Unexpected Challenges

Back in March, my girlfriend took the opportunity to go travelling around Europe. Over the last year or so, she'd had two complicated bereavements within the space of just two months, a toxic situation had developed at work at much the same time and, all the while, she was working on her Masters degree in Space Science and Technology. When she received her results (pass with distinction) she handed in her notice and started planning in earnest a trip she'd fully expected to have to put off till she retired.

This presented a useful opportunity for me to get some work done on our flat, since I'd only have to worry about my own (in)convenience. I've needed to get the ceilings redone ever since the roof got fixed about two years ago, so that was the main job I wanted to get done. Courtney and I had also discussed redecorating the bedroom, so I was even able to tag the redecoration onto the end of the ceilings refit, once I had her preference for paint colour.

But what has this to do with TransFormers, you ask? Why is this momentous enough to warrant a blog post?

Well, because I ended up transforming a bunch of my figures into vehicle mode for the sake of portability (also to pass the time while work was going on in another room), and completely empty an Ikea 'Detolf' cabinet so it could be moved without the contents falling over (or out).

And the figures in this cabinet were largely Masterpiece and 3P MP-analogues, with a couple of exclusives.

So, while work progressed in the lounge, I had the cabinet temporarily in the bedroom, with its contents spread out on the bed and, in every case, the instructions stashed away in the boxes which were, naturally, inaccessible... Some of the figures were notoriously breakable, or had complicated or fussy transformations, while others were simplicity itself... Here's a quick breakdown:

Armada Unicron: mostly very easy, on account of it being a proper large format toy. However, the way I'd arranged his shell pieces, while fine for his robot mode appearance, was the wrong way round for his planet mode. On top of that, it took a while to remember how the rings were supposed to work, and one half of his rings popped off twice: once at the point where it connects behind the shoulder, and once at that part's rotation joint. Also, I found that one of his knee ratchets has broken... so I'll have to take that apart to assess the damage once all the decorating is done.

Cybertron Primus: much the same as Unicron, only complicated by the transformation steps that require the Omega Lock. For once, the arm cannons didn't deploy themselves during the process, so that was a bonus.

Galaxy Force/TDP Soundblaster: Didn't feel like transforming this one as it's a bit too fussy, and I'm not convinced that his jet mode would be significantly less easily damaged than his robot mode... but I did transform his weapons and Hell Buzzsaw, for ease of storage.

MP03 Starscream/MP Skywarp: still my favourite Masterpiece mold, because the jet mode is essentially flawless. One of these days, I hope to be able to substitute my Hasbro MP Thundercracker, based on the MP11 mold, with the Takara MP07 version, and acquire the original Hasbro MP Starscream, in the G1 toy's colours. Simple transformation with just a couple of points that are difficult to line up properly. Managed to transform Starscream without any further stress on a couple of points where the plastic got stressed years ago, and Skywarp without issues of any kind.

MP Thundercracker: as mentioned above, this is the MP11 mold, with the arm-mounted guns on their little ball-jointed stalks but, otherwise, not hugely different from MP03. Comes together in jet mode slightly more easily, but doesn't look as good on the underside.

MP05 Megatron: this is the only official figure I was concerned about, as a couple of tabs broke off soon after I bought him, back in 2007. Working without instructions seemed unwise, but he turned out to be surprisingly intuitive and largely quite similar to the G1 toy, just with a few small differences and extra steps to allow for the improved articulation - overall, I remembered it quite easily. The main problems were where the die-cast framework parts had tarnished, causing them to stick to the surrounding plastic.

MP Soundwave: super-easy, barely an inconvenience. Same with his Cassetticons.

MP Optimus Prime v2: the rearrangement of the torso confused me for a while, but I got there in the end. Not too much difficulty, though the back end didn't want to tab together fully.

MP Grimlock: didn't bother transforming him as he was already in dino mode!

MP26 Road Rage: pretty simple, but the dinky missile launchers were a pest and I was surprised by how flimsy she feels.

FansToys Rouge: not half as bad as I remember, but it's certainly not an intuitive transformation, with several points where one part has to be forced past another, and others were parts have to be arranged just so to fit properly. The flaps on her thighs, which open to accommodate hinges inside her backpack, feels like a lazy solution, as does the opening helmet. Even so, I think this is still better than Takara Tomy's Masterpiece Arcee... though I'm tempted by the MPG repaint, 'Secret Agent Arcee', which is a homage to the cancelled G1 toy's prototype colourscheme.

Big FireBird Nicee: by contrast with the above, this Arcee-analogue was pretty easy to transform, the only hitches being ensuring everything was properly tabbed in.

DotM Leader class Sentinel Prime: still one of my favourite Leader class toys, from the era of more intricate and impressive toys that nevertheless had electronic features, and not too bad to transform. Getting the windscreen lined up, to allow the bumper to tab in, to allow the collar to peg on underneath, was the main issue... but the tabs along the sides of the vehicle were a bit of a pest as well.

TFCC/Timelines Nexus Prime: based on molds that originated in the Energon toyline, these were also super-easy... But the extensive use of translucent plastic led to the one breakage of this exercise - One of the gun/pegs on the front of Landquake's vehicle mode had snapped off in his combiner foot. Didn't look like impact damage from falling over or being hit by another figure, not least because the other peg was fine, and just as firmly plugged into the foot. The upside is that nothing else was broken... the downside is that this will leave Nexus Prime with a weaker ankle connection that's more prone to further breakage.

Given how long most of these figures have been on display in the Detolf cabinet, I'm more than a little surprised at how easy it was to transform all of them - particularly Masterpiece Megatron... but it goes to show that an intricate figure need not be difficult to transform if it's well enough engineered.

Retro G1 Brawn

After struggling through my write-up to Retro G1 Gears toward the end of last year, I intended to fast-track this one, to get it out of the way and - with any luck - prevent any ruminating. Thing being, Brawn was always one of my favourites, partly because of the early Marvel UK strip, The Enemy Within, in which he basically gets a blow to the head and goes nuts, then has to prove his loyalty in a battle to the death with Starscream, who's on Megatron's naughty list due to his scheming. The fact that his G1 toy was, let's face it, a little on the goofy side - lanky, with short arms featuring tool-like claws rather than hands, and little 'wings' on his shoulders - just added to his appeal.

The one glimmer of hope I've had for my continued collection of Hasbro's output was kicked off by the last two War for Cybertron chapters, Earthrise and Kingdom, which brought back some of the original, first year Mini Autobots in Deluxe class form. It hasn't all been great - Cliffjumper was a partsformer, and Huffer had the animation-style head - but the most recent bone Hasbro have thrown their GenX audience has been the Retro G1 line as an alternative (and presumably the eventual Retro G1 Huffer will use the toy-accurate sculpt which made its debut as the Go-Bot Road Ranger in a Generations Selects 2-pack).

Their failure to create a new toy-accurate head for Bumblebee meant I had no reason to acquire that one, but Gears got a decent update to the G1 toy's head sculpt, though the toy as a whole was somewhat disappointing (leading Courtney to name him "Gears Starmer"). I've been keeping my eye out for new Retro G1 releases since then, and the second pair came out in the late Autumn/early Winter of 2025, coupling Brawn with... Seaspray, a wholly new take on a figure from 1985, just as we're getting a new Deluxe class Windcharger, the last of the 1984 Mini Autobot set, as part of Studio Series '86.

Brawn is, for better or worse, a retooling of the Studio Series '86 toy which, despite being leagues better than the Titans Return toy, didn't interest me in the slightest due to it having another ugly, animation-style head sculpt. Once again, the question here is whether or not the new, toy-inspired head sculpt is enough of an improvement on this mold... so, let's find out.

Unique Toys R-09 Red Destroyer

The moment I learned that Unique Toys were planning to develop Stinger for their line of Masterpiece-analogues, my curiosity was piqued. After all, this was a nonentity who dissolved into a flying cloud of metal cubes rather than transforming. When the first grey prototype images appeared, I was instantly hooked. My experience with Unique Toys products thusfar has been uniformly positive: their engineering has always been clever without being overly complex and their QC has yet to disappoint. However, in terms of screen-accuracy, particularly on their head sculpts, they've never been 100% on the mark, which resulted in some of their more recent figures later being 'fixed' by cheaper knockoffs.

Their strategy for this figure was to cut down on paint applications to reduce the retail price as far as they could, in the hope that people would buy the original rather than wait for a KO, and they teased the release of a Camaro Bumblebee with much the same robot mode as additional motivation - the suggestion being that the reception of Red Destroyer will determine whether the yellow Camaro goes into production. Their paintwork has almost always been considered lacking by fans and, coupled with the eyewatering prices of some figures and inaccuracies in their sculpts, they've given the KO merchants ample room to make improvements in the past. Dialling things back even further seems like the worst decision to me. As it turned out, they revealed images of the Camaro remix within a month of Red Destroyer shipping.

But let's see how Red Destroyer stands as his own product, before anyone has the opportunity to reverse engineer it and produce a cheaper option.

2025 Retrospective

Well... What a year.

Toward the end of 2024, I was contacted by both of my regular/annual freelancing clients, with the expected jobs: updates to a website for one, updates to a printed booklet for the other. Both would normally gear up during January, but it's good to be forewarned, and get the question of payment out of the way in advance... At least, as far as possible, where one of them is concerned...

Retro G1 Gears

Given that Hasbro have been recycling G1 now for almost five times longer than G1 actually existed, back in the day, it became increasingly baffling to me that each new iteration - particularly from the Prime Wars trilogy onward - that the focus has been wholly on the G1 cartoon rather than the G1 toys. Sure, the argument rages on, that the cartoon is the main reason TransFormers exists as a brand, but that's a particularly American point of view, and has me questioning whether some of these people are actually TransFormers fans, or simply fans of a TV show they view through nostalgia goggles, and afflicted with a compulsion to buy branded merchandise.

However, about 20 years after the Classics reboot, which brought a fresh new look and contemporary engineering to the old-favourite characters, Hasbro seem finally to be acknowledging that some TransFormers fans actually want familiar-looking, contemporary remakes of their old G1 toys... and so we have the Retro G1 line.

Essentially, it's a mix of latecomers in the grey area of an ongoing line that is War for Cybertron, Legacy and Age of the Primes, and including toys which, for whatever reason, are popping up first in the Studio Series '86 line. Their plastic colours and head sculpts are more toy-accurate, but it's like something the TransFormers Collectors' Club would do: a repaint with a new head, packaged under its own brand... only this is specifically targeted at the 40- to 50-something nostalgia hounds rather than the Premium Collector bracket. The inaugural pair were - to no-one's surprise - a repack of the War for Cybertron: Earthrise Bumblebee (which, having been a Netflix exclusive to being with, has since been repainted about a billion times already) that kept the animation-style head, and Legacy Gears.

Much as I might have wanted a new G1-style Gears, it wasn't just the ugly, animation-style head that put me off buying the Legacy toy... So let's see if this cynically-marketed re-release is enough to make me change my mind about an entire mold.

Age of the Primes Onyx Prime

Thusfar, Age of the Primes looks like another toyline that I'll skip almost entirely, with exceptions being those that are either holdovers from Legacy (more likely their 'Retro G1' remixes) or figures like this one, which fits about as well into TransFormers as did the live action movie Dinobots or TLK Megatron.

I have to confess that my knowledge of the Primes is pretty much non-existent, both in terms of who they are and how/why they entered the lore... But, if I had to guess, it was probably Furman (and I'd be right). The idea of thirteen Primes representing aspects of Cybertronian physiology or society isn't inherently bad, per se, just... superfluous... And their introduction into TransFormers media really highlights how astonishingly easy it is for a moderately proficient writer to define authority figures and get a whole community of people to accept them as gods in a religion.

Nevertheless, we're currently at a point in the Age of the Primes line where there's only a couple more of The Thirteen to go - Quintus and Amalgamous, both of whom sound interesting in theory, but look terrible as toys - and I'm highly unlikely to add them to my collection... Let's see if Onyx Prime can help us ascertain why that is...