Hasbro New York Comic Con 2024 Breakfast Event Attendee Report

On Saturday October 19, 2024, I attended Hasbro's New York Comic Con 2024 Breakfast Event in New York City, an offshoot of the larger New York Comic Con going on elsewhere in the city at the same time. Join me as I share with you my experience of the event.

Unlike Hasbro's Toy Fair side-event in February 2020, this was a small, rather intimate event that was held at Hasbro's New York City headquarters.


No, Seth MacFarlane, that's not Hasbro's real New York City headquarters. The building depicted in Ted 2 (2015) is actually located at 101 Park Avenue; Hasbro's real headquarters can be found on the 11th floor of 11 East 26th Street. If the building above looks familiar to you, it's probably because you recognize it as Clamp Tower.

In a weird coincidence, because I watched it for the first time earlier this week, Hasbro and New York Comic Con are integral to the plot of Ted 2. Going one step further, the unrated cut of the film contains a Ghostbusters reference when John (Mark Wahlberg) rattles off a list of movie character surnames: "Skywalker, Solo, Vader, Kenobi, Palpatine, Calrissian, Balboa, Rambo, Griswold, Stifler, Bickle, Gump, Corleone, Wonka, Zhivago, Lebowski, Venkman, Spengler, Stantz, Rizzo, Zuko, Golightly, Higgins, Dolittle, Poppins, Bond, Blofeld, Blutarsky, Lightyear, Soze, O'Hara, Butler, Dufresne, Clouseau, McFly, Baggins, Plissken, Ventura, Montoya, Burgundy, Scissorhands, Drebin, Striker, Bueller, Lector, Potter, Weasley, Dumbledore, Sparrow, Doubtfire, Bourne, Von Trapp, Zoolander, Kirk, Spock, McCoy..."


When I arrived at the Hasbro event, I did not enter through the front door at 11 East 26th Street. Due to construction being done on the lobby, I entered through the service entrance at the rear of the building at 6-8 East 27th Street. It's hidden behind the green scaffolding in the photo below. I swear, every time I go into the city, there is always scaffolding and construction everywhere. It's like they're never done fixing or re-building something :-)


Inside was a large Hasbro Pulse "Check-In" sign, so I knew I was in the right place. I was the first one to arrive, as I got there at 8:00 AM due to the LIRR running trains once an hour.


At 8:30 AM, we were put inside the service elevator and arrived on the 11th floor. The six of us in the elevator knew we were on the right floor when we saw this sign staring at us on the opposite wall.


Exiting the elevator, we entered the Hasbro offices and turned left to arrive at the company break room. This is where all of the breakfast food was laid out. We could take whatever we wanted now, or head past to the display room where the toys were being shown off. For now, let's head there. We'll look at the food later.

There are two entrances from the break room to the display room. Coming in from the left, I saw this:


If I had come in from the right, I would have been greeted with some Stay Puft candy bowls (provided by HalloweenCostumes.com) on a table with some Ghostbusters goodies; namely fun size Crunch bars, HasLab patches and pin-back buttons, and some HasLab Ectomobile promo cards, one of which is designed to look like Louis Tully's business cards. I'll go into detail about the freebies at the end of this article.


The display room was very small, though there wasn't much on display, anyway. Ghostbusters, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Magic the Gathering, Marvel, Star Wars, and Beyblade X... all "boys" toys, no "girls" toys, like My Little Pony or Disney Princesses. I don't know if Hasbro didn't have anything new for any of the "girls" properties, or if they were unfairly giving special treatment to the "boys" lines. As there were very few items on display, it won't take long to go over them.

Of course I'm going to start with Ghostbusters. Clearly, it was the showcase for Hasbro as it got to use the large display screen AND had two prop figures flanking it.


These props, provided by HalloweenCostumes.com, are the 6.8-foot Garraka...


...and the 5-foot animatronic Slimer.


The only new Ghostbusters item Hasbro had on display is the HasLab crowd-funded "Ghostbusters Plasma Series Ectomobile (Anniversary Edition)". If you want to learn more about it, you can read the press release. In short, if you pre-order the base model for $325, you get the 22-inch Ecto-1, a Library Ghost figure (with accessories), a Slimer figure, and a rolling gurney (to put inside the car). If you pre-order the deluxe model for $400, you get all of that, along with an Ecto-1A Conversion Kit (roof with functioning lights, red rear bumper with Ecto-1A license plate, decal sheet), figures of all four Ghostbusters (with toaster, mug, and balloon accessories), four Proton Packs (with proton streams), and two Slime Blowers (with ecto-plasm streams). Although the campaign ends on December 2nd, if it meets its 12,000 backers goal (of the two models combined) by November 2nd, everyone will get a Ghostbusters II Louis Tully figure.

I have to take a minute to get on my soapbox here... I really wish Hasbro would stop with these limited edition, high-priced, crowd-funded items (which will only benefit eBay scalpers later on) and go back to making reasonably-priced toys that anyone could buy through various retail outlets. They didn't do much for Frozen Empire, so that's what they should have been working on instead of this. We never got Plasma Series figures of Gary and Callie, and we NEED a Plasma Series Garraka figure scaled to the humans. I could go for detailed Pukey and Sewer Dragon figures, an Orb replica would be awesome - especially if it lit up and the little "tiles" on it moved in and out, and let's get some more Kenner Real Ghostbusters figures (like the forgotten Fright Features Janine)... maybe even a Kenner firehouse playset! Also, the Library Ghost and other figures being offered with the Ectomobile should be available separately for people to buy, but Hasbro probably won't do that.

Don't let me discourage you if you'd still like to buy one of these Ectomobiles, or two of them to keep as each version. If you have the money to spare, go right ahead and place that pre-order before all of the eBay scalpers grab them and jack up the price after these ship in late 2025. So, let's take a look at these beautiful girls, starting with the Ecto-1 (base model).


As previously stated, the base model includes Library Ghost and Slimer figures; and Louis Tully, if the 12,000 backers goal is met in the next two weeks.


The Ecto-1 includes a detailed roof rack and all of the interior details.


The deluxe model gives you all of the parts needed to convert the Ecto-1 into the Ecto-1A.


The deluxe model includes figures of all four Ghostbusters dressed in their Ghostbusters II uniforms. It also includes the dancing toaster, hot thermal mug and free balloon for the kiddies.


It also includes Slime Blowers to put on Ray and Winston; or Peter and Egon should you want to do that. The Ecto-1 roof rack includes the LED signboard, though it is decals, and not a working LED board.


There are four proton streams and two ecto-plasm streams to go with the Proton Packs and Slime Blowers.


Here is a beautiful boudoir photo showing what she has under her hood.


The conversion kit includes the red bumper to put on the back of the car.


The Ecto-1A roof rack includes lights that are powered by three AA batteries.


Here are three videos giving you a walk-around look at both cars.




That's it for the Ectomobiles (Spook Central VIPs get over 30 high-res photos of the Ectomobiles, plus over 70 more photos of the entire event), so let's take a quick counter-clockwise trip around the display room to see what else Hasbro had for viewing. Next to Ghostbusters was a display of G.I. Joe and Transformers comic books: Void Rivals, Transformers, Cobra Commander, and Duke. The G.I. Joe: Nightforce comics were available for the taking.


To the immediate left were seven G.I. Joe figures.


At the back of the room, on the side facing Madison Square Park on 26th Street, were some Transformers figures. There are some retro figures, like Bumblebee, and a Star Wars: Mandalorian crossover figure.


There was even a Galvatron from Transformers: The Movie.


The Magic the Gathering table showed off a Beginners Box set and five Marvel cards featuring Iron Man, Black Panther, Captain America, Storm, and Wolverine. The Hasbro rep manning the table gave me a Doctor Strange card. A photo of it appears at the end of this article.


Continuing around the room were two tables with Marvel figures; Secret Wars and a large Sentinel from X-Men '97.


Of course, Star Wars got two tables, as well. Various figures of characters I don't know from Disney+ shows I've never seen.


Finally, there was a display and demonstration of Beyblade X. In short, it's a modern version of the old spinning tops that kids were playing with in the Laura Ingalls days. I tried it out with the pretty blonde Hasbro rep, and it's pretty cool. I've also caught the anime series on Disney XD a few times, but I'm far from knowledgeable on the subject.


On the shelf behind the Beyblade X display were some board games. There were no placards with them, so I think they might be a standard fixture in the Hasbro office, and not there as part of the product display. On the far right, not pictured, is Monopoly: Hasbro 100th Anniversary Edition. This was the only one that was plain, as the four to the left of it were quite fancy: Monopoly: World Edition by Charles Fazzino, Monopoly: California Dreaming by Kathleen Keifer Edition, Clue: Luxury Edition, and Scrabble: Prisma Glass Edition.


To the far left of all of the board games was a statue of Optimus Prime, who clearly is a fan of The Breakfast Club.


Now, let's head to the break room and take a look at the food. The offerings included bagel sandwiches, sausage patties, bacon strips, fresh fruit, orange juice, bottled water, soft drinks, yogurt with granola, donuts, and a few other things.


Yes, Hasbro has a collage of Transformers skateboards on the wall of its break room. The one in the middle was autographed in 2017, presumably by the artist whose name appears on the bottom, "Rodriguez".


As previously stated, there were donuts...lots of them. There were four boxes of Krispy Kreme's Ghostbusters donuts. I will write a separate unboxing review of them later, so no need to detail them here.


As I was sitting in the break room, I had some real heartwarming experiences with some of the other attendees. One fella, whose name and outlet I do not remember (sorry, my friend), told me that he has been visiting Spook Central for the past 30 years. I often feel like Spook Central is the forgotten website among all that are still out there. It made me feel as good as busting that maybe that's not the case. Later, Craig Goldberg of the Yes Have Some podcast came up to me and shared some really heartfelt words thanking me for everything I've done for the Ghostbusters online community. I didn't think that I was recognizable since I don't usually put out pictures of myself (exception below) and prefer to let the content on Spook Central be the "star", not me. I can't fully express with words how truly grateful I am that others in the community appreciate what I've been doing for nearly three decades. Craig's words, and getting to meet and have my photo taken with the adorable Abigail Gardner (along with Craig and YHS cohort-in-crime Jacob Walsh), was truly the highlight of the event for me.

Weirdly enough, I actually appeared in a photo with awesome Abigail three years ago at the Afterlife premiere, but she had the cherry spot at the front corner of the fan pen, and I was stuck just a bit behind and off to the side. Both then and now, she was wearing her signature pink "SOS Fantomes" Slimer sweatshirt. Did you know that the YHS trio would have appeared in Frozen Empire, but their reaction shot during the Sewer Dragon chase was cut. Is it too late to petition for an extended cut?


While Hasbro did not give out swag bags like at the Toy Fair 2020 event, there were a handful of freebies, mostly related to Ghostbusters. There's a HasLab No Ghost Logo patch and pin-back button, G.I. Joe: Nightforce comic book (NYCC Ashcan #1), and two dual-sided Haslab Ectomobile promotional cards (one is designed to look like Louis Tully's business card). I took enough of everything to give to friends and some of the Spook Central VIPs.


This is the Magic the Gathering Doctor Strange card I was given. The artwork is really cool. If I ever think I'm going to meet Benedict Cumberbatch somewhere, I would love to have him autograph it.


At the Ghostbusters goodies table were papers with a 15% QR code for HalloweenCostumes.com, the provider of the Ghostbusters candy dishes and props used at the event. The code translates to https://halloweencostumes.com/?CouponCode=newyorkcomiccon15. They have lots of Ghostbusters costumes and decorations, if you need still anything this close to Halloween.


And that concludes my look at the Hasbro New York Comic Con 2024 Breakfast Event. Although it wasn't as good as the previous 2020 event, and I really wish it were later in the day (I'm not a morning person), I thought it was quite nice for what it was.

Patreon-Exclusive Bonus Features: My full set of original 4096x2304 photos and 1920x1080 video files.

All photos in this article were taken by me, Paul Rudoff, exclusively for Spook Central and the VIPs. Please do not repost them elsewhere without permission. Thanks.