If you collected the figures from Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy, you may be aware of the utter disaster the line became, which is very unfortunate. The Bridge Direct had no previous experience making action figures - other than a Justin Bieber doll - but they had two guys on staff who worked for Toybiz during the epic Lord of the Rings line.
Bridge Direct rolled out two scales for the movie - 3-3/4 and 6 inch. They were in Toys R Us, but could not get into Walmart or Target. Not sure why - potentially because they were a relatively unknown in the boys action figure industry. They eventually ended up in KMart and were clearanced right away.
Bridge Direct had displayed the entire company of dwarves at Toy Fair. In the end, we only got five: Thorin, Balin and Dwalin, and Fili and Kili. Almost every figure was packed as a single, a two pack, or a five pack. So often you would end up with three of a figure in order to get the whole set.
The fact that 13 dwarves were shown and never released leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of fans to this day. Hence, why at least once a year, someone will pipe up in the Bridge Direct Hobbit forum on CoolToyReview and remind us how much Bridge Direct sucks. Whether it was in their control or not can be debated.
The epic journey can basically be described as: Who they hell is Bridge Direct -> Oooo! These look cool! -> I can't find them -> They are on clearance at KMart -> series 2 has awesome stuff coming -> series 2 is canceled -> Bridge Direct - you suck!
I went through my boxes and pulled out the small collection and purchased a few missing items. I did not realize that the 4 inch Azog, Radagast, and invisible Bilbo were actually released in the UK. I managed to buy Radagast and Azog off AmazonUK. Invisible Bilbo I found with an Ebay seller in Dominican Republic but he can't ship it to me until they are allowed to ship to the US again due to Covid.
So here is the current collection. The packaged photos are what I just purchased to complete the line.
Wow! I never knew about these...
ReplyDeleteThe sad part is seeing the entire company of dwarves along with Bard and Beorn at Toy Fair and they were never manufactured.
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