Managed to get out a fair bit over the past few days, due in large part today especially thanks to a friend of mine with a car. I have sighted and am informing and/or recommending of the following.
STAR WARS BATTLE PACK - HOTH SPEEDER BIKE PATROL - Got this a few days ago, and snagged it since I was concerned it would be a short-lived store exclusive like the LAST Speeder Bike Battle Pack. Turns out it's not. However, it IS an extremely impressive Battle Pack with two white-colored classic Speeder Bikes and two new variations of Biker Scouts that use the arms and boots of Imperial Snowtroopers, which, along with pale grey coloring in place of the black of the Biker Scouts, effectively results in a new sort of "merged" Imperial Trooper division that looks immensely cool. Based on observations at numerous Wal-Marts, Targets, as well as a K-Mart and a TRU today, this is also the most popular set of the three new ones, which also include a Clone Wars Speeder Bike set, and a Hoth Recon Patrol set featuring Han, Chewie, a couple of droids, and the Probe Droid.
DC UNIVERSE INFINITE HEROES -- I finally encountered these today at several Targets. Decided I could squeeze Shazam/Captain Marvel and Guy Gardner into my budget. Wish I could've found Black Adam, but there was no sign of him, or Atom or Black Hand. Professor Zoom didn't interest me that much, and the clear peg-warmer of this first assortment is Adam Strange.
JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED - Finally saw the six-pack with Gorilla Grodd in it at Target. There's not enough new figures in this set to make it worth $20 just for the big ape, but it was interesting to finally see this set.
TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE CLASSICS -- Found the new "Seeker" Jet, ACID STORM today. Also saw Galvatron, but my budget would not allow. Hopefully soon. I'm glad to see the Seeker plane mold are still clearly intact. I doubt that Hasbro is going to give us the ones that BotCon did last year, but hey, maybe we'll at leats get Sunstorm at some point.
TRANSFORMERS REAL GEAR ROBOTS - Tucson's one and only K-Mart yielded a single Real Gear Robot, a set of blue binoculars called Farsight T-20. Given how lousy that toy department usually is, I was stunned to see this.
G.I.JOE - Toys "R" Us had a couple of new store-exclusive multi-packs. One was called CRIMSON GUARD, and had, as one would expect, five 25th-style Crimson Guards, including one slightly repainted as an officer with a silver chest. The other one was FIREFLY vs G.I.JOE INFANTRY, and featured Firefly going up against four "Greenshirts", for lack of a better term. Honestly, format aside, these are what that G.I.Joe Infantry six-pack from a few years ago should've been, at least from a basic appearance standpoint. That original Infantry set was pretty poor. I didn't purchase either of these sets as I'm not collecting this style of Joes, but I did like the basic concept ideas, and hadn't even heard of these sets!
G.I.JOE 12" - The second assortment of 12" G.I.Joes is already out. I saw Snake-Eyes -- not bad; Storm Shadow -- pretty decent but still assigned to Cobra; Torpedo -- cool enough although not wearing any fabric clothing, instead his diving suit is molded as his body; and Flint is carried over from the first assortment.
HALO - Saw a red CQB soldier at Spencer Gifts. Couldn't justify the $15.00 price tag despite really wanting him.
(BTW, anybody wanna hire a very reasonably priced freelance writer and photographer?
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