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Q&A with Nate Baertsch, Designer of the Icon Heroes Castle Grayskull

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You may know him as Baena at many of the toy and collectible forums, but Nate Baertsch is also an accomplished illustrator, and happens to be one of the designers behind the Icon Heroes Castle Grayskull Polystone Environment. Nate recently got one of the Icon Heroes Castles off the production line, shared these pictures, and kindly answered some of our questions.

AFP: How did you get involved with Icon Heroes for this project?

Nate: Dumb luck! Okay, that’s not entirely true. I’ve had a good working relationship with the Four Horsemen since somewhere around 2007? I started out doing packaging art for their Seventh Kingdom line. Ramathorr was the first painting I did for them, and to this day still one of my favorites.  Over time my work with them has increased from packaging artwork for their figures, to occasional design sketches and concepts for figures for the variety of lines that they work on. Over time, and meeting up with them when I could at conventions, we’ve established a good working relationship and friendship, as we all love all things MotU and general super fantastical spacey geeky goodness. A lot of “geeking out” about MotU lore, Seventh Kingdom, their other properties, Outer Space Men and now Power Lords!

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New Mattel Superman: Man of Steel Figures Revealed – BigBadToyStore

Man of Steel Movie Masters Figure - Faora Man of Steel Movie Masters Figure - General Zod With Armor Man of Steel Movie Masters Figure - Superman With Key

Online retailer BigBadToyStore has listed new Superman: Man of Steel Movie Masters figures from Mattel, revealing a new character and two variants for the line-up. Included in the assortment are Faora, an armored General Zod, and Superman with chains and key. I purposefully have not been following the movie news, but was a bit surprised that the new character wasn’t Ursa. I’m not that knowledgeable when it comes to Superman lore, and don’t have any recollection of a character named Faora from the comics or the previous movies – but I’m not going to Google her now, for risk of spoiling myself for the movie that opens June 14th.

It’s not clear whether this is a second wave of figures or if these will ship with the Man of Steel figures previously shown – BBTS has them listed all with a 2nd quarter ship date.

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Iron Man Legends Wave 2 Available on Amazon

Iron Man Mark 42 Movie Suit Iron Man Patriot Movie Suit Iron Man Ultron Classic

The second wave of Iron Man Legends is now available on Amazon.com – it was a little hard to find, but aptly designated search for “Iron Monger build a figure” will bring up the three figures in IML2 needed to complete the Iron Monger build-a-figure. All three figures are available directly from Amazon for $16.99 and are eligible for Prime shipping.

Update: The much-maligned Ultron is no longer available directly from Amazon, but you can still pick him up for a few bucks more sold out.

Update 2: The figures sold by Amazon qualify for a promotion – you’ll get a discount applied automatically if you buy 2 or more of them when you place your order.

Happy shopping!

Border Patrol: One Sixth Scale Arkham City Batman, DC Universe Classics Earth 2 Flash, and Marvel Legends Black Widow

One Sixth Scale Arkham City Batman 1 One Sixth Scale Arkham City Batman 2 One Sixth Scale Arkham City Batman 3 One Sixth Scale Arkham City Batman 4

One Sixth Scale Arkham City Batman by dreamntigers – this 14-inch tall Arkham City Batman will fit in great with your 1/6 scale DC Collectibles figures – the suit is a latex skin and the head, gauntlets, and boots are scratch sculpts – comes with 4 Batarangs and the figure retains most of its original articulation – ends May 02, 2013 19:18:40 PDT

In AFP’s Border Patrol, we scour active eBay auctions for customized action figures that you won’t want to let slip by!

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ThreeA Toys Reveals Ascended Blind Cowboy Chase and the Sock Puppet Origin

3A Toys White Ascended Cowboy Teaser redsockspeaks1 redsockspeaks2

The 3A Toys Dead Equine Super Set pre-order is live on Bambaland now, but if you want some practice hitting F5 to refresh your browser, you can go after the White Ascended Cowboy chase figure, to be pre-sold as a single figure in extremely limited quantities for $120. This chase will come with all of the weapons of the Shadow Slinger version, and also come with a severed robot head. He’ll be available in batches throughout the remainder of the sale, which should close up shop around 9PM EST today.

Ashley Wood also shared a couple panels on how the red sock puppet that will come in the Dead Equine set is tied into the Blind Cowboy. The comic will be included with the set, as well as a collectible poster. Really looking forward to this one. Happy shopping!

via 3aVOX.

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