Although there were some “preview” showings last night, Guardians of the Galaxy officially opened today. I purposely tried to avoid as much info on the movie before seeing it, but even so, the marketing machine of Disney / Marvel was so effective that I was worried I was over-hyped for it. Well, that worry was all for naught – we saw a showing in 3D earlier today, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It has all the fun of the first Iron Man movie, but with a much bigger heart.
Now, it’s the long wait, for the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel, which Marvel announced for July 2017… and also the action figures! Sure, Hasbro has Marvel Legends figures for the movie Guardians – you’ll have a tough time finding a full set in stores or even on Amazon, but you can get a full case of Marvel Legends Guardians of the Galaxy at Entertainment Earth (all figures including doubles of Iron Man and Star-Lord) or pre-order a complete set of all six at BigBadToyStore. As for me, I’m getting the Hot Toys Guardians of the Galaxy figures – Sideshow has exclusive versions of Rocket Raccoon, Groot and Star-Lord up for pre-order, but those won’t arrive until March next year.
The longest wait will be to complete the comic book versions of the Marvel Legends Guardians of the Galaxy. Hasbro announced at their SDCC panel that they’ll be releasing a five-pack with comic book versions of Star-Lord, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Gamora, and Drax. Drax had been previously released in the Arnim Zola wave back in 2012, but Hasbro said for this set they’d use a bigger body (I’m hoping for Hyperion). For Star-Lord and Rocket, I’d expect straight up re-releases of the Star-Lord that came in the SDCC 2014 exclusive Thanos Imperative set and the Rocket BAMF (build-a-mini-figure) from last year. Can we hope for a re-deco, perhaps in their Annihilation Conquest colors as above? That leaves Gamora and Groot. There’s a lot of different looks for Gamora, but Hasbro has done a nice job of utilizing their current female bodies that I’m not concerned – but I’ll hope for consistency with the rest of the set. For Groot, I’d sure love a uniformed version, versus the naked tree version that appears in the movie. However, that would require a lot of tooling on Hasbro’s part, so even if the movie pulls in a ton of cash at the box office (and I’m sure it will) I think the odds are we see some re-use from the movie Groot.
But we’re way ahead of ourselves here. Hasbro said that we wouldn’t see this set until the second half of 2015. And mum’s the word on if this will hit all of mass market or if it will be a retailer exclusive – however, a 5-pack exclusive seems to be the domain of Toys R Us, so that’s where I’m expecting to see it next fall.
Glad you enjoyed it! I’m not sure if I’m going to see it any time soon. Looking forward to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, though!
Saw the movie Thursday night. Loved it! They always have to make changes from the comics to the screen, but most of them in this movie I didn’t mind at all. I think my only real disappointment was that a certain character from the DnA run was in the movie, but not used at all. I was really hoping that he would do more when we saw him in the after-credits scene. (But the surprise we did get in that scene was awesome!)
Loved the movie! Rocket was awesome! ” I need that guy’s leg!!” part was funny!! Immediately messed with my GotG figs when I got home!
Hell no. I’m sick of hearing about this BS. Lifelong Marvel and DC fan here. And GOTG is waaay too cartoony to me. A talking tree, a talking raccoon, a space frat boy, a green interstellar jock and a Star Trek reject? Yeah, that’s an emphatic “no”. An “eff no”, even. Disney Marvel is garbage.