poll What should Hasbro have done with Cannonball?

[leokearon]

The Wendigo wave Cannonball, has proved to be quite controversal. So how should have Hasbro done him.

[monron999]

They shoulda done something like they did with Hydro Man. I know it's popular to portray his entire lower body as rocket thrust but that's not necessarily the way he was originally concieved and many artists (still) portray him with regular upper thighs. They shoulda just did a regular figure, foregone with the BAF piece, and given him 2 different attachable blast effects. One blasting off and one tapered set to show him rocketing through the sky. How can you screw this up so bad, Hasbro.

[bashpics99]

Well, if you listen to one vocal contingent of collectors, they would seemingly rather not have the figure at all than have one without legs.

When the hasbro guys say that they couldn't do both legs and blast effect, i tend to believe them.  I'm sure the designers wanted to include both but some higher-up bean -counter said no because it exceeded budgetary constraints.  I wouldn't be surprised if they even momentarily considered making the blast effect a BAF thing kind of like mcu Vulture and his wings, before deciding that not many customers would want to build a Blasting Effect.  Similarly, there may have been a brief discussion of having Sam get the deluxe treatment like Archangel before they decided that he wouldn't be a popular seller at the $30 price point.

Personally, if we had both options, i'm guessing i would have Sam with blasting effects rather than legs about 90% of the time, so i don't mind not getting legs. And my guess is that at least 50% of the people complaining about his lack of legs still end up buying the figure... people just like to complain, which is fine as long as they don't assume their opinion is shared by everyone.

[Jmacq1]

They should have subbed in Rictor, Sunspot, Snowbird, or Warpath (Whether Original X-Force, X-men, or "New" X-Force) in the main wave and marketed Cannonball as a fan-channel deluxe exclusive like Archangel, complete with swappable "normal" legs.

[Lord_Scareglow]

6 hours ago, Jmacq1 said:

They should have subbed in Rictor, Sunspot, Snowbird, or Warpath (Whether Original X-Force, X-men, or "New" X-Force) in the main wave and marketed Cannonball as a fan-channel deluxe exclusive like Archangel, complete with swappable "normal" legs.

I Agree with this, should have been a deluxe release like Archangel with Legs and Blast Effect, and they should have just had a different character in the wave instead , honestly I would have preferred the fig with legs only and no Blast effect, they should really have just had legs and give him some sort of Mysterio or Blink, or Hydro-Man add on effects. I personally wouldn't even want Cannonball with a blast effect at all, rather just legs, figure looks awful to me

[monron999]

19 minutes ago, Lord_Scareglow said:

I Agree with this, should have been a deluxe release like Archangel with Legs and Blast Effect, and they should have just had a different character in the wave instead , honestly I would have preferred the fig with legs only and no Blast effect, they should really have just had legs and give him some sort of Mysterio or Blink, or Hydro-Man add on effects. I personally wouldn't even want Cannonball with a blast effect at all, rather just legs, figure looks awful to me

Cannonball is just not Cannonball without some kind of blast effect. I actually advocated for the Hydro Man type effects on another thread (the Fan Channel Exclusives), and I even provided art showing how it could be done. I woulda been totally good with the whole Deluxe arrangement as well, but I'm a huge fan of most of the X-Men characters and would buy up most anything either way. And though I think there would probably be as much interest for the other characters you named as there is for Cannonball, I don't think Cannonball could actually carry enough weight to do the whole Deluxe thing. Of course that's just my opinion. Personally I think the best option woulda been to make him the BAF. As a lot of us have said, Wendigo just seems way out of place in this whole wave. If they woulda just done a new Warpath, people woulda gone bonkers and like it or not, most people woulda been compelled to get the Cannonball BAF to round out as much of the team as possible. If anyone here collected DC Universe Classics you'll maybe remember the first CNC they did. It was Metamorpho (or Element Man), who was a standard sized figure, but he had a buttload of attachments to represent his powers. As Hasbro runs outta "Larger" figures to do (c'mon Strong Guy, it's almost your time to shine) this is something they should look into doing with future figure and should have been doing already. And I don't mean that BS Finish-A-Figure crap they pulled with Vulture. Don't try and sell me half a figure and make me have to buy the entire wave to finish the damn think. They coulda done this with Kamala Kahn, Hydro Man, Super Skrull and maybe even some versions Iron Man. I just don't know, they did this same version (poorly) of Cannonball years ago with legs and no blast effects and it was received just fine, and it's actually still a decent figure by today's standards. I don't forsee them taking another crack at it. If we ever see another Cannonball again, I suspect it will be in his New Mutants uniform (as an army builder, perhaps) or in his more current blue jacket/brown pant getup, which I actually wouldn't mind at all. Please though, not that cheesy X-Men uniform.

[Jmacq1]

I think having the sculpted "FX" with the figure is great...as long as there are "normal/neutral" options also available alongside them.  It's when there's a lack of neutral/non-powered options with a figure that it annoys me. (ala Electro having no "normal" hands or Cannonball not having normal legs.  And yes, if they are going to err I would prefer they err on the side of "non-powered."

 

Hydro Man not having normal arms doesn't bother me as much, mostly because "neutral" Hydro Man in that costume is basically "Black T-Shirt Man" whose look is not nearly so iconic and recognized as similarly-themed characters such as Sandman and Absorbing Man.  But I do appreciate the snap-on foot FX as opposed to perma-sculpting those on. 

[nieman257]

I think they should've gone with the phasing to translucent legs, similar to Sue Storm's arms/hands, with blast effect attachments for the feet...like Mysterio or Hydro Man. That way you had everything. The full blast bottom wasn't a good idea. 

[SolidSnakeEyes]

I feel like Hasbro was trying to be creative and do something different by giving Cannonball a blast effect lower half like they did, but all said and done I think it fell flat. Sure it’s interesting, but ultimately kind of difficult to utilize given that it only allows the figure to pose in a straight upward flight path. So, he’s  gonna be in the back of everyone’s X-something display just blasting up into the great wide open. Now if the blast effect had an arc to it so the figure could appear to be blasting straight forward or at least up and forward, it would have an overall better use IMO. 

Overall, it’s not a total loss, but a sort of half figure that’s going to prove difficult to use in most displays.