The Toy Box: Hasbro Pulsecon

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New G.I. Joe Classified

Hasbro Pulsecon 2021 has wrapped up their G.I. Joe segment, and were happy to announce one new figure the fans have eagerly been awaiting. The all new Going Commando Snake Eyes will be available for pre-order from Target at 5:00 PM today, limited one per customer, with only ten being produced. Good luck!

In all seriousness, Hasbro announced several figures today which included Spirit with Freedom, Storm Shadow, Croc Master and Fiona and B.A.T. Hasbro also announced the next wave of Target exclusives, which will shift the line from Cobra Island to Tiger Force and Python Patrol. These initial figures will include Outback (Tiger Force), B.A.T. (Python Patrol), and Cobra Viper (Python Patrol).

These three figures don't really excite me. Tiger Force and Python Patrol were great back in the day, but they don't necessarily scream "amazing" in six inch form. More so an excuse to create "cheap" repaints on Hasbro's part, because let's be honest, B.A.T. is already coming, Viper has already come, and Outback will hit at some point int he future in his traditional gear. Especially now that Hasbro has the mold. With that said, I'd be perfectly happy if all future exclusives were just repaints. It would make missing out on them a bit easier to swallow.

Croc Master has been one of my favorite figures since 1987, so I'm really excited to see this one come out.

Many people tend to forget that Storm Shadow was Spirit's original adversary in the cartoon, not Snake Eyes. So to me, this release schedule works perfectly.

Hasbro Pulse members can pre-order the already known about Master of Disguise Zartan as of 4:00 PM, and he will then be made available to everyone else as of 5:00 PM. Target's pre-orders will also be available at 5:00 PM today. At this time, the regular B.A.T. is just an announcement, and this is the only figure not being listed for sale yet.

UPDATE - Target appears to have fixed their pre-order debacle of prior figures, as these are still available as of 5:30 PM. Hasbro is sold out of Storm Shadow, Spirit, and Croc Master, but you can get them via other online chains, such as Entertainment Earth. They have not yet hit Target.

Update - As of 7:30 PM Master of Disguise Zartan is sold out at Hasbro Pulse.

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Hasbro Pulsecon 2021

2021 Hasbro Pulsecon starts today at 11:00 AM, and runs through tomorrow. You excited? Maybe? Possibly? Meh?

Join the livestream at their official Youtube page.

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Hasbro Pulse - To Be, Or Not To Be, A Premium Pulse Member

As my annual subscription sets to expire for my Hasbro Pulse membership, I briefly considered whether or not the $50.00 annual membership truly held any value to me. In doing so, I came up with this pros and cons list, which I thought I would share with you.

First off, what is Hasbro Pulse Premium? Basically, it's an annual subscription fee you pay which provides you with free shipping, early access to products, first access to restocked items, season promotions and discounts, access to exclusive Hasbro Pulse content and events, and what they call, "other perks". So let's break this down by category.

FREE SHIPPING

Depending on how much you buy, this perk alone can easily pay for your membership. For me, I suppose it did within the first day. I signed up for Premium leading up to Pulsecon 2020, and during that event, I purchased multiple items of varying sizes, which shipping would easily have covered the cost of the membership. To that aspect, yes, there is value here.

EARLY ACCESS TO PRODUCTS

With the exception of 2020's Pulsecon, here is where the value of this option failed miserably. While I did indeed receive early access e-mails to many items, the problem with this was that I don't sit around all day watching my e-mails come in. I'm certainly not looking for them from Hasbro at any given moment.

What essentially kept happening was that while I was getting these e-mails, I didn't see them until several hours, if not days later. As such, it didn't matter if I had the opportunity for early access. I never knew when an e-mail was coming, so I missed them all. Even on ones I may have happened to catch early, the result was always the same when I clicked on the link, "SOLD OUT".

FIRST ACCESS TO RESTOCKED ITEMS

Somewhat in conjunction with the above, telling me an item has been restocked is relatively useless if I'm not watching my e-mails twenty-four hours a day. Again, I saw little to no value from this aspect of the Premium membership.

ACCESS TO EXCLUSIVE HASBRO PULSE CONTENT AND EVENTS

All the events held by Hasbro were on Youtube, which anyone can access just by going to the link - Which they had right on the front page of their website leading up to every single one. There was nothing exclusive about any of the content or events they offered. Further, these events were typically held in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday when most people are at work. So again, this is useless to your average person.

SEASON PROMOTIONS AND DISCOUNTS

Really? Where? I never saw any promotions or discounts during my year of being a member.

OTHER PERKS

What a joke that they even included this in the description. Please, Hasbro. Tell me what these "other perks" were.

TO CONTINUE

So obviously the majority of the perks for being a member noted above were all but useless to me. However, in the off chance that I did place an order, there was another caveat that really hindered the value of this plan, and that was the fact that nothing I pre-ordered shipped before other online retailers, or even physical brick and mortar stores received the products.

Despite pre-orders for Flint, Lady Jaye, Zartan and Cobra Infantry, I found all of these via other avenues, and ended up canceling my orders. While you would think direct from the source would be the fastest route, this was anything but the case.

BOTTOM LINE

I'd rather just save the fifty dollars in the future. If I'm going to miss out of 99% of purchase opportunities because they sell out within minutes. Why bother? If I do manage to place an order, I find it well in advance of Hasbro shipping it. So again, why bother?

Using the exclusive Snake Supreme Cobra Commander as an example, that figure was forty dollars from Hasbro Pulse. With the fifty dollar Premium membership, I essentially paid $90.00 for it. However, I could have just as easily gotten one off of ebay, for sixty, and saved thirty bucks.

At the end of the day, unless you're buying something from them frequently, and taking full advantage of the shipping, and you're willing to wait extended periods to get what you bought, there's simply no reason to buy a Premium membership from Hasbro Pulse.

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2021 Pulsecon Zartan Showing Up On Ebay

Looks like Asian "markets" are putting the upcoming Pulsecon 2021 Zartan on ebay. Of course, it will cost you a ridiculous amount of money to be among the first to own one. Current listings are $250.00+.

The package appears to be a "hinged" flip cover, with a dial incorporated into it. Rotating the circle changes the face of Zartan, essentially mimicking his master of disguise abilities.

It looks cool, but I'll wait for Pulsecon.

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A Toy Box Contest V

***UPDATE***

WE HAVE A WINNER! Reader Ryan was the first to provide the correct answer to the question. Police Academy The Animated Series, which featured a theme performed by The Fat Boys, and Pee-Wee's Playhouse, which featured a theme from Cyndi Lauper.

Ryan, please leave a comment with your e-mail address, which won't be published. I'll reach out to you to obtain your mailing address. Congratulations!

Here are the intros for those of you who want to check them out.

Black thumb for the video above really blends in with the site. Click the play button for it.

Hello, and welcome to contest number five here at The Toy Box. These took a hiatus for a bit, but I'm looking to get back into the swing of things, so dive in and take a chance. Maybe you could be the winner.

But what's the prize you ask?

Up for grabs this time is the Hasbro Pulsecon exclusive, Snake Supreme Cobra Commander from the G.I. Joe Classified series.

This figure comes to one lucky winner in brand new, still in the box condition. Don't let the photo fool you, that's just a stock image from Hasbro's website.

How do you win? Well, this one's going to be a bit of a fun challenge. To win, you have to answer a bit of 80's television trivia. To make it all the more challenging, it's a two part question, and you have to get both right.

Rather than impose a time limit for this contest, we're going to cut directly to the chase. The first person to correctly answer the question in the comment section wins. So hear goes. Get your thinking caps on.

The question: In the 80's two artists contributed to two separate children's shows by performing the theme songs. One, was a very unusual girl, the other a famous group of hungry rappers. What were the shows, and who were the artists?

Alright, there's your question. Follow the hidden clues within it and test your 80's trivia knowledge! Good luck!

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A Toy Box Contest II

***UPDATE***

There's are only two more days left for this contest. If you want a chance to win, make sure you enter now!

Last month's contest is over, and with October, here we go with a second one. However, before we do that, let's get one thing taken care of.

The winner of September's contest is..........................ACTION FIGURE BARBECUE! You have seventy-two hours as of this post going live to claim your prize - October 4th, 2020 by 5:00 AM! Do so by leaving a comment with your e-mail address, which will not be published, so I can get in touch with you for your mailing address! I know we know how to contact each other already, but rules are rules. I wouldn't want anyone to think I was showing favoritism. You have to claim it to win it.

***UPDATE***

Prize has been claimed. Congrats again to Action Figure Barbecue! This will ship out soon.

Congratulations to everyone who participated. Don't be disheartened if you didn't win. We have plenty more contests to go, including this months! October's prize is the all new, Hasbro Pulsecon 2020 Transformers War For Cybertron Trilogy Quintesson Pit of Judgement! Wow, that's a lot of words!

This is in hand and ready to go to one lucky winner!

How do you win? Simple. Leave a comment with your favorite obscure Transformer character with a short message as to why. Key word in that was "obscure". Tell everyone about that character that doesn't stand in the spotlight all the time. They can be from the cartoon, toy line, comics or whatever other source material that is Transformers related.

Entries will be accepted as of this post going live, and through 11:59 PM on October 31, 2020. The winner will be chosen at random and announced on November 1st, 2020. At that time, another contest will also go live.

You must be eighteen (18) or older to enter this contest. The winner will be announced at the beginning of the post for the next contest. At that time, the person will have seventy-two hours to leave a comment with their e-mail address, which will not be published, so that I can get in touch with them. We will work out the shipping arrangements from there.

Shipping is free and all entries across the globe are welcome. However, foreign addresses will be responsible for all applicable taxes and import fees on their end.

Good luck to all!

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G.I. Joe Classified: Snake Supreme Cobra Commander - Hasbro Pulsecon 2020 Exclusive

I'm not sure what the determining factor was in who received their Snake Supreme Cobra Commander's now, versus those who were told that it would ship in March of 2021. It seems to be anyone's guess, as some people who ordered theirs via the Premiere Member Early Access event have said that their figure has either shipped, while others say theirs states next year.

Mine arrived today. I purchased via the Premiere Member Early Access event and paid via PayPal. Maybe that was the winning combination. I don't know. But, it's here.

It came in a solid brown box with the Hasbro and Pulse logos displayed across the sides. What was a little disappointing was the minimal padding within. The items was thrown in, with two bubble bags on top. The box was too big for the figure to fit snug, which means it bounced around inside during transit. Fortunately, this didn't result in any damage.

Much like their prior exclusive, the Deluxe Snake Eyes, Snake Supreme Cobra Commander is a box within a slipcase. Albeit, not anywhere near as large as Snake Eyes' box was.

The back of the box is a fabulous bit of etching and cuts, but definitely feels like it could easily be torn if you weren't careful.

Snake Supreme Cobra Commander is officially number nine in the series for those keeping track of the specific order of the figures. Me personally, I'm going to display them in this order on my shelf(s).

When you remove the slipcase, you can see that the front of the box actually opens by "splitting" it open down the center. However, this means that the back of the box is potentially very fragile, and with repeated opening and closing, could wear out and tear.

Here's the back of the box, and as noted above, you can see the hinges within it that split apart to open it.

And here's the reveal of the figure inside. Before I go on, does anyone else see the immediate problem with it? Look closely.

Did you spot it?

The plastic chain drooping across the figures chest is broken! I immediately took the above photo and sent it to Hasbro Pulse to see what can be done. Obviously, I don't want to wait until March for a replacement, but I also don't want a broken figure. Downer! I'm sure I could easily fix it with super glue. But the point is I shouldn't have to. This isn't a vintage figure that has seen a lot of use and love. It's a brand new one in the box, direct from the producer.

Let that be a lesson, folks. Sometimes getting it first isn't the best. How many of us found that out with the Xbox 360 and the red ring of death?

Oh well, it is what it is, and it won't stop me from reviewing the figure here.

Because I'll probably have to send the whole thing back to get a replacement, I was as careful as possible to remove everything from the package, keeping every piece of tape intact and in place.

Immediately, the sheer amount of detail in this figure jumps out at you. Despite its flaw, the chest plate is packed with golden painted artwork, flanked on both sides by a total of ten miniature cobra insignia sculpts...and of course, a broken chain. The red, blue and gold play so well off of each other. This is an amazing looking figure!

Even the boots and sword sheath have an incredible amount of detail!

If I had one complaint about the overall design, it would be the cape. It's ridiculously long. It definitely could have been cut off near the heels, or even at ankle height.

With that said, there's a bit of texture on the back of it that really works nicely. it has almost a fake leather type feel to it, while the red side is cloth.

Snake Supreme Cobra Commander comes with a few accessories, which include a sword, two additional hands, his vintage style blaster, a palm size globe and cobra headed scepter. The sword in my package was bent and the blaster a beast to get into the holster.

Problems aside, with the exception of the additional hands, all the items can be stored somewhere on the figure.

Here it is all decked out! Definitely a fan!

While distribution has been an issue for this line, it's good to see that the overall quality has been there. I'm excited to see how this series pans out in 2021. We've already seen a few reveals, but no doubt more will come.

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G.I. Joe Classified - For Every Step In The Right Direction, There Is A Giant Leap Back

It seems like every time Hasbro shows that they're taking a step in the right direction with G.I. Joe Classified, they immediately take a giant leap back in the wrong direction.

As many of you know, Hasbro Pulsecon featured their second day of panels, and among them was the G.I. Joe team. They excited fans when they announced Zartan was coming to the next wave, and then hit the ball out of the park when they followed this up with a lighter blue version of the Cobra Trooper, now called, Cobra Infantry, coming to Hasbro Pulse and general retail.

Everything was sounding great! Then they showed that they hadn't learned from their mistakes.

Hot on the heels of that announcement were the Cobra Island wave Firefly and Viper, another highly anticipated troop builder. If you haven't put two and two together yet, the words "Cobra Island" should have clued you in as to where this debacle was going.

That's right. Firefly and Viper will be Target exclusives, which go live today at 5:00 PM.

Go ahead and shake your head for a minute. Hasbro, it seems, will never learn. Attendees of the panel were quick to blow up the feed with their disdain for Target exclusives, calling them ebay exclusives. It would be funny, if it weren't so true and sad.

Well...Good luck to all. Start saving your pennies now for those scalper prices.

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Hasbro Pulsecon Day Two Panels

Day two of Pulsecon is live!

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Hasbro Pulsecon Exclusives Available To The General Public Today

As many of you know, early access for the 2020 Hasbro Pulsecon items went up yesterday, and oddly enough, not too many of the figures "sold out". As of this morning, the only unavailable items were the Star Wars Black Heroes Of Endor Pack, G.I. Joe Classified Snake Supreme Cobra Commander and Marvel Legends Hellfire Club.

Even then, I use the term sold out lightly, because only a limited quantity of the items were made available for early access. All the remaining product will go on sale today to the general public, giving everyone a chance to get something. With a limit of one per person and a captcha verification process, this prevents the scalpers / bots from running amuck and ruining this for everyone. Additionally, people who bought yesterday should not be able to buy again today, unless they create a new account to scam the system.

Bottom line is everyone will have an equal opportunity to get what they want, but obviously for the best chances you want to make sure you're ready to click that "add to cart" button immediately at noon. All items will appear to ship in March of 2021.

With the exception of t-shirts and hats, the below list are what will be available. Since they've been up since yesterday, you can view them HERE.

Power Rangers Lightning Collection Mighty Morphin Lord Drakkon EVO III Figure
Star Wars The Black Series Wampa
Star Wars The Black Series Heroes of Endor
Star Wars The Vintage Collection Star Wars: The Clone Wars 501st Legion ARC Troopers
Marvel Legends Series Hellfire Club Collection
Marvel Legends Series X-Men Marvel’s Logan and Charles Xavier
G.I. Joe Classified Series Snake Supreme Cobra Commander Action Figure
Ghostbusters Plasma Series Tully’s Terrible Night
Transformers Generations War for Cybertron Trilogy Quintesson Pit of Judgement

I'll try to update this list throughout the day with what has sold out. Blue items will denote they are still available and red will reflect items sold out. So far, Hasbro has handled this incredibly well, putting measures in place to ensure that the fans will indeed come first in this event.

Happy hunting!

***UPDATE***

As noon draws near, this was definitely a bad sign at Hasbro's site. Hope everything gets fixed quick!

***UPDATE 2***

Issue noted above was fixed at noon on the dot and items are selling!

***UPDATE 3***

It's interesting to note that the Transformers Generations item initially changed to out of stock, but then reverted back to in stock. Not sure how or why. Possibly orders got cancelled, payment methods denied, or Hasbro is staggering the pre-order to maximize opportunities. Also, the Logan / Xavier Marvel Legend appears to have disappeared from the page. Not sure what this means either. Is it out of stock? Did the page crash? All I know is that the page is gone, and gets an "Oops" screen when you go to it via Google search.

***UPDATE 4***

The Marvel Legends Logan and Xavier two-pack are back up on the site, and still available.

***UPDATE 5***

We're about four and a half hours out since everything went live to the general public, and several items are still available. This is rather impressive. I wish I could say I feel bad for the people who rushed to ebay yesterday the moment people started listing things, but you get what you get for being impatient. What's odd are the people who are still buying off of ebay at scalper prices. Hopefully these people are from areas, where these items aren't available. I'd like to hope people who can readily get them aren't that stupid.

***UPDATE 6***

They're in stock, they're out of stock, they're back in stock...I can't keep up with this anymore. The Transformers set has stated it was sold out twice, and came back with pre-orders. I'm not going to track this anymore in this post. Check their website for availability.

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Hasbro Pulsecon Early Acces Exclusives Are Up

Though it's a little late, I wanted to make sure everyone knew that the early access Hasbro Pulsecon items are up, and have been for about thirty minutes now. Sorry, I was in line for my Snake Supreme Cobra Commander. Which...

Though it's unfortunate that there was a Premium Membership required to get the early access, I'm happy to see how easy it was to get this figure. I logged in, refreshed the page at noon exactly. Clicked "add to cart", paid, and was done. Order confirmation was received moments later.

In fact, many of the exclusives are still available for early access as I type this. I hate to say this, but if you want any of these exclusives, it may be worth you paying the membership to get them. Everything is limit one (1) per person, so just keep that in mind.

Of course, things are already on ebay, so you can go that route too.

With the exception of the exclusive t-shirts and hats, the items below are what Hasbro made available during early access. Blue denotes that they are still available as of this writing. Red denotes they are sold out for early access, but you can try again tomorrow during the general release.

You can head to the shop, HERE.

I reiterate, all items go on sale tomorrow for the general public. Just because an item is denoted as sold out above doesn't mean you won't be able to get one tomorrow.

I'm actually really surprised to see how many items are still available. I'm wondering if people forgot about the early access, or if they simply don't care. I would have thought for sure that the scalpers would have been all over these.

I am also pleasantly surprised, and eating my words, at how well Hasbro has managed to handle this so far. The exclusives have not been difficult to get with Premium access. I thought for sure I was throwing away $50.00. However, the membership has already paid for itself with the items I purchased today. Not only with the free shipping, but the ease of getting them. Kudos to you, Hasbro.

I'm hopping that many of you will have success with getting what you want, either today, or tomorrow. For curiosity sake, let me know if there was something you were after on this list in the comment section.

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Hasbro Pulsecon Preview

Hasbro Pulsecon's preview is up. Did you watch it? What did you think? Haven't seen it? Watch it below!

Yeah, don't actually watch it. Much like everything Hasbro touches, this preview was a giant failure. It was nothing short of a fifteen minute discussion about a Haslab HeroQuest board game. Viewers were expecting an actual preview of the upcoming events and exclusives. Not a singular focus on one item, that could have been its own panel during the virtual con.

Oh Hasbro. How you love to be a train wreck.

On a side note, the HeroQuest game reached its goal.

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Hasbro Pulsecon Update: Pay For The Opportunity To Try To Get Exclusives

Just when you thought Hasbro couldn't get any dumber, they go and do something like this...I wish I could make a Dumb and Dumber reference and follow that up with, "And totally redeem themselves!" Sadly, that's not the case.

If you had an inkling of hope that you'd stand a chance of obtaining one of the San Diego Comic Con 2020 exclusives, now turned Hasbo Pulse exclusives, this year, you may want to go sit down. Hasbo has found yet another way to give you, the average collector, the finger.

It wasn't bad enough that we'd all be competing against the scalpers and other rabid fans on September 24th, 2020. Now, as it turns out, product may not even be available that day. Why? Because Hasbro is selling early access to the exclusives to anyone willing to pay $50.00 to join Hasbro Pulse Premium. With your purchase of their annual membership, you'll also get early access on September 23rd, 2020 to try and buy the exclusives.

Here in lies the next problem. That fifty dollar fee doesn't guarantee you anything in terms of the actual items. Just the opportunity to shop one day earlier. You still have to sign in, grab the item, get through checkout and get your pre-order confirmation before they sell out. Not only that, but there's no limit to how many Hasbro Pulse Premium memberships are being sold. In fact many, if not most, Hasbro Pulse customers already have a Premium account for the free shipping benefits.

"But Hasbro is limiting one (of each) exclusive per customer," you say. Okay, fine. But, simply do the math in that equation.

If there are five thousand memberships to Hasbro Pulse Premium, but only two thousand pieces of each exclusive, that still means they're going to be sold out instantly on the 23rd. In fact, I pretty much guarantee it. I'll be incredibly surprised if this isn't the case.

The only thing Hasbro is going to accomplish here is angering thousands of collectors who had no chance unless they wanted to be extorted for an extra fifty bucks. Mark my words, the internet will be ablaze on September 24th with angry rants directed at Hasbro, and Hasbro Pulsecon will be labeled an utter failure.

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