Coolest Star Wars Toys from Hasbro

Like so many of you, we are in total Star Wars mode these days. In honor of the long awaited debut of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I thought I’d share some of the new Star Wars toys from Hasbro. Back in September, my family was invited to the Global Day of Play where bloggers and other media were invited to play with all of the newly released Star Wars toys. I can’t even begin to describe how excited we all were to geek out with these awesome toys.

IMG 5545

 

Hasbro has a huge selection of Star Wars-branded toys, ranging from toys for preschoolers in their Playskool line to board games to role playing games to cool items for collectors. Because there’s something for Star Wars fans of all ages, my entire family loved being among the first ones to get a look at the Next Kid Things from Hasbro.  

 

NKTStarWarstoysHasbro

There was so much to see and try out, but our favorites include:

Playskool Heroes Star Wars Series

I love the Playskool Heroes Star Wars Series because of its chunky characters and easy to handle vehicles and accessories. Preschoolers like my little guy love these Star Wars sets because they’re more age-appropriate and perfect for open-ended creative play. ($4.99-39.99)

Blade Builders
My older Star Wars fan loved creating his own powerful Lightsaber with the Blade Builders set. By connecting and twisting various different weapons, young Jedis can create their own custom Lightsaber that boasts realistic sounds to be used in battle. ($49.99)

Play-Doh Can Heads

My Play-Doh fanatic can’t get enough of the Star Wars themed Can Heads. I love the way the cans become characters and can be included in open play patterns. Little Padawans can mold and sculpt their favorite Star Wars shapes with these fun sets. ($9.99-19.99)

 Kylo Ren Black Series Lightsaber
This super sleek lightsaber is geared to the collectors and die hard fans. It has solid features, light effects, movie sound effects, 3 blades and metal hilt. ($199.99)

Star Wars Mr. Potato Head
What better way to introduce Star Wars to the toddler and preschool set than with the iconic Mr. Potato Head toys. Mr. Potato Head takes on the Dark Side with all the coolest Star Wars accessories. Choose from Frylo Ren, Darth Tater, Spud Trooper and more. ($9.99-19.99) 

BB-8
Ok, so, like everyone else, we want BB-8 for ourselves. Biggie loved maneuvering the RC BB-8 and had a great time navigating the Dark Side obstacle course. This BB-8 boasts movie-accurate sounds and expressive droid sounds, just as one would imagine.

We absolutely loved getting our hands on all of these fun toys. To say we were over the moon with excitement at the Global Day of Play was a total understatement. Check out the highlights from the Star Wars Global Day of Play to see these toys and more in action! Biggie was so giddy to train with a Jedi and Littles, my Play-Doh fanatic, LOVES Can Heads!

 

 

 I truly can’t pick a fave, the whole day was such a treat. If you’re Star Wars fans like we are, I have no doubt that some of these fun goodies are on those wish lists. 

IMG 5566

 

Thank you to Hasbro for hosting us at the Star Wars Global Day of Play.

Our Favorite Goodies and Gadgets for #ForceFriday

In case you missed it, today is THE day! Force Friday, that is!  Today marked the day that retailers released the highly anticipated toys and gadgets for the upcoming Star Wars installment, The Force Awakens. 

In fact, collectors and Star Wars die-hards were waiting in line at midnight to get their hands on the newly released merchandise for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Over the past few months, I’ve had the chance to check out some of these cool goodies and gadgets before they officially hit the shelves. Here’s a quick round up of some of my favorite cool toys and gadgets for #ForceFriday!

Chewbacca + Furby=Furbacca

I mean, c’mon! Furbacca speaks wookie and interacts with an app. This is perhaps THE coolest Furby out!

IMG 5320

 

Legendary Jedi Master Yoda

Legendary Yoda from Spinmaster is unlike any other Star Wars toy. It stands at 16 inches, has voice recognition, speaks 115 phrases that tout Jedi Wisdom and Lightsaber mastery. He can show off his Jedi Lightsaber skill, as well as his 360 Lightsaber attack! One of the coolest things about this Master Yoda? My friend Amy, one of the creative minds at Monkey Bar Collective, wrote the toy script for Legendary Yoda. Legendary, indeed!

 

81uJyGn7VPL SL1500

 If only I had 4k to invest in my very own Star Wars bed from Pottery Barn Kids. How insane is this thing? 

Img42c

 

Speaking of the Millennium Falcon, Lego has several new sets in honor of the Force Awakens. The Millennium Falcon is such an iconic Star Wars ship, so it’s great that this generation of Star Wars fans will appreciate it too—whether a bed or a Lego set.

Lego star wars force awakens millennium falcon 1

BB-8 Droid from Sphero

Gadget fans are going crazy for this guy. The app-enabled BB-8 Droid from Sphero is proving to be the must-have for Star Wars fans, collectibles and geeks alike. Gizmodo is even calling it the “coolest Star Wars toy ever.” I saw several friends in my feed hit Toys ‘R Us at midnight for this cool gadget.

68026044597504p

In case you weren’t able to snag BB-8 at TRU, our pals at Bed Bath and Beyond are getting in on the Star Wars #ForceFriday frenzy, too. Word on the street is, BBB has some still in stock. Unfortunately for us, you can’t use your stash of BBB coupons on this droid!

 

Did you score some good stuff for #ForceFriday? What were your favorites?

Reading Enrichment with Play-Doh and Star Wars

With school back in session, I wanted to share one of the many activities that we’ve been doing to sharpen and enhance Biggie’s reading skills.


Because of his late September birthday, we redshirted our five year old and thus, I’ve been vigilant about bridging the transition to Kindergarten. I have much to say about redshirting and transitional kindergarten in general, but I’ll save that for another day. Today, it’s all about Play-Doh and Star Wars.

Reading enrichment comes in many forms, but for one rainy afternoon, we paired Play-Doh and Star Wars to engage in a hands-on reading activity that just happened to focus on Biggie’s favorite characters. I let J flip through one of his favorite books right now, which is a DK Readers Level One book called Who Saved the Galaxy? by Catherine Saunders. Since he’s not quite reading fluidly on his own, I love the fact that this book has characters he loves and can decipher words with graphic help. Not to mention, it’s a well known tactic that familiar characters engage beginning readers. In our case, my beginning reader is most interested in things like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, space and Star Wars.


For this project, we used Play-Doh’s new Ultimate Rainbow Pack. The wide range of colors makes this activity fun since the novelty of new colors and variety keeps J interested in the task at hand. Once he picked his colors, he used various cutters to cut out letters for characters like Luke Skywalker.


We moved on to other characters and even picked colors that matched the characters color scheme; yellow and brown complemented C 3P0 quite perfectly!

To change it up, we decided to roll letters, which also works on those fine motor skills, and is important for proper writing utensil handling. By rolling the letters, I found that it was a great way to better understand letter formation since he had to manipulate pieces to form the letters.


Our most favorite part of this project was making a model of R2D2. This project was a fun way to work together to create something we both like! To work further on those fine motor skills, I let J cut out the tiny buttons that make up R2D2’s robotic exterior. I helped J to make the formation of R2D2 himself, but allowed him to make the final touches of all the pieces.


By pairing Play-Doh and Star Wars, not only were we able to keep occupied and have fun on a rainy afternoon, but we made Play-Doh educational by twisting it into a reading activity. Play-Doh isn’t the cleanest activity, so I’d suggest using Glad Press and Seal for easy clean up. To make Play-Doh an educational activity on our own, just grab your favorite book, pull words and play away. The more accessories, colors and words, the better!

I’m so sure teachers do activities like this in school, but for us at home, it’s a great way to sharpen reading skills and express creativity by bringing our favorite characters to life via Play-Doh and Vine!

Full disclosure:  we were provided with a sample of Play-Doh, but we used our own creativity for this fun project.  As always, all opinions are my own.

Toy Fair 2011: Hasbro Showroom, Boy Toys

Along with many of my blogging and media colleagues, Toy Fair affords us an opportunity to take a glimpse into toy manufacturers’ lineup of new products for 2011.  A few big brands opened their doors for informational tours of booths and showrooms, including #2 toy maker, Hasbro.

I already mentioned a few notables from our tour of Hasbro’s Toy Fair showroom, but Hasbro continues to underscore their success in existing toys and licenses, which includes many of the familiar products that have shows on the new family channel, the Hub, a joint venture with Discovery Communications.

I’m finding it quite difficult to organize everything I saw over the past few weeks, so I’ll try to post them in good-sized chunks to avoid bombarding too much information at once.

Here are just a few of the many new toys for boys from Hasbro:
IMG_8860wtmk

Hasbro’s new Boys Toys didn’t disappoint. Marvel Super Heroes, once again, have a big presence in Hasbro’s lineup of new toys.  With Thor and Captain America hitting the big screen later this year, Hasbro has several new toys, including role play sets, that will have launches coinciding with movie releases.

(above) The Lightning Hammer is a replica of Thor’s signature weapon, and is fully equipped with electronic battle sounds and a launching projectile.
IMG_8871wtmk

The Captain America Disc Launching Shield fires miniature foam disks and has a diameter of 15 inches.

Because I have a smaller super hero fan, I love the Super Hero Squad 3-Packs.  In addition to other popular super heroes, Hasbro will have Thor and Captain America 3-Packs as well. I’m excited to see this segment of Super Heroes go on to expand with more accessories and playsets
IMG_9157wtmk
IMG_9150wtmkIMG_9158wtmk

Aside from the Marvel Super Heroes, Rescue Bots (Transformers) and Star Wars are joining this chunkier line up for smaller hands.
IMG_9153wtmkIMG_9152wtmk

Read More

May the Fourth Be With You!

Happy Star Wars day, everyone!  May the 4th be with you!

As a nudge to the iconic phrase from Star Wars, “May the force be with you,” May 4th is dubbed Star Wars Day.  While many hardcore fans are celebrating with Princess Leia cupcakes and Hot Dog Lightsabers, I thought I’d share just a few of the latest Star Wars goodies, starting with some of Hasbro’s upcoming toy launches.

Star Wars

Read More