The history of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is a constantly changing story. This documentary confronts some of the conflicting stories from those who take credit for the franchise’s origins. Having read a bit about the history of Mattel and grazing over this period of their history, I can’t say as that I am surprised by the conflicting stories. Mattel’s corporate culture did nothing but breed this type of in-fighting. I look forward to the release of this documentary.

One of the surprise announcements out of SDCC 2011 for Mattel was the discontinuation of DC Universe’s distribution to retail in the form of connect n’ collect/build-a-figure waves. No more build-a-figures would be offered at retail and instead the line would shift to more popular character selections shipped on a unique schedule. That left a hole for MattyCollector.com to fill by selling the figures of characters the line had not yet gotten to along with the more obscure character selections that tend not to do well with retail, but are popular among collectors.

  

In theory, this wasn’t a bad idea. Mattel set up a 9 month subscription that would feature nine monthly figures starting in April of 2012. There would also be three quarterly oversized figures and one club exclusive oversized figure as well. The latter, of which, would be decided by online fan poll based on a selection of revealed characters including, but not limited to, Black Lantern Swamp Thing and Shaggy Man.

The linch pin of this subscription, though, was that a specific number of subscriptions would need to be sold to make it viable. Mattel setup a thermometer to keep track of the relative number of subscriptions on MattyCollector.com to give people an informed view of how close they were to the goal.

Read more about the state of the subscription after the jump.
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Conan O’Brien had Harrison Ford on last night to talk about his new movie, Cowboys and Aliens. It was mentioned that it only just barely beat out The Smurfs to take the top spot at the box office this past weekend.

Looks like we’ll be getting a new game based on the Batman franchise, albeit without Batman. Gotham City Impostors will be a downloadable game for Playstation Network and XBox Live Arcade.

 

Pictures have surfaced, courtesy of JustJared.com, of Tom Hardy dressed up as Bane on the set of The Dark Knight Rises. You can see the images above.

Another slow week on releases. Looks like we have a new Bleach game for the PS3 and a couple of special edition Saints Row offerings collecting the first and second games. Not much more than that, but be sure to take a look for yourself after the jump and click through to anything you want to purchase to help the site out. Until next week!

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This is why we can’t have nice things.

I am happy to see that warehouse punch dancing is still in vogue though.