I’m clearly late to the party in highlighting these items and Disney’s Avengers hit screens months ago and is now on DVD, but I just stumbled over them the other day. Grab Zags are another set of Marvel blind bagged toys. Each bag contains either an Avengers-themed finger scaled skateboard, disk launcher or “Marvel Mini” figure. As far as my recent search has dug up, there doesn’t seem to be any codes on the bag to decipher what’s in it. However, if you feel the bag it’s pretty clear which bags contain skateboards and disk launchers. Bags that contain disk launchers feel fairly flat. You can feel skateboard wheels in bags that contain them. Probably because I’m so late to the game, I’ve found that mostly what’s left in stores are disk launchers and skateboards. The bag advertises the possibility of there being 100 different toys in the bag. Based on the bag art, I’m not sure how that math works as I count 24 possible toys.

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Snow White and the Huntsman is the latest live action retelling of the Snow White fairy tale to come out in the last year following Julia Roberts’ Mirror Mirror and ABC’s Once Upon a Time. From all of the promotional materials I had seen leading up to the film’s release, I was expecting it to be a grounded, Batman Begins-esque take on the fable with Snow White reimagined as a warrior. To my surprise, most of the more fantastic elements of the story are still present, which I actually found refreshing. In the end, however, the movie still manages to disappoint.

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A few months back I wrote about Marvel’s Heroics figures. A series of tiny, blind boxed, 97 cent non-articulated figures. The figures walk an odd line between featuring detailed costumes while having almost blank faces. It was a sad tale about a quest for a Hulk or Captain America figure neither of which I found. This is a very different article. This is all about DC Heroics. And this time it didn’t matter who was in the plastic balls, because I wanted them all anyway. I’m a sucker for all things DC. Always have been. One thing I learned in purchasing this batch of DC figures is that if you turn the plastic ball so that the wrapper runs perpendicular to the split in the ball, you can place just a little pressure on the crack and it will open enough to allow you a peek at what figure is in the ball without actually opening it. Blind box foiled!

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While I’ll admit to a certain amount of fondness for the Hulk, Captain America and Iron Fist, for the most part I’ve never really been a fan of the Marvel Universe in general. So you can imagine my surprise at the number of Marvel toys I purchased over the last week at Walmart. This story actually starts a few weeks ago when I stumbled upon a display of balls. The display promised that each ball opened like one of those plastic eggs you see around Easter time and that within them would be a tiny Marvel figure. The line is called Marvel Heroics and among the photographs on the display were Captain America and Hulk. The balls were priced at just $.97 so I figured I’d buy one. At that price, why not!?

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