$34, huh?  At that price I could be seriously tempted to buy the Helicarrier!

But then what about the future of the Avengers line?  We're just a little over a month away from Toy Fair.  And when you look at the Avengers Box Office gross numbers, it's the number 3 movie of all time with over $1.5 Billion worldwide.  One would think that Hasbro might want to revisit Avengers in 2013.  But what should they do?  Here's a wishlist:

BASIC FIGURES
Captain America (new uniform, no helmet)
Thor - Mountaintop battle (no armored sleeves)
Thor - Helicarrier battle
Tony Stark - Snap on Mark VII armor
Hawkeye - No sunglasses, rapelling gear
Loki - Unarmored
Maria Hill
Agent Coulson - with Destroyer gun
Chitauri Warrior - with removable facemask & articulation


DELUXE FIGURES
Banner & Hulk (properly scaled)
Black Widow & Chitauri hovercraft


There are definitely a good number of other figures you could offer if they expanded the Avengers comic line, too.  But I imagine Hasbro might not want to cross over too much with Marvel Universe.

The sourcing on a return to Tikal is sketchy.  Even the Reuters report that was the source for the comicbookmovie.com link was pretty vague.  And Reuters is a world-renowned news agency.  But in that part of the article it looked as though they were going on what a Guatemalan Star Wars fan group had stated, and nothing from Disney or Lucasfilm.

Only time will tell!

Personally, I'm glad that we're seeing a lot more new sculpts in this assortment.  And I'm fine with the Dropship's 501st deco repaint.  That ship was super scarce, and deserved a better run at retail.  And if Hasbro decides to repaint the Y-Wing Scout Bomber, too?  That's fine by me as well.

From the standpoint of looking at the begining of Avengers run in Marvel comics, I agree, Scott.  But the Avengers movie wound up being REALLY jammed up with plot points that I think including Wasp & Ant Man would have left the movie pretty cluttered.  Especially with the SHIELD weapons subplot.  That's something that you didn't have in the original launch of the Avengers comic, but is a product of the Ultimates universe.  Still, I think that SHIELD was the perfect catalyst/plot device for bringing the core Avengers together for the Marvel film universe.

What about some of the other major plot points?  When you also factor in how Avengers really served to advance the story of Banner and the Hulk?  The Hulk FINALLY came into his own after 2 films that didn't necessarily do the character justice.  I think the absence of Wasp & Ant Man was a case of addition by subtraction.  And introducing Wasp and others in the movies leading up to the Avengers sequel seems like it might be a good way to go.

The Goblin town looked pretty amazing!  You could never build a set like that, and it looked really convincing.  Although the end of the chase through Goblin town was a little difficult to believe.

As for the difference between the Goblins and Orcs?  I like that we got to see both Goblins AND Orcs.  And that's cool in the leadup to LOTR, where Gandalf talks about how Saruman crossed Goblin men with Orcs to create the Uruk Hai.

But some of the Orcs looked...OFF.  Some of the Warg riders looked very much like the Orcs you saw in LOTR, like guys in makeup & prosthetics.  But Azog looked like he was completely CG to me.  Which is weird, because I knew the actor who played Azog, but I couldn't recognize him.  Was Azog like Gollum, a character who was done completely via motion capture?  And there were at least a few other Orcs that looked that way, too.

Hmmm.  So why did they make Bolg and not Azog?  I'm not getting that.

Plus, neither Legolas nor Tauriel made it into the first movie.  I realize they want to get some familiar faces in the lineup, but that's kind of odd.

Japaneese version.

http://youtu.be/lgBFz9-rAS0

AH!  I see the shot now.

Bumping this up with a couple of additions:

THE VINTAGE COLLECTION
EXCLUSIVES
___  AT-ST Crew 2-Pack K-MART EXCLUSIVE


STAR WARS KUBRICKS
___  2005 Toys R Us 5-Pack - includes Ceremony Luke, Imperial R5, K-3PO, Ten Numb & Wicket (Ewoks version)