Brought to you by Roaming Reporter Mr Fiend, we have this year’s Marvel Toys UK Toy Fair Report!
Hello, my fellow Fwooshers!
I’ve just got back from the London Toy Fair and Pabs has asked me to write a quick report for all of you lovely people. As always at the UK Fair, most booths have a no photo policy. A bit annoying, but understandable considering how secretive the toy business is. I did try and get some Marvel/Hasbro dirt too, but no one seemed to be very knowledgeable on the subject. It did seem a little subdued at this years Fair, but there were still a few nice surprises.
ML13
The BAF is indeed Onslaught. The big "Robotic crab" version that fights the entire MU at the end of the saga was shown on the concept boards.
ML 14
My god this took me ages, and I managed to get some pretty strange looks out of the business types that were going around the showroom. Here is the list of X Babies and Mighty Vengers that will be packed in with series 14. They look great!
Figure: Pack-in
Longshot: Colossus
Psylocke: Rogue
Cage (classic version): Nightcrawler
Zemo: Wolverine/Kitty
Falcon: Captain America/Iron Man
Iron Man: Hawkeye/Thor
Face-off 2 packs
They look to be new sculpts, Hulk/Leader and Daredevil/Kingpin were on show. The Hulk sculpt looks to be the unreleased Buscema sculpt (A big brute of a figure), the Leader included was based on Mcfarlanes version of the character (the one with the two large balls on his head). Daredevil/Kingpin appeared to be the variant set sporting an all black Kingpin and an unmasked Daredevil. Murdock looked to be an all new sculpt, so no tiny head for Daredevil this time, yay! Both sets include a big shared stand (a little like the clear stands) with card background, Vs game card, and obligatory comic
FF Classics
None on show, ARGH! It looks like we won’t be getting these in the UK. Fellow Brits pick these up on Ebay while you can.
Ghostrider
Same as FF Classics, Nothing on show. I’m guessing this will be a Hasbro line.
Spiderman Classics
The upcoming Websplasher Namor was shown (on card), and it looks to be a re-release of the old five-inch figure that used the Sunfire body unfortunately.
X3
All the figures that are currently available abroad were shown, no new figures were there.
Wal-Mart Exclusives
Nothing on show. I did ask a rep at the Vivid stand, he said they were in talks with Toybiz and Asda about a possible UK mass-market release. Apparently if they are successful, we may be looking at a six-month delay compared to the US mass release. I also asked at the Gear for Games stand. These guys handle the collector and comic shops in the UK. They air freight stock in and generally have it a few weeks before the US release. They too are looking into bringing them in to the country, if they get them it would be a bit before US release. So, nothing concrete but people are working on bringing them into the UK.
Icons
These look just like the two-ups you would see at Toy Fair! An Iron Man prototype was there. It looks to based on the ML8 figure. There was a packaging concept on show for Captain America, this also looks to be based of the ML8 version (but with a "prettier" face). The next series looks like it’ll include Thor, Phoenix and Daredevil.
In other news, it looks like Vivid will also bring Battle dice and Zlingers to the UK. We are also getting another UK exclusive, in the form of Marvel Hero Micros from Corinthian. These are little super deformed figures, available in single and three packs. They should be available from April.
Cheers!
– Mr Fiend
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