timothyf's blog

Movie Toys to Look For in 2006

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 12:05:36 -0800

This year, 2006, will be an active year for movie related toys and collectibles.

One of the year's most anticipated movies, Superman Returns looks to be the most plentiful source of movie inspired toys. Mattel is the main licensee for Superman Returns related toys. DC Direct will also produce new Superman figures in the likeness of new Superman actor, Brandon Routh.

Another highly anticipated movie originated from the comic scene is V For Vendetta. This movie, featuring Natalie Portman from Star Wars, will be out March 17th. So far the only toy or collectible announced related to this movie is a porcelain replica of V's mask from DC Direct. If the movie does well, I think you can expect many more items related to this movie.

Surprisingly, there are currently no plans to make any action figures directly tied to the latest X Men movie out in May, X3: The Last Stand, but Marvel will be releasing a slew of new X Men figures, though not directly tied to the movie, many of the movie's characters will be included. Diamond Select and Master Replicas will also be producing X3 related merchandise.

A kid's movie expected to inspire alot of toys is the Disney/Pixar feature Cars. Mattel will be making a line of toys, especially cars and trucks, based on the movie.

A follow-up to 1994's Clerks movie from Kevin Smith, Clerks 2: The Passion of the Clerks, will result in more of the animated-style character toys from Graphitti Designs.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is the new Pirates of the Carribean movie featuring Johnny Depp reprising his role as Captain Jack Sparrow. As with the first movie, you can expect alot of toys and collectibles related to this movie. Expect products from NECA and Master Replicas.

This summer also brings us a movie version of the popular 80's show Miami Vice, sans Don Johnson. The movie version features Colin Farrell and Jamie Fox. While no toys specific to the movie have been announced, Mezco Toyz will be releasing action figures based on the original TV series.

Other possibilities with no announced toys yet include Silent Hill, based on the long-running video game franchise and Mission Impossible III.

You can discuss this posting by adding your comments. Let us know what movie toys your most looking forward to or let us know if you know of any that we've overlooked.

Become a Featured Contributor

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:08:08 -0800

Toy Scene is looking for several bloggers to become featured contributors of the site. These individuals would be asked to contribute regular blog postings on a topic that they have special knowledge or expertise in. For example, some suggested topics that could be featured are:

Action Figure Customizing
Specific Theme Collectors (star wars, star trek, gi joe, etc.)
Toy Industry Rumours, News, and Announcements
Any other topic that you think readers would be interested in reading on a regular basis

If your interested in becoming a featured contributor, please contact me at webmaster@toy-scene.com

Check out our new book reference and store section

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 17:47:22 -0800

Click on the Books link in the Quick Links menu to go to the new Books section of Toy Scene.

The books section features some great toy collecting books. There are books for collectors of Star Wars, Star Trek, GI Joe, Transformers, Barbie, Hot Wheels, and more.

Toy Fair 2006 Coverage

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 14:50:53 -0800

Toy Fair 2006, the premier Toy Show for the Toy Industry began today, February 12th, in New York. Here are some links to some great sites for viewing full coverage and plenty of cool new toy images from Toy Fair 2006:

Coverage from Action-Figure.com

Star Wars Coverage from StarWars.com

GI Joe Coverage from hisstank.com

Transformers Coverage

Sideshow Colectibles Coverage

Millionaire Playboy Coverage

Toy Mania's Coverage

Action Figure Collector World's Coverage

Rebelscum's Star Wars Coverage

Diamond Select Coverage

If you know of more good links providing Toy Fair 2006 coverage share them in a comment to this post..

Lego Star Wars License Renewed through 2011

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 12:18:56 -0800

The LEGO Group and LucasFilm Ltd. have announced that the Lego Star Wars licensed has been renewed through 2011. Under the agreement, the LEGO Group will continue its construction toy rights to the entire Star Wars galaxy, including an all new Star Wars animated television series currently in development.

Lego first teamed up with Star Wars in 1999, and since then has produced more than 125 different LEGO Star Wars sets. The sets include more than 60 vehicles and spacecraft, and LEGO minifigures of nearly 80 characters from all six Star Wars episodes. Most of LEGO's top selling toys continue to be from their Star Wars line.

A Gem for Mego Collectors - The Mego Museum

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 20:20:51 -0800

In the 70's and early 80's Mego was one of the most successful toy companies, making action figures of popular television and pop culture favorites including Spiderman, Batman, Star Trek, Happy Days, The Wizard of Oz, and Planet of the Apes figures. In its heyday, Mego was lead by Martin B. Abrams, the son of its founder D. David Abrams. Unfortunately, Mego filed for bankruptcy and stopped manufacturing toys in 1982. Although, Mego ultimately failed as a company, the toys that it manufactured continue to be popular among collectors today. The Mego toys are top sellers on eBay and their values are soaring. Recently, there have even been some attempts at reviving the style of action figures that were popularized by Mego.

With the Mego company no longer around, fans of their products are hungry for information about these toys. The Mego Museum is a site dedicated to the Mego action figures and related accessories from the 70's. The site was created in 1996 by Mego collector Scott C. Adams. Scott guided the site until 2000 when he handed the reigns over to fellow collector Brian Heiler who continues to oversee the site today. Brian, who works professionally as a product developer for a toy company, has an interest in Mego products from around the world. Over time, the site had become a large and unruly website, Scott returned in 2005 to completely redesign the site to its present look. Joe Derouen hosts the site and and is responsible for the day-to-day running of the site, as its webmaster.

If your a Mego collector or fan, the Mego Museum is definitely a site worth checking out. You can easily kill a few evenings just browsing through their archives. The site's main sections are described below:

The Galleries is an impressive collection of images of every Mego figure there was. Even if you were never a big Mego collector, most toy collectors in their 30's and above will remember having a few of these, and the images are fun to look at and remember these old toys of ours.

The library is a collection of documents and images related to the Mego corporation. The library includes interviews, Mego dealer catalogs, art images, advertising and press archives, a nice history of Mego, and more.

The forums section is a great place for Mego collectors to discuss all things Mego related. A particular fun forum is the Mego Playhouse forum. This forum showcases Photoshop created images that include Mego figures.

The CustoMego section focuses on customized Mego figures. This section showcases the work of many Mego customizers and includes galleries of their customized Megos. There is also a Resources and Links section for those who want to find more about making their own customized Megos. An interesting article that I found on the CustoMego pages is about how to convert a ToyBiz Famous Covers figure into a Mego replica.

Users can post their own Mego images at the Mego Museum User Gallery. If your a Mego collector, share your Mego images at Mego Museum, and here with us at Toy-Scene in our galleries.

Here are some other great sites for Mego collectors:

Abmac's Mego Customs	The Megohead Archive
Foreign Mego Archive	The Mego Store
Megoville	Phelonious Phabrikations
Mego Madhouse	Dave's Custom Megos
MegoSteve.com	Classic TV Toys
Mego Central

Site News

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:56:22 -0800

After less than a week since we've begun announcing Toy-Scene.com, we've already received a tremendous response. Please continue to visit our site and help spread the work to make this the best site focused on toy collectors.

Since this is a very new site, we are still growing and evolving into the most exciting format we can. Over the coming days and weeks, you will notice some changes and some new additions to the site to make it an even better community.

While there are plenty of sites today that focus on announcing new toys, and general toy industry news, we believe what will make our site stand out is its primary focus on you the collector. We are not an information site, but truly a social community for all toy lovers. In order to grow successfully, we need your participation. Help us out by posting your images, using your Toy-Scene blog, publicizing your toy-scene blog, and become active in our many forums.

Soon, we'll be introducing a new Collectors Bio feature where we feature short biographies of our toy collector members from around the world. This will evolve into a toy collector of the month feature as well. If you'd like to be have your bio featured early on our site, please submit a short bio on your toy collecting hobby to webmaster@toy-scene.com. Tell us how you got into the hobby, what type of toys you collect, how long youv'e been collecting, how you display your toys, and anything else that you think other collectors might be interested in reading about.

Another exciting feature that will be introduced soon is a blog aggregator page in which you can see what all the other Toy-Scene.com members are blogging about.

In our forums section, there is a forum just for making site suggestions. Please take advantage of that forum to help make this the site that you'd like to see.

Toy Fair 2006 Begins in New York Sunday!

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 16:27:58 -0800

Toy Fair 2006 begins this Sunday in New York City at the Jacob K. Javits conventions center. Toy Fair runs from February 12th thru the 15th this year.

Officially titled American International Toy Fair, it is the largest toy trade show in the westernn hemisphere. Toy Fair features more than 1500 manufacturers, distributors, importers, and sales agents from 30 countries. Featured products include action figures, dolls, games, puzzles, radio-controlled vehicles, preschool toys, cars, trucks, trains, video games, and more.

Unfortunately, Toy Fair is not open to the general public. To attend, you must have a toy industry association. But, whether you attend in person or not, you can count on Toy Fair for some exciting announcements of new and upcoming toys and fantastics new pictures. Toy Scene will bring you the best of the Toy Fair coverage and images right here at Toy-Scene.com

Hasbro gets toy license from Marvel... Toy Biz is out...

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 07:19:02 -0800

Marvel and Hasbro recently completed a deal that will allow Hasbro to produce a wide range of toys and games based on the Marvel character universe. This is the license formerly held by Toy Biz, most known in the Marvel universe for their Marvel Legends line of action figures. Marvel terminated the license with Toy Biz effective December 31, 2005. The Hasbro license doesn't become effective until 2007, and lasts for 5 years. Among the first products that Hasbro will bring to market will be the Spider Man 3 movie action figures, and action figures for the upcoming Ghost Rider movie. Overall, Marvel has a library of over 5,000 characters that is included in the deal with Hasbro.

Some of the toy lines that Hasbro will produce for Marvel include action figures, role play and preschool toys, board games, and puzzles.

This license deal with Hasbro guarantees Marvel a payment of $205 million. Wow!

Between now and 2007, Marvel will directly produce their own action figures and other toys, including those formerly produced by Toy Biz.

The Most Amazing Spiderman Collector?

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 20:22:56 -0800

While browsing around on the net recently, I came across the Spiderman Collector website, run by perhaps the most amazing collector of Spiderman merchandise in the world, Sy Winnie. According to his website, his site has been featured in Forbes magazine, TV Guide, ToyShop magazine, Shift magazine, and ABC News. As a collector since 1967, Sy has built an amazing collection of Spiderman memorabilia.

The Spiderman Collector site features the Collector's Room, which contains photo's of Sy's large Spiderman collection. Sy also maintains an informative Toy Blog, keeping readers up to date on all the latest Spiderman and memorabilia news. The Toy Archives section of his site shows pictures of more than 5,000 Spiderman memorabilia items. The Amazing Covers section of the site includes scanned images of over 500 Spiderman comic covers.

There is also a Message Board section of the site where you can discuss Spiderman collectibles, post buy/sell/trade ads, and talk about your Spiderman room.

Sy also offers for sale, a CD that contains over 5,000 images of Spiderman memorabilia, and over 500 spiderman comic cover scans. These are the items that are also available on the site. You could just download these images from the site, but then again, there is an awful lot of images to download.

If you have your own collection on display that you'd like to show-off, upload pictures of it to our Toy Collections gallery.

The Ultimate Star Wars Collector

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 08:40:13 -0800

Rebelscum.com is featuring a two part article about Steve Sansweet, who is perhaps the ultimate Star Wars collector. The articles are a fun read for any collector. They also include plenty of pictures of Steve's collection that will most certainly make your collection seem tiny. The guys at Rebelscum were lucky enough to spend a weekend helping Steve sort through some of his collection that he keeps in a building he converted from an industrial warehouse that serves only to house his massive collection of Star Wars collectibles. Steve's collection includes toys, clothing, videos, books, art work, store displays, life-size replicas, and many other collectibles. In 1996, Sansweet was hired by Lucasfilm Ltd as Director of Specialty Marketing.
read more...

Join Toy Scene Today!!!

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 08:43:04 -0800

Toy Scene is an all new online community for anyone intereted in toys. The goal of Toy Scene is to become a community driven by the users, through blog postings, forum discussions, image contributions, and overall participation. At Toy Scene, every member is given their own blog, access to image galleries, discussion boards, access to a trading post for buying/selling toys, and more. We also have full RSS syndication available for you to grab the site's feed as a whole, or you can publicize your own Toy Scene blog by distributing the feed for just your blog.

We are also always looking for featured contributors to contribute on a regular basis on a toy-related subject for which they have knowledge. If your interested in becoming a featured contributor, let us know.