I think the Astral Plane Strange shipped first. He was all I saw initially at three different places. Now those are gone and the regular has taken his place. I was on the fence about getting even the normal version, but had to pull the trigger with him being in the Avengers for so long now.
I got around to opening a bunch of MU figures today. I started with the earlier figures and have been really impressed with the detail and articulation. The sheild gmick they're using (hook to place on wrist or pegs/strap to carry elsewhere is pretty cool. I noticed after a few figures that they stopped including the "secret files" packet, which is fine as these were often out of date anyway. I do really like the cool black stands each figure comes with. Then I got to a few of the last waves to discover the stands are gone now too.
![Sad :(](https://www.jedidefender.com/yabbse/Smileys/classic/sad.gif)
I get raising the price OR offering less, but its a buzzkill when companies start doing both. How much cost does the stand add to the figure anyway? 4 cents? Lame. The new figs like Psylocke, Storm, Steve Rogers, Iron Fist are really fantastic, but not having the stands leaves a black stain on the experience for me. The comic packs don't come with them either I suppose.
If anyone has extra stands they don't want, I'm in the market for some.
I also opened up a few Captain America and Iron Man figures. The USA Agent and Bucky-Cap are pretty solid figures, but the Iron Man 2 line takes the cake. I ripped into classic horned faceplate IM, the Stark Armor Iron Man, Titanium Man, Stealth IM, and my absolute favorite, the blue comic series Iron Monger. I don't know how they got away with selling that figure at regular retail - its like a Darktrooper on steroids with added detail and articulation. I just cherry picked figures from these lines, but am really loving the ones I got.