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Avengers Pre-Show: A Tale of Two Aliens

The call went out across the interwebs. SKRULLS are in the new Avengers movie!! It was a fact...only...it wasn't a fact. Marvel executives were less than quick to shoot down the rumors, causing some to speculate there was some semantic tinkering going on in their answer. Then came NY Toy Fair and the infamous JAKKS board game, which consequently made it to retail stores. The little purple guys in there had a striking resemblance to our familiar shape changing alien fiends, as did the icon used for them on the dice included. "No..no.." Marvel replied. No Skrulls. We promise. A Marvel rep at the same show pointed to Diamond Select's silver mystery box (containing their Marvel Select Loki's Army action figure) and said "It's a Chitauri..the Ultimate Universe version of Skrulls..so no one was entirely wrong." Then came the LEGO packaging that revealed the look of the grey, armored menace, and new commercials for the film revealing the aliens in action (ie; being thumped by the Hulk). It was all rather anticlimactic. Now we've seen the Marvel Select action figure and the Hasbro 3 and 3 quarter inch figures, so the mystery is solved... right?


Almost on cue, Hasbro sends out solicitations for their pre-orders of The Avengers Movie Action Figures Wave 3 including...

3x Gamma Smash Hulk
1x Fusion Armor Iron Man
1x Cosmic Spear Loki
2x Reactron Armor Iron Man
2x Hawkeye
1x Black Widow
2x Skrull Soldier

SKRULLS!!!! These evil alien bastards are just as devious in real life as they are in the comics!!! I shot Entertainment Earth a message:

"Really? Does the info you got really say Skrulls or did someone on staff just call them that instead of Loki's alien army or some such?"

their reply was...

"I was surprised too! The picture should be up shortly."

I had to jump over to Big Bad Toy Store for the reveal which showed...you guessed it...98% traditional looking comic Skrulls. Note that this is a brand new sculpt and not just a repaint/redeco of the Marvel Universe Skrull Soldier. One might think Hasbro was given early art work showing Skrulls and so, made their figures from it, but they've already shown "Loki's Army" action figures. You could also argue that Hasbro often filters comic versions of characters into film lines, but that doesn't explain the JAKKS game pieces. Who knows when this story will finally unravel. For now, fans of the movie will be able to army build "Loki's Army" and Marvel Comics purists will be on the hunt for a Skrull horde...and all will be right with the geeky world.

CLICK HERE to dive into our folder full of Avengers Movie Merch, collected all in one place!