Lego Thor Love and Thunder, Hot Toys Peacemaker
Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9’s regular round up of the latest in wallet-sapping toy and merchandise news. This week: Lego gives us another glimpse at Thor: Love and Thunder’s Mighty Thor and her friends, a classic Voltron gets updated, and… brace yourselves, it’s toys based on the human Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on. Check it out!
Lego Marvel Thor: Love and Thunder The Goat Boat
You’d be forgiven if you thought we meant our first good luck at the upcoming Marvel blockbuster Thor: Love And Thunder featured the greatest Lego boat of all time. Instead, the Goat Boat is literally exactly that, a longboat pulled by two magical goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr—who predate the comic book character and are part of actual Norse lore—pulling the OG Thor’s chariot. The $50, 564-piece set won’t be available until April 26, but has already given us a look at new and returning characters with its five included minifigures: Thor, Mighty Thor, Valkyrie, Korg, and Gorr—with Stormbreaker and Mjolnir appearing to join the party too.
Disney and Pixar Lightyear Jetpack Liftoff Buzz Lightyear Figure
You can’t have a Pixar movie without a new toy line, so Mattel is getting things underway for Lightyear with this Jetpack Liftoff Buzz Lightyear 11.5-inch figure. Although based on the real Buzz Lightyear character and not the action figure come to life from the Toy Story movies, this figure does include button-activated phrases from the movie and pop-out jetpack wings. But the best feature is a fuel cell squeeze bottle that fills the figure with water that’s used to produce a vapor trail effect, complete with accent lights, whenever the toy is picked up and flown around. Neat!, but is it $50 neat when available this fall?
Hot Toys Peacemaker Peacemaker Sixth-Scale Figure
Do ya really wanna, do ya really wanna taste it? The best part about James Gunn taking over the Suicide Squad franchise may very well be John Cena’s portrayal of Peacemaker: an impossibly violent anti-hero whose sidekick and best friend are both a bald eagle named Eagly. Hot Toys is giving the character the 12-inch figure treatment with 30 points of articulation, a couple of swappable polished chrome helmets, an axe, a sword, a sidearm, and a removable tongue (quite possibly a first for the brand). Availability isn’t expected until late 2023, at which point season two of the Peacemaker series will hopefully be well into production.
Threezero Voltron: Defender of the Universe ROBO-DOU Voltron
Most Voltron toys sacrifice accuracy for functionality, and while we’ll never complain about assembling a towering robot from five different robotic lions, Threezero’s talented designers have created an obscenely articulated Voltron toy that better matches the giant mecha’s appearance in the original animated series. It looks like a solid 10.6-inch figure, but the whole thing breaks down into five separate lion bots that, when combined, provide an astounding 124 points of articulation. It’s officially available for pre-order through Threezero’s online store starting today.
Hot Wheels R/C The Batman Original Edition Batmobile
If you didn’t have $500 to drop on Hot Wheels’ impressively detailed, 1:10-scale replica of the new Batmobile from Matt Reeves’ The Batman last fall, you’ve now got a second chance to score a similarly sized RC replica that’s slightly less detailed but significantly cheaper. The new Hot Wheels The Batman Original Edition Batmobile includes a pistol grip wireless remote, working headlights and jet exhaust glow, and 20 minutes of baddie-chasing on a single charge, but tops out at 10 MPH, compared to the $500 alternative that can hit 15 MPH instead. It’s the exact same scale, however, and will cost you just $100 over on the Mattel Creations website.
Lego Vespa 125
Lego continues to brickenate the best in affordable European transportation by following up on the Creator Expert Fiat 500 with a lovely model of a Vespa 125 scooter. You’ll have to wait for March 1 to arrive next week to snag the 1,106-piece, $100 set which helps celebrate the iconic scooter’s 75th anniversary. The model includes a side-mounted front wheel, a pair of front and back seats, a removable cover revealing a hidden engine, working steering and kickstand, a helmet with goggles, a spare tire, and basket on the back with a flower bouquet inside.
QMX Qraftworks Papercraft Star Trek ‘PuzzleFleet’ Model Kits
Similar to Wrebbit’s 3D puzzles (but presumably different enough to keep everyone out of court), QMX’s new Qraftworks model kits are assembled from precision cut puzzle pieces made of thick foam, allowing 3D recreations of iconic ships from the Star Trek universe to be assembled without the need for glue, hobby knives, or even painting. The line features eight ships in total, including the original TV series Enterprise, the Enterprise D from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and even a Klingon Battlecruiser and Bird of Prey. At eight inches long the models are small enough to display on a shelf while featuring lots of pre-printed detailing, and are available for pre-order from QMX’s website for $15 each.
Hasbro Gaming Jenga Maker
More often than not an evening spent playing Jenga devolves into using the wooden pieces as building blocks for forts, castles, etc., after the last tower falls. Jenga Maker embraces that idea, and instead of having players trying to re-stack a teetering tower, two teams compete to build random objects like lobsters or wedding cakes using a collection of different shaped building blocks. Each team requires two players, however: one who knows what the object being built looks like, while the other does the actual assembling with no knowledge of what the final outcome should look like. Like a trip to Ikea, it sounds like a real acid test for the stability of a relationship.
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