Hasbro announced its third quarter earnings this week, and the news was better than expected. On sales that were down to $893 million from $1.1 billion a year ago, the company earned $50.6 million, compared to $13.8 million in 2000.

The DVD edition of the Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace managed to sell some 2.2 million copies during its first week.

A mixture of new and old products make up our Top 10 Cool lists for September, 2001, both in the sense of new and retro properties and creative material, and in the sense of products new to the list and those that have previously appeared.

Here are a few of the tidbits from presentations of major comic publishers at the Diamond/Alliance Retailer Summit held in Las Vegas last week.

Marvel Comics is preparing trade paperback collections of the G.I. Joe and Transformers comics that it published in the 1980s, and Dark Horse will reprint the Star Wars comics that Marvel published in the 1970s and 80s.

Hasbro is ready to release a wide array of B.U.M . toys, ranging from deluxe action figures and their color coordinated Space Cycles to lots of different PVC collectible figurines.

The biggest surprises at the top of the lists in August are the #1 toys product -- Clive Barker's Tortured Souls from Mcfarlane -- and the #1 anime -- the El Hazard OVA DVD box set.

Dark Horse Comics will publish four Kiss -related comic titles beginning in the spring of 2002.

D-Boy, Inc., in association with Studio Tron and Fanboy, Inc. plans to release a series of collectible pewter statues based on the gorgeous female leads in Kia Asamiya's Silent Mobius manga.

Dragon Models, Ltd., one of the leading manufacturers of realistic military models for the collector's market, has announced an agreement with MGM to create figures based on John Woo's epic World War II motion picture, Windtalkers. .