Sometimes you can’t pin an entire article on smaller tidbits of news, so that’s where a catch-all article is needed. A ton of news and new figures debut from all different companies, and it’s impossible to do a reaction article for each and every one. I’m not even sure I’ve seen everything that’s been revealed yet, so I know I’ll either be forgetting or leaving out some very important stuff. But other than Marvel and MotUC, here’s some of the other things that tweaked my buns during 2015’s SDCC.
Like most of the human race, I enjoyed Mezco’s One:12 Collective Batman figure. With outstanding articulation and a high quality fabric uniform that rivals Hot Toys offerings, it is right at the top of my list of favorite action figures ever. Mezo isn’t stopping there as they debuted several more action figures that symbiotically meld fabric and plastic into pure fun.
I’m willing to give Mezco the benefit of the doubt on the fabric quality of their Flash, Superman, and Space Ghost figures. These are scheduled for a long time from now — Summer of 2016 at the earliest — which is plenty of time to do some necessary tightening of the fabric. I doubt this is going to be what we get in package. If you extrapolate the possibility, I have to say it looks like a line I’ll be grabbing one of everything. Space Ghost was a completely left field choice, but more than welcome. Despite a recent attempt by Jazwares that suffered some limitations, there hasn’t been a really stellar Space Ghost figure.
But it’s not just superheroes. Even better is their Frankenstein’s Monster figure. It’s a beautiful-looking work of art that I’ll have a hard time not buying multiples of just for the hell of it. I was pretty excited when I heard Mezco was planning Universal Monsters, and now I can’t wait to see a Dracula or more.
I’m not really fond of most of the output of DC Collectibles, but they did show off a handful of things that tweaked me. I continue to be completely confused by their Icons line and will probably remain so until in-hand reviews start pouring in. At times they look really good, at other times they look problematic. On the plus side, they showed off a decent-looking Firestorm and a “trench coat and Fedora” Joker that both look nice. Joker’s head is excellent.
Firestorm has some design details I’m tired of, but I consider myself a fairly large Firestorm fan and this keeps enough of the main aesthetics to make me want to pick him up. And that type of Joker is just totally noir-cool. I still don’t know if I dig this line or not, but it keeps tickling my interest.
While we’re on the trend of talking about DC, it appears Mattel is stepping back into the 6-inch DC water a bit. It’s obvious from the start it won’t be like it was, and much of what was shown wasn’t for me, but I did dig the black Superman. I wish he had trunks, because all of my Superman figures need to have trunks, but I still dig the alternate versions of Superman that have shown up over the years in various continuities.
S.H. Figuarts showed off a Bruce Lee figure that has laid claim to my money. A line known for extraordinarily articulated figures putting out one of the greatest martial artists in cinematic history? Yeah, that is the definition of no-brainer.
NECA showed off a lot of cool stuff, but one of the coolest item ended up being the Bat-Gremlin. We’ve already managed to get a Spider-gremlin, so this is a welcome addition to the slowly growing collection. Who would have thought we’d be getting such a great line of Gremlins toys? It’s nuts.
We’ve also gone from a time where there was no Ripley to fight our Aliens to a barrage of Ripley figures, including a Power-loader for her to kick Alien ass with. And we’ve also gone from static Terminator figures to Terminators that can move in all the ways they need to, plus Sarah Connor herself. John Connor sold separately (or not at all).
Star wars unveiled a ginormous Tie Fighter that you can actually ride around in. I’m pretty sure you can. Don’t tell me differently because at 170 bucks I better be able to shoot down some rebel scum while riding in it.
A new and exciting contender for my money has popped out of nowhere. In a short span of time, Mondo has announced fantastic-looking 12-inch Turtles, and they also showed off a set of three Madballs. First off, 12-inch Turtles are insane, and the price will no doubt make me cry, but there’s no way I can not get such perfect representations of the early comic-styled Turtles. Absolutely no way. With multiple heads and full articulation, I look forward to having these four guys loom over all the other versions of the Turtles we’ve managed to acquire. Now if they can put out a similarly scaled Shredder to go with it, mind’s will be blown.
The Madballs were pretty much the biggest shock of SDCC. While no info has come out as to price, release date, or pretty much anything, just knowing there is the possibility of these coming out is huge. A few years ago there were updated Madballs released that added a bunch of extra detail to the vintage designs, but, I have to say, I found them to go a bit too over the top in order to update the vintage style. But these look to have maintained the same aesthetics while ramping up the details allowed on something that isn’t a foam ball. It’s probably the best versions of the Madballs that may ever be released. I need these, then I need super-articulated Head-Poppin’ versions, and the Super Madballs, and I need them all as soon as possible, please and thank you.
Finally, something that was large enough news that it should really get a Reaction article all to itself but I can only babble for so long: Mattel will be making Thundercats. I know people like to bitch about Mattel and a lot of it is warranted, but if they can do the same thing to Thundercats that they’ve done to Masters of the Universe, we may finally be looking at a comprehensive line that includes both updated vintage and characters that were only in the cartoon. And trust me, after the soul-churningly aborted lines handed out by Bandai, the chance to get a complete line of Thundercats overrides anything else. Lion-O and Jackalman are all we had to look at but they look beautiful and if the rest maintain that standard we’ve got good times coming for a long time. Thundercats is one of those lines that has taken longer than it should to get a superior update, so to have it finally happen really puts an exclamation point to the proceedings.
Overall there was a ton of stuff to be happy about during this SDCC. For me, The fact that brand new Madballs and Thundercats were both announced at the same con means that my childhood just had sex with itself and produced a baby made of awesome. I know I left out a ton, but I think that hits my personal highlights.