Spider-Man 3, Venom, and Sinister Six Films announced!

Holy Announcements, Sony!  Sure explains the Venom and SinSix easter eggs in that preview trailer. 

Pretty sure I saw a rig that looked like the Vulture's wings in there.  And when did the Rhino's suit become some kind of mecha?

The increase of ACL tears is definitely worrisome, but I think the concussion situation has far more lasting affects into later life.  The NFL finally seems to be taking the issue seriously.  Witness the huge payout the NFL made to retired players for head injuries.

Knees can be repaired structurally.  An ACL injury used to mean the end of a career, but sports medicine has made some great strides forward in repair and rehab.  And no doubt the NFL is going to start looking at lower body hits, the current rules, the turf and shoes in combination to try to deal with this uptick in knee injuries.

But I think it's the head injuries that are the bigger concern.  When you have recently retired veterans like Brett Favre coming out and saying they have concerns about the safety of kids playing the game in relation to concussions?  That's significant.  And more parents are getting concerned about letting their kids play football.  The injuries seem that much more brutal than in other sports.  And parents seem to be steering their kids to other sports with less potential for serious injury.

How horrible is it going to be if the Super Bowl is played in these conditions this year? I think it would be an embarrassment.

I couldn't disagree more.  Look back at some of the most storied games in the history of the NFL.  Case in point?  The Ice Bowl of 1967.  Lambeau Field in Green Bay was frozen, and those conditions were a major factor in the outcome of that game.  If we wind up with conditions like that for this season's Super Bowl?  That game could quickly go down as one of the legendary championship games in NFL history.  And maybe something like this will drive away some of the corporate clown who now take up so many of the seats at the game, letting actual fans become more of a factor in a Super Bowl.

Even at the $15 price, one set of these is enough for me.  I wanted this set mostly for the BAF Droids, and not so much for the other figures.  But the crazy swings in pricing have been interesting to watch.

I like the fact that weather conditions affect the game. Football has always been an all-weather sport, and the varying conditions make it that much more interesting to me. What about when high winds affect the passing game and kicking game?  Personally, I don't see the sense in coddling these professional athletes with a perfect climate.

That's a great point about the CommTech Reader. Way ahead of its time and shy of the mark of real interactivity. If they had integrated that technology into the vehicles/playsets, or beyond to any kind of gaming, then maybe. But that was 15 years ago (!!!). The more I think about it, it's the toy industry in general, rather than any particular brand, that is suffering right now.

There was a second generation of CommTech chips in the works.  The figures that were to be offered with that second wave of CommTech technology eventually became what we saw in the POTJ line.  Rumor had it that when you placed multiple second gen CommTech chips on the reader that they would interact with one another.  But from a marketing standpoint the concept fell flat.  Hasbro probably would have been better served by packing a figure with the CommTech reader, but it's all ancient history.

The action figure segment seems to be reaching for SOMETHING to bring it back.  But I think it's really suffering because the market has become oversaturated by properties that THINK they can sustain an action figure line, and a shift towards video games on either console systems, computers and handheld devices.  I suspect that what may help is if we see a game developed by both Hasbro and EA with content that's unlocked by codes with a figure.  Will that happen?  We'll see.

It does seem that play patterns are shifting towards interactivity with gaming consoles and computers.  When I go into TRU these days I'm struck by the enormity of the Skylanders feature display at the front of the store.  Some 30+ feet of shelf space is dedicated to this particular property, and it seems that popularity is due to how the toys interact with video games.

As for the current spate of sales?  We're in the home stretch of the 2013 retail season.  And we always see significant sales this time of year.  It is worth noting that retail sales stats show that spending in 2013 is DOWN from spending during the 2012 holiday season.  That macro statistic indicates a more broad softness at retail than being isolated to any one intellectual property like Star Wars.

As for Star Wars?  I believe I've said this before, but it bears repeating.  I think we're in a transitional stage.  Hasbro is trying to find the next big thing from a play pattern / marketing standpoint.  And Lucasfilm / Disney are still dealing with the new realities of the corporate takeover.  Much of the licensed future of Star Wars is going to depend on how Episode VII shapes up, along with the upcoming Rebels animated series.

So fear not, Chicken Little.  The sky is not falling.  We're just waiting to see where things are going next.

Slave I was 40% off with it's lightning deal.  Basic pricing for the TIE Interceptor is $39.99, so I imagine we're looking at a sale price of something along the lines of $23.99.  We'll just have to wait and see at 4 PM ET.

Quote from: shmashwitdaclub on December  5, 2013, 09:41 AM

this is going to be on a Amazon lightning sale today at 1 pm eastern time

What is a Lightning Sale? Or the real question I have is how cheap are we talking?

We could be looking at a significant savings during the lightning sale.  I'm hoping that it might go as low as $39.99.  I'll definitely be checking it out at 1 PM, because I've been holding off.  Here's the link.