Preparing for the Iron Man Influx
04.28.07 By Collin DavidIn May of 2008, one of Marvel’s premiere heroes will find his way to the big screen for the first time. He’s a billionaire industrialist alcoholic named Tony Stark, but that’s not why I love him. I love him because he wears a suit of robot armor, and I’m genetically predisposed to love the bejesus outta anything marginally robotic, and that includes Lucy Lawless and her metal pelvis.
With any movie property based on comics, you can always expect a barrage of merchandise to come surging through the pipelines. Walk into any toy store or Wal-Mart tomorrow and you’ll likely be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Spider-Man 3 toys, notebooks, beach balls, toothpastes and various mystery ointments that have your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man on them. I like Spidey and all, but he’s never made it into my top ten favorite super-beings. I mean, not enough to consume chewable vitamins in the shape of his head kind-of-love. Iron Man is undoubtedly in my top five, and yeah, I’d probably eat anything with his cold, unfeeling face on it.
If my predictions are correct, and I used the latest in Magic 8 ball technology, Iron Mania is poised to consume our nation in 2008… just as soon as Spideyphilia wears off, and the subsequent Fantastic Eu-Four-ia ebbs. While this means a vast array of new action figures from Hasbro, there’s also rumours afoot of Hasbro breaking out the old ToyBiz Marvel Legends molds and re-creating a classic array of past Iron Men. When a movie property is hot, fans will likely dig around in the source material and discover the interesting genesis of the character, and with it, the previously unnoticed products that bear their new favorite character. And as far as Iron Man goes, there’s a pretty fair selection. If I were a speculatin’ man, I’d pick up a few of these things before the general populace encroaches upon our noble nerd kingdom and annexes our Iron Men.
My top Iron Man speculation would be the Sideshow Collectibles Premium Format statue, the prize of my collection. While the exclusive version with the interchangeable Tony Stark head has already reached up to $800 at auction, from an original price of a scant $250, even the regular version has doubled in price, and this is without Iron Mania sweeping the nation. Speculating on any of Sideshow’s exclusive items is usually a very safe bet for a large profit, though. But you didn’t hear it from me. I just buy one of each for myself. If you seek a slightly smaller investment, Sideshow’s Legendary Scale Iron Man bust seems to also be a fair bet. The exclusive version comes with a sculpted Iron Man placard, designed to be placed in front of this bust or your entire Iron Man collection.
What I’m most excited about is a beautiful sextet of Iron Man busts coming from Bowen designs, and not just because it has the word ‘sex’ in it. You might be thinking - ‘Why do you need six Iron Man busts, you crazy, sad little man?’ Because Iron Man, like David Bowie, is a chameleon, constantly changing appearance to suit his various ends and fight his myriad enemies. And melodies.
The series of busts explores the evolution of Iron Man from his classic red & yellow costume, his dark blue Stealth duds, the horn-head armor, his Silver Centurion armor, the most recent comic armor designed by Adi Granov, and even the rarely-seen Iron Man 2020 armor, which first appeared in Jack Kirby’s Machine Man #2. That’s six beautiful armors, though it excludes IM’s first appearance armor, his modular armor, the Ultimate universe armor, and the armors that he wore while battling Thor and Hulk - all of which were cool enough to be used for various Marvel Legends action figures. They come in packs of three for roughly $100 per set, and are a thrill to this long-time Iron Man fan. Even if he’s kind of a jerk now. These are scheduled to ship in the third quarter, which is the July to September range on the retail calendar. Drop by Alter Ego Comics, my favorite online retailer, to pre-order them.
The Marvel movies will be out in force for the next few years, with the second Hulk movie also coming along (and starring Ed Norton as the Hulk, and not that creepy Eric Bana guy), and Sub-Mariner in pre-production…. but no one’s gonna care about Namor. No one has ever cared about Namor. He’s a Spock-lookin’ guy with wings on his feet, despite the fact that he lives underwater. You don’t see me showing off my GILLS, Namor. Get over it. The point is that the Iron Man movie is coming…
And it had better be good. If not, I’ll still get a vast array of Iron Man toys to play with and make my own movie. Hand-puppets are severely underrated.
---
Article Tags: action figures, Alter Ego Comics, evolution, Hasbro, Iron Man, Marvel, Tony Stark, ToyBiz================
Gotta Collect? Then You Gotta Connect - Join our Collectors’ Community!
April 28th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Speaking of bucket-head, have you seen this yet?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v168/mamodan/iron-man-grey-01.jpg
I’m officially awaiting some CG repulsor blasts.
April 29th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Totally. That’s a beautiful interpretation of the first appearance armor! I can’t wait to see where they go next… as long as it isn’t Spider-Man-One-Green-Goblin style. THAT…. was uncalled for.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Hand-puppets are severely underrated!
I’d love to watch a Collin Puppet Production