Hasbro opened up Toy Fair with its media event for collectors. With half of the Toy Building undergoing renovation for eventual condominiums, Hasbro moved its showroom to the West Side of Manhattan. Now across the street from the Javits Center, where many of the companies without dedicated showrooms were housed, the Hasbro space encompassed the better part of a New York City block.
Our tour was set to cover the collector-oriented brands: Marvel, G.I. Joe, Star Wars and Transformers. Jammed in with eighty of our closest friends from online media outlets of all shapes and sizes, we ventured into the presentation that would set the tone for our 2007 Toy Fair experience. Part One of the Hasbro report will cover the Marvel brand.
Marvel – "It’s a movie year!"
On display in the Marvel area were four major categories of toys: kid-oriented stuff, Spider-Man 3 movie toys, Fantastic Four 2 movie toys, and Marvel Hero toys (including Heroscape, Legends, and Icons). With Ghost Rider in theaters now, and sequels to the blockbuster franchises of F4 and Spidey coming out this summer, the vast majority of the merchandise was focused on the movie properties – true to what they promised us at Toy Fair last year. In the action figure category, Hasbro has established that movie-based toys will be changing to the 5-inch scale. This allows for the inclusion of more action features, and makes it easier to produce vehicles.
Relative to the Marvel displays at previous Toy Fairs, when the license was held by Marvel Toys (formerly Toy Biz), Hasbro’s showing was a little sparse. While Toy Biz liked to overwhelm us with peeks at much of what would be hitting shelves in the upcoming year, Hasbro’s approach was to show only finished product. Granted, part of the reason is that the Marvel section had relatively little space available – while the overall Hasbro showroom dwarfed that of Toy Biz, the entire Marvel section would have fit easily into one of the four rooms Toy Biz had last year.
Kids Toys: As you can imagine, this category is dominated by Spider-Man toys, in a line called Spider-Man & Friends from Playskool. This year will see the debut of Spider-Man Operation, Spider Spud (for you Mr. Potato Head fans), Spi-Dog (a Spidey-decoed I-Dog, the electronic music companion), Spidey 3 Superhero Squad toys, and more.
Itsy-Bitsy Spider-Man, who debuted at San Diego last year, will get more company with Super Pal Spider-Man, intended as a bed-time companion for kids. And it’s never to early to get kids started on action figures – My First Spider-Man features limited articulation, web projectiles, and catchphrases, all in a larger scale rotocast figure.
All in all, a strong showing that demonstrates Hasbro’s ability to leverage a new license into its existing toy portfolio.
Photos: http://www.thefwoosh.com/picsold/thumbnails.php?album=677
Fantastic Four and Spider-Man Movie Toys: Hasbro will be releasing a whole slew of toys to capitalize on the anticipated blockbuster movies coming this summer. F4 and Spidey will each have a line of 5-inch action figures. For F4, Hasbro showed 3 of the 4 heroes (Sue was invisible) and 2 villains (Doom and the Surfer). The F4 line will be complemented by a new, sleeker Fantasticar that splits into 3 modules and features extending wings and an exclusive Mr. Fantastic figure.
Spidey will have a broader set of toys. There will be action figures that cover the new movie, the previous two movies, and another set of Spidey toys from animated features and video game designs. Spidey also gets Titanium figures and Superhero Squad renditions. Expect action features like Venom ooze and web swinging to be prevalent here.
Despite these being in the 5-inch scale, these lines show promise for the collector lines based on the quality of sculpts and increased level of articulation not typical in 5-inch figures.
F4 photos: http://www.thefwoosh.com/picsold/thumbnails.php?album=675
F4 discussion: http://www.thefwoosh.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36552
Spidey photos: http://www.thefwoosh.com/picsold/thumbnails.php?album=679
Spidey discussion: http://www.thefwoosh.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36553
Marvel Legends and Icons: Accustomed as I was to Toy Biz’s presentations at Toy Fairs past, I can honestly say I heard the collective groan of the Fwooshers as we saw what Hasbro had to show. There were no two-ups, no painted prototypes. Hardly a glimpse of what’s to come other than two items coming to your shelves soon – the HML2 Lord Thor and the Icons Dr. Doom. And while we hadn’t before seen them packaged, the figures themselves were not significantly different from what we saw at San Diego last year.
With HML1 prominently on display, we at least got to ask the big questions. Will Marvel Legends continue past HML2? Yes. Will they stay in 6-inch scale? Yes. Will the BAF continue? Yes. All easy answers and all good. The tougher question had to do with product quality. Like us, Hasbro was a little baffled about the feedback on the quality of sculpting in HML1. They confirmed what we thought – that HML1 consisted entirely of sculpts done by the regular Toy Biz sculptors. Regarding articulation, they maintained that they’ll continue to use different articulation types depending on the character in question. My interpretation is that we’ll see more of the Sigma 6 elbows and Ghost Rider knees as they can use them. Fingers and toes – nobody knows.
We also asked about paint apps, one area we thought there was legitimate criticism for HML1. Hasbro’s factory process is able to mold parts in the right color plastic – this allows them to eliminate some paint apps in cases where the parts are molded in a single color despite the final color intended. They said they would look at the paints more closely. Since more paint apps means higher cost, my expectation is that unless Hasbro believes better paint will offset the added cost through higher volume, we’ll continue to see paint consistent with HML1.
Finally, we asked Hasbro about some of the lists of assortments that have been circulating the Fwoosh. As expected, they would neither confirm or deny the line-ups. But they did find it remarkable that intrepid Fwooshers would crack the code at the Hasbro site, or dig deep into the Wal-Mart system just to uncover advanced info. Despite having no official response, those lists combined with their comments on the solid health and performance of these lines has me believing that we’ll see a decent amount of collector-oriented product in 2007 and 2008, at the least.
Pictures: http://www.thefwoosh.com/picsold/thumbnails.php?album=678
Discussion: http://www.thefwoosh.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36549
Marvel Heroscape: I know at least one Fwoosher who wasn’t completely let down by the Hasbro Marvel showing. Yeah, I’m talking about you, Heli88! For those of you clamoring for a Marvel version of Heroscape, your wait is over. This set will include ten miniature figures and 40 terrain pieces.
The lineup will include on the hero side: Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk, and the Silver Surfer. The villains: Venom, Red Skull, Dr. Doom, Abomination, and Thanos. Yes, purists can lament that Heroscape will get a Thanos before Marvel Legends. You can’t count Marvel Select Thanos, after all! 
On the terrain front, I have no idea what pieces are coming with this set, or how good they are. All I know is that Heli once made me ship him a Lava Terrain set that he couldn’t find at his TRU but was peg-warming at mine. Just another sign that NY > NC (an inside joke for all you Frooshers!)
Pictures: http://www.thefwoosh.com/picsold/thumbnails.php?album=676
Well, that wraps it up for our coverage of Hasbro’s Marvel showing. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that Hasbro will take our comments to heart about giving us some advanced peeks at upcoming product. They maintain that they save it up for San Diego Comic Con (and they certainly did not disappoint last year), but that they would be showing all of HML2 at this weekend’s New York Comic Con. We urged them to show more, and hopefully they will.
about SamuRon
As a staff member of thefwoosh.com, SamuRon gets to do a lot of fun things, like spending his vacation time and money to go to Toy Fair and putting random things in his "about the author" section. So far, he’s still adhering to his New Year’s resolution of not wantonly pimping his own customs. It helps that this week he can legitimately pimp a new custom in this week’s edition of New Custom Tuesday!