toy fair 2007

liveblogging coverage with things i find notable, or else i’d never be willing to look it all up again. this is a week late, so i think everything is up that’s going up. we’ll just go in alphabetical order of companies here…

bif bang pow

you had me at urban vinyl figures of the big lebowski although the 80s ming the merciless plush is pretty sweet too. nothing like taking things i’d want toys of anyhow, and making them into the kind of toys they shouldn’t be. like toy vault’s cthulhu plush line.

there’s also more mainstream 6″ action figures of flash and ming, bobbleheads of same, and standard 12″ action dolls of the dude and walter, but i have almost no interest in any of that. although the head on flash is amazingly good. no real-scan on a movie star from 20 years ago, this one.

dc unlimited

dcdirect has somehow finagled the world of warcraft license, which is odd because blizzard has been doing their own toys for years, and they were generally better than anything dcd was putting out. anyways, four figures. i think an undead mage guy, a dwarf in obnoxiously ornate armour, a slutty blood elf girl, and the only one i’m buying, an orc shaman. the orcs always translate well. it’s easy to exxagerate them and they look better that way. too bad there was never a 40k line. orks with guns = two great tastes that taste great together…

also, afro samurai.

diamond select toys

the appeal of the minimates, when art asylum first introduced them, was they were the only western bastardization to successfuly capture the minimalist style that made medicom’s kubricks so charming. the star trek minimates? a thing of beauty. but since then they’ve lost that initial success and now minimates are just like all the other western kubrick ripoffs; clunky and badly implemented.

so 24 minimates should be good news, but it’s just not.

their galactica stuff is not so hot either.

mouse guard pvc set, on the other hand? i am all OVER that.

and this statue of angel kicking in a door is nicely done.

office space bobbleheads and figures seem like a nice idea, but the prototypes don’t have me convinced. i’d rather have something based on the office.

their star trek stuff has hit ds9, which is bittersweet. there’s finally going to be an ezri dax figure, but i’m not a big fan of the size or style. i don’t think i’ll be buying up the whole line. it is nice that sisko comes with his baseball, though. i guess if they did a dukat i’d have to get him and sisko. and garek, and weyoun, and damn damn damn. i should just get the dvds, is what i should do.

theyr’e also going to be distributing reissues of the 70s mego star trek figures. one two three. these are straight-up reissues, possibly new molds, but no new sculpts or stylings. so they’re alternately cool and goofy looking. spock and bones and most of the aliens are actually really nice, better than much of the 9″ playmates stuff. kirk is a bit odd. but i think i’m already sold on concept alone, and that figures from 25-30 years ago appeal to me more than modern stuff says something. i’m not sure what though.

finally, if you want to tank your stargate alantis line right out of the eponymous gate? put wier in the first wave. yeah, that’s going to be a real hot seller. listen, i never entirely enjoyed the ‘put wolverine in every assortment’ mentality of the 90s toy biz x-men line, but it worked. you want to sell a lot of atlantis toys? ronan. every wave, two characters plus ronan. women want him, men want to be him. done.

shepard looks nice. weir is actually nicely done too, i just don’t care. give me shepard, mckay, ronan, and teyla, and when you branch out into second tier, i’d still rather have zalenka, ford, carson, and major lorne before weir. and skinner. and light-up replicas of the daedelus and a jumper. speaking of, where the hell are the stargate ships? i’d buy crappy stargate minimates(gate-mates?) if they made a nice jumper playset.

hasbro

called shot to the nuts: hasbro is doing exactly what i expected. movie prime is an accurate longnose semi that turns into a clunky robot. i don’t like it at all, mainly since i already have this version from g2, which is the same thing only more elegant. and, uh, i still think that should have been the movie design, but let’s maybe not get back into that.

a death star that transforms into darth vader shouldn’t work, but it kind of does. it’s like vader crossed with unicron. i just wish he was twice as big as all the other star wars transformers.

the star wars line is doing a series of figures based on ralph mcquarrie’s concept designs, which are all completely awesome.

a more robotic 3po
a bizarre 70’s alien chewbacca
boba fett in a more armoured white suit
a stormtrooper with shield and lightsaber
and my personal best-in-show, nazi-samurai vader with a wicked helmet and a blaster.

mezco

comic styled abe sapien. series 3 is supposed to also have rasputin and possibly hellboy as anung un rama. the movie version of that was already cool, so a mignola-accurate hellboy with horns and crown of fire, i’m excited. no confirmation yet, though.

here’s a living dead doll of leatherface that basically speaks for itself.

mcfarlane

dragons series 5 brings three good ones. the fifth water clan dragon is a wicked old norse sea serpent sinking a viking longboat. the fifth eternal clan dragon is flying low over a stand of trees. and the deluxe boxed fifth fire clan dragon is gigantic and rising up out of lava to smote a knight in armour. i think i might get all three. then try to get caught up on series 1-4, since all i ever bought was the first water clan dragon. the water dragons are the best, the one in series 2 was an angler fish monster thing.