Everybody’s Star Wars for the Weekend

There aren’t too many toys these days that are truly exclusive and hard to get. Then there are the limited-edition toys that are only available at the Walt Disney World parks. You have to actually GO ON VACATION to get them.

Well, plan your vacations for this May, because that’s when Star Wars Weekends return to Disney Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World, Florida. And that’s where you’ll be able to get this exclusive Jedi Training Academy 5-pack, featuring Vader, a Jedi trainer and three adorable Padawans. It’ll go for $39.99.

While you’re down there, check out the Muppets 4D movie. It’s amazing.

Watch our friends be funny.

What’s that they say on Battlestar Galactica? All of this has happened before, and will happen again?

Well, as you know, several years ago a bunch of ToyFare’s talented writers left and went on to form Robot Chicken, where they animated toys doing funny things.

Now Alex Kropinak, the very talented animator who was responsible for our own animated Twisted ToyFare Theatres (which you should really watch if you haven’t), is going to be creating a series of animated videos featuring toys for Marvel’s website called “What The..!”, and he’s posted a brief and funny teaser video for the project.

Future segments of What The…! (great name!) will be written by Alex, along with TTT contributors Jon Gutierrez and Sean T. Collins. We wish them much success.

So say we all…

Business sounds like busy-ness. Coincidence?

Hey, folks. It’s ToyFare’s busiest time of the year right now…NY Toy Fair time! We spent an intense weekend at the show and now we’re back in the office, putting together magazine goodness for you. But in the meantime, check the WizU main page for some of our dispatches from the convention! We’ll try to add some more over the next few days in between doing a billion other things. Enjoy!

Even More Vote Rocking

Hey folks, hope you’re enjoying this week’s brand new issue (go buy it if you haven’t yet!). In it, you most likely saw the feature about Kotobukiya’s new Marvel x Bishojo line which takes the sexy ladies of Marvel Comics and puts an Eastern spin on them. To vote for which character AND costume you’d like to see make the leap from page to your shelf bop on over here and make your voice heard.

Rock the Vote

As NYCC attendees may have noticed in Hasbro’s little corner of the Marvel booth, the good folks at Hasbro want fans to choose who will make it into their Marvel Universe 3 3/4-inch figure line. Head over here to choose five out of the 70 possibilities. The power is now yours!!!

Skate 2 Video Game Review

Recently, as many readers of the magazine will hopefully have noticed, we here at ToyFare have been slowly dipping our toys into the enormous ocean that is the video game world. One thing holding us back? Neither Justin nor myself actually owned a 360 or PS3. Well, I got a 360 recently (Justin’s super jealous) which has opened up the floodgates for potential video game reviews. First up on the list is EA’s recent Skate 2 release, which has been a whole lot of fun.

I’ve been playing this game for about three weeks now. I’m not all that great at it, though I have mastered a few tricks pretty well. The great thing about the game is that you can basically ride around and do whatever you want. There are missions and tasks of a skateboarding variety that you can teleport to or skate across time until you reach it, but they can be completed at your leisure. So, if you want to just skate around doing kick flips over steps for two hours, it’s no problem.

I’m a big fan of the teleport function. You’ve got a task menu that you can access whenever you want that tells you what’s going on around town. You’ve got events that help your skating career (your character has just been released from jail and doesn’t speak for some reason), races, trick competitions and the like to choose from. After scrolling through, you pick what sounds good and BAMF there you are, like Nightcrawler. You can also leave a marker in a particular place so that, if you’re trying to do rad tricks from the top of a big hill, you don’t have to keep running back up the hill. You just hit a few buttons and automatically return to that place. This really helps when you’re trying to claim an area, something I have yet to do because I’m not really sure how it works.

You also can’t really lose. Well, not in the long run at least. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to do certain tasks, failed and then left, but there’s no real penalty, you can go back whenever you want (at least that’s been my experience so far). Also, this is the first game that I don’t mind playing even though I’m not that good at it yet, especially if it involves spectacular crashes (there’s actually a combination of buttons you can press to completely bail out, which I accidentally press way too often). Also also, I haven’t gotten into the online capabilities. I know they’re there, but I’m having too much fun trying to do something for the 200th time.

Okay, well, that’s not completely true. There are some incredibly frustrating moments I’ve come across when playing this game. There doesn’t seem to be a simple way to switch which direction you’re heading in or if there is, I haven’t figured it out yet. There are also some amazingly poorly planned spawning locations, like at the very edge of a hill in front of water. You can’t get enough speed up from where you are to get over the water so you have to backtrack, even though a few minutes ago, when you wiped out, it put you back at the beginning (this was in on of the pro challenges I had a lot of trouble with).

All in all, the good way outweighs the bad and I’m still playing the game (I’ve quit simpler games that are WAY less frustrating). So, if you’ve always wanted to play a skating game, but the Tony Hawk ones have gotten a little crazy looking lately or you’re just a fan in general, I’d recommend grabbing yourself a copy of Skate 2.

–TJ

ToyFare # 140: On sale 2/11!

Hey, guys. You know what’s a really good issue of ToyFare? This one.

It comes out tomorrow. Optimus Prime from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is on the cover. You should totally get it. As for what’s inside? Well…

• An interview with TF: ROTF producer Lorenzo DiBonaventura, and a look at Hasbro’s upcoming movie toys.

•A behind-the-scenes look at how Mattel chooses the characters for their hot-as-heck toy line, DC Universe Classics.

• An interview with My Chemical Romance frontguy Gerard Way about his comic book The Umbrella Academy, their new PVC figurines from Dark Horse and his time in the trenches in the toy industry.

• Video game industry insiders rating the best video game toys on the market right now!

• A look at Kotobukiya’s sexy Marvel x Bishojo statue line, and a fan poll for you!

• Part 2 of our Wall St. Warriors TTT.

• A really awesome retro feature: The 20 coolest and craziest obscure secondary characters from Playmates’ classic TMNT line!

• First looks from The Four Horsemen, Square Enix and more!

Good stuff. For reals.

ToyFare Conquers NY Comic Con!

Like, literally conquered. It’s now a duchy of ToyFare magazine.

If you didn’t make it out to our panel, don’t worry – we packed our room, and there were probably 50+ people there for the panel. Which is good, because I was legitimately worried that there would be more people on stage than in the audience. And with good reason – we rolled deep with nine people on stage…probably more than any other Comic Con panel (that I’m aware of at any rate).

Present and accounted for were:

Zach Oat, beloved former ToyFare editor, possessor of the world’s best set of muttonchops, and the ToyFare guy who still most frequently gets recognized and stopped by fans, despite the fact that he doesn’t work here anymore.

Jon Gutierrez, former/semi-current price guide editor and TTT storyboard artist.

Sean T. Collins, blogger extraordinaire and TTT contributor.

Rachel Molino, Wizard staff writer and TTT contributor.

Jairo Leon, TTT designer.

Dylan Brucie, TTT photographer.

Alex Kropinak, former TTT animator, currently the video editor for Marvel.com.

TJ Dietsch, ToyFare’s associate editor.

And ToyFare editor me.

NINE PEOPLE!

We were apparently so entertaining that no one in attendance remembered to snap any pictures during the actual panel. The only photo I could actually find (see it at the top of this post) came during our brief signing session after the panel (when I was in full Blue Man Group make-up), and is courtesy of Zach’s buddy Jon Abrams, co-writer of Dynamite Entertainment’s “Lone Ranger & Tonto.” Thanks, Jon!

A big thanks to all the fans who turned out and got to hear the dirtiest jokes we were ever asked to not put in the magazine, as well as a special staged reading of the TTT that comes out a month from now. What’s that? What’s the TTT about? Sorry, you’ll have to track down someone who was at the panel and beat it out of them.

(Infinitity) Gems Are Truly Outrageous!

You voted, now ToyFare is world premiering Kotobukiya’s Infinity Gauntlet ArtFX Theatre statue, which won our fan’s choice poll. Go check out the pics from all angles!

Try to Battle My Boys? That’s Not LEGAL!

Newsflash: Mattel is making movie-accurate Ghostbusters toys!

This is the biggest toy news of the year so far, for sure, and news that ‘ToyFare’ has been waiting for since the wee early days of the magazine.

It’s also, as some have surmised, the info that we teased in the Previews solicit for our March-shipping issue #141, as the Mattel news that “will have people wondering ‘how did they do that?’” This is, of course, because there’s a long history of people not being able to do movie-accurate Ghostbusters figures, despite their best efforts.

It will surprise no one to hear that the Four Horsemen are hitting this out of the park so far, and the fact that the license also includes Real Ghostbusters was just icing on the cake. For the inside scoop on how Mattel staged this toy world coup, check out ToyFare #141, on sale next month.