NYCC 2016: DC Collectibles Day 1

Today, MUReview took a little preview saunter through the DC Collectibles booth, and why not, we stopped at Graphitti Design too!  We managed to snag some great pictures of a ton of new statue scale figures coming from DC Collectibles, as well as the amazing costumes from Wonder Woman.  Unfortunately, technically fortunately, there was some celeb hubub going on, Frank Miller was tucked away in the corner of the booth and he caused quite a stir and crowd to appear.

Tomorrow we have our official interview with DC Collectibles and we can’t wait, but for now, check out the booth as best as we can show it to you.

 

NYCC 2016: Diamond Select Toys

If one of the first stops along your comic con trail isn’t persistently the Diamond Select Toys booth, you are doing it wrong.  There, I said it.  The fine folks at Diamond Select Toys consistently deliver amazing products featuring awesome licenses across all of their innovative toy lines, Minimates, Selects, Vinimates, PVC Statues, name it, they have it, and going through their display case, we saw a ton of great stuff.

Now for the bad news, most of what we saw in that display case…it’s gonna be a long cold winter waiting for it, as much is 2017 product.  Still though, much to look forward to.  Let’s dive in!

Marvel Minimates

Featured among the Marvel Minimates is one of my grail pieces, the Black Knight!  Another one…Venom Space Knight!  It’s going to be a fantastic next couple of Minimonths! (see what I did there?).

 

Marvel Statues and Select

Diamond Select showed off some exceptionally beautiful PVC statues including Medusa and Doctor Strange.  Also on display, Odin Destroyer!!

 

Diamond Select DC

Diamond Select Toys produces incredible busts and statues of all of your favorite DC characters.  Today they showed off, I believe for one of the first times, the pictured King Tut from the classic Batman TV series.  Let’s not forget the Shakespeare bust!

 

Muppets!

Diamond Select Toys is bringing some incredible, some of the best ever Muppet figures to market, between Minimates and Select scale, the characters that they are addressing are perfect every time and I can’t wait to get mitts on!

 

Vinimates

Like Minimates in art style, but vinyl, bigger, and amazing.  Vinimates haven’t really hit shelves yet, and there are a ton of prototypes shown off here at NYCC, including the first EVER Caddyshack figures!!!  More from Beetlejuice, the Vinimates line is going to be epic.

 

Nightmare Before Christmas

Diamond Select Toys are amazing stewards of the Nightmare Before Christmas toy line, bringing surprises and amazingly detailed figures to market every year!

 

Ghostbusters

Seriously, the best freaking Ghostbusters toys ever, come from Diamond Select Toys.  Beautiful, highly articulated, a joy to behold.

 

All the rest

Diamond Select Toys showed off so many amazing properties, Predator had new reveals, the Mallrats line looks great, Plants Vs. Zombies?!?!  Let’s also not forget, Star Trek!  Check out what else is happ’nin at DST.

 

Thank you so much to Diamond Select Toys for taking us around the booth today, it’s always one of our favorite stops on our journey through NYCC.  We look forward to it every year!  We look forward to it because the toys are amazing, and the people there are even better!

NYCC 2016: Hasbro Marvel Brand Team Interview

Whenever someone asks us if we want to ask questions of our favorite toy makers, we jump at the chance.  It’s one of our favorite things to do here, because generally, it involves you, the reader.  We reached out across our social media outlets this past week, when Hasbro came a calling and asking if we’d like to meet with their Marvel brand team.  Below, you’ll find the results of that meeting, driven by questions asked by YOU! The Marvel toy line fans!

As with last years interview, there is no way I’m publishing the audio, I sound like a yutz.  So I’m transcribing and I’ll avoid paraphrasing as much as possible.

The meeting took place at Toy Fair 10/6/16 between myself, and the Hasbro Marvel Brand team, led by Dwight Stall, Tony and Ryan.

First question.  This one was from me, pretty much everything after was from readers everywhere!

Q: ‘When is Deadpool 12 inch coming’

A: ‘2017, stay tuned’

 

Q: ‘The collector base is upset by the “swapping epidemic” that is taking place at retail.  Is there anything that the Hasbro brand team is planning to attempt to address this?’

A: ‘It’s a good question, it’s definitely, if you are sneaky enough to pull something out and return it to the store, you are going to find a way to do it, if that’s how you are going to do it.  Obviously we don’t support it at all, and even more so, I feel bad for whoever would pick up that purchase, not paying as close of attention, taking it home and realizing…oh that’s sadness in a box and that’s not good.  I don’t know if we have any other plans to make it fool proof, you can add more tape and stuff, but those people, they will find a way.“  “Yeah, they will find a way, aside from going back to the impenetrable fortresses of the old school Legends packaging there is nothing we can really do.”  “Even then it’s people buying it, taking it home, and then they have as much time as they need.  At the end of the day it’s theft so, I mean there is nothing much we can do to prevent that unfortunately.’

 

Q:  ‘When building a wave, how is the wave constructed?  Is it figure set first? BAF first?  Who does a wave come together?’

A:  ‘I think it’s depending on what the wave is, if it’s a wave that’s tying directly to a theatrical release, we try to make a balance between of the MCU characters vs the classic characters and once we get to the mix of the whole year, on how we want to get those types of figures out, because the MCU is super important to us, then we try to go back and say alright, we’ve got those guys covered off where do we go from there?  What’s the right Build a figure, whether it’s a large based MCU character or something incredibly compelling, you know some incredibly compelling whatever, from any year and era.  There isn’t a five point step to making a wave, it’s different for every property.  It’s different for every wave we do.  We are just trying to find the best mix of characters that represent fandom for all of our ages of the fans.‘

 

Q / Non-Q – Jokingly I asked how they feel about all of these toys ending up in the hands of adults and collectors and none leftover for children.  I asked them not to answer that, I don’t want them to fix that.

 

Q: ‘Are there plans to increase the size of Build a Figures in 2017?’

A: ‘I think the biggest one we’ve gotten to was probably the Hulkbuster, of recent, which was a sizeable heavy figure, there was a lot of plastic on that one.’

‘I can’t think of anything off of the top of my head that’s a Galactus scale figure that we have in the works.  But that doesn’t mean we aren’t open to it.  We made those beautiful ones quite a few years ago, those 16 to 18 inch ones for the MU.  There is no reason why we can’t use them.  It’s just trying to find a home for an item like that.  I imagine an item like that today would be quite expensive.’

‘Yeah and I mean if you just look at the pack outs, you know the team is including, alternate heads, great accessories, you run out of space fairly quickly.  It’s tough to get a figure of that size would be just kind of tough to work around, but yeah we’re open to the idea.’

‘Or that’s something that goes back to asking of the fans.  What would you rather have?  Would you rather have something like a Galactus?  Or would you rather have a swappable hand, alternate head, the magic effects, all those extra bits and pieces.  Because I think the limits of that package are what they are.  You could maybe do something like that, but you’d have to sacrifice something else.’

 

Me chiming in to the brand teams ‘it’s funny you should mention because about half of the people out there asked about accessory packs, more accessories, the other half wanted BAFs.

 

Q: ‘Is there any possibility for sidebar accessory packs a’la DC Icons planned offerings?’

A: ‘Well let’s pit those two armies against each other and whichever one is left standing, we will cater to, how about that?’.  ‘Toy Wars!’.

 

Q: ‘Mattel just released a 6 inch scale playset.  This has fueled the fires of fan desire further towards the ends of playsets and vehicles in the Hasbro lines.  I asked about this last year and you said you were not closed to the idea, but it doesn’t look like we are any closer to the idea, any further consideration given to playsets? Vehicles?’

A: ‘Yeah, we’re always looking at that. I think what we would want to know is, what do they want?  The Batcave is a very iconic play environment for Batman.  It works.  What would you like to see for our Avengers universe, or for Doctor Strange? Spider-Man?  What is that environmental place that you want to see?’

Me interrupting:  ‘Throwing out, Sanctum Sanctorum, Avengers Tower, Baxter Building.’

A: ‘An Iron Man Armory would be sweet too, so you could put in armors’.

 

Q:  ‘Folks are also very interested in civilians as well. The Aunt May’s…and I’m not gonna lie, I said Alfreds…I was nervous…shut up.  The community suggestion was actually, hey, maybe you put out a playset, with an exclusive civilian.’

A:  ‘We debuted that Mary Jane figure, kinda in that vein, but we are trying to get into that as well.’

 

Q: ‘Can we petition you to create a 6 inch GI Joe Figure line’

A: (laughter) ‘You can petition us but that’s a whole different team so I don’t have a very good answer for you.’

 

Q: ‘Roleplay items are awesome, the shield the helmet, are there more in the works?  Can I please have an infinity Gauntlet?’

A ‘Well yeah, we’ve seen great success so far.  The shield hit first it’s got good distribution online and in stores.  We will continue making them if the fans respond in kind.  So far the response has been great.  We’ll do more reveals at New York Toy Fair for all of our segments including from 6 inch to everything else in a couple of months so stay tuned.’

 

I am so incredibly appreciative of the Hasbro Brand Team for taking the time out of NYCC 2016 to have this conversation with me.  I’m grateful to all the folks out there that contributed questions, and thank you to Litzky PR for putting it all together.  We had an awesome time and we can’t wait to see what’s next at Toy Fair 2017!

NYCC 2016: Hasbro – Twas The Night Before Party – Marvel

NYCC 2016: Hasbro – Twas The Night Before Party – Marvel

MUReview and litlgeeks made it down to the always wonderful Hasbro ‘Twas the Night Before party.  Held, the night before…. NYCC 2016!  This is a fun night for industry, media and friends to get together and to appreciate all that Hasbro has to offer.  If you want to see ALL that Hasbro has to offer…go here.  

 

If you want to see what’s going on with Hasbro Marvel…you are in the right place.  Scroll on friends.

Marvel Legends 3.75

Displayed were already released 2-packs.  It’s not that we aren’t excited about them, but we HAVE already reviewed them, so head to our main page and click figure reviews to check that out.

Marvel Legends 12″

The 12 inch line was on display showing off Iron Man, Cap and Spider-Man.  You can get them in stores now.

Marvel Legends 6″

Well, now, the buzz is already out on the Internet, nothing to hide, just saving the show stealers for last.  The 6 inch Marvel Legends team has all guns blazing, aimed at 2017.  I’m really excited to talk to them more about it tomorrow at NYCC offsite, but for now, I’m content to share with you the pictures I took and the figures I learned that will be coming in to existence.

The big stories as far as I’m concerned, 2000’s era Adam Warlock, Death’s Head 2, Shatterstar, Old Man Logan.  The Doctor Strange wave was displayed, that’s out now.  Also displayed, the 2017 Spidey wave.  Brit Spidey, Jackal, Green Goblin, 2014 / 2015 2099 Spidey, Symbiot  Suit Spidey, Ms. Marvel, Shocker, and a beautiful BAF in Sand Man (with alt hand accessories).  My guess, Warlock is a Guardians wave figure.

 

NYCC 2016: Hasbro – Twas The Night Before Party

NYCC 2016: Hasbro – Twas The Night Before Party

Hasbro throws a fantastic party.  Tonight was absolutely no different.  The good folks at Litzky PR set the scene with a great venue, great location, beautiful decorations and welcoming smiles.  The rest was the product talking, and talk it did!  Hasbro was showing off some fantastic product lines, Star Wars, Marvel, Yokai Watch, Trolls, Transformers, Nerf.  It was all there, it was all fantastic, and I do not wish to keep it from you any longer….

Marvel

This is a Marvel site.  If you want to see the Marvel stuff, click HERE.

 

Star Wars

Star Wars is always a show stealer at whatever show it happens to be.  A wealth of new Rogue One products were shown of course.  The motorized AT-AT Walker, and one of the coolest things I saw at the show, a Gigantic, had to be 3 feet tall, Darth Vader Simon Game!  Keep your eyes on store shelves, most of what is pictured is already out.  Anything that isn’t is coming very very soon!  Special note…the Nerf Star Wars weaponry is…out of this world…see what I did there?

 

 

Transformers

I had a fantastic discussion with the fine folks that bring you Transformers.  It consisted of…man I wish I could also afford an in-depth, expansive Transformers collection.  The team never disappoints with innovative new transformations and play patterns.  This year, it’s two vehicles that basically snap together and click to transform into a single robot.  Check out the video.  On top of that…that blackbird…that Hot Rod…I need so much money!

 

 

Yokai Watch

Yokai Watch is chugging along through it’s second season / series and a movie is on the way (already released in Japan).  This adorable and very funny show has an equally adorable and fantastically interactive toy line.  The series 2 watch features a non removable watch cover and a projector that interacts with discs and shows the character they portray.  You have discs, figures, and even a collectible card game.  Keep your eyes on litlgeeks, we are hoping to review some great Yokai stuff for you!

 

Nerf

Nerf Accustrike and Rebelle expand their library including some exceptional new weapons…the rifle though…the sweet sweet rifle.

 

Trolls

Trolls is coming whether you are ready or not.  I’m talking about the movie, and right along with it, the adorable toy line.  Dolls of all sizes, KRE-O build kits, this movie is well supported, and your kids are gonna love it!

 

Thanks again to Hasbro and Litzky for showing us a fantastic time, and even more fantastic toys.  I leave you with a few pictures of the event that don’t quite fall into the categories above.