Mr. Spock is captured as he appears in the classic episode “Devil in the Dark,” with a cave diorama and a Horta alien — the first Horta toy ever made! Spock himself will have interchangeable legs for standing or crouching poses, and interchangeable hands to hold a phaser or tricorder or establish a mental link with the Horta. He even comes with an alternate grimacing head!

The second Star Trek Select figure, Captain Kirk, comes with an engineering room diorama base, a second set of hands, a broken phaser and a control rod, as well as a second set of legs so he can deliver a flying kick to the reeling figure of Khan himself! That’s right, this figure is based on the episode “Space Seed,” and re-creates the first battle between the longtime foes.

Both figures come in packed-to-the-gills Select packaging, and will be available at comic shops and specialty stores in early June. Pre-order today with your local shop or favorite online retailer! Check the gallery below for more images!

To get ahead in the world of toys, it takes originality, determination, and guts. Wendy Bryan may have took those elements a bit too literal, as her plush company, “I Heart Guts“, is all about the innards. What started as a one-time gag grew into a flourishing business based solely around cartoonish internal organs with endearing faces and personalities.

We first met Wendy and her team at New York Toy Fair 2013, where we took a first-hand look at these adorable guts and saw many making their world debut at the show. Since then, we had a chance to get some one-on-one time with the originator of a very unique brand of plushies to talk to us about the origins of the company and it’s evolution, plans for the future, and some advice for budding toymakers.

Nerdvolution: How did “I Heart Guts” get started?

Wendy: I Heart Guts was born in a bar. I am a compulsive doodler and first drew these organ characters when I was heartbroken and drunk drawing sad hearts on cocktail napkins. Years later, my husband spied the guts in my sketchbook and loved them, so I figured I’d do something with them. I designed a heart shirt, some buttons and stickers and stuck them up on a website almost as a joke. But soon requests for specific organs came in – pancreas for a diabetic friend, uterus for a pregnant friend, and so on.

Each organ was drawn and added by popular demand. One day, someone who’d received a real kidney wanted to “give back” a plush one to his donor brother and asked why we didn’t make toys? Once we figured out how to make plush organs, the business really took off.

Nerdvolution: Are you surprised that it has come along so much in the past few years?

Wendy: It is something of a shock to me. I think the guts took on a life of their own because of the personal relationship people have with their own bodies. Everyone has a body, everyone is a walking bag of organs, so everyone is interested in body parts, especially if something goes wrong, or if they work on it, or study it. They say laughter is the best medicine, so I think our products are great for the type of person who can look in the face of illness and laugh.

Nerdvolution: You attribute part of the launch of the company to your husband suggesting you “do something” with these characters. Is this essentially a family business?

Wendy: Absolutely. My wonderful husband, Codi Lazar, is the backbone of this business. I am the flaky creative type; he can deal with numbers, handle accounting, deal with legal issues, and secure loans, all the boring stuff you need to do to run a company. He has been the I Heart Guts operations manager on the side in addition to his work as a scientist, musician and DJ. But as of this year we are both working on the Guts full time. It’s scary but exciting. Wish us luck. A lot of our growth is due to our amazing distributors at DKE Toys, they wholesale our toys along with hundreds of other small independent toy brands to stores worldwide, mostly small quirky boutiques with a taste for the odd.

Nerdvolution: When you began, were you hand-making the items?

Wendy: I handmade the original felt organs with help from my mom, who is an excellent seamstress. My husband and I dragged these around to different places and snapped silly photos of them in Tokyo, New York and Los Angeles just for fun. I never sold any handmade organs since my prototyping skills are not so good — the organs looked more like potatoes with arms than the organs I had drawn. When we got into mass-making the plush, I drew up specs and sent them out to actual plush manufacturers, who really brought the organs alive and made them look great.

Nerdvolution: What was the evolution of the product line, since the company not only does plush items but stationery, posters, and clothing.

Wendy: We started with button sets, sticker sets and shirts and added characters that way. We add characters and products by popular demand — people are always writing in to say, please make a trachea or please make a placenta. Certain body parts, like the rectum, no one asked for. But we thought it would be funny, and the shape is way cuter than the tube I thought it was, so we added it anyway.

Hopefully our organs can expand into some other areas. We recently collaborated with Tattly to make temporary tattoos and we worked with Chronicle Books for the journal and stationery. We do have a few more exciting collaborations up our sleeves, so stay tuned on our website!

Nerdvolution: Tell us about some of your inspirations, both in the world of illustration and in the plush business?

Wendy: I am most inspired by Sanrio and San-X characters, Domo Kun, and kawaii Japanese stationery and illustration. Scandinavian design and illustration are also a huge inspiration for clean lines, bold shapes and great colors. I am inspired by Friends With You, Giant Microbes, Ugly Dolls, Particle Zoo, Noferin, Amanda Vissell, Gama-Go, Shawnimals, Jeremyville, and Pee & Poo.

Nerdvolution: I read that you were always into making things that were simultaneously cute and a bit on the gross side. What were some of the things you had made?

Wendy: One year I laminated slices of head-cheese and sent them out as valentines to all my friends and family. I once made a fetus out of bread dough, baked it and covered it with hair and jam for an experimental art class. It was pretty gross. I wish I had a photo of it, but my fabulous art professor took a giant bite out of its head. I also made a cookie cutter in the shape of the mudflap truck girl and set hundreds of these cookies on fire with a blowtorch. I guess I got my start in plush when I was thirteen and my best friends asked me to make a planet puppet for a presentation about Uranus.

Nerdvolution: What were the challenges of starting a business in the toy industry?

Wendy: We learned by making a ton of mistakes. We never set out to be a toy business, and I still don’t really know how well we fit into the traditional toy industry. Most stores that carry the Guts are small funky boutiques and quirky science museums or medical student bookstores, not so much toy stores. Let’s be real – even my own kids would pick out Spiderman or Hello Kitty over a plush lung. We had a booth at Toy Fair for the first time this year, so it took us six years after making our first plush to feel ready to exhibit there.

Nerdvolution: What’s the most popular character/ organ that you sell?

Wendy: The heart outsells all other organs four to one. You know, love and all that. Some organs turned out to be far more popular than we would have expected. For instance, our second round of plush included the brain, uterus, pancreas and gallbladder. We figured that the gallbladder would be the worst-selling of the bunch, but it turns out there are a half-million cholecystectomies every year! Since you can live without this little bile sac, and the surgery is pretty easy, so folks have a sense of humor about it. The gallbladder is pretty popular.

Nerdvolution: What are some of the new organs planned for 2013?

Wendy: We just added tooth, eyeball and heart of gold plushes and hope to add lymph node and skin later this year.

Nerdvolution: What happens when you run out of organs to make plushies from? Or is the plan to use the characters you already have in different ways?

Wendy: We still have a long way to go and new requests come in all the time. Recent requests include the amygdala (part of the brain), diaphragm, and larynx. We’ve had a ton of requests for the adrenal and thymus to be made into plush lately; this immunology lab in Japan studies T-cells, they buy a ton of thymus pins every year and we really want to make the plush just for them. I never thought the glands would be interesting-looking — in my mind they were all just little balloons, but once I really looked, I was amazed by how distinctive their shapes were and also how specialized their functions. But, you’re right, the body is ultimately a finite source for inspiration, so I’m sure we will find new ways to use these characters.

Nerdvolution: Any advice to budding toymakers out there looking to break into the industry?

Wendy: Number one, start small and cheap. Number two, have a lot of ideas. Three, make your idea original. Four, don’t give up if your first idea doesn’t take off. Five, build your audience. Six, protect your idea. Seven, scrape together money. For more in-depth advice on how to make your own custom plush toys, based on my own personal experience and a few Comic Con panels I moderated on the subject with indie toy world luminaries, read this post on my blog.

Nerdvolution: Who is your personal favorite organ?

Wendy: It’s impossible for me to choose! I guess if you put my back to the wall I would say the uterus, since it’s where we all got our start. Oh, but I love the heart, too. I can’t pick. Don’t make me pick!

Check out the full inventory of “I Heart Guts” plushies, t-shirts, posters, stationery and more on their official website!

For decades, those words were synonymous with comic books in the mainstream media, thanks to the fan-favorite depiction of comic book images in the DC Comics 1960s Batman Classic TV Series. Today, Diamond Select Toys (DST) is proud to announce it has teamed up with Warner Bros. Consumer Products (WBCP), on behalf of DC Entertainment, to create high-quality collectibles based on the TV classic, including busts and statues.

“The Batman Classic TV Series was on my TV constantly while growing up,” said Chuck Terceira, director of DST. “Working on these characters is a dream come true. I know there are a large number of fans out there who feel the same way about the show, and we will give them the collectibles they’ve always dreamed of!”

Diamond Select Toys has multiple product categories supporting the Batman Classic TV Series license, including busts, statues, vinyl bust banks, bottle openers, and slate artwork, and development on their line of collectible busts has already begun. Character likenesses attached to the DST line include Adam West as Batman, Burt Ward as Robin, Julie Newmar as Catwoman, Frank Gorshin as The Riddler, Burgess Meredith as The Penguin, Cesar Romero as The Joker, and several other famous villains on the television show. DST will also draw on the show’s many distinctive props and sets for new products in the line.

“The world of the Batman Classic TV Series was so fully realized, the designs so iconic, the cast so beloved that I can see us creating distinctive, exciting product for a good, long while,” continued Terceira. “And as a lifelong Batman fan, I look forward to slowly turning my office into my own personal Batcave, full of collectibles that I have always wanted to own. I may never leave!”

Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani have created quite a stir with their work on some of the most fun and ageless comics of all time. They won an Eisner for Tiny Titans, their treatment of DC Comics’ Teen Titans, and their recent Kickstarter campaign for their Aw Yeah Comics series surpassed its goal in record time.

Now, this dynamic duo takes on Dark Horse’s best-known character, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, in an all-new comics series, Itty Bitty Hellboy!

A ghost named Rasputin has been spotted. And Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. are going to find out what’s he up to. Who is Hellboy, anyway? Why does he have such a big hand, and what is it used for? Who’s weirder, he or his friends? What is the B.P.R.D.? And what does chicken soup have to do with all of it? All this and more will be answered in the debut issue, where BIG things happen to Itty Bitty Hellboy!

“Itty Bitty HELLBOY! WOW! Such awesomeness! I haven’t screamed so much AW YEAH SHOUTOUTS in all my life! It is truly an honor to be the next creative team to add to the HELLBOY saga! I have been a fan of Mike Mignola since Hellboy’s early days at Dark Horse LEGENDS! It’s true. Can’t wait! Itty Bitty has never been so HUGE! AW YEAH HELLBOY!” said Art Baltazar, famous cartoonist.

“We get to work on HELLBOY? HELL YEAH!” exclaimed Franco Aureliani. “One of the most iconic characters in all of comics, and we get to bring our own style and story to it! Truly a dream come true! We’re big fans! Itty Bitty Hellboy is going to be a lot of fun . . . and we get to actually say HELL(BOY)!”

“Given the recent developments in Hellboy’s life—falling in love, discovering that he’s the rightful king of England, having his heart torn out and dropped into hell—this is clearly the next logical step in his evolution,” said Hellboy creator Mike Mignola.

Itty Bitty Hellboy #1 arrives on shelves at your local comic shop on August 28.

Dark Horse kicked off C2E2 in style, with what is sure to be some of the biggest news of the weekend. Attendees of the Diamond Retailers Summit were the first to hear the publisher’s announcement of an all-new series in one of comics’ most storied worlds!

For generations, the Wolfriders sought a safe haven. Now, in the Palace of the High Ones, they have found it. But with security, the elves lose the skills that made them superb survivors in a harsh world. Elfquest: The Final Quest poses dire questions: Who stays? Who goes back to the forest? And what grim price will the Wolfriders pay?

“Dark Horse is a company I’ve admired ever since it sprang on the scene in the 1980s. Somehow, as large as they’ve grown, they’ve retained an independent spirit that Richard and I totally identify with. The quality of their offerings is legendary and I’m extremely happy that Elfquest is part of their lineup,” said Elfquest cocreator Wendy Pini.

“Mike Richardson and Dark Horse come from the same publishing DNA as our own company, Warp Graphics, and he retains that gut-deep love of getting comics out into the world. We’re jazzed at all the plans, both traditional and new, they have for Elfquest,” added Elfquest editor and cocreator Richard Pini.

“I’ve known Richard from our very first year and read Elfquest from its inception. I’ve also pursued him and Wendy for nearly as long as Dark Horse has existed. Elfquest has been a lifetime project for Wendy and it is one of comics’ great epics. I am extremely proud to bring their wonderful book to Dark Horse and particularly excited to see what is in store for us over the next three years,” Dark Horse President Mike Richardson continued.

In celebration of the thirty-fifth anniversary of Wendy and Richard Pini’s cult comics classic, Dark Horse proudly welcomes the Wolfriders, the Sun Folk, the Gliders, the Go-Backs, and the High Ones to its own rich history!

The first release will be the prologue to an all-new fantasy epic, Elfquest: The Final Quest, arriving in the fall of 2013! Following that, Dark Horse will release this new story alongside all-new editions of the previously published material from this best-loved series! Look for more details shortly!

At C2E2 this weekend, Dark Horse Deluxe, an imprint of Dark Horse Comics, has licensed rights to create figures based on Powers, a long-running creator-owned series of comics and graphic novels by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Avon Oeming.

Projects include a limited-edition statue of Retro Girl, a central figure in the first Powers story arc, and a boxed set of vinyl figures of the series’ ongoing principal characters.

Combining the genres of superhero fantasy, crime noir, and police procedural, Powers follows the lives and cases of two homicide detectives, Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim, assigned to investigate cases involving people with superhuman abilities, who are referred to as “powers.”

“We have been very particular about merchandising Powers over the years, because I wanted to make sure it was the highest-quality merchandise we could offer,” said Brian Michael Bendis. “I am a giant fan of Dark Horse and the care they give their merchandising. I am very excited about this partnership.”

“We feel that Powers is one of the best graphic-story treatments of the modern era,” Dark Horse Product Development Vice President David Scroggy remarked. “We are delighted to bring these characters forward. Brian Bendis is a master of story construction and dialogue, making him one of today’s most widely read comics writers, and Michael Oeming’s unique art style is one of the most individual in the field. Capturing their creative vision is a challenge we appreciate, and we couldn’t be more excited to work directly with these two talents in making that happen.”

The Retro Girl statue will be sculpted by Tony Cipriano, who has created many popular superhero-themed collectible statues for a variety of companies. Michael Avon Oeming, working in concert with Bendis and Dark Horse, created special art for the statue, which will be used as control art during sculpting. The statue will capture the stylized nature of the graphic art, while anchoring the figure in realism.

“To see your work translated into sculpture is always scary, but I’m very excited to be working with the amazing Tony,” Oeming stated.

Dark Horse also plans a boxed set of four-to-five-inch vinyl figures, which will include protagonists Walker and Pilgrim as centerpieces of the ensemble. Both projects are slated for release in the fourth quarter of 2013. The prototypes will be shown to the trade and the public for the first time as part of the product display in the Dark Horse booth at San Diego Comic-Con in July. Retail prices and edition sizes are to be determined.

You have not had fun until you have shot a marshmallow gun! I was in love with these at NY Toy Fair 2013, and now that I have a few of my own to play with, I thought I would share the joy with you and let you know if these were as great as I remembered. Last time, we reviewed the two mini-marshmallow blow guns on the market from Marshmallow Fun Company, and today we look at the “Marshmallow Stryker” guns, which are one of the big sellers for the company.

The Stryker’s are more gun-like than the blowguns, measuring in at around 10 and a half inches long with two pistol grips (one on the chamber and the other on the handle). There is no trigger with these weapons, you simply use the pump to create air pressure to fire a mini-marshmallow out of the chamber. Loading the mini-marshmallows (which are sold separately and can be easily found in any supermarket) is simple too, just open the loading area and slide in up to 11 mallow payloads into it. I do suggest you clean this in between uses, or else it will get sticky and become very difficult to use.

Loading the gun is simple, firing it is equally easy. The mini-marshmallows will fly up to 20 feet, but on a good day outside with the right amount of wind, you can send it soaring pretty far. Like most of the Marshmallow Fun Company guns, they come in two colors – red and blue, and camouflage. This is a very fun outdoor activity, even if you are not a fan of toys that are weapons. Although it has weapon-like qualities, there is no trigger and the design greatly differentiates it from resembling an actual gun of any kind. It’s basically a system of cylinders with a pump-handle to create air pressure to force mini-marshmallows out, so if you can find a firearm like that, let me know.

The product I was reviewing in this post was actually a twin-pack with a pair of guns, but I could not find it at the time of this review from Amazon. However, I did find the guns sold as singles for only $8 a pop, and a twin-pack would run for roughly the same cost anyway. A typical Nerf dart-gun costs around $16-20 for one about the same size as these Stryker’s, so this is a good deal already compared to the cost of those. Plus, using edible ammo makes it more expendable, as opposed to loosing darts or balls with the Nerf guns. For that price, these are fun little marshmallow guns that are great for outdoor fun year-round!

You can also browse for other marshmallow guns on their official website.

Dynamite Entertainment has inked a deal to include its comics digitally through the Dark Horse Digital store and apps. Thirty single issues and more than twenty collections are available for purchase today! New titles will be added weekly, with all upcoming Dynamite releases available digitally the same day as print.

“We’ve been looking for ways to expand our digital presence, and this is our first step to building an even more robust library of digital comics,” said Dark Horse President Mike Richardson.

“We’re proud to add Dark Horse Digital to our retail partners selling our digital titles to their audience. Our wide range of titles, from Vampirella to Battlestar Galactica, Grimm, The Shadow, Red Sonja, and many of our other Dynamite titles, are a perfect fit for the large audience who purchase Dark Horse titles. We’re thrilled to work with Mike and his team at Dark Horse Digital on this new endeavor and excited about new opportunities to come,” added Nick Barrucci, Dynamite Entertainment’s CEO and publisher.

As a sign of appreciation for its loyal digital subscribers, Dark Horse Digital announces that fifty free first issues from many of its best-selling series will be available for the next forty-eight hours (promotion ends Friday, April 26, at 9 a.m. PST).

Starting Friday morning and throughout the weekend, Dark Horse Digital is offering 10 percent off all bundles in the web store! And confirmed newsletter subscribers will receive an additional coupon! The newsletter coupon stacks with the bundle discount, offering even greater savings.

The sale starts this Friday, April 26, and ends Sunday, April 28, at midnight PST—so head over to Dark Horse Digital and sign up for the Digital Newsletter to maximize the discount.

Dark Horse Comics launched its standalone comic-reader app and digital store on April 27, 2011, and has received incredible support from the continuously growing digital-comics fan base.

Since then, Dark Horse Digital has grown significantly in numbers and readership by featuring its most popular and best-selling titles, including Star Wars, Buffy, Serenity, Hellboy, Conan, and Mass Effect, as well as exclusive digital-only comics such as Falling Skies, Prototype 2, and Dragon Age. Dark Horse Digital also provides sales and discounts for its readers on a weekly basis. It currently offers thousands of comics and continues to increase the digital availability of the Dark Horse back catalog.

Dark Horse Digital is available through all modern web browsers and features cloud storage through both the Google Play and iOS apps.

As the game says, this is good ole’ fashioned team trivia – but trivia is not limited merely to answering questions. Made for gamers age 12 and above, the concept is simple enough. Earn the most points through the various trials to win the game, lather, rinse, repeat. A “host” acts as your dungeon master in this, selecting the trivia cards and reading off the questions before giving the teams two minutes to write their answers down on the answer sheets. Whoever has the most points wins.

Games are fast-paced and move quickly, especially with the two-minute time limit, and can get pretty hectic if you are stumbling with your partner to decide on an answer. Each card has its own topic or category, including entertainment, science & technology, history, geography, sports & recreation, and the fan-favorite “Anything Goes”. The first five questions are “short answer”, where you and your teammate[s] write short answers to solve the questions. The sixth question is where you list four correct answers to things that have multiple correct answers, like what are the four heaviest land mammals or naming the four kids in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”.

The seventh is the “Who Said” category, where a quote is read and players must figure out who said it. Question eight is where you have to figure out what decade something happened in, although you can earn bonus points for guessing the exact year. Question nine is a problem that is answered with a number, and the final question involves drawing a diagram or picture. All in all, a nice change to just asking questions, and allows players to use different problem-solving techniques to answer the trivia.

Technically, there is no board to march a character or game piece around, but there is a “Quiz Card Sleeve” that you can slide the cards into for easy maintenance. There are also 100 quiz cards, which hold a total of 1000 questions on them, 10 score sheets, 200 team answer sheets, and four pencils to write on the aforementioned answer sheets. The trivia is a good mix of difficulties, although there is no batch that is labelled as easy, medium, or hard. It’s more just who happens to know what, but that is the fun of team-baed trivia.

You can order “Pub Trivia” Board Game from Amazon.com for $20, a savings of $15 as the game normally retails for $35, or you can also purchase it in stores from Wal-Mart. For that price, it’s a fun game to play with friends (and even more fun if you are fueled by alcohol like in a proper pub) with plenty of question to keep you guessing and a variety of ways to answer them to keep everything as fair as possible. There will no doubt be expansion packs as well if you need more questions, but there are enough to keep you busy for a pretty decent amount of time. “Pub Trivia” is challenging and fair, offering different ways to hold a quiz game with plenty of versatility and options to keep everyone having fun!

Back at NY Toyfair 2013, we fell in love with the Marshmallow Fun Company and their massive arsenal of mallow-based projectile weapons. Let’s ignore any talks of political correctness and talk about the joy of firing off tiny marshmallows onto inanimate objects, which is absolutely immense! Today, we are taking a look at some of their blowgun style offerings, specifically the “Marshmallow Straight Shooter” and the “Marshmallow Blower”. These narrow toys use mini-marshmallows as the ammo, and are quite the cost-effective way to have some edible firearms fun.

The packaging on both of these guns is very simple and easy for a child to open, being simply on a card with no twisty-ties or inner casing around it. Although there is no target on the back of the cardboard, you can easily glue or tape your own targets to the sturdy backing and utilize it to keep your house a bit safer with all of the mini-marshmallows flying around (although it is suggested that you use these outdoors instead of inside).

The “Marshmallow Straight Shooter” is like a blowdart gun, measuring 11 3/4 inches long. You load a single mini-marshmallow into the chamber, which is located near where you would blow into it. If you have a hearty lung capacity, the projectile should fire up to 30 feet. For best results, I recommend only putting one marshmallow into the gun at a time, and also to do your best to clean the inside, otherwise your gun will get clogged with sticky mallow remains and may cause jams.

The “Marshmallow Blower” is similar to the Straight Shooter in design and measurement, except it has a pistol grip and handle on the barrel to make your accuracy better. The way you fire this gun is not blowing into the chamber, but rather you blow through a flexible pipe that connects to the chamber, which works surprisingly just as well as the other blow gun. Due to the chamber being connected separately, the distance is not quite as great with this weapon, but 20 feet is still enough to clear most rooms (or cubicles if you want to annoy your co-workers). Both of these guns come in a variety of colors, but the ones I reviewed were the classic red and blue style and camouflage colors.

The company does not recommend eating the marshmallows after you have shot them, mainly since its an easy way to share germs, but I leave that decision up to you. The best part about these two blowguns is that you can buy them together as a pair, in either of their color schemes (see below for links to them). For $10, you can have a lot of fun with your friends of any age, as they are recommended for ages six and up (and being much older than six, I can say I had a lot of fun trying these out). The marshmallows do not come with the guns, but you can easily pick them up at any supermarket. These are a lot of fun, and for parents who like the idea but do not like the idea of traditional guns, these two weapons do not have triggers and are vastly different in appearance and functionality than a toy gun. Plus, mini-marshmallows. Need I say more?