Welcome back to Toy Aisle, our regular roundup of the coolest toys we’ve seen floating around on the internet this week. Or, as our favourite toy this time around might be more wont to do, swinging around. Beyond the Spider-Verse, we’ve got a very cool space beeper, Lego getting plant-friendly for a set literally about plants, and squishy A.I. Check it out!
Avengers: Endgame Captain Marvel Pager Life-Size Collectible
Props and replicas aren’t necessarily a new thing for Hot Toys, as the toymaker’s sixth-scale figures often come with miniaturised versions of the suits, weapons, gauntlets, and other accessories important to their characters. The company is just scaling those up to real-life size, finally. One of the first is the intergalactic pager seen in Avengers: Infinity War and Captain Marvel used to call that latter film’s title hero. Hot Toys’ version doesn’t actually connect to a cellular network ” either here on Earth or across the universe ” but it does feature a glowing screen illuminating Cap’s logo.
Lego Ideas Tree House
Late next week Lego will help lift you out of the summer doldrums with its new, 3,036-piece, $280 Tree House, which is another fan-designed Lego Ideas set the company has put into production. It features multiple levels, three separate rooms with removable roofs for easy access, and three minifigures that can climb and explore the structure. The set is also Lego’s latest push for its plant-based polyethylene plastic pieces which are derived from sugarcane plants, with over 180 botanical pieces made from the eco-friendly material.
Medicom MAFEX Into the Spider-Verse Miles Morales
Medicom’s MAFEX figures have some of the wildest articulation your hard-earned import-figure cash can buy. Turns out, pairing that with the jaw-dropping style of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (and a rare flirtation with extensive soft goods for the company’s Marvel toys) makes for what might be the best recreation of the film version of Miles Morales outside of the movie itself.
Clocking in at little over 5″ tall, the figure is a pitch-perfect rendition of the film’s comic-book-y aesthetic, not compromising on Miles’ gangly, exaggeratedly spindly physique even as it crams enough articulation to have him running, jumping, and swinging his way across your desk.
It’d be good enough if it was just Miles in his home-sprayed Spidey suit, but Medicom also packed in a bunch of extra accessories ” from alternate masked expressions to two unmasked heads, alternate hands and webbing to swing from, and a complete set of soft-goods clothes (and a pair of trusty sneakers) to recreate Miles’ appearance in one of the greatest scenes in the the one. Miles will set you back around $100 when he releases in Japan in June of next year. [Medicom]
Master Replicas HAL 9000 Plush Figure
What could be more comfy and satisfying than cuddling up with a 25cm plush replica of one of film’s most terrifyingly cold antagonists? Master Replicas, who also makes one of the most accurate HAL 9000 prop replicas for 2001 fans willing to part with $1450, is now accepting pre-orders for a much nicer and affordable recreation of the diabolical computer.
For about $43, available for pre-order now, this plush recreation still includes HAL’s glowing eye, but it instead only speaks one of 12 positive phrases like, “Dave… don’t forget your space helmet,” or “Certainly, Dave, I would be happy to open the pod bay doors.”
Monopoly Stranger Things Collector’s Edition Board Game
It won’t be long before the endless iterations of Monopoly games outnumber the Earth’s population. Do you really need yet another copy of the world’s most iconic board game on your shelf? No, but then Hasbro’s gone and wrapped this Stranger Things version in gorgeous packaging that looks like a vintage “˜80s wood-panelled TV and VCR, swapped the houses and hotels for hideouts and forts, and replaced all the tokens with items like sailor hats, waffles, slingshots, cassette tapes, and nail-covered baseball bats. No word on whether the $75 box will make its way to Australia.
Wrebbit Downton Abbey 3D Puzzle
With 890 foam-backed pieces that assemble to recreate a 3D replica of the sprawling Downton Abbey mansion, you’ll wish you had as many butlers and servants as the Crawleys did to help you put this puzzle together. For $80 it doesn’t come with any drama ” you’ll need to bring that yourself ” but gather a few family members around the table and it won’t take long for an argument or fight to break out over which pieces go where. While Wrebbit usually makes its way down under, you might have trouble sourcing this one locally.
Rubik’s Cage Interactive Stacking Game
Take the frustration of solving a Rubik’s Cube (for some people) and mix it with the inevitable cutthroat level of competition that develops when two people play Connect Four and you’ll end up with this new Rubik’s Cage game.
Up to three players at a time each choose a colour and then drop their cubes into the three-dimensional cage in an attempt to get three to line up in a row. It sounds as simple as Tic-Tac-Toe, but like the original Rubik’s Cube, this cage can be rotated, twisted, and even flipped upside down to change where pieces end up. It introduces loads of additional strategy compared to Connect Four, and presumably more rage for those playing.