It's the day of the Theros Launch for Magic the Gathering - it might just be our biggest Friday ever. :)

Been A While - And This Week It's All About Theros

Yes.  I know.  I keep hitting this blog with great gusto for a while, then losing touch, then starting again full of promises about how I'll post here every day.  Anyway - and so we try again.

Since I've been away, a little game called Magic the Gathering sneaked up behind us with a 2 by 4, slapped us over the back of the head and turned into almost a quarter of our business.  Oops.

Anyway, this weekend is the biggest of the year for Magic the Gathering fans, with the launch of the Theros block.  We've got a jam packed weekend of events planned, starting with loads of folks turning up to pick up cards tomorrow.  Then we'll have probably our busiest ever Friday Night Magic, as people try to track down the second of the 9 Hero cards given away during the Theros block.  And finally - another Standard format tournament and another chance to get the Hero card on Saturday afternoon, because we won't be able to fit everyone in on Friday night.  Gonna be hectic and fun!

The End of the Offers

Well, it's been a month of us being more than a little generous and hundreds of you took full advantage. At last though, the final fifth birthday offers have been announced, and you guys have your final couple of days to take advantage.

It's been fun. Now what will we do in August?

Could Bumpeez Be Big? I Think They Might...

There are a couple of pocket money toys I'm really excited about heading our way for the later part of 2011. I might post on the other one next week, but first let's talk Bumpeez. There's not too much information out on them yet, but there certainly isn't any shortage of hype.

Bumpeez are an outdoor/indoor, game/toy, collectible/lots of fun thing - all of which seem like pretty good combinations. Led by the main character, Omar, there are over a hundred of the main circular parts to Bumpeez to collect, all featuring different characters, each of which fits into various outer rings to create a toy that bounces in all sorts of wierd and wonderful ways. The creators have come up with 25 different games that can be played with a Bumpee already, and we're promised plenty more to come, to keep the playground buzzing all autumn. I can't wait for them to arrive in stock towards the end of August - check out our Bumpeez information page for more details.

Melissa & Doug Returns to Bus Stop Towers

It's a long dull story, with no one main reason, as to why we've not had one of our favourite pre-school manufacturer's toys around recently. However, at 9:45 this morning, we took delivery of a whopping 17 boxes full of Melissa & Doug produce.

All our favourite Melissa & Doug items are back including Magnetic Fishing and Princess Dress Up, but there's also tons of new toys for 2011. Drop in and see just why we love Melissa & Doug toys so much (online customers, we'll have them all on our website later this week.) Stand out amongst them (but hey they're all great) are the Shape Sorting Clock, Stacking Train and Pizza Party - come see.

Fifth Birthday Offers Continue

We're only five days into July, but we and all you regular customers are having loads of fun with our special offers. In the first four days, we've done a great deal on our current number one: Moshi Monsters, a deal that could scarcely be believed on board games, an incredible YuGiOh! giveaway and a tasty saving on tops girls toy, Zoobles. (Most of them last more than a day too, so you're not too late if you've yet to put in an appearance.)

Tomorrow, we unleash a great deal on long-time Bus Stop favourite, Uglydoll, and all this has happened with still 26 days of the month to go. Wow.

Happy Birthday to Us

Yep, it's hard to believe that we've been around for five years already - just seems like yesterday that I opened the doors for the first time and nervously awaited the first person approaching the till. Anyway - of course it's time to celebrate and you're invited. We're bringing you crazy good deals on all your Bus Stop Toy Shop favourites all month - in fact there's a brand new special offer being added every day for the whole of July - every one of them on stuff you guys love.

To find out more, take a look in at our Facebook page.

Moshi Monsters Moshling Figures Are Back...

...just thought you might want to know. We've had one delivery and we're eagerly awaiting a second, but once again I doubt they'll last long. We've got 5 packs of Moshi Monster Moshling Figures, 2 packs of Moshling Figures, some of the Moshling Plush Toys back in and a VERY LIMITED supply of the Mash up Trading Card Starter Packs. Maybe - just maybe - backpack buddies in time for the weekend too.

If you're a store customer, jump in soon. If you're an online customer, here's our Moshi Monsters page (remember we offer worldwide shipping).

Free RPG Day Approaches

We're getting excited about this at the moment - Free RPG Day (Saturday 18th June) heads towards us rapidly :) Free RPG Day is the day that the RPG industry gives a little back to all their loyal followers. Quite simply if you walk through the door of a participating store, you get something good for nothing, nada, nil, zilch. How good is that?

That's far from all though, when it comes to Bus Stop - we're really going to town for the weekend, with in store gaming going on right across the weekend of the 18th and 19th as Free RPG Day gets to take over the shop. We've got Serenity RPG on the Saturday afternoon, Call of Cthulhu and All Flesh Must Be Eaten on the Saturday night. Sunday sees us unleashing Fantasy Flight's Black Crusade for the first time, with a great quickstart adventure and Sunday night sees us finish up with some Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying.

If you're an RPG fan, and fancy signing up for a game (they're all FREE by the way), head over to our Facebook page, and click on the events tab. If you can't make it for a session though, don't worry - just make sure to pop your head round the door and get something good for nowt :)

NERF Super Soakers Arrive

It's probably the very wrong day to announce the arrival of NERF Super Soakers into stock - the wind is howling, the rain is lashing and the ultimate water fight is probably the last thing on your minds right now. However Summer is hopefully only just around the corner, and there's only one big daddy in the water pistol category this year.

When we say water pistol of course, we're talking about something much more than that of course. The NERF Super Soaker Tornado Strike is pretty special in our humble opinion. We're sure you'll agree :)

The Return of Moshi Monsters Figures

I think the manufacturers had an inkling that the Moshi Monsters collectible figures would be popular, but I don't think they had any idea of just how much. The first batches hit shelves, sold out immediately, and then the wait began. It's been around six weeks we've been waiting (almost) patiently, but now. Drum roll please. They're back in stock tomorrow - at least the five figure packs are anyway. I'd advise you to come see me soon though if you fancy some. They'll be back in stock on our website tomorrow too.

Doctor Who Monster Invasion and Micro Figures

It's always exciting times at Bus Stop Towers when there's a new season of Doctor Who in the air. This time around it's double-exciting because we have a new Doctor to enjoy. To celebrate, there's two brand-new Doctor Who pieces of excitement arrived on the shelves this week that we really love.

First up, you'll know how much I love my trading cards - that's why I'm super excited about the new Doctor Who Monster Invasion cards - a 90 card series with new games to play and all the best characters from the new shows taking on card form. Superb!

Second up to bat is the new Doctor Who Micro Figures. These look simply great, and there's ten figures in the first wave with both good guys and bad guys aplenty. There's also some great Dioramas to build - the Tardis (pictured) and the Dalek Progenitor Room and what's more - they're fully compatible with other leading brick based construction toys. Lovely.

Drop by and check them both out :)

Make Your Very Own Special Offer

I'm trying something a little different for our May Special Offers. You get to pick your own. Wow - and there's plenty to choose from as well, covering loads of our favourite things at Bus Stop Toy Shop.

All you need to do is head on over to our Facebook page, find the picture with all the special offers on it (it's not hard to find - it's at the top of our news feed at the time of writing) and tag the offer you like. You need to be a fan, but we're sure you are already ;)

A Big Week for Trading Cards...

It's a week for all the TCG players to get salivating over - if you're not still drooling over the new Pokemon Black & White booster from last weekend that is :) There's another, not one, but two releases to look forward to this week from YuGiOh! and World of Warcraft.

First up to bat is the WOW TCG with its new War of the Elements booster pack - the first Worldbreaker expansion - due in Wednesday-ish. As well as a pile of great cards for the game, WOW online players can expect a new set of more-than-nice loot cards.

Meanwhile, this weekend sees the latest YuGiOh! Sneak Peek event with players getting their first chance to get their hands on the new Extreme Victory booster featuring the new Tech Genus and Meklord archetypes plus loads of new goodies for existing archetypes. You can only get your hands on a few packs by being at our Sneak Peek event on Sunday though - for more packs, you'll have to wait for the following weekend.

Gonna be a fun week :)

Restocks on Tomica

If you didn't get into Tomica last year, shame on you! It's brilliant. Anyway, just a quick post today, to let you know that everything that was out of stock, erm, isn't anymore. If you've yet to enjoy Tomica Hypercity - the best car/rail/city building thingy around by a long, long way, then take a look at our Tomica range here.

Mic-o-Mic Construction

When I first clapped eyes on Mic-o-Mic at Toy Fair, I was instantly impressed. Construction toys are one of my favourite sections in the shop, but we devote a lot of space already to them, so it takes something very special to get my attention and convince me to expand our selection even further. Mic-o-Mic, aimed at children of 5 years plus, managed it, and that says a lot.

Firstly there's the design quality of Mic-o-Mic. Bright colours, tactile, and just - well - gorgeous. Yep, it is very good, but then so are the Meccano and K'Nex ranges we already stock, so what makes it different? Once the model is 'pinned' together (using, I have to say, an incredibly novel method) it is solid and robust enough that it can be a toy for playing with. Even if that plane has to perform a "crash-landing", it's still not going to fall to bits.

I'm loving Mic-O-Mic - one of my top recommendations at the moment - if you want to find out more about Mic-O-Mic, go here to our full information page and if you live in the UK, and want to buy some Mic-O-Mic, go here.

New in Stock This Week

It's a busy start to the week for stock arrivals. First up, we've got one of the most eagerly anticipated arrivals of every spring, Match Attax Extra. Arriving tomorrow, Match Attax Extra features all the updates to the Premiership from the January Transfer Window. There's also plenty of other goodies too - watch our Match Attax Guide Page for more details in due course.

We've also got a whole pile of new Yoohoo & Friends plushies - they continue to be one of the big hits in store just now, and we can't wait to see what the new ones look like. There's also badly needed Zoobles restocks arriving. Phew - just before we run out of the last lot.

Finally, and possibly most excitingly, we've got the arrival of Eggbods (pictured). We saw Eggbods at Toy Fair this year, and well, we think they're pretty cool - shop customers, do drop in and let us know what you think. It's no co-incidence that they're being launched in time for Easter - they make a novel alternative to chocolate - but we have a suspicion that they might go on to be one of the crazes of the year - we'll see.

Pokemon is B(l)ack (and White)

Now I'm sure all our biggest fans are well aware that I'm a bit of a Pokemon anorak. If you weren't, you won't know how excited I am about the release of Black & White across all the various Pokemon guises.

There's a new series of the anime (and it started in real style last weekend), the new console games (I've still to get my hands on a copy, but it wont be long) and (where the shop comes in), the new trading cards.

This week, we have the first Pokemon Trading Card release of the Black & White era, and it's a little bit special. The Black & White Sneak Peek tin contains what you'd normally expect in a Pokemon tin - there's four booster packs from previous releases. But then it gets good. Each of the three tins contains a 5 card promo from the new Black & White Generation, then there's the shiny card which features one of the brand new starter Pokemon - Oshawott, Snivy or Tepig, PLUS you get the starter Pokemon on the shiny card in figure form too. Uber-cool.

Finally, All Coming Back In

At Bus Stop Towers, we hate it when we run out of stuff that you love. We're used to it happening at Christmas Time, but when it happens in February, it means we've got some pretty hot crazes on our hands. Finally though, there's light at the end of the tunnel, and a few things we've been desperately trying to get hold off arrive back in stock tomorrow.

Firstly there's Zoobles. If you're one of the people who've been trooping in each day to check if we have them, tomorrow it's good news time. Last time around we could only get the two-packs (Toobles) and what we did get lasted all of five minutes. This time, we've got single packs, double packs and our first glance at playsets too. They should last a little longer this time, but I'd still advise you to come and see us sooner rather than later.

Then there's the other hot property of the moment, Moshi Monsters. Whilst we've managed to keep some of the plush moshlings in stock, our first batch of the large talking Moshis vanished in the blink of an eye. They reappear tomorrow, as do the Moshi Monsters Mash Up trading cards we've been trying to get for months. Happy days :)

More For Our Roleplaying Fans

One of our many missions this year is to provide a better service to our hardcore of RPG fans that frequent the premises. Well, I'm pleased to say that stage one of our mission is now complete. We've been stocking D&D for a long time, the Fantasy Flight Warhammer RPGs have been around since late last year and now we've added: World of Darkness (including the Werewolf and Mage settings), Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, Traveller and Tunnels and Trolls into the mix. That pretty much gives us a decent coverage of all the most popular RPGs of right now.

But don't forget that whayt we hold in stock is only the beginning. We can quickly get hold of pretty much any currently-in-print RPG rulebook or supplement - with over a thousand RPG products in stock at our suppliers at any one time, we can be fairly certain of getting you whatever you want, whenever you need it. Put us to the test :) Anyway, you can check out all the stock items over at the RPG section of the website. Enjoy!

Best of Toy Fair Part 3 - Moshi Monsters Plush

What do you get when you cross the massive smash hit massive multiplayer game, Moshi Monsters, with adorable soft toys? Probably one of the biggest crazes of 2011. When it was announced that Moshi Monsters were entering the toy arena in a big way it looked certain that there was something huge coming and early indications are that the prediction isn't wrong.

There's talking Moshis plus a wide range of Moshlings available in plush and backpack clip on forms, plus a big range of colelctible moshling figures too. You can find out more about the new Moshi Monsters soft toys here, and they'll be available with worldwide shipping on our website soon.

Best of Toy Fair Part 2 - Iwako Erasers

We always look forward to spotting the big Japanese crazes at Toy Fair - they are invariably very cool indeed. Last year it was Micro Pets, which were awesome. This year, we spotted the small, very plain looking box with the Japanese writing from about 40 paces. "Iwako," the sign above the stand told us. We already knew that the box would contain something great...

Iwako make fantastically fun-shaped erasers - many with removable and inter-changeable parts. Massively trendy in Japan, already huge in the US, and about to be huge here too - there have been over 800 Iwako erasers released in Japan, and a fair number of them will be available in the UK within the next week or two. You can find out more about Iwako here.

Best of Toy Fair Part 1 - Zoobles

Over the next few posts, I'll be highlighting all the best of Toy Fair this year - the things I think will be the hot crazes and must-have-toys of 2011. I'm starting today with Zoobles. They were released by Spinmaster in the US in late 2010, to huge success, and make their United Kingdom debut in January 2011.

Zoobles are little animals, that start out wrapped up in spheres. When placed in their Happitats, they magically spring into life and reveal gorgeous creations with loads to see and do. With already over 150 Zoobles available and many more to come, plus playsets to follow, oh, and an online interactive element to play as well, they look very likely to be one of the smash toy hits of 2011.

To find out more about Zoobles, here's our information page.

Mega Bloks Halo Arrives

We've been watching the Halo Mega Bloks range quietly for some time now, and seen it take off and become something that we simply had to have on our shelves. It's a great combination - Mega Bloks make superb construction toys, compatible with the 'L' word that we never mention at Bus Stop Towers and Halo (in case you live deep underground somewhere) is one of the biggest selling console games of all time.

The Halo Heroes Foil Packs are just the first piece in the jigsaw and there is much more to come - watch this space. Check out our Halo Mega Bloks page on the website.

Yoohoo & Friends - A Surprise Hit

This one caught us by surprise, and its not often we say that. When we brought Yoohoo & Friends in last year, we had no idea they would catch the imagination to the extent that they have. Everyone seems to want one. Unless you already have one, in which case you want two, or three or four.

Yoohoo & Friends are a series of plush toys by Aurora, based on endangered creatures from around the world. They are gorgeous. Anyway. We keep increasing the quantities we bring in, and the number of differnet creatures from the range, and they keep all selling. Maybe we have enought to keep them in stock for a while this time? We'll see.

To check out our full range of Yoohoo & Friends, go here.

Watch out soon, for news of Gogos Crazy Bones Trading Cards...