Honorable Mentions:
GI Joe - Cobra Viper Pit
If you're not a fan of Sigma Six, this year was not the best year for GI Joe fans, but one set made everything all better. The Cobra Viper Pit included six of the much sought after Cobra Vipers, in their original cartoon color scheme. The set was awesome enough for me to buy two of them. That's troop building made easy!
Transformers - Soundwave
If there is one Generation One Transformer that is difficult to improve on, it's Soundwave. He's got decent articulation for a Generation One toy, he holds other Transformers in his cassette deck, and he looks great in both modes. This particular re-release of Soundwave includes both Ravage and Laserbeak and is actually based on the Soundblaster mode, meaning it can hold not one but two tapes in his cassette deck. A classic made even better!
This Years Winners:
Lego Star Wars
While Hasbro may never release a Star Destroyer for their 3 3/4" figure line, we can enjoy the Lego version of this iconic ship. The bridge opens to reveal the command center, in fact the entire ship opens up for a playset, including a docking bay and Vader's meditation chamber. I'll forgive the fact that his meditation chamber in the film was actually on Executor.
Lego versions of other ships were released as well, including the TIE Interceptor, A-Wing and B-Wing, which features a rotating cockpit. Best of all, like all other Lego sets, you can actually build other ships from the Star Wars universe. Perhaps I will build my own version of Executor...probably not.
Star Wars Saga Collection
I've got to hand it to Hasbro. They've been producing the modern Star Wars action figure line for more than a decade, and they are still finding ways to keep it fresh. I already have plenty of good Tatooine Luke Skywalker action figures, but I ended up buying another version last year anyways. I bought another gunship for crying out loud, and there is no good place to store one of those things, never mind owning two of them, they're huge!
The Saga Collection treated us to a re-release of the Imperial Shuttle at a rock-bottom price, a plethora of different clone troopers and plenty of all new characters like Representative Been and Hem Dazon. However, it was not good enough to beat out another one of Hasbro's lines for first place in the NibCrom Central Awards...
Toy of the Year:
Transformers Classics
Forget Cybertron. Forget Alternators. Forget the upcoming movie line. There may have been some gems in those Transformers subsets, but the line I have been waiting an eternity for is Transformers Classics. Every single one of these that I have gotten my hands on have had great robots modes, great vehicle modes and great transformations. Sure the Alternators line has really cool vehicle modes base off of license vehicles, but they are a pain in the butt to transform. In the Classics line, the transformations are just difficult enough to make both robot and vehicle modes look great, and some are even the closest examples to their cartoon counterparts ever released.
Megatron is a gun, Starscream is a jet, and Hot Rod is a hot rod. It doesn't get any better than this.
Index | Movies | Toys | Lifetime | Video Games | Music
