this is a longshot, but this board has surprised me before, so here goes!
I was putting away my decks from the tournament, and was looking through the binders. as we know, most 3 stat characters got 2 specials in the IQ set. 13 characters only got 1 special. I was wondering if anyone had any insight into why
the characters were
thing
war machine
*rhino
*doc ock
silver surfer
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captain America
hulk
cable
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banshee
blob
iceman
juggernaut
*scarlet spider
some observations
-the 3 with asterisks got a hillshire farm card. they are the only ones from the list that didn't get a monumental special
-they are split pretty evenly throughout starters, boosters, and power surge. all 10 mission control characters got 2
-if we split them roughly into 4 groups (xmen/spiderman/ff/avengers), we get 5/3/2/3. nothing too shocking here, as there was an abundance of mutants as x-men was really popular at the time
captain America and hulk stick out to me. I realize that both were less popular in the 90s, but they were still iconic characters. the rest are borderline, with thing/juggernaut/surfer being slightly more recognizable
so...I'm stumped. was it simply that the set was getting too big, and some cuts had to be made?