With the dust from Toy Fair 2012 settling and everyone getting back home and into their usual routine, I wanted to take a minute to talk about one of the companies I got to meet with:
MEGA Brands, makers of the Mega Bloks construction toys. I was happy to have the opportunity to talk with them, as their philosophy of offering construction toys to all age groups echoed my own sentiments on this site.
Mega Bloks were first introduced by their parent company, Ritvik holdings, in 1984. Their focus on younger builders helped the brand catch on quickly, to the point where Ritvik sold off its other toy lines to focus solely on Mega Bloks in 1989. The last few years have seen several cool new lines, including
Need for Speed,
Halo,
Thomas & Friends,
Cars, and more. Their booth at Toy Fair showcased several continuing and new lines for 2012.
For the youngest builders (age 1 - 4), the "Tiny 'n Tuff" series is set to premiere this spring. Each compact vehicle is a three-piece set with colorful paint, happy faces, and interchangeable pieces allow for mixing and matching with other Tiny 'n Tuff Buildables (as well as all other Mega Bloks First Builders). The line will continue to grow, with the Tiny 'n Tuff Ramp and Race 'n Chase Rig scheduled for release in the fall.
For slightly older builders (5+), the Blok Squad will feature new sets including the Ocean Adventure (pictured) and Hero Packs. The Police Station and Fire Patrol Station are already available in stores.
They will also be introducing new and expanding on existing properties such as
Chuggington,
Hello Kitty,
Need for Speed,
Dora the Explorer, and
Smurfs. All of these lines feature a combination of specialty and traditional building blocks, allowing them to create accurate toys while still remaining easy to build, customize, and rebuild. The
Need for Speed cars are especially cool, with surprisingly accurate reproductions of cars like the Ford Shelby GT500 Super Snake, Nissan GT-R, Porsche 911 GT3 RS, Porsche 911 Turbo, and Lamborghini Reventon. The full series of 1/38 and 1/55 scale vehicles should be available by the end of the year (sadly, nothing in 1/24).
One of last year's biggest winners for MEGA was their line of
Halo sets. They will be expanding on this series as well, with several new sets in the traditional size as well as an all-new series featuring smaller vehicles with metal figures. The smaller scale will allow for larger in-scale vehicles and playsets, and in fact appear to be very close to wargaming scale for anyone who might want to add a Warthog, Scorpion, or Falcon to their armies.
MEGA also had previews of a couple of their upcoming properties. The first - and by far largest - was the
World of Warcraft series that will join
Halo as one of the heavy hitters for 2012. The
WoW sets will include figures, vehicles, and scenes from the game, my personal favorites being the airships they had on display. The second big license of 2012 is the
Spider-Man movie sets that will debut with this summer's movie.
While the Mega Bloks line was by far the largest part of MEGA's booth, they did have a few other fun items. The first was a series of 3D puzzles called "Breakthroughs." The outer edge of the puzzle is a common rectangle (so it can fit in a standard frame once it's assembled), but certain elements of the puzzle actually rise from the background, creating a 3-dimensional object once the puzzle is finished. It falls somewhere between traditional puzzles and paper modeling, and the effect is quite cool in person.
These items were just a small sampling of what was going on at the MEGA booth - detailing everything would require an entire week's worth of entries. Suffice it to say, MEGA has really stepped up their game this year, and has a lot of promising new products on the horizon. Boys and girls of all ages will be sure to find something fun to build, and that includes adults. After all, when was the last time you built something? Stop by the toy aisle on your lunch break, grab an inexpensive building set, and put it together before you go back to work.
