So I really dropped the ball on getting around to this post as late as I did. San Diego Comic Con has always served as an exhibition space for Hasbro to show off a lot of their upcoming toys alongside a few toys are already available that they are trying to promote. With me being almost a year late a lot of the “upcoming items” have already been released or are almost here.

What I’m really pissed at myself is that this would have been a really good opportunity to get on Hasbro’s radar and hopefully create a professional relationship with them. Considering that most of the toys that I’ve been collecting over the last couple years are Transformers which are made by Hasbro, such a relationship would have benefited me greatly.

Looking back at Hasbro’s, I’m not going to lie it wasn’t that impressive, especially compared to what they brought out with them for Comic Con 2019. The way they had the Nerf Guns displayed, the giant dioramas using Marvel action figures. I’m a bit curious what was the cause of the decline in quality for 2022’s Hasbro booth, although I won’t be surprised if it’s another result of COVID-19. Either Hasbro is unwilling to spend the extra money designing and building an awesome activation for fear that they might need the money for a rainy day, or maybe the people responsible for designing and building such awesome booths were unfortunately let go.

While Hasbro has a pretty diversified catalog of properties they make toys for, their Comic Con booth is best summarized in 4 categories: Transformers, G.I. Joe, Marvel, and Star Wars. For Transformers and Marvel the big things they were really pushing were the Transformers Evolution line, and the Marvel Legends Series. 1 really nice thing I like with Hasbro’s booth at least compared to like Bandai Namco’s booth, is that by focusing so much on a few specific brands instead of trying to cram as much of their catalog into the booth as possible, it made it really easier for me to organize my thoughts about this and also gave me a reason to bust out some header tags.

Anyway, enjoy!

Transformers

2022 marked the 15th anniversary for Michael Bay’s Transformers film which gave birth to a multimillion dollar movie franchise. To commemorate the occasion Hasbro came out with this box set of the first 5 Autobots. From left to right you have Ironhide, Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, Ratchet, and Jazz.

Here are the 5 OG Bayverse Autobots in vehicle form. Looking at them now, while I do like how they found a way to incorporate the accessories into the vehicular form so they’re not just hanging loose, I feel like they should have tried to come up with a better way to either hide them, or at the very least make them look more like a natural part of the cars.

The Optimus Prime Auto-Converting Robot—Flagship Collector’s Edition along with the Optimus Prime Auto-Converting Trailer with Roller – Collector’s Edition. Aside from being big the cool thing with these is that they’re little articulated robots that can transform and move on their own and can be controlled via a mobile app on your phone. The downside is that they are also really expensive. Optimus alone is a grand while the trailer is like 750 bucks.

An Engineering Pilot 1 model of Star Saber/Victory Saber. In terms of the production process this is an early prototype which is made to test out the functionality of the design.

Here’s a Deco Master Model of Star Saber/Victory Saber in vehicle mode. In the production process, the Deco Master Model is the final copy that is used as a reference for production.

An assortment of figures from that Shattered Glass line. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Shattered Glass line is basically the Transformers Mirror Universe where the good guys are bad and the bad guys are good.

Close up on Shattered Glass Jetfire. I was tempted to get this 1 a few months ago, but considering that I already have the regular version, and the fact that room and money is bit tight at the moment I decided against it.

Shattered Glass Star Scream. The color scheme on this is very reminiscent of the mainstream universe’s Jetfire.

Here’s the Titan class figure of 2022, Cybertron Universe Metroplex from the Transformers: Cybertron anime that was a part of the Unicron Trilogy. Ever since I got into collecting Transformers I’ve grabbed up every almost every Titan class figure they’ve come out with—almost. This 1 is the only 1 I willingly passed up on. There were just too many things I didn’t like about it.

Insecticon Kickback, another figure from the Transformers: Legacy line.

Galvatron, another Transformers: Legacy figure. I like how they gave him the Matrix of Leadership necklace he wore in Transformers: The Movie. From what I understand this is basically a reissue of the the War for Cybertron: Kingdom Galvatron, retooled to be more cartoon accurate.

Blitzwing in his tank mode. Like the Studio Series Autobots boxset with their accessories, I’m a bit disappointed how they handled Blitzwing sword, just pinning it to the turret like that, instead of trying to figure out how to hide it.

G.I. Joe

Cobra High Speed Sentry AKA the Hiss tank.

A figure of Tracker.

Xomat and Tomax of the Crimson Guard.

Storm Shadow as he looked in the 1983 G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon which is probably his more iconic look. Honestly I prefer how he looked in the 1989 cartoon.

Dr. Mindbender. Looking back I don’t remember him having that number tattooed on his forehead when I was a kid.

Tiger Force member Stuart “Outback” Selkirk. According to the G.I. Joe wiki the members of Tiger Force were uniforms that are mainly green and yellow and vehicles with a matching color scheme. If this is the case I wonder why they put this guy in a tiger t-shirt.

Bazooka, wearing in his number 14 football jersey. I’m a bit surprised they made the figure with a white jersey since Bazooka is normally shown wearing a red jersey.

A Cobra Stinger with Cobra Officer from their retro line.

This is a neat set, it’s Lonzo “Stalker” Wilkinson with the A.W.E. Striker. What makes this particular figure and vehicle so significant is that it is a mash up between G.I. Joe and Transformers. The Striker is actually a Transformer, more specifically it’s supposed to be Bumblebee. I’m wondering if this is supposed to be a reference to Transformers: Last Knight where it was revealed that Bumblebee helped the allies during WWII where his alternate form was an old Mercedes-Benz.

Marvel

A big ass sentinel figure. Like the Unicron from 2019 this guy was a HasLab campaign item, where in order to become a production product a certain number of backers had to express their interest in it by putting down deposits. It might seem a bit weird for a big toy company like Hasbro do a crowdsource campaign for a product, but  it’s actually pretty smart on their end. If you look at some of their other HasLab campaign items you can see they mostly do it for their more ambitious products, products that are really big and therefore really expensive. As cool as the HasLab stuff is, the price tags are going to make a lot of people reluctant to buy them. Rather than take the risk of sending them through production and have their products tank by becoming shelf warmers before making their way into the bargain bin, by doing a crowdsource campaign they are not only able to get an accurate gauge of how much people are interested in their products but also by taking money in they can recoup some of their costs and ensure they are at least able to sell off the first production run.

This thing is pretty cool. I really like how they included the tentacles which I feel is a detail from the cartoon/comics that, I feel that’s 1 of those details from the cartoon/comics that was never recreated in previous Sentinel figures. Note the Bastian and female Prime Sentinel figures. Like with most crowdsource campaigns, Hasbro was incentivizing people into contributing by offering a few extra depending on how many backers they were able to receive. Apparently this thing did really well because not only is Hasbro throwing in the Bastian and Prime Sentinel figure, but they’re also throwing in the Master Mold alternative head that’s right here at the bottom, as well as a battle damaged and Tri-Sentinel alternate heads.

Another big ass figure, it’s Galactus with some of his heralds. At his hands you have the Silver Surfer and Nova, while at his feet you have Firelord and I believe Morg the Executioner.

From X-Men you have Mojo, Dazzler, Long Shot, Jean Grey and Morph. I fucked up on my F-stop setting but if you look closely you can see that it’s Morph from season 2 of the X-Men cartoon when he was evil and always had bags under his eyes.

Wolverine laying down looking all jealous at a picture of Jean and Cyclops. While most people would recognize this because it’s a meme, I’m sure more hardcore X-Men fans would remember that this is from a scene from the ’90s X-Men cartoon.

Star Wars

Here’s a diorama recreating the from Mandalorian where Boba Fett and Fennec Shand show up at Jabba the Hutt’s palace and kill Bib Fortuna who took over Jabba’s operation after he was killed in Return of the Jedi.

And I’ll close this out with a couple shots of some Star Wars figures which while brand new have packaging reminiscent of how the original action figures looked in the ’70s.

And that’s it for my highlights of the Hasbro booth. Sorry I didn’t have more, but like I said there just wasn’t that much that interested in. Even though i’m way late, I still have a few more posts from San Diego Comic Con, as well as a few other conventions, so don’t forget to come back for more.