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.

A little while back we heard the news of a metallic finished Optimus Prime Mighty Mugg release for SDCC this year, but were expecting at least one other as well.

Today, images have started circulating of the newly announced companion to the Transformers re-release – it’s an X-Men Origins movie version of Wolverine – complete with retractable claws!

Being an Aussie I have no problems with the Hugh Jackman styled design, which I think they have nailed very well. From the side of the box shot here I think there may be some classic “Wolverine scratches” across the artwork around the back.

Overall a pretty cool choice for an exclusive I reckon, and I’m glad to see that there’s life still in the Mighty Muggs brand. Rumours still circulate about a new Transformers line “Revenge of the Fallen” themed Mighty Muggs, but no confirmation on that front as yet.

As I won’t be making it to SDCC this year (just to clarify – I’ve never been to any SDCC’s at all, but there’s always hope!) I’ll be pinning my chances of picking up this Wolverine through either eBay or perhaps an online retailer who starts stocking them after the conference. Out of the 4 SDCC exclusive Mighty Muggs released so far (Commander Gree, Fertility Idol, Peter Parker, Iron Man), I’ve picked up two from online retailers in Australia (Gree, Idol) and hope to one day buy the others without having to sell a kidney.

I’m not sure when I started collecting Spiderman toys, since I had never really been into Spiderman comics. My brother-in-law was (is) the Spiderman fan in the family (I’m more of a DC kind of guy) but I’ve somehow managed to end up with a fair amount of Spidey-stuff in the collection. Here’s a look at what is on my #1 Spiderman shelf … (more…)

As you can see, a lot of of my recent collecting efforts have been around Mighty Muggs. The more than I’ve gotten, the more that I’ve been determined to grow the collection. I’m sure at some point either I’ll collect them all, or will slow down at least, but that time is still a way off!

For this Mighty Muggs Alert, I wanted to especially mention that I’ve finally added the last missing Mugg to the Indiana Jones part of my collection – The SDCC Exclusive Fertility Idol! I was looking like having to import him from overseas which (at the moment with the Aussie dollar exchange rate) was looking like being quite an expensive little exercise. Luckily I found him from a local supplier and now have all of the Muggs from the short-lived Indiana Jones range.

Of course, I’ve also picked up some more recently as well:

• Indiana Jones: Fertility Idol (SDCC Excl.)
• Star Wars: Shocktrooper (Target Excl.), Grand Moff Tarkin, Darth Vader (Unmasked), Darth Maul (v1), Admiral Ackbar and Shadow Stormtrooper (Diamond Preview Excl.), Commander Gree (SDCC Excl.)
• Marvel: Captain America (Classic), Punisher and Jigsaw (TRU Excl.)

My Muggs have started to really dominate the collection, and the new shelves and bookcases that I recently put into the man-cave are fast filling up. My next round of Mugg hunting will center around the new Star Wars and Transformers waves, and slowly back-filling the Marvel range. I’m just not a big GI Joe fan in general, so I’m not in any real hurry to start on those, although I’m sure I will eventually.

I went on a Mugg hunt into the city today and took my 7yr old daughter with me. We had a lovely afternoon together, and she didn’t even complain at the amount of time we spent in the comic shops! Isn’t it nice when you can spend quality time with your kids AND Mugg hunt at the same time?! It was also very exciting because I picked up my first “exclusive” Muggs today along with a few others :

• Indiana Jones (Entertainment Earth Exclusives) – Short Round, Sallah
• Marvel (Preview Exclusives) – Thanos, Red Skull
• Marvel – Thing, Dr Doom (Wave 2)
• Star Wars – Plo Koon (Wave 6)

I’m hoping to pick up some more Star Wars exclusives shortly, namely Admiral Ackbar, Shadow Stormtrooper, Commander Gree, Shock Trooper … and then I’m onto Wave 8 & 9 of Star Wars and keeping on through the Marvel releases. I only need to get the SDCC Exclusive Fertility Idol now and I’ll have the full Indiana Jones line, but trying to find him locally is proving a bit difficult. But that’s what makes the hunt so much fun! You can see the full list of Mighty Muggs in my collection here.

Had the thrill of being able to go on a huge Mighty Muggs spree today, and did extremely well. I managed to pick up for myself …

• Transformers – Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, Soundwave (all Wave 1)
• Marvel – IronMan, Wolverine (all Wave 1)
• Star Wars – Chewbacca (Wave 1), C3-PO (Wave 2), Clone Commander Cody (Wave 3), Anakin Skywalker, Captain Rex (Wave 5)
• Star Wars Exclusives (Target) – Biggs Darklighter, Bossk, Teebo, Snowtrooper
  

Guess I’ll be spending my weekend putting up some more shelves!

Let me just say that this is very out-of-the-ordinary for me to get this much  in one go, and is only because I was able to offload some other items recently. Plus I have a very loving wife who was happy for me to indulge myself I’ve been limiting new purchases recently to Mighty Muggs and Phantom Comics (cause all my Cubeecraft is free!) and so at least I have a very specific range of items to try and find when I do have some cash allocated to my collection. And when you find those ones that you’ve been wanting to add to your collection, doesn’t it feel great!

This weekend I plan to head into Comics Etc in Brisbane for some more “Mugg hunting”, and will issue another Mighty Muggs Alert if anything cool turns up!