Welcome to yet another jam-packed edition of Toy News Tuesday – the one weekly column right here on ScienceFiction.com where we seek out all of the awesome news you need to know about any announcements and cool happenings in the toy industry and put them all in one easy to find place for you! We are only a little over a week away from Toy Fair 2015 and the early announcements won’t stop coming! There’s so much cool new stuff coming our way that there isn’t any time to waste, we need to jump straight into the Toy News for the week of February 3rd, 2015!
To Skip This Figure Is To Court Death
After his first appearance during a post credits ‘stinger’ on Marvel’s ‘The Avengers‘ way back in 2012, people have been waiting for Thanos the Mad Titan to make an appearance as an uber powerful heavy hitter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Last year, he turned up in Marvel’s summer blockbuster ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ as more of a “behind the scenes” villain, and Hot Toys is jumping at their opportunity to be the first toy company to give hungry collectors their first taste of a movie version of Thanos with their all new Hot Toys 1:6th scale Thanos figure!
As per usual with Hot Toys, Thanos is expertly crafted with designers taking painstaking attention to detail with Thanos armor and helmet! To top it all off, Thanos comes complete with his ‘hover throne’ as seen in the film, which features light-up LED functionality. This massive figure is sure to give your Hot Toys Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy figures a run for their money!
Hot Toys Mixes Things Up
While there is literally zero information available yet, Hot Toys has just announced an all new product line that is set to premiere later this year! The line will be titled the ‘Artist Mix Collection’ and will features stylized specialty figures of your favorite characters, which will start off with a series based on Marvel’s ‘The Avengers: Age of Ultron’. The release from Hot Toys is below:
Hot Toys is expanding its collectible lines yet again and will be introducing the brand new “Artist Mix Collection”! The first wave of collectibles from this series will feature a number of characters from the upcoming Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron in a special form with unique artistic twists.
Keep a look out for the “Artist Mix Collection” as it will be revealed very soon!
LEGO Takes Marvel To New Heights
If there is one thing that being a collector in this day and age has taught me, it’s that dreams come true. This week, LEGO made the dreams of millions of Marvel fans come true with the reveal of their all new ‘Avengers’ SHIELD Helicarrier building set! That’s right, you can build THE ENTIER SHILED HELICARRIER! It is MASSIVE, and looks amazing. For the $349.99 it’s expected to run you, it had damn well BETTER be amazing! Check out the full release from LEGO below:
Build and display the huge SHIELD Helicarrier!
Discover a world of mystery and adventure with the awesome LEGO® Creator Expert Detective’s Office, featuring unique elements and surprises.
Take on the challenge of building this awesome LEGO® model of The SHIELD Helicarrier. Construct the flying aircraft carrier with 2 runways, microscale Quinjets, fighter jets and ground support vehicles. The set also comes with many of your favorite LEGO Marvel Super Heroes minifigures, plus 12 microfigures to display on deck and within the highly detailed interior. Includes 5 minifigures: Nick Fury, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye and Maria Hill.
- Includes 5 minifigures: Nick Fury, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye and Maria Hill, plus an iconic SHIELD eagle stand to display them on
- Features 3 microscale Quinjets, 3 fighter jets, a gasoline truck, 2 forklift trucks, 2 runways, 4 road blockades, armored exterior with translucent elements, detailed interior, plus 12 microfigures (Nick Fury, Hawkeye, Captain America, Iron Man and 8 SHIELD agents)
- Also includes a detailed runway
- Weapons include Hawkeye’s bow, Black Widow’s gun and Captain America’s shield
- SHIELD Agent Maria Hill minifigure is new for spring 2015!
- Includes a plaque with facts about The SHIELD Helicarrier
- Add lights and spinning rotors to the Helicarrier with the 88000, 8883 and 8870 LEGO® Power Functions sets (sold separately)
- Rotors can also be turned manually
- Includes a display stand
- Helicarrier measures over 11” (29cm) high, 31” (80cm) long and 17” (45cm) wide
- Each Quinjet measures over 1” (3cm) high, 2” (7cm) long and 2” (7cm) wide
- Minifigure stand measures over 4” (12cm) high, and 2” (6cm deep) and 6” (16cm wide)
(via AFI)
Square Enix Tests Their Metal
For those of you that collect Square Enix’s Play Arts Kai figures, we’ve got your first glimpse at the first ever Marvel Comics figure from their Variants line! While they announced the series at NYCC 2014, this is the first real look we’re getting of this all new Iron Man figure from Square Enix’ Play Arts Kai line. He includes a display stand/base, several alternative hands, back-flap exhaust parts, femur missile attachments, and exhaust effects to make it look as if he’s blasting off into battle!
Stylistically, this figure isn’t a huge departure from the basic Iron Man character design. The ‘Variant’ Play Arts line is known for their drastic redesigns and new takes on classic characters looks, so the fact that they didn’t change a whole lot with Iron Man besides adding some black to his color-scheme is kind of a nice change.
(via Marvelous)
Valiant Minimates TRU Exclusive
While there hasn’t been any official release from Diamond Select Toys regarding where these would show up, it would appear that the standard set of Valiant Comics Minimates is to be sold exclusively at Toys R Us stores! It’s been known for a while that this Minimate 2-pack was set to be a retailer exclusive, but it was not known where until now. Toys R Us has the figure pack posted on their website, although it is not yet available for sale. You can still set it so that they send you a reminder when they do become available though, so save yourself some hunting at get set up to be notified so you don’t miss these awesome new Minimates!
Evil Luring Them In Young
While most of our reader base is probably aged past Fisher Price’s Imaginext toyline, these next few releases also seemed like they might be right up your alley! The team over at Fisher Price’s Imaginext division must be huge DC Comics fans, because they’re giving collectors their first ever Legion of Doom swamp-base playset!
That’s right, the infamous giant head that rose from the swamp back during your Saturday morning viewings of ‘The Superfriends’ is finally getting the playset treatment! Unfortunately it’s too small for most figures, but Imaginext is correcting that too with the announcement of a ton of new villain figures! We’re getting Solomon Grundy, Captain Cold, and more! Check out the full release below:
Imaginext DC Super Friends Hall of Doom
It’s the headquarters of the Legion of Doom, occupied by the evil Lex Luthor! Kids can turn Lex Luthor on the disk at the entrance to raise and lower the elevator. Turning Lex Luthor on the top disk transforms the entire Hall of Doom-the “eyes” open and light up, the hidden cannon is revealed and the cage drops ALL AT ONCE! The adventure continues on the back with all sorts of interesting sculpted details that help kids add to the story about Lex Luthor and the Legion of Doom spying on their foes.
Imaginext DC Super Friends Captain Cold and Ice Cannon Action Figure
It’s Captain Cold, an evil member of the Legion of Doom! In his icy gear, he looks for ways to “play it cool” then strike when the Caped Crusader isn’t looking! His weapon choice: a snowball! Will this cold-hearted villain of ice put Batman in the deep freeze? Captain Cold is the perfect character to help kids’ imaginations heat up as they create new adventures.
Imaginext® DC Super Friends Solomon Grundy
DC Super Friends The Riddler Hot Rod
Which DC Super Friends™ villain has a “tricked-out” hot rod? THE RIDDLER, of course! Here’s the “trick” in “tricked-out”: press a button to shoot question marks and make the engine blower pop up and shoot disks! It’s a great way to drive kids’ imaginations as they create new adventures. Look out, Batman™, THE RIDDLER is cruising Gotham City looking for you!
(via AFI)
Wait… We Can Buy WHAT?!
Do you remember how awesome ‘Batman Returns’ was way back in 1992? How epic was that grand finale scene with all of those little Penguin Commados in their tiny helmets with rockets strapped to their backs? Pretty awesome right? Well now, you can own one for yourself! Or at least a replica of one, with this all new 20” tall Penguin Commando Statue from Hollywood Collectibles Group!
These guys are SUPER limited, with only 300 of them being made, and of those 300 only 75 of them are hitting the United States markets. They’re available for pre-order over at Entertainment Earth, but they’ll also set you back about $500, so this isn’t a collectible for the timid!
(via io9)
NECA Previews New ALIEN and Pacific Rim
The team over at NECA have been hard at work bringing all of your favorite franchises to life in your toy collection! This week they were showing off all kinds of cool new stuff from both their ‘ALIEN’ and ‘Pacific Rim’ series of figures!
First up is a peek at the actual production figure of Ellen Ripley as seen in the first ‘ALIEN’ film! This figure is set to be part of ‘ALIEN’ Series 4, which should be hitting stores later this spring!
Next up NECA has revealed an all new figure in their ongoing 8-Bit Video Game Tribute series with the new 8-Bit version of the Dog Alien from ‘ALIEN 3’! The game was released way back in 1992 and was highly stylized, which means the figure is as well! This figure sports a special two-tone paint deco so that it can match the style of the original game, with the figure looking blue from one side and orange from the other. This figure uses the same sculpt as the recently released Dog Alien figure from NECA’s ‘ALIEN’ Series 3, so it’s looking like a solid figure all around!
Keeping the ball rolling, NECA revealed two new Jaeger figures from their upcoming ‘Pacific Rim’ Series 6! In this upcoming wave we’ll be getting ‘Reactor Blast’ Gypsy Danger and Horizon Brave Jaegers! This new Gypsy Danger figure is largely recycled parts from the Series 5 updated Gypsy Danger figure, but it features a new chain-sword accessory and a chest attachment to allow you to recreate the films finale on your shelf! Horizon Brave is an all new Jaeger that was only actually seen during the opening prologue of the film in some newsreels, but he’s been highly demanded by fans who are clamoring to grab up anything and everything they can in terms of new Jaegers!
Sometimes, we think we’ve seen everything. Then NECA announces a toy of ‘Baby Otachi’, who was born premature during the events of ‘Pacific Rim’ and is effectively an underdeveloped Kaiju fetus. But alas, here we are. Baby Otachi looks like an awesome figure! The release from NECA is below-
From the epic Pacific Rim movie! It might be the littlest kaiju ever, but Baby Otachi is just as deadly as its Category IV mom! This freshly-spawned 6” long replica has an unsettlingly rubbery feel and features a detailed umbilical cord and bendable tail. Ships to retailers in April!
Funko Forecast
Get ready for the Funko Forecast! This is where we’re going to be showcasing all of the cool new announcements and reveals from Funko! With all of the awesome that consistently seems to be flowing out of those guys, it shouldn’t be hard to keep this section alive each and every week!
Marvel Collectors Corps
With online subscription delivery services like ‘Loot Crate’ and ‘Nerd Block’ being all the rage lately, it isn’t a big surprise to see Funko teaming with some big players to release their own special edition subscription boxes! That’s where the all new Marvel Collectors Corps comes from! This all new subscription service from Marvel and Funko is available for order now and will contain a bunch of cool new Marvel branded Funko merchandise that is 100% exclusive to the Collectors Corps! They only ship out a box every other month, and they’re priced around $25, sp these shouldn’t break the bank too hard if you’re uncertain about subscribing!
The first box is set to ship in April and will contain an EXCLUSIVE 6” Funko POP! Vinyl Hulkbuster Iron man figure! This guy is one of the most heavily anticipated figures from the Funko ‘Age of Ultron’ line, so it’s kind of a surprise to see him made an exclusive! Still, what better way to drive sales> Each box is set ot include a tee shirt, a stylized vinyl collectible, and two premium accessories! The first box is themed to ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ in April, while the July box is themed to ‘Antman’! They are also offering a special ‘founders program’ for those who sign up for the full year in advance, which gains them a special item once yearly that is exclusive to the founders program members. Subscribe here today!
More Funko Exclusives
If there’s one thing Funko is known for besides blasting out a ton of really cool toys, it’s blasting out a ton of really cool exclusive toys! This week is no excpetion when it comes to new exclusives being announced from Funko for various specialty retailers!
First up is this fancy Ravagers Uniform Rocket Raccoon figure, which is set to be a previews Exclusive! That means he’ll only be available at places that order from Previews Catalog, so your local comic shop is your best bet for this bad boy! Don’t expect to see him stocked at major retailers!
Next up is the Toy Wars Exlcusive Holographic Glow in the Dark version of Emperor Palpatine from ‘Star Wars’! This guy is only available HERE, so don’t miss out on your chance to pre-order one for yourself!
While we may never see the now infamous ‘Rainbow Batmen’ figures from DC Collectibles we talked about last week, we’ll at the very least be getting them in Funko POP! Versions in the form of these new Entertainment Earth Exclusive Rainbow Batmen figures!
Orphan Black
As if all of the cool new exclusives weren’t enough, the crew over at The Nerdist announced the all new ‘Orphan Black’ series of POP! Vinyl figures that will be heading out way later this spring! This series is set to be exclusive to Hot Topic stores and website.
Evolve
With the highly anticipated video game ‘Evolve’ hitting stores next week, Funko is amping up their promotion of the new series with all new waves of ‘Evolve’ branded POP! Vinyl figures and Legacy figures! The new wave of POP! Vinyl figures consists of Markov, Val, hank, Maggie, and a super-sized 6” POP! of Goliath!
The new Legacy ‘Evolve’ figures feature the same character lineup in 6” scale fully poseable figure form! They’re jam packed with cool accessories and lots of detail, so they’ll be a line to watch out for!
Vinyl Sugar DORBZ
While little is known about the mysterious ‘Vinyl Sugar’ project from Funko, they have announced yet another new series of collectibles that is being released under the ‘Vinyl Sugar’ branding- Dorbz! Assumedly short of ‘adorable’, these figures look just that! So far both Marvel and DC Comics look to be licensed for the line, so hopefully we’ll find out more at Toy Fair in a few weeks!
And with that, we bring this week’s Toy News Tuesday to a close! What do you think about the new items announced this week? Do you plan on picking up anything we mentioned in this week’s column? Are there any lines or brands you’d like to see more coverage of? Let us know in the comments section below! Until next week, happy toy hunting!
