Thundercats had a big presence this year at Toy Fair. Bandai had a great display of its upcoming products, so here is a brief summary.

Images in this post mostly originate from ASM. Please check out their full gallery for many more photos from Toy Fair 2011.

Information and images after the jump!
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This is the main event for the toy industry every year. For weeks now, companies have been blitzing us with reveals and teasers in a PR campaign to gain position in the minds of the public. I’ll be attempting to cover as much news as I can this weekend. This post will be preserved as an index for all Toy Fair related news. As I write and update articles, this post will be updated with a link to each story.

Toy Fair 2011: NECA debuts Gremlins 2, Gears of War, Bioshock, Duke Nukem and more
Toy Fair 2011: Mattel’s DC products; DCUC, Young Justice, JLU, Batman Legacy Line
Toy Fair 2011: Barbie and Ken back together again
Toy Fair 2011: Thundercats from Bandai
Toy Fair 2011: Masters of the Universe Classics (MOTUC)
Toy Fair 2011: Optimus Prime gets a parking ticket
Toy Fair 2011: BifBangPow! teases new Venture Bros. figures and more
Toy Fair 2011: GI Joe SDCC 2011 Exclusive Starscream Skystriker with Cobra Commander
Toy Fair 2011: Hasbro Event Presentation

Pre Toy Fair Announcement and News
Toy Fair 2011: Pre Toy Fair reveals for Hasbro’s Transformers
Toy Fair 2011: Pre Toy Fair Announcement of Walking Dead action figure line
Toy Fair 2011: Bandai press release for upcoming Thundercats products

We have some more news about the upcoming Thundercats product lines coming from Bandai. Among the pictures included with the release are photos of Panthro and Tigra figures from the new show. We haven’t seen those before now. Just Lion-O and Cheetara. We also get our first look at some of the Thundercats Classics line. Not too bad. Hoping we get a classic Thunder Tank for that line as well. The new one is just missing that influence of the original design’s simplicity. Note that you can see Snarf’s head poking up from the cockpit. Also, Panthro’s head on the 4 inch figures looks pretty terrible, but these probably aren’t the final product anyway.

Press release after the jump, along with many more pictures!

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TVShowsonDVD is reporting that the tv series Challenge of the Gobots is being worked on as a future release from the Warner Archive group. According to the site, a fan named Nick Simmons asked some pretty direct questions on the Warner Archive Collection (WAC) fan page on Facebook. Here is what was said:

Nick – Do you own the rights to Hanna-Barbera’s Challenge of the GoBots cartoon series or its movie GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords? I’d really like to see both on DVD some day.
WAC – The GoBots are heading your way soon!
Nick – Sweet, both the series and the movie then?
WAC – At this point, just the series…..

So why is this significant? This is the main series that went head to head with Hasbro’s Transformers in the 80’s. While Transformers was first with their Marvel comic, GoBots managed to premiere its animated series before the Transformers. Several years ago Hasbro acquired Tonka, the company who brought Bandai’s Machine Robo toys stateside and developed the line into the GoBots brand. It was believed that acquisition included the rights to the animated series, but in recent times that has been brought into question with the possibility that Warner Bros. might actually own those rights since they acquired Hanna-Barbera, the animation house who developed the cartoon itself. No details regarding time frame, pricing or really anything else are known, but the news is sure to please fans.

Following yesterday’s leaked images from UK Toy Fair, one of the writers for the new Thundercats show, Todd Casey, revealed the first official image on his twitter account. See above. He also has mentioned that Snarf’s role in the new show would be revealed in time. Reports from UK Toy Fair indicate that Wily Kit and Wily Kat were indeed on display and that they received heavier overhauls that many of the other characters, while Mumm-ra, the main villain of the series, looked pretty true to classic form. No images of the twins nor Mumm-ra have surfaced as of yet.

We’ve got our ears to the ground and will bring you more as it is available!

The internet is a buzz over the newly revealed Thundercats action figures from Bandai. Photography was strictly forbidden at the event, but strangely video was not, so these stills come from someone’s video of the event. The pictures appear to have originally surfaced here. We get our first look at the new logo, new 3 3/4 inch figures, new vehicles and more. It looks like there will be both a 3 3/4 inch line and a larger 7 to 8 inch line aimed more toward collectors, similar to MOTU Classics. Only images of the smaller scale surfaced though, but I’m sure we will be seeing quite a lot more soon at New York Toy Fair. It also might be safe to say that a lot of the hype from Toy Fair will be centering around the relaunch of this franchise.

From the data sheets, it looks like product will be hitting retail around Autumn 2011. Gotta say that Thunder Tank is looking pretty good from the blurry image. The new character art isn’t bad at all either, except those sideburns on Panthro, but thats easily overlooked. Mmm…Cheetara. Yes, Cheetara evokes the same response the old always did. No word if Snarf will be snarfing it up in this series or not.

    

The year is wrapping up and I figured that this would be the perfect time to take a look back at some of the year’s highlights.
Think I missed an announcement or important piece of news? Discuss it in the comments! I love to hear what you all have to say.

There are a couple of images that don’t appear to have been encoded properly by YouTube during the Highs/Lows segment. The original video was fine and I could not upload it again to YouTube because they said it was a dupe. Imagine the Battle Beast Minimate with a caption of “I want to buy you!”

Recently we heard that there would be a new staction figure line and a new animated series for Thundercats. Well now we know what came of the action figure line. I did not see this coming, but Bandai has been named the global toy licensee of the new Thundercats series.
I was truly expecting Mattel to get this license and for the line to be in scale with their DC and MOTU offerings. Bandai’s best effort is Power Rangers and Ben10, which is not saying much. Bandai is really going to have to step their game up to get collectors to sign on to this line, myself included.

Press release after the jump.
[Via PoeGhostal]
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