Marvel Select - A Tale Of Two Beta Ray Bill Figures -UPDATE: Only One Figure Being Released-

LOVE the hammer effect on the Select. Just like the pulse bolts they used for Silver Centurion.

This is what the "whirling hammer" should look like....you wouldnt be able to read the inscription if the thing were twirling that fast!

An articulated jaw, similar to what Marvel Universe did with their 4" Beta Ray Bill, would do well here.

Such a beautiful paint job on that one.

On 9/9/2022 at 1:10 PM, DSTZach said:

I don't often come to these forums, I mostly visit The Fwoosh, where we talk to MS fans and look at polls, and the MS Facebook group, where people who are invested in the line post their own polls and opinions. But maybe I need to start coming here, especially if incorrect info is going to circulate, and people are going to make assumptions about the MS line, among others.

Shrink button or no shrink button, if ML were to release a similar, smaller version of our Beta Ray Bill, or we were to release a similar, larger Sasquatch, I don't think anyone, including licensors, manufacturers AND collectors, would be happy. You MIGHT be one of those people who make money scanning and shrinking (or enlarging) other companies' heads (which IMHO pushes the definition of customizing), but in the professional world that kind of swiping is frowned on. Besides, this one is specifically based on his mini-series look, and would not work as a classic BRB, so you'd have TWO Mohawk Bills, and reaction to the mohawk is already mixed.

And MS is not an ML-completing toy line. While we make PLENTY of larger figures, we will never focus on them, because we are our own scale and we have our own collectors. We need to make regular-sized characters as well. We will likely NOT make another Abomination. I doubt Sasquatch will top our list any time soon. But Titanium Man was a hit, and I think BRB will be a hit as well.

Wow, well I'm not sure what I could have said that would make one assume I "might" be some kind of money grabbing counterfeiting thief, but thanks for that. For the sake of correctness I'm no "copier" or "scanner" either. I pursued a career in art but got trapped at a fairly well paying position in another line of work at a young age and kept moving up from there. Life happens differently for some people. Only in a perfect world does everyone get to land their dream job. I suppose from a certain perspective on high one could view me as just a lowly self taught scab playing artist in his free time. I'm no "professional" in the toy world by any means either, to be sure. Hell, I'm just a peasant who builds $70,000,000 aircraft within a 200,000th of an inch tolerance. What the hell do I know about a damn thing anyway, right? What can I say, art is a natural gift that I squandered away in my youth, yet it somehow still makes me happy today. Luckily it's a gift I was able to pass on to my daughter who's currently in college to earn a legit commercial art degree. She's already 10 times the artist I ever was.

As far as misinformation, it wasn't intentional or malicious. If i didn't make it clear before, I apologize. Like I said, it was brought to my attention by another member on the forum that the sculpts were almost identical, even up to the folds and tears in the pants, with a few aesthetic and color changes. You know, similar to what a cheesy tattoo artist does to avoid getting on the wrong side of licenses and trademarks. I thought admitting I misspoke was enough of a penance, but I guess the road to forgiveness requires a bit more groveling. Again, sorry. Actually, looking back they are completely different sculpts, not even close. It's like the difference between night and a little bit later that night. My bad. Personally I don't even understand what those Youtube videos entirely dedicated to compare the two figures are trying to get at. Complete hearsay.

Artistically speaking the majority of everything I do and have done is completely designed and created by me, though I do some commission work based on licensed properties. Admittedly my work in the 1/6 scale, using the crude, old sculpt and mold technique, is much better and way better rehearsed than my foray into the 1/12 scale. Actually a large part of the reason I purchased a scanner/printer setup at all was to try and scan my own work in an attempt to try to convert it to 1/12 scale. If and when I do decide to do anything that might even be assumed to be "swiping" someone else's work it would be to do a head sculpt that I believe should have been included with a figure in the first place, say like a screaming face for a screaming character like Siryn, or a neutral face for a character like Thunderstrike, or maybe a powers relevant based sculpt for a guy like Cottonmouth. Y'know, silly little nitpicky stuff that probably bothered no one else but me. But even then, I would make the argument that the portraits would be more based on the established design of the character itself rather than a stolen design from another artist. I mean both Rob Liefeld and Greg Land drew Siryn as a beautiful, red haired, fair skinned Irish woman with similar features, so who stole from who? I suppose they both stole from Steven Leialoha when it gets down to it.

As far as getting paid for my work, I suppose I'm just an evil person who takes real payment for work that took real time and effort out of real life to produce. I suppose a legit artist requires only the satisfaction and enjoyment of the creative process as their only payment. In that case I guess my daughter will be living with her parents forever. Fortunately, the other natural gift I squandered, the knack for math and science, is on pace to earn my son a medical degree within the next couple of years so he should be able to take care of his sister after we're gone. So I got that goin' for me. Back to the subject of money, I'm almost ashamed to admit that my evil business partner, a fellow petty aircraft builder, has found another evil use for the printer by designing and producing unique and original and charming, yet useless psychedelic knickknacks and decorations the likes of what one might find in stores like Spencer's or Hot Topic with minimal work and overhead and selling them online. It's actually a fairly profitable hustle but it's okay, we made a pact that we'd both repent on our death beds.

Hey, I like The Fwoosh too. I'm on there as well under a different name, though nowhere near as frequent as here. I guess it only makes sense that representatives of a product called Marvel Select would all but ignore the largest independent site dedicated entirely to everything Marvel on the net as a source for information and input, but glad to know that shutting down incorrect info and assumptions are first on the hit list.

Great to have you here, Zach

still waiting for someone to do a classic Beta ray bill!!! my old toybiz version has a busted leg!

that said, considering picking this guy up despite his huge size relative to ML. since Bill magically transforms i'll assume the enchantment could theoretically change his form over time, after all thor hasn't always looked the same and seems like he has gotten bigger at times too.i dunno he's a horse alien so being huge doens't seem that unusual.

On 9/9/2022 at 1:49 PM, DSTZach said:

There is no closed-mouth version of this figure. specialty stores and the Disney Store will have the same figure. It will have an open mouth. Everything about the figure will be the same, including accessories.

Welcome Zach!

Would not be possible to do an articulated jaw instead? I don't know how much more complicated and costly than molding another entire headsculpt.

On 8/18/2022 at 3:18 PM, monron999 said:

Well it's nice to finally have someone to address these issues directly. I know they are not, and it is quite clear that the are not the same figures. I have both of them, but there are clearly portions of the same sculpt in both figures. They are indeed unique, but the build is almost identical. I pointed this out in posts long ago and many were quick to point out they were almost the same sculpt in different scales and they were done by the same studio. I have and do do some commissioned sculpting myself and also do scanning and 3D printing, mostly for customizers, so I have a general understanding of modeling. I didn't mean to insinuate that it was as simple as pushing a magic button and the model shrinks, but as the Beta Ray Bill figure is done, would it not be much easier to model a similar figure off this existing one for ML rather than create an entire new sculpt? Similarly the Sasquatch sculpt was very well done IMO, but the actual figure itself is largely considered to be out of scale to what it should have been. The character is and always has been and should be taller and wider than the Hulk, and had that figure been "expanded" it would have been completely accurate. Many, many fans are calling, I being one of them, for this correction to be made, and I'm here to tell you that if MS did one that scaled well with the ML Hulk it would sell like gangbusters. Would it not be fairly easy to use the sculpt you already have, differentiate enough from the ML version as to not be a "copy" as was done with the Hulk instead of doing an all new model?

Not suggesting to tell you how to do your jobs, but giving you some insight on the pulse of the fandom. There was a time, many, many moons ago when people from the ML team, mostly during the Toybiz era, where they interacted with us on these boards and took our input into consideration. It's nice to have some correspondence from people in the actual business again.

I'm telling you now, and I know there are a lot of fans who agree, that if you MS was to start concentrating on a lot of the larger characters and characters that have been done as BAF's that ML has fumbled the ball on, such as Abomination (I do have DS's older one) and Sasquatch, who both should be larger than the Hulk but are not, and make versions similar to the ML ones, just as was done with the Hulk, in a scale that would look better with the ML Hulk, there are a ton of customers chomping at the bit to buy.

I don't often come to these forums, I mostly visit The Fwoosh, where we talk to MS fans and look at polls, and the MS Facebook group, where people who are invested in the line post their own polls and opinions. But maybe I need to start coming here, especially if incorrect info is going to circulate, and people are going to make assumptions about the MS line, among others.

Shrink button or no shrink button, if ML were to release a similar, smaller version of our Beta Ray Bill, or we were to release a similar, larger Sasquatch, I don't think anyone, including licensors, manufacturers AND collectors, would be happy. You MIGHT be one of those people who make money scanning and shrinking (or enlarging) other companies' heads (which IMHO pushes the definition of customizing), but in the professional world that kind of swiping is frowned on. Besides, this one is specifically based on his mini-series look, and would not work as a classic BRB, so you'd have TWO Mohawk Bills, and reaction to the mohawk is already mixed.

And MS is not an ML-completing toy line. While we make PLENTY of larger figures, we will never focus on them, because we are our own scale and we have our own collectors. We need to make regular-sized characters as well. We will likely NOT make another Abomination. I doubt Sasquatch will top our list any time soon. But Titanium Man was a hit, and I think BRB will be a hit as well.

There is no closed-mouth version of this figure. specialty stores and the Disney Store will have the same figure. It will have an open mouth. Everything about the figure will be the same, including accessories.

Last month the new Marvel Select Beta Ray Bill figure from Diamond Select Toys went up for pre-order at places like our sponsor Entertainment Earth.Most of the initial images for the figure that went out when the figure was first solicited showed it with an open mouth headsculpt. There was one image that slipped out showing a closed mouth, but that was quickly pulled. Well it looks like things have changed and now the images being shown for the regular release Beta Ray Bill show the figure with the closed mouth headsculpt, which I feel is the one most people preferred anyway.Today a listing on the ShopDisneyUK website popped up for what looks to be a Disney exclusive version that has that open mouth headsculpt. That one has not yet shown up on the US website but likely will soon.

Found an image showing what I mean about the Legends Sasquatch being too slender. He was an earlier BAF that came out in 2017-18. Now, the heavyweight BAFs are wider, which is more accurate for Sasquatch.

When the Armadillo BAF was revealed last year, I first saw a thumbnail image and thought it was a new Sasquatch and got really excited. Anyway, I think the Armadillo figure's shoulder width and girth are better than the Sasquatch/Wendigo figure for Sasquatch. So, if there should be any inspiration taken from a previous Legends for a larger/better Sasquatch, a better source of inspiration should be the Armadillo figure.

Also, I didn't realize that a DST rep was in this thread. Oops, sorry for my comment above about previous sculpts lol. Anyway, I'm a DST fan (the Select Colossus is my default Colossus in my Legends collection) and also hope that you guys can improve upon Sasquatch and other larger characters. I'm there for it!