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Don’t Expect Many X-Men Or Fantastic Four Collectibles In The Near Future

By Nick Tylwalk

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Not only do we live in a golden age of super heroes in movies and on TV, but we also happen to be enjoying an unprecedented variety of super hero collectibles. From high quality action figures to busts and statues to just about anything else you can imagine, it’s seemingly either out there already or in the planning stages somewhere.

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At least that’s true for most Marvel characters. When it comes to the X-Men or Fantastic Four, though? Not so much.

While it’s not something the company has ever announced publicly, it’s become very clear that Marvel is doing everything it can to lower the profile of its two most famous teams due to its inability to wrestle the movie rights to both franchises back from Fox. The cancellation of the Fantastic Four comic book series could have happened anyway because of Secret Wars, but it also just happened to come in the lead up to Fox’s movie reboot. And there are rumors that the X-Men might get spun off to their own planet after Secret Wars too. Those are two mighty big coincidences.

It’s a little more obvious that something is afoot when it comes to collectibles, where licensees are reportedly being straight up told that they can’t pursue projects involving the X-Men and FF. Bleeding Cool has a story today about XM Studios Premium Collectibles being forced to stop production on its line of X-Men statues (make sure to hit that link for some very cool images, if you’re interested). The company explained the issue pretty clearly on Facebook.

"Folks, it’s been a sad day for us… due to reasons we aren’t at liberty to disclose, we have been asked to put a hard stop to all X-Men characters for now. That means Cable can’t be released, and neither can the awesome Sentinel Diorama which we’ve all been so looking forward to. Still, we continue to have faith that this isn’t an indefinite red light forever and you can have our promise we will be back to producing these dream pieces once the coast is clear – no matter how long it takes!"

Note that XM believes it will be able to finish its products someday, which could mean that the folks there have already been given some assurances from Marvel. Certainly, the X-Men are too popular and the Fantastic Four too historic for this to go on forever, and franchises under the Marvel umbrella ebb and flow. Go back 20 years, for instance, and no one except diehards cared about the Avengers.

For the time being, though, this movie-related cold war has spilled over to the world of collectibles, and a thaw doesn’t seem likely in the near future.

(via Bleeding Cool)

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