Marvel Legends Icons Canceled
Well, this isn’t much of a surprise, but Hasbro has canceled all orders of the fifth and sixth series of Icons figures to online stores. Hasbro isn’t very forthcoming with information, so we’ll have to take this as a pretty strong indication that the Icons line is done. The fifth series would have given us Daredevil and Nightcrawler, while the sixth was slated to bring Colossus and Jean Grey. I didn’t really care that much for the Icons scale, but I definitely would have picked up that Nightcrawler. Oh well.
This cancellation has brought about more “doom and gloom” from collectors who are concerned about the fate of Marvel Legends. Hasbro still hasn’t said anything one way or the other regarding HML4 (or anything beyond that). The “unofficial” word is that Hasbro’s reason for not having yet released HML4 is that the retail market is currently saturated with movie figs and there is no place for Marvel Legends. To me, that makes no sense. Every Wal-Mart, Target, or TRU I walk into has peg space devoted to Marvel Legends, which is currently rotting away with series 2 and 3 pegwarmers… Why not replenish that aisle space with new stock that might actually sell? I think what Hasbro really means is that Marvel Legends is their lowest priority, and they’re focused solely on movie merchandise right now. Why not just be honest about that, Hasbro?
So, Icons is done. And there’s no word on Marvel Legends proper. Is this the end of an (action figure) era? Tough to say. I’m hoping that NYCC (April 18th-20th) will bring us the answers we’ve been waiting for.
Tags: marvel legends icons
I liked the icons a lot and REALLY wanted Collosus, Nightcrawler, Daredevil and both Phoenix and Dark Phoenix. That is a lot of my money Hasbro could have had.
This is not surprising though and I anticipate the complete cancellation of ML at any time. I only hope I get my FF Foom first. I consider the Hulk series coming to be ML.
Do I have to mention that Hasbro sucks? S.A. Guy knows I feel this way. They keep coming up with these lame excuses…”Toy Biz made all the good characters,” “The market is too saturated.”
Ya know one reason they say there are so many figures on the pegs is cause they keep releasing sub par Spiderman junk every week with 100 of the same figures that nobody wants and 1 per box of the characters everybody wants so they can attain collectable status.
My brother and I were just lamenting that we will probably not get a Titanium Man from Iron Man movie series for this reason. They set themselves up for this crap. Toy Biz did the same thing. 100 Wolverines that everybody already has or doesn’t want and 1 really cool character or some similar situation. Not that Toy Biz (Marvel Toys) were as bad as Hasbro who is notorious for this.
Again I say this is fine. Hasbro doesn’t want my money and Mattel does so…
They canceled because they think they won’t sell since the last ones didn’t. Why didn’t Thor, DR. Doom, Punisher, Silver Surfer, and 1/2 Torched Torch didn’t sell cause they sucked. Why is HML going to get canceled because they don’t sell why don’t they sell because they suck. So if Hasbro is going to blame anyone they should blame themselves not a saturated market of course which they created.
I thought Icons was all over the place with nice ones like Doom and junk like Punisher. Some guys say Thor is the best Icon ever but the one I bought broke at the leg and I never replaced it. The blanched out skintone turned me off too on that one. HML has had some nice figures (SheHulk, Thor, Annihilus) and junk (Banshee) but the biggest problem in my major metro has been not finding stock on the store shelves. To this day I have never seen a Black Knight or a Namor from the Fantastic Four series. Somehow I found a variant Marvel Girl at Target but its like MLs and Fantastic Four just disappeared. TRU, of all places, never got Hasbro’s Fantastic Four series or much ML action beyond a ton of lousy Diamond Emma Frost exclusives. So yeah- lots of subpar figures, terrible distribution, and an interest in pushing StarWars, GIJoe, and Transformers down our throats instead of Marvel Legends. But this is the same company that sells transformer deluxe class Bumblebee- the freaking star of last summer’s movie blockbuster- where if kids ran to the toystore to buy a Bumblebee he couldn’t be found!!! For months!! I swear I think ‘ol Bumblebee is just now starting to hit the shelves in some good numbers to get ahead of the scalpers. 9 months later!!! Slow boat from China indeed!
Well you guys already know my feelings about hasbro. That nightcrawler really looked awesome…….I hope once they cancel ML, Marvel will start producing their own lime of comic style figures, but for now bring on the DCUC!
Hasbro you should burn in the hell of toy makers along with geppeto!!! in toy globe wave 4 and 5 said canceled too, so i think this is it for Marvel Legends… a very little smart move from the guys of Marvel given the license to this crappy toy factory, and now a worst move from Hasbro killing the golden eggs chiken… well, we always hate you Hasbro…. R.I.P. Marvel Legends… Hello DC Universe….
Dang. I can’t believe they’re ending this line and possibly the whole Marvel Legends line… When SDCC comes around in July I hope I see some kind of sign that their might still be a flicker left in the Legends line.
I think that Marvel should rekindle a new deal with Toybiz to get the line back into shape, that’d be awesome.
Okay, I’ve been giving this some thought. I think a lot of things are possible, so I’ll try to break them down.
1. (most optimistic, somewhat likely) Hasbro realizes the line isn’t doing well, and they realize fans and collectors are unhappy. They’ve put the line on temporary hiatus while they bring in Jesse Falcon and Marvel Toys to rework the product and try to whip it back into shape. We’ll see something akin to an ML relaunch toward the end of the year, and all will be well.
2. (less optimistic, but still okay) Hasbro realizes that ML sales are not high enough to warrant continuing the line as is. They decide, instead, to only tie in Marvel Legends releases with major movies. So all we’ll see are things like the FFML wave and the upcoming Hulk ML wave. Next year we’ll get some X-Men ML waves to tie in with the new Wolverine movie. And maybe at year’s end we’ll see an Iron Man ML wave. It won’t be all that different, we’ll still get new comic-accurate marvel characters, but they’ll just be packed in themed waves.
3. (kinda pessimistic, but most likely in my opinion) Hasbro has been begrudgingly dragging along the 6″ ML figures at Marvel’s behest, and have finally decided they’re done with that. What hasbro does best is the 3.75″ fig. At SDCC we’ll see an announcement that Hasbro is relaunching marvel legends in this new, smaller scale, complete with vehicles and playsets.
4. (very pessimistic, and unllikely) Hasbro says “Screw it, all we care about is Spider-Man Monopoly and sound-action Hulk foam hulk hands. You action figure collectors can go suck on a rock!” And they dissolve marvel legends altogether and make nothing but movie-based kiddie toys.
Who is Jesse Falcon and when you say Marvel Toys do you mean they might bring in Marvel Toys to help?
I love my Thor icon. I thought all of the Hasbro I cons were pretty good except for Punisher who was not to scale and looked like a thin Richard Nixon. That is the one thing that Hasbro did well enough I thought. Better than Toy Biz’s Beast icon anyway…
Mr. Cool Toy; What is wrong with Geppeto? tee hee
Is Toy Globe a reliable source? I expected the cancellation but is it official?
Who’s Jesse Falcon!? Ha! Sometimes I forget that he’s not a “real” celebrity and most people have never heard of him!
Jesse Falcon was the spokesman/product development manager for ToyBiz/Marvel Toys. Basically, he headed up the team of guys who decided what figs to make and how to make them (IE - dream job). He’s also a pretty accomplished comedian and performer. He was in “Upright Citizens Brigade” if you remember that comedy central show and he works for some theatre troope in NY, I believe. He’s kind of a ponce, but overall a cool guy.
At NY Toy Fair this year, Marvel announced that Marvel Toys was no more - they completely disbanded toy making operations. This meant that LCBH was canceled, and the TNA license went to another company (Jakks, I think). The rumor is that Hasbro has hired Jesse and company to work with them on the Marvel license. Hence the reason for Marvel disbanding the toy company. There’s an actual press release about this somewhere. It’s not just me spouting off unsubstantiated nonsense. Lemme try to dig that up.
A-ha, yes. I might be reading too much into this, but here’s the excerpt from TNI:
“It turns out that Wave 3 of Legendary Comic Book Heroes will not be released and that the line is done. Jesse went on to tell us that even though sales were good, Marvel Toys decided to pull the plug so they could concentrate more on working with outside vendors like Hasbro. Jesse was very excited about what was coming down the pipeline and believes that collectors and fans will be very happy come the New York Comic-Con and San Diego Comic Con this year.”
it’s the ‘concentrate on working with outside vendors like hasbro’ part that got everyone excited.
I hope Marvel sells the rights back to Toy Biz - their figures were of MUCH better quality and detail (and ironically cheaper). It seems when they ran the line - the figures flew off the shelves - and are worth a bunch of money today (Try to get a Masked Captain America for under $60).
I think the 12″ icon line is the best thing rolliing - and I was really looking forward adding Colossus to my collection.
Sometimes I think fans are drunk on the nostalgia of Toybiz MLs and Icons. Toybiz Icons gave us the great sculpts and decent distribution: Hulk, Capt. America; and the not-so-great sculpts and lousy distribution: the hard to find Icons Blue Beast (and I returned 2 defective ones before the 3rd one gave me one without a defective arm). Toybiz MLs gave us the great sculpts and decent distribution: Series 9 Galactus; and the not-so-great sculpts (Legendary Riders Thing), lousy distribution (Legendary Riders TaskMaster). Not to mention more Wolvies and IronMen then you could shake a stick at. Hasbro gave us the great Icons ( Ultimate Ghost Rider), great BAFs (Annihilus), and great 6″ MLs (SheHulk). Hasbro gave us lousy Icons (Human Torch), lousy BAFs (Ronan), and lousy 6″ MLs (Bucky, Emma Frost). And lousy distribution: FF series, Queen Brood series. I have yet to see an ML Namor and I’m one of those nuts who makes the weekly rounds. So anyway, different company but more of the same old headaches. Its pretty much DCUC and NECA TMNTs for me too right now. Delivered to my door from CornerStore Comics, natch.
Okay, further developments on this. Hasbro has “officially” contacted online retailers and declared both the Icons line and HML4 won’t be coming. Not cancelled, per se, just not coming in their “original form”. (My source is this post from CornerStoreComics over at the fwoosh).
“Hasbro has decided not to move forward on either of these lines as they were previously solicited.”
So… maybe this is good news in disguise. Hasbro isn’t using the terms “canceled” or “hiatus”, they’re saying “not gonna get them as previously solicited”. Maybe that means they’ve been pulled to be retooled or something. Shrug.
NYCC can’t get here fast enough…
SuperArticulatedGuy,
I so hope that you’re right. This is what I’m thinking. EVERYONE has complained about the lousy paint jobs on HML, the lousy sculpts (though I think some of them were pretty good, ie: She Hulk), etc etc. When Hasbro responded to these complaints, they said that since they have to outsource the painting, that they couldn’t give us the nice detail that so many Toy Biz MLs saw and still keep the price down. We all knew that was bullsh!t.
Then along comes DCU by Mattel. These figures are BEAUTIFUL, sculpted by a well known team (the Four Horsemen) and receiving beautiful paint applications similar to the ToyBiz MLs. And, guess what? The price is IDENTICAL to HML. WTF? How can Hasbro not produce beautiful toys and keep the price down, while Mattel is pumping out great product left and right AND keeping the price down. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?
So, maybe…JUST MAYBE…Hasbro sat back and said “Sh!t! Mattel showed us up. We need to get our act together and show the world that we can compete with Mattel.” If Jesse is truly returning to the line, he probably told them “Look guys, your producing sh!t, the collectors hate it, I hate it, and Marvel hates it! Plus, I promised the world a retooled Scarlet Witch, and need to follow through on that promise!” LOL!
Also, Hasbro said all the cool characters were already produced. Apparently they don’t realize that there are still some iconic characters that people grew up with that have yet to receive a figure. I’m not a fan of this character, but Jubilee is well known by kids from the 90’s. We still haven’t seen her. What about that retooled Scarlet Witch? Most of the current events in the MU have spun out of her storyline! We still haven’t seen a comic style Mary Jane, and she’s one of the first ladies of the MU. The Thunderbolts? They were promoted on the back of all the original ToyBiz ML packages, but we still haven’t seen Songbird, Atlas, Citizen V, Moonstone, etc. Polaris? Hellcat? Ares? What about the Inhumans? The original New Warriors? X-Factor? The Power Pack? Complete the Young Avengers? Dazzler (yeah, you all hate her, but I love her - lol), the Exiles? X-Force? Alpha Flight? The Starjammers? The Shi’ar? Arana? Sebastian Shaw? Valkyrie? etc etc. There are still so many “Cool” and popular characters out there that haven’t gotten the ML treatment, some of which have never received an action figure period.
I so hope this line gets saved and returns to its glory and/or gets better! That would make me a VERY happy camper!
Here’s to hoping for good news from NYCC!
Not to mention classic Jean Grey, and I’m not talking about Phoenix or Dark Phoenix…But JEAN GREY! Why isn’t there a figure of her too? Apart from all the other fabulous characters mentioned above…
No se alguien podria confiramar si la serie de icons va asalir o ya no ?
o se retrazo , o que va apasar gracias
oh geez. more spanish. um, okay:
Hola Miguel!
mi espanol no es bueno
la series de icons es cancelada. no mas! yo confiramo que hasbro no produsco ese figuras (any longer?)
yo deseo tu pode comprender.
All I have to say is, SUCK! My younger brother and I were reallt lookin forward to add Nightcrawler adn both Phoenix figures to our wide collection of Marvel figures. Oh well!