Captain America: The Winter Soldier Toys Include The Red Skull

Earlier today at ToyFair 2014, Hasbro unveiled Marvel Studios movie tie-in toy sets had seemingly revealed previously-unannounced characters from the films. Captain America: The Winter Soldier's toy line is already on the shelves--complete with characters like Baron Zemo and Mandroid that nobody thinks will appear in the film. So what's the deal with this one? Well, apparently The Red Skull was included in the part of the presentation that was reserved for toys directly related to the film, whereas other non-film characters were presented separately. Given some fan speculation that S.H.I.E.L.D. honcho Alexander Pierce could secretly be the Red Skull in disguise, it's worth noting that there's now some evidence, even if it's shaky and circumstantial at best, that the character will appear onscreen in The Winter Soldier. Also (equally flimsy) evidence that the character could tie directly into the film is the fact that he comes packaged with a drone to use as an offensive weapon--a U.S. policy that Captain America is said to have some objection to in the film. On the other side of that, though? Well, Cap's villains had a drone in the comics--a very early one. The "experimental drone plane" upon which Captain America and Bucky were seated before they fell to their watery fates in the frigid ocean was controlled by...Baron Zemo. He of the not-at-all-movie-canon-toy. Toys can be a tricky thing: for every playset that completely gives away a major plot point, there's another half-dozen that don't pan out, made just to sell more toys. They could also simply incorporate cut footage (or recycled footage, even) from the first film into the second in flashback when Bucky is talking about his apparent death. So take this with a grain of salt...but probably also a pinch of intrigue.