2015 Retrospective

While I've already done a Seventh Anniversary post, I figured I should do something vaguely significant to close off 2015 - just about every other year, I've posted very little of any significance ('haitus warnings' on a couple of occasions, and skipped December and/or January altogether many other years) so, while this won't be an 'x 'Bots for x Years' sort of thing, I'll pick out a few highlights for the year and touch on a few of my hopes for 2016.

Just a quick note...

...To the effect that I may or may not end up taking new photographs for posts on this blog - both the existing, live posts and those still at draft stage - because one of my Christmas presents this year was a nice, large light tent (thanks to my awesome girlfriend, Courtney). I'm still getting the hang of it - as the still-variable photos in the Trypticon post will attest - but I'm hoping that I'll be able to start taking better quality, more true-colour images of my TransFormers toys.

For the time being, I think I shall press ahead with the existing photos in all the posts currently in draft form, and re-take photos gradually as I continue this blog. New purchases, of course, will immediately reap the benefits of my new, slightly more professional setup.

I don't expect my photos to rival those on the likes of Seibertron.com or Black Plastic Life anytime soon, but at least we'll eventually be able to completely do away with my cabinets and coffee table or the kitchen wall and worktop as the slightly incongruous and camera-confusing background to the toys.

Here's to a New Year and improved blog photography!

(Time to get a move-on with my new, non-TF toy blog, too...)

Combiner Wars Hot Spot

The leader of the Protectobots is another of the G1 combiner torso bots I wasn't able to acquire back when I started collecting TransFormers. I believe my best friend had the full set as I distinctly remember seeing Defensor up close... but that didn't really help me, because I had three out of five in the team and, for whatever reason, wasn't able to get my hands on the remaining two.

After Hasbro released the Combiner Wars Aerialbots in two separate waves, one of which never made it to these shores, they have thankfully adopted more sensible tack with Wave 3, and made it all Protectobots. Even then, while I managed to buy all the limbs in regular toy shops (a couple in Smyths at Friern Barnet, the rest at either the Brent Cross Toys'R'Us or the Uxbridge branch of Smyths), I still found myself having to order Hot Spot online. Whether impatience got the better of me, or he just didn't turn up on the shelves of my usual toyshops (hell, I even went looking in Lincoln!) for an inordinately long time, I'm still not sure.

The important thing is that I got him, right?

Generations Platinum Edition Trypticon

Back in the 80s, the idea of a giant alien robot that transformed into a city seemed quite cool, even moreso after the bit in the 1986 animated movie where Ultra Magnus orders Springer and Arcee to "transform Autobot city" (even though that didn't actually involve Omega Supreme, Metroplex or Fortress Maximus, all of whom had appeared in the Marvel comics by that point) because that was a pretty exciting sequence early on in the story, and showcased some of the most impressive, intricate animation in the entire movie, surpassed only by Unicron's transformation toward the end of the movie.

Sadly, the UK tended not to get the larger, more complicated TransFormers toys in those days so, while Metroplex got released on this sceptred isle (and made his way into my collection), we didn't get Trypticon (similarly, we later got Scorponok but not Fortress Maximus).

At least, we didn't get Trypticon back in 1986. For whatever reason, Hasbro have seen fit to grant him a re-release as part of their 2015 'Platinum Edition' line... I thought I'd given up on buying Generation 1 toys after completing my G1 Seacons by finding a Snaptrap in reasonable condition on eBay... But when I found Trypticon on Amazon at a vastly reduced price, I ended up taking the opportunity to grab one of my few remaining 'Holy Grail' G1 toys.

But how does a nearly 30-year-old model stand up against today's TransFormers toylines, and does it really have a place on the shelves of a 40-something collector?

Rumour Has It...

It has been noted on fan sites that the TransFormers Collectors' Club has changed the wording on their membership purchase option to state that "All memberships will terminate with the December 2016 issue", causing much debate as to the meaning of that phrase.

To me, that (coupled with the almost vague comments offered by a certain Fun Publications staffer on his Facebook page) suggests that the Club - at least, as operated by Fun Publications - will no longer exist in 2017, despite the news that details of TFSS5 will be coming soon. One thing I've just noticed which may be considered 'further evidence' is that a certain large-size reissue I bought recently features none of the TFCC advertising that Hasbro have been including on their packaging for years. It's not just that it's covered over by stickers on the box - I've looked at photos and video reviews online, and can't see any mention of the Club on the packaging.

So... The end of an era..?

I can't be bothered to offer any conjecture on what will happen next - whether Hasbro will license another third party to operate a fan club, whether they'll do it in-house, or whether they've decided there's no place for a fan club of this kind in the internet age - but I will spend a bit of time describing my experience of the Club, for better or worse.

Combiner Wars Groove (Legends class)

Hasbro caught a lot of flak for this one. Not only were fans upset that Groove - officially one of the worst G1 toys, as his robot mode was basically a motorcycle stood up on its back end - had been relegated to a Legends class supplemental role but, rather than forming a weapon for Defensor, he - like Blackjack and CW Rodimus - serves no truly useful purpose pegged into Defensor's chest.

Still, it's Groove, right... and since he's been released, you might as well complete the team...

...Right?

Combiner Wars Rook

OK, time to address the elephant in the room: While I'm sure we all wanted a Deluxe class Groove for the Protectobots (Takara Tomy certainly did - they created one as a new mold for their Unite Warriors boxed set), there is no way a motorcycle can adequately scale with a police car and an ambulance, let alone a helicopter, and transform into a limb of the same size as his team-mates. Whether or not that was Hasbro's reasoning, they've changed the character line-up one way or another for all of the gestalt teams so far, so it was no real surprise to find Groove relegated to Legends class as a supplemental part of the team - as Powerglide was to the Aerialbots and Blackjack to the Stunticons.

Of course, this left a space to be filled as one of Defensor's limbs... and the solution presented by Hasbro is another whole new character invented for Combiner Wars... Rook!

Combiner Wars Streetwise

Back in the days when Generation 1 toys were available in the shops, Streetwise was the only one of the Protectobot limbs that I was unable to acquire. Looking at that toy now, it's a complete mess - most of the gestalt limbs showed terrible signs of the compromise between vehicle, robot and limb modes, but the way Streetwise was built left him perpetually leaning forward, with his chest and shoulder line about level with his 'toes' and his back stepping gradually backwards as it dropped toward his legs due to the weird transformation jointing. He also had a weird collapsing-bonnet-belly-flap (seemingly quite fragile, given how many on the secondary market are without it) making the torso look very awkward, though it's not entirely clear whether it's meant to be collapsed for robot mode, or just when Streetwise is functioning as Defensor's leg.

Let's hope there's none of that with this new Combiner Wars version...

Combiner Wars First Aid

It always puzzled me, back in Generation 1, that there was technically only one Autobot medic - Ratchet - despite the ever-increasing character roster of the toyline and TV show. When a new medic eventually joined the team, he was one of the Protectobots, and transformed into a smaller, less detailed version of much the same so-called ambulance as Ratchet. He also got lumbered with the most boring and obvious name in the history of the brand.

With Defensor being the second Autobot gestalt in the Combiner Wars series, Hasbro granted First Aid his official return as one of the limbs of the Protectobot behemoth, but how does this update shape up?

Combiner Wars Blades

Pretty much the moment images of the Slingshot-substitute Alpha Bravo appeared online, everyone knew he was Hasbro's way of delivering Blades and, most likely, Vortex by reusing parts from an existing mold. Considering both Hasbro and Takara later released Slingshot as a repaint of Firefly, one has to wonder why they bothered... but I guess it gave them a non-critical character on whom to test the Combiner Wars Helicopter mold.

So, let's kick off the Protectobots with the first major mold re-usage in the Combiner Wars series...

The Other Half

I'll put my cards on the table straight away and admit that this post was inspired by a couple of articles on the TFSource blog (specifically this one and this one) as much as it was that today is the third anniversary of the start of my relationship with my girlfriend, Courtney. Furthermore, it's a whole bunch of questions that I hadn't really considered before (though an ex- once told me quite pointedly that I'd "never find someone else who'd put up with" my collection) and reading the responses in the TFSource blog post got me wondering how Courtney feels about it all, since she has lived with me now for about a year and a half.

It is worth noting that both of us are Sci-Fi geeks, though Courtney has read less Speculative/Science Fiction than me (possibly because she's been into actual science for many years, and so reads more of that). Despite a not inconsiderable age difference, we like quite a lot of the same stuff (Film Noir, The X-Files, Firefly and Doctor Who, just for starters), and at least one person in both our families has a habit of collecting/hoarding, so we were both exposed to that mentality from quite a young age. Where I collect transforming robot toys (and other things), she collects stationery and books... and, lets face it, there are WAGs out there who may be frustrated by their partner's obsession while neglecting to consider their own.

I took questions from both posts, since they are quite different, reorganised them into a more logical sequence (because I couldn't help myself), and asked her to jot down a few thoughts. Her first comment, interestingly enough, was on the tone of the questions - she felt it was pitched quite negatively, with all its questions of "should" but, having now read both of the TFSource posts, she has said that they "weren't as negative as I'd expected them to be."

So... here's the Q&A, with a few of my own thoughts tagged on, because it's all about me...

TransFormers Legends (Takara Tomy 30th Anniversary) LG15 Nightbird Shadow

(Femme-Bot Friday #33)

Since the G1 TV show was aired so patchily on terrible Saturday morning television in the UK, there are quite a number of episodes that I didn't get to see (until they started appearing online). Then again, given the quality of most of the original TV series, it was hardly a sad loss. One rather random episode featured the Autobots failing to protect a human-built Femme-bot ninja from the Decepticons, leading to all kinds of silly hijinks and the sort of cringeworthy dialogue for which the show was notorious.

That Femme-bot was Nightbird and, considering that she didn't actually transform or utter a single line of dialogue, it might seem strange for her to be honoured in Takara Tomy's 30th Anniversary Legends series, but there's always been some level of fan demand for a Nightbird figure... and now, finally, there's an official one.

TransFormers Animated Jazz

TransFormers Animated was a curious event in the history of the toyline. Taking its style from the exaggerated proportions of youth-oriented American cartoons of the time, it created designs that shouldn't have worked as toys, and yet the designers managed to pull off quite a few miracles. It also took its character cues - largely - from Generation 1, albeit re-imagining the core team to quite a degree. When it finally started introducing secondary characters, such as the Elite Guard lead by Ultra Magnus, a few more G1 favourites came along for the ride and, unlike Prowl, they weren't that different in appearance from their original selves...

DotM Mechtech Shockwave

When the movie series introduced characters with familiar names, it was a fair bet that the character would either look or behave nothing like the traditional bearer of that name, which accounts for a lot of the fan anger directed toward the franchise. However, when a character as iconic as Shockwave appears, surely he'd have to be the logic-fixated cyclopic scientist we all so fondly remember... Right?

TransFormers Legends (Takara Tomy 30th Anniversary) LG14 Ultra Magnus

Back in Generation 1, Ultra Magnus was a white repaint of Optimus Prime with a red and blue car carrier trailer into which the cab robot could be plugged (so, originating as Diaclone's Powered Convoy, he was basically a piloted mech piloting a larger mech suit). That seems, for many years, to have given both Hasbro and, to a slightly lesser extent, Takara Tomy a license to repaint any and all Optimus Prime figures white and call them 'Ultra Magnus'. Until recently, the only variations to this rule have been in the original Robots in Disguise/Car Robots line, TF Animated and TF Prime (although the earlier, unique toy was quickly replaced with a remold/repaint of Optimus Prime). The only way one could obtain a true G1 homage Ultra Magnus was to buy FansProjects' City Commander trailer set.

Then came KFC Toys' Masterpiece-scaled Citizen Stack and, soon after, Takara Tomy's offical Masterpiece model, which proved that, not only could Takara Tomy create a unique Ultra Magnus mold, but they could give him a cab that looked almost exactly like MP Optimus Prime v2, yet which transformed entirely differently, along with its car carrier trailer, to create a figure that was reasonably accurate to the TV series.

Then Hasbro announced Combiner Wars Ultra Magus - a trimmed down, IDW-inspired mainstream toy based on approximately the same principles, but with a distinctly underwhelming paint job lifted from the comics.

Leave it to Takara Tomy to repurpose the mold into its 30th Anniversary Legends toyline, with a more G1 toy-accurate colourscheme... But it is really that much better..?

I've found a new use for Smallest Transforming TransFormers...

I just wish I had a better background for this kind of thing...

(Edit: Now with colour version of the image!)

Given that the gestalts in Combiner Wars appear to be depicted as far larger than the scale of their toys would suggest, it seems that Takara's 2003 blind-packed novelties are the perfect size to be posed with them.

Though, obviously, that ain't STT Convoy poking out from behind Superion's right foot - it's actually Hybrid Style G1 Convoy, who's a better scale to all the Autobots in vehicle mode.

San Diego Comic Con 2015 Combiner Hunters boxed set

(Femme-Bot Friday #32)

One of these days, I hope to get myself to either the San Diego Comic Con or the New York Comic Con (or both), but I fully expect that the TransFormers exclusives available at whichever event I manage to attend will not be my cup of tea. They tend to be rather 'hit-and-miss' (moreso than BotCon, even) with only a few - since I've been aware of the phenomenon - really catching my attention.

With Combiner Wars in full swing, though, the SDCC exclusives were something special: a premium Devastator (with a positively obnoxious amount of purple chrome) and the all femme-bot team of Combiner Hunters - Windblade, Chromia and Arcee all in one box, with new oversized weapons! I considered spreading this out over three Femme-Bot Fridays but, since they come as a set, I may as well cover them as a set...

A Second Not An Unboxing Post

A package arrived for me at work while I was away from the office sorting out personal matters. A package from Japan...

I can't deal with that now, but I figured I should at least give you another taste of things to come...

Yep, I can be a G1 Snob sometimes... but, seriously, Hasbro's version looked terrible
even if it is more IDW accurate.

Revenge of the Fallen Sideways

One of the most objectively interesting things about the TransFormers movie franchise - for me, that is - is the way it has introduced lots of new characters without ever giving them any characterisation. One fine example of this is Sideways, who appeared in Revenge of the Fallen for less than a minute, largely to introduce a bunch of new Autobots by having them chase him down and murder him horrifically. He's parked near Demolishor for reasons never explored, flees the scene when discovered, and spends his few remaining seconds of screen time trying to escape, never uttering a single line of dialogue. We never learn anything about him, least of all why a Decepticon who never actually tries to defend himself short of running away, actually deserves to be literally cleaved it two by Sideswipe (another newly introduced character who transforms into a silver car, just to make things easy to follow).

And yet Hasbro made a toy of him, meaning some poor bugger had to develop some sort of character for him in the associated comics and the novelisation because, let's face it, who'd actually buy a toy for a character who gets offed in the first few minutes of a story and is only seen in robot mode for a few seconds..?

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2008 (Timelines) Shattered Glass Jazz

There have been times when the Collectors' Club have produced a figure of a character as yet unavailable in Hasbro's mass-produced output. They generally come in for some flak whenever they do, normally because no-one can understand why a particular figure hadn't been produced by Hasbro (such as Classics Thundercracker, who remained exclusive to 2007's BotCon set, Games of Deception, until 2008, when he appeared in Takara Tomy's Henkei! Henkei! line, and then 2011, when he finally appeared in the Generations line). The only times they tend to get away with it is when the character is in some way not an interpretation of the hallowed G1 original, such as their take on Jazz for 2008's Botcon set, Shattered Glass...

Not An Unboxing Post

Nor a Femme-Bot Friday post, simply a post on a Friday that just happens to be about Femme-Bots.

'Nuff Said

Preordered pretty much the day they were announced, another trio of Takara Tomy-flavour Femme-Bots, in the form of Generations/Legends Arcee repurposed as Nightbird, Generations/Legends Windblade repurposed as Slipstream (featuring a cool Legends/TF Animated fusion vibe) and TF Animated Blackarachnia repurposed as... Beast Wars Blackarachnia.

I'll try not to keep you all waiting too long for these fine ladies...
(Links added retrospectively... at long last...)

Music Label Soundwave (Spark Blue Version)

Even at the time, Music Label seemed something of a potentially dangerous folly for Takara Tomy. The sorts of consumer electronics involved still tended to be quite expensive, and including them in transforming robot toys, while pretty cool in theory, was perhaps venturing too far into a niche market. Sure enough, over its two year lifetime, Music Label produced only three unique molds, but two were released in several colourschemes.

Like Convoy, Soundwave - or, to give him his full, tautological mouthful of a title 'TransFormers Music Label Soundwave Playing Audio Player' - was originally released in white, back when Apple's attitude toward the colour of their proprietary media player was "you can have any colour you want, as long as it's white". It didn't take long, however, for a G1 homage to turn up...

TransFormers: Prime Wheeljack

Introduced in Generation 1, Wheeljack, in one form or another, has been popping up in various continuities of TransFormers since the Unicron Trilogy but, aside from the familiar head, it's never been quite the same character that G1 gave us. In fact, on several occasions, he's not even had the right name, let alone the right character. In the Unicron Trilogy, 'Wheeljack' looked suspiciously like Sideswipe, and had sided with the Decepticons. The character that looked like Wheeljack was named 'Downshift' and started out as a blatant homage to the G1 character in both paintjob and overall styling, later becoming a 1970s-style green and black muscle car whose head and feet were the only features that closely resembled the G1 character. None of them were the 'clumsy professor' of Generation 1, though.

Then along came TransFormers Prime, with a character who looked very much like the character of old in robot mode, and with vehicle mode which was a clear homage to original... But is it the Wheeljack we actually wanted?

On a random note...

I don't know who's writing the bios for the TransFormers Collectors' Club's Subscription Service figures, but I've just seen the bio cards for this year's FSS Krok and Nightracer... and they're not half bad. They deal less with the character's backstory and more with the character's personality and abilities, just like the old G1 toy bios.

This led me to look back at the previous ones, and they seem to have been gradually improving from the nonsense of Carzap to the latest couple which feature a much shorter piece of backstory followed by halfway decent information.

Let's hope this is the beginning of a new trend...

Perfect Effect Perfect Combiner PC-05 Combiner Upgrade Set G1 White Version

I honestly think Hasbro/Takara Tomy had the right idea in turning the Combiner Wars hands and feet into secondary weapons for the Deluxe class components of each team. After all, the G1 characters all had their secondary weapons, most of which had to be simply removed and set aside for gestalt mode, making them a bit of a waste of space.

By combining these secondary weapons with the hand and foot requirements of each gestalt, the became more efficient in design, and the potential was there for something very good.

Unfortunately the execution left a lot to be desired. The hands all had massive, protruding knuckledusters - theoretically quite cool and useful, but ugly and unwieldy in plastic form - while the feet ended up being far too small and, with no real ankle joint, they rarely presented a stable footprint. Together with frequently loose hip joints, they conspired to make the completed gestalt wobbly on his feet, and the poseable thumb/heel had no discernible benefit.

This is normally where the Third Parties step in, and so I was very pleased when Perfect Effect announced their 'Perfect Combiner' upgrade sets, which take the idea to a whole new level of brilliance.

Combiner Wars Superion

This being the toyline called 'Combiner Wars', of course there's more to it than just groups of individual Deluxes with a Voyager class team leader. These things do actually combine to form gestalt robots and, unlike Generation 1's diminutive combiners, the size class of the components involved means that the combined mode is pretty colossal by the standards of contemporary TransFormers toys - easily exceeding what now passes for Leader class.

But we all know these gestalts are big... are they actually any good?

TransFormers Animated Ratchet

The character of Ratchet, having been all but ignored since Generation 1, went through a series of rather massive changes (not to say transformations) when he turned up again in the live action movie series and in TransFormers Animated. While one seemed to be attempting a take on the 'party bot' persona hinted at in the G1 toy's bio, the other went completely the other way, turning him into a grizzled, curmudgeonly war veteran medic for an inexperienced team of Autobots whose primary function was maintenance.

The result was surprisingly effective, given TFA's heavily stylised look, and Ratchet was one of the best developed characters, gradually learning to soften his approach, as we learnt about the events - and the failures on his part - that shaped him.

Mastermind Creations Reformatted: R-08D Azalea (Stealth Assassin)

(Femme-Bot Friday #31)

You might think that, with three other iterations of this mold already in my possession, I wouldn't think it worth paying over the odds for a(nother) limited edition, event exclusive repaint of the Azalea mold... But then, dearest reader, you would reckon without the dangerous allure of the dark/evil repaint of a Fembot, not to mention my OCDs.

You'd also reckon without the amazing good fortune I had on eBay with this one...

Combiner Wars Alpha Bravo

The wild-card in the set, Alpha Bravo is a whole new Aerialbot, replacing - temporarily, at least - Slingshot from the old Generation 1 character roster. Being a helicopter, he was also quite a blatant hint that the Protectobot Blades was on his way and, knowing Hasbro, set to be reused - likely with minimal, if any alteration - as the Combaticon Vortex (a move confirmed at this year's BotCon, when testshots of the Combaticons were first revealed).

Naturally there was a massive fan outcry when Alpha Bravo was revealed - not least over his nondescript name - which may have led to the repurposing of Firefly as 'Quickslinger'... but was it at all necessary, or is this a decent replacement for the loud-mouthed Aerialbot?

G.I.Joe/TransFormers Collectors' Club 2015 Old Snake with Advanced Stealth B.A.T. duo

While the TransFormers Collectors' Club has been run by the same company as the G.I.Joe Collectors' Club for about ten years now (wow, that makes me feel old!), and despite the fact that TransFormers and G.I.Joe have crossed paths in the associated fiction several times, the two Clubs have only relatively recently started crossing over their exclusives. It started a few years ago, with the likes of Hound, Starscream and Jetfire being turned into G.I.Joe vehicles but, this year, the TransFormers Collectors' Club released a pair of crossover exclusives: Afterbreaker (formerly Technobot Afterburner) with Marissa Faireborn and Old Snake with Advanced Stealth B.A.T. Duo.

Since the former is a non-transforming toy - just an underachieving repaint of a GI Joe movie vehicle featuring a spring-loaded gimmick that either fails to work at all, or operates on a hair trigger - with a fairly nondescript G.I.Joe figure, that was an easy pass for me: one thing I may never understand is TransFormers toys that don't transform.

The latter is a different story...

My Take on the New York Comic Con 2015 Reveals

You will no doubt have seen by now the many images of Hasbro's upcoming output, as revealed at the New York Comic Con this year. Obviously, I wasn't there, so everything I say here is based on those photos on the editorial accompanying them.

Combiner Wars Firefly

With a team made up of four Deluxe aircraft and one Voyager, I wonder if Hasbro were tempted to pull the same trick as they did with Energon/Superlink and use only two unique Deluxe models with the colourschemes creating the characters. Thankfully, the designers of Combiner Wars have been clever with their parts counts... and probably had slightly higher budgets, and so the Aerialbots have four mostly unique models with only a few shared parts between two of them.

Firefly - formerly Fireflight - is one of the entirely unique molds... but is that necessarily a good thing?

Combiner Wars Air Raid

When Hasbro declined to release the second wave of Combiner Wars toys across Europe, citing a lack of interest from vendors, that left collectors with an oh-so-nearly complete Superion and/or only the first component of Menasor, potentially leaving many fans unable to complete their contemporary sets of Generation 1's biggest rivals, the airborne Autobot team and the Decepticon road warriors.

This, obviously, is where the online retailers prove very useful... though the final component of Superion, Air Raid, sold out pretty quickly almost everywhere (mine is actually the US-style package, meaning I got a comic rather than a collectors' card, but pretty much everything else is standard) so I consider myself quite lucky.

But, of course, it's still a Hasbro product, so was it really worth the effort of tracking it down?

Chicago Holiday Haul

We got back from our holiday to Chicago first thing yesterday morning and, after a long (albeit interrupted at about 1am) night's sleep, I'm already feeling a lot better than I did after getting back from last year's holiday to LA. I'm actually pretty glad that we passed on BotCon this year as, aside from the amenities of the venue, we wouldn't have been able to see or do much from the Pheasant Run Resort, whereas staying in town (an apartment at DeWitt Place) gave us great access to the entire city via Chicago's fine public transport system of trains and buses (much like London's only far cheaper (fares of $2 or $2.50 using a Ventra card - which is like our Oyster - versus, for example, £4.70 ($7+) each way for my journey to/from work using an Oyster, or £5.80 cash (almost $9) each way for the same journey!), cleaner and only slightly less frequent).

Courtney and I got up to quite a bit in our short visit, and while we came back with quite a few souvenirs and gifts, I didn't actually buy any TransFormers as neither of us felt like wasting too much time on shopping (except in museum gift shops, for example).

So... This is a bit of a silly, pointless post...

Other than the PSA about comparative public transport in Chicago and London.

Seventh Anniversary

It really doesn't seem like seven years ago today that I started this humble blog, largely as a substitute for the crummy HTML tables, tiny photos and startlingly brief write-ups which had once appeared as a subsection of my personal website (which, these days, is nothing more than a portal to my other online activities). Back then, the 'plan' was simple: more complete write-ups of each toy, along with multiple, full-sized photographs, tagged for easy filing. While I was already back into buying TransFormers, I honestly could not have guessed how far the blog would go, and how much of an uphill struggle it would be to keep it updated.

Then again, setting up over 100 drafts, just to use the photos uploaded to one particular Photobucket account was probably not the wisest move on my part... but, you live and learn.

Combiner Wars Skydive

I can still remember being distinctly unimpressed by the G1 Aerialbots. They were small and awkward-looking, terribly basic, even by G1 standards, and not even as well-designed as the G1 Stunticons... With Combiner Wars remaking all the limb-bots as contemporary Deluxe class figures, it was tempting to hope that the new Aerialbots would take on board the lessons of the many Third Party gestalts doing the rounds...

But this is a creation of Hasbro, and they've been in full-on cost-cutting mode for ages... so it's bound to be a disaster, right?

DotM Hatchet

Hasbro can make some pretty bizarre choices when it comes to turning 'characters' (and I use the term loosely) from the live action TransFormers movies into toys. Or not turning them into toys. Dark of the Moon featured a plethora of Decepticon troops being brought down from the moon which, you'd have thought, would give them the perfect opportunity to extend the toyline exactly the way they did with the first live action movie... Only by this point, they were already cutting costs, so even some of the 'named' movie bots only came out in one size class and others didn't come out at all.

So, in the movie, the three 'Dreads' - Crankcase, Crowbar and Hatchet - transformed into identical police SUVs. For the toyline, we got a Deluxe class Crankcase, Cyberverse Legion class versions of both Crankcase and Crowbar... and then a Cyberverse Commander class Hatchet, and it was nothing like the character's appearance in the movie...

TransFormers Collectors' Club OTFCC 2003 Shadow Striker & Roulette

(Femme-Bot Friday #30)

Something a bit special for this one - call it a 'Thrilling 30th' of my own, to celebrate passing the 3,000 pageviews in month milestone in August 2015.

Proving that Femme-Bot toys aren't such a new thing after all, the Official TransFormers Collectors' Convention (not BotCon) 2003 accompanied its RiD/Car Robots reimaginings of Sunstreaker and Sideswipe with another pair of siblings. Not only were they Femme-Bots, but they were original characters, created for 3H Productions' expanded Universe line.

Like much of RiD/Car Robots, I wasn't especially keen on these to begin with. Since starting this Femme-Bot Friday feature, I've been picking up a few figures that I may otherwise have skipped. I've been repeatedly put off by some rather high secondary market prices (often pushing £100 - normally, but not always, including shipping), so when I found this boxed pair in the display cabinets of Orbital Comics, priced at a much more bearable £60, I decided to treat myself.

TransFormers: Prime Rumble

If the first live action movie was notable for its plethora of toys created from either otherwise unused concept art and designs from the associated videogame, it certainly wasn't unique in doing so. Granted, a lot of new 'characters' have been simple repaints of existing toys (with remolded parts in some cases, like TF Prime Hot Shot) but there have been occasions where an entirely new character has been created with no obvious explanation.

Considering how small the character roster in TF Prime actually was (fewer than ten individuals on each side!), it's both surprising and disappointing that Hasbro didn't add more toys into the mix, but one of the few wholly unique characters they did bring in was a complete re-imagining of one of G1 Soundwave's minions, Rumble

TransFormers: Prime First Edition Starscream

When I decide I like a mold - particularly if it's made to create some contemporary variation on one of the G1 Seekers, and especially if it makes all three - I tend to make it a mission in life to get as many iterations of the mold as possible. Since the Voyager class version of TF Prime Starscream hasn't - as yet - been reused for anything, I've only got the one instance of that mold. However, the Collectors' Club created a TF Prime-style Timelines Slipstream based on the First Edition mold, and that was pretty spiffy.

Thus hooked, I'm now fairly well on my way to getting all variants of this mold, but the first one I had to get was the original, rather hard to find, Deluxe-sized Starscream... 

A Second Gestalt Completed

And so, the very day after Leonidas and Zinnia arrived on my desk, the final component of Combiner Wars Superion turned up in the post. Weirdly, despite not ordering it specifically, I got the US/comic book version of Air Raid which is really cool, as he comes with what appears to be an issue of IDW's Combiner Wars series. On the other hand, that means I don't get the collectors' card that came with all the UK releases... (#firstworldproblems)

This now means that I'm basically done with Combiner Wars until I make a firm decision on whether I want the UK release of Ultra Magnus or the Takara Tomy version on import, and then basically done till next year's figures - Sky Lynx and the Combaticons - start to turn up. After that, it's anyone's guess... Hasbro are playing Combiner Wars as a weird and rather slow game.

Recent Acquisitions

The downside to having lots of new stuff to write about is that I haven't had time to photograph or write about any of it. I've recently had some incredible luck on eBay and with online retailers such as Gerrutcamaro, TFs-Express (formerly Transbridge Omegalock), Masterforce and Order Sixty-Six, not to mention a bit of a splurge in the TransFormers Collectors' Club's shop after signing up to their fourth year of the Subscription Service (I don't know much about the Mayhem Attack Squad, but turning them into a gestalt seems like a cool nod to Fun Publications first foray into Membership Incentive figures, Nexus Prime). It's entirely possible I've still spent less this month than I might have, had I attended AutoAssembly this last weekend but, by this point, probably not by much.

But, hey, I have just had a holiday during which I didn't visit a single toyshop...

I'm very much behind in my photography now, quite apart from still having a massive backlog of existing posts, so here's a stopgap photo of my most recent purchases:

Back row: SDCC2015 Combiner Hunters set, Perfect Effect PE-DX05 Leonidas
Middle row: Mastermind Creations Reformatted R-08Z Zinnia, GIJoe/TFCC Old Snake/Advanced Stealth BATs
Front row: BotCon 2013 Thundercracker, TFCC Subscription Service 2.0 Rewind, Chromedome & Micron Stylor

Not included, because the box has been stashed away already, is the Mastermind Creations Azalea Stealth Assassin, which I was fortunate enough to win on eBay for less than £30 (just over, including domestic shipping).

The Combiner Hunters set, Leonidas and the Advanced Stealth BATs were all no-brainers. Zinnia I ended up ordering because it turned up dirt cheap (less than £40 including shipping from the States) and I needed something to do with the Zinnia fenders I got with Salvia Prominon... little did I know there would be another pair included in the box! The rest... where kind of a whim. Since I was ordering the GIJoe/TFCC pack, I decided to order Chromedome as well, since he was the only SS2.0 figure I was really interested in. Then I figured I may as well also get Rewind, since he was still available, and I'm curious about the mold. Then I decided I may as well add Thundercracker since I'm quite keen on Skywarp from the BotCon 2013 Machine Wars: Termination boxed set (it's a slightly altered Harrier, and I'm very fond of that aircraft for some reason), and it was only another $19/£12 on the order. Weirdly, he now seems to be sold out!

Briefly:

• the Combiner Hunters set is awesome, albeit quite weird.
• Leonidas I haven't yet taken out of the packaging, but he's huge and looks gorgeous.
• Zinnia looks pretty cool - more interesting than I'd expected, based on the photos I've seen online, so I suspect the photos I'll eventually take won't do her justice either.
• Azalea Stealth Assassin arrived with a factory defect - the metal pin in her lower knee joint had been pushed through the plastic of the knee hinge, rather than through the hole - but that was easily fixed and now she's basically perfect.
• I'm rather annoyed at the choice of carded bubble packaging for Old Snake/ASBATs, since I have to irreparably damage the packaging to get them out - whatever complaints one might have about the TFCC's usual packaging, that ain't one of 'em.
• Thundercracker is cool, albeit with a bizarre colourscheme and a 'camouflage' pattern that looks like a rubbish, pixellated world map.
• Rewind is distinctly underwhelming for a $49/£31 exclusive, and the spring-loaded piledrivers are on hair-triggers
• Chromedome is awesome, and it's a real shame Hasbro didn't release any variations on the Wheeljack mold that I wanted to buy.

Full write-ups will be forthcoming... But possibly not for a while. You know me and my teasers - sometimes it's bloody years before the write-up finally happens (see the Shackwave debacle)

...And, with that...

Femme-Bot Friday has been a regular feature, every Friday, for twenty nine weeks... which is pretty good going for me, and just goes to show what a bit of occasional effort - and a lot of post-scheduling - can achieve. Since I now need to catch up on my Femme-Bot photography, I'm going to give the feature a short rest...

Never fear, though, Femme-Bot Friday will be an ongoing, just less regular feature from here on.

Hope you've all enjoyed it so far... and if there are any particular Femme-Bots you'd like to see covered in future, please do post a comment!

Also, just to note, I'm off on a brief holiday with my girlfriend and her family tomorrow, and haven't had time to queue up any posts. I'm back from my holiday now, but am in the midst of the busy period at work, so still not getting any toy blogging done. I'm sure you'll survive for a short while longer.

Mastermind Creations Reformatted: R-10 Salvia Prominon (Ancress)

(Femme-Bot Friday #29)

Since this is quite likely to be the last proper Femme-Bot Friday post for a while, I figured I should keep back something special. Not kept back long, mind you, as this is one of my most recent purchases... And, sure, it's yet another iteration of MMC's Azalea mold, but this one actually gets a new head... and, rather than being a homage to a mere femme-bot, Salvia Prominon is their take on Solus Prime, the first female Cybertronian and one of the Thirteen, the original Primes.

FansProject Causality CA-01 Warcry

The first entry into the Crossfire offshoot, Causality, was a simple repurposing of the other half of FansProjects' Energon Bruticus upgrade set, Munitioner (aka Swindle) based on Micromaster Growl and not, as I'd assumed, a G2 Swindle-inspired repaint - thanks to Colbey Hopper for pointing that out! I'd stopped collecting by the time Micromasters rolled around, and only even saw any back when some were rereleased in the Universe line, around the time Cybertron/Galaxy Force was doing the rounds.

But, if the homage is lost on the likes of me, is a standalone remake of a third party combiner limb replacement still worth having?

Robots in Disguise (2015) Sideswipe

I genuinely intended to skip RID2015 completely. The look of the TV series - not to mention its focus on Bumblebee as team leader - just doesn't appeal to me. Then again, I said that about TransFormers Animated before sitting down to watch some episodes, and that won me over just enough to get me collecting the toys. RID2015 might be just as entertaining but, for the moment, at least, I don't feel inclined to give it a try.

The toys, meanwhile, look pretty terrible - cheaper-looking construction than TFAnimated, more simplistic than many of the TFPrime toys and the design generally has been a real let-down... but, on the upside, that's one toyrange I can save money on, allowing me to focus more on the likes of Combiner Wars.

Then Sideswipe came along... and, while I've heard and read lots of bad things about the toy, it looked interesting enough to be worthy of a closer look...

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2012 (Timelines) Shattered Glass Turbo Tracks

(Femme-Bot Friday #28)

Because we all know this is actually Timelines Road Rage, right?

Road Rage is also a far more interesting character than Shattered Glass Tracks because, in robot mode, she's a mild-mannered diplomat while, in vehicle mode, she's a foul-mouthed speed freak, contemptuous of anything else on the road. Which must be awkward.

As is often the case, I've now written up a couple of variants of this mold without first dealing with either the original Classics Tracks or the slightly remolded Wheeljack version... so just to compound my heinous error, here's yet another Exclusive version of this Classics car...

Collecting, Then and Now

I may be a little bit evil, but I'm trying to get my niece into TransFormers*. I started her out on easy ones, giving her Optimus Prime (aka "Truck Man", when she forgets his proper name) and Grimlock from the Age of Extinction range of one-step changers for Christmas. Since she turned six this year, I got her Strongarm (yay, Femme-Bots!) and Jazz from the new Robots in Disguise line (for ages six and up, says the packaging). Not unexpectedly, she needed a little help, and will be hanging on to the instructions for a while... but I'm hoping that transforming them will become second nature after a while, and that her dexterity improves generally.

A lot of it - whether she chooses to become actively interested in the toyline, how quickly she learns to transform the toys, etc. - will depend on how her attention span develops. I was always very focussed... but then I grew up in a household where the TV came on only for certain shows, and when the only computers around were our 48K ZX Spectrums (nothing builds patience like spending 10 minutes loading a game that takes only five to complete). Their TV tends to be on just for background noise, and almost every flat surface carries a gadget of some kind, capable of distracting a wayward six-year-old.

Combiner Wars Megatron

Considering that Combiner Wars Optimus Prime - based on the Motormaster mold - is a combiner torso, one would surely expect his Decepticon counterpart to perform the same function but, for the moment, at least, Megatron is his own standalone robot without any gestalt potential. Even stranger, Combiner Wars Cyclonus becomes the torso of Galvatronus, at once keeping in the tradition of Cyclonus being partnered with Galvatron (no hints yet of a CW Scourge, but they'd probably just churn it out as another repaint of either Alpha Bravo or Firefly, going by what we've seen of things to come in 2016), while irreversibly separating Galvatron from Megatron.

So... here we have the G1 version of a new tank-based Megatron (Hasbro losing points for originality straight off the bat, not even taking into account the almost immediate Armada repaint)... How does he stack up against the myriad others out there..?

TransFormers (Movie) Fracture Knockoff

(Femme-Bot Friday #27)

The trouble with buying stuff on eBay is that, all too often, a deal that looks too good to be true actually is too good to be true. I honestly wasn't aware that the Classics Mirage mold had been knocked off, let alone that it had been put to such an esoteric purpose...

...But, apparently, knockoffs happen when a toy is popular enough that demand outstrips supply, and it would seem that Hasbro's 2008 Go-Bots reference, in the extended live action movie toyline, was a perfect candidate for ripping off unsuspecting fans of these cheeky references to Bandai's old rival toyline.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let's meet this piece of rubbish I like to call K.O.rasher...

Generations (30th Anniversary) Blitzwing

Triple-Changers - specifically Astrotrain and Octane - were reintroduced fairly early on in the Classics line. Sadly for them, the Deluxe class size was basically inadequate to the task. For a while, it seemed that Triple-Changers were put on the backburner as a result, before their sudden and triumphant return in the form of 'Thrilling 30' Springer.

One Triple-Changing reboot deserves another, and so came Blitzwing - more G1-oriented in most respects, but with a curious TF Animated-inspired twist...

TransFormers Collectors' Club 2015 Members Incentive (Timelines) Lio Convoy

(Members Incentive Monday #11)

Over the last few years, I've been quite ambivalent about much of the Club's output. Membership figures have been fun, but the exclusives - and particularly the Subscription Service after year one - have been eminently avoidable... Just as well, considering the import charges I normally end up paying. In fact, overall, during the time I've been a member (wow... almost ten years now?), they've hit very few home runs.

But this year, something pretty miraculous happened. The club announced that one of its premium exclusives would be Nova Prime, based on the 'Thrilling 30' Orion Pax mold, but with a new head... and that this would also be used to create the 2015 Members Incentive figure... a reimagining of one of my favourite Beast Wars characters, none other than Lio Convoy!

3H BotCon 2001 Universe Arcee

(Femme-Bot Friday #26)

Once in a while I get a bee in my bonnet about a particular mold, or just a particular iteration of a particular mold... Especially if that iteration is an exclusive. For example, having spent many years thinking Beast Wars II Lio Convoy was the most ridiculous TransFormers creation in all history, I suddenly decided it was awesome and set about collecting as many instances of the mold as I could (currently the original and black versions of both the Robot Masters mold and the Beast Wars II version... Flash Lio Convoy I haven't bothered with thusfar because he looks rather like he's made of sparkly wee).

The latest example of this strange mania is the Beast Wars TransMetals version of Blackarachia which, thankfully, has only two iterations. One was the mass release in the TransMetals toyline... The other was this limited edition (1200 pieces, according to TFWiki.net) from BotCon 2001, back in the days when it was run by 3H Enterprises...

A Big Day Out

A while back, my girlfriend Courtney managed to bag tickets for a live version of one of her favourite TV shows, Who's Line Is It Anyway?, ending its run at the Adelphi Theatre today. Our plan from the start was to pop into town earlier than necessary, so we could pay a visit to Forbidden Planet ('pay' being the operative word as both of us have trouble leaving without first opening our wallets). But, when we found that a new movie we were both very interested to see (Mr Holmes) was already being phased out in favour of some new summer blockbuster, our trip into town got shifted earlier into the day so we could fit that in too, at Picturehouse Central in Piccadilly.

Now, obviously, this being a TransFormers toy blog, I'm not going to suddenly launch into a review of Mr Holmes or write about Whose Line..? but Forbidden Planet is fair game. I didn't mention at the time but, on my birthday this year, my colleagues clubbed together to get me - amongst other things - £20 of Forbidden Planet vouchers, which went towards sci-fi books and, obviously, a bit of plastic crack. This time, I picked up the Hasbro version of Generations 'Thrilling 30' Sky Byte, a Sherlock Holmes-based card game and a talking plushie K-9 for Courtney (having said I'd get her one when I first saw it announced ages ago, then completely failed to find one).

For preference, I would have got the Takara Tomy version of Sky Byte because the plastic and paint job look far superior, not least due to the chrome and the authentic asymmetry of the paint on the shark's head. In the end, I had to admit that the darker blue plastic and chrome just weren't worth the premium on an import toy and, since FP are currently selling Voyager class toys slightly cheaper than the average UK toy shop (£22.99 rather than £24/25) and having passed him by on several previous visits to FP, there was only one left on the shelf, I just caved in and picked him up. Being a 2014 'anniversary' figure that I've never seen in any normal UK toy shops, I was keen on the idea of owning him, but mostly couldn't be bothered searching for it because I know it's not that great.

After Forbidden Planet, we went in search of dinner before the show, but we clearly hadn't spent as much time in Geek Heaven as we'd thought, as we still had plenty of time to get to Strand for the show. We'd gone to a nearby Pizza Express for dinner because Courtney had a voucher and just round the corner from the branch we chose was Orbital Comics' current digs in Great Newport Street. On my few recent visits to this location, they've always had an interesting selection of TransFormers merchandise, albeit not as great as the selection they had when they split into two shops (one for comics only, the other specifically for merchandise). I'm very glad we popped in there yesterday, though, because I managed to grab the final component of Combiner Wars Defensor, Legends class Groove, and another old exclusive - OTFCC 2003's Shadow Striker and Roulette... about £40 cheaper than I've seen them on eBay.

We also popped in on a couple of stationery shops, and I've now got decent cards for my niece's upcoming birthday and her next one, as well as some gift tags... So I can finally post her present off this coming week.

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2014 (Timelines) Flamewar

(Femme-Bot Friday #25)

Fun Publications, the folks behind BotCon, seem to have a thing for sexy, femme-fatale-bots. Flamewar was first introduced to the Timelines universe at BotCon 2005, in 'Decent into Evil', where she attempted to sabotage the Autobots investigation into Deathsaurus' insecticon revival. Seemingly destroyed by the Tripredacus Council, she has lain low until now, returning with a new look for BotCon 2014. Both were attendee exclusives, but this newer one is the first I've been able to buy because the first is already commanding silly money on eBay.

Combiner Wars In-Hand

Now that I've got almost two complete Combiner Wars gestalts, but don't currently have time to photograph them all and write them up fully, I figured I may as well note down a few thoughts I've had on my experience of the line thusfar...

TransFormers: Prime Soundwave

Considering the TransFormers brand is, in several very meaningful ways, all about change, it's surprising how many in the Fandom are quite rigid in their view of some characters. Just look back at the outcry over the look of the robots in the original live action movie, and the extreme reactions elicited by just about every new TransFormers continuity as product shots appear on the web.

So when TransFormers Prime completely reimagined Soundwave as a virtually silent 'Big Brother' to the Decepticon ranks, not even fully trusted by Megatron, and transforming into - of all things - a military drone aircraft, not dissimilar to General Atomics' MQ-9 Reaper, the reaction was generally quite positive, or accepting at the very least, because his portrayal in the series was very well thought out, and suited the darker tone of the show perfectly.

But how does one go about turning a spindly drone into a transforming robot toy, even if that robot is just as spindly as his alternate mode?

Mastermind Creations Reformatted: Azalea * (Asterisk Mode)

(Femme-Bot Friday #24)

While I love the standard Azalea figure, I can't help thinking it went through an explosion in the pink factory and came out rather too thoroughly empinkened. It could have used a few more non-pink painted details in some places, considering the character it was based upon - Arcee in IDW's Spotlight story - features touches of orange/gold to break things up a little.

When Mastermind Creations decided to make a couple of even more exclusive versions of their short run model, one was a sort of Nemesis version, featuring darker pinks, purples and greys, and the other took its cue from one of the other colour options in the early concept artwork options by Alex Milne...

And, knowing what a sucker I am for limited editions, it's predictable enough that I'd go after one or the other (or both, eventually)...

That All-Too-Frequent Problem

I received this year's TFCC membership figure - Lio Convoy - today, and am well pleased with him. I may be alone in this, but I strongly feel that the Club has erred in giving away Lio Convoy for free, and making Nova Prime (basically the same figure, but with less variation in colour) the premium exclusive... but I'll get into that in more detail when I finally get round to writing up Lio Convoy in the next Membership Exclusive Monday.

And therein lies the problem. Since I've been back at work full time (a little over a year now), I only really have time and opportunities for photography at the weekends, even now there's semi-decent light for quite a while after I get home from work. Similarly, I find it very difficult to do much writing in the weekday evenings, so that normally gets left to the weekends as well... and my priority recently has been ensuring a seamless run of Femme-Bot Fridays.

This weekend, I'm off to Lincolnshire for the momentous occasion of introducing my parents to my girlfriend's parents. In a couple of weeks' time, I'm off on holiday with my girlfriend and her family and, later in the year, my girlfriend and I are taking our second 'proper' holiday together, across the Pond, so I really need to buckle down an get things done over the weekends in between, or I'm never going to keep up with my purchases, let alone clear my backlog (#firstworldproblems).

Femme-Bot Friday is all complete and up to date, with the total now standing at 29 posts (6 remain, all scheduled). I 'only' have a further 80 draft posts, but have yet to photograph 9 Combiner Wars figures (Megatron being the latest aquisition) so, on balance, I hadn't got that far through the backlog before starting to add to it all over again.

It's times like this that I wonder if I should start doing these things as videos after all...

...But, no...

It's BotCon 2015 Weekend, and I'm Not In Chicago...

...But then, really, neither is BotCon.

I have a friend who's a Chicago native and, back when this year's BotCon was first announced, and I was intending to finally attend (because a BotCon at the end of my Birthday week seemed like the Universe was telling me "Gord, it's high time you went to BotCon"), I contacted her to discuss the location, amongst other things. She was quite disgusted that the publicity described the Pheasant Run Resort as being 'in Chicago' because it's about 30 miles outside what she, as a native, considers to be 'Chicago'.

In the end, the Birthday/BotCon Holiday plans had to be cancelled because it was also around this time that my girlfriend was to be doing exams toward her Open University degree, and I had no wish to cause problems for that.

Perfect Effect Motobot PE-DX02 Aranea

(Femme-bot Friday #23)

Perfect Effect's Motobot RC was certainly an interesting addition to their lineup, considering some of their underwhelming early efforts. As their first foray into full-size transforming figures, it was highly ambitious and pretty well executed. I'd been keen to get my hands on one of them from the first moment I saw them, however, my interest in the original Motobot paled into insignificance when the first remolded variant was announced... because rather than just rehash the same basic design with a couple of new parts, the remold was every bit as ambitious as the original, and they had only the core structural parts in common.

Plus, the remold - hinted at in the comic packaged with RC - was an intriguing Beast Wars/TransFormers Animated mashup homage to Blackarachnia in Perfect Effect's own futuristic biker-bot style.

Apologies in advance for some inconsistency in the photos - what's here comes from two different sets of photos, taken at different times on different days, and in very different conditions...

Another Marketing Snafu

And so, it came to pass that the whole of Europe will have to do without Wave 2 of Combiner Wars. This is, according to an email posted on several fan sites, because Hasbro "couldn't meet quantity targets for Europe". This apparently means that orders for Wave 2 didn't indicate a level of demand that made it worthwhile bringing the final Aerialbot and 3/4 of the Stunticon Deluxes out. That's not just in the UK, but orders across the whole of Europe.

TransFormers (Movie) AllSpark Power Black Arcee

(Femme-Bot Friday #22)

If there's one thing that's certain about TransFormers, it's the black repaint. These have been appearing quite regularly in the toyline, at least since the first Nemesis Prime, if not longer. Arcee seems like a peculiar choice for a black repaint, all things considered, and especially since she'd also been given a G1-homaging pink-and-white paintjob, but that sort of thinking had never been known to stop Takara.

CW Silverbolt Addendum

Or

A Quick and Easy Modification to Silverbolt/Superion's Antennae,
being a Cheaper Alternative to a Third Party Head

I opened up Superion's head to look at how the antennae are attached, and found that they're both part of a single piece of painted rubber. This, no doubt, contributes to the difficulty in flipping them into place because there's not just the resistance from each individual antenna, but the drag caused by the piece linking them twisting rather than actually moving as well as rubbing against things inside the head. Having cut a chunk out of the rubber in the middle, I can report that the antennae - while still not perfectly willing to move into the proper place due to friction between the painted rubber and the plastic they're mounted in - are far more cooperative.

Things of Value

At work recently, I got into a brief conversation about my collection, in which I was asked what the most valuable item in my collection was. The truth of the matter is that I have no idea.

As collectors, we all assign 'value' in different ways - and that's before you get into the prices assigned to things on eBay and the like - because we all have our own preferences. Then, when looking at cost as an analogue of 'value', things get very complicated because secondary market prices are just plain bizarre. with the same item available at wildly different prices for no readily apparent reason.

I wasn't able to give my colleague anything like an answer to his question at the time, but it's been rattling around in my head ever since... So, here, I attempt to pick out a few of the items in my collection that I value the most... Not necessarily due to their cost or the difficulty I had getting hold of them, just a few things that stick out for one reason or another. Details of my favourite/least favourite things can be found on the 'More About Me' page, so I should probably attempt to steer clear of things mentioned there. There are some TransFormers in my collection with a story attached, though whether that adds value or just some sort of nostalgic feeling, I know not...

So, in no particular order, here are some of the TransFormers toys I (possibly) consider 'valuable'.

TransFormers Collectors' Club 2014 (Timelines) Trans-Mutate

(Femme-Bot Friday #21)

Since it's only fairly recently that I've seen the entire run of Beast Wars, the whole 'Trans-Mutate' phenomenon passed me by at the time. Out of curiousity, I did once consider trying to buy the US Beast Wars reissues which came with parts of a Trans-Mutate figure but, frankly, the Japanese reissues that were around at roughly the same time looked better, and more accurate to the TV show.

'Trans-Mutate', the episode of the TV show, was an interesting one... a damaged stasis pod releases a misshapen, cognitively impaired wreck of a robot that can't even transform. Megatron loses all interest but, strangely, Rampage and Silverbolt instantly take a shine to the new arrival and each tries to convince her to join them. Needless to say, it doesn't have a happy ending.

Now, almost 20 years later, the Collectors' Club has decided, almost on a whim, to add an alternate continuity, properly functional version of the character to its collection of exclusives...

Age of Extinction/Generations Drift

Drift has a curious history. The original character was created by IDW writer Shane McCarthy, who apparently felt that a certain element of character was lacking from the existing lineup. Like Beast Wars Dinobot, he was a Decepticon-turned-Autobot with a strong sense of honour and a large sword. Riding on Dinobot's coat tails, McCarthy's Drift apparently proved so popular that Hasbro created a toy based on the character and then, all of a sudden, Drift was announced as a character in Age of Extinction. The design looked daft - someone clearly took the samurai motif a little too far and a little too seriously - but he was to be voiced by Ken Watanabe, so surely movie Drift would turn out to be awesome?

As it turned out, Drift was another toe-curling stereotype, along the lines of the twins from Revenge of the Fallen, speaking in haiku and, without explanation, suddenly transforming into a Cybertronian helicopter as well as using a terrestrial disguise, introducing the audience to the concept of Triple Changers in a slightly more overt way than the likes of RotF Mixmaster... But, hey, whoever said the live action movies were internally consistent or coherent?

Combiner Wars Silverbolt

Now that Combiner Wars is in full swing (kinda), I've even more glad I didn't bother buying the Universe/Classics Silverbolt back in 2008, instead choosing the Darkwind repaint. It was utterly daft of Hasbro to release a Silverbolt remake that wasn't going to be part of a gestalt because the whole point of Silverbolt is that he's the leader of a gestalt team of flight-capable Autobots... and he's afraid of heights. Leading the team and becoming the main part of Superion is all intended to keep his mind off his phobia long enough to do something useful. Take the team away from him, and there's really no point to a Silverbolt toy (unless it's an update to the Fuzor - go on, Hasbro, you know you wanna).

But back in 2008, Hasbro had no apparent plans to do any more combiners, repeatedly telling BotCon attendees that they weren't financially or technically viable these days. More than five years later, and in the wake of a veritable plethora of third party combiners, Hasbro announced its latest phase in the continuation of the Classics line: Combiner Wars... and one of the first teams to be released is the Aerialbots... meaning, at long last, we have a true Silverbolt

FansProject Function-X2 Quadruple-U

Function-X is a very different line to FansProject's Causality range. While the latter reimagines and updates Generation 1 figures into something that resembles the original, but has a very modern feel, the former seems (based on the few I've seen so far) to hark back more strongly to G1 in terms its presentation, striving only to improve articulation. The first Function-X model in the line was an update of the G1 HeadMaster Chromedome, a figure which I still own from those days, and something about the way it looked didn't impress me the way their Causality figures did (and continue to).

This second figure, however, intrigued me. Not only was it a stylistic improvement over the first, but FansProject decided to recreate one of the HeadMasters I didn't get back in my youth, for whom I have developed a small fondness due to the BotCon 2007 repaint of Cybertron Snarl/Galaxy Force Fang Wolf.

AD17 Movie Advanced Darkside Soundwave

After a rather disappointing 'appearance' in Revenge of the Fallen, I was thrilled to see Soundwave taking a more active - and ground-based - role in Dark of the Moon... At least, I was until I realised that it wasn't really Soundwave. His satellite-violating tentacles were pared down into spiky things used to threaten Carly and he may have had weird speaker things all over his arms, but he was just another of Megatron's thugs - capturing, then executing some of the Autobots.

Even so, the design of the character impressed me, and I was really looking forward to picking up a small plastic version to transform and pose for my shelves. Hasbro even announced a Human Alliance version, which was awesome until I actually saw it (75% of the vehicle mass becomes his arms, and the rest is unevenly distributed between his torso and his legs? Is that really the best you can do, Hasbro/Takara Tomy?) so I was hoping to 'make do' with the Deluxe.

But, because Hasbro sometimes clearly hate TransFormers fans, neither version got a full release and the molds - licensed vehicle mode and all - were consigned to limbo.

Then Takara Tomy did something a bit special for their extended Age of Extinction toyline, and 'Darkside Soundwave' turned up with a new and unique paint job, along with a set of other toys which celebrated some of the lesser characters from the series. Of course, they weren't easy to find outside of Japan, and import costs were pretty heinous... But then I found this fella at the MCM London Comic Con in May, for a mere £30.

That, dearest reader, is what one calls "a no-brainer"

I don't really 'do' G1 anymore, but...

...Has everyone else seen the news that G1 Trypticon is getting re-released, in all his battery-powered, walky glory?

I haven't bought any actual Generation 1 toys since... let me see... it must have been Broadcast (Blaster), in his Takara TransFormers Collection form, back in 2006 (or possibly something second hand, from eBay, like Snaptrap), and I really don't have the space for a Generation 1 behemoth like Trypticon, but I do already own an original G1 Metroplex, so it's extremely tempting.

Trypticon is also just the kind of toy I'd like to share with my neice... when she's a bit older and less likely to break stuff in a fit of pique... because all the battery-operated features sound neat. Plus, it's a city (meh) that turns into a giant robot dinosaur (yay!) that walks on its own (wow!).

Many years ago, I had a plan/dream of creating a space for all my G1 TransFormers toys, in which I would build some kind of diorama. Since I don't actually have that many G1 TransFormers (compared to some collectors, anyway), it wouldn't even need a huge amount of space... but certainly more than a single shelf in an Ikea 'Billy' cabinet. If this dream ever comes about, having both Metroplex and Trypticon would be ideal... Sure, I have Scorponok, but his city form is a bit disappointing. It'd also be cool to have Omega Supreme - another battery-operated, walking toy from the 80s - but I'm happy to skip Fortress Maximus because, size aside, there's nothing that great about him.

It'll probably come down to whether or not I impulse buy it, based largely on its price, and if it even gets released in the UK.

TransFormers Legends (Takara Tomy 30th Anniversary) LG10 Arcee

(Femme-Bot Friday #20)

Back in 1986, TransFormers: The Movie was my first introduction to the phenomenon of the 'Femme-Bot'. In theory, had the UK airing of the G1 cartoon not been so damned patchy, I would have known about the team of Femme-Bots, led by Optimus Prime's old flame Elita-1, but 'Saturday morning kids TV' in the UK was still a fairly new - and, frankly, unreliable - concept that I would miss TransFormers for weeks at a time because it was never properly scheduled.

But I digress. TransFormers: The Movie introduced Arcee, the sassy, capable warrior who somehow seemed to be the only feminine robot in a war filled with large, boxy and overtly masculine Cybertronians. Virtually all the characters in the animated movie appeared in toy form - most looking nothing like their animated counterparts - but Arcee was notable by her absence from shelves.

In recent years, the internet has uncovered numerous - frequently terrible - early attempts by Hasbro and Takara at making an Arcee toy, all of which were mercifully cancelled, some barely even making it to the prototype stage. One - referencing Arcee's appearance in the Headmasters cartoon - was just a repaint of G1 Chromedome. The designer of this toy actually scratch-built a G1 Arcee model for a BotCon Japan competition, which ended up netting him a job at Takara Tomy. This led to the opportunity to revisit his scratch-build and turn it into a marketable toy, after several third parties had already released their takes on G1 Arcee.

It's quite stunning to think that it's taken almost 30 years to get a toy of a character from an animated movie based on the 1980s toyline... but here she is!

Galaxy Force Ramble Drones

When I first got back into TransFormers, Galaxy Force was pretty much the perfect toyline for me, combining nostalgic character references with bold new designs and levels of articulation that just hadn't been possible when I first encountered the toy line back in the 80s.

While some homages were more obvious than others, the toy designers didn't shy away from taking things in unexpected directions, and some references were broader than others. Soundwave's design came across as a fairly logical extrapolation of the G1 character, except that he only had one minion.

Or did he? Technically, the Ramble drones were nothing to do with GF Soundwave, coming across more like evolved Scraplets, and the fact that their name was romanised to 'Ramble' rather than 'Rumble' seemed to confirm that these weren't intended to be a homage to G1 Rumble (and Frenzy), but that seems to be just a symptom of poor translation.

N.E.S.T. Global Alliance Bludgeon

Bludgeon will always seem to me to be a weird addition to the live action movie toylines. Originally a G1 Pretender, his shell was a ghostly samurai in orange armour (because Pretender technology makes for a perfect disguise!) and he transformed from a dumpy robot into a dumpy tank. The first movie Bludgeon appeared in a two-pack, as a repaint of Wreckage packaged with a repaint/remold of Blackout as Whirl. For the extended Revenge of the Fallen toyline, something entirely new was created, going back to his roots, but in a startling and original way.

MCM London Comic Con 2015 Haul

Just a quick post - I was hoping to do some photography today (once I'd done the dishes - Real Life FTW!) but the weather has turned rather grey - to list the things I did and didn't get at the MCM London Comic Con yesterday. I'd taken the day off work especially for the event as my best friend told me Fridays are calmer than the weekends (probably because many folks are at work), which made it seem the best opportunity to introduce my girlfriend to the wonders of full-size conventions, after taking her to Hyper Japan towards the end of last year.

The MCMLCC tends to be very variable when it comes to availability of TransFormers. Some have been brilliant, some have been terrible... this one was not bad. There were plenty of Combiner Wars toys from the waves that involved Superion, Menasor and the CW form of Optimus Prime, but that didn't make for any complete combiners (that I was interested in, at least). I'd mostly planned on skipping everything until Defensor, but have recently decided than Superion actually looks OK, so one of my first purchases was CW Silverbolt. Along with him, picked up FansProjects' Function-X2 Quadruple-U (aka Weirdwolf). I'd been considering this model since it was first announced, but never felt strongly enough about it to order it online... So basically, that was a couple of impulse buys.

Next up was Age of Extinction Drift. I had been considering ordering the Premium version (available on its own via eBay) because that is truer to the character's appearance in the movie but, having not done so for however long it's been available now, I just caved in and bought the basic version. Further up the list of things I actually definitely wanted to buy was any version of the Deluxe class Soundwave from Dark of the Moon and, as luck would have it, the same stall had one left... the Age of Extinction re-release as 'Darkside Soundwave').

Other than that, my money went on a couple of new Genki Gear t-shirts, a portable speaker thing that works by attaching itself to things that can carry sound by vibration (examples on the stand included a large polystyrene container, which offered excellent sound!), a small print of a Japanese painting/poem, a 4-pack of Flying Cauldron 'Butterscotch Beer' (actually labelled 'Butterscotch Cream Soda' in smaller print, because it's non-alcoholic), a 10-minute massage, the complete series of Cowboy Beebop on DVD, a CD from the crew behind Weebl's Stuff and some food.

Things I didn't buy included lots of other Combiner Wars stuff (including no less than 2 heavily overpriced Leader class Megatrons), Generations Doubledealer, Brainstorm, Roadbuster and Whirl, the Play Arts Kai Catwoman, Variant Batgirl and Wonder Woman, Kotobukiya's Bishoujo Batwoman, a whole bunch of Gundam model kits, and The Eyes of Bayonetta 2 artbook. Some of this I'll probably buy online - PAK V-Batgirl I've already ordered - because either it was sold out by the time I got back to the stand, I couldn't find the stand again or just forgot to go back... By the end of the day, we were all pretty tired... and this was the first time I'd ever stayed at one of these events much beyond lunchtime.

Generations (30th Anniversary) Chromia

(Femme-Bot Friday #19)

Whether it's because it was never fully shown or because I'd simply lost interest, I didn't get to see those episodes of the G1 cartoon which featured the original Femme-Bots. In fact, aside from a few random images and video clips on the interwebs, my first proper experience of Chromia as a pseudo-G1 character was in the Windblade comic, in which she was the titular character's bodyguard on Cybertron

Given the fringe nature of the character, she wasn't an immediate must-buy... But how does Hasbro's Generations take on one of the earliest canonical Femme-Bots shape up?

AM12 Arms Micron (TFPrime) War Breakdown

I don't mind saying that getting hold of this was rather more complicated than it needed to be. It started out easy enough - I simply found him available via Amazon's Marketplace - but, once ordered, he failed to arrive within the estimated deliver date range, so I had to get in touch with the seller and ask them to try again. They couldn't have been more helpful, to be honest, first of all offering to send a near-mint replacement, then tracking down a factory-sealed replacement within a week. They also sent the replacement with tracking, and he arrived very quickly.

But all of that would have been unnecessary if Hasbro had chosen to distribute him at all.

I'll also admit that my write up will be neither as concise nor as eloquent as the video review by Thew Adams, which convinced me I couldn't pass this one up in the first place, but that's not going to be a surprise to anyone.

Anyway, Breakdown - voiced by the perpetually gruff Adam Baldwin the the TV show - is Bulkhead's nemesis. An equally big bruiser-type, with a similar style of alternate mode and a similar preference for melee weapons. Hasbro apparently felt the model wasn't cost-effective, and so declined to release the Voyager version at all. Thankfully, Takara Tomy had no such issues...

TransFormers Legends (Takara Tomy 30th Anniversary) LG12 Windblade

(Femme-Bot Friday #18)

Very few people would ever accuse Hasbro of genuinely listening to fans, so when they announced their 'Fan-Built Bot' promotion, fans were naturally pretty sceptical. I honestly wasn't paying attention at the time but, during the early part of 2013, Hasbro asked fans to vote in nine polls to determine various characteristics, then revealed the 'finished' character at that year's San Diego Comic Con. Some suggested that the polls had been designed to fit a set of preconceived ideas that Hasbro had in their catalogues, but that seems rather unfair in retrospect. It took about a year for the Windblade toy to make its first appearances, and the end result seemed a little lacking... But then some bright spark decided to hand Windblade to writer Mairghread Scott and artist Sarah Stone and, from that point on, I was hooked. The Windblade comic originally lasted only 4 issues, but has since been fully rolled into an existing IDW continuity, and Windblade appears to be a major player in the new Combiner Wars series.

When Hasbro finally got the toy out on the streets, it seemed disappointing on a number of levels - the colourscheme tended too far in favour of black, where the character seemed more red in the comic, the head barely resembled Stone's gorgeously expressive interpretation of the character, and... it was another high-heeled femme-bot with stability issues. Then Takara Tomy released images of their take on Windblade, which paid proper homage to Stone's artwork...