Okay, so there's a lot of G.I.Joe coverage in the newest ToyFare. Three things caught my eye.

The Cobra Scarab movie vehicle. No reason to think it won't work with ANY 3-3/4" Joes, and I was impressed by the design. May have to consider it.

In the "Top Ten Hottest Toys", the Ultimate Battle Pack ranked at #5, with a cute remark, "Welcome back, Trouble Bibble. You were missed."

And MATT TRAKKER was on the list at #10, too!

A set that's still collecting dust at a 50% clearance is one of the "hottest toys"?!? Way to keep your finger on the pulse of the market.

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The part that caught my eye was in relation to the interviews with the movie-makers. None of them knew the property coming in. They basically admitted to it being a rush job, and to making it up as they went along. And I must have read 5 different attempts to categorize the movie as being like some other action flick. It really made me believe that this flick won't have much of an identity of its own (unless sucking is itself an identity), and will instead try to mimic the devices of other movies to get the hacked together script to work.

I'll post some quotes when I get home and can pull them from the articles. I'm not that concerned about the movie either way, as long as we get some cool figures out of it, and it's not the deth of teh line, as it were. But just reading the interviews somewhat objectively, I saw a lot of red flags that made me think these folks drew their inspiration from every possible source OTHER than G.I.Joe.

Some of the figure previews showed some promise, I thought.

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In fairness to ToyFare, given the production lead time needed for the magazine, they probably took that pulse just as the set was hitting the stores...

Look carefully...it doesn't look like the doors open, and everyone has to crawl in through the sunroof.

....which would be hilarious if that's how it is in the movie, too.

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Like that's the first time access to a vehicle has been a tricky proposition. But we'll see when it comes out.

Yeah, really... Not every vehicle can be the VvV Humvee!

So far, none of the movie toys are that appealing. Which is good - from a certain point of view (less to buy). Still, I'm hoping at least some of the figures are worth getting.

Or the Vamp. Or the Stinger. Or the other dozens of vehicles that open properly. No, this one is more along the lines of the Smokescreen Transport. And I'm sure glad those designs are back, let me tell you.

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I for one am glad the UBP made the top ten, now the casual scalpers that use toyfair as their buying guide will clear the shelves for us.

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What worries me is this: Are Hasbro going to base future 25th-style releases on the volume of sales they get from the movie toys? They have told us that the comic based figure releases will be on a hiatus while the movie is out to concentrate on sales of those toys. If the movie bombs and the sales figures are low, that would give them a perfect excuse to either severely cut back on releases or cancel the line altogether.

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I like that ToyFare told the design lady that many fans didn't like that SE's mask had a mouth and she just ignored it in her comment.

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Hate to ask but can someone run down all the main points in the issue. It's 40 miles to the nearest book store that carries Toy Fare and since I'm on short time it's not exactly like I have the spare cash to track a copy down.

To sum: Hasbro gave $ to ToyFare to pimp the Joe line.

/end

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Ah the normal Toy Fare this is the greatest toy line ever thing in an attempt to never alienate the fans of anything.