Awesome Toys

The trend of brand biopics continues with this movie about the meteoric rise and fall of Beanie Babies. It follows the story of toy salesman Ty Warner, who worked with three women to create this pop culture juggernaut of the 1990s. Stars Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Snook, and Geraldine Viswanathan and premieres 7.28.23 on Apple TV+.

Process X visited Marusho Co., a Japanese factory that makes metal toys. During this production run, you’ll see how they create tiny airplanes by cutting sheet metal into strips, stamping their fuselages, and assembling the parts. It’s amazing to see how much handwork goes into creating each toy.

MicroCoaster’s miniature roller coaster kit lets you create custom tracks from over 900 parts, with 19 feet of track and a battery-powered lift hill. The S-scale coaster that rolls on its rails was inspired by Cedar Point’s Maverick coaster and rolls on 30 steel wheels. The initial batch is sold out but subscribe to their newsletter for updates on more releases.

Those Kenner Star Wars AT-AT toys were awesome to play with, but we had to use our imaginations to get them to walk as they did in The Empire Strikes Back. For engineer James Bruton, that wasn’t good enough, so he got to work rebuilding a version of the imperial walker with a servo-powered drivetrain that lets it really walk.

Artist Duane Perera is a master at his craft. He makes playful miniature scenes inspired by pop culture. Each diorama features characters enjoying everyday life, like playing video games, listening to CDs, or record shopping. His making of video for his Scarface plays NES diorama is priceless. Duane sells prints of his work on Redbubble, and we want all of them.

When a problem comes along, you must whip it. Super7 pays tribute to the founding fathers of de-evolution with its first-ever Devo ReAction figure. The retro-style 3.75″ figure features the likeness of a young Mark Mothersbaugh donning his Devo Dome and ready to crack that whip. It even comes with a tiny bowl of whipped cream.

One of the more entertaining LEGO bricks is the 1×4 spring shooter that fires tiny plastic projectiles. Brickstory Builds thought it might be fun to assemble a bunch of these bricks and make them fire together. After building a wonderfully satisfying train, he built a wall of 400 and attempted to trigger them all at once.

The S adds to his arsenal with an impressive-looking cardboard machine gun that can rapidly fire numerous rubber bands. It has a motor drive mechanism that turns a pair of gears when its trigger is pulled, sequentially releasing 16 rubber bands in just a few seconds. We wonder if he could double or triple up on rubber bands or if that would jam it.

Despite what your eyes are telling you, the blue and red LEGO space explorer minifigs in this image are the exact same size. Mathematician Henry Segerman shows how perspective and a custom 3D-printed structure produce this mind-bending optical illusion.

NERF makes some cool blasters, but the custom community is always outdoing Hasbro’s factory toys. WalcomS7 shows off the world’s fastest NERF blaster, Gatling Tommy’s M134 minigun. The full-auto blaster has a 500-round capacity and fires 58 darts per second. It’s fed by a belt mechanism and an ammo backpack attached via a massive 3D-printed chain.

While you could buy a playable Pac-Man game for less money, the official LEGO version gives you the joy of assembling one yourself. The 2651-piece kit features a mechanical playfield and scoreboard, spinning Pac-Man and ghost characters on its top, and a light-up coin slot.

Funwhole’s building block sets give LEGO a run for its money with more precise parts and lighting. This 1741-piece camper van kit features a fully-furnished interior, working doors, LED headlights, and details like a roof rack, solar panels, and a canvas shade for its outdoor seating area. The finished model measures 14.9″ L x 8.4″ H x 8.6″ W.

This very special collectible from Mighty Jaxx and design trio Ilustrata celebrates three amazing things – Godzilla, sushi, and The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The limited-edition 10″ vinyl art toy features Japan’s iconic kaiju made of imaginary sticky rice, raw salmon, and seaweed strips and stomping through the bluest bowl of miso soup we’ve ever seen.

Whether you played with Slinkies, Silly Putty, or Sea Monkeys when you were a kid, you’ll find some wonderful nostalgia in Steven Heller and Jim Heimann’s catalog of American toy advertising. The 528-page book features hundreds of vintage ads that sold dreams to kids and often served as a reflection of their time.

Canon and Takara Tomy teamed up to create this special Nemesis Prime Transformer that turns from a Decepticon into a Canon EOS R5 camera. When in disguise, the 80% scale camera looks just like the real thing, though sadly, it doesn’t snap photos. Preorder by 4.6.2023 for 1.2024 shipping.

Muppets fans will recognize these Super7 action figures as the members of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. The Muppets ReAction Wave 1 set includes 3.75″ Kenner-style figures of the band’s leader, Janice, Floyd, Zoot, Animal, and road manager, Scooter. They’re also available individually, but why would you break up the band?

Apple fans, here’s a fun addition to your desktop. Classicbot’s Trashbot 2.0 Stationery Set includes a Macintosh Finder-inspired metal whiteboard, along with Trashbot and Errorbot figures, as well as folder, floppy disk, and mail icons with magnetic backs. It also includes 100 sticky notes that look like computer windows.

NERF darts typically require a blaster if you want to shoot them across the room. Joel Creates and his brother engineered a NERF dart that can fire itself right from your hand. After playing with compressed air, explosives, and springs, the final design relies on an electric ignition and a magician’s gimmick.

We love watching videos of old things being made as good as new. In this clip, Old Things Never Die got their hands on a vintage mechanical soccer game, disassembled it, sandblasted off the paint and rust, fabricated custom replacement parts, and painstakingly repainted its playfield and players.

The Lord of the Rings fans will drool over this incredible LEGO model of the peaceful elven haven of Rivendell. The 6167-piece kit is one of LEGO’s 10 biggest sets ever and is packed with fantastic details. It includes 15 minifigures: Frodo, Bilbo, Boromir, Elrond, Arwen, Aragorn, Gimli, Merriadoc, Peregrin, Samwise, Legolas, and Gandalf.

This titanium fidget toy features a series of magnetic bars which tilt along a center beam and click into place like toggle switches. The interchangeable buttons let you choose between a mix of rectangular and square switches. Available in grey, purple, or blue anodized finishes.

Artifact Design Co. makes these cool, laser-cut wood racks for displaying collectible toy cars. Each tiny parking space has a cutout to keep the vehicle aligned and its wheels from rolling while allowing easy access for playtime. They come in 1:24-, 1:32- and 1:64-scale sizes and hold collections from 12 to 132 cars.

DanCreator is back with another cardboard NERF gun. This time, he created a Fortnite-inspired sniper rifle that can shoot foam darts. He built it almost entirely from cardboard and hot glue, with a handful of dowel rods and some stiffly bent wire for its springs. It uses a pair of small motors to accelerate and fire each dart.