The Best Toys Of 2021

Let’s get this ginormous robot out of the way so the rest of this year’s entries will fit. For nearly four decades, Transformers fans have been dreaming about the big orange spaceship that first brought the Autobots and Decepticons to Earth millions of years ago. For ages the Ark has been a half-disc-shaped spaceship, famously lodged in the side of a volcano. Now, thanks to the Transformers’ Kingdom line, the Ark has its own massive robot form.

You might want to stand back, this image is kind of big.

Standing 19 inches tall and covered with cool details, the Ark’s robot form would have ended the conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons pretty damn quick had it existed in the original cartoon. This is a beast of a toy, so big that my original plan to photograph him for this year-end list was thwarted because I spend most of my time in a hospital bed and there was just not room for anything more than this head shot:

Of course, with great size comes great pricing, which in this case is around $170. But hey, you can pull out his chest and transform it into a robot named Mainframe, which in turn transforms into Autobot computer Teletraan-1. Who can put a price on that sort of utility?

Hasbro can, and it’s still $170. Gonna put him back up on the top shelf and move on to smaller, mostly cheaper things.

I’ve been playing with Snap Ships from PlayMonster since 2020, and I keep forgetting to tell people how good they are. They are so good. Snap Ships are part of a line of modular building toys you can use to put together all sorts of futuristic vehicles, from mechs and monsters to space fighters and cruisers. There’s a whole backstory involving an evil alien empire known as The Komplex and a human-lead alliance, The Forge, determined to resist the empire’s spread. The good guys are white and green, the bad guys are red and black, and both sides look super cool when assembled.

The entire system is modular, so you can take ship parts from any set and combine them with any other parts, building your own personalized armada. The best thing about Snap Ships, aside from the cool designs, is that the sets are pretty inexpensive, ranging from $8 for smaller kits to $40 for the big mother…ships.

Remember Gargoyles, the dark, mature, and complex Disney cartoon that was a contemporary of Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men? The one about the thousand-year-old stone statues that awaken in contemporary NYC and become the city’s protectors? That show had some amazing toys back in the day, but nothing as amazing as NECA’s new Goliath.

The obvious choice for the first figure in the Gargoyles line, Goliath is the leader of the infamous stoner group: massive, mighty, and just a little tragic. NECA’s highly detailed Goliath figure stands eight inches tall with an impressive wingspan to boot. Too scary for you? Swap out his face and hands and catch the stoic leader reading a good book.

Goliath is out now and runs about $35 or so at specialty toy stores. And don’t worry, he won’t be alone for long–Demona and Hudson figures are already in the works.

There were so many good Lego sets released this year, from the inclusivity-celebrating Everyone Is Awesome collection of rainbow-colored minifigures to the outstanding Vintage Typewriter. From a pure gaming standpoint, however, nothing topped the incredibly intricate brick engineering of the Lego Super Mario 64 Question Block. On the outside, it’s a beautiful yellow cube with rivets and white question marks. Hidden inside are several small-scale scenes from the Nintendo 64 classic, including a tiny little version of Princess Peach’s castle.

Not only is it filled with great gaming memories, but the set is also super fun to build. Watching the cube slowly take shape, fiddling with the little Mario bits. It took me a good weekend to put it all together (I’m getting slow), but it was a very good weekend indeed. Unfortunately, the $170 set is pretty hard to find right now. If you see one, snag it.

I’ve been avoiding Hasbro’s Studio Series figures for the past couple of years because they’ve mainly been about characters from the live-action movies, which I’m not too keen on. But this year’s ‘86 movie line, based on the original Transformers: The Movie animated feature, hit me right in the nostalgia gland.

The line features movie-accurate (or as accurate as Hasbro can get) versions of characters from the iconic film. Newcomers (at the time) like Hot Rod, Kup, and Nipples the Motorcycle (Wreck-Gar) are presented in movie-accurate colors, with little details pulled straight from the animation cels. As with other figures in the Studio Series, each comes packaged with a movie-inspired backdrop for photos and display.

Even better, the figures are in scale with one another. The original Dinobots were relatively small figures. The ‘86 Studio Series Hot Rod figure is six-and-a-half inches tall. Grimlock and Slug (aka Slag) are both eight-and-a-half inches in robot form, relatively towering over their fellow Autobots. Now all I need is a movie-accurate Optimus Prime corpse and I’ll be all set.

Hooray for independent toymakers doing their own thing. Titanic Creations recently launched its Soul Wars series, a line of original kaiju creatures each with their own original backstory. For instance, Titanicus, who looks a bit like Godzilla with icebergs on his back. He first appeared in 1912 when he famously attacked the HMS Titanic. Experts in the kaiju sciences believe he was originally a superweapon created by the lost city of Atlantis.

Then there’s Nosferadon, an alien monster who fell to Earth as an egg and befriended a young Jewish boy named Wolf in 1930s Germany. When Wolf’s parents were taken by German soldiers, Wolf and Nosferadon set off together to try and find them.

I love these figures. They are nice and big, both six inches tall and 12 inches long. They aren’t very articulated, but they’re quite detailed. And they come in these lovely simple boxes that contain just a plastic insert and the toy itself.

There are two more figures launching in the line early next year, including Griffixis, a birdlike kaiju who is the alien enemy of Nosferadon, and Skureaus, described as “the ultimate weapon of ancient Egypt.” I’m gonna collect the whole set.

You may have heard of Squishmallows, the incredibly popular line of egg-shaped stuffed animals, plants, foodstuffs, and more from Jazwares. They come in various shapes and sizes, with prices ranging from a couple of bucks for tiny ones or $60 or so for the absolute units. They also take up a lot of room in my home, where my spouse has managed to collect over 100 of the damn things.

Enter Squishville, the new offshoot of Squishmallows featuring the same egg-shaped animals in more egg-appropriate sizes. These little cuties are two inches tall and come in packs of six for $15 or so. You can also buy little playsets for them to occupy, filled with furniture to play with and outfits to wear.

Best of all, they don’t take up my entire living space. Our children can still move through the house without tripping over them, and my wheelchair readily runs them over instead of snagging them in its wheels.

It’s about time I told you all about Beastbox. Created by a company called 52Toys (pronounced Five Two Toys), Beastbox is a line of robotic animals that transform into two-inch cubes. Yes, I know, that makes them technically the third transforming robot entry on this list, but these are not made by Hasbro and are very cool, so we’re doing this.

There are apes that transform into boxes. Also parrots, wolves, lions, sharks, monkies, owls, insects, dinosaurs, hippos, rhinos, and more, all changing from these highly detailed mechanical animals into these sleek little high-tech boxes.

What makes them perfect for me, an obsessive collector of robot things, is that each character comes with a clear plastic box that is designed to interlock with other boxes. You can connect them side-to-side and top-to-bottom. You can build walls of these colorful plastic animal boxes. They don’t take up much room, and they generally cost around $20 to $30 apiece, so it’s easy to budget myself one a month, and then go over that budget. The only downside is these are imported, so you’ve either got to grab them from a specialty toy store or roll the dice on AliExpress.

From the best anime series of 2021 comes the greatest ridiculously inexpensive imported toy cars of 2021. Pui Pui Molcar is a short-form stop-motion anime about a world where people drive around inside living guinea pigs. It’s ridiculously adorable. Since the series is from Japan and such quirky fare takes its time making its way to the West, I had to get my toy fix imported via the fine folks at Hobby Link Japan.

These five little cars are part of Takara Tomy’s Tomica toy car line, basically Japan’s answer to Matchbox. They are part of the Dream series, which features fanciful licensed designs. Each comes in a little box, perfect for storage and display.

What’s so lovely about the Pui Pui Molcar Tomica toys is they are heavy and die-cast, while the finish on the vehicles feels sort of soft. Not quite flocked and fuzzy, but the hint of a fur feel is there. They only cost like six bucks apiece, which is well inside my annual toy budget. Plus they each have a permanently surprised look, so you can pretend they are reacting to whatever that red thing is on my desk. What is that thing?

You might be wondering why we’re looking at a pink, purple, and blue turtle sitting on a toilet. We are not. We are looking at a pink, purple, and blue TURDle, and it’s sitting on a transparent toilet, which is the best, most horrible sort of toilet imaginable. I shall now begin taking questions.

Q: What is the turtle’s name?

A: It is a TURDle, and its name is Shelbert.

Q: What does Shelbert eat?

A: Duh, pink Aqua Sand, like all turdles.

Q: What does Shelbert poop?

A: Just like humans, Shelbert poops exactly what he eats.

Q: Why is Shelbert’s neck so long?

A: To teach kids to use their pets’ necks as convenient carrying handles.

Q: Why is the toilet transparent?

A: Because all toilets should be.

No further questions, your honor.

As an adult whose children took years to potty train, I approve of any toy that helps remove some of the stigma from dropping a load of Aqua Sand into my clear acrylic toilet.

And that’s the toys that have kept me somewhat sane throughout this wacky year. Feel free to share your favorites in the comments. I’m always looking for recommendations. No seriously, always. It’s kind of a problem.