toys Archives - You Found a Secret Area!

Update: Since I wrote this original post, Mega Brands was bought by Mattel, which caused some restructuring of the brands. What was once Megabloks is now known as Mega Construx, with the Megabloks brand being used for the more child-like knockoff of Lego’s “Duplo” brand. For the sake of this article, I’m sticking with the original name for reference, as it was in late 2016.

Sometimes when you’re like me and you’re bored in a department store, you tend to wander around to other sections to find some amusement or cheap deals. In my case, I browsed the clearance section of a toy aisle. Suddenly I found these little beauties:

These were originally $8 each. Somehow they got even cheaper than this. Don’t know how, but hey, discounts are great.

They’re Mega Bloks tie-ins for Halo and Call of Duty. Since I hadn’t messed with Lego (or its derivatives) for years, it felt like the perfect time to rekindle my interest in brick-building toys. It also gives me something to do when not sleeping all day.

I used to have a lot of Lego as a kid. One of my birthdays I ended up getting about several Lego playsets, with the only non-Lego thing being a VHS copy of D3: The Mighty Ducks. Though my interest in Lego waned as I got older, we still have the bricks around somewhere, in a giant tub somewhere in the house. One of my dreams is to rebuild the old playsets, but that requires time and money I don’t really have.

So these are made by Canadian company Mega Brands. If Lego is Coca-Cola, Megabloks would probably be Dr. Pepper. They’re both fairly known, but one is more iconic than the other. Megabloks tends to get the video game licenses more than Lego does, likely more content with making playsets off much bigger properties and telling TT Games to churn out a new Lego tie-in game every year. Any major video game franchise you can think of in the past few years has a Megabloks play set associated with them: In addition to Halo and Call of Duty, I’ve seen ones for Assassin’s Creed, Skylanders, and several others. Mega Bloks basically has the video game brick market covered, something I don’t see Lego really tackle these days.

This box was beaten to hell. I should’ve asked if I could get a deeper discount on damaged goods. So much for the resale value…

So let’s dive in. The Halo Megabloks features a covenant guard riding a Ghost, one of the iconic vehicles of the franchise. It’s no Master Chief in a Warthog, but it’ll do. The Covenant guard also has pieces that make them resemble Jul ‘Mdama, a character introduced in the current 343 Industries Halo games. Alas, my only experiences with Halo was some of the earlier Bungie titles and no later, so I don’t know if this character has any importance to the series’ plot.

20160911_163240 — Imagine the hassle I had keeping this motherhumper upright to take a picture.

Back in late 2012, I wrote about Hot Wheels cars featuring iconic Atari brands. The cars featured were based on the 3-4 existing brands Atari already have milked dry but on rather dubious car brands. At the end of that post, I had mentioned that I also had some other Hot Wheels based on a video game brand, and that I’d get around to writing about them someday once I completed the set. Well, that time is now because I finally completed the whole set.

Hot Wheels cars were quite a fascination to me when I was younger. I grew up in the age of the wacky race tracks and those automated machines that moved the cars at high speeds. It was quite an entertaining toy, and naturally I ended up grabbing a bunch of them over the years.

When I bought the Atari Hot Wheels back in 2012, I wasn’t really expecting to have another set to complete. Since I had three out of the five, I thought it was a fairly easy goal to attain. After all, unless it’s from the 80s or earlier, the more recent cars don’t really have high demand, and thus are easy to snatch up for a few bucks each. After all, the Atari Hot Wheels only cost me $12.

But enough rambling, let’s take a look at the cars themselves:

Much like the previous set I covered, these are all cars based on various Hot Wheels car lines or real cars. These cars give a perfect snapshot of Sega from this period. By this time Sega had already abandoned their console heritage after the Dreamcast floundered, beginning to publish games for their previous rivals the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox. This was back when they were experimenting with old series frequently and making sequels to Dreamcast titles most people didn’t play originally. Here are the cars in question:

Call of Duty and Halo Megabloks: A brick-building collection restarts.

2003’s Sega Hot Wheels, featuring your favorite Sega properties.