January 5, 2022

Happy New Year! For the first time I remember, Playmobil has released their first half year catalogs on all of their websites on January 1 this year. That means I can finally post about many things that have been known through leaks for some time. It's not really official until it's in a catalog, and even then, like we saw with Everdreamerz 4, that doesn't mean it will become available in the stores. In another change from usual, the US catalog has no new exclusive to the market sets this time. They may come later, with additional catalog versions coming out. That happened last year with 3 catalog versions over the course of the year. The US and German catalogs look nearly identical at this point. The US has NHL Hockey and last year's exclusives in it, and does not have the Cargo theme or the new Asterix licensed sets. Other than that, all the new sets for Germany are scheduled to be in the US this year. That's a big change from the staggered releases of the past. It also means that some sets like last year's German released gift sets are not going to hit the US market. If you need them you will want to purchase from Europe soon before they completely disappear.

On to the new animals for the year so far.

First up is a new horse and pony farm series. For the US that means we will be getting a mix of last year's German pony farm releases with this year's new ones all split between January and May releases according to the catalog.

New Haflinger style horses, the dark one is from 70999 and the white one from 70995

New pony foals both from 71000

The rest seem to be re-releases of existing ones, but we will see when part numbers come up.

Another new horse variant is in the Novelmore theme where two new sets will arrive. Horse is from the wagon 70903

also in Novelmore is a dragon set 70904

Staying with Mythical animals there is a Fantasy set  71002 with a Pegasus and unicorn, both new variants

The other main Fantasy type theme is Ayuma fairy land, and there are a few new sets in that theme with various new animals

Pegacorn from 70809

Butterfly and pink birds from 70808

Spider, spinosaur baby and boar from 70807

Note there is a baby spinosaurus in the Ayuma theme. Meanwhile in the Dino Rise theme there are some fantasy animals, a lava scorpion in 70909 and a horned lizard in 70925. Both of those would have been better in Novelmore or Ayuma in my opinion.

There are some actual dinosaurs in Dino Rise, two new velociraptor colors in 70928

and finally, a first for this theme, an actual new dinosaur species. It clearly appears to be a Dimorphodon in 70929, though the size is hard to tell from the picture

I really wish they had spent less money on weird tech hardware piece molds and more on new species. There are so many cool dinosaurs out there that they could have done and really got some attention, insteasd they have just retreaded their way through the back catalog. From what I am hearing online this is in part because they have greatly reduced their lead time on set production. So they seem to be re-using existing molds as often as possible at the moment and have limited time to come up with new molds prior to production runs starting.

Also partly in the fantasy theme is a snake woman 70859, a use of the body mold they had started for cancelled Everdreamerz 4. We also see some of the head pieces from that theme showing up in Ayuma and other Special Plus and Playmo Friends sets.

The new licensed theme this catalog for Germany is Asterix. There are some excellent sets in the theme and the largest of them has a new mold for the dog of the license, Dogmatix

There is also a grey boar, like the one from Hercules only without the blood spatters

Both of those are in 70931

No new 1 2 3 sets, but there is a related theme for youngsters - Duck on Call. It's something that should be followed by a video series, but hard to say if they will give it the attention it would need to succeed. They have a little trouble breaking through all the noise with their own animations sometimes. The best thay have done I think is the Novelmore series and ROBert educational videos. Others have fallen somewhat flat. In Duck on Call there is a large articulated duckling in all the biggest sets 70910 +

It changes hats between sets but I suspect there is just the one duck mold.

Also in this theme is a probable kitten variant in 70917, I am assuming it is black

In some new sets for the Dollhouse theme there is a grandparents with dog set 70990. It has a new color of the bearded dog mold not seen in a while

The final new variant I have noticed so far is the husky puppy in Girls Figures 22, 70735

That's it for new animals that I have found so far. If I have missed anything let me know and I will update. This update is live at the site now. Using the By Year lilnk at the bottom of any page and scrolling down to the lowest right hand side of that page will find you the list of the 2022 releases with links to their pages with images. A count of 29 so far for this year. There was a total of 98 new variants released in 2021.

Also updated this time around was the Figures pages themselves with catalog image placeholders for Series 21 and 22.

There is also an update to the Shields pages with the new catalog additions

From Asterix 70932 there are three round shields, one used to carry a figure on

in 70934 there is a new Roman scutum

In Figures series 22 70934 there are 2 new shields

In Ayuma the bat fairies have their own new shield as well in 70807

There is also a shield in Dino Rise set 70928 to hold off the velociraptors

That's it for new shields in the latest catalogs. There is a placeholder in the Greek catalog for a new Play and Give set, but no images yet so there is hope for more there. There are also a few possibilities in expected theme expansions later in the year. We will see how it goes.

The final additions for Shields this update are thanks to Don in The Netherlands who provided images of two Antex shields. The brown with horse is a little smaller sticker and the shield is darker than the same one previously seen in a regular Playmobil set. You ewill find them next to each other in 3569 c

The other is similar to the Playmobil one but the buffalo faces the other direction. It is from Antex 9505

That's it for updates this first week of 2022. There are some exciting animal themes showing up in leaked info for the second half year. Maybe we will see some of them in Nuremberg Toy Fair coverage. I certainly hope so as there are some very exciting rumoured new species. Toy Fair is February 2 to 6 this year. I wish you all a great healthy and happy 2022

Thanks for reading - Tiermann

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