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AIC NEWS: 2026 Marvel Legends March Madness Winner and More News from Around the Toy Industry
0 Playsin 7 hours
Welcome to AICNN (Adventures in Collecting News Network) where toy news matters! On this very special extended edition of your AIC News Brief, we're revealing who won the 2026 Marvel Legends March Madness Tournament along with some of the most recent news from around the toy industry.
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Intro and other voices by Joe Azzari
https://www.instagram.com/voicesbyjoe/
Theme Music is "Game Boy Horror" by the Zombie Dandies
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Transcript
Introduction and Giveaway Announcement
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome back to a special edition of AIC News where we give you the toy industry news you need to know headed into a fresh week. This is the last week of March.
00:00:26
Speaker
Today is the last day of March almost. No, just kidding. There's one more tomorrow. But ah it is the end of our March Madness tournament.
00:00:36
Speaker
And I know you guys are here to find out which Marvel Legends March Madness contestant took home the gold. And I promise you, you will not have to wait long to find out. But first, as is usually the case, a little bit of housekeeping here from Adventures in
Giveaway Entry Details
00:00:52
Speaker
Collecting. As there are only just a couple days left in the month, as I just mentioned, ah it is also means that there's still time for you to enter to win our giveaway. So our March 2026 giveaway, of course, we are partnering with our friend at Paternia.com to give away this amazing McFarlane Toys Elite Edition Image Comics Founders Edition Collection.
00:01:20
Speaker
Spawn. um One of my favorite figures of the year so far. i have waxed poetic about it. It is almost April and this is still mighty high on a list that I may or may not be keeping for the halfway point of the year.
00:01:35
Speaker
um Yeah, but you have two days left to enter to win it. You can do that by going to at AIC underscore podcast on Instagram, looking for the pinned post and ah following the instructions that you need to follow in order to enter to
April's Giveaway and Updates
00:01:52
Speaker
win this. um Sold out pretty much everywhere. Pretty hard to come by. Aftermarket looks a little wonky on it already. So if this is something that you wanted to add to your collection, this is your chance to do just that. So again, that is at AIC underscore podcast on Instagram. um
00:02:13
Speaker
and And also just a note about April's giveaway. um Announcing a new giveaway and announcing a winner of a giveaway on April 1st is probably ill-advised considering it's April Fool's Day. So we actually are extending this by one day, which means that we will announce the winner on April second as well as ah the next giveaway, which is something you are not going to want to miss. We have another great collaboration set up with a really, really fun giveaway i right in time for WrestleMania season. So I'll put it that way.
00:02:52
Speaker
Something really, really cool. And I think you guys are going to love it So definitely keep an eye on Instagram.
Star Trek Toys and Target Strategy
00:02:58
Speaker
Quick rundown of some news. It was a WonderCon this weekend and Toylanta and all other kinds of toy. C2E2, PAX East, it was like convention weekend. And while a lot of toy companies ah showed off things that we have seen before, just maybe for the first time, in person. ah The Nacelle Company, of course, our friends Brian Voglice and Brian Adams over at Nacelle had to show off something super cool in their Star Trek universe, and that is my personally, my personal favorite Star Trek character, ah Leonard
00:03:40
Speaker
Bones McCoy, Dr. McCoy here with his bio bed and a ton of accessories. So this will be coming to the ever expanding Star Trek toy line that Nacelle is putting out there. It looks amazing. All the accessories, all the heads, the head sculpt, all the hands. I'm really excited to get my hands on Wave 1.
00:04:04
Speaker
Hopefully that is soon. And as soon as I get my hands on it, I'll i'll you know make sure that we post up some content so that way you guys can see the final product um in hand. ah Something else that was revealed this week, maybe unintentionally, Target posted a link, take look, take a step back. I was looking for the links for the Target Haul-a-thon and one of the things that you can do before they go live is if you filter Target links by um not in stock, it shows you things that are just about to come in stock.
00:04:38
Speaker
So pro tip. um And I saw this, which is really cool. To me, this is the most iconic version of the like standard good guy doll Chucky before he gets all stitched up and everything. This is of course Child's Play 2. It is an ultimate. um It looks fantastic. The accessories are great. I love that they give you not only the expression, but the accessories to recreate the iconic box art from the vhs the poster um it just it it looks incredible and i am really excited to add this uh this kind of quintessential pre-stitched chucky to uh the collection so no word on when this is going to be available uh but it is real it is official chucky is real guys um so yeah a really really great uh update to an existing character that we you know we we
00:05:35
Speaker
We've come
Cryptoids' Toy Line Success
00:05:36
Speaker
to love. ah The other really big piece of news coming out of ah WonderCon has been all of the news around our friends at ah
00:05:49
Speaker
Cryptoids. So massive, massive success for Cryptoids and Cryptoids. their their war for the green planet uh toy line so uh the kickstarter has been a huge success and uh they keep adding things uh and unlocking things which is great so uh the campaign is now 100 funded um
00:06:19
Speaker
And they just unlocked prior to the recording of this episode. They did unlock their next goal. We'll get to Bat Boy there in a second.
00:06:30
Speaker
But ah their next unlock is officially here, which is your Reptoid. So the first, uh, first version of the Reptoid has been unlocked. They did cross the $250,000 mark.
00:06:45
Speaker
So that means that they have unlocked the glow in the dark alien, the squonk and the Jackalope and the, uh, the green Reptoid drone. So the, uh, the next one is at 300, which is the blue Reptoid drone. Uh, then the albino at 350, uh,
00:07:04
Speaker
um and more to come, supposedly. But the big news coming out of WonderCon weekend and Toylanta weekend was the addition of the ah Weekly World News officially licensed Batboy.
00:07:20
Speaker
So if you are a fan of the tabloids and the the the unknown and the The sideshow world, this is some a character that should be all too familiar. ah it It comes in both a black and white and a colorized version. Super, super cool addition to their lore and cryptozoology world that they're creating here. So I'm really excited for the folks at ah at Cryptoids. Of course, the people behind that is the team behind the Yes, Have Some podcast, Toy Anxiety. They are...
00:08:00
Speaker
amazing people and I am so happy for them and the entire team there that that this has has gotten off the ground as quickly and as successfully as it has because it is a really cool toy line it is something different and it is something that uh that I know I'm personally excited for know Mothman being one of my favorite characters uh in all of fiction.
00:08:24
Speaker
The truth is out there. Maybe it's not fictional. But um yeah, I'm super excited for this line and I can't wait to to learn more about it. And of course, they did show off some of their prototypes at Toylanta. So um yeah.
Hasbro Live Stream and March Madness
00:08:38
Speaker
the ah The other thing that I wanted to just cover off on real quick before we head into the Marvel Legends March Madness news is ah some Marvel Legends Hasbro news. So there will be a G.I. Joe classified live stream on YouTube.
00:08:55
Speaker
on April 1st at 11 a.m. Eastern Time. So i' really excited to see what our friends, Lenny and Tony BMAC have in store for us for some GI Joe news.
00:09:09
Speaker
um They did reveal a couple of renders last week of of a few new characters, but I'm i'm excited to see what ah what they have in store. Yeah, should be really interesting. And um and also a friend of the pod from the Hasbro team on Marvel Legends, Dan Yoon said to make sure that the the ovens are hot, as as as he likes to say, make sure you you save some bread.
00:09:34
Speaker
for April because there will be some new pre-orders. So i keep that in in mind for ah the next month as we head into it. I am hoping, seeing as how a certain wall crawling superhero in the MCU broke all sorts of records with his trailer for his new movie, that maybe
00:09:56
Speaker
Maybe it's something from that. That would be great. But to the reason why you are probably here and maybe not always here, but you should always be here. This is great. We have fun here.
00:10:06
Speaker
um Let's let's ah the big reveal. Who is the winner in the final matchup? And of course, to set the stage here before the before the big reveal, we had two heavy hitters throughout the tournament.
00:10:21
Speaker
They knocked down pretty much every opponent that they came up to by a large margin, if not the largest margin in the round each time. So if we split it to north and south, armor was absolutely destroying the competition throughout the northern hemisphere of the tournament and Annihilus was annihilating the competition on the southern hemisphere.
00:10:46
Speaker
They were the two front runners from pretty much day one and they stayed that way all way through the end and it just so happened that the randomizer did not pit them up against each other early in the tournament that kept them apart, which is fantastic because here we are with two of the most requested characters, at least in in in our orbit for Marvel Legends. And it is ah my pleasure to reveal to you this year's Marvel Legends March Madness winner.
00:11:20
Speaker
It is a Nihilus. So with 53% of the vote, um this was close the whole time. I was actually worried we were gonna have to rerun it or figure out a way to do a tiebreaker. There were sizable moments in time.
00:11:37
Speaker
um when this was fifty fifty and then it was like 51-49 and the there were parts where armor was ahead, there were parts where Annihilus was ahead, it was back and forth. It was as neck and neck as you would hope a final would be in ah in a fan polling situation like this.
Fan Polls and Production Decisions
00:11:58
Speaker
It proved that both of these characters were you know worth their weight they they they really kind of carried ah the entire tournament and even into the last matchup it was almost a 50 50 split um but annihilus edged out armor uh at the very end now you know where does this leave us so uh we did get a lot of comments um No, this tournament is not officially affiliated with Hasbro, Marvel, or Marvel Legends in any way, shape, or form. um We do not pretend that it is. We do not pretend that it will make miracles. This is purely an exercise in polling the fandom to provide Hasbro with any information if they so desire to use it for anything.
00:12:47
Speaker
um It gives them an idea of a rank of characters, how they perform against each other, which ones are hot, which ones cool off. it's it is It is purely ah research that we are providing as a third party. Let's put it that way.
00:13:03
Speaker
So um by you participating, you are sharing your voice with Hasbro because we know that they're watching things like this. Our friends over at SWTBC, you know, they have an amazing March Madness for the Vintage Collection every year. Luth and Rail won this year, um which was my number one pick head in. So I'm happy that ah i'm happy that he won. I feel very vindicated, um even though Dash Rendar lost. But, ah um you know, we know that these community polls matter.
00:13:39
Speaker
People give their honest opinions. And, you know, we we get the opportunity to to really share our voice, our collective voice with the people who are driving the product that we collect.
00:13:52
Speaker
So that's that's the the only really way to look at this. There's no guarantee. there's and There's nothing attached to this. um But it does now allow us to to speculate, right? We have two characters that came all the way to the end.
00:14:05
Speaker
in the In previous years, whether it is it whether it is because of the tournament or whether it is um just pure happenstance and and and and and you know coincidence, we have seen a number of characters from the list.
00:14:25
Speaker
make the line in in Marvel Legends. Now, that being said, they're all very popular characters with their own fandoms. And again, like whether they're on our list or some other list on the internet, there they tend to be on lists. They are popular
Design Challenges for Marvel Legends
00:14:42
Speaker
characters. The fact that they are on the in the tournament and get made i I don't think there's a correlation necessarily there. My ego would like to believe that there is one.
00:14:52
Speaker
But ah yeah, i don't read too much into it. Have fun, share your opinion, and the best thing that we can do is get out there and and shout it from the rooftops for you. So we're now presented with an outcome where we have a character that was a Build-A-Figure very early on in in the Marvel Legends line to the point where most people don't even really consider those to be Marvel Legends at this point.
00:15:15
Speaker
um Because of technology and just the way that action figures work at this point, Annihilus is very, very, very overdue for a a redo, a proper Marvel Legends treatment. And then you have a character like Armor that presents a significant design challenge, right? You have a figure within a figure, effectively. Now we have seen the G.I. Joe team do things like snake armor before. That could be a way to do it. You know that you can fit a Cobra Trooper in that suit.
00:15:47
Speaker
um And you know, maybe there's a way to suspend the character in there, so that way it's a clamshell sort of thing. Who knows? i don't i I don't pretend to know the answers for this. But I do know that one figure is potentially much easier to make than the other, um seeing as how it's a figure within a figure. So I think this is a really cool outcome for fans. It shows kind of the dichotomy of of the fandom, especially when it comes to the comic book stuff. I mean, you have like a classic, classic, classic
00:16:21
Speaker
It doesn't get more classic villain really than Annihilus. One of the top tier villains that, um like I said, is long overdue for an update. And then a character like Armored that's on the newer side that has some nuance that, ah you know, is kind of, I don't want to say a a brand new character, but in comparison to Annihilus,
00:16:40
Speaker
Yeah, she's pretty
Future Tournaments and Engagement
00:16:41
Speaker
new. So ah this tournament was filled with lots of surprises. Characters that I did not think would make it very far in the tournament made it like all the way into the semifinals. I mean you you had characters like Doc Samson, another character that hadn't had a Marvel legend very, very early on, making it very far. um I think the recent inclusion of a lot of new Hulk figures is maybe wanting people to, wanting them to keep the momentum going and getting some more Hulk figures. I know I'm one of those. um Also Ghost Rider. There was, you know, the the the engine of vengeance failed, but there's still a lot of love out there for Ghost Rider. So, you know, Robbie Reyes, Vengeance, um and 90s Johnny Blaze with the the mullet and the trench coat, they made it very far into the tournament. So do not count out Ghost Rider. But yeah, so this ah this ends our our Marvel Legends March Madness. And as I said um at the beginning of the i March Madness tournament, um this year,
00:17:47
Speaker
Give me a little bit of time, but like between, i would say, let's just say between now and the start of the next tournament. I've got a year to work on it. um We'll get a a Google Doc, Google Forms thing set up.
00:18:02
Speaker
out there so that way people can actually nominate i characters for next year's list. We'll do a little bit of a soft reset on the list. um Obviously, we'll keep Annihilus and Armor in. They made it into the finals, but maybe we'll we'll let some things reshuffle and um we'll get some fresh blood in there.
00:18:20
Speaker
And then of course, too, the rule is between now and the next tournament, if any figures from the list of of characters are announced or come out, um they're removed from the tournament. So by having this Google form out there, we create this overflow list where as characters come off, we have characters to add, we can just kind of refresh. So um when we started this tournament, we had way fewer followers than we have today in 2026. So we want to make sure that everyone's voices are being heard and being heard accurately.
00:18:53
Speaker
So stay tuned for that. And I'm constantly thinking of ways that we could do more of these tournaments. it It seems like you guys really, really like them. Of course, we do the Archies at the end of the year and we do you we do this in March. Maybe there's something in the second quarter that that I could think of that ah that we could do another another type of tournament. I'm thinking about it.
00:19:14
Speaker
But if you have any ideas, ah DM us. if you If you have an idea of a really cool tournament that you'd love to see us conduct, um I'd love to hear your ideas. I'm open to anything.
Conclusion and Credits
00:19:24
Speaker
But um with that, on behalf of the entire AICNN News team, congratulations to Anilis and all of his fans. And this has been your AIC News Special Report.
00:19:46
Speaker
This has been a non-productive media presentation. Executive producer, Frank Hablaui. This program and many others like it on the Non-Productive Network is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License. Please share it, but ask before trying to change it or sell it. For more information, visit non-productive.com.