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One of our favorite toymakers here at BG, NECA makes it a habit to crank out some of the coolest looking video game and movie inspired action figures around. The showing at this year’s Toy Fair is no different as the company brings the big guns and then some.
We talked about Funko yesterday , but NECA is another company that has oodles of great licenses and puts them to excessively good use. Whether you’re talking their now longstanding Predator and Aliens lines, or their constantly expanding video game properties like the pictured Batman: Arkham Origins, Portal, Borderlands and now Halo; there’s pretty much something for very discerning collector.
That’s another thing that’s great about this company; everything is absolutely stunning in sculpt and paint app. Even NECA’s articulation is great, which is in stark contrast to some other, more finely detailed, figures on the market.
This Toy Fair sees some very exciting new additions to the lineup for collectors in the giant-sized Batman from Arkham Origins, the giant-sized Master Chief from Halo and a large scale Heath Ledger Joker from the Dark Knight film (picture incoming). If you’re a collector of Batman toys, you might not want to miss any chance of seeing these life-sized items. All of them stand in at 18″ and will run around $100 when they see release- and all of them are well worth that if you’re a fan since you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything else that looks as good.
Another nice surprise this year were the extensions to the Aliens line- with a little extra emphasis on that Bishop figure. I don’t think there’s ever been an adequate representation of the synthetic man from Jim Cameron’s groundbreaking second film in the Xenomorphic series (no, the Kenner one doesn’t count) and this one is spot-on with its likeness of actor Lance Henricksen… by the way, how about some Millennium figures guys?
Also great this year are the BioShock toys, including the new motorized Patriots and Booker (finally!), the start of the Diablo III line (hopefully it’ll be a line anyway) and that Predator speeder with pilot. News broke over Twitter too that NECA’s popular ‘8-bit’ inspired series of repaints will indeed continue in some way into this year, which is great news for fans of classic gaming.
Maybe my favorite thing about the display at the Javits Center this year though, comes in the from of something that’s not even really a ‘toy’ per say. I’m talking about the Star Trek HeroClix here. Instead of centering on characters (like most of the ‘Clix made available over the years), these are miniatures based on the ships of the Star Trek: The Next Generation universe and they look spectacular.
I don’t mind saying that I used to collect the HeroClix minis with a passion and yet never played a round of the tabletop game that went along with them. They’re just so awesome as miniature figures that they look super in a display case or out on a desk and the game itself is almost just icing on the cake. I feel the same way about these. As a monster TNG fan, I’ve seen the property disappear almost completely form pretty much every avenue of licensing since JJ Abrams modern ‘alternate reality’ Trek film franchise started up at the box office, and to see a suer high-detailed line of affordable ships from that classic series of TV shows is just too awesome. Especially that DS9. I mean, look at that thing, Cardassian engineering at its finest.
