Last year’s Toy Fair saw the debut of the Disney Princesses line. This year, it’s the boys’ turn to get toys and it’s based on the Disney Junior cartoon Jake and the Never Land Pirates. There are three sets including a fun little pirate ship. There are a few other Duplo sets, and no new princesses, though.
There aren’t that many Creator sets to show for the fall, only three to be exact. And much like the more recent sets, the house sets include at least one minifig. The great thing about these Creator sets that are based on houses, is that it provides a great suburban-type of playset/environment compared to the more urban buildings in the modular series, or the dollhouse-type fire and police stations. You can actually make a neighborhood. If only LEGO City would catch on and make things like gas stations, or post offices, or cafes, or any other hundreds of types of buildings you’d find in a, you know…. CITY.
Click through each box image to go their set.
We must be getting the hang of this cause this has been our fastest upload yet. Pictures and video of the fall assortment for Galaxy Squad are now online in our YouTube Channel and flickr feed. Some highlights include a photo of the tiny bugs that pop out of the red pods and the awesome skittering action of the Hive Crawler’s legs. Probably my favorite GS set. Anyways, click through the stills to get to each set’s flickr set, or watch the videos below:
I just finished covering the LEGO Friends line from Toy Fair and you can catch all the photos and details at our sister site. The one set I’m looking forward to is 41015 Dolphin Cruiser. Pleasure craft, yacht, cruiser, whatever you want to call it, it’s awesome and looks like it’ll be lots of fun. There are thirteen new sets with over a hundred pictures to peruse through, so head on over to HeartlakeFriends.com and take a look at what’s coming in 2013 for LEGO Friends.
Tonight was the industry awards show for the American International Toy Fair where they give out awards for Toy of the Year in various categories as well as induct any new inductees into the Toy Hall of Fame, and The LEGO Group walked away with three out of the twelve categories. It should be noted that no other manufacturer won more than one award. Top Honors for Toy of the Year went to LEGO Friends for which I’m very happy about. LEGO also won Activity Toy of the Year with LEGO Friends, Girl Toy of the Year with LEGO Friends, and Specialty Toy of the Year with LEGO Architecture. And that my friends is how this post is relevant.
It’s always a treat to see how LEGO decorates the corners of their booth at Toy Fair. This year they are understandably making a push on their hot new IP line, LEGO Super Heroes, and their feminist-angering girl-friendly line, LEGO Friends.
The Super Heroes corners was the most interesting. Rather than going with a mural or a large statue, a bas relief of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman adorned one corner. It was a combination of a studs-out mural type of build with a traditional sculpture construction technique.
And finally, LEGO had an approximately six-and-a-half-feet-by-six-and-a-half-feet tall sculpture of the Hulk minifig on the conventional hall floor. Lean, mean, and green, it will probably give you an idea of what the final painted face will look like for Hulk if you squint your eyes and blur your vision a bit.
I’ve started the upload process for our photos taken at the LEGO Collector Event this morning here in New York.k It’s slow going, and our connection is a little iffy, but we’ll do our best to make sure everything makes it onto the FBTB flickr stream.
Up right now is the Star Wars theme. We’ll be uploading the licensed themes first, then the rest afterwards. So take a peek and let us know what you think.
I was wrong. This year’s exclusives from LEGO are actually exclusive. Or, at the very least, very difficult to come by.
First up as you can see is the Darth Maul minifigure. He’s packaged similar to white Boba Fett, Chrome Vader, etc, before him, so chances are he’ll be available through some other means later in the year. Possibly as a Shop@Home exclusive.
The next exclusives truly are exclusives. They are Iron Man and Bucky Barnes Captain America. The Iron Man is different in that the head is a printed minifig head piece, whereas the regular release figure will have a helmet with a flip up visor. This figure was specially made as a promo minifig like the Dark Knight version of Batman and the Green Lantern figures before it. Bucky Barnes Captain America was, if I recall correctly, produced while the script for the Avengers movie was being finalized. It was unknown if Bucky Barnes would play the role or if it would be Steve Rogers, so when it was determined that Steve Rogers would play the role of Cap, the Bucky Barnes version of the minifig was shelved. Until now.
Disclaimer: I’m a little under the influence as I post this, so the exact details of the origin of this special Cap figure may not be 100% factually correct, but that’s about as close as I can get it.
I just received FBTB’s official Toy Fair invitations which doubles as our badges which triples as a teaser for our exclusive minifigs. The wording makes me believe, however, that our “exclusive” minifigs will later be available to the general public through a normal set since the tag line says, “be the first to receive two 2012 LEGO minifigures!”. No idea if there will be any other premiums but we’ll keep you posted.
Don “Solo” Reitz and I will be attending the collector event this Sunday February 12th. Watch this space and our flickr stream for our full event coverage.
We finally finished uploading the rest of the sets from our Toy Fair coverage what seems like a mere few hours ago. Many thanks go to Ryan and Anonymous Tipster for staying up late to clean up a few of the miscategorized videos, duplicate pictures, etc. Despite those minor issues, our coverage is now complete. Each picture below links you to the collection for that theme, and each collection has all the sets for that theme. I’m also including everything that was posted yesterday for easy navigation. And finally, there’s a set for LEGO Licensing to give you a sneak peek at the upcoming licensing line including books, bins, and storage media. Enjoy!
A few notes:
The biggest let down? Pricing. It seems that the pricing per piece ratio is getting worse and worse and the trend is spreading beyond Star Wars into other non-licensed themes, namely City.
The biggest surprise? The minifig cases shown at the LEGO Licensing booth. I hope to get some more information and materials about those in the next few weeks.
The one set I personally am looking forward to is 7962 Anakin’s and Sebulba’s Podracers set. The clear Technic bricks were a huge surprise and the redesigns of the two podracers are just gorgeous, especially Sebulba’s. The price for the set is very reasonable by today’s standards. All in all, it’s the clear winner for the August LEGO Star Wars lineup.
