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)