In just a few short years, Warner Bros.' DC Super Hero Girls franchise - which reimagines some of the comics giant's most famous female heroes as teenaged high schoolers - has become one of the company's most successful endeavours. It already consists of comic books, toys, and a web series, but now it's becoming a fully-fledged animated TV series premiering on Cartoon Network.
San Diego Comic-Con 2017 is right around the corner, and thousands will be standing in line for a chance to purchase exclusive toy goodness. This year Mattel's hitting the show with stuff from the Justice League movie, DC Super Hero Girls, Spider-Man, Cars and some team-based shooter game.
DC Super Hero Girls, the collaboration between DC Comics and Mattel featuring DC's most iconic female characters reimagined as teenagers attending school together, began as a series of online shorts meant to advertise a companion set of dolls (or action figures). Now, though, it's become so much more.
DC Super Hero Girls versus Pokemon. Funko Pop! vinyls versus LEGO Disney minifigures. Fossil Hunter Lottie versus Fortress Maximus. We've got some tough choices to make to determine the winners of the Toy Industry Association's 2017 Toy of the Year awards.
LEGO's girl-focused Friends line, which replaces the traditional minifigures with something closer to tiny plastic dolls, can rub certain collectors the wrong way. Making the tiny plastic dolls DC Comics characters, as LEGO is doing with six new DC Super Hero Girls sets, certainly helps.
Boys read comic books. Girls play with dolls. Or at least that's how it used to be in ancient times. Mattel's new DC Super Hero Girls dolls blur tired old lines both ways, so I recruited my doll-loving wife to help us take a look at the newly-launched line.
