A lotta talk for a little girl...

So the biggest controversy right now with Toybiz' Marvel Legends, one of my favorite lines, is the selection of the character of X-23 for series 12. Here's what the figure looks like:

The main problem with her selection seems to be along the lines of her not being of "Legendary" status, which is quite the load of BS, in my opinion. All this talk of "legendary" is, in geekspeek, "I don't read her comic, I don't know who she is, I know all, how can this character be?!! Remove it from my sight!." Yet many of these same people ignore the inclusion of Maestro Hulk in the same wave. This character is just a thinly veiled excuse for a new Hulk figure. Though I happen to like the Maestro Hulk incarnation, where's the outrage over this? Of course, I know why - they read the comics Maestro was in. All what, 6 issues? Or at least were aware of the existence of them. Hulk is "legendary" no doubt. But this incarnation? It was a one-or-two-storyline variant. X-23, on the other hand, is a member of the X-men currently.

I see this tendency of collectors a lot, to want all the best, most-longstanding characters to be figures RIGHT NOW. It's common to all of us. But if a toy company blows their wad, so to speak, with these characters, people will stop buying the line and it'll die. Is that what we want? If SOTA released Dhalism, Zangief, E Honda, etc in the second series of their Street Fighter line, who'd they release in series 3? How about series 6? If they even got to that point. Because like it or not Toybiz, by saving characters like Psylocke or Loki etc for down the road, is getting us figures that we would never see otherwise, like Man-Thing and Deathlok. And though people wondered why they were even made at the time, I guarantee by series 20 people would be screaming for the more obscure characters.

As toy fans we've been taught by bitter experience that most of our favorite toy lines are not long-lived. I don't think Marvel Legends is one of these. Here we are, at series 10, and series 9 reportedly had the highest sales of the entire line. They've earned a little faith from us. We'll get everyone we want, in time.