Tag Archives: toy insider

PiercingMetal Scenes from Toy Insider’s “Holiday Of Play” 2025: Playmates Toys and Bandai Namco

September 20, 2025 Ken Pierce Leave a comment

It was only a few short days ago that the PiercingMetal High Command had the honor of attending The Toy Insider’s annual “Holiday Of Play” event for 2025. Historically speaking, I’ve been one of the media voices at this and their “Sweet Suite” since 2016 and I look forward to these happenings every year. Nowadays, most of my coverage of the Toy Insider soirees gets posted over on “The Chronicles of Piercing Ken” but when there are brands that we normally feature on PiercingMetal I make sure to get them the attention from our audience that they deserve. Playmates Toys and Bandai Namco were both at this year’s HOP. Let’s explore.

I’ve talked about Playmates Toys over and over here on the website based on their releases like “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, “Godzilla X Kong” and “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers”. For “Holiday Of Play” they only brought out one of the TMNT Battle Wagons, Power Rangers and Winx Club.

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Events, Reviews

Scenes from Toy Insider’s “Sweet Suite” 2025: Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!

July 20, 2025 Ken Pierce Leave a comment

As previously mentioned, the PiercingMetal outlet has been one of the attending press at the incredible Toy Insider event that is known as “Sweet Suite” for the past nine years. It’s here that we learn about the latest and greatest toys that will be coming out and sometimes these events also feature some special surprises. In my previous post I shared the intel on the new Playmates Toys and Pokémon stuff and now I’m sharing the visuals that were found at the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! booth. They had a whole mini-museum of oddities that one might find while exploring such a place.

For many years, New York City had its own Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum and I had visited it on numerous occasions for some special Mezco Toyz events. Sadly, they would close their doors in 2021 and leave a massive empty space on a once flourishing strip. Sure, 42nd Street is still busy but with this place, the old McDonald’s and our beloved B.B. King’s being gone its not the same but I digress.

In addition to these massive tomes on the table, Ripley’s had almost two dozen oddities to examine and I’ve presented the whole display for you in the following photographs. Enjoy.

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Pop Culture, Toys and Collectibles

Scenes from Toy Insider’s “Sweet Suite” 2025: Playmates Toys and Pokemon

July 19, 2025 Ken Pierce Leave a comment

For the past nine years, the PiercingMetal outlet has been one of the attending press at the wonderful event that is the creation by our friends over at The Toy Insider. It’s called the “Sweet Suite” and it is an absolute blast that brings in dozens of toy manufacturers and their representatives along with media and those who are considered to be influencers in the industry. It’s at the “Sweet Suite” where we all get to see and learn more about the latest and greatest offerings, get to try them out and if we’re lucky maybe even take a sample or two home with us. Down below you’ll find my spiffy badge to let people know who their interacting with and I should let you know that in addition to things here on PiercingMetal, you will also find a lot of coolness over on “The Chronicles of Piercing Ken”. I’ve broken this post into two main companies that speak to our specific demographic with Playmates Toys and Pokémon. Let’s begin.

The folks from Playmates Toys really brought a lot to this year’s “Sweet Suite” with pretty much something for everyone. The first display was their “Stuntman Stu” stuff and what this crash and bang up product reminds me of is the old Evel Knievel toys that that I had growing up. They were so much fun but I don’t have them anymore to share historical background with you. Everything from this line looks like a lot of fun but I would advise that most of the launching be done in the backyard.
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Features, Interviews

PiercingMetal’s Exhibitor Interviews From Toy Insider’s “Sweet Suite” 2024 @ The Glasshouse

July 21, 2024 Ken Pierce Leave a comment

Last week, PiercingMetal was once again invited to participate in the annual “Sweet Suite”, a mega-toy preview event held by the fine folks over at The Toy Insider. Today’s affair would be held at a brand-new event space to my list called The Glass House. If memory serves me correctly, I’ve been attending the groups events since 2016 and now the coverage spans across all three of my websites. The more adult collector stuff gets shown here and now its time to share some of the videos that were done at the event. Starting off is the amazing “Transformers” robots from Robosen. These are so damned cool.

Checking Out Robosen’s “Transformers” at The Toy Insider “Sweet Suite” 2024

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Pop Culture, Toys and Collectibles

Checking Out Playmates Toys @ Toy Insider’s “Spring Fling” 2024

March 20, 2024 Ken Pierce Leave a comment

Our friends over at The Toy Insider had recently announced a brand-new event called the “Spring Fling Toy Preview” and it would be held at an event space that I never visited before as well so when the invitation came to come out and explore for the purposes of the website and its bevy of social media profiles, I could not resist. From the get go I felt that this was a great idea since the usual winter months Toy Fair was not happening and would be returning in early 2025. Of course there was a Toy Fair back in the Fall of 2023 which dedicated readers of the site already know based on the content that was posted across the realm. Once I was situated in Lavan Midtown, I began exploring and found that most of the items being exhibited were more suited to our companion website “The Chronicles of Piercing Ken”. I’ll link to that later on but now its time to showcase what we found at a toy company that has been discussed on numerous occasions, Playmates Toys.

It’s without question that I love what Playmates Toys is releasing these days and over the years we’ve seen assorted variations of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Voltron and Star Trek. Currently they are the holder of the license for the upcoming “Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire” film and brought a lot of the line with them to the Spring Fling. Let’s take a look.

Are you ready for the big reveal? 10, 9, 8…oh just scroll on down 🙂

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