 |
Read Posts by Jeff Cope |
|
February 10th, 2012
This is the last of my admittedly self-indulgent series of Pre-Toy Fair articles looking at the lines that I’m most excited about. Toy Fair kicks off tomorrow with the Hasbro presentation, and then gets into full gear on Sunday. I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for the news to start coming in!
|
|
February 9th, 2012
Mega Bloks is going to be releasing construction sets based upon Blizzard Entertainment’s hugely successful World of Warcraft MMO game. I’ve covered this before in my blog here at AFi, so it should be no surprise that I’m really looking forward to this line. Let me be clear. I’m REALLY excited about this line!
|
|
February 8th, 2012
Mars Attacks is making a comeback in 2012, and as a fan of vintage sci-fi, I’m pretty excited by the imminent invasion.
|
|
February 7th, 2012
As a player of video games, I was so happy to see Unimax launch their Gamestars line last year. While the 3-3/4″ revolution was going on strong at …
|
|
February 6th, 2012
One of the 2012 toylines that I am most awaiting and most nervous about is The Hobbit (and the Lord of the Rings). I’m a huge fan of …
|
|
February 3rd, 2012
One of my favorite lines going right now is Hasbro’s Marvel Universe. Marvel characters in my favorite scale. Doesn’t get much better than that.
So, it is with great anticipation that I look forward to what David Vonner and the rest of the intrepid Marvel Universe team is going to unveil at Toy Fair 2012. I’m trying to manage expectations, ‘though. If memory serves, there hasn’t been very much shown at Toy Fair the past couple of years, with a much bigger splash coming in the summer at Comic Con. However, there’s bound to be a few surprises. But, what?
|
|
February 2nd, 2012
I’m starting to wonder if anything is going to be left for Toy Fair itself. Yesterday, MTV Geek revealed a bunch of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys, which was another of the lines I was most looking forward to coming out of Toy Fair.
|
|
February 1st, 2012
It’s the 1st of February, and that means that Toy Fair 2012 happens this month!
Every year, it seems, the Big Dance of the toy industry is a mix of elation and disappointment. But, for even the most jaded collector there is always something to look forward to.
So, every weekday between now and the start of the show on February 12th, I will be looking at some expected items that I am optimistically looking forward to.
Since some of this got spoiled this week, we’re going to start off with products based on this year’s sure to be blockbuster motion picture: The Dark Knight Rises!
|
|
January 1st, 2012
Today’s January 1st. New Year’s Day.
And, like any good little toy collector…one of my first thoughts, come the new year is…
…Toy Fair is next month!!
What are you looking forward to?
Oh, and by the way…HAPPY NEW YEAR!
|
|
December 27th, 2011
There’s a bit of news that broke earlier this year that really has me jazzed. Mega Bloks announced that they would be producing sets in 2012 based upon the super-popular MMO (that’s Massively Multiplayer Online) World of Warcraft created by Blizzard Entertainment.
|
|
September 30th, 2011
This summer saw a glut of movie based toys clog the aisles of toy departments pretty much everywhere. Despite achieving (for the most part) box office success…the big summer movies failed to drive sales of tie-in merchandise at retail. Much of the product just sat…and is still sitting.
I don’t have any empirical sales data to back this up, but based upon extensive local observation it seems that the best selling movie toys of this past summer was The Smurfs from Jakks Pacific.
|
|
June 27th, 2011
I was recently turned on to a relatively new card game called Summoner Wars produced by an equally new company, Plaid Hat Games. I’m not usually one for card games, preferring miniatures games by far, but Summoner Wars is a fast and fantastic game with loads of options yet not tons of rules to bog things down. I had the opportunity recently to chat with the Head Hat of Plaid Hat Games, Colby Dauch about his experiences starting up his own game company and bringing products to market.
|
|
May 16th, 2011
There’s a new adventure of Captain Jack Sparrow setting sail this week, and I don’t mean the new film, On Stranger Tides, which opens in theaters this Friday, May 20th. Nope, I’m talking about the new, full-length hardcover novel Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom which hits bookstores on May 17th. Popular genre author A.C. Crispin has crafted a tale of a much younger Jack Sparrow. In this tale of the sea, Jack is about 25 years old. He’s already had a past of pirating, but because he broke the Pirates Code, he’s an outcast from Shipwreck Cove, the Brethren Court and the ever mysterious Teague, the Keeper of the Code (not to mention, as we saw in At Worlds End, Jack’s papa). When we first encounter Jack in the novel he’s the First Mate on the Fair Wind, a merchant vessel of the East India Trading Company. Jack is doing his level best to be a respectable seaman. But, you know what they say about best intentions. The Fair Wind is attacked by pirates, and it’s captain dies, setting off a chain of events that leads to Jack being given his own ship, the Wicked Wench, by a young Cutler Beckett who is trying to make a name for himself in the East India Trading Company. Thus is born Captain Jack Sparrow.
|
|
May 3rd, 2011
As I’ve mentioned previously, I am a huge fan of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. For the new movie, On Stranger Tides, JAKKS Pacific was awarded the Master Toy License. Included in this license was the rights to produce games based upon the movies. Of interest to gamers would be the Pirates of the Caribbean: Master of the Seas Strategy Game. I recently had the privilege to interview Ken Malouf, Senior Director of Marketing for Games & Puzzles at JAKKS about this new game which is due in stores any day now
|
|
April 21st, 2011
I’ve had a blog idea kicking around the back of my head for over a year now, and Mattel just killed it. Sort of. Being responsible with our environment is an important topic to me. It’s more than a topic, it’s a way of thinking and a way of living. My family and I live on a small 5 acre farm. We raise our own chickens (we have 17 egg layers, and generally raise about 60 for meat per year), pigs, and dairy goats. We actively recycle as much as we possibly can. Where we live you have to pay extra for that, so we do what we can on our own. The animals help with that. There’s a lot of food stuff that can go to the chickens or, especially, the pigs rather than into the trash. Fortunately, we have a recycling facility in town to which we take our paper products, glass, cans and plastics. Two years ago our trash can was full to overflowing each week when we put it out. Now, there’s barely anything in it. It’s fantastic. So, where does Mattel come in? Over the past few years Mattel (and, to be fair, other companies as well) have been getting very elaborate with their packaging, especially with convention exclusives. But, even their standard retail products as well. And, frankly, it’s been frustrating me because it’s just a huge waste. It’s a waste of resources on their part, and it’s a waste on the consumer end as most of that packaging then ends up in landfills. I remember getting action figures as a kid, whether it was Kenner’s Star Wars or Super Powers or whatever. The packaging was a small backing board, and a plastic blister containing a loose figure. No plastic backer vacuu-formed to the shape of the figure. No twist ties holding the figure in plastic (or, in Mattel’s case, a figure-warping action pose). It was all pretty minimalistic. And, I miss it. This has been bugging me for a while. Backer cards started getting ridiculously huge in proportion to the figure it held. The amount of plastic being used seemed to be more than the amount of plastic used in the figure itself! The Comic Con exclusive packaging has been raising my ire for several years now, and then I saw the trend at retail start to move towards excessive packaging, too. The 4" figures from James Cameron’s Avatar had packaging that was so disproportionate to the product being offered that it was ludicrous. And I thought, enough was enough.
|
Next Page »
|
|
