Hasbro Toy Box is a new quarterly series of comics and stories from IDW Publishing. IDW has had great success with their My Little Pony titles over the years. So it makes sense that the publisher decided to make the magical horses the focus of the first issue.
A number of stories focus on the characters of Princess Twilight, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash. The ponies get into a number of adventures involving parties, the evil Changelings, and ice cream. Lots of ice cream! There's also a number of theories on how the pony wizard Starswirl got his wizarding hat. Plus, there's a couple of head-scratching shorts about the My Little Pony multiverse.
While My Little Pony is the focus of this 48-page giant collection, the point of this book is to highlight selections from the Hasbro line of toys. One story focuses on the Equestria Girls Think Bratz meet Clueless but with all of your favorite My Little Pony characters now turned into human schoolgirls. The other non-ponies tale was based on the Hanazuki line of tiny treasure toys. This story had the main character of Hanazuki fighting off a bunch of bunny-like creatures called Hemka, who have just stolen her ice cream bar!
Of the two non-pony stories, I liked the Equestria Girls adventure best. In fact, I think that was my favorite story of the entire book. The Hanazuki story was quite confusing and I didn't like that your had to go to Youtube to watch how the rest of that adventure played out.
As for the rest of this comic, I had a couple of problems with it. First, none of the stories are original. If you already own an extensive number of My Little Pony comics, then the odds you have yet to read the material contained within this issue are greatly not in your favor.
My second issue with this comic is mostly my problem. As am I am very unfamiliar with all of these properties, I didn't have a very good understanding of what was going on. I was quite confused.
I did like the artwork. Being familiar with what My Little Pony figures look like, I thought artists like Tony Fleecs and Katie Cook did excellent jobs making the characters appear just like their plastic counterparts. Even Nico Pena's work on the Hanazuki story looked just like the cartoon on which readers are supposed to watch on Youtube.
I think if IDW Publishing is going to succeed with the Hasbro Toy Box Quarterly, then they've got to make a few changes. First of all, I am hoping that this series will rotate out to include other Hasbro toys like Glo Worm, GI Joe, Jem, and even Easy Bake Oven! But if they decide to focus mainly on My Little Pony, then IDW has got to make a choice: do they only use reprinted works and alienate the fervent MLP fan base? Or will IDW branch out and include some all-new material?
One thing is for sure, if IDW is trying to reach out to new readers, they're going to have to start including some blurbs that introduce the characters to the newcomers. To not do so, you'll have more readers like me on you hands- lost and confused... and not willing to give issue #2 much of a chance.
Hasbro Toy Box Quarterly #1 is recommended for readers of all-ages. It debuted in stores on December 27th, 2017. For digital readers, check out Kindle and Google Books!
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.
This review was published concurrently on Outrightgeekery.com.
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