TransFormers Animated Wreck-Gar

While the robot characters in TransFormers Animated weren't particularly plentiful, what they lacked in numbers, they more than made up for in personality. The small cast seemed to have been perfectly selected for what they were able to add to the storytelling potential of their situation.

A prime example of this would be Wreck-Gar, who was given an entirely new origin story - no longer leader of the Junkions, a race of transforming (and partsforming) robots which evolved separately from those of Cybertron - he was, instead, the innocent creation of Sari Sumdac's AllSpark key. Introduced with no idea of his own identity, his occasional appearances served to develop his character, though I seem to recall his fate was left very open-ended.

Perfect Effect PC-18 Upgrade Kit for GodJinrai

Picking up the upgrade sets for Powermaster Optimus Prime/Super Ginrai had two effects on me. First and foremost, it somewhat restored my confidence in Perfect Effect's output... but, perhaps just as important, it left me wanting to ensure my Legends Godbomber/Super Ginrai combination was as good and 'complete' as it possibly could be.

The stock Godbomber figure is far from perfect and his components, when added to Super Ginrai, leave the figure substantially less stable than he was in his basic form. Given that the PC-16 set puts a little bit more weight onto the robot's back (in the form of Jinrai Prime's legs), his weak ankles leave him even more prone to overbalancing and falling over backward.

With that in mind, to be perfectly honest, the only part of this figure I was really interested in was the ankle supports for the God Ginrai gestalt...

Cybertron Landmine

Every so often, there's a mold in a toyline I like that doesn't particularly inspire me. Landmine was one such mold, until I got my hands on the Rhinox repaint, part of the BotCon 2006 boxed set, 'Dawn of Futures Past'. Larking about with that figure gave me a different perspective on the mold and so, while I still wasn't overkeen on having a dull Autobot construction vehicle on my shelves, I did end up buying the substantially cheaper Cybertron version of the mold, that I could play with and pose while BotCon Rhinox languishes in his box till I'm able to display him adequately, along with the rest of his crew.

This might seem like a strange reason to buy a toy but the Cybertron/Galaxy Force line really grabbed me as a whole, and I didn't want to miss out on a fun toy, even if it didn't appeal to me straight away.

A Bump in the Road

Yesterday saw the sudden failure of one of my external hard drives.

Thankfully, the only thing related to this blog contained therein was the spreadsheet I'd been using to track my collections and - more recently - my eBay sales. That can be rebuilt, of course, but it was frustrating to find that the autobackup option was not enabled by default and, while the software does autosave its own backups every 15 minutes, those backups are wiped when the document is saved/closed.

All my photos are stored on another drive, but even those could have been re-taken if the worst had happened. I've ended up re-taking photos of quite a few toys, despite having rescued the originals from Photobucket before I closed my accounts there.

The main problem is that a number of ancillary files - such as the original Adobe Illustrator file from which this blog's banner was made - are gone. As are many files relating to my freelance work and personal projects. A good proportion of it is still lurking in emails, so it's just a matter of tracking it down and remaking spreadsheets, InDesign documents, etc. as appropriate, but it's still pretty frustrating, considering I've gone through more PCs than external hard drives over the years, and those drives have helped me transfer to new PCs almost seamlessly.

I guess the lesson here is that I should start to trust the Cloud a little more, and keep backups of my backups going forward.

Binaltech BT13 Laserwave

Based on the number of iterations of it I own - five in total - the Mazda RX-8 would seem to the casual observer to be my favourite Binaltech mold. While the first version I wrote about - BT20 Argent Meister, one of the final Binaltech releases - turned out to be a bit of a floppy mess, the original Meister - BT08, released four years prior - was really only a let-down because it was too a pedestrian car to turn into Jazz... Though this was before the movies turned him into a Pontiac Solstice which, in many ways, wasn't much better.

For the third release of the mold (the second being the red 'Zoom-Zoom' repaint of BT08) Takara seemed to have given up on the idea of the Binaltech Decepticons having commandeered bodies intended for Autobots, because this guy is unmistakeably Shockwave.

Or rather, Laserwave...

Perfect Effect PC-15 Upgrade Kit & PC-16 Jinrai Prime

TransFormers developed along some very strange lines during the Prime Wars trilogy. We were treated to the second ever G1-style Ultra Magnus toy which transformed as a unit rather than being a white Optimus Prime with power armour (the first being the Masterpiece figure), and that led to a reinterpretation of Powermaster Optimus Prime (and Takara Tomy's Super Ginrai remix) in which the 'cab only' Optimus Prime - and the Powermaster feature - was bypassed in favour of keeping with Titans Returns' HeadMaster gimmick and the single-unit transformation.

While I like Super Ginrai and enjoyed him as a single unit, the moment I saw Perfect Effect were producing upgrade sets - the first being essentially supplemental parts for the second, a fully transforming, independent cab - I knew I was going to treat myself to the full Super Ginrai/Powermaster Optimus Prime upgrade, and ordered both PC-15 and PC-16 as soon as they became available.

On War for Cybertron: Siege, the Netflix show

The much-anticipated Netflix TV show based around Hasbro's now year-old War for Cybertron: Siege toyline debuted a couple of days ago, and I decided to watch its six-episode opening chapter today. My initial impression of it was simply that the frame rate was higher than the awful Machinima shows based around the Prime Wars trilogy of toylines. Aside from that... there's honestly not much good I can say about it. It's OK... but suffers from the same problems that plague a lot of modern TV, in that it feels like it was written with a particular conclusion in mind, and everything else was written purely to achieve that conclusion. There was also a real sense of cheapness to it, in that there wasn't much variety in the body types of the robots. Literally all the background 'extras' were repaints of the main characters, without even slight changes to their heads. When a cheaply made cartoon from more than 35 years ago had more character variety than a new CGI show, you pretty much know from the start that it ain't going to be groundbreaking.

Now, because it's only just out, I'm going to try to avoid outright plot spoilers... but be prepared, as there may be a few spoilerish details...

Studio Series #57 Offroad Bumblebee

I was reasonably convinced, back when I bought MPM-7 Bumblebee, that I'd never feel compelled to buy another live action movie Bumblebee figure. Even when Studio Series #49 turned up, looking pretty good (and, of course, in scale with the rest of the Studio Series line), I didn't feel it was necessary for my collection because I'm still a huge fan of Battle Blade Bumblebee from 2010, and I really think I've had enough Camaro Bumblebees for one lifetime.

So, seeing the flaw in my plan to avoid lining their pockets by buying yet more Bumblebee toys, Hasbro decided to take advantage of the only other terrestrial disguise taken by their protagonist in his solo movie... leading us to now take a look at the so-called Offroad Bumblebee.