Wrap-up of official news

Okay, I have to admit that I'm way behind in this. I haven't even gone through all of the sets yet. LEGO has been releasing so much stuff about their official lines, that it's hard to keep up. It's not just that I'm constantly behind in blogging - so every day I bookmark things I want to post, but don't have time just then to post, but also I'm more interested in highlighting great MOCs that simply pushing the corporate product. But I do aspire to completely covering the field on this blog, so I'll use one post here to mention several official announcements that have come out recently (or not so recently). BTW, if you are looking for more timely updates, be sure to follow Brick Heroes, FBTB and Brickset, as those guys are much more up-to-date than I am.

Okay, let's start with the most recent. Last week LEGO released an Avengers movie poster based on the real one. News today is that they will give away 2 million of these on the opening day of the movie.



Also in the immediately new news category is the announcement of an exclusive Hulk figure. If you buy $50 of merchandise through Lego.com between May 16 and 31, you'll get this free fig. This hit the web yesterday, so at first I thought it was just another April Fools prank, but, no, it seems to be real.



Within the past month, the Marvel sets have started to roll out. They've been seen on the shelves at John Lewis, a British store, and you can order them on such sites as Walmart.com (they sold out quickly and should restock soon), Amazon (pre-order still) and Target (pre-order). You should be able to get these at a store near you in the next couple of weeks. Some people have started to get the sets, so reviews are starting to appear, such as this for the Quinjet, this for 6866, Wolverine's Chopper Showdown, this for 6868, Hulk's Helicarrier Breakout and this for 6865, Captain America's Avenging Cycle.




Aside from the set itself, the review of the Quinjet led to some other exciting news. In the packaging, we saw the characters for the yet-to-be-seen set, 6873 - Spider-Man's Doc Ock Ambush. We'll get Spider-Man, Doc-Ock, and, here's the exciting part to me - Iron Fist! That means that we're going to go further into the Marvel Universe, seeing some of the less prominent characters. Will of Brick Heroes points out that Iron Fist will be a featured character in the upcoming Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon, so that makes sense for the LEGO merchandising tie-in (so it's not like we'll see Black Lightning any time soon) (checks - ah, wait, he was DC - I was just grabbing for someone obscure). However, Will adds that the Ultimate Spider-Man series will also feature Nick Fury, Nova, White Tiger, Power Man, Venom and Dr. Doom. Of course Nick Fury will be in the Avengers movie, so I'm baffled he isn't already in a set (he's in that movie poster, after all), but by far the most exciting character here for me is Dr. Doom - second only to Magneto on the all-time list of Marvel baddies, IMO (btw, not just my opinion, the IGN list of top 100 comic book villains put Magneto at #1, then Joker, then Doom).




Okay, jumping over to DC, they tricked me. I thought they'd already shown the cover art for the upcoming Batman 2 video game, but this week they released the official final cover art.



Also on the video game, if you preorder, you can get an exclusive Lex Luthor fig in a powersuit.



Various other promotional art has come out for the video game as well.

On some older news, at some point in the past month LEGO put some content on their official Marvel Superheroes page. At this point it is just a big panoramic scene that you can scroll back and forth. When you click on different characters you get their statistics (Thor - really strong, but not so bright, Magneto, not as strong, but smart, etc).



The official DC Superheroes page has more content. When you first log in you get a little Batman vs Joker video. Content includes character bios, product news, and the coolest bit is the comics builder, where you can choose different characters, vehicles and settings and put them together to make your own comic adventures.





I don't think I ever posted the exclusive figs that were available at Toy Fair New York. Why oh why didn't they do Iron Man like this? It looks so much closer to the comics, and the opening faceplate feature really isn't worth it. I mean, who really cares what Tony Stark looks like?



Whew. I still have to finish up giving my own thoughts on the official sets, but otherwise I think I'm caught up with all of the news of the line.