HEXdidn't... presents: TransFormers Collection Blog

TransFormers (Movie) Bumblebee (Camaro Concept)

2011-12-07T20:37:00.000Z

It is, perhaps, no surprise that Movie Bumblebee has had multiple incarnations, not just across the three movie toylines, but within each one as well. A 'Camaro Concept' version was inevitable simply because that's the disguise he adopted shortly after being 'discovered' by Sam. However, despite being a significant upgrade on the '76 Camaro version, the first upgraded movie Bumblebee still exhibits many of the flaws of the first movie's toyline... but is that really so bad?

Vehicle Mode:
There's no doubting that Chevrolet's design for the updated Camara is a muscle car of its time. Far sleeker and smoother than the '76 model, but clearly still a muscle car. This model is quite a faithful representation of the concept car, has comparatively few seams, and those it has are fairly sensibly placed, to minimise their impact on the vehicle. The most obvious oddity is the set of four rectangular holes in the bonnet, which don't seem necessary, and are probably just a strange byproduct of one small element of the transformation

Comparatively speaking, there doesn't appear to be a great deal of paintwork to Bumblebee. The racing stripes are plain black strips down the bonnet and boot, bypassing the roof, the head- and tail-lights are painted, as are front grilles (including, naturally, the Chevrolet logo), hubcaps and even the exhaust pipes, then yellow paint is present on the transparent blue plastic where appropriate, most obviously on the doors.

Not much more to say, really... it's a decent representation of the car's appearance in the movie...

Robot Mode:
I can remember when I first bought this, and thought it was a fantastic interpretation of the movie CGI (that I'd seen, up to that point), given the size of the model. It was far more complicated than any of the Classics/Universe figures from around the same time and, as Deluxe figures go, it's very poseable. How many people, I wonder, bought movie figures and immediately tried to pose them similarly to the CGI publicity images?

Of course, it's not perfectly accurate and, in many ways, is actually quite seriously flawed. Most obviously, the head sculpt is absolutely terrible, like most of the original movie's toyline. Later iterations corrected this, but all the first movie's Bumblebees had similarly inaccurate sculpts, with or without the battle mask. The huge chunks of car roof on the forearms don't help. The movie character has sleek, shapely armour on his forearms, not large, flat panels. The feet are a massive improvement on the '76 Camaro version and, from the front, are a pretty accurate take on the movie CGI, piston things and all. The heels are massively simplified, and yellow piece that folds up is just plain weird.

Bumblebee's weapon, cleverly stowed between his legs in vehicle mode (steady on!) is an interesting addition to the toy. On the one hand, it's inaccurate on at least three levels: it's presented as hand-held, rather than something that attaches over the hand to better represent the way it transforms out of his wrist in the movie, it's far too big and, most curiously, it transforms from a hand cannon into a short energy blade. This last feature is cool and all, but it's something that just doesn't happen in the movie, so I've no idea why it was created for the toy.

Straight out of the packaging, the paintjob on this toy was terribly bland. Yellow touches on the arms and waist, a tampographed numberplate, and metallic blue on the groin were pretty much it for the body, and the face was more black than silver - something of a recurring motif in the movie toys. I broke out my paints and gave him a rough 'drybrushing' with silver, added a bit more to the face, and picked out odd other details elsewhere.

For me, the highlight of the first movie toy line was the Automorph gimmick. When it worked, it was awesome... when it didn't it was no great shakes because these are still transforming robots, and their baseline level of cool is pretty darned high. Camaro Concept Bumblebee is one of the models on which Automorph worked very well, which probably explains why the model went essentially unchanged until the latter part of the Revenge of the Fallen line.

Articulation is pretty much spot on for the first run of Deluxes. The legs are a slight improvement on the '76 Bumblebee (mostly, I suspect, because of the less bulky groin), and having proper feet certainly helps on the posing front, particularly in that the poseable toe offers enough of a footprint to balance on. The arms are a bit limited, partly due to car bits getting in the way of the shoulders, partly due to the elbows just not having much range, and partly because of those large roof panels on the forearms.

Something very much like this model has been reused many times in the movie toylines, which would normally be a sign of laziness - especially when you consider that this exact model was recoloured into red and black and called 'Cliffjumper' - but in the case of this model, it's reuse was well-deserved - it's a truly excellent first attempt, and was only properly superseded by the complete overhaul known as 'Battle Blade Bumblebee', released at the tail end of the Revenge of the Fallen line.

Small Addendum

2011-12-07T14:10:00.001Z

I've had a bit of a playabout with Battle Ops Bumblebee recently, and added a couple of new photos showing that he can actually be posed quite well with effort and patience.

And a little bit of cheating. Specifically, unpegging his right arm from the shoulder, so it can point outward rather than just straight forward.

It's not such a bad model, really... just not necessarily so good as a toy, and it's important to note the difference. Maybe I'm wrong, and I must admit that I'd be surprised if kids really spent much time posing their toys, as opposed to just bashing them into each other... But, really, if they wanted to do that with a TransFormers movie toy, surely they would buy the non-transforming lights and sounds version?

Just for fun, the two additional photos are also here...

TransFormers Collectors' Club 2008 Exclusive Seacons Boxed Set

2011-11-27T03:32:00.000Z

Funny thing: Back in the day, I bought all the G1 Seacons apart from Snaptrap, who I just never found. The Seacons turned up in the Marvel comics, and seemed pretty cool. Two of them transformed into robot fish (kind of like Sharkticons, in that they had arms and legs), one was a lobster, one was a ray and one... Well, I don't think it's ever been adequately explained what the hell Tentakil is supposed to be...

Somewhere along the lines, the Seacons popularity grew to near mythical proportions, putting them almost alongside the Predacons in the collective consciousness of the fandom. The Seacons were cool. Each one had a weapon mode, effectively making each one a TargetMaster as well as a component in the gestalt. They formed Piranacon. Piranacon was awesome.

And then, as an adult collector, a set like this comes along...

Packaging:
I know the official Collectors' Club has its detractors when it comes to their display packaging, but it's one of the things I really like about the Club. They are attempting to illustrate that they are a club for Collectors (note the capital 'c'), rather than for folks who just happen to buy lots of toys. Nowhere has this been more apparent than with their packaging for the Seacons. Not only is it their usual high-grade cardboard with full colour print and glossy finish, with the toys therein held snugly in a foam insert, but the box mimics the G1 gestalt boxed set format with cutaway/windowed sections revealing the contents.

It features the G1 artwork for Piranacon and the artwork for the individual robots that form the team, all lovingly recoloured to match the toys in this Collectors' set. It even has the G1 grid pattern in the background, and the cut out sections more-or-less line up with this grid.

Inside is the usual deal - foam insert, as mentioned, with the bio cards and instructions bagged along with the accessories, such as the weapons, Piranacon parts and the stands for each component's gun mode.

Snaptrap
Alternate Mode:
Well, I guess we have to start somewhere... Snaptrap, being the largest in the pack, is naturally the team's leader. He's... Some sort of turtle? With cannons? And horn/wing/claw things?

There's not much more to be said about Snaptrap's alternate mode, other than that it's completely garish, and is actually better articulated than his robot mode - all four legs have hips and knees, the head can move (as a side effect of transformation) and the jaw can open. Additionally, the gun barrels can move in and out, simulating a firing action, by flipping a switch on his back from one side to the other.

Oh, and I'm baffled as to why only the tops of the gun barrels are painted black... Seems like an oversight to me. Other than that, most of the paintwork ends up on Snaptrap's rear end, which seems quite odd until you realise that Snaptrap's rear end becomes Piranacon's chest.

When I first saw photos of this model, I was disappointed that the horn/wing/claw parts were bare, flat yellow rather than chromed, but I eventually kind of rationalised it that they were supposed to represent a kind of boney protrusion, which had yellowed over time.

And, yes, I know that makes no sense.

Robot Mode:
Deary me... What is to be said about Snaptrap's robot mode? Well, in its favour, it's colouration is fairly sober compared to alternate mode. Most of the purple winds up on his back and is only visible below his (exceptionally broad) shoulders. The only paintwork visible in this mode is on his face and chest - his alternate mode's head tucks in quite nicely, displaying some metallic blue and a tampographed Decepticon logo. Since the cannons are only painted on the tops, they appear to be plain yellow in robot mode.

Like most G1 toys, all the articulation is in the arms - both shoulders and elbows are hinged. The head doesn't move at all. The hands are rather awkard, in that they aren't extended via a tab, like most similar G1 models - they have to be basically shaken out or extracted by gravity. Also like many G1 toys, Snaptrap looks terrible from behind - two of his alternate mode's legs just stick up out of his backside, making it that much trickier to get at the slide switch that operates his cannons, and making him rather back-heavy.

Snaptrap can make use of a large yellow blaster and Piranacon's sword (each having two levels of grip - one for Snaptrap's smaller fist holes, one for the gestalt's larger hands), and the alternate mode's rear end can also be mounted on either shoulder as a shield. It's not particularly effective, and seems more than a little flimsy, but it's an option.

Nautilator
Alternate Mode:
Well... it's sort of a lobster, isn't it?

Back in G1 Days, the Seacons were a serious colour-clash team, with purples and greens and pinks and greys... this exclusive set plays around with the hue settings and produces a team that, in some cases, clashes even more horribly, and Nautilator is the epitome of this. The head, tail and sides are a strange, desaturated pale sky blue, the body and claws are bright orange, and the legs (surely one pair too many?) are purple.

The common theme in this set is going to be sparse paintwork and, again, Nautilator could be the poster boy for plainness. He has a large, black panel at the back of his alternate mode head, yellow eyes, a couple of patches of yellow on his back... and, like Snaptrap's cannons, only the tops of his pincers are painted black.

Is it worth mentioning articulation on this model? Probably not, since the claws revolve at the 'shoulder' only because they're actually removeable. Oh, and the mouth opens.

Robot Mode:
In all fairness, none of the G1 gestalt limb components from any team has ever been particularly impressive, but Nautilator has to rank among the worst. His transformation is somewhat less complex that a minibot, and he's one of the most disproportionate messes I've ever seen in the TransFormers line. He has one leg which, if your imagination is particularly effective, at least splits off into two feet. His head sits too far back on his shoulders and his torso is just an enormous barrel.

Worse still, what little paintwork was visible in his alternate mode is mostly concealed in robot mode - only the two touches of yellow on the torso and the smear of yellow meant to highlight his face are visible in this mode.

Seawing
Alternate Mode:
I must confess a bizarre fondness for Seawing's alternate mode... A ray was never going to be the easiest thing to turn into a transforming robot, but those G1 designers did a quite reasonable job on this mode, at least. Additionally, Seawing in this form displays what it easily the most elaborate paint job in the entire set. The wings are molded in bright orange, but have a graduated tint of yellow extending in from the wingtips, black details along the front edge (though, like Nautilator and Snaptrap, they're only painted on top!) and on the back, and that pale greyish blue is used again to bring out details on the head, as well as the yellow paint for his eyes. On top of this, he has Decepticon logos tampographed onto both wings... It's like he's the aquatic equivalent of one of the Seekers.

Where most of the other models in this set are merely more garish than their G1 counterparts, Seawing - in this form, at least - is a significant improvement on the original's comparatively bland colourscheme.

And, hey, robot ray!

Robot Mode:
However much you may enjoy Seawing's alternate mode, though, his robot mode is utterly foul. He barely has legs (which probably explains why there are details picked out with paintwork), the ray's jaw becomes a faintly disturbing serrated crotch flap, and he's almost as wide as he is tall.

Additionally, all the paintwork that made his alternate mode look so groovy is utterly wasted because his wings are folded around his back.

Oh, but let's not dwell on the amount of his alternate mode that's just hanging off his back...

Skalor
Alternate Mode:
Were it not for the magnificent glory of Seawing's alternate mode wings, Skalor would probably have the best looking alternate mode in the set, largely because of the awesome dark wash that brings out the detail in his molded scales. He's also the only one whose mouth is properly painted so that both top and bottom jaws match, and he's the Seacon who looks most like the Sharkticons from the G1 animated movie.

Then again... that just means he's a giant robot fish with stubby legs and arms... and they really are stubby. While I can (just about) see the 'logic' behind giving this model legs (the other option would have been somehow turning his tail into the robot's arms), I don't see why he was given arms... particularly since he's the only Seacon whose arms are pinned in place, rather than being removable.

Robot Mode:
Sadly, while Skalor looks wonderful as a robo-fish, he looks terrible as a robot. Like Nautilator, he's almost as wide as he is tall but, unlike Nautilator, it's because of the excessive bulk in his arms. There's really no reason for them to be as large as they are, considering the size of the pegs on the guns. The fists are larger than they need to be and, even if it wasn't possible to mount the guns in his fists, it would have been perfectly acceptable to plug them into his forearms. Either way, the arms could have been made slimmer.

As usual, robot mode is significantly less articulated than the alternate mode, and the legs require far too much suspension of disbelief to be effective. Also, much like Seawing, the most effective aspects of the alternate mode paint job are concealed in robot mode, leaving him looking rather plain.

Skalor is also where the quality control issues in this set start to become apparent - the 'knee' joint that allows his robo-fish head to become robot mode's feet is not particularly firm or secure in robot mode, though the most detrimental effects of this problem are felt more by Piranacon than Skalor himself. There's also a problem with the tail joint - my original manages to fold down so it sits flush with the back... this one sticks out at quite an angle.

Overbite
Alternate Mode:
While Overbite is clearly meant to be a shark, he's essentially a Seacon of the same format as Skalor - a robo-fish with arms and legs. As befits a shark, though, his legs are leaner and his arms are meaner - almost claws, really. The arms, much like Nautilator's are removeable, which does help him look a bit more streamlined and shark-like... but the lack of fins and the presence of legs naturally detracts from this.

There are bits of incidental paintwork other than his eyes - a metallic blue lump on his head, almost like a cockpit, sits just in from of his Decepticon logo, then there are several dark blue protrusions from his flanks, almost where a shark's gills would be. The claws also have touches of the light metallic blue.

Robot Mode:
Much like Skalor, Overbite's robot mode is a bit of a travesty - not only does he seem to have one leg, but there's not even much to differentiate between his feet. Articulation is much the same, but his fists are molded onto the backs of his robo-fish feet, rather than being separate pieces that stow in the soles. And, just like both Skalor and Seawing, the paint that's visible in his alternate mode is completely hidden in robot mode.

Considering his size, and the fact that they're G1 models, we should probably be pleasantly surprised that his arms are articulated both at the shoulder and the elbow. On the one hand this is simply as a result of his alternate mode's articulation... but, on the other, since fish don't actually have legs, some kind of bizarre thought went into them, with the intention of giving the both of them more posability than the average gestalt part.

Tentakil
Alternate Mode:
Really, I have no words... Tentakil is clearly based on some kind of squid, going by the short, stubby, rather flat 'tentacles' and the vaguely squid-like arrowhead crest... but that face... and those legs... What the hell are they all about? The face is almost cute, and just doesn't fit the largely robotic aesthetic of the alternate modes of every other member of the team, and the legs make him look comical rather than fearsome.

G1 Tentakil's paint job was largely restricted to this mode's face and there's not much of an upgrade on this version: some metallic orange on the 'wings', silver on the crest's grille, a subtle grey wash on the tentacles... and then a coat of glossy black paint on his 'shoes'. It's tempting to joke that they showed enough restraint to avoid giving him spats as well, but part of me has a sneaking suspicion that might have been suggested.

Weirdly, this alternate mode is probably the most posable... sort of. While it doesn't have the knee joints of Skalor or Overbite, the tentacles can be rotated forward and back, and the additional orange tentacles at the back can be positioned to offer additional stability... Essentially made necessary by the fixed squat pose of the legs.

Robot Mode:
But if Tentakil's alternate mode wins in the category of most bizarre, the big surprise is that his robot mode probably exhibits the best proportions of the set. Sure, it's a little wide in the body, but of the Seacons, he's the only one to get anywhere near a convicing representation of two legs. Of course, this is completely ruined by the solid, very much one-piece 'feet' but, hey, at least they're showing off some of the paintwork. That makes a change, right?

Sadly, Tentakil also offers further evidence of both poor quality control and serious mold degradation - the 'knee' joint is so stiff, it feels (and, if I'm honest, actually looks) as though it's going to break. Many of those who bought this set complained of signs of plastic stress before they even attempted to transform him.

Piranacon:
I remember Piranacon's first appearance in the Marvel comics back in the 80s... a massive, terrifying titan emerging from the sea. Sure, it had a wacky colourscheme... but, frankly, it's not a patch on this insanity. Broadly speaking, the colours are as unified on this version as they were on the original... but it's still pretty bonkers. After all, these are Seacons... and yet they're a crazy combination of yellow, orange, purple, blue-grey, almost-black, and miscellaneous metallic colours... This could easily be mistaken for an elaborate piñata.

The quality control and mold degradation issues are bad enough in the individual components, but the combined form of Piranacon suffers from a terrible slouch, largely thanks to Skalor. You'll notice in one of the photos below, Skalor is facing backwards. This alleviates the problem somewhat, but there also seems to be a slight difference in height between him and his leg-mate Tentakil, meaning Piranacon is just all-round unstable.

Granted, all of the G1 gestalt limbs were designed to be completely interchangeable, but the box art does tend to suggest a particular arrangement. This set quite clearly depicts Nautilator as Piranacon's right arm, and Overbite as his gun... however, there's no way to make this work on the toy - everything about Nautilator gets in the way of Overbite's weapon mode attaching to the right fist.

Sadly, the QC issues don't end there. The chest plate doesn't sit in place as snugly on this model as it does on an original G1 Piranacon or, from what I've seen, the Hasbro re-release

The limbs are completely interchangeable, using the standard square posts that all G1 gestalts had. Any of them can be any limb, or form Piranacon's weapon, though some are not quite fit for purpose as their individual weapons often don't attach properly in that mode.

It has been said that this set was originally intended to be a store exclusive, many years ago, but that the store chain in question pulled out of the deal, meaning this set very nearly never saw the light of day. In many ways, it's very cool that Hasbro consented to the Club's request to take on this set... but that cool factor is somewhat diminished by the fact that Hasbro subsequently re-released the Seacons themselves, in their original G1 colourscheme (more or less), with all the stickers and chrome of the original G1 release and somewhat improved quality control versus this set...

The most significant omission in this Collectors' Club redeco is the stickers - while each individual G1 Seacon came with the usual sticker sheet, this Club exclusive set has none. Reprolabels quickly produced a set of Seacons labels re-coloured to fit these models' colourschemes, but it seems pretty daft of the Club to neglect to do so themselves. Hasbro's re-release, meanwhile, was released with the stickers already applied. Adding insult to injury, it was - initially, at least - far cheaper, too.

Aside from this and the original G1 version, there was another set of these figures released in one of the Japanese Beast Wars lines. While it had a far more uniform colourscheme (mostly pearlescent white) it apparently suffered from terribly plastic quality, and a tendency to break due, in part, to the metallic flakes in the plastic. At least the Club didn't try to emulate that version.

It's a crying shame that such a highly anticipated Club exclusive turned out to be so flawed. I eventually managed to track down a fairly well-preserved G1 Snaptrap on eBay, to satisfy my obsessive compulsion to own complete gestalt teams. Aside from some chrome wear - almost inevitable, considering the age of the toy - it was more or less perfect and so, sadly, a huge improvement on this set, at a fraction of the cost.

If I ever decide to sell any of my collection, this set will be at the top of the list but, given its much-publicised QC issues, I wouldn't expect to get much for it, despite being one of the first Club exclusives to sell out on preorders (if I remember correctly). It's sets like this that make me wonder why so many TransFormers fans are so fixated on Generation 1.

TransFormers (Movie) Bonecrusher

2011-11-25T17:14:00.000Z

If there's one thing you can say about the Michael Bay TransFormers movies, it's that the designers working on the robots were unafraid to ignore 25 years of TransFormers history, and strike out into their very own continuity. While the toys back in the day tended to transform into something vaguely humanoid (albeit rather boxy), ILM took the concept of 'alien robots' to heart, creating something very different.

It almost seems strange, then, to have used so many recognisable names from Generation 1, while giving the robots associated with those names such a massive overhaul, both in look and in purpose. Bonecrusher, for example, was one of the Constructicons back in G1. For the first TransFormers movie, however, he became a rage-fuelled engine of destruction, fixated on Optimus Prime, and with no affiliation to the Constructicons who (arguably) appeared in Revege of the Fallen.

Vehicle Mode:
One of the funniest stories about the making of the live actionTransFormers movie concerned the vehicle Bonecrusher used as hisdisguise. The Buffalo mine-clearing vehicle came to the attention ofthe relevant people involved in the movie's production, and they wereimpressed by the imposing fork on its large, pneumatic arm protrudingfrom the front of the vehicle. It sounds as though the robot wasbasically built around that arm. When the vehicle was delivered,however, they discovered they had been duped by some very creativephotography: the vehicle's real fork is tiny ('only' 14 inches wide).According to the TF Wiki, a 10 foot wide version was made for themovie, but that doesn't seem quite right, given the apparent scale ofthe vehicle, or the proportions of the toy... I would guess it wasn't even 10 feet long...

Nevertheless, the Buffalo is still an imposing vehicle, so it's a huge shame that so detailed an alternate mode - particularly for a Deluxe class figure from the first movie - ends up so plain through lack of paintwork. All the (small) windows are painted metallic turquoise, and the two molded tyres are painted to match the free-rolling wheels, even down to the hubcaps, but the rest of the model, as far as this mode is concerned, is basically devoid of paintwork. It's not a disaster, because the choices of colour for the plastic suits the model perfectly - sandy-coloured for the most part, with greener, vaguely metallic plastic used for the fork and parts of the arm. The lack of paintwork only really becomes jarring where there's a feature that really demands paint, such as the vehicle's lights, or the ladder at the rear. However, the small fact that the bulldog insignia on the righthand side of the vehicle is a sticker rather than a tampograph suggests it was something of an afterthought... which is a huge oversight.

Aside from it being too small - and it seems even Hasbro conceded in retrospect that Bonecrusher should have been a Voyager - the only real flaw with this Deluxe is that the rear wheels don't line up - one of them on each side will always rest at an angle (or be inset) due to the way it's mounted on the robot's legs. It doesn't prevent the vehicle from rolling, though.

One thing that's pretty impressive about the few versions of Bonecrusher - I believe there were only Deluxe and Legends class versions - is the mobility of the fork arm. It's not perfect, and the gimmick that allows the fork to split apart and move on a geared lever does come at the expense of another 'elbow', but this is probably the best alternate mode a model of this size could have.

Robot Mode:
A lot of the complaints about the TransFormers live action movies seem to stem from the expectation among some fans that the robots in the movie should look like the G1 toys or cartoon characters - bipedal, and of largely humanoid proportions. I'm one of those who applaud the designers for their more believable, alien take on these transforming mechanoids, and few movie Decepticons were as bizarre-looking as Bonecrusher. With his hunched back, broad shoulders, short, clawed legs, and a third arm that was a cross between a scorpion's tail and a junkyard crane claw, he was immediately intimidating. Even the sight of him rollerblading down a highway didn't lessen the impact of this dangerous-looking robot... Though, OK, maybe that's because he rolled through a bus...

In Deluxe size, it's quite obvious that many, many compromises have been made but, still, Bonecrusher turns out to be a great, reasonably poseable figure. His proportions are pretty accurate - maybe a bit excessive in the shoulders - and, while the arms are largely great, immobile chunks of the vehicle, what joints there are have been placed quite cleverly. There's no elbow joint, as such, but the arms can be extended thanks to a concealed extra 'forearm' length. One of the two joints on this piece can act as an elbow when the arm is stowed, but this then leaves enormous blocks of vehicle parts where the arms bend.

If vehicle mode looked bland and underpainted, though, it seems most of the paint budget went on robot mode - great swathes of a greenish-gold metallic paint are used on the torso, with accents in a coppery colour and touches of a flat, dark green on the groin and 'forearms'. Small patches of these latter two colours add a tiny bit of detail to the head also. Weirdly, despite appearing far lighter, the greenish metallic paint is a fairly close match to the green, sort-of metallic plastic used for the legs and forearms.

As with the movie character, the fork arm is quite prominent in robot mode - it can either sit, idle and split, on his back, or articulate over his head with the fork rearranged into his trademark claw. It doesn't extend out particularly far - about an inch forward of his head - but it shows how much effort went into making this toy as close as possible to the CGI model of the movie... One can only wonder how much cooler this would have been as a Voyager.

Of course, no discussion of Bonecrusher from the live action movie can pass without mentioning that he wasn't a Constructicon. It's not just that his disguise wasn't a construction vehicle - considering how awesome both vehicle and robot were, that would be easy to forgive - but the movie incarnation of Bonecrusher existed entirely independently of the team of construction vehicle Decepticons who may or may not have combined to form Devastator in Revege of the Fallen. Oh, the ignominy.

I'm going to come right out and say that I absolutely loveBonecrusher's robot mode, despite many, many shortcomings. The hunched,insectoid look, the menacing arms, that terrible attack claw... Bonecrusher really fits the concept of a transforming alien robot. The model suffers from being so small - both in that transformation is rather simplistic and that it results in the arms being large, awkward pieces of the vehicle with large, awkward panels hanging off, but the designers really tried to counter this with the arm extension gimmick. It doesn't really make the arms any better articulated, but the effort isn't entirely wasted.

The legs are a bit of a pain, in that they don't peg into the groin very successfully, and their range of motion is fairly limited by the arrangement of the feet. That, coupled with the awkward, top-heavy nature of the figure means that it can be difficult to pose adequately. One thing that really impressed me was the handling of the head - not only is it on a ball-joint, but there's a whole hinged 'neck' as well.

The most disappointing aspect of it is that the arms are composed of the entire top and rear sections of the vehicle. The shoulders have a fair range of motion, but the vehicle parts hanging off the main part of the arms get in the way of everything.

No, correction, the most disappointing aspect is that there's no way to adequately recreate the highway chase/battle scene, because Bonecrusher is utterly dwarfed by even the Voyager class Optimus Prime.

OK, I'm crap...

2011-11-25T17:10:00.001Z

Yes, yet another long hiatus... Due to ennui and Xenoblade Chronicles (and Metroid: Other M... and Zelda: Twilight Princess...), I have spent rather too long away from this blog and many other bits of writing.

I'd like to say I'll be getting back on track now, but that would probably be a lie.

Oh well...

Addendum

2011-08-15T12:17:00.002+01:00

I don't quite understand how I managed this, but I found today that there was yet another toy in my collection that I hadn't taken photos of - Revenge of the Fallen Chromia. That has now been rectified, so that should be one of the write-ups I get round to as soon as I get my arse in gear...

Also, somewhat reluctantly, I have added 'Entry Mode' to my writeup of Revenge of the Fallen Deluxe Ravage. It's a rubbish alternate mode, but it's there... Similarly rubbish is Mixmaster's so-called Cannon Mode, now added to the voyager toy's write-up.

Also put in a few links between Leader Class Starscream and the couple of 'Stop Press' addenda I wrote.

Alternators Sunstreaker

2011-07-29T18:13:00.000+01:00

Binaltech was a line that missed many opportunities - the sort of 20th Anniversary celebration that left many people wondering exactly what went on in Takara's strategy meetings. Sure, it came along before the TransFormers movie franchise kicked the toymaking into a higher gear and, yes, there were several key motor car manufacturers who still - irrationally - did not wish to associate with 'war toys', but when you create Sideswipe out of a Dodge Viper SRT-10, surely it's natural to create Sunstreaker out of the souped up version, isn't it? And yet the remixed model, with it's bespoilered rear end, and a head sculpt that was clearly Sunstreaker, was first released as a Decepticon, Dead End... and it was up to Hasbro's Alternators line to correct this most grievous error...

Vehicle Mode:
In it's own way, the Dodge Viper SRT-10 Competition Coupe is quite a beautiful car. I say "in its own way", but what I probably mean is "in a very American Muscle Car sort of way". Sure, the back end makes it look like something out of The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift, with its squared off sides and elevated spoiler, but that extended front end, wide open grille and the evil-looking headlights are pure muscle car. The kind of car that doesn't care if it wins the race by fair means or foul... which is, let's face it, perfect for the thug known as Sunstreaker.

Like the standard model, it's a two-door with an opening bonnet. Curiously, it looks as though the boot was intended to open, but is screwed in place. Removing the screw allows the boot to start opening, but then the moldings around the hinges get in the way, and the boot lid just pops off. Not that there's any detail - or storage space - beneath it, just more flat, unpainted plastic, covering robot parts.

And, yes, the majority of this model is unpainted plastic, just like the typical Alternators model. The yellow is richer than my photos suggest, but just as bland, and the black stripes don't do much to improve the looks. The only real surprise in the paintjob is that they bothered to pick out the fuel cap in silver. I guess that, since it's on the part that was already extensively painted - the roof is entirely made up of transparent plastic, painted over in yellow and black where appropriate - they figured picking out that little bit of sliver wouldn't hurt.

Oddly, Sunstreaker came out after Tracks who, in Japan, was originally released in yellow instead of Tracks' traditional blue, because yellow was Chevrolet's colour of choice for the new Corvette. It was said that Hasbro's version of Tracks was blue rather than yellow because the plastic wasn't dense enough to look good on that mold. Strangely, this yellow car looks just fine. The only gripe I can come up with is that the red Viper logo on the front pretty much disappears on the black stripes.

These days, of course, those black stripes would tend to make most people think of Bumblebee...

Robot Mode:
Whereas seeing Sideswipe as a Dodge Viper was a bit of a stretch, Sunstreaker seems to suit both the vehicle mode and the robot mode far better. The windscreen-gut, and all the stuff hanging off his back and shoulders are reminiscent of - though not exactly accurate to - the original G1 model.

The fact that the Competition Coupé model's hard top folds down into his back, leaving the windscreen without any attachments on the robot's front means he's not quite so elegant-looking (or as secure) as Sideswipe, and the head mold isn't among my favourites from the line, but this isn't a bad reuse of the mold.

I do find it curious that the arms are red and grey, with black fists, rather than black and yellow with yellow fists, because he ends up looking like he's borrowed Sideswipe's arms... but I guess it could be an attempt at referencing the miscolouring on the G1 toys - Sunstreaker came with a pair of red stickers for his shoulders, that remained unchanged from the days when he was the red Diaclone Countach.

Sunstreaker was one of those models where I deliberately chose the Alternator over the Binaltech version available. Not for financial reasons - I could easily afford Binaltech Asterisk Sunstreaker - or because he was easier to find - if anything, the BT:A would have been easier, at the time. I just didn't think the Japanese release looked as good. There was far too much yellow, not enough of any other colour, and it didn't even have the stripes. Sure, that all just made it more G1 accurate... but it also made it extremely dull. Not even the accompanying figure, Junko the Race Queen, was enough to sway me.

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2006 (Timelines) Unit-2/Tigatron

2011-07-29T17:52:00.000+01:00

Since I still haven't got myself to over BotCon, all of my exclusives either came via the Collectors' Club (in the unlikely event that any were left over after the convention) or eBay. Tigatron is one such figure, bought as a companion piece to the Dawn of Futures Past set that I picked up at a show in the UK. He's a straight redecoration of the boxed set's Cheetor figure in Tigatron's traditional white, black and minty green.

Vehicle Mode:
Straight away, this model manages to look better than the original simply because it's so extensively coated in minty green. And not just any minty green, either.. it's metallic minty green. So while Cheetor was largely bare yellow plastic (or seemed so - like this version, Cheetor's bonnet was transparent plastic painted over in plain yellow!), Tigatron is more instantly eyecatching. He has the same massive red Maximal logo printed on the bonnet, and his exhaust pipes are a lighter, though still faintly bluish metallic colour.

Taking his cue from Cheetor in one respect, the car's seats are 'tastefully' upholstered in white tigerskin. While it's the obvious thing to do, especially considering the way the pattern is revealed in robot mode, it's still very strange to see these two alien robots who, at this point in their lives, had never been to Earth, exhibiting animal patterns.

In every other significant way, this model is identical to BotCon Cheetor.

Robot Mode:
And, yet again, Tigatron manages to look far cooler than Cheetor, despite being the same mold. I don't know if it's my affection for the character (awesomely voiced by Blu Mankuma), or just the fact that white, black and metallic minty green floats my boat far more boyantly than yellow, black and metallic blue. Either way, Tigatron is superior.

The 'animal face' paint design on his chest has been adapted to be more suitable to Tigatron and his stripes, while still completely incongruous, work better on both the arms and the chest than Cheetor's spots.

Even the head mold got a different paint job - not just the face and eye colours, but there are tiny little 'whisker' lines painted on!

Naturally, this version of the mold has all the same shortcomings as Cheetor - flimsiness being the chief amongst them - but mine probably shows more signs of mold degradation than the version from the boxed set. The legs - both the ball jointed hips and the pinned knees - are particularly floppy (though not to the extent that he won't stand unaided), and the flaps on the back of his lower legs have a nasty habit of detaching during transformation. Thankfully, they do pop right back on.

It's a really weird thing that, with two instances of the same mold being used for Cheetor and for Tigatron, I prefer Tigatron in both cases. This isn't my favourite mold from Galaxy Force by a long chalk, and I never did pick up any version of GF Skids, but Tigatron manages to transcend all shortcomings. I can't remember how much I paid for him on eBay (probably over the odds), but he's not particularly easy to find these days, so it was essentially money well spent...

TransFormers (Movie) Ratchet

2011-07-28T23:41:00.000+01:00

Of all the things that had 'fans' in uproar about the first Michael Bay-directed Transformers movie, Ratchet's appearance was probably the daftest. G1 Ratchet was, of course, an ambulance made out of the Nissan Cherry Vanette mold (aka Diaclone's Onebox Vanette... Although, bizarrely, the toy appears to have been based on a vehicle that didn't see the light of day until several years after G1 made its debut, let alone Diaclone!), and was one of the most ridiculed models in the line - he had no head, barely had arms, and was a terrible 'robot' sat upon a mobile 'repair bay'. Rather than sticking with the ambulance theme, Movie Ratchet becomes a rescue vehicle for the Fire Service. A strange choice, to be sure...

Vehicle Mode:
Leaving aside the politics of the licensing deal behind the vehicles used in the live action TransFormers movie, there are advantages to Ratchet disguising himself as a Fire Rescue vehicle rather than an standard ambulance. What we have here is a heavily modified Humvee which, at the back, is more or less an ambulance but, everywhere else, is vehicle designed for just about any terrain, and tough enough to get into the dangerous situations the Fire Service are likely to encounter.

Aside from the bullbars and roof rack there are few molded details that define this as anything other than an ambulance, most notably the spade and wrench-like things (not sure what they're called, but they're not wrenches, and their function is basically the opposite of a vice - they're for forcing things open/apart) molded into the roof just below the rack. Despite the fact that the bulk of the vehicle is flat panelling, there's a fair amount if detail molded all over, from the ridges and handles on the doors to the lights on the sides and above the cab, even the various hitches on the front and rear bumpers... And, of course, not forgetting 'HUMMER' molded into the front grille.

Where it's lacking, by and large, is the paint job. Straight from the box, most of the molded details are unpainted, and the red emergency flashers are woefully underdone. Much of the paint budget appears to have gone on painting the doors green, since they're molded in transparent blue, but at least it's a reasonable match to the plastic. It's nice to see all the headlights and front indicators - even the lights on the roof rack - painted appropriately, though the rear end is a little lacking. Of the movie models, as far as extra paintwork requirements go, Voyager Ratchet's alternate mode was probably the most in need.

Both the roof rack and the bullbars are removeable, but the holes left by the removal of the latter and the details exposed by the removal of the former mean that Ratchet really does need these un-ambulance-like parts to be fully effective in vehicle mode

One rather cool thing is that the windscreen, despite being split for transformation, manages to look almost seamless unless you're looking closely. Sadly, there's no molded cab detail and, in fact, you can see a rather significant transformation part quite clearly within. It's also pretty impressive to see wing mirror that stick out the way these do, but I guess that's what you get when Hasbro license the vehicle used in the movie.

On the downside, the undercarriage leaves the robot's arms in plain sight and, while there is some molded detail inside the wheelarches, none of it is specific to the vehicle mode.

Robot Mode:
Like Ironhide, Voyager Ratchet remained largely untouched between the first movie's toyrange and that of Revenge of the Fallen. There were numerous repaints, but Ratchet didn't get any remolded parts - not even the head. The again, Ratchet's is probably the only head they got more or less right the first time round.

Ratchet looks pretty good - well-proportioned, detailed, and pretty mobile. The legs are too blocky to be accurate, but some attempt was made to mitigate this by molding a lot of detail on the outsides. Even so, those details needed some additional paintwork to really bring them out. And paintwork, again, is where robot mode falls down. There's an amazing amount of molded detail on the upper legs and the arms, but the vast majority was left as plain plastic. The parts of the forearms that were painted were dark grey, so I covered over much of it with silver, and used copper to pick out certain parts.

Broadly speaking, though, he's very accurate to the movie CGI. The tyres on his shoulders are actually supposed to be the lights from the roof rack but, in terms of using what's available to make the best approximation, they did an excellent job.

Two glaring flaws really stand out on this model - the vehicle's doors (and the large panels that fold over them) stuck on the backs of his shoulders, and the roofrack hanging off his back (which literally sticks out - and at quite an angle!). The latter is detachable, though, and intended to be used as some sort of claw weapon - it attaches to his forearms, and the green peg within the wheel is a slide switch that opens and closes the claw. Why this was included is anyone's guess - Ratchet never uses anything like that in the movie.

What he does use is some kind of blaster and a rotary saw, both of which transform out of his forearms. What this model has instead is some kind of butterfly-shaped 'axe' weapon which can be pulled out of his right forearm. The same green detail is molded into his left arm, but is a solid part of the arm.

Ratchet is fairly poseable, though the feet are very limited in their motion, and the knees are somewhat restricted by rear bumper panels hanging off the backs. As far as I can tell, the only Automorph gimmick Ratchet has is in the legs - as the feet are rotated down into place, a pair of panels on the inner face of each lower leg push out, giving his otherwise boxy legs a bit more shape.

I was really impressed with the way Ratchet transforms. He takes the standard G1 'vehicle-front chest' and quite literally turns it on its head, and the way the cab collapses down and the lower body hinges into place underneath was very original.

The mold isn't perfect but, unlike Ironhide and the myriad modifications to his mold, Ratchet stood the test of time, and I haven't felt the need to replace this now 4 year old Voyager with any of the repaints or the Deluxe-sized versions. That said, I suspect either of the Deluxes could have been improved if they'd been scaled up to Voyager class.

A few extra weapons wouldn't have gone amiss, though...

TransFormers (Movie) Megatron

2011-07-28T17:55:00.000+01:00

Although there was as much artwork of Megatron's live action movie appearance as there was for the other characters, his alternate mode was shrouded in mystery. For everyone else - Autobot and Decepticon - images had leaked of the contentious robot modes and the terrestrial disguises they'd adopted. Then came the bombshell: Megatron wasn't taking an Earth-based alternate mode.

While the scant information available before the release of the movie characterised this as arrogance - why would the Decepticon leader feel the need to have a disguise? - the news left most fans cold. Sure, we couldn't expect his to transform into a gun (Michael Bay had been adamant that there would be no 'mass shifting' to ruin his 'realism') but, if he wasn't going to be a 'Robot in Disguise', what would he be?

Vehicle Mode:
The answer, of course, was that he would be a Cybertronian attack jet.

Wait, what?

The toy actually came out before the movie hit the screens, and it became swiftly apparent that it was playing fast and loose with the CGI model. That said, Megatron's jet mode was so spindly, his transformation into the bulky, massively tall robot stretched credulity. There was no way the toy would be able to mimmick that in real-life, plastic parts. You could probably customise a movie-accurate alternate mode out of this toy, but it would mean removing the legs and rebuilding the entire midsection of the jet.

So, in short, Movie Megatron's toy vehicle mode is shit. There's no getting around it. From the front and sides, it would almost look OK were it not for the legs very obviously dangling from the undersides of the wings. As if that wasn't bad enough, he also suffers terribly from 'Visible Robot Head' Syndrome - with just a small plastic tab 'concealing' his face, the entire head sits just behind the jet's nose.

This model is another fine example of a toy that looks pretty good from above, because that's the only angle at which the silhouette comes close to matching the CGI. It's a pretty large model and, in that respect, it wins back a few points, but the extensive (excessive?) use of plain grey plastic, and the airbrushed patches of a strange metallic blue really don't constitute a paintjob to be proud of. As with far too many of the first movie's toys, I had to bring out my paintbrushes and do some extensive work on him... work which I eventually gave up on through sheer tedium. Molded detail abounds - there's even some on the underside of the tail section, and on pieces that end up inside the torso in robot mode.

There is a sound effect in this mode, but it almost sounds like a holdover from Galaxy Force Flame Convoy, because it's just a screech... I can only assume it's meant to represent the jet mode's engine sounds, but I don't recall any sound like it in the movie.

The worst part about it is that, while all the other movie toys turn into something recognisable - and licensed! - arguably the most important character becomes some strange, alien, and yet nondescript so-called jet. Had there been any mention in the movie of Megatron's reasoning for not taking a disguise - even if it was just a case of not having time to select one - it might make some sense, but the whole issue was ignored.

Robot Mode:
And it's not as if things are much better when Megatron shows his true form... Neither this nor the Voyager class version did a particularly good job of representing the CGI for the first movie, and it wasn't just because Movie Megatron looked more like The Shrike than Megatron. What possible chance did the designers have of turning such a monstrosity into a viable toy?

It's not unusual for a TransFormer to be burdened by a surfeit of obvious vehicle mode parts in its robot mode... but when the vehicle in question is alien, surely that should make it easier to conceal? And yet Movie Megatron's wings protrude from his back, the entire nose section hangs down over the entire tail section (which is only as bulky as it is because it doubles as the battery compartment) on his back, and the forearms carry the 'prongs' that flank the nose section.

Attempts were surely made to keep to the look of the CGI, as evidenced by the panels that move into place in the final (and otherwise redundant) phase of transformation. Like Prime, there's a switch at the bottom of his waist which, when flipped, releases the internal gears that raise some translucent pink... things... behind his shoulders. What these are is anyone's guess, because nothing like them ever appeared in the movie.

There are a couple of true Automorph gimmicks - one closes up the wings onto the robot's back as the nose is flipped back over the shoulders, the other puts the toes into place when the knee is clicked back to vertical. The former is quite impressive to watch, the latter is well done but, since the legs are wholly superfluous to the requirements of the vehicle mode, it seems like wasted effort.

Considering the way the torso basically concertinas into place, it's no surprise that there's no waist articulation, but what's left is horribly limited. The head doesn't move at all - and it's not because of electronic lighting for the eyes, all he has is light piping! - the arms are a mass of bizarre joints and protrusions that interfere with them and, while the legs have decent range, the feet barely keep Megatron stable standing straight, let alone posed dramatically.

With so much extra bulk on the model to accommodate the electronics, one could be forgiven for hoping that robot mode would offer substantially more than the button-activated screech in jet mode. Sadly, one would be very disappointed: the geared movement of the chest plates is accompanied by another, different screech and a couple of blinking lights in the chest. Not even a single voice clip, and no additional effects once transformation is complete. The button that activated jet mode's screech is actually covered up in robot mode.

There are a couple of 'bonus' features that may mitigate this disaster, depending on how generous one is willing to be: the right 'hand' can detach and fold up to be the mace Megatron used toward the end of the movie (a subtle reference to his Energon weapon from the TV series pilot), while the left arm's 'prong' can extend and Automorph a kind of weapon, though it's not entirely clear what it's supposed to be. Finally, the two arms can be linked via a small clip on one wrist but, again, it's not obvious what this is intended to accomplish.

The paint job for robot mode did the model a disservice, too. The face was painted black, the biceps were largely black, much of the chest detail was masked in black, the central parts of the shoulders were black, and much of the shins remain black because I just gave up. Hasbro have a terrible habit of substituting silver with black (original mass release of RotF Ravage, anyone?), and this version of Megatron is probably still the worst victim of this heinous act.

The problem with any TransFormer that's a mess in robot mode and has a non-terrestrial vehicle mode is that transformation is going to be a disaster. The Automorph features are cool and all, but the more attention you pay to transformation, the more you start to see how, perhaps, it might have been done better. Of particular note are the 'concertina' torso and everything from the waist down. Getting the legs into position - because there's a tab on the back of the lower leg that needs to clip into the underside of the wings - is a nightmare, and several poorly-judged attempts have worn away some of the crotch detail on mine.

It probably wouldn't be so bad if the figure was poseable but, as previously noted, the design of the feet basically means that he can only successfully stand up straight. The awkward, bulky arms and the sorry excuses for hands mean there's almost no way you can make this toy look threatening... except perhaps by wielding it as a weapon yourself.

It is unlikely to ever be revealed why the movie designers chose Dan Simmon's futuristic, time-travelling technorganic monster as their inspiration for Megatron but, in doing so, they did the character, the fans, and Hasbro a rather significant disservice. I don't dispute that a lot of effort went into making a toy based on the movie's CGI... I just think that effort was well and truly wasted, and that Hasbro should have stepped in and demanded a proper disguise for Megatron from the outset.

Further Content Updates

2011-07-28T15:47:00.000+01:00

Just photographed and uploaded comparisons between G1 and TFCC Nightbeat.

You know what that means, don't you?

G1 Nightbeat on the way...

Another Tease

2011-07-27T19:53:00.001+01:00

OK, something a bit different this time: A couple of photos of something that, arguably, shouldn't be here. Something very old (and yet, as will be demonstrated when I write it up fully, perfectly preserved). Something I might never have owned, were it not for an amazing coincidence... Stand by for a 'shock'...

Tandy - AKA Radio Shack - sold several products named 'Galactic Man' over the years, all of them knockoffs of other companies' products (hell, one of them was very obviously RoboCop)... but that's just the way things were back then... And, let's face it, Hasbro obtained Roadbuster, Whirl, Jetfire and Shockwave from third parties, so it seems things were played pretty fast and loose when it came to transforming robots and the corresponding Intellectual Property rights...

I saw this incarnation of Galactic Man in Tandy's catalogue one year, and immediately pestered my folks to either buy one for me, or take me to the nearest Tandy (Wembley - sadly no more) so I could buy one myself. Then, when I went into school, I told all my friends what I'd got, and where I'd got it...

What's really funny about this toy is that it's a 2-tone grey/silver version of a G1 mold that Hasbro release in purple... And the same character appeared in the most recent TransFormers movie as largely grey/silver, while the toy was molded in shades of purple. Weird.

Write-up soon... Probably...

TransFormers (Movie) Jazz

2011-07-26T21:49:00.000+01:00

Jazz got a seriously raw deal in the live-action TransFormers movie. Optimus Prime's stylish, brilliant Special Operations Agent was reduced to a wannabe Gangsta whose saving grace was that he only had about three lines of (terrible) dialogue before he died at Megatron's hands. Not only that, but the fans poured scorn on the choice of car for his alternate mode - the Pontiac Solstice - and the filmmakers' choice of colour scheme... Not the best way to start, so... "What's crackin' li'l bitches?"

Vehicle Mode:
There's not denying there's something essentially bland about the Solstice. On paper, it ticks all the right boxes - sporty, compact, sleek, curvy, bold... and yet the way it comes together makes it seem more like Ford's attempt at a 'safe' sports car than the latest in a long line of high performance street cars by one of the most prestigious names in the automotive industry.

And it doesn't help that Hasbro decided up use plain grey plastic (albeit with subtle metallic flake) rather than going the extra mile and painting him silver. A silver Solstice might have been a little bit more impressive. A grey Solstice is just dull. What little paint there is brings out the headlights, indicators and tail-lights. Straight out of the packaging, a good deal of the rear of the car is bare black plastic, which I swiftly painted over in silver.

But it's a reasonably good representation of the car, with mostly sensible use of natural seams for transformation, so it looks about as smooth and sleek as it possibly could. The spoiler on the back is a bit of an oddity, in that it tilts. Partly, this is to better accommodate Jazz's weapon - the lance including with this original version, or the crescent gun that was packaged with 'Final Battle Jazz'.

Transparent blue plastic is used for most of the windows though, because of certain aspects of the transformation, there's no rear windscreen - it's the same flat grey of the rest of the car body, not even painted. Inside the car, there are shallowly molded seat and dashboard details though, since neither of the doors open, that struck me as a little redundant.

Robot Mode:
Jazz just had the worst luck in the first TransFormers movie, and his Deluxe robot mode piles on still further ignominy. Everything up to the groin looks OK, and in proportion... but then, what happened to his torso? His body goes straight from his hips to his chest, with no waist in between.

If that wasn't bad enough, he doesn't even really have arms... The upper arms are stubby blocks, and lower arms are the bonnet folded back on itself, with strange horn things protruding from the wrists. OK, fine, Jazz in the movie had four fingered claws rather than 'proper' hands, but I count three digits on these... things.

The 'logic' behind the floppy 'sandwich' forearms is that his weapon plugs into the top half, leaving the bottom half hanging on his inner wrist but, frankly, they don't look like proper forearms with or without the weapons. And the fact that Final Battle Jazz's crescent gun fits just as well as the packaged lance goes to show how little was actually modified between the two molds.

Legs aside, there's barely a single part of this model that looks like Movie Jazz from any angle. Side views only emphasise the squat form and empty forearms, and the rear not only shows off far too many car parts but also that the whole spoiler section of the car is essentially superfluous to the robot. The idea - for whatever reason - was that it could plug into either shoulder to become a shield, or connect with the lance to create the crescent gun. Sadly, the combination of the lance and the car's spoiler section looks absolutely nothing like the crescent gun.

He's not even a particularly poseable robot, despite having all the necessary joints. The knees are limited by the car doors, which remain attached to the thighs (some clever kitbashers fixed this, so that Movie Jazz had something akin to the G1 model's door-wings) and the arms, while mobile, just can't do anything that makes them look like arms.

Worse still, the point job is just as bad in robot mode as it was in vehicle mode. There are a few more colours, but far too much black. The face was painted black, the feet were black, the knees were black... and the applications of coppery paint were pretty inadequate... Yet again, I pulled out my paintbrushes and gave Jazz's robot mode something like the paint job he deserved.

The head mold is so bad it's difficult to tell how much of it is down to the its size, and how much is down to yet more useless pre-production artwork. On the upside, it's on a ball joint (albeit resting on a very floppy platform) and the light piping is excellent.

The best description I can come up with for the transformation is that it's novel. Technically, Movie Jazz is the most similar to his G1 ancestor, in that the chest is basically the front of the car with very little alteration (unlike Bumblebee, Ratchet and Ironhide), and the legs are the back of the car, though the arms form from the bonnet rather than rotating out from beneath it.

The stubby look of this figure really ruins it and, even though Jazz turned out to be a very minor character in the film, it's disappointing that this was all there was until the Human Alliance version that came out three years later, following Revenge of the Fallen. For completists, and those who are keen on having the full set of movie characters, Jazz may be a necessary disappointment... for everyone else, the Human Alliance model is a much better investment.

TransFormers (Movie) Blackout

2011-07-26T16:43:00.000+01:00

One of the first TransFormers to be seen in the live action movie, Blackout set the tone for the look of the Decepticons. He was a new character invented for the movie, though he exhibited some characteristics of Soundwave (jamming radar/communications, carrying a 'minion'), so he was an easy fit into the mythos, even if the creation of new characters when such a wide and varied selection from the multiple continuities already existed did raise concerns about the movie.

There was something very ominous about the silence of the MH-53J 'Pave Low' as it made its first appearance, being led to the SOCCENT Forward Operations Base by the resident humans, who hadn't the faintest idea what they were allowing into their fold... Blackout was one of the first movie toys I bought, and the vendor assured me I would not be disappointed.

Vehicle Mode:
There are two things that first leap out at you when handling Blackout's toy. The first is that, for a Voyager, he's actually pretty small. This is actually fairly common for aircraft TransFormers, and particularly the helicopters... so, while it's disappointing that such a massive chopper has become such a tiny toy, it's not unexpected. Fans have been clamouring for a Leader class Blackout since 2007, but it looks increasingly unlikely to happen.

The second thing is that he's awesomely detailed, with - mostly - cleverly concealed seams. The proportions seem right - those rotor blades certainly look the right size - and, while it's a little lacking in decoration, the flat, sober blue-grey suits the vehicle perfectly. Windows and other details are picked out in black, yellow and gold paint, and there's a very half-hearted black wash on a few other parts, but most of the model shows off the flat plastic colour.

The designers also managed to include the almost ubiquitous button-activated rotor-spinning action rather more subtly that some other toys have managed, with a black plunger protruding from the tail. It's a shame this couldn't also have been geared to also spin the stabiliser, but the tail fin is pretty slim, and widening it accommodate the necessary gears would have been detrimental to the overall look. The rear flap has a large molded support making a mess of the tail section but, considering the length of the flap, it was a necessary structural addition.

Also, taking cues from Blackout's big attack scene at the beginning of the movie, a tiny Scorponok figure is included, held in a cage towards the back of the chopper. The cage is supposed to spring to open and eject Scorponok when a small button is pressed, but the mechanism is weak and floppy, and sometimes doesn't work too well - either flopping open without the button being pressed, or refusing to open when it is. The figure even has a spring-loaded tail that is supposed to fling him out when the cage is release, but it barely moves, and the figure is molded in rubber anyway.

One cute feature of this model is that Deluxe Scorponok can attach to the bottom, and his gears connect with Blackout's so that activating the rotor blades also spins Scorponok's claws. Out of proportion it may well be, but it certainly adds play value.

Robot Mode:
Bearing in mind that this toy came into my possession before the film hit cinemas, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Blackout is like nothing I'd ever seen before - every helicopter TransFormer before him had stuck to much the same pattern, making tradeoffs between one mode or the other to reach a happy medium. Blackout, meanwhile, looks far more like I would expect an alien robot to look when it disguises itself as a terrestrial vehicle. I particularly liked that the entire rotor assembly becomes a feature of his back, sitting above and behind his head, with the rotor blades hanging down like a cape.

Less attractive is the entire tail section hanging down behind him. Looking at the model in robot mode, it becomes obvious that the transforming robot is made from the cockpit and the underside of the chopper - everything else just kind of sits there in robot mode. I'm sure that, had Blackout's toy been made specifically for Dark of the Moon, or even perhaps Revenge of the Fallen, that tail section would either have been better utilised, or collapsed into the back more throroughly. Naturally this would have been at the expense of the geared rotors, but it might have encouraged the designers to make the rotors detachable - as they are in the movie, and almost every other TransFormers helicopter - for use as a weapon in robot mode.

But, still, Scorponok's cage rotates round so that it's in approximately the right place, but with the hinge now at the top, it's even less inclined to open successfully when the release button is pushed.

The Automorph gimmick on this model should, in theory, be awesome. When the cockpit is collapsed back into place as the robot's chest, gears should automatically reveal the head and lower the legs... but in practice, it all needs a helping hand.

It's difficult to judge how good the head sculpt is because it's so small, and because it suffers from the worst attempt at a black wash I've ever seen. Blackout is rarely seen in any detail or for very long but, going by the CGI artwork on the internet, the head isn't a very good match. It does have excellent light piping, though, which works well in spite of the large protrudance from his back. The legs probably lose most in terms of accuracy to the movie model - they're very square, and the toes are curved inward rather than out, but they did try to balance this out by including little panels that flap out when the kneecap is pushed into place.

Poseability is generally good - better in the upper body than the lower - but the large block of helicopter hanging off the back does get in the way somewhat... Though, on the upside, it's long enough to act as a further support for some of the more extreme poses. It can also be detached from his back and plugged into his shoulder, giving the toy access to an approximation of Movie Blackout's rotor blade weapon, albeit vastly more bulky and unwieldy.

Scorponok Mini-Figure
This is the millstone hanging from Blackout's neck. Were it not for this, more of the body of the chopper could have been turned into robot. It's to the right scale, certainly, but it's molded in entirely the wrong colour of rubber, and the, despite being a reasonably detailed model, the paint job is insultingly weak - just a touch of gunmetal over the tail.

The tails is sprung so that, in theory, Scorponok will launch himself out of Blackout's back, as he did in the movie. Sadly, the spring isn't strong enough, and the rubber is too flexible, for this to be effective.

As a first-generation movie toy, Blackout is, of course, very flawed... but he's also pretty bloody awesome. Were it not for his size - tiny compared to other Movie Voyagers - he'd still be one of the finest movie toys thusfar released. He was repainted several times for the first movie and the second, and as both Autobots and Decepticons.

Aside from the glitchy Automorph gimmick, his transformation couldn't be simpler or more effective, though I suspect a contemporaty remake of this character in any size class (preferably larger!) would exhibit many improvements in design and execution. He probably only has waist articulation because it's necessary for transformation, but it does add to the model.

It's unfortunate that he has no additional weaponary, other than the excessively bulky rotor assembly, but all Blackout's weapons in the movie were internal - one in gun in each arm, and another in his chest. By comparison, the inclusion of a mini-Scorponok seems like a huge waste.

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2006 (Timelines) Boxed Set: Dawn of Futures Past

2011-07-25T19:46:00.000+01:00

For the most part, being a UK resident, I really didn't see the point of joining something like the TransFormers Collectors' Club. It's expensive, and it's run from the United States. Anything ordered from them would be hit by Customs and VAT charges, plus whatever extra ParcelForce decided to add on top as their 'handling fee'. If Hasbro UK don't see the point of forming an official UK or European branch of the club, then I'm just one more member they don't have. I didn't even really follow BotCon, even after getting back into TransFormers for the 20th Anniversary. That all changed in 2006, though, due to that year's pre-Beast Wars theme, and the boxed set 'Dawn of Futures Past'.

Packaging:
One of the staples of Fun Publications' tenure as the license holder for the TransFormers Collectors' Club is the excellent, solidly-built, premium quality printed display boxes and their figure-hugging foam inserts. The DoFP set includes the five repaints (two Voyagers and three Deluxes, by today's standards, two of which had remolded heads), their 'Gold Disks' (repainted Galaxy Force planet keys), an enamel commemorative badge, the Dawn of Futures Past comic book, instruction sheets, bio cards and an attendee certificate. Back in the day, this was about $250 worth of materials, though I paid closer to £250 at a show in the UK and, given the secondary market prices on eBay, I think I got a pretty good deal. The painting on the box isn't exactly a masterpiece, but it shows the characters more clearly than the intro to the first episode of Beast Wars ever did, so it's perfectly reasonable to believe that the crew of the Axalon did actually look like this prior to reformatting for the Beast Wars. It's also nice to see artwork of the toys - like the old G1 murals - rather than either a middle-ground between these and the TV series CGI, or just paintings of the CGI characters.

Enough about the box, though... What about the contents?

Dinobot
One of the best-loved characters from the TV show, it's good that Dinobot became one of the characters in the boxed set, despite not being part of the crew of the Axalon. He's even billed as 'Darksyde Dinobot' on the packaging. He starts out as a Decepticon (sorry, Predacon), but soon switches sides as a result of Megatron's dishonourable conduct.

Vehicle Mode:
Armada Ransack seems like a very odd choice as the base mold for Dinobot. The mechanical digger doesn't fit the svelte, agile Beast Wars swordsman quite so well as it did Cybertron Longrack and, leaving that aside, it's not even a particularly attractive mold. However, given the whole Unicron Trilogy to choose between, I'm not sure I can come up with a single mold that does suit.

Suspend disbelief, then, and look upon this digger. The colourscheme fits quite well - predominantly dark brown (I still remember the BotCon website stating emphatically that "there is no black on this model", perhaps because their photography wasn't wonderful), with a lighter brown for the digger arm, pale grey for the treads, and an astonishing amount of otherwise incongruous, yet all-too-ubiquitous 'Allspark Blue' (OK, I realise that phrase was coined a year later, with the first movie toyline, but it's definitely that kind of almost fluorescent blue!). It turns up in the strangest places, both in paint and plastic, without rhyme or reason, and sticks out like a sore thumb.

The model itself has a pretty cool key-activated gimmick, in that the huge plunger on the back can be pushed in to extend the digger arm. It seems almost counterintuitive for the button to work that way, but any kind of movement on the digger arm is welcome. I quite like the additional 'piston' pieces, which are as much for decoration as they are functional parts of the mechanism.

It's also pretty cool that the digger's cab can rotate freely above the treads... Armada didn't get much right, but it rarely missed an opportunity for interactivity.

Robot Mode:
And Ransack is still looking like a bizarre choice for Dinobot. The robot mode is awkward, gangly and boxy... but it is poseable and, miraculously, the original head fits Dinobot almost perfectly. Sure, it's far wider than any other version of the Beast Wars character's head, but the 'helmet' and the facial expression are bang on and, with the brown/copper paint job, he looks excellent.

Robot mode also gives the first hint as to why this mold was chosen. Sure, the digger arm doesn't suit Dinobot, but the other 'clawed' arm has a Mini-Con port in the palm of its hand, referencing the holes that would accommodate Dinobot's sword or spinny-shield-thing on the Beast Wars toy.

I'm still not sure where all this 'Allspark Blue' came in - the only blue in Dinobot's original colourscheme was his face... but I will concede that it breaks up what might be an otherwise bland, and very brown paint job.

Despite some very strange joints, Dinobot's legs are very poseable and, coupled with a mobile waist, this model is capable of some truly awesome poses.

Cheetor
Another weird choice of mold, this one. Galaxy Force Skids is one of the very few Galaxy Force/Cybertron molds that I didn't pick up at all. It's small, flimsy, and the original versions - both US/UK and Japanese - didn't look particularly good. How on Earth could it ever be appropriate to a pre-Beast Wars Cheetor?

Vehicle Mode:
Well, if you can believe the Animated Blurr mold for Cheetor, why not this one? It's a compact, yet sporty little car, which must surely suit the Beast Wars ADHD speed freak. The distribution of colours in this mode certainly harks back to the reissued BW toy (though 'harks back' isn't strictly accurate, since the reissue came the year after Dawn of Futures Past) although the spots are limited to appearing on the seats... So Cheetor's quite... um... discerning in his choice of upholstery.

One of the things I disliked about the Skids mold and, by extension, this mold's use as Cheetor, is the key-activated weapon. It's wide and flat by default, and opens up to be wide and flat with a strange protrudence from the top when activated. As weapons go, it doesn't look too bad in vehicle mode because it basically fits into the context of the vehicle. Probably not the worst in Galaxy Force...

Robot Mode:
I was actually amazed by how well this mold suits Cheetor in robot mode, even ignoring the entirely new head mold. The colour scheme is cleverly arranged so that the chest looks as much like the Beast Wars toy's Cheetah head as possible, and the sparse spot pattern on the arms doesn't look so out of place in this mode as it did in vehicle mode.

It's also quite a poseable little robot, the biggest surprise being the superfluous waist joint. Had it been utilised in transformation, it might make sense.... but it's a welcome extravagance. Having hollow lower legs and a comparatively dense torso makes Cheetor quite top-heavy, and prone to falling over backward, but holding the handgun balances him out.

The handgun certainly doesn't work as well in robot mode as it does in vehicle mode, though. Cheetor may have had the most bizarre weapons imaginable in Beast Wars - the tail blaster and the intestine rifle - but Galaxy Force Skids' weapon really takes the biscuit... it's like a pair of handguns balanced on a tray... and, despite having two pegs, it can only ever be held in one hand or the other, rather than in both, because of the way the forearms are molded. The triple exhaust pipes make for an interesting, claw-like weapon for robot mode, but the length and the strange kink in the pipes make them rather awkward to wield.

The best thing about this model is the remolded head, since it captures the essences of both the original Beast Wars toy, with its humanoid face in a bulky helmet, and the CGI character's more feline features. Considering how small a head it is, that's no mean feat.

Rattrap
One of my favourite Beast Wars characters, Rattrap needed to be something small and nippy. The Galaxy Force Gasket mold wouldn't have been my first choice (Autolander was almost rat-shaped, and the large wheels on his robot mode shoulders would have harked back - or forward, perhaps - to the Beast Machines design), but it turned out pretty good.

Vehicle Mode:
The Gasket mold, being a futuristic motorcycle, kind of fits Rattrap, and the colourscheme is very well organised - predominantly grey, with touches of copper and black, and a kind of smokey, almost fluorescent orange for the wheels, windscreen, headlights and weapon. This is also, I believe, the first - and, so far, only - instance of the Gasket mold being properly assembled, with the back wheel's supports oriented correctly. Even the Japanese limited edition Police-Type Gasket is misassembled, so three cheers for Fun Publications (or the plant that produces their toys) for getting it right!

The bike design is like something out of Akira - very elongated, with massive, chunky wheels. All it's really lacking is handlebars...

The key activated gimmick transforms the rear-mounted cannons into tail guns... and that's probably the safest thing for them to do, since they'd otherwise be aimed squarely at the rider!

Robot Mode:
I still say Autolander would have been a better choice, but I must admit that the head mold somehow fits Rattrap. The accompanying comic depicted him as having a removable 'cap' which covered the 'exposed brain' effect on the Beast Wars toy's head. It does not, however, explain why this toy has a humanoid face, rather than the rodent-like look of both the original toy and his CGI incarnation.

The distribution of colours in this mode is far more accurate to Beast Wars Rattrap, though I do feel they missed a trick by painting the bulk of the chest silver/grey, with the box details in red... had they filled in the V-shaped piece in the middle in black (or the coppery colour), and the block directly beneath that in white, the chest area would look like a cartoony robotic rat face.

Rhinox
Easily my favourite component of the Dawn of Futures Past set, Rhinox is derived from Galaxy Force Guardshell. Somehow, due largely to some amazing coincidences, this mold fits Rhinox perfectly, and not just because Rattrap always referred to him as "ya big bulldozer".

Vehicle Mode:
Considering the size of the cab, and the ladders between the wheels, it's obvious that this mold represents quite a large bulldozer, and the huge wheels suggest a lumbering machine which is probably capable of moving at rather high speeds, if necessary, just like a mechanical Rhinoceros.

This alternate mode is more colourful that any version of Beast Wars Rhinox, though this is only due to the lack of large, beast-flesh panels hanging off his frame. Some of the robot's green and gold is plainly visible, but this just makes for a more rounded colourscheme. Flat grey or beige would have been pretty dull over the whole vehicle.

Robot Mode:
Here's where the coincidences in design between BW Rhinox and GF Guardshell become obvious. The head mold, while rather more mechanical that the original Rhinox, is as similar to it as Armada Ransack's was to Dinobot. The way the gold paint is applied the the mold cements the common elements. The exhaust pipes on the shoulders seem to evoke the 'wings' that close to form Rhinox's mutant head, and the bulldozer panels on his shoulders are very reminiscent of the Rhino legs on the original.

His weapons aren't a great match - the large rivet gun/engine thing isn't exactly the 'Chaingun of Doom', but the key-activated blades in his wheels are quite similar to the saw blades of the toy's weapons.

The Guardshell mold is also very poseable, and thankfully without the same level of interference caused by the huge slabs of Rhino armour on the Beast Wars toy. It's also quite amusing that this mold has visible screws on the shoulders... just like the misassembled BW Rhinox. It's not misassembly on this model, though - the shoulders cannot be switched as they're not identical, symmetrical moldings.

Optimus Primal
Probably the only truly controversial - dare I say contentious - model in the set, this is based on Galaxy Force Landbullet which, on the surface, seems like an odd choice. Many commented at the time that the Deluxe-sized mold for GF Inch Up would have been preferable to this turbo-powered tricycle. For me, personally, this is a better fit because of its overall bulk, and Optimus Primal's colourscheme suits the mold very well.

Vehicle Mode:
Bizarrely, this was the first iteration of this mold I picked up and, on the strength of this model, I went and picked up a Cybertron Crumplezone (still unwilling to pay import prices for the superior Japanese version!). It's a unique vehicle, nothing like anything I've seen before in TransFormers, and looks to have been built to break land speed records on as many planets as possible.

The key-activated gimmick seems a bit lame - the spoilers flip out to the sides as the massive turbines rotate round from back to front, revealing that they are spring-loaded missile launchers as well as jet engines. Naturally the accompanying sound effects have been removed from this version of the mold, but I always felt they were rather bland - and far too loud - anyway.

The colourscheme is high-contrast - mostly black and white, with odd details picked out in blue, and red highlights to complement the use of transparent deep red plastic.

Robot Mode:
Inch Up might have been better proportioned overall, but I would say this mold fits the idea of Optimus Primal rather better, due to its size and upper-body bulk. Land Bullet/Crumplezone was a very ape-like bruiser of a Decepticon, and the articulation of this model allows for some referencing of one of BW Optimus Primal's mechanical gimmicks - the lever-activated chest beating.

The colour distribution in this mode is very strongly reminiscent of Optimus Primal, both the original release and the 'Beast Wars Reborn' version, though perhaps the white is purer on this. Due to the layout of the mold, some parts that should have been white are blue (the biceps, mainly), and I have to admit that the shoulder launchers do seem rather too bold in white.

The only downside to this model is the size of the remolded head versus the rest of the body. Landbullet/Crumplezone got away with having a small head because it emphasised his bulk. That same effect overemphasises the body because Primal's head seems absolutely tiny, and is almost lost when the shoulder launchers are activated. The sculpting isn't bad, and actually looks fairly close to the CGI version of Optimus Primal, rather than the toy, but I can't help thinking it would have been cool to keep Landbullet's mobile jaw gimmick, to create a middle-ground between the original Beast Wars Optimus Primal's complete faceplate, and the CGI model's mouth-revealing open faceplate.

Although I wasn't a member of the TFCC until the end of 2006, it was on the strength of this boxed set, as much as it was my desire for their DoFP Airazor, that tipped the balance in favour of joining. The idea was cool, the toys were excellent, and the presentation of the set was classy.

As attendee-only figures, Fun Publications added Darksyde Megatron and Waspinator, and both Buzzsaw and Laserbeak, with Tigatron reserved for BotCon pre-registrants. While the latter pair was reasonably cheap to pick up, the former set - or even Megatron on his own - rapidly exceeded the price of the whole 2006 boxed set. I'd still like to pick up both of them - Megatron made out of the Galaxy Force First Gunner mold was awesome, and the perfect antagonist for Landbullet Optimus Primal, but this boxed set, the two Shadowhawk repaints, Tigatron/Unit-2 and the Collectors' Club Exclusive Airazor are enough for now...

The comic book explores the events leading up to the Beast Wars, beginning with Megatron's theft of the Golden Disk (which, in at least one continuity, is the disc that was sent out with the Voyager probe). It introduces the all characters from the boxed set, plus the attendee and pre-registrant exclusives, and even TFCC Exclusive Airazor (as the pilot of the Chromia 10, commandeered by Tigatron in an attempt to catch up with the fleeing Megatron). While it focuses on shoehorning these characters into a kind of "Previously On..." story for Beast Wars, explaining how the Axalon and the Darksyde ended up transwarping to Earth's past, the story is reasonably well self-containted, and it also tantalises with a brief look at what happened later, back on Cybertron... hints which, as yet, the Collector's Club have yet to really follow up on.

TransFormers (Movie) Deep Space Starscream (Target Exclusive)

2011-07-25T15:55:00.000+01:00

There's something about Movie Starscream that seems to attract colourschemes in the beige range. Both the original Voyager and the Revenge of the Fallen version were very beige, despite the character in the movie being very clearly grey or silver, for the most part. Bad enough that Starscream had such a controversial design ('monkey-chicken' being one rather unflattering description), with a wide, heavy torso somehow supported on comparatively spindly, bird-like legs, he had to have such a drab colour as well? But was that the only problem with the original Starcream toy..?

I did buy the original, beige iteration of Movie Starscream but, as with most of the original movie toys, I started adding paint here and there, to improve the overall rather neglected look of them, and ended up coating almost the entire model in Mercedes Smoke Silver. That being the case, there will be photos of my custom up here eventually, but I figured this would be the best place to start with the basic, unadulterated model. OK, Deep Space Starscream a 'Premium' repaint but, other than that, it's unadulterated...

Vehicle Mode:
Well, where to begin? As with many TransFormers planes, Starscream looks great from above - the angles and subtle curves of the F-22 Raptor are well-represented, although the tail fins are not only the wrong basic shape, but skewed backward, like older jets, rather than the almost balanced trapezoid shape on the real-life Raptor.

From any other angle, Voyager Starscream is a disaster: from the front or sides, you see a distinct lack of jet intakes and, in their stead, two honking great barrels of something. The Raptor's elegantly concealed weapon systems are ignored in favour of ginormous, ultra-sensatively-spring-loaded missile pods and, if you don't fancy making use of the launchers, an additional rack for missiles that flips out of the back of the launchers. Looking at the rear of the plane can only be described as a mistake... Everyone has heard of 'Visible Robot Head' Syndrome, but Starscream suffers from that and 'Visible Robot Feet' Syndrome, not to mention 'Oh My God, Are Those His Arms?' Syndrome. There is a small, rubbery flap that attempts to both cover Starscream's head (at which it fails) and serve as the implication of the F-22's afterburners (at which it also fails), but it's a futile gesture in such a poorly executed model.

He's also one of the few - probably one of the only - full-sized TransFormers planes that does not have an undercarriage. Starscream doesn't need one. He flies around with his own personal landing platform permanently welded to the underside of the plane.

But, still, there are positives. The colourscheme on this version of the mold is fantastic - not only is the flat grey (hurrah!) plastic supplemented by a generous application of metallic paint, he also has something approaching real-life (as in CGI model) squadron markings on the tail fins. There's the Decepticon logo, and 'FF 1st FW' out the outside of each one and, maybe it's just me, but I always think the '1st FW' line looks like 'TFW', possibly referencing the TransFormers fan-site Transformer World 2005? The paint job is supposedly intended to reflect Starscream's appearance in one of the short vignettes during the end credits of the movie, where he's seen jetting off out of the atmosphere, following Megatron's defeat... Other than appearing slightly shinier, though (and, OK, pretty much on fire), his appearance in that sequence was identical to that in the rest of the film.

The spring-loaded missile launchers, while over-sensitive and surely liable to blind someone one of these days, do have quite a neat feature. The large plastic wheels in the underside are geared to rotate the three launch tubes and, with a flap positioned just behind the rotating section, the missiles can be automatically launched as the plane... erm... rolls on the ground. Doesn't quite fit with the idea of an 'aircraft', does it, Hasbro?

So, not a great alternate mode... but certainly better than a scaled-up version of the Legends figure.

Robot Mode:
Oh dear... Robot mode really isn't much better, is it? In terms of screen accuracy, it's pretty rubbish, with the flaps and wings and things sitting in entirely the wrong places (darned pre-production artwork and its vaguaries!), ridiculously broad shoulders, massively puffy arms that don't even have proper hands and positively thunderous thighs.

Other than all that, it's not too bad as a representation of the extremely unusual movie look of the Decepticons' Air Commander. The silhouette is basically correct, it's just the details that let it down. But, let's face it, Starscream was an awesomely complicated CGI model, and must have cheated greatly to transform into an F-22 in the first place. The designers of this toy had a real uphill struggle, and did an admirable job of creating a three-dimensional, transforming version - and one must always remember that these things are toys for children, not statues for display.

The way the torso collapses, and the cockpit section flips back and pulls open to create Starscream's distinctive chest, while the nose of the plane flips up onto the back, is a clever piece of design. Awkward and massively oversized though they may be, the arms are very poseable, but the lack of hands is a terrible loss. I'm not sure whether the claw things that can be pulled out from between the launch tubes are an attempt at turning the launchers into hands, or at mimmicking the blades that pop out of Starscream's wrists when he activates his missile launchers in robot mode... either way, their effectiveness is undermined by the fact that they're molded in soft rubber.

The legs may be overly angular and chunky, but they're fairly poseable, with hips and both upper and lower 'knee' joints on ratchets, making them very stable. The ankle is pinned, though, so the feet aren't quite so useful, but the rotation joint just above the upper 'knee' means he can adopt some quite dramatic and dynamic poses.

The head mold is, frankly, terrible. I'm not sure any of the toys from the first movie did particularly well with their heads, but whoever sculpted Starscream misinterpreted the artwork to an incredible degree. Fans complained enough about the 'insectoid' look of the CGI model, but I quite liked his alien look, and for it to become this monstrosity is a huge disappointment. The whole head is basically too flat, and the face and collar are raised up on a completely unnecessary 'neck'. It is well painted on this version, however, but the light piping has been painted over to give Starscream his 'Decepticon Red' eyes.

While much of the paintwork visible in robot mode is only held over from the plane mode, it's nice to see a bit of red detailing on the insides of his elbows. That mechanical/piping detail is lifted directly from the CGI, and having it painted in makes a huge - positive - difference to the overall look of the toy.

I have to say that, even after the Revenge of the Fallen Voyager and the utterly awesome Leader class version of Starscream, I'm still pretty fond of the way this thing transforms. The collapsing/expanding torso is very smartly designed, and the way certain parts are molded for a dual purpose is nicely done. He may not transform into a particularly convincing fighter jet, but Starscream is a pretty neat toy.

It's just a shame that the rear flaps of the plane are so obvious on his shoulders, and that the CGI's robot 'wings' are sticking out of the front of his shoulders, rather than the back... but, as the first iteration of such a unique and alien design for Starscream, this Voyager class toy stands up well despite its myriad flaws. I'd have to say most of that is down to this superb 'Premium' finish, and the original mass release is pretty mediocre by comparison.

TransFormers (Movie) Optimus Prime

2011-07-25T00:57:00.002+01:00

Back when I wrote about the Revenge of the Fallen Leader Class Prime, I noted that it was unfair to do so without first having written about this one. In retrospect, I feel it was not only unfair but downright daft. The toyline for the 2007 movie is where the real improvements in toy engineering began, giving fans the complexity and movie accuracy we have today. The original Leader Class Optimus Prime is one of the most significant milestones.

Vehicle Mode:
Arguably, this is the easiest bit to get right, and certainly in the halcyon days of G1, the toyline was full of accurate, real-life (albeit unlicensed) model cars that turned into awesome, chunky robots. On the surface, this appears to be a reasonably accurate model of the Peterbilt truck used in the movie, albeit not as shiny or as heavily decorated. A 'premium' version was released later, with more silver paint and even some chroming, but this first mass-release version looks the part from most angles, and I was particularly tickled to find that the Autobot logo hood/grille ornament detail from the movie had been retained.

From the sides, you can see what is obviously the robot mode's weapon plugging into the back of the truck, where a corrugated metal plate should be, and the large gap that the weapon plugs into, but you can kind of let it slide because the rest of the truck looks so good, and because it could easily be some piece of customised truck engine. Right at the back, I (along with, I suspect, many other fans) was pleased to find a molded trailer hitch with the kind of recess that could have indicated a trailer in our future... but none appeared until the Dark of the Moon line.

The paintwork is a bit patchy - most of it is there in a reasonably movie-accurate way, though the white pinstriping on the flames is absent in every instance. In fact, the flames are absent from the sides of the nose, but they do return on the sides of the cab.

A couple of really impressive things: first and foremost, the tyres are rubber - all six of 'em - surely making this the first TransFormer since the early years of G1 to have rubber tyres, automatically making this toy cooler than it might otherwise have been. Secondly, the battery compartments, rather than becoming an unsightly, clumsy box somewhere in the model, are the external fuel tanks on either side of the truck. Each one accommodates one of the required AA batteries, making this the most sensibly organised electronic TransFormer I've ever seen - not even the Revenge of the Fallen version deals with its batteries that cleverly.

And speaking of the electronics, they're not bad, but they are a little underutilised. Vehicle mode has a button on the roof of the cab which activates a few blasts from the truck's horn and, bizarrely, a pair of yellow lights behind the windscreen. That's really all there is - one sound/light feature...

Robot Mode:
Here's where my writeup of the RotF version becomes seriously unfair because, back when I first bought this, transformed it and played with it for a while, I couldn't believe they'd ever be able to surpass this model. I should note before going any further that the photos below show my quite extensively painted model - many of the molded details (mostly on the arms and back) have been picked out further by paint, with reference taken from the CGI artwork that accompanied the release of the first film.

Even so, to my naive eyes back in 2007, this looked almost identical to the movie CGI, with the windscreen splitting open to form the chest, all the bits and bobs sticking up over his shoulders, and those distinctive two-toed feet. Of course, it's really not that accurate - the grille on the waist is spaced out too far, the shoulders are hopelessly inaccurate, the forearms are boxy, the molded details on the legs don't match to the joints, the proportions are all wrong... and what the hell is that hanging off his hips?

The position of the rear wheels may well be an attempt at authenticity to the CGI model, but their size is a problem, and the only reason the legs have the range of motion they need is that the darned things are hinged so that the rearmost wheel isn't obstructing the knee.

Such cheats aside, this model is exceptionally poseable - I'm tempted to say moreso than the RotF version, if only because the arms, though bulky, have a full range of motion and can be fully straightened, and because the feet, while not as accurate, are a bit more mobile and stable.

The head mold - again, as a result pre-production artwork - isn't quite right... not only that, but straight out of the box, many of the details which should be silver are left in the plain blue plastic (touched up on mine!). This omission is all the more strange considering the tiny specks of gold paint on the outsides of his eyes.

Molded detail, generally, is pretty good so, while certain aspects of the transformed robot are not screen accurate, details - on the back particularly - make direct reference to aspects of the CGI model... even if they were left unpainted.

Much like vehicle mode, there's one sounds-and-lights feature, linked to the rather weak Automorph gimmick. Pulling down on a switch at his waist causes the windscreen to separate and the head to rise out of the chest cavity, flipping back part of the roof. Accompanying this is a strange 'power up' sound, with a few mechanical, gear-meshing sounds (not to mention the clockwork whirr of the internal gears), and the two lights behind his windows flash along with the lights in his eyes.

The other Automorph gimmick is his right-hand weapon. A slide switch on the inner forearm swings the entire gun assembly round over the fist and extends a rod just below. The gun incorporates a spring-loaded missile and looks fairly accurate to the weapon in the movie, just a little truncated.

Getting the original movie Optimus Prime from one mode to the other is certainly easier than with the RotF model, but it's not without its complications. There are some awkward panels that have to be navigated, juggled, or outright forced around other chunks of this model, but the transformation experience is pretty satisfying, even after the release of the RotF version, and both modes seem pretty solid.

For it's time, the original Leader Class movie Optimus Prime was fantastic... Four years and two further movies later, it has been surpassed aesthetically, but perhaps not in terms of play value. While the joints aren't necessarily screen accurate, they're far more mobile that the more recent Leader Class figure and, while his head isn't accurate to the character in the movie, it does have uninterrupted rotation. If on assumes that this model was intended for the 'Ages 5+' market at the time of the first movie, it's not unreasonable to extrapolate that the more complicated/CGI accurate model from Revenge of the Fallen would be the ideal follow up for a child of 7+ who wished to continue their collection.

TransFormers toys: A Learning and Growing Experience... :P

TransFormers (Movie) Bumblebee ('76 Camaro)

2011-07-24T17:55:00.000+01:00

When it was first revealed that Bumblebee in the live action movies would be a Camaro, the fans were in uproar. Everyone knew Bumblebee was a VW Beetle - the underdog both in vehicle mode and in robot mode - not an American muscle car. The character's introduction in the movie attempted to mitigate this faux pas by including a yellow Beetle in the same scene, and starting him out as a banged up 1976 Camaro.

Vehicle Mode:
I have to say, this version of Bumblebee looks pretty good in vehicle mode. The 1976 Camara is bold and angular, wide and low to the ground. The front end is a mess of very visible seams due to its rather overambitious, spring-loaded Automorph gimmick (which actually loosens up over time, making the seams even worse), but the remaining seams only stand out where the paint applications don't continue from one adjoining panel to the next.

Compared to the later Camaro Concept version, it's obvious that Hasbro were aiming for a washed-out, desaturated yellow for this, to match the faded look of the movie car's paint job, but yellow is a very difficult colour to wash out and desaturate, and the result is a plastic colour that's pale, but still quite vibrantly yellow. The stripes are a very solid black, too, with no simulated scratches, scuffs or faded parts. There's a fair bit of other paintwork, though, from the lights, bumpers and hubcaps, to the patches of rust and, unfortunately, all of the car's windows. The Japanese version of '76 Camara Bumblebee used transparent blue plastic painted over with yellow where necessary, but the Hasbro release uses the same yellow plastic as the rest of the car body, and has the windows picked out in a strangely metallic blue paint.

The two spring-loaded missile launchers stow quite well on the underside, though it's a very tight fit and can cause even more panel-alignment issues. The missiles can be left in place, and you can sort of pretend that they're exhaust pipes to explain the two odd protrusions from Bumblebee's rear.

Robot Mode:
When I first saw this model, before the film hit the screens and long before the Camaro Concept version appeared, I thought it was a pretty good attempt at turning the CGI model into a toy. In retrospect, I think I was being too generous, and applying my opinions of old-school TransFormers engineering to this new line of toys.

While the upper body is pretty reasonable (though I always felt that the front wings of the car should have been able to rotate up, like the Concept version), the legs - and particularly the feet - are extremely poorly handled. Whereas the later models made some (distinctly variable) attempts to recreate the feet of the CGI model, this first iteration of Movie Bumblebee just has massive duck feet that don't look right from any angle.

It's also a little bizarre that his door/wings are broken in half, with the bottom halves attached to his wrists. Then again, this model has Bumblebee's distinctive shoulder panels replaced by the back halves of the front wheelarches, so it looks as though almost no effort was made to match the toy's robot mode to the movie's CGI model. Virtually none of the transformation seams match up to the vehicle's natural seams, either...

Weirder still, a closer examination of the vehicle parts reveals some unpainted areas that are textured to represent rust patches.

The fact that the head is virtually nothing like the CGI model - and, in fact, remained so until the Revenge of the Fallen toyline - is blamed on the fact that pre-production artwork was used to design the toys. I can believe this to a certain extent, but there's an awful lot of molded detail revealed in robot mode that's clearly derived from something like final artwork, so it seems as though including an Automorph gimmick was a higher priority than making the toy look like the character in the movie.

Paintwork was also a bit sparse on the toy straight from the package - all the photos below show extensive additional yellow paint just to make him look tidy.

One cool feature is that the spring-loaded missile launchers can be held in either fist or mounted on Bumblebee's shoulders - G1 Deluxe-style - by plugging them into the tyres that are clipped in place there.

Transformation is quite simple, but actually hampered by the Automorph gimmick that flips the bonnet round to the robot's chest. The arms have to be in a particular position for this to function uninterrupted, but the bonnet has to be in robot mode position to allow the shoulders to move into place. It all leaves the robot looking very little like the CGI model because the chest is positioned wrongly. The legs aren't exactly intuitive, either, and it's all too easy to get the feet caught in the wrong position. Also, getting him back into car mode securely becomes quite tiresome, because the Automorph gimmick doesn't like clipping back in place.

As one of the earliest movie toys, it is perhaps understandable that the '76 Camaro version of Bumblebee is actually pretty terrible. It's a combination of a poorly executed gimmick and virtually no likeness to the character in the movie. It's only saving grace is that, with the spring-loaded launchers mounted on the shoulders, this is the only time a Deluxe Bumblebee has had his shoulder launchers before 2009's Cannon Bumblebee, and the only time the shoulder launchers have been in any way active.

TransFormers (Movie) Scorponok

2011-07-24T00:20:00.002+01:00

Now, I'm going to be a little bit controversial with this one... Or not, depending on how you view the movies versus the toylines. In the movie, Scorponok was never depicted as a transformer and, if he was, it seemed likely that he'd transform between an Earth vehicle and a robotic scorpion thing. Hasbro's toy, however, transformed into something approximating a bipedal robot... just not very well... So I'm basically going to ignore that as far as possible.

Robot Mode:
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Back in the days of Generation 1, Scorponok was a massive city-former and, aside from Fortress Maximus, one of the tallest toys available. Naturally, he had next to no articulation, but he was the leader of the Decepticon Head- and TargetMasters on Nebulos according to the comics and, if I remember correctly, the TV series too. He was huge, he was dangerous, and he was pretty darned cool.

And so we come to the live action movies, where he's essentially relegated to the role of Mini-Con or, at best, something akin to Soundwave's minions (although they didn't fare much better till Dark of the Moon). He's 'ejected' from Blackout's back, and goes a-burrowin' through the Middle Eastern sands, chasing after the survivors of his master's attack on the SOCCENT Forward Operations Base in Qatar.

At first glance, the toy is a pretty accurate rendition of the movie's CGI monster, except that none of it is very mobile. In the movie, Scorponok was incredibly agile, leaping and rolling on top of the sand just as easily as he burrowed through it. I wouldn't expect the toy to be as fully jointed as the movie model, but I would have hoped for better from the legs. They're ball jointed at the body, but in sockets that barely allow any movement, and only just permit the claws to touch the ground.

The reason for this is apparent when one looks at the underside, however, as there are wheels in the body. These activate what would be called the 'Mech Alive' gimmick in a RotF toy - as Scorponok rolls along a surface, the barrel in his back and both sets of claws rotate. Given the size of the model, it's a pretty cool gimmick, and really brings the toy to life.

But that's not the end of it... The tail incorporates a spring-loaded stinger. It's rigged so that it doesn't actually launch as a missle, just extends forward but, even with the tail at its tightest curl, the stinger barely reaches beyond Scorponok's head, so it's not exactly a useful weapon.

But even that's not the end of it... One rather cool feature is that the two sockets on his back can plug into two pegs on Voyager Blackout's underside, and a peg just in front of Scorponok's tail plugs into a corresponding socket at the back of the chopper. Pushing the button that activates Blackout's rotor blades then also activates Scorponok's claws. A movie figure that has a Powerlinx gimmick! Hasbro sure likes to keep wheelin' out those old tricks... but this one, this time, is very welcome... even if Deluxe Scorponok is hopelessly out of scale with Voyager Blackout, which already has an in-scale Scorponok mini-figure.

The colourscheme is good, with the metallic grey and copper plastics supplemented by silver, copper and red details, and plenty of tampographed text detailing that suggests that Scorponok is part of Blackout, rather that just contained within him. The only real disappointment is that the head isn't particularly accurate or mobile, and those armour plates either side of his eyes are fixed in place.

Alternate Mode:
Why, Hasbro, why? Given Scorponok's role in the movie, I cannot fathom why they wanted to even attempt to give him a 'humanoid' robot mode and, given the result of their attempts, it's clear that they shouldn't have bothered.

OK, perhaps the fact that the movie - and the toyline, of course - is called 'TransFormers', compelled them to create a transforming Scorponok... but this is one occasion that a Deluxe sized model should have been made more detailed and non-transforming. The beauty of it is that it would still have been possible to incorporate the 'Powerlinx' gimmick with Blackout, but the model of Scorponok would not have been compromised by the need to create this stubby-legged monstrosity...

This is one of those TransFormers that's likely to spend most of its life in it's supposed alternate mode, because that is it's 'true form'. It's not as if transformation is even a proper transformation - the legs merely detach from the side and rotate back, then the head and the claws shift position to suit a robot standing on two legs rather than crawling on six.

While I might have preferred the six legs to be slightly longer and better articulated, I do recognise that this is a toy and that, for younger players, the gimmicks make for better play value.

I have found that plastic wear is a problem, particularly with the claws - they're held in place (and intended to articulate) via metal pins in very delicate plastic loops. One of these loops has already broken on mine, though thankfully it hasn't separated from the rest of the toy (yet). It does appear that Scorponok suffers from the brittle kind of metallic flake plastic, so be cautious when posing the claws.

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2002 Tap-Out

2011-07-23T22:42:00.002+01:00

Ah, the humble beginnings of BotCon... While the current operators, Fun Publications, have taken it to the dizzy heights of several thousand attendees, regular boxed sets of 5 or 6 exclusive repaints - some with remolded parts - and increasing numbers of attendee-only additional figures, the original BotCons started small, with a couple of repainted Generation 1 Mini-Autobots. One of 2002's exclusives was Tap-Out, a dark, minty green remix of Cliffjumper
Vehicle Mode:
There's really not much to say about any of the Mini-Autobots except that some of them, like Cliffjumper - and thereby Tap-Out as well - were Super Deformed. The range of pull-back cars was called Choro-Q in Japan, but it better know to the Western World as 'Penny Racers', because the of the slot on the back which accommodated a small coin. This coin was to weigh down the back and cause the car to rear up into a wheelie as it sped off under the power of its pull-back motor. I've always though it was very clever that these Choro-Q/Penny Racer style Mini-Autobots - initially just Cliffjumper and Bumblebee, but later the repaints and remolds like Bumper and Hubcap - used the inconcruous penny slot as a feature of the vehicle. Cliffjumper and Bumblebee both have stickers depicting electronic or mechanical detail, but the remolds and repaints have tended to have an Autobot logo instead.

The car is supposedly a Porsche 924 Turbo, but you'd be hard pressed to find any photos of a car that looks much like this mold - the nose of the toy matches reasonably well to some modified 924s, but that recess on the bonnet, the large, protruding wheel arches and the angular spoiler don't match anything I've been able to find. Still, it's a cute model, and even this reasonably contemporary refit came with rubber tyres, a G1 staple that has disappeared in recent years.

This 2002 exclusive is a recolouring of the 2001 keychain version of Cliffjumper, rather than the original, hence the ring sticking out of the rear bumper, and the lack of 'Dunlop' detailing on the tyres. The model was bagged with the chain and loop but I can't imagine anyone actually using this - or even the original mass-release - as a key fob. The green plastic has a strong glitter component, which really adds to the look of the model.

Robot Mode:
If the vehicle mode is simplified, it's no surprise that robot mode is too... and yet this is one of the iconic TransFormers. The fact that something so small could be both a car and a pretty convincingly humanoid robot was a revelation. What's really weird is that it has basically the same articulation as some of the larger models - the legs are fixed, but the arms move. The only joint that's missing (and that's only from some of the better models in G1) is the elbow.

Robot mode doesn't really show off any new colours - just like the original, the limbs are molded in the same grey plastic as the windows. And, just like Cliffjumper, Tap-Out's face is picked out in silver, and he has a large Autobot logo on his torso.

Transformation is of the same pattern as many G1 Mini-Autobots - pull out the arms, pull out the legs and flip up the feet, then finally flip out the head. It's a simple, but effective, and it's testament to how effective it is that the Classics 'reimagining' was basically an upgrade to this, rather than a complete redesign.

Tap-Out comes with a playing card-sized bio card, on which one side is a well-coloured, sharply printed rendition of the character in exactly the kind of action pose the toy cannot achieve, while the back is a monochrome bio which suggests that Fun Publications were not the originators of the "All Autobots Must Be Cheerful" cliché.

My very first TransFormer was Cliffjumper and, given my record thusfar, I wouldn't be surprised if that original will be one of the last I get round to chronicling. Still, it did mean that a moment of nostalgia led to me picking up this limited edition which, while not necessarily uncommon even today, and certainly not commanding the high prices of contemporary BotCon exclusives, is still not widely available.

I'm not sure than any of the pre-Fun Publications BotCon exclusives are 'must haves' to the same degree as theirs but, since it tends to be cheap, and it's a cute model both in robot and vehicle modes, I'd tend to recommend picking Tap-Out up wherever he appears.

Collection Count 2011

2011-07-17T16:05:00.000+01:00

Just for fun, and since I saw a set of polls about it in one of the forums, I decided to attempt a quick count of my collection - everything from G1 onwards, both those at my home and those in storage at my folks' place.

I can't guarantee my accuracy but, going by the Universal Counting Method, I reckon I have somewhere in excess of 600 TransFormers, more than 500 of which are at my flat. While doing my counting, I was reminded of how few larger G1 Autobots I ever picked up... which is a real shame.

Sure, I picked up some reissues, but (financial considerations aside) I cannot fathom why I didn't pick up more of the larger bots from 1984/85...

Further Teasing...

2011-07-14T00:26:00.001+01:00

I'm really going to have to get a move on with my Collectors' Club and BotCon Exclusives... I've got ~~just under 80~~ 95 posts (including other BotCon stuff) waiting for write-ups to finish off everything that's in my old PhotoBucket account, but so much of the stuff I need to clear more urgently is in the new one...

But anyway... Here we have the BotCon 2011 boxed set. I have none of the extra figures (other than Animated Cheetor, obviously), because they sold out at the show, and I'm not sure I want to pay secondary market prices at the moment.

It is called 'The Stunti-Con Job', and the packaged comic features a cover based on one of the movie posters for The Italian Job. The plots are not similar, but it's a cool nod nonetheless. I did kind of hope that one of the Stunticons, at some point, would blow up something big (which almost happens), giving another the opportunity to say "You were only supposed to blow the slaggin' doors off!", but I guess that was a nod too far...

I'm happy to report that the QC issues which plagued the BotCon sets over the last couple of years seem to be absent from this set... And, in fact, Motormaster fits together better than my Animated Optimus Prime (I think I picked up a dodgy one, but QC on Animated toys was patchy at best). This is also the first experience I've had of the Arcee (Drag Strip) and Hot Rod (Breakdown) molds, since they never made it to the UK, and were quite hard to come by in the States, by all accounts.

A proper write-up will be forthcoming... for the moment, suffice it to say that, while The MotorMaster may be characterised as wrestler Randy Savage, I think he looks more like Lemmy out of Motorhead... Just imagine what sort of comic that would have been!

TransFormers Collectors' Club 2011 Exclusive (Timelines) Cheetor

2011-07-13T18:39:00.001+01:00

Another year, another couple of Collectors' Club exclusives. This time round, they offered Animated TransTech Cheetor, with a new head designed by TF:Animated supremo Derrick J. Wyatt, and Classics Generation 2 Ramjet. Personally, I can't stand G2's lurid colourschemes, and I already have Classics Ramjet... the Classics Seeker mold is getting seriously overused. Thankfully, that just means I get to save money this year, and only get one (seriously cool) exclusive.

Packaging:
As usual, the Collectors' Club supply this exclusive in one of their heavy-duty, glossy-printed display boxes but, just for a change, it's pretty much exactly the size it needs to be (except perhaps depth-wise), rather than massively oversized. Actually, to be fair, the only one that was massively oversized was Nightbeat, from 2008, and I guess that was only to accommodate the comic. No Club fiction accompanies Cheetor, he just has has G1-style Tech Specs card and the instruction leaflet. The Tech Specs card is slightly larger than the box, and has to be inserted diagonally, but even that bends the corners!

The box is styled after the TF: Animated packaging, with a photo of the model in vehicle mode accompanied by character artwork, behind which is a faded illustration of Cheetor's CPDC (Cybertron Police Defence Command, apparently) identification. Cheetor's name is picked out in a metallic-effect flash, typeset in the approximation of the Beast Wars font. It's all bright and vibrantly colourful, but steadfastly squared-off-box-shaped, rather than following the mass release tradition of strangely shaped boxed with odd angles and sticky-out-bits. Inside is the traditional foam insert, which holds the model very firmly, though mine seems to have an alignment issue - the righthand 'nose' of the car actually sticks out of the foam, and has tried to push the side of the box out.

I'm a little surprised that, after so many years, and so many different boxes, the note on the box still reads "join the Hasbro TrasFormers Collectors' Club"... Though they could get away with claiming it's not a typo, it's a reference to one of the foreign versions of the brand name... But, seriously, if I'd ever missed a typo like that two weeks running, let alone four years running (assuming Airazor/Astrotrain's boxes to be the first instance of this error), my former manager would have crucified me.

Vehicle Mode:
Make no mistake, I absolutely love this vehicle mode, both as Blurr and as Cheetor, and it works perfectly for both. This model is rather more monochromatic - molded almost entirely in yellow plastic, as far as this mode goes, with black spots (asymmetrical on the bonnet and roof, but looks symmetrical on the sides) and red detailing on the rear 'lights' and all four wheels. There's also transparent green plastic for the headlights and a touch of slightly copperish orange toward the back of the cockpit.

Cheetor's tail end doesn't have as prominent a crest as Blurr did, and it's molded in solid plastic rather than rubber. It doesn't fit the slot cut in the back of the roof quite so well, either, and the completely open, head-revealing rear is just as glaring on this model as it was on Blurr.

It doesn't look a great deal like the sketches for TransTech Cheetor, but that's probably a good thing. This vehicle would fit in with just about any branch of the TransFormers family, as it's one of the least cartoony looking alternate modes from Animated.

Robot Mode:
Seeing this mold used as Cheetor, I suddenly find it harder to appreciate Animated Blurr. Sure, that was the first use of the mold, and it's intended use... but Cheetor is leagues better. The legs may not be double-jointed a-la Beast Machines Cheetor, but there's something about the sculpting that suggests it, and they can be posed in such a way as to emphasise that. The arms, with their wheels and the high, pointed shoulder crests certainly manage to evoke the TransTech design and spirit.

The colourscheme gets a bit more varied in this mode - more of that copperish orange, more black, and even more of that lurid, almost fluorescent green hinted at by the car's headlights. What's really impressive is that the spot patterns remain in evidence in robot mode - it's not just decoration for the vehicle mode. They are far more regular and entirely symmetrical the chest, forearms and thighs. It does seem a little odd that, in this mode, they could be mistaken for mechanical detail, while the spots on the alternate mode are so organic... but, supposedly, it was all intended to be regular and mechanical-looking, until it was decided that it just didn't look right on a test model.

The big deal here is the head sculpt, of course, based on Wyatt's animation design. Looking at early photos, I thought they'd done a fantastic job, not only in creating an cool look for 'Animated Cheetor' but in turning that design into a three-dimensional reality. The final product is missing some of the paint application (most notably the black outlining which I, personally, believe would have improved it and helped the eyes stand out), but the face still manages to look excellent. My one and only gripe is in the positioning of the socket for the neck's ball joint - it's right behind the chin! In all the artwork, Animated Cheetor follows the Wyatt trend of massively jutting chins, but the final model looks very flat-faced because the joint is too far forward. It doesn't affect articulation (though the head is rather prone to popping off) so I can only assume the choice was made to ensure the crest could plug into the appropriate slot in vehicle mode... Even though it very nearly doesn't...

His weapon is the same combination sheild/saw blade thing that Blurr had, naturally, though the BotCon 2011 comic, The Stunti-Con Job, depicts it has some kind of blaster, somewhat like Animated Bumblebee's stingers. The 'blade' is molded in the same transparent green as the headlights, and the mechanism is just as weak on this model as it was on Blurr.

It seems to me that the best Club exclusives so far have been tied to Beast Wars - the pre-Earth version of Airazor is still my absolute favourite (and I should really get round to writing that up sometime soon...) and now this is a very worthy second place in my affections. It's a combination of the perfect mold for the job, an excellent new head sculpt (marred only by lack of detail-emphasising outlining - which, let's face it, was true of almost the entire Animated line - and a poorly positioned neck joint), and a perfectly-judged colourscheme, taking cues from every version of Cheetor from the original Beast Wars model right up to Beast Machines and beyond.

Seriously, forget the lurid G2 Seeker - it's going to get ridiculously expensive on the secondary market. If you're on the fence about joining the Club, and have any affection for Beast Wars and/or Animated, this is the perfect excuse to sign up, and it's still available as of the time of writing.

I would like to note that I wasn't even stung on Customs charges for this... but this year's BotCon set was another story entirely...

Beast Wars Reissue Tigatron

2011-07-08T18:11:00.001+01:00

All things considered, mold reuse was not especially common in Beast Wars... at least, not in the sense of repainting one character into another. Even in those cases, it wasn't repainting one species into another. Reusing Cheetor's mold to represent a white tiger - which tend to be native to Bengal, while Tigatron patrolled the arctic zones in the Beast Wars TV series - seems strange, although it's suggested that he was intended to be remolded slightly.

Beast Mode:
It's actually quite amazing how the different paint job makes the same model look completely different. The white tiger's face seems wider somehow, and with much more muscular neck, despite being absolutely identical to Cheetor's mold. The bulky body actually suits Tigatron better, too, since tigers tend to be heavier and more muscular than your average cheetah.

The paintjob on this version is far better than that of the original - more extensive, more detailed and more natural-looking. While Cheetor looks a bit crap in beast mode, Tigatron looks every bit as powerful and majestic as the character from the TV series.

Robot Mode:
Sadly, while the tiger is slightly more convincing, the robot is every bit as bad as Cheetor. The cool, almost minty colourscheme seems a lot more uniform than Cheetor's mixture of bluish silver, gold and orange, but that doesn't help a great deal.

As mentioned, there were plans to remold Tigatron slightly, certainly giving him a new beast head, but possibly also altering the crotch plate, foot details, and weapons. Strangely the mutant head was going to be left identical to Cheetor's, but who ever uses the mutant heads?

I'm not sure I can explain why but, while I feel Cheetor was rather weak, even with the reissue's improved paintjob, Tigatron is pretty excellent. All the excess bulk that didn't suit the former works perfectly on the latter and, while he still suffers from the 'enormous animal head sticking out of chest' issue, even that kind of suits Tigatron.

Armada Tidal Wave

2011-07-08T17:34:00.001+01:00

Gestalts were nothing new to TransFormers back in the early 2000s. Even leaving aside the teams of five (or six, in the case of the Constructicons), there had been a G1 Powermaster, Overlord, who consisted of two vehicles - with individual functionality, but without individual robot modes - which combined into one larger robot. Armada took this a step further, paving the way for the Autobots' 'Superlink/Powerlinx' feature in Energon, with the Dark Fleet, also known as Tidal Wave.

Vehicle Modes:
What's really cool about Tidal Wave/Dark Fleet is that the three component vehicles can dash around individually - an aircraft carrier, a troop carrier (which could be a hydrofoil or a flying machine) and an attack catamaran - or they can merge into one enormous Dreadnought. And it is a pretty large toy, too - each individual vehicle measures between 6" and 7" in length, with the combined mode measuring about 13" long by just under 10" from wingtip to wingtip.

This being an Armada toy, there are plenty of features, though only one is Mini-Con activated to any degree. Another one involves the Mini-Con, but isn't controlled by it.

The aircraft carrier has a total of four Mini-Con ports, though one is concealed within a very clever lift arrangement on the port side of the vessel. A whole great chunk of the deck can be lifted up and, thanks to a spring, folds back to reveal the Mini-Con storage bay. Only one Mini-Con is small enough to fit in however, and - predictably - that's Ramjet, the packaged partner of Tidal Wave. He basically folds into a 'storage mode' to fit inside the storage bay. The other three ports are one on each side of the foredeck, and one atop the control tower.

The catamaran has one port on each of the fore-hulls, and one active port behind the bridge. Plugging a Mini-Con in here activates a slider switch which rotates all the gun turrets on the main deck. This vehicle is also the only one to have any spring-loaded weaponary - each of the fore-hull has one missile launcher.

The troop carrier has another four Mini-Con ports - one atop each of the towers at the rear, and one on each side of the main deck. None of them do anything, but the main decks can be raised, revealing four fold-out seats for other Mini-Cons. Considering the supposed size of Tidal Wave, these seats seem incongruous to say the least, and very much out of proportion for Mini-Cons. Fold-out weapons I could understand... but seats that, were Tidal Wave real, would be too large for most full-size Decepticons, look more than a little ridiculous.

No extra features are available in combined dreadnought mode (in fact, the troop carrier's bay doors are more difficult to open due to obstruction by the catamaran's gun deck!), but the overall look of it more than makes up for this minor inconvenience, and it actually looks pretty awesome, despite a rather garish colourscheme. The Japanese version was darker and far more uniform... the US/UK version lightened everything and introduced the acidic green to the catamaran... somehow, it doesn't look as out of place as it should. The paintwork is not extensive, but it's used very effectively, with some of the molded detail picked out in gold, silver or red paint, with the aircraft carrier's landing strips marked out in red.

Robot Mode:
As befits a titan like Tidal Wave, his robot mode is one of the tallest Armada had to offer - about 11.5". Each vehicle component forms a balanced part of the robot, and the overall effect is, while a little blocky, very effective. Tidal wave also has an abundance of molded detail, and not just on the front parts - just about every surface, even the robot's back (bottom of vehicle modes) has mechanical detailing all over. No additional paintwork is revealed, since the front of the robot is essentially the unaltered decks of the vehicle modes, but the redistribution of colour makes it look pretty good.

The head is completely fixed in place - no rotation, let alone full, ball-jointed articulation - which is a huge disappointment, but Tidal Wave's grim visage is almost made more menacing by the fact that the whole body has to move for him to look in a different direction. In the cartoon and the videogames, Tidal Wave is many times larger than the rest of the Decepticons, but the toy feels just right for what it is.

The legs are very limited in articulation - really only moving at the hips because, while there is a knee joint, it's facing the wrong way. It seems odd because, with only a mid-thigh rotation joint and a slight redesign of the troop carrier, Tidal Wave could have had fully articulated legs. The arms, meanwhile, fare much better, with the ratcheting shoulder movement supplemented by the catamaran's transformation joints. They're supposed to peg into the body, but this only works if the missiles are removed - otherwise they block the attachment, or fire off when jostled. Still, what kind of Decepticon has missile launchers in his armpits? The arms themselved have excellent elbow joints - bending and rotating on ratchets, thanks to their transformation - and the hands are moderately articulated - the fingers are fused, but do bend, and the thumbs rotate up into place.

Naturally, the one Mini-Con activated gimmick is still functional in robot mode, and Ramjet actually looks pretty good attached to Tidal Wave's chest - almost like a PowerMaster figure from G1.

Mini-Con Partner Ramjet:
On the downside, Ramjet is one of the worst Mini-Cons ever. Purely from a functional design point of view, he's pretty well done, in that the jet mode looks OK, and it folds up effectively to go into storage inside Tidal Wave's aircraft carrier... but the robot mode looks like it only has one leg, and the arms are hopelessly oversized. Even so, for a Mini-Con, he's got a reasonable amount of paintwork - the cockpit is painted over in gold, and the robot's face is picked out in red, both colours fitting in with his overall colourscheme.

Despite the comparative lack of articulation, Tidal Wave is one of my favourites from Armada. He's got plenty of molded detail, a decent colour scheme, and he's pretty darned big. The way the vehicles combine is very well thought out and, even though he's technically a parts-former made up of vehicle drones (something I personally dislike about the Power Core Combiners), it is possible to transform him from combined Dreadnought mode to robot mode without separating the components.

Also, the three vessels can be attached to Armada Megatron/Galvatron to give the Decepticon Leader his own 'Supermode' to rival Optimus Prime and his Superpants...
One rather interesting coincidence with this mold is that the connection format for the arms was later reused in Galaxy Force, for attaching Leobreaker in claw mode to either Galaxy Convoy or Master Megatron/Galvatron... this means both that Tidal Wave's arms can be attached to Convoy and Megatron, and that Leobreaker can be attached to Tidal Wave... though either one completely screws with any sense of proportion the toys might possess!

Armada Optimus Prime

2011-07-08T13:55:00.000+01:00

"Hi, I'm HEXdidn't... and I wanna tell you about the TransFormers..."

Specifically the Armada incarnation of Optimus Prime, on this occasion. Say what you will about the cartoon that accompanied it (what little I've seen of it can only be described as 'shit', despite using many of the voice actors from Beast Wars, though whether it was entirely down to the US localisation, or whether the Japanese original was just as bad, I cannot say), the toy line had some highlights. Many of the toys were big, clumsy and blocky, but they at least had reasonable articulation. In fact, the Deluxe-equivalent version of Optimus Prime - fondly named 'Bendy Prime' - is still roundly considered to be one of the best of that line, and among the best articulated TransFormers ever... So surely the Leader Class analogue should be better, right?

Vehicle Mode:
Strange though this may look, Armada Prime's vehicle mode is actually not half bad, and was the first version of Optimus Prime since 1995's Laser Optimus Prime to come with a trailer that transforms into a battle station, just like G1 Prime.

It does look odd, though. Very odd. The truck looks more like a pickup than a semi/tractor, it's distinctly lacking in detail, has comparatively enormous (solid plastic) wheels, and has a nasty case of visible robot fists at the tail end. The trailer, meanwhile, is a bizarre jumble. The front end is open, revealing all kinds of inner workings, and the back end has no means of access. On either side, there are large boxes hanging off, and it is supported by tank tracks, rather than wheels. I'm not certain whether the top of the trailer was intended to act as a carrier for other Armada Autobots but, since none of them seemed to be in proportion, that would probably look a bit daft.

Somehow, though, it kind of works... It definitely looks like a kiddies version of TransFormers - almost Fisher Price in its blockiness - but the colours are very definitely those of Optimus Prime, so it is at least recognisable.

Also, it has pretty good play value in this mode - the trailer hitches onto the truck quite securely, and the whole thing moves well as it is dragged along the floor, following the truck around any corner you care to turn it through. The treads might be molded solid, but there are small plastic wheels underneath.

Robot Mode:
And here's where you start to wonder where it all went wrong. It's only natural to compare this to the Deluxe-equivalent version of this mold, which combined a Mini-Con activated 'punching' gimmick with excellent articulation. This larger-scale model has no Mini-Con activated gimmicks and very limited articulation. You don't get anything like the freedom of movement in the legs, because the ball-jointed hips are enclosed in solid plastic casings which allow no backward movement and only moderate movement to the sides. The knees still bend, but the feet are basically fixed flat. The arms, meanwhile, are just bizarre... If the Deluxe version could have ball-jointed elbows, why not this one? Instead we have double hinges which don't move far because the upper arm and forearm are so darned large.

There are a couple of things that might almost be saving graces... the head features a push-button mouthplate-waggle gimmick, somewhat reminiscent of Masterpiece Prime, though not nearly as effective because the head is pinned, rather than being on a ball joint (another advantage to the Deluxe!). Also, the inner chest area has a molded 'Matrix of Leadership'. Not all that impressive, really...

And, like vehicle mode, there's not a great deal of paintwork, so this version of Prime looks clumsy, chunky and cheap...

He can carry the enormous hand-cannon, or the smokestack weapons from each wrist can be detached and combined into a double-barrel hand weapon made of transparent plastic. This would almost make sense if there were any electronic lights in this mode... but there aren't.

Trailer, Base Mode:
This actually turns out to be the highlight of the toy, because it's packed with features, some Mini-Con activated, some entirely independent. The large blue boxes that hung off each side of the trailer become small Mini-Con 'garages'. There's a Mini-Con activated double-barrelled turret above one of them, a diminutive launch ramp in the middle, and a two-tiered tower above the control centre of the base. On another of the protrusions is a spring-loaded missile launcher which pops up on a long arm. There's a similar thing on the other side but, strangely, it's just molded detail. I've never quite understood why that is - other than cost-saving - because it would have been easy enough to add another launcher on that side, and there's no point to having molded detail that just looks like a missile launcher in that space.

There's still not an awful lot of paintwork on this mode - just a few splashes of gold here and there, but there is a large red LED mounted just below the transparent 'view screen' at the centre of the base. This is activated by the Mini-Con port just in front of it, and goes along with the uninspiring couple of sound effects emitted by the speaker (gunfire activated by this port, whirrs, clunky and other such sounds associated with transformation and combining).

The coolest thing about this is that, given a set of batteries and a surface with just the right amount of friction/traction (smooth wood or vinyl isn't enough, thick carpet seems to be too much!), it transforms automatically. Inside the truck's cab is an infra-red LED, which signals the trailer as it's transformed. This signal tells the trailer to transform itself into either base mode or into...

Trailer, 'Superpants' Mode/Super Robot Mode:
Um. Yes. The trailer becomes a pair of trousers. With the truck transformed into 'torso mode', it plugs into the centre of the newly-erected 'Superpants' and becomes one of the most poorly-articulated TransFormers since Generation 1.

OK, it's obvious that legs formed out of the trailer are never going to be articulated... Even in this day and age, with the Dark of the Moon 'Ultimate' Optimus Prime, the legs are fixed, structural parts. The problem with this model is that you're hard pressed to even see the legs as legs. From the front, they're pretty chunky, from the sides it just looks like he's plugged into his trailer, and from the back it's an absolute disaster: even with such an apparently large footprint, Supermode Prime is leaning on a large chunk of trailer to keep himself upright, and the base's tower is only slightly collapsed against his back.

The reason for all the space behind the torso is that Supermode Prime is meant to further combine with Armada Overload, giving him a pair of over-the-shoulder missile launchers at the expense of even more of his already limited articulation. The torso could alternatively combine with Armada Jetfire in 'Superpants' mode, though the only version of that mold I own is TFCC Astrotrain, so I haven't taken photos of that...

In amongst all the chunky crappiness of this mold, there are a couple of cute gimmicks in addition to the automatic transformation between three modes of the trailer. Firstly, when transformed into torso mode, Prime's Supermode head is revealed by a spring-loaded gimmick that activates when the torso is plugged into the trailer. Secondly, a button on the right shoulder activates a second red LED in Prime's supermode fist, allowing the hand cannon, the double-barreled 'smokestacks' gun, or any one of the myriad variations on the Mini-Con Star Sabre to light up. On the downside, there are no worthwhile Mini-Con activated gimmicks available in Supermode.

On the subject of the head, I'm in two minds... On the one hand, it's quite a daring departure from the traditional stylings, yet retaining enough of them to be instantly recognisable as the face of Optimus Prime... On the other hand, it kind of reminds me of something from a Power Rangers series... In fact, the whole 'Supermode' thing feels more Mighty Morphin' than TransFormers.

Mini-Con Partner Sparkplug:
Or 'Armada Bumblebee' by any other name... because, let's face it, that head is very clearly derived from the G1 cartoon version of Bumblebee. Yes, it's squared off, but the horns are there and the face is very similar. Even the size and overall built are more than reminiscent of Bumblebee... And yet, Hasbro decided to call him 'Sparkplug' referencing one of the human characters from the G1 mythos.

Sparkplug is very small and terribly flimsy, and has a nasty habit of falling apart. Thankfully, it almost seems designed with this in mind, as the joints all pop back together quite easily.

Vehicle mode looks like it's based on some form of Lamborghini... Robot mode looks a bit rubbish.

The biggest disappointment in this version of Armada Optimus Prime is that a larger model should have a simpler transformation, and is more limited in just about every sense when compared to the Deluxe version. Transformation follows more or less the same pattern, just... there's not as much to it, and the end result doesn't look as good. And then, in Supermode, where only the arms are mobile, they're even more limited than the basic mode's arms: the 'elbow' is the basic mode's knee, but bending in the opposite direction, so it barely moves at all. Thankfully the shoulders offer full rotation, or he'd never be able to raise a weapon!

Remembering that TransFormers are toys for kids, not models for collectors, I'm inclined to like Armada Optimus Prime, on play value alone. After all, 'play value' is more than articulation, it's how interactive the toy is both for the child playing with it, and for the other toys involved. With five Mini-Con ports in his Supermode (plus three on the hand cannon!), three in base mode (plus the two 'garages') and four in trailer mode (not to mention two on the basic mode's backside), along with all the light and sound effects spread across all three modes, and the many interactive features of base mode, there's a lot of fun to be had with this toy. It may never take pride of place in a collection, and it may not be the most successful incarnation of Optimus Prime, but it's certainly fun to lark about with once in a while.

One word of warning, though... This model has been in my collection for about eight years at this point and, larking about with it as I wrote about it, I managed to drop it a couple of times. The first time, nothing serious happened - the tower's platforms came out of their struts, but they plug right back in without problems. The second time, he landed on his Supermode head, and one of his crests actually broke in two places. It's made of fairly rigid metallic flake plastic, so it's not exactly a surprise - all the metallic flake plastic from that period was especially prone to breakage.

Masterpiece MP05 Megatron

2011-07-07T22:32:00.000+01:00

After doing the MP01 mold to death and only producing one new mold in two years, Takara Tomy had to do something particularly special with MP05 to get some credibility back into the so-called 'Masterpiece' brand. The announcement that the fifth release would be Megatron met with mixed response. The revelation that he would appear in his old Generation 1 alternate mode - a Walther P-38 handgun - hopes were both raised and dashed in equal measure
Alternate Mode:
G1 Megatron is one of those models that people either love or hate. To some, it never seemed quite plausible that the leader of the Decepticons would transform into something as small and insignificant as a handgun. Then there was the question of how far the old 'mass displacement' system actually went - was he a human-sized P-38, or a giant-robot-sized P-38? G1 never gave a definitive answer - in the cartoon, he seemed to become whichever size was appropriate at the time, having been wielded most often by either Starscream or Soundwave, and certainly turning up in the hands of mere humans in the comics, if not the TV series.

The toy drew as much criticism for being too accurate a representation of the gun (only marginally smaller than the real thing, assuming my hands to be of average size) as it did for the poorly proportioned robot mode, with its thin legs, curious hip arrangement and, of course, the notorious trigger-crotch.

The Masterpiece version has several key differences, though most of these are only visible in robot mode. First and foremost, this Walther P-38 is oversized, far more detailed than the G1 mode and, while there is no action attached to pulling the trigger (no eye-endangering, spring-loaded pellet launchers here!), it does have a mobile safety lever. I was a little disappointed to find that the hammer is still molded as a part of the back of the gun, rather than being mobile, but reasons for this become more obvious in robot mode. Also, the molding and paintwork are intended to look like brushed steel, rather than the smooth, shiny chrome of G1, with a scored, grainy, matte grip that features a loop so the gun can be attached to its holster with a cord.

By default, Megatron is packaged only with the sight, without the stock and silencer that were included with the G1 version. All the other accessories are for robot mode. The sight isn't even functional - even in the toy sense, like G1 or Classics Megatron - because it incorporates a superbright red LED.

Oversized though it may be, there was some concern over MP05 being packaged in gun mode, and the likelihood that Customs offices in many countries would confiscate such an accurate model gun without the orange 'safety caps' toy guns now routinely have. Indeed, I believe it's still illegal to own MP05 in Australia without the sort of licensing one would normally associate with genuine, active firearms. I would suggest that it's not something one should carry around in public, particularly not with the Justitoys upgrade parts.

Robot Mode:
One can see why hopes were both raised and dashed by the early artwork. The end result figure has many of the flaws of the G1 figure, even while trying to improve upon them. The first thing that strikes you is the lack of trigger-crotch. This was accomplished by splitting the entire trigger section in half, and having it fold down into the inner calf areas. The outer calf is further bulked out by splitting the grip, and folding the rear halves forward, but the upper legs remain very skinny, despite the upper part of the grip folding out a little way.

As far as the legs go, the real disappointment is that, despite very firm joints (almost too firm, in some cases) and double-hinged knees, he's neither particularly poseable nor stable, particularly once the fusion cannon is attached to his arm. With that in place, he has a tendency to lean to the right, no matter how the legs are arranged.

From the waist up, Masterpiece Megatron is as faithful a homage to his appearance in the G1 cartoon as one could possibly hope for, though the head doesn't quite look right from the sides. It is, however, mobile... which is more than could be said for G1 Megatron's very strange head. The face is quite well-designed, though the expression is on the blank/passive side of menacing, and it's painted in a faintly pearlescent off-white, so what little detail there is, just isn't picked out. I've seen customised versions where the areas around the eyes are painted in black, and that alone improves the look of the face.

Mounting the fusion cannon does create several problems, mainly due to its weight - the shoulder joint isn't firm enough to keep the arm outstretched (removing the electronics helps, but not for long!) - but also due to its bulk. It seems proportionally larger than G1 Megatron's weapon though, without that model to hand at present, I can't be certain of that. Thankfully, that's not the only weapon Megatron was packaged with - he also has his Energon ball-and-chain, as seen in the TV series pilot, in his battle with Optimus Prime atop the dam (though the chain seems longer than necessary - it could amost be used as a skipping rope), and the discarded beam sabre (apologies for borrowing Gundam terminology, I just don't know what else to call it...) and handgun used to fell Prime in the Animated movie. There's also a little 'Kremzeek' figurine, molded in transparent yellow plastic... though who knows why..?

Transformation is surprisingly similar to the G1 model, just with a few extra steps and joints and, in the main, it's rather more impressive. The feet fold almost completely flat and stow inside the two halves of the grip, the hands fold back into a space that seems too small for them, and the way the arms bulk out is very clever, if a little flawed. It is scuppered somewhat by the mass of ball joints on which these panels are mounted - they're all prone to popping off. Also, both in the arms and the legs, there are clips that fold away for robot mode... I can't help thinking it was a bad idea, because it can be very difficult to align them, and to actually get them to clip together. The arms are particularly troublesome because of the ratcheting joints at the elbow and mid-bicep... they are an absolute pain to align.

This is technically my second Masterpiece Megatron - the first had a pin missing in part of the arm assembly, which led to one arm basically falling off the first time I transformed it, straight out of the box. This replacement has no such omission, and had transformed without incident until I took these photos - since he's displayed in robot mode, I took those photos first, then transformed him to gun mode, then transformed him back... at which point one of the clips on the upper arm broke off. That clip isn't thin plastic, so I can only conclude that it's exceptionally brittle.

Justitoys MP-5 Upgrade Package:
Third-party manufacturer Justitoys released an upgrade package which adds both silencer and stock, and replacement - die cast - grip parts which not only allow the stock to be attached, but lower robot mode's centre of gravity, making it a little more stable. It loses the cord loop on the grip, but that's really a small price to pay to upgrade Masterpiece Megatron into U.N.C.L.E./Rifle mode.

Additionally, just like the G1 version, the parts can be reorganised into accessories for Megatron's robot mode - both standalone cannon mode, and the shoulder-mounted 'bazooka'-style weapon can be accomplished, though the latter is unstable. On the upside, one of the stock parts includes a spring-loaded trigger mechanism which allows standalone cannon mode to fire the included plastic projectiles. I suspect these are just as eye-threatening as the G1 version, if not more so, and I haven't tried it yet...

Even without the Justitoys additions, I personally think Masterpiece Megatron is a fine attempt at creating the impossible - Megatron in the cartoons cheated far more extensively than just about any other character transformation. While the G1 toy was derided for its trigger-crotch, this version was equally derided for its skeletal appearance. It's not a perfect success but, short of making a mess of the alternate mode, or following the Classics example and turning him into a gun that doesn't really exist, I don't see how they could have done better. It's a Masterpiece model for display purposes - an adult collectible, rather than an action figure.

One of the biggest controversies was with the metallic parts on Megatron's feet, which start tarnishing almost as soon as he's removed from his packaging. It's not too unsightly, if you ask me, and I've always been troubled by the idea of these giant robots looking pristine, but it is a failure of Takara Tomy's part to use a metal that would tarnish in that way.

Kiss Players Hot Rodimus

2011-07-07T18:00:00.001+01:00

Whether it was the malign influences of Unicron, or merely evidence that some folks at Takara were overworked to the point of nervous exhaustion, something very strange happened to the TransFormers brand in Japan in 2006... and that strange thing was "Kiss Players".

A mercifully brief line of toys, it incorporated repaints from Binaltech, G1, and a bunch of transforming egg things that hadn't previously been 'TransFormers'. There was also one larger-format PVC statuette of one of the girls that came along with a 'Worlds Smallest' version of the Mazda RX8. Each of the Binaltech repaints came with a human partner - at a slightly larger scale than had been used with Binaltech Asterisk - and the story had it that the robots gained special powers when their human partner kissed them. The story also seemed to include gratuitous panty shots, and the sort of phallic tentacle/tongue things that are normally only seen in the seedier genres of anime.

Hot Rod comes with Xiao-Xiao/Syao-Syao, some kind of Chinese martial artist in a very short dress and a padlocked collar, munching on what could be either a dumpling or a rice cake. Despite being to a different scale to the BTA figures, she fits into Hot Rod's vehicle mode reasonably well though, obviously, cannot be made to hold the steering wheel.

Vehicle Mode:
When it was first announced that the Fort GT was being used to make an Alternators Mirage - and the Alternator did come first, Mirage eventually gained a limited Binaltech release, in clear plastic, representing his 'optically camoflaged' mode - I was intrigued, yet sceptical. When the first photos appeared, I have to admit, I thought it looked like crap. Massive shoulders with doors hanging off behind, and the vast majority of the car's shell folded up and hanging off the back, it hardly look like Takara/Hasbro's finest hour...

And yet, it's a fairly nice-looking car... and with a different paint job, the result is far better. Mirage, having previously been a racing car, just didn't suit the 'high performance streetcar' look. Hot Rod, meanwhile, can get away with it. Some might argue that the 2007 SDCC exclusive's paintjob was more evocative of the character, but this toned-down, catalogue-accurate look is more believable, more in keeping with Binaltech, than the golden flame pattern of the exclusive.

As was common to the Binaltech line, Hot Rod features 'steering', opening doors and bonnet-boot (and possibly engine compartment - I'm not sure if that's intended to 'open' in car mode, or if it only comes apart for transformation...). It's as detailed a model as any of the Binaltech line but, despite this being a Japanese release, there's no die-cast metal in the model. The visible surfaces of the car are painted, rather than being plain red plastic, so there's an excellent glossiness to the finish, but the toy feels light and, to be honest, cheap in spite of this. Furthermore, while there's a fair bit of paintwork in the interior of the car, the steering wheel - molded in red plastic - is incongruous.

Robot Mode:
I'd still say this model suits Hot Rod more than it does Mirage, but its shortcomings are just as glaringly obvious. Having the entire front wings of the car occupying each shoulder doesn't look too bad until you see the car doors hanging off behind. Additionally, the whole shoulder assembly looks weak and clearly wasn't really built with poseability in mind. The joint between the arm and the shoulder is also fairly loose and, since it's a pin joint, not easily fixed.

Having the bulk of the car shell hanging - loosely - off the back not only ruins the look of the figure, but interferes further with poseability, both at the waist and at the shoulders. The legs win some points back through being very mobile, but the feet, even with their garish, jarringly yellow heel pieces, don't offer a great deal of stability.

The head mold is also rather contentious. Mirage's head was quite wide - it always was, though, and the Alternators update looked quite reasonable, and familiar, despite being more angular than Mirage's G1 look - but, for whatever reason, the folks who sculpted Hot Rod's head decided to keep to the same approximate dimensions, leaving him with a comparatively wide face inside an enormously wide helmet. Sure, it has a deployable visor gimmick (albeit in completely clear, colourless plastic, so you can barely see whether it's deployed or not) straight from the animated movie, but nothing about it really says "This Is Hot Rod". Nevertheless, with the huge shoulders and the hinged arms that transfer the car's bonnet to the robot's chest, the head somehow manages to seem a little lost, despite its size.

One really cool aspect of this model is that it was packaged with a three-part fishing rod - another homage to the animated movie - which can be reassembled into Hot Rod's trademark triple-barrelled wrist blaster. Sadly, the clips that should hold it in place don't actually clip in anywhere, and aren't that tight, so the slightest nudge will dislodge this weapon... Which is a real shame, because the 'guns' he inherited from Mirage are terrible. One is barely bigger than his hand, the other folds out in such a way that I cannot fathom how it could possibly be aimed adequately. They can be put in his hands like tonfa, and actually look marginally better that way, but Hot Rod is distinctly lacking in good weaponry.

In some ways, this model appears to have been a template for Classics Sunstreaker/Sideswipe - particularly in the way the legs transform, with the back end of the car hanging - unsightly and useless - from the knees. Transforming him back and forth between modes feels quite perilous at the shoulders - the plastic doesn't seem to be of a particularly high quality and, since it's such a struggle to get the steering tabs and sockets lined up, I'm forever scared that I'm about to break him. Also, the robot's chest seems like a real cop-out, being just the bonnet of the car held out from the body by a pair of panels that it doesn't even clip onto. Sure, it means you could drop a Matrix of Leadership into the gaping chasm that is Hot Rod's chest... but it'd probably just fall out.

In many ways, I'm not a fan of this model... or the mold, at least... and, being part of the much-maligned Kiss Players line, it was a very strange purchase for me. I'd like to say that Hot Rod transcends the shortcomings of the mold but, even after owning him for several years, I'm not entirely sure he does. It feels rather like a high-quality knockoff, rather than a genuine TransFormer and, while it's cute to have Xiao-Xiao sitting on his shoulder as he goes fishing from his shelf, Kiss Players Hot Rodimus cannot be described as an essential purchase, particularly at typical import prices, and especially at the inflated prices of the secondary market.

Beast Wars II Longrack

2011-07-07T16:44:00.000+01:00

As ambivalent as I was toward Beast Wars, the Japanese line did have some delightfully bonkers additions to the range, and Longrack is just such a character. Among all the lions, tigers, apes, dinosaurs and other such powerful, dangerous creatures, who would have thought that a Giraffe represented a viable alternate mode for one of the time-displaced Cybertronians? Evidently someone at Takara did...

Beast Mode:
So, yes, it's a Giraffe... and not only that, but it's a reasonably accurate and detailed representation of that animal. The size suggests a juvenile to me, but I'm no expert... it could just be that they scaled back on the neck for purely practical reasons (which become more obvious in robot mode).

It's molded with subtle - not very convincing - fur detail, which is then painted over with the traditional giraffe 'crazy paving' pattern. Like the best Beast Wars toys, this paint job is not symmetrical, and runs nicely across all of the panels that make up the beast shell. While it may seem odd that the Giraffe's tongue is sticking out (as if feeding, I guess?), this activates one of the model's gimmicks. Where some beasts came with panels to open, revealing a sort of 'playing dead/carcass' mode, Longrack's tongue is a button which causes the eyes to move. Not quite sure what that's supposed to signify, but it may be explained somewhere in the (Japanese) packaging.

Due in part to further gimmicks and in part to the necessities of transformation, Longrack's beast mode is almost articulated... that is to say, the back legs move freely, and the front legs bend at the knee. There's also a moderate amount of tilt on the head but, unsurprisingly, it can't turn. That said, I doubt it would have taken much redesigning to give him a fully poseable, ball-jointed neck joint. It was never going to be a fully poseable neck because of the necessities of robot mode and the supposed 'weapon platform' mode, but the ability to turn the giraffe's head would have been neat.

The tail also moves a little, but only on one joint, pinned at the bottom. It's molded mid-flick, but the tuft at the end looks rubbery rather than furry, due to the use of semi-matte paint.

Robot Mode:
Well, what can one say other than "Huh?". Longrack's robot mode is a bit of a jumble. He basically has the full length of the giraffe's neck protruding from his right elbow (not his shoulder, as he does have an elbow joint below that red shoulder joint!) with a ginormous claw sticking out of the collar. This claw is spring loaded to fire out and, through the magic of inertia, close itself, as if clamping around some Predacon's neck. As gimmicks go, it's very strange... but then, Longrack appears to be made of strange. I suspect this claw is the reason Armada Hoist/Micron Legend Grap was given a new head and paint job, and released as Cybertron Longrack back in 2005.

Longrack's left arm is a more normal arm, albeit embedded within large panels of beast shell both at the shoulder and, most obstructively, on the forearm. This huge slab of beast flesh houses Longrack's weapon, however, so at least it serves a purpose.

The weapon is a particularly bizarre looking short sword, molded in red plastic, with a guard made out of the giraffe's mane. It can sit either in the left fist or, if you're feeling daring, can also be plugged into the inner claw on the right arm. It doesn't seem to be a particularly effective weapon either way.

The giraffe's forelegs, now sticking out of Longrack's back, become missile lauchers with what must be the most annoying hair-trigger on any TransFormer I've ever owned. Seriously, you only have to look at them and they launch. I've lost count of the number of times one or both have fired off, mid-transformation, though thankfully I've never lost track of the missiles.

The head mold is probably one of my favourites from the Japanese range, simply because it's one of the few Beast Wars robot heads that actually looks like a robot's head, albeit with a ridiculously large central crest. Longrack's spark crystal is concealed in his chest, 'Matrix of Leadership'-style, covered by a rotating panel of beast shell. The weirdest thing about this is that the shell has diagonal slits molded into it, so the spark crystal is almost visible when it's closed. The first time I saw it, I wondered if there was a speaker hidden behind.

Longrack in robot mode is, thankfully, far more poseable than in beast mode. The legs are particularly well-jointed, though the awkward feet don't put him among the most stable Maximals. It can take an awful lot of time and patience figuring out how best to pose the toes and heel-spurs to keep him upright, during which time those missiles on his back will probably launch several times over. The arms, naturally, are quite limited - one by its sheer size and spring-loaded gimmickery, the other by the large panels attached to it, but Longrack does have the unusual advantage of waist articulation, as a necessity of transformation, so he works out quite nicely.

Weapon Platform Mode:
Many of the TransFormers in Longrack's particular line were described as triple-changers, in that they could adopt a kind of weapon/utility mode. Longrack, frankly, looks more like some kind of construction equipment, except for those two missile lauchers facing foreward. It's certainly not among the best alternate modes... but then, none of them looked like much more than an afterthought.

I won't beat about the bush here: Longrack is a complete pain in the arse to transform. Even putting aside those missile-launcher knees (in fact, big tip #1: take those blasted missiles out before attempting to transform him!), the number of panels, and the fact that some of them seem to have to move through others, makes switching between modes a time-consuming and infuriating process. Either of the two main modes look good enough - though I would like to see a more detailed/natural repaint, like the other Beast Wars reissues - but that extra alternate mode is just plain weird.

There was a very short space of time between my first discovery of the adorable insanity that is Beast Wars II Longrack, and my discovery that he was out of stock everywhere. It is the very fact of his awkwardness and asymmetry that appealed to me, so I was thrilled when an online TransFormers specialist found one in their storeroom after a stocktaking weekend, and I ordered it without hesitation. Longrack defies all explanation - he is the toy that should never have been: A giraffe that transforms into a robot... and he, even more than Lio Convoy, is responsible for my increased interest in the Beast Wars/Machines toy ranges.

Despite its many shortcomings, Longrack is easily one of my favourite Beast Wars toys. I'm even quite keen to get the Cybertron version, despite that mold being a bit rubbish, because Longrack's look is both amusing and unique. If it's good enough for TFCC/Botcon Dinobot, it's easily good enough for Longrack.

Beast Wars Reissue Cheetor

2011-06-23T01:16:00.000+01:00

Every line of TransFormers needs a headstrong, action-hungry kid-appeal character who starts off completely arrogant, insubordinate and consistently bites off more than he can chew, but grows not only to respect his Prime but the rest of his team as well. Lately, that's been the Bumblebee role... but in the Beast Wars, another yellow character fulfilled the same purpose...

Beast Mode:
If you consider that a Cheetah is a slender, lithe, fast and agile hunter, you might wonder what went wrong with this alternate mode. It's almost as wide as it is tall, and essentially a complete brick. Yes, the back legs are articulated, but their range of motion serves no useful purpose in this mode. They're molded much like Lio Convoy's, in that the only joint in the beast's hind legs is the robot mode's knee, and that's kind of in the wrong place for the beast. It's all far too chunky and would require too much suspension of disbelief for it to look like a Cheetah were it not for the truly incredible paint job on this reissue.

The actual toy is far more orange than these photos suggest, and the white airbrushing isn't really white at all - it's a very pale, muted orange that complements the plastic colour well. Where the beast mode truly excels, though, is in the spot detailing - it's neither symmetrical nor regular and, over the top of the subtly molded fur, manages to look reasonably natural, albeit glossy, rather than matte like the airbrushed 'white'.

Face on, the head sculpt and its painted detailing looks fairly accurate to a Cheetah, albeit with bulging eyes and an exceptionally thick neck. Perhaps this kitty took after Garfield...

If you squint, it almost looks good from the front, but from any other angle it looks clunky and clumsy, and not at all convincing. Were it capable of pulling off a 'dash' pose, the rigid tail wouldn't look quite so out of place, but all this beast mode can do it stand around looking stunned. Or stoned..?

Robot Mode:
It was models like Cheetor that really put me off Beast Wars back in the day. When they first turned up on UK shelves, I picked up Optimus Primal and Megatron and decided not to get any others because, let's face it, most of them don't really look like robots in robot mode... And Cheetor is a prime example of a truly awful-looking Beast-Former. The Cheetah's forelegs hang useless, yet rigid, from the robot's back, just behind his shoulders, and the beast's head basically obscures the robot's vision of anything that isn't above him to some extent.

Bizarrely, though, the format is somewhat reminscent of all those G1 cars where the front end of the vehicle became the robot's chest, and the doors became 'wings' behind the shoulders... even the proportions are similar!

As with beast mode, Cheetor's robot mode has a vastly upgraded paint job - gold, along with a cold, blueish-grey metallic paint that complements the grey, metallic-flake plastic used on some of the joints, and almost flourescent colours used for both the robot and the 'mutant' eyes. Oddly, their eyes are different colours, and possibly chosen to reference the many different colourschemes of the original '96 Cheetor. Robot mode is the red/orange-eyed variant, while the battle mask is the green-eyed variant.

The paintwork overall is anything but sparse, too - arms, legs, groin-plate and the entire head are lavishly painted up so, even if he still looks nothing like his CGI TV series counterpart, and despite the shortcomings of the figure, he does look pretty impressive based on nothing more than the extent of the paint coverage.

The head sculpt is pretty bland and, again, nothing like the character from the TV series - far simpler, far more human-inna-helmet but, again, the form of the helmet carries with it some G1 references... the central crest with 'horns' either side is quite reminiscent of the likes of Prowl, Bluestreak and Smokescreen.

The 'mutant' head/battle mask, meanwhile, hovers somewhere between cat-like and insectoid, with a dash of bird-like just to make it even more confusing. In fact, looking at it in the wake of the TF3: Dark of the Moon trailers, it almost looks as though Cheetor's battle mask was the inspiration for live-action Laserbeak's head...

One really cool feature, common to most of the Beast Wars figures, is that Cheetor's weapons are stashed internally in beast mode. The tail section detatches to become one handgun, and the belly comes out - molded intestines and all - to become another. This latter weapon, like a select few others in Beast Wars is a functioning water pistol - squeeze the 'guts', immerse the nozzle in water, and release to 'load', then squeeze the back end again to fire off a blast of liquid. I'm not about to try it with this TakaraTomy reissue, but I suspect it would be quite effective, as long as the joint between the rigid plastic of the gun barrel and the softer plastic of the 'guts' held up to the constant squeezing.

Cheetor offers a reasonable balance between traditional, 'proper' transformation and the 'shell-forming' that seemed prevalent in Beast Wars, but even the parts that fold out or collapse still stick out too far and look both awkward and somewhat ridiculous. On balance, I'd have to say that beast mode looks better than robot mode, despite the awesome improved paintwork of this reissue.

Where this figure wins is its articulation in robot mode - the shoulders are ball-joints leading into swivel joints, the elbows move, the hips are ball-jointed and the knees bend and swivel. With a fairly large and comparatively solid footprint, this makes Cheetor one of the more dynamically poseable - and stable - Beast Wars robots.

Considering it's now a 15 year old mold, it should come as no surprise that it's simplistic and not particularly effective. However, considering how well-regarded Beast Wars is as a TV series, it should be hard for any collector to pass up a reissue like this... and it's not as if the Classics/Universe Cheetor was any better, despite its increased complexity.

The Cat Returns

2011-06-21T12:31:00.000+01:00

I was very lucky a short while ago.

When I popped out earlier to empty my bins and start restocking my fridge, I found ParcelForce had tried to deliver something to the flat yesterday, around 5pm. Annoyingly, it was another one of those occasions where I heard the buzzer go, seemingly at random, in the early evening, and decided not to answer. I should really try to look out the window on these occasions, but there's no way to do that subtly, or quickly enough to get to the intercom afterward.

Anyway... I popped out to get the first part of my shopping and, upon my return, found the postman handing some stuff over to one of the ground floor businesses. As I unlocked the main door, he followed me in, but didn't seem to be carrying any boxes (at which point, I remembered I wanted ParcelForce, not Royal Mail).

He didn't have anything for me so, once I'd put my shopping away, I popped out again for the other stuff I needed. When I got back, I saw a guy walking away from the front door with a box in his hand.

He was heading to a red van.

A red van labelled 'ParcelForce'.

So, lugging my shopping, I ran after him, and caught up to him just as he was logging his failed delivery. I knocked on the window and asked if, by any chance, he had just tried to deliver to my address. He said this was so, and I produced the card he'd left yesterday, saying "That's me!". Since he needed proof of identity, he had to follow me back up to the flat to complete the delivery... but now it's here!

Far earlier than I'd expected, my TFCC 2011 Exclusive Animated Transtech Cheetor has arrived! The actual toy's box is less than half the size of the shipping box - it's only a little larger than the toy, for a change, though about twice as deep as it needs to be. No comic with this one, sadly, but he does have a G1-style Tech Spec card stuffed in there (really, I mean it was stuffed in - it's slightly longer than the box, and so had to be put in diagonally, but even then the corners have bent).

Pretty cool stuff... Pictures soon (in the Collectors' Club sense of 'soon', knowing me...)

Masterpiece MP03 Starscream

2011-05-21T23:14:00.143+01:00

After repainting MP01 Convoy into MP02 'Ultra' Magnus, cheapening the 'Masterpiece' branding, and thereby disappointing legions of fans with yet another straight white repaint, Takara Tomy really had to create something stunning for MP03. It wasn't long before the first sketches made their way onto the internet, and Masterpiece Starscream was the centre of much speculation. How big would it be? Would it have the same extent of die-cast metal parts? How would Takara Tomy create a convincing F-15 and a cartoon-accurate robot?

Vehicle Mode:
Well, they certainly succeeded in creating a decent model of the F-15, for starters. Some people I've shown this to don't believe it's a TransFormer because it just looks like a decent-sized model plane. The cockpit opens (allowing the strange, badly painted Dr Arkeville figure packaged along with him to sit inside), it has deployable landing gear (the two wheels at the back aren't that convincing, but the one under the cockpit is actually concealed by a flap), convincingly curved wings (which almost have working flaps), a very slim silhouette that barely hints at the presence of a disguised robot, accurately painted lights, and all the expected markings are there.

In fact, they've really gone to town on the printed labelling - the 'No Step' marking turns up all over the place on the wings and the fuselage, the wing's stripes are G1 appropriate, but subtly done and fit the overall look of the plane, and Starscream's motto is printed just below the cockpit, where the names of the pilot and co-pilot would normally be.

Other than that, the paintwork is almost nonexistant. There's a subtle dark wash over the entire model, to bring out the detail, and touches of silver at the back, in front of the independently directable afterburners.

Where the detail really shines in this model is in the unexpected and completely unnecessary additional features. Not only does it have the opening cockpit and landing gear, but it also has airbrakes - one in the centre of the plane, and two more just in front of the afterburners. Beneath these, there is more molded - and painted - engine detail, though the central airbrake only has a chromed piston underneath. Furthermore, the nose cone opens up to reveal a finely detailed and painted radar-emitter.

Weapons-wise, the recesses for F-15's machine guns are highlighted with a white border, and a pair of missile pods can be attached to the underside of the wings, each with two fully-painted missiles, or the robot mode's Null Ray cannons can be attached. They're painted quite like large missiles anyway, so they don't look particularly out of place.

Robot Mode:
Shōji Kawamori's update to Starscream's robot mode is controversial indeed. Leaving aside the colour scheme for the moment, what we have is a design which references the G1 Seeker toy in a number of significant ways, and yet is different enough to have raised eyebrows throughout the fandom. One of the main gripes, bizarrely, has been the positioning of the tail fins/flaps. Supposedly, an earlier version of the design kept them in the old G1 location, on the ankles, but Kawamori decided to separate them from the lower leg, and attach them to the hips so as to look like sheaths for swords.

Other than this blatant disregard for aesthetic continuity, I personally think this is one of the most beautiful and elegant TransFormers ever made - the very epitome of the Masterpiece line. The level of molded detail is just right - barely a single featureless surface. While much of the painted/printed detail is appropriate to the plane mode, it is appropriate that it remains considering the traditional look of a Seeker robot. The paintwork that is robot mode specific is simple and sparing, and all the more effective for it. As with plane mode, the bulk of the body is the 'sea blue' colour, but a truer, albeit flat blue is introduced for the forearms, referencing the G1 model's 'gloves', and a few other details. Strangely, this blue also appears on the torso, just below the chest turbines, which would theoretically be the same red/burgundy as the turbine casings... Except we've already established the existence of variations on the traditional paint job.

The head mold, while excellent, and playing host to the model's main gimmick, seems out of proportion - far too small for the rest of the body, though this is because it has to fit inside the nose of the plane. The fact that they have included a face-changing gimmick at all is impressive. The faces are molded on either side of a piece that pulls out of the bottom of the head and twists 180 degrees to switch between them. One is a very neutral face, echoing the multi-purpose G1 Seeker face. The other side shows Starscream's trademark smirk, and is an excellent sculpt.

The other sneaky extra - referencing a secret weapon deployed by the Seekers only once in the 80s cartoon - are two banks of missile pods concealed (bizarrely) behind the chest turbines. Not quite sure how that works. Also, just like the G1 version, the arms can be mounted with either Starscream's traditional Null Ray cannons or the plane mode's missile racks. The latter doesn't suit robot mode quite so well, but they don't look half bad...

Transformation is, to be perfectly honest, a bit of a pain. Certain parts have to go into just the right position, and moved in just the right order, for everything to appear seamless, but all of these parts can go back into almost the right position, and it's close enough that one can complete transformation, but leave some very noticeable gaps between parts in plane mode. That said, transformation has many similarities and points of contrast to the G1 original. Obviously it's a far more complex model, and isn't intended to come apart, unlike the original Seeker mold, which was essentially a parts-former, with all the wings, fins and flaps detachable.

One of the main points of contention with the rear fins/flaps, quite apart from the fact that "they're not in the right place", is that they place a terrible restriction on the movement of his hips. In theory, they should be able to move out several notches on their ratchet joints... But with those whopping great chunks of plane hanging off them, they only manage the first notch, and that only grudgingly. Forward/backward movement is hampered more by the hip plates on the front, which are mobile, but lack useful range. Making matters worse for the legs, the footprint is pretty diabolical... it's very tricky to get Starscream balanced on his feet, and I feel that the afterburners are perhaps a touch too short. Also, the lower legs are quite floppy around the extension joint, and tend to rattle somewhat. They're not loose, as such, and they don't collapse except for transformation, but they're not very well fitted.

Everywhere else, articulation is great - there's even a tiny bit of waist movement, if you can arrange the nearby parts correctly. The jointing of the hands allows for some very expressive gestures, too.

The other contentious point was that, following the die-cast heavy MP01 and 02, this model is almost entirely made out of plastic. Naturally there are metal pins and screws everywhere, but the only significant metal piece is a structural part in the torso. It all makes for a good, solid model, but it seemed to be a dramatic change for the Masterpiece line, and none of the models since have had much by way of die-cast.

That said, I honestly cannot praise this mold enough - had I the money and the space, I'd buy every iteration of the mold, even the silly, garish, slavishly G1 US repaint and the terribly expensive Japanese Thundercracker repaint (I picked up a cheap UK Skywarp!). The 'Ghost' version that turned up is incredibly beautiful, deserving not only its own display, but proper lighting to do it justice. The fact that the Masterpiece Seekers come with a display base that can accomodate the model in either mode is an excellent bonus, but I can't help but wonder if it was included largely because the robot mode doesn't stand particularly well on its own...

TFClub Coronation Kit:
One odd feature of Masterpiece Starscream is the presence of jointed notches on each shoulder that had no obvious purpose. Leave it for the third parties to find a purpose. TFClub determined that these notches were perfect for mounting reproductions of the massive shoulder pads he wore for his coronation in the '86 animated movie. These can then accommodate the tasteful purple cape, and a nicely molded crown fits snugly upon his diminutive noggin. The plastic parts of this kit are brilliantly molded and well painted (though the red paint on the 'jewels' has a nasty habit of flaking off), but the cape is very sloppy. It's just a piece of purple nylon fabric cut to shape, with the fraying edges left unhemmed. Still, it was pretty cheap, comparatively speaking...

DotM Definitely Out...

2011-05-17T17:34:00.000+01:00

Took myself off to one of the nearest branches of Toys'R'Us today, since the Dark of the Moon toyline was supposedly launched in the UK yesterday. For the first two films, the TransFormers toyline took pride of place in the main display area at the front of the store. This time... it was Lego.

Dark of the Moon has a small block in one of the smaller shelf units at the front - you know, where they tend to put the special offers, clearance items and cheap crap - with the designated TransFormers shelf space up the back occupied by Iron Man action figures and some old Animated stuff (Shockwave and Wreck-Gar).

A closer look at the small block at the front of the shop revealed three Voyagers (Prime, Megatron, Ironhide) and a host of Deluxes (Skids, Starscream, Crankcase, Roadbuster... possibly the new Barricade and Jolt (not 100% certain of those)... Oh, and another Bumblebee), along with some Legends and Activators, which I didn't pay much attention to, but I do remember seeing the white repaint of Barricade.

Not a great deal of interest to me, but I did pick up Voyagers Megatron and Ironhide...

And here's a quick size comparison with the original Voyager Ironhide:

Quite significantly smaller, ain't it? In all honesty, it feels more like a large Deluxe than a Voyager. Disappointing... but transformation is far better. On the downside, arm articulation isn't half as good.

More to follow, obviously... but I should really catch up on older Movie stuff first...

A Taste of Things To Come

2011-05-14T11:22:00.001+01:00

'Nuff said.

(OK, I found him by chance in the Brent Cross branch of Toys'R'Us and, despite never really intending to pick up this particular Masterpiece, the fact that it's had an official UK release, and for a mere £60, was enough to change my mind about him... I'll be going through my other Masterpieces first - Starscream, Megatron, UK Skywarp - but Grimlock will appear sooner or later...)

Content Update #2

2011-05-09T15:49:00.000+01:00

Almost all of the older, crappy, 'grey-towel' photos have now been replaced:

The comparison photos, between G1 'HeadMaster Junior' Nightbeat and the Collectors' Club update will have to wait... G1 Nightbeat is still in storage. Till he's out again, the crappy old photos will remain...

Opinion: Current and Upcoming Toylines: PCC/Dark of the Moon

2011-04-27T00:39:00.001+01:00

It occurs to me to jot down a few thoughts on some of the newer toylines/sublines in the TransFormers family for anyone out there who has the slightest interest in my thoughts on such matters... There probably won't be a great deal of these posts, and it's really only occurred to me this evening, while watching reviews of some of the DotM toys...

Power Core Combiners:
As a fan of TransFormers from the dim and distant days of Generation 1, I have to say I'm not impressed by PCC as a toyline, and I hope it doesn't carry on too much longer. Aside from the incredible mold reuse (at least two or three repaints of any one torso, with the possible exception of the Dinobots), the whole concept seems like a step backwards.

In 1985, Japan and the USA got the Constructicons - a team of six small TransFormers which could combine to form the super robot Devastator. It was a bit of a brick, but looked cool and imposing, even though it wasn't particularly large. The following year, Devastator was joined by five teams of five true TransFormers which each combined into one super robot: Superion (Aerialbots) and Defensor (Protectobots) for the Autobots, Menasor (Stunticons), Bruticus (Combaticons) and Predaking (Predacons) for the Decepticons.

None of the individual toys were particularly impressive, and the smaller models that formed the limbs in the teams from '86 were extremely basic and tended to have virtually no articulation, though they did have hand-held and vehicle-mounted weapons.

Jump forward in time to Energon, and all the Autobots could form upper- or lower-bodies for super robots in each size class, and there were new teams of Aerialbots, Constructicons and Combaticons with improved articulation both for the individual models and the completed gestalt. The only problem with these new teams was that their five members used only three unique molds, with repaints differentiating the characters. Even so, they were a step forward from G1.

And now, for 2010/2011, we have the Power Core Combiners. On the plus side, the gestalt forms have articulation which is as good as, if not better than Energon. On the downside, the main body is about the size of a large Scout or a small Deluxe, and the limbs are non-transforming 'drones' that automatically form one specific limb once plugged onto the torso.

Granted, it's possible to switch the arms round, and it's possible to switch the legs round. It's also possible to use a limb drone from one team on a different team's torso (and, in fact, this is where most of the repaints come in!)... but and arm-drone will always be an arm, and a leg-drone will always be a leg. Limited interchangability on a tiny, non-transforming drone is, quite frankly, boring and cheap.

And then there's the molds themselves. While the vehicles are all pretty good and reasonably detailed, and the individual robot modes of the torso-bots tend to be decent enough, the gestalts all seem to look spindly and weak, and the head sculpts are invariably bland or downright ugly.

Even the addition of 'Mini-Cons' in the form of partially translucent, triple-changing weapons does little to improve the line, especially since the Mini-Cons are also subject to excessive repainting within the line, and frequently don't seem appropriate to the larger robot they're partnered with.

Now, obviously, one has to remember that these are intended as kids' toys and not as things for Collectors... so it should come as no surprise to readers of this blog, and should be of no disappointment to Hasbro that PCC is highly unlikely to ever feature on this blog. I think the concept is misjudged and the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Dark of the Moon:
It's a sad fact that sequels tend to reuse the same characters... Otherwise, how does one follow the developing story? When it comes to movies based around humans, and the resulting toylines, you can expect multiple costumes relating to specific movies or specific scenes within the movies. Franchises like Star Wars are built on this... and both kids in the target demographic and the Collectors will tend to buy all versions of each character for their own reasons. Toylines based around comic books have a similar advantage, and each iteration of a particular superhero will have a new and exciting gimmick (or just better articulation!). Even looking at the movie based on another of Hasbro's toylines, GI Joe, you have the basic uniforms of the characters, the Accelerator Suits, and all the vehicles used by the Joes and Cobra... and that's just from the first movie.

When it comes to a movie like TransFormers, though, where the vehicles are the characters (or vice versa), what reason does one have for upgrading when the new movie's toys come out?

Well between the first one in 2007 and the 2009 sequel, the answer was "massive upgrades to the quality and complexity of the toys". Movie 1's Leader Class Optimus Prime was awesome for the time... I couldn't see how they could possibly make anything better back in 2007. But the mold was blocky and, let's face it, inaccurate to the CGI model... so when the toyline for Revenge of the Fallen came along, getting the new - utterly awesome and still unsurpassed - Leader Class Optimus Prime was a no-brainer. Likewise, Megatron. By and large, the Voyager Class toys remained the same - Ratchet and Ironhide remained indentical bar some cosmetic changes or weapon upgrades, though Starscream did get a massive upgrade in the form of a complete remold, so the only new toys I picked up were the new molds, and most of them were Deluxes, based on the newly introduced characters. I saw no point buying the 'new' characters that were either slight retools (new heads) or simple repaints of Movie 1 characters.

And then there's the small matter of Bumblebee... Sure, he's the 'main' character, despite having no real dialogue, and he's the 'kid appeal' character... but, really Hasbro... how many Bumblebee repaints, retools or remolds do we need, and must he appear several times in every size class?

Now, when I look at the upcoming toys for Dark of the Moon, I don't see a whole lot for me to buy, and I'm sure I can't be alone. Cyberverse? Easy pass. The new Voyager Class Optimus Prime? Ditto. Deluxe Starscream? Come on, Hasbro, are you even trying? The Ark playset? Not even if I was 10 years old again. Even the remolded Jolt is of limited interest because he barely appeared in RotF and, so far, I have no reason to suspect he's any more integral to the plot of DotM to warrant another purchase, particularly since I don't even like the look of the remold.

And just don't get me started on the new Leader Class Bumblebee with his massive Mech-Tech backpack...

Leader Class Sentinel Prime is of interest... and the new Voyager Megatron may yet replace my Leader Class RotF Megatron simply for reasons of shelf space. The new Voyager Ironhide looks good, but the Leader Class one looks better, would be more or less in scale with the Human Alliance range, and I'm not sure I want both. The Deluxe 'Wreckers' looked reasonable, but now I see one of them is getting the Human Alliance treatment, so I'm tempted to wait and see if the other two get the same. Shockwave is a no-brainer, too... but, by and large, most of the toyline either looks like crap (and not even because of the oversized Mech-Tech weapons) or just isn't enough of an upgrade to the RotF iteration to warrant buying again. Look at the new convertible Sideswipe - if anything, that's a step backward from the first RotF version if only because it's completely unpainted, and yet still supposed to represent a silver car. Sidearm Sideswipe is about the best version of that character, and I almost passed on him because I'd already got the first version.

The real shame is that, having reported a massive drop in profits in the last quarter, Hasbro seems doomed to continue that trend because they're releasing a range of shrunk-down, underpainted, unimaginitive toys for what could be one of the summer's most profitable movies.

Robots in Disguise Ultra Magnus

2011-04-26T23:17:00.002+01:00

It's a very sad fact that, outside of Robots in Disguise, every version of Ultra Magnus has been nothing more than Optimus Prime painted white. OK, fine, G1 set the precedent on that one, but at least it had the super robot armour as standard... most other versions have been literally just a white version of Prime. There was one completely different iteration of Ultra Magnus in the extended Armada line, but he was just a repaint of Overload and, like Overload, attached to Armada's Supermode Prime, rather than really being a proper robot in his own right.

That's one of the reasons I like the RiD version so much: it's a completely different mold from RiD Prime, it's a car-carrier... and the full robot mode is a combination of the cab and the trailer - a far better homage to G1 than any other (official) Ultra Magnus so far...

Vehicle Mode:
So, yes... the only other car-carrier Ultra Magnus in the history of TransFormers... and, in many ways, a huge improvement on the Generation 1 version. It actually fit several of the larger-scale Autobot cars all at once - not only does the rear of the trailer fold down to become a ramp, but the top level can be unpegged and half of it tilted down to form a ramp leading all the way to the front, right above the cab. Certainly, there's not as much space on the lower level as there is on top but, with only three larger-scale Autobot cars (Prowl, Sideburn and X-Brawn, the so-called 'Car Brothers'), that's really not a problem.

What is a problem, potentially, for this kind of vehicle, is that it's not articulated. The truck section can separate and, unlike Prime, has more than enough wheels to function independently, but it's an enormously bulky truck, and the upper deck of the trailer is attached to it and folded over. Round the back of the truck are a pair of jet engines, which must surely be useless if the trailer is in use... In many ways, this alternate mode features a lot of confusing, conflicting details...

Also unlike Prime, Ultra Magnus's weapon doesn't stow within the vehicle mode, but it can be attached. It mounts either toward the front or the back of the upper deck of the trailer (facing either forward or back), and both guns and the missile launchers are fully accessible... but obviously without any sound effects.

There is a light on Ultra Magnus but all it really does is light up in synch with the button-activated contextual sound effects. By default - and certainly in this mode, all he does is say "Ultra Magnus, transform!", but things get a bit more interesting in robot mode.

Robot Mode:
Even more unlike Optimus Prime, the truck section does not transform into a complete robot in its own right - it's just the upper body, down to mid-thigh. The trailer splits in half and the lower thighs fold out to attach, at which point Ultra Magnus becomes one of the lankiest TransFormers ever.

Sadly, this is where the problems start. Since all the electronics are housed in the part that becomes the backpack, he's astonishingly back-heavy and, despite what should, technically, be a fairly large footprint, it's not particularly stable and very prone to falling over backward.

These long legs of this are also not very poseable, not just because of the completely fixed feet, but simply through lack of joints. The hips are about average, but the mid thigh joint isn't really intended to be mobile (and wouldn't be much help if it was) so the knee joint, while offering a decent range, isn't particularly useful.

The upper body has better joints - ball-jointed shoulders, elbows, wrists and even neck - but none of the are particularly solid, and the arms have a habit of sagging while posed.

The head sculpt is interesting - it's somehow recognisable as Ultra Magnus despite not having the usual extent of antennae, and has a small Autobot logo molded into the central crest. In fact, molded detail is one of the highlights of this mold - there's not a single surface without some form of detailing, and most of it is very intricate.

What makes Ultra Magnus particularly interesing is the selection of context-based sounds. His weapon, supposedly named 'Blue Bolts', has square pegs at one end and round pegs on the other. These marry up with the sockets - located, somewhat bizarrely, in his armpits - which appear either side of a button. When the weapon is plugged into the relevant socket, the button on his backpack activates a sound effect appropriate to that weapon. One way round it's a sort of Gatling gun, the other way round it's a cannon with a single, very large barrel. 'Blue Bolts' has a third mode, where it's attached on both sides. When the button is pressed, Ultra Magnus says "Fire" before unleashing a barrage.

Much like RiD Optimus Prime, Ultra Magnus is a bit of a parts-former... only this model requires all its parts to complete its single robot mode, rather than having a basic robot mode and a 'supermode'. It's basically simple enough, but the end result is a robot that's incredibly broad-shouldered and long-legged that, really, can only stand up straight... and only just manages that feat. The poses I've managed in the photos here were achieved more by luck than judgement, and the model's tendency to fall over backwards is almost impossible to avoid.

That said, the contextual sound effects and the multi-purpose weapon definitely increase play value and make RiD Ultra Magnus a very fun toy, despite the shortcomings in his stability.

...And, when you have both Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus, you can combine them to form Omega Prime!