You voted, you argued, you stuffed the ballots, you even recruited your friends from your favorite communities. Now the polls are closed and the results are in. So who then is the Toy of the Year?
Toy of the Year 2010
Best High-End Toy
Best Macross / Robotech
1/3000 SDF-1 Macross (Yamato)
Apparently the SDF-1 is so awsome it couldn't be contained to winning just one category of voting. You the readers not only voted it best Macross/Robotech toy of the year it also took Best High End and the Best of the best, Toy of the Year 2010. WE found the fit, finish, quality of materials and painstaking detail to be well worth the price tag and apprantly fans and collectors around the world agree as Yamato sold out of all of its stock of this $330 toy within days of being released.
Best Action Figure
Revoltech Batman (Kaiyodo)
Really? Better than any Robot Soul? Well, 20% of you thought so, so here it is. In its defense, it's a really great little toy, with a good likeness of Christian Bale. I think a lot of people just really dig Batman.
Best Vinyl Toy
Zentradi Tactical Battlepod (Toynami)
It was a close race between this and the Dairugger vinyl, but the Battlepod narrowly beat it out. They are both great vinyl toys. I think despite some mixed success with transforming toys in the past, Toynami shows that they can really kick some ass with vinyl. I can't wait to see what's next.
Best 1/6 Scale Figure
War Machine (Hot Toys)
People went nuts over Hot Toys War Machine, and rightly so - it's freakin' awesome. With about 50% of the vote, War Machine stole the show
Best Independent Toy
Warbots Defender (Fansproject)
Perhaps it was unfair of us to pit the art-toy stylings of E-Killer against the engineering marvel of Warbots Defender. Oops. The fact that an independent company can make such a complicated and wonderful toy that rivals the big guys really resonated with the audience.
Best Transformer
Leader Class Starscream (Hasbro)
Just beating out the War for Cybertron Prime, Leader Class Starscream took the top vote in this category. The US release is a really great toy for the price point, but the JP version is just too expensive for what you get.
Best Model Kit
Mega Size Gundam (Bandai)
We didn't have many kits to choose from, but you chose the Mega Size 1/48 scale Gundam. Perhaps bigger is better? Of course it is, silly.
Best Gokin
Soul of Chogokin Daitarn 3
So many great diecast releases in 2010, but only one could be the winner of Best Gokin. Bandai's superior engineering and quality make the SOC Daitarn 3 the winner, but just barely. It was neck-and-neck with Bandai's Super Robot Chogokin Mazinger. A difference of ONE VOTE pushed Daitarn into the lead.
and lastly....
Worst Toy
Clu (Spin Master)
Perhaps we were too hard on Spin Master. Were these worse than the A-Team toys? Hardly. But we CARE about TRON, and we were hurt when the figures weren't good.Nobody gives a crap that the A-Team figures sucked - we expected that. But we had high hopes for the TRON figures and those hopes were crushed when we got the figures in hand. Thankfully the vehicles were good. Too bad we didn't have a vehicle category.
But wait...
Ok, so some of these picks I agree with, some of them were real head scratchers. Stay tuned for the Editor's Choice to see what JoshB thought the best toys of the year were.