And welcome back for the Pulsecon opinion pieces on the Hasbro Pulsecon reveals for 2021. While the first post covered Transformers Legacy almost exclusively (purely because I don't think Star Wars content interests a lot of the general audience for my content), this will be a bit more diverse. While the bulk will be focused on G.I. Joe, I decided to include what turned out to be a surprisingly short NERF presentation (I thought they would have shown off more than one new gun and info on a V.R. game). To the one or two people that saw the two Marvel Legends reviews, I'm sorry. Still, because of how badly those did, I won't be covering Marvel Legends here, primarily due to the length of the panel (almost two hours of Marvel Legends according to the YouTube progress bar?!); it would likely be a post on its own. Analytics were not kind to Gwen and Miles' reviews, so I can't justify the work. Sorry guys, but on with the show!
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| Thank you to HISSTank.com for saving me the effort of making one of these in Powerpoint. |
Because of how short it was, I'll cover the NERF panel first. The bulk of the panel was focused on a V.R. game in development called NERF Unlimited Championship. The game itself looks interesting. I can see it having a decent player base, but due to how fractured the V.R. community is in terms of development and how niche V.R. as a gaming platform is, I don't see it having a lot of long term potential. As it stands right now, it's coming to the Occulus Platform for V.R., but if it became more accessible as a general First Person Shooter game on consoles and P.C.'s, I'd probably give it a shot. We know there is a market for more cartoon based shooting games, as evident by things like Splatoon and especially Fortnite. On the more mature end of the spectrum, they revealed the newest addition to the NERF Limited line (a line focusing on recreating weapons from popular franchises as NERF weapons) to be the Halo Needler. I love how it looks; the Needler is one of my favourite designs for a Sci-Fi gun. I love how they have the crystals glow when it's active, though it is a shame that there was no room to have the crystals retract when firing one of the darts. It would have been a nice touch if they made that work. Though I'm not an active NERF gun collector, the only two I have are a Retaliator Elite and a Barricade RV-10 with minor Q.C. issues; it is one I'm tempted to get because of how nice it looks.
Onto the G.I Joe Panel (though technically panels). They started the stream with Classified, but unfortunately, there were a lot of audio issues, especially for the introduction, the first reveal and an in-depth look at the Pulsecon exclusive: Master of Disguise Zartan. Like with the exclusives in the Transformers panel, I won't be covering Zartan here as I plan to go more in-depth at a later time. The audio issues were very distracting and frustrating due to the first reveal being the Cobra Battle Android Trooper (here on out being referred to as the B.A.T.). Encase the overwhelming focus of Transformers on this site wasn't obvious, I love toy robots, and the B.A.T. looks great. Like a lot of the Army Builders in the Classified line, there's a lot of customization options built-in, allowing for a lot of diversity when it comes to displaying the figure as an army. With the reveal of the regular B.A.T., along with an all-new repaint in one of the replacements to the Cobra Island subline, Python Patrol, I'm surprised they didn't take the time to show off the B.A.T. creator, Dr Mindbender. There's likely one coming later down the line, but it still feels like an odd omission, especially with their focus for releases being somewhat tied to storytelling (at least according to the stream).
That's not to say that what was shown off was terrible, far from it. Other reveals include a Python Patrol Cobra Viper and the Joe equivalent in the Cobra Island replacement, Tiger Force Outback. Both look good, though I'm curious to see how they handle the distribution, especially given Cobra Island's track record. For general retail (I hope), we got to see a more traditional take on Storm Shadow, Spirit and his eagle companion Freedom, along with a new Deluxe release similar to Commando Snake Eyes and Timber: Croc Master ( with Fiona, Diablo and Georgie). Storm Shadow is about what I expected; I just wish they went a little further with the modernization, similar to what they did with Snake Eyes. However, I appreciate that you can now put his arrow in his quiver; that's a significant improvement over the Arctic Storm Shadow release that I've already reviewed. On the other end of the excitement spectrum, Spirit and Freedom look great. I cannot wait to get those two, the sample shots they've shown look fantastic. However, I can't evaluate how this new toy is as a respectful take on Native American culture. Respecting the culture is something they've brought up when discussing him, but I leave the judging of that element to people far more qualified than a mid 20's Australian white guy. Finally, I'm honestly shocked Croc Master is a thing at all. I've got no idea who he is, but when/ if I get to review him, I'm very curious to learn more about him.
There was some focus put onto the Snake Eyes movie, nothing major, though. A deleted scene, a look at one of the extras included on the home release (I believe it's included at least) and a Halloween costume... I have nothing more to add to this because Halloween isn't a big thing where I live, but for those wanting to cosplay as movie Snake Eyes, there's an option, I guess? The final two reveals from the panel are from their Retro collection. New versions of Storm Shadow and Commando Snake Eyes, including improvements to try and stop hands breaking along with the return of O-Rings. For those who exclusively collect Classified, I believe O-Rings were used to handle waste swivels and maybe ab crunches for the original toys. I'm not sure of this as I'm not a 3 3/4 inch collector. The O-Rings have apparently also seen a change of material to try and improve durability, and it remains up in the air if they work with older figures and vehicles, though. On the subject of vehicles, the Joes are getting their first Haslab crowdfund project, a new take on the Skystriker, one of the most well-known vehicles in the Joe's arsenal from the '80s (I'm not sure if "one of the first" counts as it was in the second wave of vehicles). A lot of people seem to be viewing this as a crowdfunded re-release. While that's somewhat true, it seems to be a faithful modernization of the original toy, improving engineering elements, introducing new sculpting details, and being a mix of both a licensed Grumman F-14 Tomcat and toy accurate Skystriker. New customization elements for display options and army building potential (I dread to think of how much money someone has if they're willing to army build a USD 230 toy), along with unreleased characters and costumes included in both the base goal and the stretch goals. This thing looks fantastic, and I'm somewhat glad it's not available for pre-order here yet (if at all) because it's tempting to get even though I've got nowhere to put it, and I'm already backing Star Saber. At the very least, I'd love to review this toy, but I cannot justify getting it other then having a representation of the plane in my collection. While I would say there's no chance of there being a Classified scaled version of the plane, less likely things have either become reality, are going to become reality, or are apparently being worked on (seriously Fans Toys, who said a Masterpiece scaled Titan was a good idea?!). I hope it does get made, though, for all of those who want one.
Between the two days, it does seem like Hasbro is getting better at Direct Consumer marketing, but there is still room to improve (however that could, in part, be because I'm so used to Nintendo Directs). There are many things to look forward to in the new year, so much so that I'm in the process of reworking release schedules or at least coming up with new schedule ideas. I hope you've enjoyed today's content, and I'll see you next week for Kingdom Rodimus Prime.
