Before :

After :

A few days back I saw that some comics were priced ridiculously low on Amazon, $15 MSRP for titles that normally go from $50-$100. I posted about it and linked a few forums (I doubt I was the first, but I was pretty damn quick on the ball). Some other blogs noticed it and posted (including Bleedingcool, who claimed they broke the story, apparently stealing credit for news they didn’t find is a habit of theirs), and many of the titles launched up the charts, easily taking Amazon’s top 10 in book sales.

The deal was up for 16-20 hours, tens of thousands of orders were placed. When some titles hit the top 100, they were discounted an additional 45% to $8.45, a standard Amazon pricing strategy for top selling books. When Amazon finally took it down, they outright cancelled some people’s orders, some orders disappeared from people’s accounts, and some orders were shipped, including some of mine. Some people called and managed to have parts of their orders restored but pretty much everyone else was given a $25 credit, which I thought was incredibly generous of Amazon considering how many orders were placed. As best as anyone can tell, this was the fault of Diamond screwing up and passing along the wrong MSRP to Amazon.

This became a more common belief when Barnes and Noble did the exact same thing yesterday. I unfortunately wasn’t available to post about it, it was Amazon all over again on a smaller scale. Some people have had partial orders shipped there as well. Will there be another huge mistake like this at another online book store before they realize their error? Quite possibly. Will this likely have huge consequences for Diamond, if it’s indeed their fault? I can’t imagine how it wouldn’t. If your company just screwed two major e-retailers to the tune of $50-$500k, well they’re obviously not going to be happy about it.

On another note, I’ve seen lots of comments wondering why Amazon wasn’t obligated to honour a price mistake like this. As someone who’s had the luck to take advantage of a variety of price mistakes over the years, in America, most online retailers aren’t required to honour these accidents. I don’t remember the relevant laws, but I’ve seen tons of people attempt to sue large companies over similar situations and it never works out. Now, if they were to charge your credit card then deny you the item? Or ship it and charge you another price when you receive it? Then you’d likely have a case. Not that I don’t advise people to know their legal rights and get what they’re owed from companies, trust me, I do. But in a situation where some people received product, and the rest received a reasonably sized gift certificate? Trust me, if you got in on the deal, you did well for yourself.

Q.
Are we going to see any maquettes or life-sized busts from Avatar together with Legacy EFX? Tell us something!… AND… I’ve been dying to see a Jake Sully Maquette from Avatar… any chances I’ll see it soon?
A.

Yes, we are developing some very special pieces (large sized and everything) with Legacy. We’ll share more with you soon!

Q.
With the news of the Fertility Idol Prop Replica, any chance fans will see a Light-Up 1:1 Scale Crystal Skull Prop Replica from you guys? It is my favorite thing from all of the Indy films! Please DO NOT make it fixed to a base though. Thanks so much Sideshow!
A.

Understood – you want to role-play with your Crystal Skull, not just display it!

Q.
Can we expect to see a T-1000 Premium Format in the NEAR future?
A.

Not in the NEAR future, although it is still part of our planning. The artist we’re most interested in sculpting this project has been busy on others – but he’s due to start the piece in the near future.

Q.
With the shipping of the Commanded Cody Legendary Scale Bust and the pictures looking fantastic, do you plan to reveal the next Star Wars LSB soon? Also, can you hint as to who it will be?… AND… Are you planning on releasing a Darth Maul Legendary Scale Bust?
A.

In this round of Ask Sideshow, we received a LOT of interest in the Star Wars LSB line! We can tell you that of the concepts that we debuted at SDCC 2009, three of those pieces are currently in the sculpt process (and yes, one is Darth Maul). We’ve been playing a bit with the torso and base integration elements, but we’re closing in on finished sculptures. We expect that we’ll unveil the next Star Wars LSB sometime before SDCC 2010, but it’s hard to say when exactly (just yet). We’ll get you a tease image or two in the production blog very soon!

Infinite Crisis for $10.19 currently at Amazon

I’d read this one before, but I was pleasantly surprised when I re-read it. I’m not sure why I thought it was average before, it’s a good read.

The thing about DC events is they’re ambitious. Sure, they have plenty of other problems, but a DC event usually ends up doing something ridiculous like destroying thousands of universes. This one doesn’t disappoint!

Earth-1 is a dark place. Heroes have done things they shouldn’t have, Wonder Woman murdered someone on tv, too many heroes have died. The remaining citizens of Earth-2, and one from Earth-3, the ones cast away after Crisis on Infinite Earths, have decided that enough is enough. Earth-1 is corrupt and they’re going to get Earth-2 back.

My primary problem with this particular event is, even after reading the assorted comics leading up to it, it’s still a little confusing. I doubt they could’ve prevented that due to all the characters they trot out and all the multiverse business. Oh, and that Superboy is a giant baby and I hate how he became a major character for years afterwards due to this event. Although he’s pretty hilarious in the current Blackest Night arc.

The art is well done, the story is enjoyable despite some confusion, it’s an epic fight between all sides in the DC universe.

4/5.

Anyways, this enormous $2k beast of a statue started shipping out and there’s been a few problems. While there have been some paint problems, I don’t consider those a major issue (at least not from what I’ve seen so far). The issue here is that the packing materials are subpar and some statues have arrived broken. SideshowDusty responded to this and said many of the newer shipments will include better packing materials, but this is obviously a concern for people buying on the secondary market and for international buyers. The piece is so thin in some areas that it appears to have contributed to this problem. Normally I have no issues with hollow statues, but this one may simply be too thin in areas that get stress put on them during shipping.

So yeah, be really careful about this. In hand pictures make it look very impressive, but if you were to receive one and it were broken, I can only imagine the frustration.

Despite having roughly 400 games, Bomberman doesn’t get much attention. At least he’s getting some quality recognition here.

Who doesn’t love Earthworm Jim?

Loving the colours on this piece.

Let’s end it off with a little something strange, a My Little Pony Cloud toy.