I'll start off with the Lego side (to make all of you wait for my views on the Transformers). One thing about Toy Fair is that there is a mix of toys people already know about and have seen or have been released alongside the new releases. Combine that with the fact I don't keep up with every lego set to be released because I know that some will just break my heart because Lego won't release them here in Australia, and what I might be talking about as "new and unreleased" could already be out. I also saw the images on this website here (https://www.thebrickfan.com/lego-new-york-toy-fair-2018-set-images/) so feel free to check them out as well. I've tried to get as much as I could from other sites but if I have missed things, please send them my way so that I can see them. With that being said, starting from the top down:
- LEGO Boost Stormbringer: Well, to start off with LEGO Boost in general, the idea for it is something similar to Mindstorm, just app for smart devices rather than external software for computers. It actually looks like a fun set to mess around with, but extremely expensive ($250 here, so don't expect a review of it anytime soon). The Stormbringer set looks to be based on Ninjago and if that price tag is accurate, it'll definitely be a far cheaper way to get into LEGO Boost.
- Brick Heads Go Brick Me: While I know people who collect Pop Vinals, it is something I never personally got into, and while the Brick Heads look better to me, they still look like overly simplistic, trying to be cute statutes that just exist to be statutes. Nothing against people who like those kinds of collectibles, and if you ever wanted yourself as a Pop Vinal, then this is the closest you'll probably get. It's basically a collection of pieces to help you make your own Brick Heads, which would kind of defeat the purpose of seeing more of them officially made? Maybe?
- Duplo Steam Train: Not much to say other then its a cute looking train, and looks to be fine for Duplo's audience
- Elves Naida and the Water Turtle Ambush: I'll admit that there's been a part of me that's been curious about the Elves line, as some of the creature designs have been really interesting, and I'm sure is a lot of fun for the young girls the line's aimed at. The turtle itself in the picture looks quite cute, and something I'm surprised they haven't done already. Seriously, how many Lego sets involve Turtles? I personally can't think of anything
- Jurrasic World; Fallen Kingdom: A lot of these just makes me wish they'd bring back Dino Attack. I love the idea of Lego Dinosaurs and would love them in a nonlicensed line cause they'd be cheaper. The buggy in Pteranodon Chase looks like a fair bit of fun to build. Blue's Helicopter Pursuit looks rather basic for a helicopter, and I do wish there was an actual winch on the helicopter over the one side Six stud shot cannon mostly because that's a rather awkward piece to use due to its size, it often doesn't look good in sets, standing out way too much. As for the Indoraptor Rampage at Lockwood Estate set, it looks like a great centerpiece for the line, but in terms of playability for the kids, it looks to be a set akin to that of a dollhouse. Nothing overly wrong with that, but for those like me that like sets with a lot of functions and gimmicks, it feels underwhelming.
- Marvel Superheroes Hulkbuster: I'm gonna get back to the Infinity War sets that got leaked recently, but for the Hulkbuster itself, this thing looks amazing and a lot better than the Hulkbuster that came out for Age of Ultron (as it should, this is an Ultimate Collectors Series set in terms of engineering by the looks of it). A part of me is hoping it comes with an Iron Man minifig that can go inside like it does in the movie, but even if it doesn't, this is a great looking set for "Veronica", and the armatures on the display stand are a very nice touch
- Series 18 Collectible Minifigures: There's not much to say about the collectible Minifigures, what you see is what you get, though its a nice collection of Minifigures with some interesting costume designs
- Ninjago's... *cough cough*: Um, yeah all I can find of this set is that picture. I have no idea what this thing is other than some temple looking set.
- Star Wars: The Clone Trooper Battle Pack looks to be on par with other battle pack sets, though the vehicle looks really nice, a Star Wars esque hoverpod. I might get it depending on the cost of it once it comes to Australian retail. One can never have too many Clone troopers after all. The new Yoda's Hutt looks simple, yet very well detailed and I love the use of the Minifig one stud grip to let Luke do the handstand, its a very "no-brainer" use for the piece, yet for some reason I never thought of it using it that way so of comes off as ingenious. As for the "controversial" Kessel Run Millenium Falcon. Good news, that thing everyone hates, is removable, it looks to be a detachable ship. As for the rest of the set, for me, its hard to get excited about a new Millenium Falcon set as there have been so many Millenium Falcons. Even in the last few years, we got the Falcon from Force Awakens, and the Version 2 UCS Falcon late last year. Some more buildable figures were shown off in the form of Darth Maul, and for a Buildable figure, it looks fine, but the buildable figures don't have a good track record for sets that aren't a droid. Still a good source for red Lightsaber pieces though
- A new Hogwarts Castle piece was shown off in the form of the Great Hall, which looks ok, but I'd be more interested in it if it was the start of Lego Dripfeeding a complete castle. There's a lot of detail here, but thanks to growing up in the high of Harry Potter's popularity, it feels like a "Been there, seen that" for me, though nowhere near as bad as the Falcon
- Lego Incredibles 2 was shown off, but they weren't allowing people to take pictures so there's not much to say other than "Sweet, its coming!". Alongside that, Lego Powerpuff Girls was teased (That should make Marissa happy) along with Lego Unikitty sets teased but not shown. Is that show any good by the way?
Overall, a lot of the lego sets do have my personal biases going against them, the sets are getting overall simpler, more minifigure focused which isn't a bad thing, but its not something to push me over getting a specific set, its why I tend to lean more towards the Technic side for Lego sets, which by the looks of it, weren't shown off this year, though one was teased, a Bugatti version of the Technic Porche from a few years ago.
So now, onto the Transformers, and for this I'm going top down from Seibertron for this news, you can find links to the news in each of the paragraphs. Before getting started with it though, to get a few things out of the way. I am glad that the movieverse is ending, give it a chance to improve, however, Hasbro's track record with movies has not been very good so far, especially in the Live action department, and unfortunately I'm seeing the warning signs of things not improving already. I would love to be proven wrong though. As for Hasbro now making the Power Rangers toys? I am not a Power Rangers fan. I have no experience with the Bandai toys, though I've heard that their engineering hasn't improved over the years, so hopefully, these new figures have Megazords with elbows and knees. Hasbro has no excuse, we've had two year-long lines so far of combiners, they know how to make those work.
Starting off with the Studio Series, a new line of Movieverse figures from all the movies. I have heard of problems with the Bumblebee as you can get some of the figures off Hasbro's online store, and they look to have taken a huge hit in terms of size (or at least Bumblebee does), however, a lot of these figures do look really good. There are some repaints, I can tell Crowbar is just Last Knight Bezerker again, but these do look like a step up (overall) in engineering compared to The Last Knight. There are some figures I'm not sold on like Bumblebee and Optimus Prime, but I do love the look of the new Decepticon toys overall. We haven't seen much past wave 1, and the Toys R Us exclusive (why are they still exclusive to them?) Thundercracker might give me a chance to check out the Nitro Zeus mold if it can get more then one shipment of them. To check out the images, https://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/full-set-of-official-images-for-transformers-studio-series-toyline-hasbrotoyfair-nytf/40743/
Transformers Cyberverse is the new show focused line to replace RID 2015's line, and as a result, a good chunk of figures was shown off. Official renders for the Scout class is quite stupid at times, choosing to give a half transformed robot going into vehicle mode for some reason. A lot of the renders don't cut it for me as it makes it look like all but the warrior class is going to be bogged down with gimmick focused transformers. That being said, I do think the Ultimate class Megatron looks cool, and the Warrior Class Starscream and Shockwave look like a lot of fun. Ultra Class Starscream's gigantic gattling guns also look surprisingly good in bot mode. I'll admit its nice to see the gimmicks return to Transformers, but they could go with a lot of polish to them. You can find the images here: https://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/official-images-and-renders-for-transformers-cyberverse-toyline-hasbrotoyfair-nytf/40739/
As for Power of the Primes, while the stickers look to be here to stay for the year (BOOOOO! More on that when I get to characters like Starscream), the figures shown off do look great for me and aren't turning me off of the line. I love the look of Abominus and the Terrorcons, Battleslash and Roadtrap, Elita-1 and her Combined mode torso of Elita Infin1te look like a way better use of the mold then Starscream. I'm curious to see how Optimal Optimus looks in terms of engineering because by the looks of it, there's not going to be much you can do with the Optimal Armor and not much of a point removing Primal from it. Still waiting for that Leader Star Saber announcement Hasbro, you know you want to make it. To cover Predaking and the controversy around him, I'll be honest, I was expecting something like it. I was going in thinking we'll either get a very, very fat Razorclaw, the leg bots having Predakings shins on them in some form, or an all-new sixth Predacon just to be the thighs. I never go into a Hasbro combiner expecting a perfect paint job, complex engineering, no hallow plastic, MP height, flawless modes for all the individual bots' alternate, combined and robot modes all for a low price. That's not how economics works and in order for the price to be something lower than your first born child, corners were going to be cut. That being said, I'd appreciate it if there was a way to remove those combiner thighs from them, best of both worlds in that regard, and I am kinda bummed out that there's no sword to go with him, but it's not going to be the end of the world. As for the "Hasblow's ripping off Mastermind Creations", to give a brief summary of how trademarks work, Mastermind Creations is ripping off Hasbro with Feral Rex. Not the other way around. Like it or not, the third party toys can be classed as Illegal. Are they affecting Hasbro long term? Probably not, they cater to another audience. PotP's Predaking isn't ripping off Feral Rex because both this Predaking and Feral Rex can be traced back to G1 Predaking in origins. I have nothing against you if you prefer Feral Rex, I'd love to have one myself personally, but there's no point defending Feral Rex as a wholly unique thing that Hasbro's ripping off. A, the law would disagree (look at fan games and how Nintendo treats them as an example) and B, Feral Rex is still made of plastic, he doesn't care either way. You can see the note Predaking images here: https://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/official-images-and-art-for-transformers-power-of-the-primes-waves-23-hasbrotoyfair-nytf/40738/
To quickly tackle Wonderfest, which was happening around the same time, Takara Tomy showed off a few things of note, alongside their version of Power of the Primes, the next two Movie Masterpieces, Barricade and Ironhide, two more Beast Wars Masterpiece figures in the form of Dinobot and a Cheetor repaint, two things have caught my eye that I'd love to see brought out of Japan when they're released. Star Wars powered by Transformers... yeah its a dumb name, but the toys do look really good. I actually had the Star Wars Millenium Falcon as a kid, and thanks to a BST group I have two of the Arc-170's and the Republic Gunship from the old line. The original line was a series of Transformers that turn into as accurate as possible Star Wars vehicles... that were bogged down in gimmicks which made some of them look awful. As much as I love the idea of guns that fire lightsabers, those Star Destroyers are still awful. That being said, these two new ships look like a lot of fun to go from vehicle to robot and aren't anywhere near as bogged down in gimmicks. The Vader/ Tie Advance looks solid and the Falcon looks huge, with a great new Han to go with it... the other half of the ship though, the one that forms Chewbacca I think looks worse than the original. It looks messier to me. Still though, would love for these to go outside of Japan in some form, and might get me to buy Star Wars toys (outside of a lightsaber). You can find the link for it here: https://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/wonderfest-2018-takara-star-wars-powered-by-transformers-figures-wf2018w-2018/40718/
And with that, I think I'll call it a wrap for the news. Grimlock's next week (hopefully), and up next on the main site is Super Smash Brothers Melee. The most recent review from there, Fire Emblem Warriors, can be found here: https://mediaholicreviews.blogspot.com.au/2018/02/fire-emblem-warriors-it-was-successful.html
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