Although it’s just the second day of May, it’s never too early to start planning for the biggest collecting event of the summer: San Diego Comic Con! And in that vein, Diamond Select Toys is striking first blood this year: the full range of DST SDCC 2019 Exclusives are now up for pre-order online! There’s a variety of neat stuff (including a wacky Michelangelo as Batman figure), but on the Marvel front, we’ve got an X-Force Deadpool 1/2 Scale bust and three variant Marvel Gallery figures: X-Force Deadpool/X-23 and a SHIELD Captian Marvel statue!

Over the years, Diamond Select Toys’ convention exclusives have ceased having much of a focus on their long-running Marvel Select and Minimates lines, while the popular Gallery PVC statues have begun taking center stage and having a featured role to play. So with that in mind, it’s not a big surprise to see that 3 of the 4 SDCC 2019 Diamond Select Toys exclusives will be Marvel Gallery variants!

But what did catch my attention is that DST’s fourth exclusive for the show is actually the first-ever exclusive in their new-ish Legends in 3-D 1:2 Scale Bust series: an X-Force Deadpool Variant!

The red-and-black Deadpool costume was the very first item in the Legends in 3D series of half-scale busts (in fact, it was solicited before Diamond had even chosen the name “Legends in 3D” for the series), and was a fast sell-out with its LE of 1000 pieces.

The bust line has proven to be pretty popular at its low price-point of $150 for a 1:2 bust, and I’m happy to see that DST is making a full 1000 of these Deadpool X-Force costume busts so that there’s a fair amount out there for collectors of the line. This was the one piece I saw in their SDCC Exclusives announcement that I instantly went and placed my pre-order for.

For the first of the three Marvel Gallery exclusives, DST is diving deep into their archives for the original Femme Fatales Captain Marvel PVC figure, which actually pre-dates the series name “Marvel Gallery” (score another tidbit of useless trivia!). I was never a fan of this particular Carol Danvers sculpt, nor did I ever think to myself “Boy, I’d sure love a SHIELD variant of this statue!”, but I guess this is an okay limited con exclusive for those who dig it.

What I expect will be far more popular are the two X-Force Marvel Gallery exclusives coming to the show: X-Force Deadpool using the Taco Truck statue mold, and X-Force X-23! I actually never got around to buying this version of Marvel Gallery Taco Truck Deadpool in the regular red costume, so I’m putting picking this one up on the back of my mind. Looks good.

We got an unmasked X-23 in her yellow-and-blue costume last year at San Diego Comic-Con that sold speedily, and with her grey-and-black costume being quite popular, I’d expect to see that sell-out happen a second time (unless the character has lost some popularity with her reduced role in the comics over the past year).

The Diamond Select SDCC 2019 Exclusives are now available for pre-order online in limited quantities, although usually most of the exclusives end up selling out reasonably quickly online (what with the majority of them being meant to be allocated for sale in San Diego, of course). I’m not keen on any of the three Marvel Gallery exclusives this year, but I already ordered that 1/2 Deadpool X-Force bust–gotta keep my collection of that series complete!

How do you like this first batch of convention exclusives for San Diego Comic Con, Marvel collectors? Any of DST’s offerings catch your eye, and what items are you hoping to see offered by Hasbro, Kotobukiya and other companies who exhibit at SDCC in July?