Seems that Marvel Mighty Muggs had the run of Hasbro’s Mighty Muggs display at last weekend’s Comic-Con 2009 in San Diego. More specifically, a re-launching of the Marvel Universe waves (reportedly up to 3 new waves of figures), including some new characters such as Warhammer, Juggernaut, Deadpool and another Wolverine (that makes 4 versions now!). There are some great pics over on The Blot of these guys, and some shots on ToyArk.com also show the hooded version of Spiderman on display as well.

I’m so happy to know that more Mighty Muggs are planned. Even though some of the lines have been discontinued, the popular Star Wars and Marvel lines look like being in good shape for a bit longer at least.

Thomas over at Inavatof has released a new paper toy for free download – The Vendor. This is a character that Thomas developed as part of a short comic a little while ago, and it’s nice to see the hairy ice-cream-wielding ape take on another life.

Quick tip when making this one – try using double-sided tape instead of glue, especially if using a heavier paper or card as I do, as some of the curves are a little hard to stick with glue.

Download The Vendor from the Inavatof.com website, or from Thomas’ profile on NicePaperToys.com.

A friend of mine alerted me to this story – seems the StarWars.com folks have got a fundraiser on for Make a Wish Foundation, auctioning a range of custom-made Mighty Muggs from prominent artists. Called “The Empire Muggs Back“, the exhibition and auction will take place at San Diego Comic Con, but we’re told to keep watching StarWars.com for “in-depth Empire Muggs Back coverage, info on the online charity auction, Mighty Mugg crafting tips and artist profiles.” Can’t wait!

Via StarWarsBlog: There are a lot of things that people called Michael Jackson throughout his life, but I don’t remember “pinball wizard” being one of them. Check out this interactive panorama (from Pinsane.com) of Michael Jackson’s personal “entertainment arcade” – it’s a mind-blowing combination of video game arcade and pop culture museum (lovin’ the Star Wars, DC and Marvel influences here). Ahh to have a kazillion dollars …

A friend of mine found this on some Japanese site called Biglobe (anyone know it?) – it’s a pretty rockin’ paper model for the Millennium Falcon. I can’t read Japanese, and the model itself doesn’t have any clear design credits (in English anyway), so if the creator if this is out there somewhere and wants to touch base, I’d gladly let everyone know. I haven’t made the model up yet cause I’ve used up all my good paper-toy card on a recent batch of Cubees, but rest assured once I do get this sucker made, you’ll be reading about it here! You can download individual pages from the Japanese source site here, or otherwise you can get a combined PDF that I created from here.

Via The Blot: The Comic-Con 2009 Exclusives list has been published, containing pictures and descriptions of every exclusive item available at this year’s conference. There’s some very cool items even beyond my own particular interests, and really makes me wish I was living in California right now Some highlights for me include:

• Wolverine and Optimus Prime Mighty Muggs (of course)
• Pink Darth Vader bust (raising money for breast cancer research, hence the colour)
• TRON limited edition fine art print
• Ghostbusters Angry Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Bank
• 501st Clone Trooper Super Stylized Vinyl Bobblehead
• DC Direct Blackest Night Action Figures (Green Lantern)
• and the list goes on and on …

Check out the full list on the Comic-Con website – and PLEASE if anyone is going and would like to pick up some Mighty Muggs for me, you’ll receive much love and gratitude (as well as payment of course!).