TOY FAIR NEW YORK 2022 CANCELED

The Toy Association, producer of Toy Fair New York, the largest toy, play, and youth entertainment marketplace in the Western Hemisphere, has announced the cancellation of Toy Fair New York, originally set to take place, February 19 to 22, 2022 at the Javits Center in New York City. 

Toy Fair 2019: Rumors Say Diamond Bought Gentle Giant * CONFIRMED

I'll admit I've been out of touch with Gentle Giant for some time. Since being merged with 3D Systems, I'd heard a lot of awesome sounding plans that put GG's long history of scanning everyone in Hollywood into play toward future collectibles and personalized items that would make hardcore fans extremely happy. For years before that, Gentle Giant greeted us at San Diego Comic Con with a solid hour worth of work to photograph, including sculpts large and small, from Star Wars, Marvel Comics, hot new horror properties and flashy in-house properties. We stumbled upon our GG friends at Toy Fair last year with a modest display of Wolverine statues and some very appealing small scale items in blind boxes, all with high levels of detail we've come to expect. After doing their time in the very front of the Toy Fair show floor, we assumed Gentle Giant would move to a larger home...and they did...which is all the more reason this new rumor is so surprising!

Spin Master Announces Acquisition of GUND

Spin Master Corp. (TSX:TOY; www.spinmaster.com), a leading global children's entertainment company, is pleased to announce the purchase of GUND, the oldest soft toy brand in the United States, from Enesco LLC, a portfolio company of Balmoral Funds, a private equity firm.

Established in 1898, GUND is one of the leading plush toy manufacturers in the world, recognized by the American Brand Council as one of the most trusted toy brands in the U.S. Universally known and loved for its iconic "Gotta Getta GUND" campaign, the brand connects effortlessly with multiple generations of people who have shared special moments of their lives with this affordable luxury.

This News Is Not For You: A Hasbro Story

I've been covering collectibles for somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 years, with 12 or so of them spent putting San Diego Comic-Con hours under my belt, so if that doesn't earn me a purple heart in the geek army, I don't know what would. In the past, when I've aired my grievances against companies, I've been called "arrogant" and "entitled" or even "elitist" so I'd like to put that out there from the get go. If I come off this way, just understand it comes from frustration. Frustration that 15 years of writing on the internet earns me nothing in the eyes of most industry executives and more often than not, puts me in the same cramped, hot room with 100 other individuals at events like Toy Fair where a fair deal of these folks pull out their camera phone to record the day. Do I think I am better than them? I do not, but I am certainly working harder than them, as are many other people in the room who showed up ready to take more than 20 pictures and spend the rest of their time trying to squeeze free samples from anyone who will listen. Sites like Cool Toy Review, Action Figure Insider and ToyNewsInternational show up ready to sweat, with very little time to take the 900 pictures their readers expect, patiently waiting for they guy with the massive iPad to finish his painfully slow sweep across the entire display. Most of us do this for little or nothing, and that is our choice, but we cross our fingers every day that the companies will make this job as easy as they possibly can. Often, they do not.