Toy Fair 2012 – Kids’ Stuff

While everyone else is focusing on action figures (and trust me, I’ll get to them), I’m going to give some attention to some of the other aspects of Toy Fair. This time, kids’ stuff.

I think I must be getting old. Or at the very least, finally realizing that like many of our geeky generation I’m ready to have a kid, because throughout Toy Fair I found myself much more excited by the toys that I didn’t want for me, but for someone else. I’m not saying that there weren’t some very, very cool toys for collectors, but cute kept overtaking cool.

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They look they’re from Mad‘s “Avenger Time” sketch. I love it.

And now, so much Star Wars

Because who doesn’t need a Yoda backpack? On the the other hand, I’ll tell you who doesn’t need a Boba Fett jet-pack backpack. No one needs it, because Boba Fett sucks.

Underground Toys also had these gigantic talking Chewie and Vader plushes. They were awesome.

He’s like two feet tall.

There was a booth that had these weird little DC figurines call Little Mates. They said they were still looking for an American distributor.

It seems Tiny Batman had to get tough with the criminal element in attendance at Toy Fair.

They had some other stuff with the same character designs too.

A company called Manhattan Toy had a full line of Fraggle Rock stuff, in case you want your kid to have the same childhood memories as you. And we both know you do.

Yes, this is a stuffed Red Fraggle that’s about three feet tall. And yes, it really is that awesome.

Because if you’ve got the Fraggle Rock license, of course you’re going to make puppets.

They also had my favorite things of the entire show – a line of monster pillows for little kids, as well as fantastic selection of stuffed monsters and monster costumes.

But the pillows are where it’s at.

They even have a little origin story explaining them, and it’s the best, geek-friendliest thing for little kids ever. (And this is from a Toy Fair where Think Geek had Star Trek baby stuff.)

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Rather your child go to sleep dreaming of something a bit more… cosmic? How about soft and adorable planets?

Have you ever seen cuter celestial bodies in all your life?

If you want your kid to look cooler than all those punk-asses on whatever today’s equivalent of a Big Wheel is, you can put him or her in driver seat of Optimus Prime or the Batmobile.

Hell yes.

Even better, and I really wish I had taken pictures of them that weren’t blurry messes, were the Moov construction sets by Berg Toys. They’re giant wood and metal erector sets that make things kids can ride on.

Hell, if I thought I’d fit on it I’d get on for me. Speaking of things I might just get for me, there’s this awesome DC game for little kids.

You have to stop the Joker from getting across the top of the board as he drops that ball at you. Each super hero has different abilities – Green Lantern has a construct that can block the ball, Batman has a batarang launcher that you shoot at the Joker to start him back from the beginning, and Superman has X-ray vision to see what the Joker has planned (a mask of the top-half of his face with red-lens eyes). I’m not sure what the Flash does; they didn’t tell me.

And yes, I absolutely did put on the Superman mask.

I want that to be my driver’s license photo.

Skott Stotland is a thousand monkeys in a people costume. They have been writing for the internet for over a decade.

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