Toy Fair 2012: Wasn't it a huge letdown?

[Jacklefttown]

After the past few years of true awesomeness at the Toy Fair show, what are your thoughts on Toy Fair 2012?

Apart from the majority of us not really liking Hasbro's GI Joe plan for 2012 (I'll be buying very few Joes this year), even most of everything else that was shown kinda sucked. The last 2 or 3 years, I was blown away by what was going to be coming out, but this year it was like: what happened?!

I think NECA is really going to put out great product this year and their new added articulation really makes better figures. I am most excited about their Evil Dead 2 line of 4 figures. I'll also grab that Friday the 13th Part III Jason when I see him in stores. That's my favorite of the series!

I am kind of excited about the TMNT stuff, but I really only want the 4 main turtles, Casey Jones and MAYBE that huge urban playset. And maybe a few of those robot rat catchers.

With the exception of the SHIELD Helicarrier, the Avengers line is completely underwhelming. And, of course, if it ends up being as small as we all think, I won't even bother.

I would love that Voltron (old news), but at those prices, I can't justify it. If i was a kid and would play with it fine, but it will just end up sitting on a shelf and collecting dust for 5 years until I send it to ebay.

What did you guys think?

[Nordland]

Beside Joes, i was realy hoping to see the first photos of the new Micronauts line and Hasbro kicked me in the nuts on that expectation as well.

[Konigstiger]

I'd say it was. Unimax showed nothing but character art for their new lines, and not even that for Future Soldier, announced last year. McFarlane had no new info (as far as I can find) on if their Halo Falcon will see release, even though the mock-up was on display. No need to rehash the disappointments with Hasbro across the board.

There were a couple of cool things. Jakks' Monster in My Pocketesque line, as well as Mezco's 4" Mars Attacks Martian figure. NECA's Rocky stuff looks pretty good, and I'm hoping that Ivan Drago and Clubber Lang's head sculpts get shrunk by some enterprising caster. I won't be buying, but the new TMNT line up looks interesting.

[PROVOST]

Saw some good stuff but still yet more to be revealed @ Con.

[Tanksmasher]

Not a total letdown.

[Troynos]

Being there, definately had an underwhelmed feeling. Not as much new and bit stuff shown.

What was shown was decent but not spectacular. The helicarrier is CRAP!. It's basically just a plastic platform.

Nothing that made me go "wow" or "holy crap".

Except for Diamond. They have some cool stuff coming.

[starbuck]

I loved what Star Wars had to show us.

Retaliation wasn't everything i wanted, but there is enough there that i'm not too butt hurt over the ninjapalooza. I actually look forward to army building the 5POA figures that nobody else seems to want.

My glass remains half full...

[OSOK]

it was probably the worst toy fair ever

[sharky]

I have really low expectations for stuff like this. I don't make it a point to find out what I am expecting to see beforehand. So, whatever they end up showing is fine with me.

[Kolschey]

I'm not completely surprised this year by the lack of new lines, at least from Hasbro. This summer, Hasbro has four properties tied into movies (Spider-Man, Avengers, Battleship, GI JOE), so they would be foolish to put out anything like a new Micronauts or Mask line where it would be lost on shelves, and get a very understated advertising /publicity campaign.

If they are going to try to test the waters for any new properties, it would be far more prudent to do this when they aren't also dealing with a new Transformers film, or Iron Man/Thor/Captain America 2, so I would suspect that you'd be more likely to see that sort of thing next year.

That said, overall the toy industry is in a particularly challenging space. Even conventional computer/console video games, long the bane of the traditional toy industry, are showing a decline in sales in the month of January. A recession economy combined with the expensive new distractions of smartphones and tablets- which topped the list of kids "must haves" this past year, makes this a more conservative and competitive market. I think the offerings that we saw definitely reflect that situation overall.

[Kolschey]

Looking closer at IMDB, they do list some of the Marvel sequel properties as slated for 2013, but that's still tenuous. Michael Bay is in preliminary talks for yet another Transformers film, but I don't see that being ready for next Summer.

If they do decide to launch a new Micronauts line, for example, this is going to require a lot of work. They aren't going to be able to just just off the old Diaclone molds from the 70s and early 80s, so this will mean a full redesign and tooling process for every figure, vehicle and accessory. With a line like that, the aesthetic and technology is specific enough that they will have a hard time trying to do any sort of Jurassic Park thing where they would cannibalize old GI Joe or Marvel Super hero vehicles and repaint them as "Baron Karza's Battle Truck" or "Pharoid's Attack Chopper" (Though after the repaint-athon of this years Joe vehicle line, I could honestly see a Hasbro MBA bean counter proposing this in a meeting). With all of that investment, they would probably also want to do some sort of either a film property or an animated series to give the line a kick to market. That's a serious marketing campaign, and not one that they'd want buried under a Shield Helicarrier full of Marvel Heroes or an army of Arishikage Ninjas led by the Rock and Bruce Willis...

Obviously, the same paradigm goes for MASK, Centurions, or any other "classic" 80's line that they may have notions of relaunching.

[Nordland]

Micronauts is different from MASK, Centurians and any of the other 80's lines though, in that a film has been confirmed for production.
Zombieland script writers, Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese were confirmed around Oct last year and JJ Abrams to produce it was confirmed before them.
Of course a new line would require a lot of work to bring it to fruition, however we don't know how much work has been done without any press by Hasbro. I think the official announcement of the license purchase was at least a year ago though.

[Kolschey]

Ah, now that is news to me. It makes perfect sense, as that's exactly the sort of product that they would want a big film tie-in to launch successfully.

Really, the question then is indeed one of timing- that is, how far is the film into production or pre-production, and how much has been done in the way of initial design work.

Thanks for the heads-up on that, Nordland!

[Bujo]

Pretty decent showing.

Some fucking phenomenal MOTUC stuff. I'm diggin the new movie Joe line. TF Prime fiures are looking good, especially Ratchet. A Snake-Man two pack is coming out this year. More Revoltech and Play Arts Kai stuff. All around it was a good showing. A little disappointed that MU Puck wasn't as articulated as when we saw him last. I liked the rest of the MU reveals.

[alcinde4]

Toy Fair is for the retailers, not collectors. So I really can't say I was disappointed.