Binaltech BT10 Grimlock

If Binaltech's pre-movie 'lost years' timeline wasn't weird enough when it repurposed obvious Autobot shells into Decepticons - even if there was a valid in-story explanation - it jumped up a gear with its tenth entry. Early G1 Autobots getting new, contemporary, licensed vehicle modes to replace their old, unlicensed G1 vehicle modes was one thing... but the latest figure, Grimlock, had originally been a Dinobot, with a robotic Tyrannosaurus Rex as his alternate mode.

Yet, while turning the former Dinobot Commander into a car may have seemed strange, they at least chose a fitting vehicle - the latest iteration of one of the most well-known American muscle cars.

Reveal the Shield Fallback

The TransFormers subline entitled 'Reveal the Shield' was as strange as it was shortlived. By and large, it was a callback to that period of G1 toys which featured heat-activated faction insignias. The bulk of them were also just another part of the ongoing Classics line, but a small handful could be interpreted equally as part of the continuing Revenge of the Fallen toyline due to the ambiguity of their packaging.

Fallback - aka Outback, another name Hasbro lost for a few years - was one such figure. Clearly based on the G1 character, going by his colourscheme, yet a repaint of the movie version of Brawn. So... technically, while I thought Legends class Ravage was the final Revenge of the Fallen toy in my collection, it seems it's actually this one!

Revenge of the Fallen Ravage (Legends)

Continuing my recent theme of ten-year-old movie toys and - finally - completing the write-ups for my collection of Revenge of the Fallen toys, here we have the second mold made of Ravage, yet another G1 character who got a bit of a raw deal out of that movie.

The Decepticons' master spy, a renowned lurker-in-the-shadows, got turned into a shiny, bare-metallic cyclopean robo-kitty whose contributions to comic relief far outweighed his few awesome moments of action. Rather than sneaking into the N.E.S.T. holding facility to steal their Allspark fragment, he went in all guns blazing and essentially provided a distraction for the weird gestalt known as Reedman, which he had merely deployed by coughing his component ballbearings down a ventilator shaft. His only other significant contributions were delivering Scalpel to the captive Sam Witwicky (anyone else find it odd that Soundwave ejects Ravage, then Ravage ejects both Reeman and Scalpel, without any indication of how either got inside him?), and then getting his spine ripped out by the tail when it went up against Bumblebee during the climactic battle of the movie.

His Deluxe class toy proved to be disappointing, in that it had only a perfunctory alternate mode - dubbed 'Re-entry Mode' and supposedly representing his 'missile' form after Soundwave shot him down to Earth - and a colourscheme that was more G1 than movie. After about a year - and a couple of repaints - Hasbro released a completely new mold, in the smallest current size class. There were two positive signs on this version - first and foremost, his colourscheme was very much movie-style bare metallic. Perhaps more interestingly, its alternate mode was based on the fish/submersible form Ravage was given in his concept art, but which didn't make it into the movie.

Is it possible that a tiny Legends class figure is better than a Deluxe?

Revenge of the Fallen Mudflap

Intended as comic relief - in a franchise that was overburdened with comic relief from its very first installment - the Twins, Skids and Mudflap, attracted a lot of scorn due to perceived racial stereotyping. Personally, I found it odd that they were seen that way, as their characterisation seemed to be taking aim at Hip Hop-obsessed white trash more than anything else. Maybe my impression - as a middle class, middle-aged white dude in the UK - is flawed, and I'm missing some critical element of their portrayal, but it felt to me like manufactured outrage for the sake of outrage, over a movie that was just poorly made from start to finish.

Meanwhile, it took me five years to get round to writing about the Deluxe class Skids, and he turned out to be a floppy mess of a figure, with a large amount of car shell wrapped around a comparatively small robot. It was a well-designed toy, certainly, but let down by the materials and the manufacturing.

...Which doesn't exactly bode well for his brother...

Revenge of the Fallen Dead End

One interesting feature of Hasbro re-using established names in new franchises is that some fairly high-profile names end up appearing in unexpected places. 'Dead End' was used for two separate figures in the extended Revege of the Fallen toyline - the Scout class figure later repainted into Nightbeat, and this Deluxe class figure, a repaint of the Sideways figure with a new head sculpt.

Notably, neither of them were in any way connected with the Stunticon Dead End, and the name was applied in reference to the character being some kind of robotic vampire. Whether this makes him distantly related to Ratbat, or just the expanded movie universe's resident Goth stereotype, who can say? But I'm a big fan of the mold for its interesting transformation, automorphing features and the unique look of its robot mode, even as a poor second choice for representing Dino from Dark of the Moon, so this Revenge of the Fallen repaint was a no-brainer.

TransFormers Animated Bulkhead

In many ways, this should have been posted as a direct follow-on from the KuBianBao upsizing of movie Hound, since TF Animated Bulkhead surely played a part in the Bayverse reimagining of the old G1 favourite. While the mass release of TF Prime Bulkhead was fudged to stop him looking 'fat', the First Edition paid greater attention to the CGI, leading to a vastly superior toy. The toys made of TF Animated Bulkhead - regardless of size class - didn't even try to disguise how chunky the character was, and they all ended up with fairly stumpy legs, as was appropriate to his animation model.

And, like most TransFormers figures at that time, Bulkhead was made available in just about every size class. All of them had their shortcomings, but only one of them - the Leader class version - was anywhere near the right scale for the rest of the toyline. While the line as a whole wasn't overly concerned with scale - Bumblebee being one of the largest Deluxes, despite the character's diminutive stature on the show - I've always like to try to get the characters matching up as well as possible. While the Voyager class version of the toy was more accurate to the character's overall appearance on the show, even this Leader class version was technically undersized in robot mode... but it was the closest available.

Of course, 'best available' doesn't always equate to 'best overall', and it's not as if Leader class figures always made best use of their budgets back when they were all huge and packed with features...

TransFormers Cloud Starscream

I don't know a great deal about TransFormers Cloud, not least because the toys - by and large - didn't interest me. Most were pretty dull repaints, with the occasional new head sculpt, but only two tickled my fancy: Hellwarp - a repaint of the Generations Sky-Byte mold in Skywarp colours - and this one, Starscream.

Neither were priority figures when they first appeared, but when the Bumblebee movie turned up, featuring a character named Blitzwing, who transformed into a jet coloured suspiciously like Starscream, the latter figure got bumped up the list since it occurred to me - thanks to my weird way of thinking - that he could function both as Cloud Starscream and a Generations version of Bumblebee movie Blitzwing (even though he never transformed into a tank, or gave any indication of being a triple-changer in his brief appearance).

Of course, I already own both Generations Blitzwing and Generations Doubledealer - the latter's head sculpt being reused here - so let's see what makes Cloud Starcream unique...

Studio Series #56 Shockwave

While I've not liked all the designs of the robots in the live action movies - particularly the randomly spiky Cybertronian forms of the Bay movies - there's no denying how striking they are, and how imposing they managed to appear in the films. Given that some Decepticons didn't even transform on-screen, they could have been given just about any alternate mode imaginable.

One such character was Dark of the Moon's distinctly non-traditional interpretation of Shockwave. Gone was the logically-minded custodian of the remnants of Decepticon Cybertron and, in his place, we got a fairly generic, virtually mute metal monster with a honkin' great cannon on one arm (and the wrong arm, at that) and an enormous, city-munching robo-phallic tentacle monster for a 'pet'. Pretty much the only things the production artists got right were the head (cyclopean, albeit heavily embellished versus the G1 character) and the power cable for his gun arm.

Not that I'd expect a movie bot to transform into an enormous space gun but, given that Shockwave's appearance in the game of the very first movie had him transform into both a helicopter and a howitzer, there's already precedent for something out of the ordinary... And yet the original toy just had him turn into a spiky tank... Now, about five years later, Shockwave has been granted a Studio Series makeover - packaged as a Leader class figure, no less - so let's see what sort of improvements Hasbro have made...

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2009 (Timelines) Skyquake

There are a number of figures in my collection that I can look at and genuinely wonder what ever possessed me to buy them... and there are figures in my collection that are flawed in some small but critical way. Thankfully, either one are rare occurrences particularly since, on the rare occasion I shop in bricks-and-mortar toy shops, I can give any figure I want a quick once over in the box, to see if I can spot any obvious flaws.

I've not always had the best of luck with TransFormers Collectors' Club figures, and particularly BotCon figures bought via the Club shop after the event, but this figure - part of one of the souvenir sets from BotCon 2009 - would certainly fit into both categories were it not for the fact that he was packaged alongside Banzai-Tron, an excellent reimagining of a G1 Action Master using a bonkers Energon mold.

Wings of Honor didn't interest me a great deal, but it was nice to effectively get a bonus figure along with the one souvenir toy I actually wanted. Aside from these, the only figure from 2009's set that's even on my radar is Scourge, made using the Galaxy Force Noisemaze mold.

(And, yes, I know Elita-1 and Razorclaw were available at the 2009 show as well, but they were additions to Games of Deception and Dawn of Futures Past, respectively, not Wings of Honor)

TransFormers Go! Hunter Soundwave

Takara Tomy's take on the Beast Hunters extension to TF Prime was a bit of a surprise. Most of the beasts/Predacons were incorporated into their TransFormers Go! TV show, but only a few of the non-beast toys made it into the toyline. Shockwave was one, receiving a far better paint job than the Hasbro/Beast Hunters version, and Soundwave was another. While Hasbro's release seemed to channel an old TransFormers Universe toy, Takara Tomy went a bit more traditional...

One might wonder why I'd pick up another version of TF Prime Soundwave when I already have the original TF Prime Deluxe and Hasbro's Beast Hunters version... but remember I also went and bought the Collectors' Club's Old Snake & Advanced Steath BATs set... and read on.

Street Fighter II X TransFormers Hot Rodimus [Ken]

While I wasn't particularly interesting in obtaining a second iteration of the Titans Return Hot Rod mold, I pretty much had no choice, since that's the mold that was chosen to represent Ken in the Street Fighter II X TransFormers Deluxe class 2-pack.

Or, at least, that's what I thought at first. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that Takara Tomy had used their slightly modified TF Legends Targetmaster Hot Rodimus mold. While I'd already acquired Hot Rod before Hot Rodimus even appeared, I did - briefly - entertain the possibility of picking up Takara Tomy's version as a replacement, as I have the Targetmaster version of G1 Hot Rod, and the translucent plastic flame pattern on his chest, along with the overall better colourscheme, were quite appealing.

In the end, I decided to get the Reprolabels set and make do with Hasbro's offering, so getting my hands on this mold via the Street Fighter II crossover set seemed like an unexpected bonus. He's packaged along with Arcee/Chun Li, and she turned out pretty cool... So, without further ado, let's see what Takara Tomy made of Ken.

Street Fighter II X TransFormers Arcee [Chun Li]

(Femme-Bot Friday #71)

So, having dealt with the Street Fighter II X TransFormers Convoy/Megatron set in one hit, I find myself having to split the second set to properly accommodate the main reason I was interested in either set: Generations/TF Legends Arcee repainted as Chun Li.

It's a bit puzzling that the two sets were made out of toys in different size classes (Arcee and Hot Rodimus being Deluxes), but I guess they felt either that both Ryu and Vega/M. Bison warranted partnering with the Voyager class leaders of the two Cybertronian factions, or at least that Ryu should be partnered with a robot of the same size class, even though he'd generally depicted as being much smaller than Vega/M. Bison in the games.

Still, is that any more strange than including a figure from an older, entirely unrelated line, when three out of the four crossover figures are from Titans Return?

Street Fighter II X TransFormers Convoy [Ryu] vs Megatron [Vega]

Considering I already have three iterations of the Generations Blitzwing mold, I decided I wouldn't bother with the Titans Return remake, either as Megatron (the form it was first released in) or as Blitzwing. Conversely, while the Optimus Prime version of the Octane mold was of no interest to me, I've ended up with not only TR Octane (in fact the first and only contemporary Octane in my collection!), but the Tokyo Toy Show 2017 Nemesis Prime/Black Convoy version as well.

All of which is to say that, of these two Street Fighter II crossover repaints, only one was entirely new to me... but the idea was certainly bonkers enough to get my attention, and I ordered both of the Street Fighter II X Transformers boxed sets as soon as they became available.

If you've ever wondered how an arcade beat-'em-up would translate into TransFormers toys, read on!

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2006 (Timelines) Buzzsaw & Laserbeak

The pattern with me and TransFormers toys appears at times to be "the weirder, the better". The Beast Wars figures I picked up tended to be rather strange (Lio Convoy, Mach Kick, Longrack, Break, etc.) and I often appreciate a robot mode more the further it is from standard human proportions.

That said, the Superlink/Energon Shadowhawk/Divebomb mold really ticked my fancy because it managed to do both its avian beast mode and its robot mode in a convincing, innovative way, without wasting the bird's wings as the robot's backpack the way so many other avian TransFormers have.

BotCon 2006's Dawn of Futures Past boxed set was one of the things that got me into the idea of joining the Collectors' Club and possibly, eventually venturing across the pond to a BotCon. While the boxed set was awesome in and of itself, I did also covet a couple of the attendee-exclusive souvenir packs. Since I wrote about the boxed set and one of the attendee figures, Tigatron, almost nine years ago and I still haven't found an affordable Megatron/Waspinator (the former appearing every so often for something in excess of a thousand pounds, while the latter has recently turned up on eBay for over £500), I figure it's about time I wrote about the other bagged pair I currently own...

War for Cybertron: Earthrise Cliffjumper

Considering that G1 Cliffjumper was the first ever TransFormers toy I bought, it was a foregone conclusion that I'd be on the lookout for a decent update. The Classics version took the easy way out and reused the Bumblebee mold - even down to the head sculpt - and that pattern of laziness carried on into the perfunctory Cliffjumper repaint of the original Concept Camaro Bumblebee from the first movie toyline. While Windcharger - my second ever Autobot - has had three new Scout/Legends class molds in the last decade, Cliffjumper's only other appearance in anything approaching his traditional form was in Alternity, while he had a complete makeover for his appearance in TF Prime.

Then, in a baffling albeit welcome move, Hasbro announced a new, unique, G1-style Cliffjumper toy in the Earthrise chunk of the War for Cybertron toyline - without even a hint of a Bumblebee, despite him supposedly having a major role in the IDW comics series, according to their plans. What's more, it looked almost like a simplified version of the MP21 Bumblebee figure. It seemed perfect... but then it became apparent that Cliffjumper would be another of Hasbro's recent pricepoint cheaters - effectly a large Legends class toy with accessories included to bump him up to the new, inflated Deluxe class bracket.

What trickery is this? Let's take a look!

(Worth noting here that my photography will be a bit inconsistent between posts for a while, as I've been experimenting again with the white background for my light tent - newly taken photos will have a white(-ish) background, older drafts will feature the more usual 'black' background)