Spoiler-Hunting In The Toy Aisle

Spoiler-Hunting In The Toy Aisle

Posted on Thursday February 2, 2012, 15:51 by Ali Plumb in Empire States

As a blog about movie tie-in toys and the spoilers they reveal, the following images will contain details you may not want to hear about just yet. So consider the spoiler horn firmly sounded. *Honk*.

Last week, our man Phil went to the London Toy Fair. There, he saw the latest Avengers action-figures, as well Lego interpretations of certain scenes from the film.

When he got back, Phil posted a couple of snaps of a Hulk toy, noted The Incredible One’s brown chinos, then outlined the details of the Lego-fied Avengers scenes he’d seen. Interesting stuff, especially for die-hard Marvel fanboys and/or nevernudes.

But I can’t help wondering... is it news? Of course, in many ways it is, but somehow investigating miniaturised versions of movie characters in an exhibition hall feels like... not news.

Most movie news comes from interviews, press releases, contacts, and, increasingly, stars’ social media outlets – but from the looks of things, premature unveilings of toy tie-ins are becoming a regular source of previously unreleased information.

At the risk of pissing off Phil (and half the internet), for me, finding out “news” this way is a little disconcerting. Here at Empire, there are unwritten rules about what's good enough for publication: you won't see trailers for trailers, for example, or on-set paparazzi shots, or bootleg videophone-in-the-back-of-the-cinema footage.

But toys... toys seem to fall in the grey area between “not good enough quality” and “very interesting indeed.” So my question for you guys is this – is this the kind of news you’re interested in? Are photographs of toy catalogues of upcoming films the kind of thing you like to read about?

To give you some examples, here are some, um, examples.

Things we learnt: Catwoman has a nice bum, wears ‘kinky boots’ with silver heels and looks good in 3D reading glasses.

Things we learnt: Bane cocks a good sarcastic eyebrow, Batman looks incredibly earnest in his old age, and Catwoman changes her mask as and when the need arises.

Things we learnt: This may be the basic shape of the quinjet the Avengers will fly about in. Whether or not it will fire "lauching missiles" is also still unclear – my guess: yes.

I put all these pictures in this blog and slap a large, Riddler-like question mark next to them to start a debate. Are images like these worthy of your time or ours? Should anyone care about badly scanned snaps of plastic toys? Or when it comes to films as highly anticipated as The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, is this exactly the kind thing you want to know about – if only to keep on top of everything the online movie universe is chatting about? In the desperate persuit of spoilers, are images like these a step too far? I need your thoughts - ideally, in the comment box below.