The team at NECA aren’t really shy about how much they enjoy bringing your favorite characters and creatures from horror and science fiction to life in your toy collection, although that much is fully obvious from one quick glimpse at their display at New York Toy Fair 2018 where they had a veritable cornucopia of spectacular new pieces from some of our favorite franchises including ‘The Evil Dead’, ‘ALIENS’, ‘Gremlins’, and even lighter material like the ‘Crash Bandicoot’ video game series and Marvel Comics!
To start things off, we’ve got the previously announced 8″ clothed action figures including Freddy Krueger ( in his ‘Nightmare On Elm Street 3’ look), Dr. Herbert West (‘The Re-Animator’) and Captain Blake (‘The Fog’)! Also on display was the incredibly less frighting figure of Buddy The Elf from the film ‘Elf’, which is the latest in NECA’s annual holiday figure offerings following ‘Home Alone’, ‘A Christmas Story’ and ‘National Lampoons Christmas Vacation’ figures that have released in previous years!
In a kind of surprising announcement that left a lot of people a bit confused, NECA has announced the purchase of Joseph Enterprises Inc! You may not recognize that name, but you’ve definitely heard of some of their products that have been household names for years like Chia Pets and The Clapper! While details are scarce at the moment, NECA has bit plans to release special new licensed versions of these items, so sooner or later you can probably hope to see a fancy new ‘ALIENS’ themed Chia Pet on your shelf!
Next up is NECA’s massive 1:4th scale line! On display this year they had the recently released figure of Marvel’s Daredevil on display, as well as an all-new Deadpool figure that includes a mountain of accessories! These figures are based on what NECA has deemed the most interesting aspects of the various versions of these classic comic book costumes, so the designs are a unique blend! Also on display was a gigantic Jason Voorhees from ‘Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter’!
On the video games front, NECA was showcasing their new ‘Crash Bandicoot’ line of figures based on the classic Playstation character! The first figure appears to be a pretty basic figure of our titular hero, while later figures look to be a bit more ‘deluxe’ with accessories like the Hoverboard Crash or Jetpack Crash! If Crash isn’t enough for you, NECA is teaming up with Valve again to finally finish out their ‘Team Fortress 2’ line of figures with the last three figures hitting the shelves later this year! They also announced that some of their most popular figures of all time, Chel from ‘Portal’ and Gordon Freeman from ‘Half-Life’, would be getting new production runs so that people who missed them the first time can get a chance at adding them to their collections!
Earlier this year NECA announced they would be bringing the world of acclaimed director Guillermo Del Toro to our toy shelves, and at Toy Fair they were showing off the first three figures in the line with The Faun and The Pale Man from ‘Pans Labyrinth’, and Santi from ‘The Devils Backbone’. With each of these Del Toro figures NECA plans to include some kind of deluxe item like the bomb figure base with Santi, or the underworld throne with The Pale Man! These deluxe items are all going to be fully scaled to these 7″ figures, so they’ll be quite large!
For their ongoing ‘Evil Dead’ line, we’ve got a new wave of ‘Ash Vs. The Evil Dead’ plus the long-awaited ‘Evil Dead 2’ figure two-pack of Ash and Evil Ed! These are all still a bit further down the line in terms of release dates, with more information coming soon!
One of the most exciting reveals from the NECA Toy Fair booth this year is their freshly announced ‘Ultimate’ Gremlin figure! This figure is so new that it hasn’t even been solicited at all yet! It’s still in the final sculpting process, but NECA just really wanted to show fans that it’s coming down the pipeline soon! To top things off, they announced that they were also developing a new ‘Ultimate Gremlin Stripe’ figure as well via Twitter!
Everything floats here with two all-new Pennywise figures from ‘Stephen Kings It’! NECA has been good enough to us that they’re giving us both a modern Bill Skarsgard Pennywise and a classic Tim Curry Pennywise figure! Both come with a number of alternative heads and some wonderful accessories! These two really stole the show this year, and it isn’t hard to see why!
Taking things to the streets, after years of fan demands NECA is delving into the world of diorama playsets! Fans have been begging for years for NECA to release some of the amazing diorama displays they show their figures off in for Toy Fair and other conventions, and now they’ve finally given in with the announcement of their ‘Street Scene’ Diorama Environment! It’s pretty standard fare as far as the design, but it looks like it will be a fairly versatile playset that would work for almost any 6″ or 7″ figure set! Or at least any that are ‘Street Scene’ appropriate. There’s no word yet as far as what the price point will be, but it’s expected to hit the market later this summer!
Finally, what you’ve all been waiting for, it’s time to delve into the ‘ALIEN’ and ‘Predator’ licenses! First up is the new ‘ALIENS’ Series 13, which is all themed around some classic figures from the old Kenner ‘ALIENS’ line! We’re getting the highly requested Snake Alien and Scorpion Alien, as well as a Kenner styled Sgt. Apone! He’s even got his big robot arm! It’s a dream come true for many ‘ALIENS’ fans.
For ‘Predator’, we have the new ‘Ultimate The Elder: The Golden Angle’ figure, plus a number of other new Predators from the Dark Horse Comic Series, and even a few from the classic ‘Alien Vs Predator’ Arcade Game! There is also going to be a special ‘Alien Vs. Predator Arcade Game’ figure 2-pack featuring arcade styled figures of the playable characters Dutch (with his bigger robot arm! Take that Apone!) and Linn!
So what do you think was the coolest thing NECA brought to New York Toy Fair this year? Clearly, they’ve been working hard to bring collectors everything they could possibly ever want, but was there something you were hoping to see and didn’t get? Let us know in the comments section below! Be sure to stay tuned to ScienceFiction.com for all the latest NECA updates!
