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Hockey at NY Toy Fair 2017: Rods, knees and stuffed Auston Matthews

NEW YORK – Toy Fair is the annual trade show where toymakers large and small converge to show off their best sellers and innovative ideas.

It’s like Comic-Con without actors from “Star Trek: Voyager” charging $75 for a photograph. It’s also like “Shark Tank” if “Shark Tank” was only the parts with the optimistic pitches and not the parts where Kevin O’Leary asks you to throw yourself into a volcano for inventing a line of gourmet animal crackers.

As I wandered the aisles on the final day of the 2017 event, I had but one mission: Find hockey stuff.

And here’s what I found…

BLEACHER CREATURES

The weirdly lifelike dolls are available for every sport and every entertainment genre. This season, they have a Creature for Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs (above) that in no way looks like Billy Zane with a $3 hairpiece.

STARSPORTS BACKPACK

These are backpacks that have large plastic helmets on the back. Some are hockey masks, but most are NCAA football helmets from schools like Ohio State.

They just closed a deal with the Montreal Canadiens to make these backpacks with a Habs mask on the back, so expect that to catch on like wildfire.

LIL TEAMMATES

These NHL toys have been available for a bit, as they’re available on carded packages at various toy stores. This seems like something I totally would have collected as a kid, got bored and then didn’t finish the Western Conference.

ROD HOCKEY

There were a pretty solid number of table hockey games, many of which fail the basic test of “is there a guy who goes behind the net with the puck?”

This one from Mastermind Toys ($49.99) is a bit different and fun: The game is a combination of pinball and foosball, as there’s a metal ball that gets rocked around a sloped rink surface. It comes with 180 players and two balls, which we assume you’ll lose within a week.

Here’s the box:

But hey, maybe the traditional rod hockey game doesn’t do it for you. Maybe you want one that GLOWS IN THE DAMN DARK:

From Franklin Sports (about $30), this is a rod hockey set that glows in the dark. Which is as cool as it sounds.

Speaking of Franklin Sports:

According to Franklin, knee hockey (a.k.a. mini-sticks) is a booming part of the hockey gear industry. And why not, when kids are uploading knee hockey highlights to YouTube and stuff.

How big is it getting? Here’s the newest item:

A mini-hockey shooter tudor.

What a world.

CHECKING BUDDY

They claim this is an inflatable checking toy, but it’s entirely possible it’s actually Dan Girardi.

PARTY PLATTER

Now we’re talking! Customizable snack trays of varying depths and partitions and other things. So if you have, like, a bunch of grapes and strawberries, as the photo in the middle optimistically and humorously depicts, now you can customize your snack tray.

And finally…

From our friends at TY, makers of Beanie Babies, comes Artemi Panarin after an allergic reaction to bee stings.

Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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