Thanks to the imagination and skill of two of Walt Disney Animation Studio’s most talented animators,  Mark Henn and Glen Keane, Disney Princess fans and doll collectors can now see a whole side to the beautiful princesses.

Cute versions of all the favourites – Ariel, Cinderella, Jasmine, Belle, Pocahontas, Mulan, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Tiana and Snow White  – are all available now from the Disney Store and show a clever resemblance to the famous characters that they become in later life. The little dolls each come with a special pet too and are priced around £20.

Grossman is banking on the fact that kids love things that adults recoil from, so this selection of corpses that kids bury in the coffins provided will certainly bear watching!

A set of 12 characters, each coming with coffin, headstone and grass to be buried under, will kick-off the range, and a website will let kids explore their ghoulish side even further, by creating more corpses and burying them.

Joining these macabre figures will be a three-foot inflatable Dalek, new scooters from the company’s Ozbozz brand (including the Trail and Twist, Torq Trekk and Moshi Monsters licensed models) and new additions to the Raskullz line of fun cycle helmets.

Other new stuff will include the Megasaurs (replica monsters for dinosaur lovers) and a pocket money-friendly Princess Fizz range.

An exclusive chipmunk pet is included in this set, and children aged four and over will be excited to see him actually walking along. If he (or any of the other pets) fancies taking it easy he can jump on the elevator and take a luxurious ride up to the second floor. Coming downstairs is just as much fun as there’s a slide to whizz down.

Priced around £44.99, other accessories include colourful acorns for the pets to load into a little pink wagon and eat while they sit around a purple table.

Leading the way is a Smurf Movie Set, featuring Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Clumsy Smurf, Gutsy Smurf, Grouchy Smurf and Brainy Smurf. The set is priced around £17.99.

You can also pick the characters up separately, for around £2.90 each (making them great party bag toys).

Designed especially for the collectible market, the Stablemates Horse Lover’s Collection Shadowbox showcases the very best of Breyer. The display boy is ready to hang on the wall and has nine different compartments, each containing a 1:32 scale model of a different breed of horse.

With typical Breyer craftsmanship, each model is carefully sculpted and painted with huge attention to detail, making an extremely realistic representation of each breed.

The unit is priced around £27.99 and further information and pictures of each breed appear on the reverse.

Each happy little Squinkie comes in its own bubble and there are lots of different types to collect, including the most stereotypically cute things on earth: puppies, kittens and babies.

Soft and squishy, the Squinkies are available to collect in packs of 16 and there are six different packs in the range. Each one contains four ‘surprise bubbles’; you have to wait until you get them home to find out what’s inside (but we’re betting that it’s something cute). The Bubble Packs are priced around £9.99 each.

Priced around £4.99 are three Share and Wear packs – Birthday Surprise, Fantasy Surprise and Princess Surprise. These provide a fun way of wearing your Squinkies as accessories.

You can also buy a fun way to store and dispense your little characters in the shape of the Squinkies Twisters. Gumball Surprise and Teatime Surprise are priced around £12.99 each.

The Squinkies can have loads of fun playing in either of the playsets too. The Cupcake Surprise Bake Shop (pictured) and Gumball Surprise Playhouse are each priced around £19.99.

This world, known as Lite-Topia, is home to Prisma, the leader of the Sprites. She is the most colourful of all the Sprites and has a Lite Wand, which enables her to glow in a variety of beautiful shades.

With 10 colours to choose from in the Lite Wand’s rainbow colour library, and any number of colours available to collect from the world around you, the Lite Wand magically transfers the colour you select into Prisma or any other Lite Sprites you own.

The wand can also be used to play games and this set is priced around £29.99.

There are four other Sprites in Lite-Topia. Astra is in charge of the sky, Meadow looks after the earth and Brooke tends to the waters, while the mischievous Bleak tries to steal colours. At around £14.99 each, the sprites come with their own pods to sleep in.

Forming the scenery for the captivating world of Lite-Topia are four Deluxe Playsets. Waterfall, Swing, Flower and Windmill sets are priced around £19.99 each. All of the playsets are designed using pretty pastel colours and can be connected together with a path.

A variety of flowers adorn the outsides of the playsets and each one also comes with a flower ring for the little girl owner to wear.

The Tree of Lite (around £39.99) gives the Lite Sprites somewhere to hang out together. Each Sprite can sit in her own pod as the canopy spins around, displaying a rainbow of colours and also playing music. The set includes a wearable flower ring, a connecting path and a Lite Pet.

Lite Pets are also available in sets of four, with each set seeing the pets sitting in a log. Each set is priced around £5.99 and there are four to collect.

Each bear stands 25cm high and has fully jointed and moveable heads, arms and legs. The golden mohair is set off by ribbons in three colours, with a limited edition of 2012 bears in each ribbon colour.

The Olympic Games bear comes in a black and gold presentation box and is priced around £79.95.

There are 10 main characters in the initial wave – and you won’t know who you’ve got until you open the packet.

Adding to the fun, five rare and super-rare figures have also been included in the packs. One in every 1,000 packs will contain a Projected Weeping Angel figure or the ‘Raggedy Doctor’ from episode one of the fifth series.

Three more figures are even more rare – Amy Pond in a Green Coat, the Silurian Alaya and the Eleventh Doctor in his Kings Arms Football Kit each appear only once in every 5,000 packs.

“Word is being put out on the net that these figures are in the bags, and keen collectors are eagerly seeking them,” commented Character’s Mark Hunt. “ Where they will turn up is a complete lottery but it has certainly created a frenzy among the fans!”

As well as the single-figure packs, you can also pick up Dalek, Weeping Angel or Cyberman Army Builder Packs (five figures in each set, for around £9.99), and three mini sets (Dalek Progenitor Room, TARDIS and Time of Angels) also for around £9.99 each.

Yes, the EggBods have transformed, literally, and you can now get three Transformers-themed characters. Choose from Eggtimus Prime, the evil Eggatron and Bumble Egg.

As with regular EggBods, these characters can be scrambled by mixing up their top and bottom halves, and they are compatible with the original EggBods range. Mix Eggtimus Prime and Bumble Egg to make Bumble Prime, for instance, or create Captain Eggatron by combining Eggatron with Captain Hard Boiled.

Once created and wound up, your EggBods will happily toddle around looking for something to bump into.

The new Transformers EggBods, from Bluw Toys, are priced around £5.99 each, for ages four and up. Find out more at the Eggbods website.