be complete. Or will it?

After all, Kenner did plan on making a whole bunch more Super Powers figures before the line was axed. And they even sculpted a nice set of prototypes for the 4th wave, including Man-Bat, Silcon, Shockwave, Rocketman, El Dorado and Quadrex. While we only have Man-Bat out of that line-up (so far) in DC Universe Classics, we have gotten a lot of the characters that were presented in concept art. In fact, we have enough to complete a whole "imaginary wave", from a certain point of view. As shown below, Mattel has made nice versions of Man-Bat, John Stewart, Kid Flash, Blue Devil, The Wonder Twins, Clark Kent, Bizarro, Vigilante, Deathstroke, and Obsidian. I don’t doubt that Creeper and 70s Supergirl are too far behind. What I really would love to see are new versions of the other Kenner created characters, like Quadrex and Executioner. And now that we have Cyclotron and Golden Pharaoh, that goal doesn’t seem too far out of reach.

Would that wrap up the line then? Almost. While it’s true we do have versions of some of the same characters in DCUC, we do not have the Super Powers versions. I don’t think we’ll necessarily get new sculpts for Orion or Kalibak, but we could get repaints that would put them much closer to their earlier counterparts. And of course, we still do need a Dick Grayson college age Robin! How great would it be to get a new 5-pack of these guys below (minus Kalibak) with the new figure being that Robin? I put the pic below together using some customs from other places online and some photoshop tweaking. And I have to say that the idea of a SP colored Mr. Freeze didn’t really appeal to me until I saw Adventurevault’s awesome custom repaint. I want this figure NOW. Custom Robin is by Lesternessman (just incredible work), Penguin is by Rich (check out his other DCUC repaints), and Kalibak is by Tyke. I highly recommend checking out all the links above. Batman and Superman are just more color accurate, with brighter grays and blues than the production figures. In general, ALL of the DCUC figures have duller, less vibrant paint jobs than SP did, even when the paint masters have them. I don’t know how these get so dull in production, because when you see the prototypes at conventions they look fantastic. I really wish they’d ditch the darker oversprays so it didn’t look like Mr. Miracle has been mud wrestling.

 So that’s about it. Once I actually have all of these in hand I’ll probably shoot that pic one more time with all of the figures at once, and put it on here poster sized. And now to work on getting all of these made in 4" scale…

So the news hit today that a county in California has banned fast food toys in some fashion. As someone who designed these toys for many years I’m of two minds on the subject.

First and foremost, it’s not really the government’s job to police what you are allowed to purchase if it is not harmful. Yes, childhood obesity is a pretty bad thing, and is even worse for our future than it is today (see: Wall-E). But I’d much rather see them crack down on the way things are cooked, the ingredients in them, and the choices being offered first. I do applaud that they at least try to make this make sense, and only take away toys from kids’ meals that exceed a certain calorie/fat level. But the sad fact is that pretty much all of them exceed that level.

What makes me not hate this altogether is that I think by leaning so heavily on licenses you are de facto bribing the kids to eat at your restaurant. Fast food places learned in the 1980s that kids are the one who make the decision where to eat in the family, and they saw that by dangling the best toy property in front of those kids they’ll win the battle. Dave Thomas never liked that Wendy’s had toys, because he wanted the food to stand on its own feet. But he was realistic enough to know that he couldn’t compete with McDonald’s and Burger King without them.

I think it you went back to having non-licensed toys that are once again just something to keep kids quiet and not used as a traffic builder/profit center it might make the licenses last a bit longer in the retail toy world instead of burning out so quick, and let creativity and craftsmanship rise in the fast food toys without having the license as a crutch. And maybe then parents and kids would pick the place to eat at that had the best food and not the coolest superhero of the month.

For the first time, I’m actually getting all of a new DC Universe Classics wave without looking for it, without hunting it down, and without paying more than retail cost. In fact, I’m paying less! I ordered the entire wave through Amazon a couple of weeks ago, and got them all for the average retail price of $14.99 each. Plus, there is no tax going through Amazon, and since I’m signed up for Amazon Prime I didn’t pay shipping, either. Pretty cool! I got a notice that they all shipped today, and Negative Man is already here, having shipped a few days early for some reason.

If I can pull this off for every wave I may never go on a toy hunt again. And I’ll be all the happier for it, too!

OK, I didn’t make any new predictions for 2010, but in all honesty my predictions for 2009 can pretty much be reused without much modifications (the less said about my 2009 resolutions, the better. Ahem.) So how did I do in forecasting the future? Let’s take a look:

The toy industry is going to get worse in 2009.

I would say this one was on the money. Prices went up, quality went down, distribution was terrible across the board. SDCC exclusives caused a panic. Online toy sales were incredibly erratic. Lines were canceled, Star Wars/GI Joe faltered. It goes on and on.  Will it get better in 2010? I hope so, but really the most I’m wishing for right now is for prices to stay where they are, and not increase yet again before the economic recovery picks up steam. Every dollar they go up is a dollar that the companies will continue to keep even after things get better.

Toys R Us and Walmart will do very well. 

I think this was also true. Walmart is getting more and more exclusives, and we saw this year that they’ve been almost the only game in town for many new toys while Target has the same old stock languishing on shelves.  TRU needs to pick up the slack on distribution and quantities, but no one can deny that they are on an upswing over the last decade, and are filling the gap left by the collapse of Tower and Suncoast for smaller collector driven lines.

Hasbro & Mattel to initiate mergers…or spin-offs.

I kind of blew this one. I really though we’d see some consolidation with the industry in turmoil, but it seems they’d rather hike prices to make up for the shortfall in sales. With the economy showing signs of life, I’m backing off this one even further. 

Licensed toys will stay strong…but become even less worth paying big bucks for the license.

Yeah. Avatar, Terminator, Star Trek, TMNT, GI Joe, Star Wars have all fallen far from their heights or didn’t hit those heights to begin with.  The perennial superhero lines are doing OK, but only the Marvel movie lines are really hot. We’ll see overall how "How to Train Your Dragon" does as a Walmart exclusive line, but everything is still easy to find. Don’t look for Shrek to burn up the sales charts, either, although Toy Story 3 might do decent numbers. The sad fact is that no matter how bad sales get, don’t expect studios to back off the cost of these licenses anytime soon.

And those were my predictions! And as an added bonus, here is your moment of Bollywood greatness; is it Teen Wolf? E.T.? The Absent-Minded Professor? You got me!

Wow, five years. I think this makes it the longest that I’ve been at one online "home" (not counting ToyOtter.com, which is really more of a rest stop than a home for new content). And it’s easily been the best place I’ve had the pleasure to be a part of.

So, to celebrate our "wooden anniversary" (thanks for that bit of knowledge, Mr. Lenzi), I’m going to write a series of blogs this week with each one being a follow-up to an older post that I’ve made, possibly even going back to old content on RTM and ToyOtter in the spirit of celebrating what has come before. Yes, believe it or not that means a new Ottertorial for every day this week!

I don’t believe it either.

And what could be a better way to kick this off than revisiting my very first blog that ran here at AFi? I’m speaking specifically about my appreciation of Funko’s Wacky Wobblers, in particular the ones based on Ad Icons. When I started collecting these things were much different in my life: I was a toy designer who liked the old marketing mascots, but outside of Wendy I hadn’t had a lot of contact with them (although you won’t believe how many times I pushed to get a head bobber made of Dave Thomas!)

These days, though, I actually do work in marketing, thinking up promotions for such diverse brands as Kraft, Castrol, Frito-Lay, Campbell’s, etc. And while I’ve tried a couple of times to push promotional merchandise on my bosses (sad to say I can guarantee you won’t be seeing a Frito Bandito Wobbler anytime soon) I really haven’t had much more opportunities to see cool retro stuff make it out than I used to.

And it seems like that’s how it goes for Funko, too. It’s been awhile since they’ve really pushed out any nostalgia properties; I talked with Brian Mariotti at Toy Fair this year and he confirms that they really don’t have any plans to make ad icon wobblers anymore. I can see where he’s coming from: back when they were a smaller company, Funko only made a few thousand of each Wobbler and the licenses were for small, one-shot runs. Those sold OK, but many of them took a little while to sell through all the way. And that was when they had outlets to sell them like Tower Records and Suncoast, which have gone the way of the dodo. Nowadays Funko plays with the big boys: they make hundred of thousands of Marvel and Star Wars Wobblers and sell them in big chains. The last one they made was the modern Burger King, and he’s easily available still.

So what it appears to be is that my collection is more or less complete…at least, it is as of a week ago. That’s when I acquired the last of the Wacky Wobbler Holy Grails: the Outback Kangaroo! Who, you say? The Outback Kangaroo?!? Since when does Outback Steakhouse have a mascot? Well, they don’t. Except for this Wobbler that was made solely for a corporate event and never available on the mass market. Funko used to (and stay may for all I know) make small runs of custom Wobblers for whoever wanted them, and better yet made them with actual packaging so they were considered as part of the overall collection. So you could pick up great icons like the Gorton’s Fisherman or the Empire Carpet Guy if you went to a little effort and expense. The only other corporate one I know that they did was Magic, the Old Navy dog who kinda existed as a real dog in their ads 10 years ago.

But Outback had no such mascot, so they created this boomerang throwing Kangaroo to fill the gap. I had never picked him up before as I refuse to spend more than $20 or so on any wobbler (I got lucky to start collecting when they first came out, as prices for some of these hit the hundreds of dollars, easily). I only have a few of the rarest ones already because I traded logos and website designs for them. So I pretty much forgot about getting a Kangaroo, and since he’s not really a legit mascot it didn’t bother me too much. Not enough to spend $100 in any case.

And then a couple of weeks ago I was looking over some old emails and noticed one from a few years back where I was watching an eBay auction for one. So I went to do a search to see if any of them still show up. And found one…for a Buy-It-Now of $12.95. Sold! And that, my friends, is the end of a collection. Why so cheap, you ask? Well, I think two things are in play here: one is the principle of "all good things come to those who wait", namely that toy prices in general are their highest shortly after the toy is released, when the maximum amount of competition is after it. As each collector’s need is satisfied, the demand goes down and supply goes up. Unless an item is truly rare, the longer you wait the easier it is to find. Ebay helps this factor tremendously. Second, the hobby of collecting these Wobblers has diminished quite a bit from the mid 2000s, when Funko was releasing new Wobblers every few months at short runs. So like me, if you aren’t always on the prowl for new items you just aren’t paying attention to what’s out there. Pretty much all of the "rare" wobblers that commanded hundreds of dollars a few years ago are readily available at reasonable prices.

Still, I do hope that one day Funko cranks out a few more of these. I really would like the rest of my favorite icons to make the grade: CrunchBerry Beast, Pizza Hut Pete, Sugar Pops Pete, King Ding Dong, or the Piggly Wiggly Pig among others. But if this is all I get, them I guess I’m pretty happy. After all, who would have though ANY of these guys would get a toy 30-40 years after their heyday? Not me. Although one day I still would like to see that Dave Thomas sitting on my shelf, pitching his square hamburgers to the rest of the marketing legends…

Ok, so I broke down last night and bought a bunch of toys that I don’t technically collect or was looking for. And one of them, Luke Skywalker Snowspeeder Pilot, is so well-made that it just might be my favorite figure in a long, long time.

So I think I’m going to make a decision on my Star Wars collection in general based on this one figure: get rid of almost everything else. Now, I’ve been working to ditch the majority of my collection over the past year. How I’m going to do it will remain under wraps for the moment, but I’ve been sorting and documenting what I’ve picked up in the past 20 years as time has permitted (most of it is in storage). I had planned on getting rid of most of my Star Wars figures, having given away my entire vintage collection a few years back to friends with kids. But now that I’ve seen how nice the latest figures actually are (I stopped collecting Star Wars around the time of Attack of the Clones, with their stupid action features) I’m rethinking that a bit.

The toys that I’m keeping are small representative batches that make good displays. And the things that got me started in the first place, the figures that hold the only nostalgia for me are the original 21 figure from Star Wars, and the first set from The Empire Strikes Back. In fact, that first set from Empire holds the most memories from my childhood (although I can tell you where I got each and every one of the first 40 or so Kenner figures).  So here is what I’m going to do: replace a set of the first 32 Kenner vintage figures, and acquire the best Hasbro modern day versions of those figures to make one big display. And that’s it. No more Star Wars figures outside of those. I’d be lying if I didn’t say this idea wasn’t heavily inspired by our pal CantinaDan’s awesome evolution blogs. No joke, go check them out now!

And since I haven’t been paying attention the SW for the past 6 years or so, I’m asking all of you: What are the definitive versions of those original 32 characters? Post a link to the figure you think is the best one in the comments below, and I’ll keep everyone updated with my progress as I pick them up. (Picture links are a must, especially for ones like Boba Fett, who has way too many to choose from!)

So I just got back from a futile trip to my local Walmart to look for DCUC 11, but I didn’t leave empty handed.

No, I instead found a plethora of Hasbro products that wore down my resolve and forced me to purchase them. Which items? Well, I’m glad you asked.  First off, I had decided to only acquire the Marvel Universe figures that were in the original Mattel Secret Wars line. But tonight I saw the new 3 3/4" Spider-Man line and had to pick up the Green Goblin and Venom. The Goblin will replace (in my mind) my old Mego Pocket Heroes Green Goblin, which I loved dearly as a lad of 8.  And now we finally have a Todd McFarlane version of Venom that can replace the one by Toy Biz waaaaay back in 1992. (Hey, do you realize that it’s been longer since Dazed & Confused was released in ’92 than it was from 1976 until 1992? Crazy!)

I would have left it at that, but I had to pass the Star Wars display on my way out. Now, I haven’t bought any Star Wars figures except the McQuarrie ones since 2002. But of course they now have a NEW SW concept figure out, the Empire Concept Snowtrooper (#2). And with it they have a finally perfect on-model Snowspeeder Luke, which was another favorite figure of mine as a lad of 9. 

So that was it. But as I left to toy section, I happened to look at the Xmas clearance section…where they had the MU Giant Battles figures for 50% off. I don’t really care about the big figures, but I did kind of want that Bucky Cap…

Damn you, Hasbro.

Well, in the six or so months since I last updated the classic Super Powers line-up with DCUC figures we’ve seen a few more slots filled. It’s amazing to think of it, but within a year we should have (for the first time!) the entire Super Powers roster recreated with a modern day line. So once again, I’ve recreated the well known shot from the back of the 3rd series cards using DCUC figures that have been released or revealed as of now. It’s a lot bigger than the last one, and with all-new, nice big pictures of these greats sculpts (and big thanks to Cornboy for helping to fill in a few gaps!). Click on the pic to embiggen.

Lots of rumors are hitting as to what’s coming next. The biggest being that next year’s SDCC exclusive will be a Plastic Man figure with multiple attachments.  Fans are already going nuts over the news (and not entirely in a good way) so we’ll see what actually plans out in the next year. There has also been talk of completing the line-up by SDCC, with Desaad in Wave 12, and a Golden Pharaoh/ Cyclotron 2-pack to be revealed on MattyCollector.com next year. 

Is any of this true? Who knows for sure. We did get a pretty accurate leak about Waves 10 & 11 all the way back in Nov. 2008, so anything is possible. It’s a pretty safe bet in any case that we’ll wrap up the Super Powers homage sooner rather than later. And that’s where it gets really interesting for me:once the full lineup is released, will we see any of the characters that WEREN’T produced? We already have a few of them: Man-Bat, Bizarro, Kid Flash, Vigilante, John Stewart, Deathstroke, Supergirl, and the Wonder Twins. But is it possible we might see Quadrex? Silicon? Howitzer?!? 

Only time will tell. 

Well, this year at SDCC I ended buying much more than I usually do, albeit a lot of it for friends and co-workers. I’m not normally one who wants exclusives unless it’s a new character than fits into an existing collection. not just a variant or retool (slimed Egon, anyone?)

But this year I did get what is probably my favorite exclusive yet: Hasbro’s Marvel Universe Invaders set! (Although the Wonder Twins were neck and neck. I love those goofy bastards!) True, it is a bunch of repainted and/or kitbashed figures, but they did such a good job I can’t really complain. And Mattel take note: this is how you do exclusive packaging! New art by Marvel EIC Joe Quesada, all on new individual cards that fit in with the regular collection, in a special case with Cho’s pencil art backing each figure PLUS a neat Marvel 70th Anniversary magnet holding the front closed. 

And if you pick up Union Jack you have almost the whole Invaders team (although it’s a shame that the upcoming WW2 Cap and Bucky figures weren’t ready before this set was made. They really would have plussed it up). As is, at least they repainted Cap in desaturated colors befitting the period. If you repaint Firestar’s hair yellow and give her Hobgoblin’s cape she makes for a convincing Spitfire. I did a photoshop mock-up of the sorely needed Baron Blood to round out the lineup. Can you believe we’ve never gotten a figure of this guy?

This set is what’s forced me to give in and pick up a few select MU figures. I’m not going to be a completist on this line, by far. I’ll outline my MU collecting strategy in an upcoming blog, though. I hope Hasbro fulfills the promise of this line, with a few playsets and even crazier forays into depth of character down the road.