We sent our intrepid reporter Phil de Semlyen along to the Toy Fair at London's Olympia today to visit the Hasbro stand for the official launch of the Hulk toy from the forthcoming film of The Avengers. So here's a tiny taste of what we can expect from the film, in toy form.So what's the big news? Well, he's big, green and clearly prefers protein to carbs, as is traditional, so it's really much the same Hulk we've seen before. The hair's perhaps a little curlier, in line with Mark Ruffalo's own, but we can't see much Ruffalo in his features (although he is performance-capturing for Hulk). The big news for comics fans is that Hulk's stretchy-pants are now brown, not purple.
If you saw the first **Avengers **trailer that's totally in keeping with Banner's outfit there: he wears a purple shirt and khaki/brown trousers in the glimpse we see of him transforming, so really it shouldn't come as any great revelation or upset.
And hey! If the X-Men can ditch blue-and-yellow for black onscreen, there's no need for Hulk to stick to his traditional Wimbledon ball-boy colour scheme here. Right? Or are you one of the "Purple or GTFO" commenters we saw on our facebook page?
Big Avengers spoiler warning: highlight text below to read
Venturing from Hasbro over to the Lego stand - which, alas, wasn't made from a bajillion tiny bricks - we came across the new range of Avengers Lego kits. The following may be seriously spoilerific so highlight the text to read:
The first, 'Loki’s Cosmic Cube Escape', has the Norse god clutching his cosmic cube on the back of a S.H.I.E.L.D. pick-up. No surprise there: it features in the Captain America post-credits clip. Except that behind the wheel is Hawkeye, helping the impish diety escape. If we're not putting two and two together and making 167, it looks like Loki is exercising mind control over the bowman.
That's possibly borne out in 'Hulk Helicarrier Breakout', a scene that presumably precedes the cube escape. While his staff is being evaluated in Bruce Banner's lab, Loki is imprisoned in a glass cell. Here's where it gets mysterious: the kit features flickable barrels for Hulk to launch across the flight deck and stymie a rescue attempt.
Is it Hawkeye's S.H.I.E.L.D. jet, which we spotted nearby with a mini-Jeremy Renner in the cockpit, that he'll be trying to stop? Could this be a Tinker, Tailor man-on-the-inside scenario?
The final kits - 'Quinjet Aerial Battle', featuring a S.H.I.E.L.D. jet piloted by Black Widow, and 'Captain America's Avenging Cycle' - had elements too secret even to reveal at the show. One figure missing was one of Loki's co-villains. Could it be a tiny Simon Cowell? We'll find out when the kits go onsale in early April.
The Avengers is out on April 27, which is why we're building this stasis system so we can sleep away the days until then without suffering agonies of waiting.[[Poll567]]