Toy Fair ’14: Disney Consumer Products Event Brings Out Special Guests

(Some of you may remember last year’s event, which focused on Monsters University and was a much bigger affair.)

Introductions

The event was once again hosted by Jim Babcock, director of Internal Communications at Walt Disney, who was briefly joined by executive VP of global licensing John Silverman for a quick intro before they got into the four properties.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

This section kicked off with them showing the most recent trailer, which can be seen in front of RoboCop, then Babcock showed off the glowing Electro action figure from Mattel, stating that a villain like that needs a hero so a young kid came in dressed as Spider-Man carrying the Web-Slinging Spider-Man (demoed here) and shot the host with silly string. When he took his mask off, it was Jorge Vega, a child actor who appears in the upcoming movie, and apparently, even gets involved in Spider-Man’s fight with Rhino. He basically said his lines about how Andrew Garfield was cool and how they bonded just before Garfield himself came out and they bantered a bit, Garfield ignoring the teleprompter when he made a joke that even Hitler was a baby once. They mostly talked about the upcoming movie and the related toys, showing off Hasbro’s Electro figure and the Web-Slingin’ Spider-Man. You can watch the video of that segment below:

Guardians of the Galaxy

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to film any of the video shown, but essentially they showed a sizzle reel with interviews with Marvel Studios Prez Kevin Feige, Chris Pratt, James Gunn and others as well as some great footage from the movie that likely will turn up in the upcoming trailer. There was one particularly funny scene between Chris Pratt and Djimon Hounsou where the former is trying to explain to the latter that he’s “Star-Lord, the legendary” but Hounsou’s character has never heard of him.

There’s another scene where we hear “Hooked on a Feeling” through headphones and it’s an alien wearing Star-Lord’s ever-present cans and when he complains, the alien jabs him with his weapon. It’s actually interesting that the headphones is something that is playing part in the merchandising for the character as there are two companies making headphones that tie into “Guardians.”

Otherwise, most of the toys on display were the ones from the Hasbro showroom only shown in different displays and configurations so we have a few new pictures, plus we also have pictures of some of the other “Guardians” related toys.

You can watch Jim Babcock demoing Star-Lord’s Quad Blaster and the electronic talking Star-Lord figure in the video below:

Star Wars Rebels

Disney is obviously very excited about all the developments with “Star Wars,” having bought Lucasfilm a few years back, but first up is the new Disney XD cartoon “Star Wars Rebels,” which comes out in the fall. Lots of information about the show has slowly been oozing out although there’s still a lot of questions.

Before Babcock could get too far into his presentation, the familiar “Star Wars” theme kicked in on the P.A. and Freddie Prinze Jr. came in followed by two Imperial Stormtroopers and they talked a bit about how Prinze got the audition to voice the role of Jedi Kanan, not realizing that he was auditioning for something “Star Wars”-related. He also said that they’re doing a lot of the voice-over work with all the actors in the room, and though they’re roughly halfway through the first season, he couldn’t say who else would be joininig him on the show. I expect we’ll be hearing more of the voice cast over the next few months. They showed off LEGO’s version of Kanan’s ride “The Ghost” and talked a bit more before Prinze headed out. Video of Prinze’s appearance below:

For the most part, most of the toys featured at the event were figures, vehicles and toys from Hasbro, Mattel and LEGO, all of which we’d seen before and have already shared pictures, but we took a few more since they were displayed differently and you can see them in the updated Guardians of the Galaxy Gallery, Star Wars Gallery and Spider-Man Gallery.