Just as “Halo Toy News” has transitioned into being a part of Gamer Toy News, “Halo Mega Bloks” is no more, having transformed into “Halo Mega Construx”! Mega Construx Halo figures and sets are now beginning to pour into more and more stores, and I spotted two such branded sets at my local Toys R Us for the first time today: the Mega Construx Halo Brute Customizer Pack and Spartan Customizer Pack!
The long-running brand name of “Halo Mega Bloks” ended not with a bang, but a whimper, as suddenly toys just began hitting stores under the new Mega Construx name with no major announcement or fanfare of any kind from Mattel. A sad end for such a long-running and popular toy line.
The good news is, Mega Bloks Halo lives on as Mega Construx Halo in 2017–new name (to differentiate the collector-focused Mega Construx toys from the child-focused Mega Bloks toys), same great toys we all know and love!
Let’s take a look at the two new Customizer sets…
First, we’ve got the Brute Weapons Customizer Pack. This set is a big deal because it’s one of the very first few sets released for Halo Wars 2, and also because it’s going to be a quick, easy and cheap way of army-building Banished Brute figures.
The colors of the Banished Brutes in this set (Orange and Dark Grey; Blue and Silver) don’t directly correlate any in-game Brutes that we’ve seen so far in Halo Wars 2 footage, but I would imagine that we’ll be seeing these colors (and more) in the Halo Wars 2 multiplayer mode when the game launches next month.
The Brute figures themselves in this set look fantastic, but where this set really shines is the amazing assortment of Brute weapons with paint deco on them!
This set includes the follow weapons: Bruteshot, Gravity Hammer, Mauler, Brute Plasma Rifle, Spike Grenade, Spiker Rifle, and a Trip Mine. In addition, the pack contains two crates that can hold all of the weapons (sans the Gravity Hammer, which is just too dang big to fit).
In addition to the Brute Weapons Customizer Set, there’s also a Spartan Armor Customizer Pack II set shipping in the same case assortment.
While this set includes Spartans in the popular armor colors of Orange and White, I was surprised to see this pack piling up at Toys R Us with plenty in stock, and it’s even discounted to $6.99 online already! I wonder if the market for these colored Spartans has finally been saturated after years of this line…?
Both the Spartan and Brute Customizer Sets are available online now, and are also starting to appear in retail stores. After seeing the Brute Weapons Customizer Pack at Toys R Us today, I went ahead and ordered it from Amazon, whose $8 price-tag was a lot more palatable to me than TRU’s $14.99 price-point.
What do you think of the first pair of Mega Construx Customizer Packs, Halo collectors? Will you be army-building any of the Halo Wars 2 Banished Brutes from these sets? And for that matter, are you still planning to collect this line at all under its rebranded name?