Marvel Select

Bills all day said:
The articles speculate the trade war Trump escalated likely contributed to AENT canceling the purchase, especially since the gaming industry seems to be particularly impacted, and Alliance Games was a major part of the deal. That makes sense to me.

What makes you think AENT would have been better than Universal/Ad Pop? I know Ad Populum owns NECA. I don't know if that is good or bad for DST and its employees.
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My assumption is that Ad Populum was interested DST for the brand, licenses, and existing molds. They already have an entire toy division via NECA and Kid Robot so I don't think they would need the workforce of DST. They would view those employees as redundancies because capitalism is cruel.
 
Got Mr. Rogers a couple days ago.
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Never planned on picking up this figure due to some design choices I'm not fond of - the long legs, high crotch and small midsection syndrome, McFarlane style. But I finally caved because of my inner voice telling me to make another custom Cap, but make it MvC classic style this time.
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So, this figure is the most perfect base I could've hoped for, especially the upper torso, arms and head parts. Will most likely reuse parts of the boots (but will have to either graft new lower legs or buff them out with sculpt, plus new bigger feet). Maybe the midsection as well, if I extend it a bit. For sure will need a new crotch piece for this one cause the high waist grampa look isn't what I'm looking for. Will have to figure out how to do the scalemail thing on him, not sure if I'm gonna sculpt it or use some fabric material, perhaps. Dunno yet.

But back to the base figure itself. As is the case usually, I'm way more forgiving of the small faults in hand than when only seeing him on a screen. I love the light colors of his suit so much, they match the MvC vibe so perfectly, and look so good next to MS Spidey as well. But the paints themselves are a bit splotchy and rough on mine, and I'm definitely not a fan of the sparsemail scale sculpt.

What's SURPRISINGLY amazing is the articulation. Holy smokes, Steve can move! All of his joints (outside of the midsection) articulate so easily and are so expressive. I'm especially suprised by the high side kicks this Cap can perform.

And finally, the accessories. Ho boy! A nice selection of hands, the perfect masked Cap portrait, a great unmasked headsculpt (although there's something slightly off about the hairsculpt that I can't really put my finger on) and a first appearance head that I will never use. Plus the blue and flesh colored necks, the downed cowl. Two beautiful shields with the coolest ring gimmick. And the modern straps/belt combo. Top effin' notch. He'd get 11/10 accessory wise if he came with some kinds swooshing shield slinging effect.
 
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I feel like to hit MvC-style buffness, the MUFF toys ADAM is probably a closer match.
 
I have a friend that owns a comic book shop who has used Diamond as his primary distributor for 15 years. He sent me an email late last night telling me that Diamond Select Toys was shutting down and that there were major changes coming after the sale because Diamond had been losing a lot of money on comic distribution as well. He told me that layoffs are coming. I don't know if he got an email from the new owners (Universal/Ad Populum) or what, as he didn't say. He writes for Bleeding Cool as well but I didn't see any articles out there yet on any of this. While none of this can really be a surprise at this point, it's still a gut punch.

So first and foremost, best wishes to Diamond employees as they navigate a terrible employment environment. That is always the most important consideration in any of this.

However I know that there will be several of us who will also be disappointed to likely not be getting that Annihilus figure. Again though, the bigger issue is the real life consequences that this will have for our friends that work there. I hope everyone can end up in a better situation than that they were in before.
 
On Instagram, Zach Oat posted that he is no longer with DST. He has been so great sharing info back and forth between fans and DST. I wish him the best in finding his next opportunity. Hopefully his book sales are high. I certainly am enjoying it.

Given Zach's prominence with DST, I wondered how extensive the layoffs were. Do you know if all employees were let go? There are articles saying Diamond Comic was cut down to just a few employees. Was DST also essentially wiped out? I can understand overhauling DST to make it profitable, but I'm not sure the value of completely cutting both companies. Good luck to all the employees affected!
 
I wonder what the chances are that Annihilus was far enough in production that he will at least end up at aliexpress like Earthworm Jim.
 
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