Its been quite a while since the Diamond Select Toys scooped up the Battle Beasts rights in 2009. They have released a few variations of an exclusive Crocodile Battle Beast to gain excitement and showed off some new sculpts at SDCC 2010, but thats about it. No plans or announcements had been made.
Recently, however, a countdown site went live at http://www.diamondselecttoys.com/battle-beasts.html. It has been counting down for over a month and will end tomorrow. Tomorrow also marks the beginning of C2E2.
Fortunately for us, IDW broke the news before Diamond Select’s countdown has finished. A new comic fleshing out a new story for the Battle Beasts franchise is on its way from IDW Publishing. Not only that, but they have put up a website showing off some comic art and design art for the ram-like character, Vorin. An exclusive translucent red version of Vorin will be available as a convention exclusive at C2E2. Vorin was not among the new sculpts shown at SDCC 2010.
A few months back, Toys “R” Us hosted a poll to choose who would be in their exclusive four-pack of Marvel Minimates spotlighting Galactus and his Heralds. And we are now pleased to reveal the lineup! Nova, Morg, Terrax and Galactus himself will be in the 4-pack, and each will be tricked out to the max. Nova will have a flaming flight base that connects to her fiery hair; Morg will have an axe and a flight base; Terrax will have his axe, a rock to ride on and a clear support stand; and Galactus will come with a teeny-tiny Silver Surfer accessory that hovers above his shoulder. Diamond Select is currently looking for a way to offer the two remaining characters, Airwalker and Firelord, in the regular Minimates line, but the Heralds of Galactus Box Set will be available at Toys “R” Us this winter! All of the Minimates in the set are 2 inches tall, and have 14 points of articulation.
Tomopop was on location at C2E2 this past weekend and got some nice shots of upcoming minimates based on the Marvel vs Capcom 3 game. Included in some of the images were Deadpool, Super Skrull, Dormammu, C. Viper, Morrigan and more. I did not see any accompanying information regarding release or assortment pack outs for the figures. Design sheets for these new figures leaked just before Valentine’s Day. Those can be seen here. It looks like many of the Marvel characters will be leveraging existing tooling, while most of the Capcom characters are getting the full treatment including Amaterasu!
The year is wrapping up and I figured that this would be the perfect time to take a look back at some of the year’s highlights.
Think I missed an announcement or important piece of news? Discuss it in the comments! I love to hear what you all have to say.
There are a couple of images that don’t appear to have been encoded properly by YouTube during the Highs/Lows segment. The original video was fine and I could not upload it again to YouTube because they said it was a dupe. Imagine the Battle Beast Minimate with a caption of “I want to buy you!”
Art Asylum has unveiled a new exclusive pack of Marvel Mini-mates on their blog.
From their blog:
Here they are finished and in final package for the first time, the Heroes and Adversaries 4 pack. This is a great pack that features some of the Marvel Universe’s most popular characters. Available through Toy Brigade/Xtreme Toys
I did a quick search for these two outlets and didn’t turn much up aside from that one is a toy retailer somewhere in California. Its not clear if this deadpool is the same as the one from Wave 28. Gotta say, that Venom looks terrible.