Welcome back! You may have noticed it was a bit quiet around here for the past week. I like to keep this site up-to-date with all of the latest Marvel toy news as much as possible, so I tend to shy away from taking any kind of “vacations”. But research trips…? That’s another matter entirely. So last week, I bit the bullet and suffered through a week-long research trip to Disney World in Orlando, Florida, solely for the sake of being there on the release date of the Marvel Vinylmation Ant-Man figures. Yep–that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it…

Thus far, things aren’t looking too good for collectibles to coincide with the release of the Ant-Man movie in summer 2015. LEGO will only be releasing a single LEGO Ant-Man set during the summer, XM Studios has a $700 Ant-Man statue lined up, Funko will have an Ant-Man Wacky Wobbler, and… well, that’s about it.

But Disney themselves decided to get the jump on everyone and generate some excitement by releasing some special limited-edition Disney Vinylmation Ant-Man figures in the Disney Parks to close out 2014!

On Friday December 26th, 2014, Disney released the LE 2500 Ant-Man Vinylmation blind boxes exclusively at the D-Street locations in Anaheim and Orlando. D-Street is the flagship store for Disney Vinylmation figures, and is typically the only place to get the rarest and most limited Vinylmation vinyls released.

And so, I ended up fighting the bloodthirsty mobs at the Orlando Downtown Disney last weekend to make my way to D-Street and claim my vinyl prizes. While the whole of Downtown Disney was ludicrously crowded, D-Street itself didn’t have all that many customers when I was there.

After a quick sweep of the store (and my heart stopping when I couldn’t immediately find the Ant-Man blind boxes), I finally spotted what I was looking for in a crate under the main Vinylmation display.

There were still a couple dozen Vinylmation Marvel Ant-Man blind box figures available on Saturday, but I guess that’s to be expected when one store receives over 1,000 blind boxes.

I was hoping to pull one of the LE 250 Scott Lang Ant-Man variant figures from my blind boxes, but I was careless and didn’t check to make sure that my boxes were actually sealed until I got back to my hotel. I then discovered someone had opened my blind boxes in the stores, opened the foil to see if the figures were the regular LE 2250 Hank Pym Ant Man Vinylmation figures, and then pressed the boxes closed again.

Definitely a bummer, but I knew that sort of thing happened, so my mistake.

The Vinylmation Ant-Man variant figure (Scott Lang) is now selling online for $100+, while the Hank Pym Vinylmation Ant-Man figure is selling for about $15 (which is actually less than it cost to begin with). Ah well! Guess I’ll have to dig deep to keep my Vinylmation Marvel collection complete.

Anyone besides me pick up the Disney Vinylmation Ant-Man Eachez vinyl figures this holiday season? Any other Marvel collectors out there enthusiastically buying Disney’s line of vinyl Marvel figures, or am I the only one?