Furby is back and he looks absolutely amazing! Furby toys were hugely popular when they first hit the market in 1998. They interacted with children who played with them in various ways and learned along the way. Needless to say the new Furbies look to be a vast improvement over the original toys. While the form factor is a bit different and one that some fans may take getting used to the things Furby can do are nothing short of fantastic. Check out this video from Engadget, as well as the article that went along with it.

Furby’s learning and degrees of motion seem quite superior to his nearly 15 year old counterpart. The eyes are replaced with two mini LCD screens allowing for many variations where little was available previously. His interaction with music and other devices is a real welcome change. It really seems like Furby is singing along with the music. How is this done? I’m sure it took quite a few smart guys at Hasbro to figure all of this out. Based on the box art Furby appears to come in solid blue, red, yellow and black colours. At $60 a piece it remains to be seen if Furby is ready to be the must have toy of this holiday season, but I’ll certainly be knocking over children and soccer moms to get my mitts on one!

Tokyo Toy Show brought us a great deal of news last week and I wanted to make sure I collected the major highlights all in one place. Those major highlights, if you haven’t heard yet, were the official unveiling of 3 new Masterpiece Transformers figures. I have included video of the presentation below. The Masterpiece portion begins at the 15 minute mark.

For lots of information and pictures, continue with us after the jump!
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Here is a review of the deluxe Superboy and Artemis figures. Kinda disappointed that Superboy didn’t come in his more common jeans/shirt outfit. Artemis is spot on, though the hands could use some work.

Enjoy the video! Buy these toys before they’re gone! They look great with DCUC figures!

The scheduled release date of GI Joe: Retaliation has been moved back nine months from June 29th, 2012 to March 13, 2013. According the Deadline, the reason is reportedly a decision to do a post-production conversion to 3D.

Choice quote:

We’re going to do a conscientious 3D job because we’ve seen how it can better box office internationally, … Jim Cameron did all of Titanic‘s 3D in post — and look how well that movie turned out.

As a fan, I’m utterly disappointed. As a business decision, I think they are foolishly ignoring the positive hype they’ve worked so hard to build around this movie. The move may allow the film to perform better, though, due to fewer blockbuster movies opening around the same time and the better performance of 3D films internationally, added to the increased cost per ticket.

I am curious to see how this year’s JoeCon will procede since it seemed pretty clearly scheduled to coincide very closely with the movie’s release. You can imagine the fan disappointment in that circle. How about Hasbro? They have an entire toy line planned for release this summer with no movie to support it for another nine months. I’m going to go ahead and call this a totally inconsiderate move by Paramount to all of its partners.

A scanned page from a Japanese magazine has been floating about today revealing the next figure in the Transformers Masterpiece line in Japan. That figure is MP-12 Lambor, or Sideswipe, as he is known state-side. The image looks like a cgi rendering of the figure. It is interesting to note that the image shows him being in scale with the MP-10 Optimus Prime figure. A silhouette is also shown of MP-13 whose identity is still a mystery.

An email was supposedly sent out to all Club Eternia subscribers with the above image. I say supposedly because I, and many others, never recieved the email. The image announces Mekanek as an addition to the MOTU Classics line, at long last. As expected, he does not have an extending neck gimmick, but instead comes with neck extension accessories to show off his elongated prosthesis. The accessories will measure 2 and 5 inches a piece. He also comes with the classic styled mace based off the one that came with his vintage figure. Mekanek is slated to be available in October, but that is always subject to change.

This leaves a short list of core characters left. Who is on your must-have list?

Here is your friendly reminder about MattyCollector Day for this month, May of 2012. You can find all the releases for DCUC, MOTUC and much more along with a few pictures after the jump. The big names for MOTUC this month are Slush Head, Stinkor and The Mighty Spector, not to mention the Snake Mountain action figure stands. All items can be found on MattyCollector.com at Noon EST.

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