So the first stop in this year’s Toy Fair extravaganza was Hasbro. Since many companies have drastically changed their press strategies since last year due to budgetary and strategic realizations, Hasbro actually decided to shuffle the members of the press through their showrooms in small groups on the Saturday preceding the actual Toy Fair, summoning me to the city on a day when I otherwise had nothing planned. Additionally, they’d set up shop at nearby Splashlight Studios instead of a traditional Toy Fair showroom in the usual toy buildings. While I didn’t feel EXACTLY like I was going to wake up in a bathtub full of ice missing a kidney or three, it came close. However, a dancing Spider-Man Potato Head danced around outside and ushered me and my traveling companion, Laura, inside. Check out the details in this handy photo gallery!

Hasbro’s most notably collectible properties encompass the enormous Star Wars brand, GI Joe, the newly-acquired Marvel Comics license and Transformers, including the upcoming live-action Transformers movie. While the uber-macho nature of GI Joe has always escaped my ardour, my barely-present awareness of Transformers has now officially flared into a full-on bout of highly contagious Transformeritis. It’s like my robot fetish never registered them, but now I see. It’s okay, though. They were in disguise.

Hasbro announced the slow continuation of the popular Sigma Six line of GI Joe action figures, (a stylized and highly-articulated series in the 6+” scale), and their plans to continue with a more classic GI Joe styling, as well as the return of the Kung-Fu Grip action feature on larger figures. Of course, I was also very distracted by a vat of silver, foam Kung-Fu Grip fists that were being given away to attendees, and a loud British man extolling the history of GI Joe to the Hasbro rep that was giving us our tour and barking over to his lap-dog photographer to get shots of this or that. You could hand me two vastly different GI Joes and I still wouldn’t be sure which one was original flavor and which one was honey barbecue.

Collectors were salivating for new pictures of Hasbro’s second set of Marvel Legends figures, since their inaugural set was met with a lukewarm (but hopeful) response. While the second wave will include a much-wanted Yellowjacket, She-Hulk, Quicksilver and a few characters from X-3, not a single new figure was on display. A single, carded Battle Armor Thor made an appearance, but the Marvel section was powerfully underwhelming. However, recent rumors have surfaced about future waves including a Build-A-Figure Brood Queen and Ronan the Accuser, as well as Fantastic Four and Spider-Man comic-based waves, also including the Build-A-Figure feature. Hasbro is deciding to focus much of their Marvel license on the Spider-Man 3 movie, including a 5” set of action figures with action features (smaller than most of the existing Marvel figures, and thus causing a scale problem among displays) and many plush and kid-centric Spidey items. As if toys are for kids or something. Also present were some uninspiring Fantastic Four movie figures, leading one to believe that we were missing something larger.

Marvel gaming will also expand from the Attacktix line, on beyond the failed Battle Dice game, and into Marvel Heroscape, which is actually a fairly successful tabletop gaming franchise in the vein of Heroclix and Warcraft.

Laura had wandered off to play with talking parrot toys and oinking pigs, mostly in the predominantly pink section of the showroom.

Next came Star Wars, which was the high point of the Hasbro showrooms for me. The most exciting revelation was that Hasbro plans to create an array of action figures based upon the original Star Wars concept art created by Ralph McQuarrie, which was significantly different between initial concept and final screen execution. Even the most obscure, barely-present Star Wars characters and aliens have been explored three or four times at this point (except for Yarna D’al Gargan, for some reason - kids have seen six-breasted pole-dancers before, guys), so they’re taking it oldschool. In addition to this line, a line of characters for an upcoming Star Wars video game is planned for release (including a battle-damaged Darth Vader), as well as a large collection of new figures that will include 30th anniversary coins, a coin album, and a mail-away offer for a special commemorative coin (which, incidentally, Toy Fair attendees were given for free and is now worth $125 at auction).

The small, cute, kid-friendly Galactic Heroes line will also continue, including fan favorite Momaw Nadon & Han in Carbonite. Probably most stellar was a Darth Vader Transformer that collapses completely into a perfect Death Star sphere. I tastefully refrained from asking about the relative position of the exhaust port. Continuing the existing Star Wars Unleashed mini-battle scene assortments are some great original trilogy arrays. Overall, Hasbro seems to have a large focus on revisiting the original trilogy (instead of the repulsive recent episodes) in deference to the 30th Anniversary events, complete with distinctive new packaging. There was a curious lack of Yodas, as my traveling companion Laura would point out, when she was done deciding that she’d rather have an animatronic parrot instead of a wedding ring.

One thing that Hasbro does that no other toy company has yet dared to approach is to mix and mingle their licenses. In as much, they’re occasionally use both Transformers, Star Wars and Marvel characters all in the same series of toys, such as their Attacktix game. As far as Transformers go, they’ll be focusing all of their energon energies on the Transformers movie. While we were banned from photographing anything in the top-secret Transformers room, we were allowed to snap shots of the high-end Bumblebee Transformer (a prominent character in the film), which includes lights and sounds, and full functionality as both a 10” robot and a sportscar. The rest of the Transformers line will span a large collection of figures, role-play items and huggable plush items which will have cashiers everywhere questioning the maturity of many grown males for the remainder of their adult lives, because laying my head upon a cushiony Optimus Prime is not entirely unappealing.

Hasbro presented us with the bonus of meeting up with the creators and programmers of the Transformers movie video game, who gave us a sample of their in-production gameplay. While still in debugging mode, with cut scenes and final character renderings far from complete, the game still seemed to play beautifully and look exceptional (even with the temporary Justice League Unlimited theme music playing in the background).

Despite the lack of Marvel fan goodies, it was not a disappointing trip. It’s my understanding that Hasbro is holding out for New York Comic Con in two weeks to roll out their big guns, and I’m willing to wait. At the conclusion of their press tours, Hasbro is fairly well known for giving out choice swag in their press kits (including a Darth Vader figure in 2005 that climbed to thousands of dollars at auction). We were given a big, bulky Transformers press kit that included a transforming pen (which is actually pretty neat), and a Spi-Dog, which is an i-Dog painted up like Spider-Man.

One can’t venture to New York City without exploring some of the sights, so after the press appointment, another lady-friend and I explored Giant Robot, Toy Tokyo and Forbidden Planet Comics (where a cashier generously offered to kill me for my Transformers press kit - I declined), and found ourselves a sushi dinner, only to return to the city for another three days. Stay tuned for Marvel Toys, Product Enterprise, Mattel, DC Direct, Diamond Select, Mezco, Sideshow Collectibles and a vast array of toy oddities, including, and remember that you heard it here first, Potty Monkey.

In the meantime, check out the growing photo galleries!

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Article Tags: , 2007, convention, GI Joe, Hasbro, Javitz, marvel comics, NYC, Star Wars, Toy Fair, ToyFair, Transformers

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