This year has been another great year for toys and there have been some great collectibles offered this year. There have been some great choices including the much anticipated updates and releases of Fortress Maximus, Batman: The Animated Series Batwing, and more as mentioned in our top 10 list below (in no particular order). While some of these are high-priced items, we choose a few for the more budgeted fan to help you choose something nice for the holiday season.
Hasbro Transformers Titans Return Titan Class Fortress Maximus:
Hasbro’s Titans Return line is inspired from the Transformers Generation One toy line of the 1980’s, and is a continuation of the Combiner Wars line. This year, Hasbro offered some great updates to the Transformers brand, including some characters for the core collector that won’t be known to most fans. Fortress Maximus is their Titan-Class offer this year and was available in two versions, a San Diego Comic-Con 2016 exclusive with the sword, and a retail version without the sword. There was also some paint differences that we discussed about in our review. Fortress Maximus is a giant city Transformer that is capable of transforming in a giant robot, city, and space ship. Children of the 1980’s will remember this character very well as the vintage figure generally went for $1,500 on average before he was reissued by Takara-Tomy a few years ago.
This new version, if you purchase the retailer edition, can run you $130+ depending on retailer. The SDCC version can be found on Amazon.com and eBay.com.
Order it now on Entertainment Earth and BigBadToyStore.
DC Collectibles Batman: The Animated Series Batwing:
DC Collectibles have been going all out right now with their Batman: The Animated Series line. While the figures are one thing, they are continuing to expand the line with vehicles such as the Batmobile, Bat Signal, and the Batwing. The new Batmobile offered this year has some new paint deco, and includes the Bat Signal offered as a multi-pack with Batman and Robin, or the Bat Signal is sold with Batman and Robin on its own without the Batmobile.
The Batwing does not include any figures, but does have the ability to seat 2 figures in the cockpit, a grappling hook to capture a villain, lights and sounds, and everything else you would expect. Due to its size, expect to pay anywhere from $135+ depending on retailer.
Order yours now on Entertainment Earth and BigBadToyStore.
BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES BATWING
Soaring out of the Emmy Award-winning Batman: The Animated Series, it’s the Batwing! This sleekly designed replica of the Dark Knight’s amazing, bat-shaped vehicle comes with retractable landing gear, battery-powered interior lights and slide-open cockpit canopy—and now, it can be yours!
Measures Approximately 37” long x 25” wide x 6” tall (with landing gear up)
$175.00 US • On Sale October 2016 • Allocations May Occur
NECA Toys Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990 Movie 1/4″ Scale Donatello Figure
NECA Toys is just amazing right now with every release that they’ve done especially in recent years with their Ultimate 7″ and 8-bit figure lines. This year, NECA have offered several different Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles offerings including the SDCC 2016 Exclusive TMNT Arcade Turtles And Foot Clan Box Sets and the New York Comic-Con 2016 Exclusive TMNT Mirage Comics Foot Clan Box Set. This has been a great TMNT year for NECA, and the company will also be offering 1/4″ scale 1990 Movie versions of each of the Turtles. Donatello is up first with a December 2016 release, with Raphael up next for Q1, 2017. These figures feature 30 points of articulation, their iconic weapon of choice, with a high-end level of detail and tooling.
Donatello is not released at the moment, but you can pre-order him now at the stores below for roughly $99.99.
The NYCC exclusive can be ordered on eBay.com right now.
Entertainment Earth and BigBadToyStore
Cowabunga, dude! NECA is proud to announce its first ever 1/4 scale action figures based on the classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Donatello is the Turtles’ resident techno-genius, but make no mistake – he’s world-class with the bo staff.
This highly detailed action figure stands 16.5″ tall and features 30 points of articulation, including double knee joints, to fully showcase Donatello’s mastery of the martial arts.
It’s entirely accurate to the movie, and comes with bo staff accessory and interchangeable hands.
Hasbro Marvel Legends 6″ X-Men Series 1
Habro’s Marvel Legends brand team is doing an incredible job right now and we have to personally thank people like Dwight Stall and rest of the brand team for all of their hard work especially in the last few years. Marvel Legends have come a long way since it made it’s debut by Toybiz in 2002. This year, fans were treated to an X-Men wave with the biggest and baddest Juggernaut ever made. The line included Wolverine, Deadpool, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Iceman, Cable, Havok, Phoenix, and the Build-A-Figure Juggernaut. If we had to choose one, Deadpool is the most requested character of the group, and would have to get the #1 spot in the wave. With characters like Rogue, Phoenix, Kitty, and Havoc as runner ups. You can take a look at our review of the wave as well as some thoughts.
Order it now on Entertainment Earth, BigBadToyStore and Amazon.com.
Diamond Select Toys Marvel Select Disney Store Exclusive Black Panther
Diamond Select Toys continued with their very popular Marvel Select 7″ line this year, and a top choice for this line would have to be Black Panther. The figure is based on his comic appearance, and was exclusive to the Disney Store/Marvel Shop. You can read our review of the Black Panther with some of our thoughts. Other top choices by DST would be Disney Store’s Doctor Strange, Captain America: Civil War Captain America, Iron Man, and their upcoming Odin Destroyer figure.
S.H. Figuarts Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Leonardo & Donatello
Bandai Tamashii Nations is offering the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of the 1980’s and 1990’s in their S.H. Figuarts line with high-end sculpting, articulation, and detail. Leonardo and Donatello are available now with Raphael and Michelangelo coming in December. You can take look at our review of Leonardo and Donatello.
Right now you can pre-order all four Turtles on Amazon.com, Entertainment Earth and BigBadToyStore.
Mezco Toyz One:12 Collective Marvel – Captain America – San Diego Comic-Con & New York Comic-Con Exclusive
Mezco’s One:12 scale action figure line have come a long way and this year’s top choice for us is the One:12 Captain America figure that was available at San Diego Comic-Con and New York Comic-Con 2016. Cap features clothed goods with plastic parts and comes in a dark blue costume with red and white. There are other versions of Cap available such as Commander Steve Rogers and a Modern Cap. This one however stands out more.
You can find this figure now on Amazon.com and eBay.com.
Mattel: ThunderCats Third-Earth Lion-O & Mumm-Ra Figures
When you can make ThunderCats figures that look like this, you know you are definitely doing something right. The Four Horsemen continue to astonish and amaze us with their ability to sculpt any character and make them as show-accorate or even an update to the vintage toy with their artistic talents. Mattel’s engineer’s also get credit as well as the Mattycollector brand team for their continued efforts.
Unfortunately, this ThunderCats line will end in December and the license is tied up in Mattel’s hands at the moment. Super 7 has expressed interest about continuing this line, but it has everything to do with licensing issues right now, and at least for the moment, this line is on hiatus starting in January, with the possibility to forever being cancelled.
You can read our review of Lion-O for our overall thoughts, with Mumm-Ra’s review coming later this month.
Lion-O can be purchased on Amazon.com and eBay.com.
Mattel: Masters of the Universe Classics Filmation He-Man & Skeletor Figures
Since Mattel obtained the Filmation rights for Masters of the Universe Classics, they have made characters into figures that we never thought they would get to do considering that some of them, like Lizard Man, were obscure and there may not have been enough fan interest. Thankfully, year after year the fans subscribed and these characters, along with the vintage line, were made into plastic form. What was missing over the years were Filmation versions of core characters like He-Man, Skeletor, Beast Man, Trap Jaw, Evil Lyn, and others. Thankfully, Mattel offered these this year and they are some of the best takes on the characters to-date. With everything ending in December from Mattel, Super 7 will continue the Masters of the Universe brand including the Filmation line.
You can read our reviews of He-Man and Skeletor for our thoughts on the figures.
You can purchase these figures on BigBadToyStore, Amazon.com and eBay.com.
Hasbro Star Wars The Black Series 6″ – Star Wars Rebels Kanan Jarrus , Ahsoka Tano, and Sabine
Star Wars Rebels takes place years after The Clone Wars ended with most of the Jedi dead and a few stragglers on the run. The story follows Kanan Jarrus, a Jedi Padawan and his misfit crew of Rebels as they take on the Empire. The show introduced characters like Ahsoka Tano and Hasbro offered 6″ versions of the figures, along with Rebels Sabine in their The Black Series line.
With the 3.75″ line at 5 points of articulation, the 6″ versions of the characters are much more detailed and articulated as had hoped that the 3,75″ line would go this year. Fans of the show and Star Wars collectors have been happily collecting these.
Purchase:
Amazon.com – Ashoka Tano, Kanan Jarrus
You can also buy singles and case assortments at Entertainment Earth and BigBadToyStore.
Playmates Toys Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Karai
One of the most requested characters from the show to be made into an action figure was a human version of Karai as the Snake version of her was just not good enough. Playmates Toys did just that this year and offered this human version. Karai came out great and looks just like she does in the show. She includes a removable mouth piece, katana, and several key points of articulation for adequate posing and playability. You can read our review of her, which we were given the pleasure to have the first review of her following our meeting with Playmates Toys at San Diego Comic-Con.
You can find her at Amazon.com.
There are tons of more choices just like these that deserved to be mentioned, as 2016 was such a big year for toys, it was very hard to pick just 10. Other choices would include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Minimates by Diamond Select Toys, Hasbro G.I. Joe/Transformers box set that was exclusive to San Diego Comic-Con, Mattel: The Dark Knight Returns Batman, and much more. There are just too many choices out there right now and we kept this limited to the top 10 for this year.