Captain America Toys

With Marvel releasing both Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger this summer, you can expect plenty of movie related action figures to hit store shelves. While not all the figures have to do with their movie counterpart, I think they’re still worth checking out. Even though some of you aren’t on board with the look of Thor, I think everything looks fantastic. Also, hypothetically speaking, if I were to have spoken to a few people that saw a test screening of Thor, they might have told me the film was great. I can’t wait to see it for myself. With any and all big summer movies, we have to have the action figure tie-in. Mania premiered many of the Captain America toys back in February at Toy Fair. Most of those releases were your standard movie toys and toys to keep the play time experience going. The Captain America figure, complete with snowboard, is a prime example. Mania compiled a list of 10 Great Captain America Toys to commemorate the first Avenger’s first movie. None of these feature Captain America with a snowboard.

From the 1970’s comes one the first Captain America dolls/ figures ever. Star Wars hadn’t brought about the 3.75 revolution yet, so this was as good as you were going to get. It was pretty cool as there was a Captain America Car for old Cap and, if you can believe it, a Falcon doll/ figure, too. Hot Toys recently announced that they will be releasing a 1/6th scale Captain America Limited Edition Collectible Figurine. The price will be steep and he will probably not be around until too much later (which is why he is so high on the list). He looks incredible, but in this economy we’ll go with a cheaper version.

Transformers Toys

The Transformers is a line of toys produced by the American toy company Hasbro. The Transformers toyline was created from toy molds mostly produced by Japanese company Takara (now known as Takara Tomy) in the toylines Diaclone and Microman. Other toy molds from other companies such as Bandai were used as well. In 1984, Hasbro bought the distribution rights to the molds and rebranded them as the Transformers for distribution in North America. Hasbro would go on to buy the entire toy line from Takara shortly after giving them sole ownership of the Transformers toy-line, branding rights, and copyrights, while in exchange, Takara was given the rights to produce the toys and the rights to distribute them in the Japanese market. The premise behind the Transformers toyline is that an individual toy's parts can be shifted about to change it from a vehicle, a device, or an animal, to a robot action figure and back again. The taglines "More Than Meets The Eye" and "Robots In Disguise" reflect this ability.

The Transformers toyline is typically divided into two main factions: the heroic Autobots and their opponents, the evil Decepticons (known in Japan as the Cybertrons and Destrons, respectively, except for the live-action franchise). Transformers toys are sold at a number of price points, and various Transformers series utilize unique play features.

There have also been a number of spin-offs based on the toys including a Marvel comic book series, an animated television series program presented by Claster Television, Inc., a television production company that Hasbro organized for this and similar purposes, that began transmissions in 1984 (Transformers series) and a feature-length movie, The Transformers: The Movie. The original series program was followed by a number of spin-offs with varying levels of popularity. A live-action remake, directed by Michael Bay under the sponsorship of Steven Spielberg, premiered on June 12, 2007 and opened in the North America on July 2, 2007 at 8:00 PM. A sequel to the Live-Action movie, titled Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, was released in North America on June 24 of 2009.

Smurf Toys

Competing against two of the biggest toy-related franchises ever -- Cars and Transformers -- Smurfs has broken out in what is arguably the most competitive summer in movie history for blockbuster family movies that generate domestic and international licensing and retail merchandising revenue. This summer served up 17 films that amount to toy business bait, including Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, X-Men: First Class, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Green Lantern and Winnie the Pooh -- up from the 10 or so in previous summers. Jakks Pacific, with revenue last year of $747 million, competes against industry giants Mattel and Hasbro (with $5.9 billion and $4 billion in 2010 sales, respectively). The largest merchandising program in history is being staged for Cars 2 by Disney, which expects the Pixar movie to surpass the Toy Story 3 licensing bonanza last year of $2.8 billion sales and to eclipse Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith record in 2005 of $3.5 billion in retail. Meanwhile, Hasbro is making a competitive marketing blitz for Transformers: Dark of the Moon with 350 licensees, well above the 250 for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in 2009.

No property in the modern era better exemplifies sustainability than Star Wars, which remains a top seller even though there hasn't been a new movie since 2008 (although there have been new TV shows). NPD ranks Star Wars as the fourth biggest seller this year and the top movie license entering summer. "Year in and year out Star Wars is popular," says Toys R Us's senior PR manager Bob Friedland. Summer is only the opening salvo in the toy wars. About a third of the year's business will be done before Labor Day. The other two thirds of movie merchandise sales will be in the rest of the year, mostly in December. This summer the biggest displays in Kmart, Target, Wal-Mart and Toys R Us have been for Cars 2 and Transformers.

The success of the Smurfs, however, is a signal for retailers as to how to prepare for the holidays. That is why by this Christmas Papa Smurf and Smurfette expect to be sharing more shelf space and front of store visibility with Lightning McQueen and Bummblebee the Autobot. The stakes are huge. The research firm NPD says licensed toys and games generated $6.3 billion in retail sales through the beginning of July, a one% increase over the same period a year ago.

The results this summer have already boosted Hasbro and Mattel, who both credit movie related sales for higher second quarter 2011 financial results. For the full year analyst Edward Woo of Wedbush Securities estimates Transformers will add $700 million in sales to Hasbro and Cars 2 will pad Mattel revenues by $500 million. Although Cars 2 has more display space in stores and more products, Hasbro benefits because it doesn't just license Transformers, it owns the rights to the property first invented in Japan. That means they control the TV version, video releases and don't share product licenses and merchandising revenues with anyone else.

Drew Crumb and David Pang in a June research report for Stifel Nicolaus explained the difference: "Hasbro does NOT share the Transformers toy IP (intellectual property) with other toy manufacturers so we still think the Transformers line should post one of the biggest sales figures for an individual toy manufacturer in '11." It used to be that toy sales were gravy for studios like Paramount, Sony and Disney. But these days licensing can be as lucrative as the movie box office and producers count on that to cover costs which often exceed $150 million.

Cute Toys

I think most of us would agree that this time of year, whatever you call it, is a special time of year for children.But it can be a sad time for poverty-stricken children, and with this never-ending recession the number of children whose families are poverty-stricken has multiplied immensely.Fortunately, there are a lot of people in this country who go out of their way to buy and donate toys for underprivileged children (and many of these good people go without things for themselves to make this donation). This unselfish act by good people is one of the things that makes me think there may be hope for the human race.And of course we all hope and expect that these donated toys find their way to a home where they make some child very happy on December 25th.Unfortunately, they may not be happening.

It seems the Salvation Army may once again be letting their rather odd beliefs get in the way of helping children and honoring the wishes of those who donate toys.Last year at this time we learned the Salvation Army was refusing to give donated toys to children of undocumented immigrants (as though those children were not deserving of a little happiness).Happily, the bad publicity the organization received over this mean-spirited action forced them to abandon that practice. But this year the Salvation Army is once again letting its beliefs get in the way of the charitable efforts of their donors.This year the Salvation Army has decided that certain toys are not compatible with their religious beliefs -- such as toys based on the Harry Potter and Twilight movies (popular toys that many children would love to have).Captain Pam Goodyear of the Salvation Army said,"The Salvation Army is based on christian principles, so these things are not in line with those."

Now one would think the Salvation Army would tell the donors so they could take the toys to another charity (or forward these toys to another charity themselves), but they don't.They accept them and then throw them away (although it seems that plastic M-16s and other war toys are Ok and compatible with their beliefs).This is just wrong on more than one level -- it shows no respect for the charity of donors and it deprives children of toys they would love. This is the kind of thing that makes me happy I don't toss money into their red kettles or make any other kind of donation to the Salvation Army.Their strange beliefs get in the way of their charity efforts far too often. I don't want to discourage anyone from donating toys, but I do urge you to do that with an organization that respects your efforts and the happiness of children.There are many, but my recommendation is the Toys for Tots Program done each year by the United States Marine Corp. They'll make sure every toy finds a home with a happy child.