Guardians of the Galaxy: Five Big Takeaways From ToyFair

With a trailer expected this week, fans are about to start getting a taste of Marvel Studios’ promotional push for Guardians of the Galaxy, one of the most anticipated–and arguably riskiest–films they’ve ever made.James Gunn’s science-fiction adventure story sees Peter Quill, a human who calls himself Star-Lord, leading a motley gang of rejects trying to beat some very nasty people to one of the famed Marvel Studios MacGuffins that will apparently build to an Infinity Gauntlet story down the line.You see the object–a glowing blue orb–in Star-Lord’s hands in a number of the promotional images–and according to the synopsis, there’s an element of the heist movie to this:”From Marvel, the studio that brought you the global blockbuster franchises of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers, comes a new team–the Guardians of the Galaxy. An action-packed, epic space adventure, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits–Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon, Groot, a tree-like humanoid, the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Peter discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand –  with the galaxy’s fate in the balance. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is presented by Marvel Studios. The film releases August 1, 2014, and is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.”That, at this point, is all the official information we have on the movie. So what can we take away from the toys and their accompanying promotional images that rolled out over the weekend at ToyFair in New York?