As we’ve already mentioned, ComingSoon.net/SuperHeroHype spent Sunday morning at the Hasbro showroom being given a tour of the upcoming toy lines and although we already posted a lot of stock pictures and the information we were able to get out of the press releases, we wanted to go a little more in-depth into some of the stuff we learned seeing the toys up close.
A big part of Hasbro’s upcoming initiative for “Transformers” is to follow the popular Hub cartoon show “Transformers: Prime” into its new “Beast Hunters” storyline with the third season in which the Autobots’ enemies the Decepticons are joined by dragon-like bots called Predacons. The entire line of Autobots has been modified and evolved to take on their new foes and while many of these are already available, in August, they’ll offer a larger-size electronic Beast Hunters Optimus Prime for $59.99 that includes a rotating five-barrel projectile Dragon Head cannon.
Our next stop was the Kre-O section, Habro’s building block toys, where we got to check out the ever-growing line of Transformers Kre-Os (which will soon include Micro-Changers that work similar to the Construct-Bots mentioned above).
Next, we went over to our favorite section of Hasbro, the Marvel toys, with the main spotlight being on toys based on the upcoming Iron Man 3 and Thor: the Dark World, the latter which you can see here.
One major difference between this year’s Iron Man movie toys and the previous two lines is that Hasbro has introduced a line of Iron Man 3 Assemblers that allow you to combine different armor by snapping them onto figures using the Interchangeable Armor System. They’re also introducing an Arc LIght Assemblers 3-Pack (at right) which can change pieces that also light up.
While there, we were also given demos of the sound FX from Thor’s upcoming electonic light-up Mjolnir, the new 15″ electronic Sonic Blasting Iron Man figure and the new Arc FX Mission Mask and Motorized Arc FX Gauntlet role play toys, all of which you can wach below.
Next, we popped over to the Star Wars section, which was noticeably smaller than usual, but they did have the figures that make up the Black Series, which are highly detailed new molds of some of the most popular characters from the Star Wars series including R2-D2, Darth Maul and others. The Hasbro rep on hand gave us a demo of the new 13″ Anakin to Darth Vader transforming electronic figure which has different spoken phrases and a different colored light saber depending on which incarnation he’s in.
Lastly, we checked out the upcoming wave of G.I. Joe toys and it’s obvious that Hasbro has spent the last year since introducing the toys tied into the upcoming G.I. Joe: Retaliation to improve the likenesses on Dwayne Johnson’s Roadblock, Channing Tatum’s Duke and Bruce Wilis’ General Joe Colton, while also introducing figures based on some of the other characters that were only hinted at a year ago. It was defintely a smaller section this year, but we were given a quick demo of the sound FX for the new electronic Roadblock toy, which you can watch below.
Before we left, we swung by the games section of Hasbro’s showroom where we were shown the new Monopoly and Operation games based on the upcoming Universal animated sequel Despicable Me 2. What makes them different from the typical variations on those games we’ve seen is that they incorporated a collectible figurine aspect to it where you get a number of figures with each game and then you can buy separate figures to collect them all. The Monopoly game also has a raised three-dimensional board rather than the typical flat one and includes a special spinner in the center rather than the traditional dice.
Today is Day 2 at Toy Fair 2013 and we still have a lot more to see, so look for more pictures in the next day or so.
