I thought I’d draw your attention to two fairly significant corporate acquisitions that may have been buried amongst the SDCC news.

After months of rumors, it’s been pretty much confirmed (there hasn’t been an official announcement yet) that NECA has bought Wizkids from Topps. Wizkids’ biggest property, as I’m sure you know, is the tabletop miniatures game Heroclix, which features characters from DC, Marvel and Dark Horse, among others. There’s also the spinoff game Horrorclix, which features Jason, Freddy, and even Cthulhu himself.

I don’t have any sense of how well the Clix property has fared over the last couple of years. I imagine that once they’d gotten down to the third- and fourth-stringers in the DC and Marvel universes, there might have been a problem keeping up interest in the game. I also thought it was a mistake not to make Heroclix and Horrorclix fully compatible. In any event, it seems NECA will be taking the reigns, and we’ll have to see what they do with it.

In other news, Diamond Select now has Battle Beasts, the 1980s toy line featuring little manimals with weapons and stickers you rubbed to find out if their strength was wood, water, or fire. (more…)