Hasbro Marvel Action Figures and Toys February 11, 2012
Excelsior! Since Hasbro took over Marvel from Toy Biz, they haven't been shy about exploiting it. This year we're seeing big movie properties like The Amazing Spider-Man and The Avengers alongside Marvel Legends, Marvel Universe, and a bunch of other stuff.
I'm not entirely sure how Spider-Man 3 performed as a toy line, so it stands to reason the diverse offering of Amazing Spider-Man stuff from the comics, movie, and aimed at all ages say "We know what this movie is: it's a big commercial for toys and we're going to have you covered, no matter who you are." Do you want a wall-crawling remote control toy? They have that. And action figures, and action toys, and all sorts of zany stuff inspired from a variety of sources. It's going to be very difficult to not find a good Spider-Man toy this year, even the Universe line has "Paper Bag Spider-Man" for those of you who know what that is. Obviously, we're all going to want one.
The Avengers segment is aimed at older boys, for the most part, with a lot of roleplay stuff and nothing that should jump out to the preschool crowd. There are large vehicles, tons of heroes, not many villains, and even Mighty Muggs. It's not a bad lineup, although you're probably going to feel like you've seen a lot of it before-- the 3 3/4-inch figures, while new sculpts, are pretty similar to the movie figures of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and others from recent years.
Some new stuff for Marvel Legends was shown, but nothing you haven't seen yet other than confirmation of a number of variants-- including on the build-a-figure, which is unusual. Marvel Universe has a ton of new stuff on display, and a number of characters for 2013 were, oddly, confirmed. It seems too early in the year for that, but we did get confirmation that Death's Head, a character popular to Transformers circles, is in the works. Exciting!
Also new/interesting/risky is Bonkazonks, a game/figure thing which is best described as little figures with painted faces you can flick, throw, bounce, stack, and otherwise toss around. It's an interesting idea out of the realm of Mighty Beanz, and they boast that 4 characters will be made in this scale that have never been previously made as toys. Which is all well and good, but I don't think that's going to be a big selling point to the Marvel collecting community.
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