Welcome back to Toy Aisle, where our latest adventures into all things shiny and plastic have taken a turn for the spooky. This week, Hasbro summons up an an entire army of Dinobots, Mattel turns its hand to The Rise of Skywalker, and so much more. Check it out!
Hasbro Transformers Takara Tomy Generations Selects TT-GS11 Volcanicus
Back in 2017, Hasbro not only resurrected the Dinobots as part of the Transformers: Generations Power of the Primes line, it added a new member in the form of a velociraptor, and redesigned all the bots so they could combine into the giant Volcanicus. If you missed out the first time, over on Hasbro Pulse you can now pre-order the Japanese version of this set, known as the Transformers Takara Tomy Generations Selects TT-GS11 Volcanicus. You don’t have to worry about hunting down all five bots in this collection at random stores, but given it’s imported from Japan, this set will cost you just shy of $260, with shipping expected in February of next year.
Lego Star Wars The Mandalorian Plush Baby Yoda
With season two of Star Wars: The Mandalorian set to debut on Disney+ on October 30, excitement for merchandise featuring Baby Yoda, aka the Child, is ramping back up again. If you’re looking for something geared toward the younger set, Target U.S. is now selling a supersized plush Lego the Child minifigure for just $15. (It’s currently unknown where this plush will pop up in Australia.) Standing seven inches tall, it’s completely out of scale with standard Lego minifigures, meaning you’re going to need to build a massive Lego Razor Quest for this to ride in. Does anyone have any silver pieces they can share?
Beast Kingdom The Nightmare Before Christmas Santa Jack Skellington
For those who want to utilise 2020’s extreme loosening of the concept of linear time to have summer lean immediately into Halloween-Christmas (and hopefully black out enough time that we can get this next three months over with in what feels like one and a half), Beast Kingdom has you covered with this lovely new action figure based on everyone’s favourite spooky Christmas film. Or their most festive Halloween film. Whatever goes!
Santa Jack stands about eight inches tall, and can be posed with his hat and beard missing for full effect. Or you could pose him with one of the four alternate face expressions and the myriad sets of hands he comes with — all the better to hold his Santy sack of course. He’s due out in Japan later this year (just in time for Chrisalloweentmas!) for about $100. [Beast Kingdom]
Playmobil Volkswagen Beetle and T1 Camping Bus
For years Playmobil has been adding lovely recreations of some of Porsche’s most iconic vehicles to its toy line, but only now is it expanding to other memorable rides from the Volkswagen Group — Porsche’s parent company. In January of next year (prices TBD), your claw-handed Playmobil figures will be able to cruise around in a classic Volkswagen Beetle, or sell all their possessions and tour the country in a VW T1 Camping Bus. Both come loaded with features, but the Camping Bus goes above and beyond with fold-out beds inside, a mini kitchen, and a tiny dining table.
Mattel Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Talking Babu Frik
Who could have known that the most interesting and entertaining part of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker would be a tiny alien plot device who was conveniently skilled at extracting lost memories from droids? Babu Frik hasn’t enjoyed as much rabid popularity as recent additions to the Star Wars universe like BB-8, Porgs, or Baby Yoda, but he’s still popular enough to warrant a plush toy from Mattel. This 10-inch Babu Frik is actually a combination of a plush body and a vinyl moulded head to accurately capture the character’s detailed face, and while his tiny blow torch doesn’t actually work, he does utter random unintelligible phrases when you press his foot. Frik’s available for pre-order in the U.S. now for $35 and shipping in mid-October. Stay tuned for an Australian release.
Megalopolis Toys Premium DNA Barnyard Commandos Series 1 Figures
The surprising success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had toymakers scrambling to come up with their own lines of inexplicable animal mashup toys. For Playmates Toys, that turned out to be James Groman’s Barnyard Commandos characters in the late ‘80s. The line reimagined innocuous farm animals as battle-hardened warriors armed to the teeth with rocket launchers and armaments that would have even Rambo wondering if they were overdoing it.
The line wasn’t exactly a runaway success, but there’s still some nostalgia for it, which is why Megalopolis Toys is reviving them for 2020 with the Rebel Army of Militant Sheep (R.A.M.S.) once again gong toe-to-toe with the Platoon of Rebel Killer Swine (P.O.R.K.S.). This time around, the five-inch figures feature up to 30 points of articulation, multiple accessories, and a $50 price tag for each one… ouch. We guess Sergeant Wooly Pull Over, Major Legger Mutton, Private Side O’Bacon, and Corporal Hy Ondahog have to fund their ongoing battles somehow.
Hot Toys The Empire Strikes Back 1:6 Lando Calrissian and Boba Fett
Hot Toys’ celebration of Empire’s 40th anniversary continues with not one, but two new 1:6 figures right out of Cloud City. While the Boba is very familiar in that we’ve gotten previous ESB versions of the character, this release actually includes all the parts from that figure as well as a new series of alternate armour pieces, to create a hyper-specific “pre-production” look based on original costume testing for the character that never actually made it film. Yes, sorry Fett fans, this is how they get you to buy another.
Lando meanwhile is an all-new figure. Featuring a removable cape, alternate hands, and a swish little handheld comms device to tell the good people of Cloud City to get the hell out of it before the Empire shows up, Lando also includes two blasters — a DL-17 for himself, and an E-11 Stormtrooper rifle to toss to his nearest Rebel friend upon the realisation that this deal is, in fact, getting worse all the time. You’ll have to wait until 2022 to venture to the Lando System (for $US235 ($321) a ticket), but Boba Fett will cost you around $389 when he drops in early-mid 2021. [Toyark]
Hasbro Play-Doh Builder Sets
Play-Doh’s great for making creatures like snakes and worms, or blobs of food that heavily rely on a child’s imagination to interpret what’s being eaten. It’s never really been ideal for building structures — that’s always been the domain of Lego — but that’s now changing with Hasbro’s new Play-Doh Builder kits. Available in a variety of sets that include an ice cream stand, SpongeBob’s undersea pineapple house, and Poppy’s hot air balloon from Trolls World Tour, the kits range in price from $15 to $20 and include special molds for building 3D Play-Doh structures like walls and roofs. It uses the same Play-Doh you were tempted to eat as a kid, so these aren’t load-bearing structures by any means, but stepping on a squishy pineapple is undoubtedly better than finding a Lego brick underfoot.