Archive for the 'General' Category
— August 2, 2007
Now that San Diego Comic Con is over, I thought we needed a recap post for all the new licenses and new products Gentle Giant showed off this weekend (some of these we already knew about but had not been shown by Gentle Giant before.) Here it is.
Star Wars
- Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress Statue
- Star Wars Chess Set
- Senate Guard Statue
- Royal Guard and Senate Guard Busts
- Tusken Raider Bust
- Darth Vader Statue
- R2-D2 Statue
- Han Solo Statue
- Admiral Ackbar Bust
- AT-TE Driver Accessory Pack
- Animated Emperor Palpatine Maquette
Lord of the Rings
- Sauron Mini Bust
- Orc Mini Bust
- Legolas, Eowyn and Gimli Classics Busts
- Elrond Mini Bust
- Saruman Mini Bust
Pirates of the Caribbean
- Animated Will Turner Maquette
- Animated Captain Barbossa Maquette
Harry Potter
- Harry Potter on Thestral Statue
- Bellatrix Lestrange Mini Bust
- Nymphadora Tonks Mini Bust
- Harry Potter Quarter Scale Statue
- Voldemort Quarter Scale Statue
- Death Eater Bust Ups Set
Halo
- Halo 3 Mini Busts
- Halo 12 Inch Figure
Indiana Jones
- Indiana Jones on Horse Statue
- Indiana Jones Bronze Bust
- Indiana Jones and Father with Motorcycle
Star Trek
- Jean Luc Piccard 12 Inch Figure
A lot of people thought Gentle Giant’s showing was lame this year because the didn’t show as much new stuff. I agree with that to a certain extent, but I do think that they showed a lot of stuff that had not been shown to the public before.
Looking back on it, I have to wonder what direction Gentle Giant will go in, based on what they have done so far this year and what they showed at SDCC. What got them where they are is mini busts and a little license called Star Wars. It seems there aren’t that many new Star Wars busts coming up, and there were way too many exclusives this year. In addition, with all the new licenses and formats, are they trying to do too much and get away from what made them popular to start with? What do you think?
— July 28, 2007
Gentle Giant’s convention booth this year reportedly has a lounge built on a second floor above the convention floor. I have not been to any conventions this year so I have not seen it in person, but I have only heard about from other collectors. Well, now we have a picture of the so called lounge, so you can see it for yourselves, courtesy of Galactic Hunter. Click on the thumbnail below for a larger view.
— July 25, 2007
If you have been under a rock lately, you might have missed that San Diego Comic Con is going on this weekend. Everything will kick off tonight with Preview Night. Many new licenses and collectibles will be debuted tonight and the rest of the weekend. I will dedicate my coverage of the event to all things Gentle Giant. So if you want to keep track of all the Gentle Giant news coming out of San Diego, stay tuned right here!
— July 20, 2007
Gentle Giant posted their con schedule for events and signings at their booth at San Diego Comic Con on their blog yesterday. One thing I noted is that they are having another Slave Leia photo shoot like the one at Celebration IV earlier this year.
Many fans reported that this was a disaster because of the massive crowding this caused and Gentle Giant and the people running the convention were not prepared for it. Plus, there will be many more people at Comic Con than were at Celebration. Let’s hope the staff at Comic Con will be prepared for it this time around and have the proper procedures implemented before hand.
— July 18, 2007
On Monday, Gentle Giant announced on their blog that they were removing the ability for members to comment on their blog. Not only did Gentle Giant disable commenting on their blog, they also removed all previous comments that had been left on the blog. Well, this didn’t stop me.
If you are familiar with how the search engine Google works, you know that once Google visits a site it indexes all of their content and puts it in a cached version of the site that is available to the public. If you search for a site, you can find the cached version of it.
So guess what I did? I searched Google for the Gentle Giant blog and found all their cached pages from the blog. And you know that the cached version still has comments on it. So what did I do? I saved all the cached versions of the pages to my hard drive. So Gentle Giant may have deleted their comments but they are still out there. Now I have a copy, and so can you, if you are so inclined and act quickly. In fact, I will save you the time by posting the link that I used to find them.
These pages are still up as of this writing, but soon they will be gone. Once Google revisits those pages, it will reindex them as they are and they will be gone from the Google cache. In fact, this has already happened on one of the most recent posts. Also, none of the Premier Guild member only posts are available this way because they are not public where Google could see them. But other than that, they are all there, and I was able to save all of them except for the private ones and the one that was already gone.
Just so you know, I am planning on going through these posts to find the comments that were left by Gentle Giant employees. I will be doing a series of posts over time where I will post their comments for everyone to see and comment on them. So, Gentle Giant’s blog comments may be gone but they are not forgotten and will have a home here on the Unofficial Gentle Giant blog.
— July 16, 2007
Gentle Giant announced on their blog today that they are disabling the ability to comment on their blog for an undefined period of time. This was undoubtedly due to all the comments that were left containing profanity and directly insulting Gentle Giant employees after last week’s San Diego Comic Con exclusives pre-order.
If you ask me, those comments were out of line, but I bet that Gentle Giant was happy to take away blog comments due to the fact that all the Collector’s Club and Premiere Guild members that were bashing them on a daily basis. The reason I say this is that not only did they stop allowing members to leave comments, they also removed all the previous comments from the blog.
The new blog launched when their site relaunched at the beginning of this year. They did not have comments at first but soon added the ability to comment if you joined the Collector’s Club or Premiere Guild and were logged in to the site. So those members have been leaving comments since the beginning of the year, and Gentle Giant just removed them all. Some would call that censorship. From Gentle Giant’s point of view, it is their blog, and they can do what they want with it.
The ability to interact with Gentle Giant is listed on their site as one of the benefits of being a Premiere Guild member and it’s also listed as being one of the benefits of the Collector’s club. So what is Gentle Giant going to do now? Either they have to take those benefits off the list or come up with another way to offer that ability.
If they do add comments in or some other form of communication in the future, I hope they are able to moderate it more than they did this time.
Here at the Unofficial Gentle Giant Blog we encourage comments. In fact, I just wrote a post earlier today asking for your comments. Also, if you are going to the San Diego Comic Con, why not tell Gentle Giant what you think about deleting the comments from their blog.
— July 16, 2007
I just launched this site a few weeks ago, and I am already starting to get traffic to it. Now that I am starting to attract readers, I want to make this site a valuable resource for fans for all things Gentle Giant.
One of the ways to do this, as I see it, is to include as much feedback from fans as possible. So, this post is a call for fans and collectors of Gentle Giant to start posting comments here on the blog, as much as possible.
I want to hear YOUR experiences and opinions about Gentle Giant. I especially want to hear from those of you who will be at San Diego Comic Con. So leave your comments on this post or on other posts where they are relevant, and you will be helping to create an important resource for Gentle Giant on the web. Thank you in advance!
— July 6, 2007
Welcome to the Unofficial Gentle Giant Blog, the blog dedicated to all things Gentle Giant. We are fans of Gentle Giant, and we are interested in covering their collectible lines.
Here you will find all the Gentle Giant news you can handle, including things you won’t find at the real Gentle Giant blog.
Have Gentle Giant news you want to share with the world? Tell us and we will make sure our readers know about it.
We are open 24/7 so stay tuned, dear readers, we have plently of GG goodness to bring you.
— October 1, 2006
As most of you probably are aware, Marvel Comics blockbuster event this year was Civil War. In August, I believe, Marvel announced that they would be delaying issue number 4 of Civil War until September ‘06 and because of this they were delaying all of the Civil War books because they all tie together event-wise.
Much grumbling was heard over this in the comics community and rightfully so. Fans would not be able to get the books they were anticipating. Retailers would not be getting the books to sell, so potentially they stood to lose money. This was a big deal.
Or was it? Diamond’s sales figures are out for August and which comic book publisher came out on top? Marvel. Yep, Marvel beat out DC by 1% in market share for the month of August, in spite of holding back all their Civil War related books.
The top 300 comics is a different story though. DC had the number one book with Justice League of America #1, and Marvel only held 4 of the top 10 positions. Although, Marvel still have positions 2, 3 and 4 with New Avengers, Wolverine: Origins and Astonishing X-Men.
Think DC’s pissed?
— September 3, 2006
As most of you probably noticed, Toy News International, or TNI, got a redesign. Not sure when it launched, but I first noticed it on Friday night. I think it looks really good and it is more in line with the other sites in the network. It also seems that the redesign will improve the usability of the site even more.
For the record, I believe this is the third major redesign of the site since I have been a regular user. You may remember, it used to be called American Dream Comics years ago. You may have noticed ADC in some of the url’s. That’s what it stands for.
At some point, ADC relaunched as TNI, changed the url and updated the design. That is the look that we have had up until now. I, for one, like the look and wish them more succeess to come. Visit Toy News International today and check out the new look!
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