2021 Retrospective

If anyone had suggested that 2021 might actually be worse than 2020 - in any way, not simply related to COVID-19 - I don't think I'd have had a particularly hard time believing them. While I'm generally an optimistic person, I'm also very cynical and have seen sufficient evidence that certain public figures are motivated wholly by self-interest, which inevitably leads to disaster.

TransFormers Collectors' Club 2017/Combiner Wars Shattered Glass Starscream

It was quite rare for the TransFormers Collectors' club to release exactly the same character twice, in two different molds (Kreo figures not included). The only other one I can think of was Toxitron, who appeared in TransFormers Animated form at BotCon 2011, then in Combiner Wars form in the final set of the Club's Subscription Service in 2017. Technically, though, even they are from different continuities... While this is simply a Combiner Wars version of Shattered Glass Starscream... and, unless Shattered Glass has its own multiverse (which, admittedly, is not inconceivable) this thing is a development of the BotCon version rather than a whole new character.

I never picked up the original Shattered Glass Starscream, since I already have a couple of iterations of the Galaxy Force Starscream mold, and I didn't really think the G1 Jetfire homage paint job suited it that well. This one had the advantage of being both smaller and - at the time - substantially cheaper, since the BotCon figure rarely appears outside of the BotCon 2008 boxed set.

Of course, this being a Combiner Wars mold, it was intended as part of one of the Club's swan-song gestalts but, by this point, it seems as though the Club didn't really care: Starscream was never officially assigned to any particular combiner beyond the vague suggestion that he could be use to create something called "Modulus", which was described as being formed with two other BotCon figures (Medix and Ratchet from the 2016 show's customisation class) and two mainline Combiner Wars figures (Protectobot Rook and Technobot leader Scattershot). Personally, I've had him as part of a custom Sky Reign along with other, similarly teamless 'bots.

War for Cybertron: Kingdom/Battle Across Time Collection Skywarp

One of the most frustrating things about being sick and tired of G1 reboots is that, when Hasbro releases a boxed set of two or more TransFormers toys, there's a good chance I'd only be interested in half the set, at most. Such was the case when the 'Battle Across Time Collection' was announced. Comprising two boxed sets - Maximal Grimlock & Autobot Mirage and Maximal Skywarp & Autobot Sideswipe - my interest was piqued by both of the Beast Wars reboot repaints, but I couldn't have cared less for the two Autobots. Upon seeing the final products, my interest in Grimlock was seriously reduced by the uninspiring (not to say incomplete-looking) paint job. Skywarp, meanwhile, was a bit of an oddity from the start. A repaint of Kingdom Airazor (which I really liked) with a head sculpt based more on the character's appearance in the Beast Wars anime than on the original toy (which was named Silverbolt in the west, but categorically not another form of the other Silverbolt)... and I couldn't decide whether I liked it or not.

Of course, that was largely a moot point, considering the somewhat ridiculous cost of either set: £58.99 for the former, £48.99 for the latter, both of which seeming somewhat over the odds for a two pack when the paintwork wasn't exactly extensive. Granted, it's still (objectively) better value than most BotCon toys, which could start at those sorts of prices for a single Deluxe class repaint, but it was more than enough to put me off buying either set, considering I'd then have to dispose of the figures I didn't want.

However, it seems there are more than enough fans who are only interested in the Autobot figures and don't mind selling off the Maximals (Skywarp being, by far, the more common on the secondary market right now). I quick look on eBay identified a handful of UK sellers offering him for around the £20 mark - well below half the cost of the set, which is always a surprise given many sellers' propensity for asking close to the full price of the complete set for just half its contents (or less). A few days later, I got a notification that one seller was willing to knock £2 off, making him about a quid cheaper than a standard, solo-release Deluxe in the Kingdom line, so I figured I might as well.

The only question being, is this semi-'exclusive' figure - rejected by its original owner - a worthwhile addition to my collection, considering it's no longer even a Femme-Bot?

Hasbro PulseCon 2021 Post-Mortem

OK, this is quite a bit later than intended, but I ended up watching Hasbro PulseCon Day 1, live, and almost in its entirety... And, as a TransFormers fan, I can honestly say that I was excited by the Power Rangers reveals (John Warden's new gig). And the Ghostbusters reveals, to be fair.

The TransFormers segment - which lasted about 50 minutes - kicked off with a brief lead-in from Anthony Ramos, star of the forthcoming Rise of the Beasts movie, who turns out to be a Beast Wars fan himself. As an aside, it always makes me feel so old whenever I learn of people who discovered TransFormers via Beast Wars... but Ramos' enthusiasm at least seemed pretty genuine. I'm a little concerned that the film is going to be an absolute mess, but will reserve judgement till the trailers arrive, so I can make a decision over whether or not to bother seeing it.

Studio Series #75 Jolt

It doesn't surprise me in the least that it's taken seventy four other toys - most of more prominent or popular characters from the live action movie franchise - before Hasbro finally got round to their third attempt at Jolt. The character seemed to have been hastily edited into Revenge of the Fallen, as an afterthought, in certain shots only, had barely any dialogue (none that couldn't be attributed to another character), took no active part in any battles... and yet somehow became key to preparing Optimus Prime for his final battle with The Fallen. Without fanfare, Ratchet simply called out "Jolt, electrify!" and his whole raison d'être was made clear.

And this is the problem when your whole movie franchise is built on little more than deals made with vehicle manufacturers. If they have a car they want to promote, it'll have to be shoehorned in somehow, logic and narrative coherence be damned.

Nevertheless, he was in the movie... Hasbro's previous attempts at Jolt weren't great, so let's see if it's a case of "third time's the charm", or if this is just another forgettable robot, from a forgettable film, made out of a forgettable car.

DNA Design DK-18 SS-56 Upgrade Kits

DNA Design have produced some truly excellent upgrade kits for the Studio Series line, though most are for figures I've not bothered picking up, or just don't quite add enough justify the expense to me, personally. I've yet to write up the first two kits I bought, for Studio Series Grimlock and Ironhide, despite them both offering substantial improvements over the stock figure. I'll get around to them eventually, I'm sure, but this one for Studio Series Shockwave - which I'd been eagerly waiting on for since its announcement around the middle last year - really earnt its swift write-up.

I finally received notification of despatch in the early part of this month, from which point it was almost two full weeks before it arrived from China. Now that I finally have it in-hand, let's see how big a deal it turned out to be after so long a wait.

Buzzworthy Bumblebee/Worlds Collide Blackarachnia

(Femme-Bot Friday #78)

The Buzzworthy Bumblebee line has become a source of seemingly never-ending puzzlement for me. Quite apart from the fact that Hasbro still insist on pushing Bumblebee as somehow central to the TransFormers brand - perhaps moreso than either Optimus Prime or Megatron - they have created a whole new toyline whose express purpose is to put as many different versions of that single character on the shelves, and they somehow fail to see a problem with that.

But then, not content with shoehorning perfectly good Beast Wars reboot toys into yet another of their interminable ostensibly G1-rebooting toylines, they've created a Buzzworthy Bumblebee boxed set that takes two Kingdom beastformers and jams them in with a five-years-late Titans Return toy and a repaint of Earthrise Cliffjumper as Bumblebee, even though there was a perfectly good, dedicated Bumblebee mold in the War for Cybertron Trilogy line (released as a Walmart exclusive in the US, but seemingly more widely available in other territories) which they could have used.

Then again, this is the same company that made both a Bug Bite and a Shattered Glass Goldbug out of the Cliffjumper mold, neatly missing the point of the choice of molds used in the predecessors.

So. Worlds Collide: a Buzzworthy Bumblebee boxed set, exclusive to Walmart in the States (availability in the UK still to be confirmed) comprising Nemesis Primal (a character who did not appear in the Netflix show, and who may be Nemesis Prime cosplaying as Optimus Primal or Optimus Primal corrupted by Unicron), Fangry (a Titans Return retooling that was seemingly - and bafflingly - the main draw of this set for many fans), the aforementioned Bumblejumper (or would this be Cliffbee?) and a reworking of Kingdom Blackarachnia based upon the the appearance of the original Beast Wars Blackarachnia's toy.

As you can imagine 75% of this set was of zero interest to me... and when reports of the QC problems - ranging from insanely loose legs on Fangry to insanely tight arms on Nemesis Primal - emerged, I felt my lack of interest was vindicated. Naturally, though, those gullible fools who bought the set for just one of the figures started splitting it up and trying to make back their money via the secondary market. While I found one UK seller looking to offload his Blackarachnia, their Buy It Now price was seriously over the odds (approx. half the price of importing the full set from the US, with UK shipping on top of that? Seriously?) and they declined my offer (approx. one third the price of importing the full set from the US, so pretty fair, I thought). Thankfully, I found a couple of US sellers offering a much more reasonable price (slightly higher than a standard Deluxe) and with acceptable costs via eBay PackLink shipping, and so I snapped her up.

And so, coincidentally exactly nine months after I wrote about the Kingdom toy, here she is!

TransFormers Legacy: already a joke

So, Hasbro have chosen to pre-empt their own online PulseCon event - running Friday 22nd to Saturday 23rd October - by revealing a couple of toys from the upcoming TransFormers Legacy toyline: new versions of Skids (from G1) and Bulkhead (from TF Prime). It's a bold move... but also means they can get a feel for the fan reaction without their own servers being bombarded.

Call me a cynic, but I think that might be the main reason... Because, if these two toys are representative of what TransFormers Legacy is going to be, Hasbro have pretty much lost me as a customer.

Brian Goldner, Hasbro CEO, dies aged 58

I should preface this by saying that I don't consider this blog to be 'a news site', but I have occasionally reacted to significant news, and offered my own personal thoughts. To this end, I'll simply acknowledge Mr. Goldner's passing here, with commiserations to his surviving family, and add my own thoughts after the jump break.

It was quite shocking news to wake up to this morning, though it appears he had been battling cancer for about a decade. As has been pointed out elsewhere, Goldner's leadership was instrumental in developing Hasbro from its humble beginnings as a toy company, to the multi-media entertainment company it is now - with Hasbro Studios producing movies, TV shows and videogames related to their toy properties. I believe it was Goldner who announced, some years ago, that Hasbro wanted to be identified as "an Intellectual Properties company that also makes toys."

The Crushing Ennui of Modern TransFormers Collecting (w/ Addendum 28/9/21)

OK, perhaps that's a little dramatic, but the dearth of activity on this blog over most of a couple of months basically comes down to a fundamental loss of impetus due to a number of factors.

First and foremost, the War for Cybertron Trilogy has been a massive disappointment in my opinion. Not just in and of itself, considering how few of the toys I've bothered to purchase, but in what it represents. Not only had Hasbro already devoted the preceding decade to remaking G1 over and over again, literally re-treading the same ground, just with a different gimmick each time, but they then chose to take yet another crack at it with War for Cybertron and then failed to keep to their original plan for the line. Dunno about anyone else, but it gave me the impression they never really had a plan other than "Quick! We need more G1! But different! Only not too different!"

A Missed Marketing Opportunity

Just a short, silly thing from a few days ago...

While I was working on the Kingdom Huffer write-up, my girlfriend bought me a bottle of Irn Bru from one of the local shops and, seeing the two together, observed that they could be related:

It's no Pepsi Optimus Prime, but it's a decent alternative

War for Cybertron Trilogy Centurion Drone

Something I wasn't aware of when I wrote about Brunt was that his design had been based on the Centurion droids from the IDW comics, as a massive improvement on the crummy, seemingly Fantasy-influenced design of the green, dome-headed droids from the G1 cartoon. It seemed only logical, then, that a repaint should be in the works, since the figure seemed to be very much geared toward those who like to build armies of identical figures, like the Vehicons from TransFormers Prime.

Leave it to Hasbro, then, to re-release the figure only as part of a limited edition boxed set, along with a set of accessories missing from their individual toys. And, typically, it was long sold out by the time Hasbro Pulse reached the UK.

Since Brunt was - for my money - about the best toy in the entire Siege line, I was keen to get hold of the repaint, even if troop-building was out of the question (had been desirable to me in the first place, which it... wasn't... honest). The set was re-released by Takara Tomy earlier this year, but that set was equally hard to find. Thankfully, the repaint figure was the only part of the boxed set that I wanted, so I figured it was only a matter of time before someone put it up on eBay having bought the set for the accessories. Back over the summer, that's exactly what happened, so I snapped him up.

Thirteenth Anniversary

While, once again, I've not bought a great deal of new stuff since last year, it's not been as easy to pin down a Top Ten because, frankly, the official merchandise has been largely disappointing to one degree or another. According to the numbers, I have bought more than last time - both official and Third Party (12 and 4 figures, respectively) - but only because of the three I held over from last year. In a lot of ways, I'd have felt better at doing a Top Five and some honourable mentions... What's happened here is perhaps predictable, but sad nonetheless.

A good chunk of the problem is that the whole War for Cybertron Trilogy, with the surprising exception of a couple of Weaponisers, has been a complete waste of time for me. This appears to be true for many others as well, considering how quickly people seem to be reselling some of these toys! I first got into the franchise via G1, back in 1984, at around ten years of age. I've now been an adult TransFormers collector far longer than I was a collector as a child, and we've now had about a decade and a half of G1 reboots taking centre stage. I'm more than a little fed up of Hasbro producing the same thing over and over again.

At this rate, Third Parties would be set to become the only good thing about being a TransFormers collector, except many of those have been frightened off producing direct analogues due to the much-publicised raids on various Chinese knockoff-makers and the arrest/incarceration of toy-modding genius Black Apple. Still others have been put off by the vitriolic 'fandom' response to their products. Meanwhile, much the fandom is intent on convincing themselves that the QC issues and the overall decline in build quality are minor. In response to a Facebook post about the so-called Studio Series '86 Coronation Starscream - a Leader class package made out of the Voyager class Earthrise Starscream and some accessories - I suggested this approach was "a little insulting" and, while a handful agreed that Hasbro might have at least remolded a few parts to make it a bit more 'toon-like, others got defensive - there was one comment along the lines of "you act like they're forcing you to buy it"... which is kind of misses the point while somehow also being the exact opposite of the case.

But I digress. Let's get into it...

War for Cybertron: Kingdom Huffer

Most of my earliest TransFormers toys, back when the toyline first launched in the mid-1980s, were Mini Autobots bought with pocket money. I have a clear recollection of buying Cliffjumper first, then Windcharger, and then I'm pretty certain my third Autobot purchase was Huffer, because I found his Budiansky-authored character bio utterly delightful (what can I say, I was a weird and occasionally somewhat grumpy kid!).

So when Huffer was revealed as one of the new Mini Autobot recreations coming out in the Kingdom line, I was initially very much on board. After all, while WfC's new Deluxes tended to be on the small size, and Earthrise Cliffjumper is almost a perfect match for Scout class Reveal the Shield/TF United Windcharger, even if he does compare less favourably with the Legends class Mini Autobots from RtS or the Prime Wars Trilogy.

When the toy was actually revealed, however, I initially decided not to bother after all. Hasbro had essentially taken the engineering from an existing Third Party figure and cut it down to the bare bones, leaving the lower legs hollow and awkward flaps of plastic for feet, then sought to achieve the desired pricepoint by throwing in unnecessary accessories - specifically a riot shield and a shotgun. These were better suited to the concept of Siege than Earthrise and, even then, more appropriate to one of the few Autobot warriors than to a character who was - in the original G1, at least - a Construction Engineer. All of this turned Kingdom Huffer into an easy pass...

...Until I found myself with a £10 voucher which could be used at The Entertainer, amongst other stores. Lacking any other, more constructive use for such a voucher for the time being, I reluctantly spent it on acquiring what had appeared to be a fairly lacklustre figure. Could Kingdom Huffer turn out to be a pleasant surprise..?

Hasbro Pulse/Shattered Glass: OK, I Honestly Didn't See THAT Coming...

The final figure in the Hasbro Pulse Shattered Glass 'Capsule Programme' has been revealed (by leaked images) as Jetfire... This presents two genuine surprises.

Neither should be surprises, all things considered, but I have to admit that I didn't see either coming and, even if I'd expected the first, the second would still have been unexpected.

The first surprise, then, was that they'd repainted a Commander class figure. The reason it was a surprise is that these figure are pretty huge, and the idea that they'd turn one into what's ostensibly a limited edition figure seems like more of a risk than I'd have thought Hasbro would be comfortable with. The reason it shouldn't have been a surprise is that Hasbro tends not to make a mold if they're not planning on releasing at least one repaint, and there aren't exactly abundant options with Jetfire. The Classics Jetfire mold may only have been repainted as the random and nondescript Universe Treadbolt by Hasbro, but it was also used by Takara Tomy to create Dark Skyfire, and for BotCon Dreadwind. 

The second surprise is the colourscheme because, where SG Starscream took on the colourscheme of G1 Jetfire, SG Jetfire has just been giving a bland, mostly black paint job with a few highlights in silver/gunmetal, purple and green. Essentially a colourscheme somewhere between Siege Skywarp and Hotlink, but with a lot more black. This was a surprise because a lot of fans - myself included - would have predicted a Jetfire in Starscream's colourscheme. Shattered Glass wasn't all straight colour-swaps between analogous characters on either side, but it would have made sense in this case. Of course, the reason it shouldn't have been surprise was that it's basically a rip-off of the Takara Tomy Dark Skyfire figure, which had been officially repurposed as SG Jetfire in BotCon 2012's follow-up story, Invasion.

Still, assuming a Commader class figure was always on the cards, a repaint of Rodimus Prime would have been more logical... if a little predictable... making for a bit of a no-win situation for Hasbro, in my opinion. Do the predictable thing and people are disappointed by the lack of originality. Do the unexpected and people are disappointed that it's not unexpected enough.

So... Touché, Hasbro - you've done something somewhat unexpected... I hope you're proud of yourselves for defying my predictions.

...But your whole take on Shattered Glass in its entirety is still a bit rubbish, and you'd have been far better off creating figures of characters not featured in the BotCon comic book... Or featured in the comic book but not appearing as BotCon exclusive toys. Straight remakes - most of which are fundamentally inferior to the originals - are both disappointing and dull and, given the premium prices you've been charging due to their exclusivity (be it real or just perceived), just not worth the money.

Here's hoping your next 'Capsule Progamme' does something a little better.

...And Yet More Surprises

I just wish I could say they were pleasant.

So, first we have the revelation of a G1 toy-coloured version of Kingdom Galvatron - a toy that sold out on the UK branch of Hasbro Pulse within a couple of days of going live, despite its £59 ($82) price tag. I won't deny that the figure looks marginally better in the toy-accurate colourscheme, but the mold generally - and its alternate mode specifically - look utterly dire. Galvatron was a badly-designed character in the animated movie, not just because it looks nothing like the toy... and the sentiment works just as well the other way round. I will probably never understand the fixation on remaking a character like Galvatron in such a way as to make him more accurate to the ugly animation model, rather than just completely reinventing him into something that actually looks good in both modes, with perhaps a few nods to the animation model.

Since then, images of a War For Cybertron Trilogy version of Ravage (AKA Tripredacus Agent) made out of a re-engineered version of the Kingdom Cheetor mold have emerged. It currently appears to be available exclusively in Asia, though the instruction leaflet includes 'SDCC1' in its text, seemingly suggesting it's something for an upcoming San Diego Comic Con.

Initially, this was a pleasant surprise, not least because the original Beast Wars figure generally commands a few hundred quid on the secondary market these days (anywhere from £300 to £500+, boxed). What was visible in the box shots of this new version looked pretty good, and the set also includes a G1 Ravage toy (with chromed missile pods) in a clever presentation box representing Ravage's final appearance in the Beast Wars TV show, where he transformed into a cassette and disappeared into the console of his exploding spacecraft.

...And Yet More Crossovers

We've seen announcements recently for TransFormers crossovers with both Jurassic Park and some musical artist named J. Balvin (both with photos) as well as, supposedly, the whole pantheon of Universal Monsters, starting with Dracula, and even some tentative plot details about the next live action TransFormers movie, subtitled Rise of the Beasts... 

...And I'm genuinely starting to worry about the future of TransFormers.

Perfect Effect PE-DX10 Jetforce Revive Commander

You have to hand it to Perfect Effect: when they know they have a winning figure, they really make the most of it. Last year, I picked up their upgrade set for Super Ginrai and their Powermaster Optimus Prime/Ginrai figure to spruce up an already excellent Takara Tomy Legends Super Ginrai figure which only suffered by relying too much on the engineering of the older Combiner Wars/Legends Ultra Magnus figure. PE's Jinrai Prime figure was quickly repainted into PC-17 Core Magnus - designed to replace CW/Legends Ultra Magnus' integrated truck - and PC-20 - designed for the Primitive Skateboarding exclusive black repaint, which could then comfortably function as both a Nucleon Quest Super Convoy and a Powermaster Nemesis Prime, considering the exclusive toy's colourscheme didn't match either.

But what happened next was perhaps the most interesting development of the mold: a strange hybrid which paid equal homage to God Ginrai/Apex Armour Powermaster Optimus Prime and the deus ex machina/MacGuffin-powered combination of Optimus Prime with parts pillaged from the corpse of Jetfire at the end of Revenge of the Fallen.

Needless to say, that is very much my jam.

However, given my prior history with Perfect Effect, I'd been a little reluctant to buy the PC upgrades, let alone another complete figure... And, with my finances being less than ideal over the last year or so, I'd put off buying this set even though there were no reports of horrific QC problems like those of Leonidas. It eventually got to the point where he was no longer available via my usual channels. However, just as my birthday rolled around this year, and around the time my folks made polite enquiries as to whether there were items not on my Amazon wish list that I might like to be treated to, I found JapanWorld House of Robots - another website based on the Continent (in Rome, Italy, specifically), who had a limited stock of him remaining, and ordered him forthwith. Fortunate for me, considering they now no longer have him in stock!

So, let's take a look at Jetforce Revive Commander and see if he was worth seeking out...

The Thrilling Climax

A 'teaser' trailer for the War for Cybertron: Kingdom series on Netflix arrived in the last couple of days and, without any real enthusiasm, I watched it.

Naturally, at just a little over 20 seconds in length, it doesn't offer much, even as a teaser, but it does suggest that most, if not all transformations will continue to happen 'off screen'. There's a bit where Optimus Prime comes under fire in robot mode, and emerges from a cloud of smoke and debris in truck mode after the traditional transformation sound is heard. For that reason alone, I wouldn't bother watching any of its six episodes. But then... he also still has his Cybertronian vehicle mode, so precisely what was the point of Earthrise? And what's the point of the Earthrise toyline - and half of the Kingdom toyline - if the Autobots never adopt their contemporary, terrestrial vehicle disguises?

Hasbro Pulse/Shattered Glass: I Called It! #1

Just announced today is Hasbro's version of Shattered Glass Goldbug... and, while it follows the pattern by 'borrowing' heavily from the predominantly black paint job of the BotCon figure, they at least chose not to stoop to making him yet another reuse of the Sideswipe mold on homage to the original being Exilion/Hot Shot.

Not strictly TransFormers-related, but...

Since it's otherwise been a bit quiet hereabouts lately, I figured it might be worth mentioning that I've made another post on my other toy blog which may be considered at least somewhat pertinent by regular readers of this one, especially those who follow my Femme-Bot Friday posts.

Here, have a teaser:

Hasbro Pulse Fan First Friday - May 2021 - New Reveals & Opinions

It's very likely that the fact that I didn't post all this immediately after the half-hour event yesterday tells you all you really need to know about what I thought of the newly revealed merchandise. I know it wasn't intended to be the big, sprawling presentation that the Fan Fest back in April was, but a quick glance at the chat during the show proved that I wasn't alone in expecting a little more from it.

This event opened with a countdown in front of a TransFormers The (animated) Movie poster highlighting this as the 35th Anniversary of the animated movie. Funny thing - and I've thought this occasionally while watching Chris McFeely's 'Basics' videos on YouTube - is that they referred to it as The TransFormers The Movie throughout... I've always subconsciously dropped the 'The' at the start, even though it was part of the G1 branding: the toyline was called 'The TransFormers' not 'TransFormers'... But I digress...

Wonder Festival 2007 Binaltech BT17 Black Convoy

I had to think long and hard about posting about this figure because, while Perfect Effect's Leonidas is undoubtedly the most disastrous purchase I've made in all my years of collecting, Binaltech Black Convoy comes a very close second. Made available at the winter 2007 Wonder Festival in Tokyo for the very reasonable price of ¥6,500 (a mere £42 in today's money), I acquired this on eBay at some point after the event. Once out of its packaging (a bubble pack, much like contemporary Alternators toys, rather than the traditional Binaltech box), it quickly became apparent that I'd bought a bit of a lemon: one of the joints connecting the bonnet to the car had been subject to a glue spillage and was immobile at an awkward midpoint, useful neither for robot mode nor vehicle mode.

At the time, it felt kind of like the universe's response to my avarice, considering I'd already acquired the Alternators versions of both Optimus and Nemesis Prime, and this figure basically went straight back into its packaging. There it remained until a few months ago, when it fell off the shelf it was on. Naturally, since the packaging was open, the figure slipped out on the way down, leading to one of the wing mirrors breaking off.

Since the box is clearly no longer a safe storage place, and I've been debating what to do about the wing mirror (temporarily on hold, having discovered that every tube of superglue I own has dried up), he's been sat on one of my main display shelves just to keep him reasonably safe and out of the way... Earlier in the week, I had to do a bit of hoovering, and so cleared the space in front of that cabinet, I figured I might as well pull him out and snap a few photos...

Studio Series #72 Starscream

Given that the Cybertron sequence in Travis Knight's Bumblebee-centric live action movie was comparatively short, it's spawned an awful lot of products... from the high-spec action figures created by 3A to the Studio Series toy made for the Cybertronian form of Cliffjumper, based on the briefly-glimpsed vehicle mode of B-127 himself, even though he was on screen for only about a minute. There have even been hints of Third Party offerings of some of the character seen in this sequence, so it clearly fired the imagination of many in the movie's audience.

Probably the highlight of this new take on the TransFormers' homeworld was the striking appearance of the Seekers. Taking its cue from the cartoon, there was a veritable rainbow legion of them, almost all of whom were nameless cannon-fodder. Even so, they were exceptionally well-designed: instantly recogniseable, even when in motion, and given an excellent new take on what has been an absolute millstone since the cartoon's pilot episode first aired, the Tetrajet.

And, of course, Hasbro are canny enough to know that making a toy of this design would be a worthwhile endeavour, not least because of its repaint potential. Since Starscream is the only named Seeker to have appeared in any of the movies, it seems only natural that he should be released as the first iteration of the Knightverse Tetrajet.

Blogger 'Fun'

When I got up this morning and checked my email, I found two notifications from Blogger in my email inbox. I always get quite excited when I receive a comment, because it's still quite a rare occurrence... But the subject line of the emails made my heart sink:

"Your post titled 'Robots in Disguise Rail Racer' has been deleted"

"Your post titled 'Cybertron Brakedown GTS' has been deleted"

According to each of these emails, it had been determined that these posts "violated our malware and viruses policy." and continued with the recommendation "We encourage you to review the full content of your blog posts to make sure that they are in line with our standards as additional violations could result in the termination of your blog."

Mr Bucket MR-02 Upgrade Set for UT R-01 Peru Kill

Something I didn't touch on in my write-up of Unique Toys' inaugural movie continuity figure, R-01 Peru Kill, was the omission of a couple of Lockdown's weapons. While his enormous 'head cannon' was basically his signature weapon in the movie, featuring even in the trailer with its own detailed on-screen transformation/reveal, he was also seen to wield a smaller, arm-mounted version at times, as well as the all-important Spark Extractor he used to off Ratchet when he was first introduced, in one of the early scenes of Age of Extinction.

It didn't really bother me at the time but, in retrospect, it seemed like a very strange omission... Surely it would have been better to release a more 'complete' movie Lockdown analogue, rather than chucking in the lacklustre 'Steeljaw' figure that I, for one, ended up just putting back in the box.

Mr Bucket evidently felt the same way because, at some point after Peru Kill's release, they put together this weapon set to correct these omissions. But do they live up to the quality of Unique Toys' figure?

JH-01 Rescue Pioneer (KO Masterpiece Movie MPM-11 Ratchet)

I've not delved into the Masterpiece lines a great deal, and have been particularly selective with the Masterpiece Movie branch, picking up only those characters whose mainline Deluxe class toys didn't quite deliver what I wanted. Consequently, I've not bothered picking up MPM Optimus Prime, 2007 Camaro Bumblebee or Ironhide, but snapped up Barricade and Jazz pretty swiftly (and MPM VW Bumblebee, but I've since sold him off), and the most recent two - Starscream and Ratchet - were on my want list. Even the MPM Megatron mold piqued my interest, being a surprisingly good, albeit still seriously flawed attempt to turn the bonkers movie CGI into plastic reality. However, the stock Hasbro/Takara Tomy paint jobs on all three of them ended up being utterly dire, making a complete mockery of the 'Masterpiece' concept and making some excellent new molds look cheap and unfinished.

Then, all of a sudden, and with very little fanfare, alongside the KO/upscaled versions of certain Studio Series toys, images emerged of KO versions of Megatron... then Starscream... then - seemingly just days after the official MPM toy was released - Ratchet. More fully painted, more elaborately decorated, more accurate to the movie in both vehicle and robot modes... more, generally. By comparison, what had been a slightly disappointing entry in the Masterpiece Movie line suddenly looked like an unpainted sample, despite being appreciably more expensive.

 

I had not, up until recently, even considered replacing my original movie Ratchet toy but, when something like this exists - at a fraction of the cost of the official Masterpiece - it's not hard to convince oneself to upgrade...

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2008 (Timelines) Shattered Glass Megatron & Divebomb

Prompted by the recent reveal of a 'new' Shattered Glass Megatron, fanmoded out of the uninspiring Siege tank mold with a few added parts, I realised that my write-up of the original BotCon toy was long past overdue... I mean, it's from an event in 2008, for crying out loud, so it's more than ten years late.

The Shattered Glass concept certainly has its detractors but, for me, the idea of Evil Autobots and Heroic Decepticons was a pretty obvious, just not entirely novel take on the franchise. I've often said that the mottos of the two factions' respective leaders are open to wilful misinterpretation: "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" could be offering the opinion that certain beings should not be considered 'sentient' - a parallel to the real world slave trade of old - while "Peace through tyranny" could be a rueful observation that only a world rigidly controlled can be considered truly 'peaceful', which echoes Beast Machines. Ultimately, Megatron wants peace, while Optimus Prime wants to reserve freedom for those who are deemed worthy of it.

And yet 'Shattered Glass', the comic book accompanying the boxed set, was a largely quite pedestrian tale which continued the adventures of Cliffjumper from the Collectors' Club membership magazine's ongoing story. It also did more with the Attendee Souvenir toys - particularly Megatron and Rodimus, sold at the show as a bagged set - than it did with the boxed set characters, and spent two of its mere 24 pages providing an infodump of the alternate history of the Shattered Glass version of Cybertron. Making matters worse, the Club had released a three page 'preview' of the comic ahead of the event - as an April Fool prank - which ended up being better (not least in terms of giving its characters discernible personalities) than the full comic published for the event.

 

All of which is to say that, if Hasbro are being a bit lazy with the Shattered Glass concept, it's not without precedent, to a degree. It wasn't one of BotCon's crowning achievements, but some of the figures - most notably those not part of the boxed set - were pretty good. So let's take a look at their Heroic Decepticon leader, Megatron.

So, I did a thing...

I've mentioned before that Thew Adams is one of the few TransFormers YouTubers I can bear to watch, because of his (normally) quickfire reviews, canny avoidance of the frequently painful step-by-step demonstration of transformation and, perhaps most important, the plethora of puns and percipient portmanteaus that are as much his stock-in-trade as his enthusiasm for shape-shifting plastic robot toys. During one of his recent videos, he mentioned that his G1 Outback was knackered... and, since my iGear Mini Warriors Bushwhacker had been up on eBay for a while, I figured I could do worse than cancelling the listing and 'donating' it to Thew.

So imagine my delight, when tuning in to his latest "Dammit, Open!", I see that very figure unboxed on-screen - the very first item in the video.

And imagine my surprise when he actually seems to like it...

Seriously, though, I'm glad Bushwhacker has found an appreciative home... Though, honestly, seeing it smashed on a Knockoff Beatdown would, I think, be quite cathartic. I almost wish I'd sent him my decaptitated Leonidas now.

Shattered Expectations

Following the Fan Fest event, earlier this month, and its revelation of Shattered Glass Blurr - the first in a special set of five Shattered Glass-themed repaints, each to be accompanied by one issue of an IDW limited series comic book - I was disappointed on a couple of levels.

First and foremost, they were repainting the new Studio Series mold... which, to me, looks like crap. Yes, the Shattered Glass version has a new, unique head sculpt... but it's based on the one BotCon/Fun Publications put together over ten years ago.

Which leads neatly into the second level of disappointment, in that it's not only a rip-off of the BotCon Shattered Glass concept, but it's a rip-off of the BotCon SG Blurr head sculpt and paint job, lightning bolts and all.

I could understand Hasbro picking up the Shattered Glass continuity, as it allows them to do something vaguely interesting with some existing molds... but to simply re-make a figure that already exists, using that character's latest mold is lazy. I'd wager that anyone interested in the Shattered Glass concept already has the BotCon 2008 boxed set, and probably at least some of the additional figures. Hell, even I have a handful of them - Megatron from the 2008 event, Galvatron from the 2011 event, Turbo Tracks from the 2012 event and the Subscription Service 5.0/Combiner Wars Starscream from 2017 (did have Rodimus and Jazz as well, but sold them last year) - but most of the figures, in terms of both the choice of character and their premium paint jobs, didn't interest me a great deal... And Hasbro's first offering in their Pulse-exclusive 'Collection' didn't either.

Today, they announced the second figure in the set: Shattered Glass Megatron... and I really don't know what to make of it. Let's break it down:

Real Gear Robots Longview

The strange thing about some of the device modes chosen for the Real Gear Robots line is that they offered little by way of actual play value. Sure, you could just about wear the earpiece provided with Booster X10 and Night Beat 7, but the buttons on the main unit were immobile. Much the same could be said for High Score 100, Speed Dial 800 and Zoom Out 25X, despite all being button-centric forms.

Enter Longview - not only one of the few to have missed out on the bizarre number suffixes applied to most of the figures in the line, but one of the few who, like Micro Change-derived toys such as Perceptor, have a semi-functional gimmick appropriate to their device mode... And all without the need for buttons.

 

War for Cybertron: Siege Soundwave Spy Patrol #2

It can hardly be disputed that the War for Cybertron toyline took a lot of its cues from Generation 1. The whole thing was pitched as (yet another) reboot of the very origins of TransFormers, but set in the time before Optimus Prime led the Autobots away from their home planet. More than that, though, the line saw the reintroduction - much to my chagrin - of the Micromaster size class along with the continued downsizing of toys in the existing Leader, Voyager and Deluxe pricepoints. While the Voyager class Soundwave wasn't packaged with any Micromasters, Hasbro's strategy of releasing them as 2-packs neatly mirrored not only the G1 Micromasters, but the card-backed releases of the original Cassetticons.

The only Micromasters I bothered picking up initially were Laserbeak and Ravage, comprising the original 'Soundwave Spy Patrol' set, but when a second Spy Patrol later emerged, featuring Rumble and Ratbat, I had that awful, sinking feeling that I was about to part with some money to obtain another pair of sub-par remakes of G1 classics. Strangely, this proved not to be the case initially, since the second Spy Patrol set seemed to sell out everywhere, almost instantly... There were sources overseas, but I didn't feel like paying over the odds and then risking import fees...

 

Cut to almost two years later, when I found a UK-based eBay seller offering them at a reasonable price. No need to ask what happened next, right?

Hasbro Pulse Fan Fest - April 2021 - New Reveals & Opinions

OK, so clearly there's a bit more to be said about War for Cybertron... I guess it's a positive that the line seemingly is not getting prematurely canned like Power of the Primes...

 

While there wasn't anything TransFormers to report after the pre-show 'Party' last night (unless you count a short gig by The Cybertronic Spree), the Fan Fest proper had a whole - quite substantial (half-hour/forty minute) - section devoted to the brand. Interestingly, they acknowledged that a lot of the stuff they were showing off had already been 'leaked', but that's not to suggest they had nothing new...

This being the first time I've had access to one of these events - the last one, I think, was region-locked - I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I'd actually wondered whether it would even be worth my tuning in, considering everything would be online within minutes of the show anyway... but, much like my spur-of-the-moment decision to take advantage of the evening entertainment at the debut TFNation, I figured it'd be daft to skip it, especially considering I signed up for Pulse Premium, and there were suggestions of exclusives available to preorder for members only.

 

I watched the event live but, obviously, this is now a little delayed due to dinner... and watching a movie over dinner... So, let's take a brief look at what was revealed... no pictures, but they're all now live on Hasbro Pulse and will probably be everywhere very shortly:

 

War for Cybertron: Kingdom Airazor

 (Femme-Bot Friday #77)

It's beginning to look as though there will be very little of interest to me in the final chapter of Hasbro's War for Cybertron line beyond a handful of its Beast Wars remakes. Even those have generally been undersized remakes and, for better or worse, minus many of the play features of the originals. The one area of the toyline where the results have exceeded my expectations is its Femme-Bots, with Blackarachnia being both an early release and a (small) Deluxe class reworking of the Masterpiece figure that ended up being, if not generally better, then at least better value for money.

So, when Airazor was revealed, and looked pretty fantastic, she went straight to the top of my want list. Considering I only acquired the original Beast Wars version comparatively recently (six or seven years ago, I think) and, broadly speaking, still think it's a pretty good toy (even if it's not remotely 'screen accurate'), my main reasons for wanting this are the improved articulation demonstrated by other War for Cybertron toys and a head sculpt more in line with her on-screen appearance.

 

It also came into stock on Hasbro Pulse UK ahead of its arrival in other UK outlets (and we can't all be YouTubers, graced by Zavvi's largesse) so that gave me an excuse to sign up.

However, all of the Kingdom toys I've picked up have come with several significant caveats, so let's find out if Airazor swoops to conquer what I've come to regard as the 'Kingdom Curse'.

Star Wars TransFormers Luke Skywalker (Snowspeeder)

Aside from a handful of notable exceptions, I tend to find myself very much against the concept of TransFormers crossovers. They end up either being simplistic retoolings (or repaints) of existing figures or, in the case of the early Marvel and Star Wars crossovers, pale imitations of the mainline toys.

In a lot of ways, given the source material, it actually shouldn't be too difficult to turn sci-fi vehicles into robots, but the results of both of these early crossovers did just one thing right... and it wasn't the transformation or the robot modes. The first batch ran sporadically between 2005 and 2012 with no real highlights (with the possible exception of 2007's Death Star/Darth Vader), then returned in 2018 with just two toys which were only marginally improved.

I never bought any of them, but my best friend did pick one up as a birthday present for me back in 2007, most likely because I've always been a huge fan of this particular Star Wars vehicle. So, let's take a look... How bad could it be?

Real Gear Robots High Score 100

The question of scale is one that comes up with almost every TransFormers toyline, and it's only relatively recently that Hasbro have even attempted to make their toys vaguely consistent within a given franchise. Even in Studio Series, there are discrepancies in the size of the robots due to the consistent scaling of the vehicle mode, and abject failures where two robots of approximately the same size class somehow transform into vehicles of entirely different scales.

What hope, then, for the 2007 toyline that styled itself a contemporary reworking of Takara Tomy's Micro Change concept, with items of present-day tech transforming into dinky robots within the bounds of a single size class..?

Well, obviously it had to go wrong to one degree or another and, while it's easy enough to make a pocket-sized toy out of pocket-sized tech, the same doesn't quite hold true for some of the other bits of hardware chosen for the toyline... And High Score 100 is one such example.

 

War for Cybertron: Kingdom Dinobot

Dinobot was one of those characters who got a really raw deal, both in the original 1996 Beast Wars toyline and pretty much ever since. A pivotal and much-loved character from the TV show, he was saddled with one of the worst-looking toys, that suffered even more due to the line's 'mutant mask' gimmick that was never even referenced in the TV show. So awful was the original toy that my one and only experience of it was Takara Tomy's 2006 Telemocha Series repaint, released for the 10th Anniversary, which had the dubious advantage of a somewhat show-accurate colourscheme. I bought even that version reluctantly, and only because I wanted to have a version of Dinobot to honour his impact in the TV show.

He got a somewhat improved remake in the Universe toyline, back in 2009, but I don't think it ever made it to the UK, because I couldn't find it anywhere - online or in bricks-and-mortar toy shops. It looks substantially better than the original but, even then, my preference would have been for Takara Tomy's Henkei! Henkei! version, as Hasbro's version introduced a weird green and purple combo to his colourscheme.

 

So now, in the wake of the stunning, yet fragile and expensive Masterpiece toy, it falls to Kingdom to produce a more affordable update to the character. Having chosen to do so at the Voyager class pricepoint, let's find out if it's another comparative dud like Optimus Primal, or something special like Blackarachnia...

War for Cybertron: Kingdom Megatron (Beast)

While I always preface these toy posts, it's not often I have to start by explaining why I had a particularly hard time with the write-up... But this toy certainly has some baggage now. This is the toy I referred to in my Hasbro Pulse/Courier Frustration post. The one that was delivered to entirely the wrong location, despite the courier's insistance that it was placed in my hands; the one that Smyths kindly re-sent, only for the original to turn up two weeks later thanks to the dilligence of the local postman.

So, on the one hand, I feel an immense sense of gratitude surrounding this toy, both to the company I bought it from, for their excellent customer service, and to Royal Mail (or a representative thereof), who went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure it reached me when the original courier failed.

But, on the other hand, every time I think about this toy, I am reminded of the frustration and anger I felt, dealing with the courier company and the inadequate process they have for investigating non-delivery complaints. I had been on the fence about this toy, and now occasionally wish I'd never ordered it.

...And that's before taking into account that I will naturally have complex feels about this toy because I already own both the Beast Wars original and the 2006 Beast Wars Reborn set. It's a little frustrating that I have, over the years, developed a habit of writing up 'new and improved' toys before their predecessors.

Kingdom Megatron is certainly new... but is it really improved?

The Other Half 3: The Next Toyline!

Apologies for the abundance of text-only posts... It's almost as if I'm treating this blog as a blog. This one is almost a counterpoint to yesterday's post, and it came together pretty quickly, so there didn't seem to be much point delaying it till after the next toy post (whenever that may be - hopefully soon).

 

On a complete whim, just for fun, and following my screed on the travesty that was the War For Cybertron Trilogy, I asked my girlfriend, Courtney, what she would do if she were tasked with creating a concept for a new TransFormers toyline. She's seen several of the TV shows, and even admitted to skimming through my toy review posts, so she has a pretty good grounding in the brand, and certainly has her own opinions on what has worked and what hasn't as far as the more prominent associated media goes.

 

Furthermore, she has said she likes the concept of 'robots in disguise' - as well as the idea of toys that are essentially action figures, vehicles and puzzles, all in one - and particularly likes the TransFormers toys that were derived from Takara's Micro Change line.

 

So, given free reign, without the need to refer to any existing TransFormers continuity or franchise in terms of characters or setting, what would her pitch be for a future TransFormers toyline?

 

Here's what she came up with...

On War for Cybertron - My (Probably) Final Thoughts

Since I'm now highly unlikely to get many other toys from the Kingdom toyline (seen Galvatron, think it's probably shit - I mean, spaceship handguns? Really? - but will reserve judgement till alternate mode photos emerge - ADDENDUM 19/3/21: have now seen the 'leaked' cannon mode images and, yes, it looks like shit), I'll take this opportunity to address one of my gripes about the so-called 'F.O.S.S.I.L. (Fossilized Osteo-Skeletal Shield Integration Loadout) Technology' which supercedes the 'C.O.M.B.A.T. (Cybertronian Omnifunctional Modular Battlefield Assault Tech) System*' pioneered in the Siege toyline.

 

Not that it exists in the first place - on that score, I have reached a state of equanimity.

 

Nor that robots transforming into dinosaur skeletons makes zero sense, particularly when the Beast Machines TV show established that a Cybertronian could develop a full, techno-organic beast mode by scanning a fossil.

 

Nor is my gripe even that someone at Hasbro clearly thought that acronym qualified as a clever and/or amusing pun and doesn't realise (or didn't care) that Osteo-Skeletal is a tautology. Marvel Comics strained credulity with some of their ridiculous acronyms, but the word salad of F.O.S.S.I.L. really takes the cake.

 

My gripe here is that, compared to Siege and Earthrise, this extended, collaborative play gimmick hasn't been evenly applied to all the toys. Optimus Primal has zero ports (despite appearing in the promotional artwork wearing F.O.S.S.I.L. armour), Megatron only two (on the soles of his feet), while Blackarachnia - about the smallest Deluxe in the line - has four (one on each calf, one on the sole of each foot), and Airazor has six (one on each arm, two on each leg) largely due to the intended deployment of her own weapons.

 

Real Gear Robots Booster X10

If you think about it, the concept of Real Gear Robots is as much a homage to those G1 toys taken from Takara's Micro Change line as it was a logical extension of the 2007 movie line, inspired by the transforming robots created by blasts of energy from the AllSpark cube. What better way to honour the very beginnings of the TransFormers line than to revisit the concept of robots in disguise as life-size items of consumer electronics? In a way, isn't it more strange that Hasbro had avoided that segment of the original toyline for so long?

 

However, the connection to the movies was, by all accounts, sheer good fortune, because the toys had apparently been in development alongside the Cybertron/Galaxy Force toyline. Long overdue though this reboot was, I think Hasbro were right to hold off on it, since it has no tangible connection to that line, and probably would not have garnered the same attention as a standalone line at the time, as it later achieved as an offshoot of the first movie toyline.

But let's take a look at one of my first purchases of the line and see how it compares to its distant ancestors.

Unique Toys R-03 Dragoon

I have a complicated relationship with The Last Knight, the final movie in Michael Bay's increasingly bizarre series of live action TransFormers movies. I refused to see it in the cinema, because it looked like a mess, and have continued to refrain from viewing it ever since. I didn't like the idea of shoehorning dragons and Arthurian legend into TransFormers (or vice versa), I have never enjoyed the excessive focus on human characters in movies ostensibly about giant alien robots, and the whole 'Knight' motif looked ridiculous...

...Nevertheless, I found the new design for Megatron strangely compelling. There was just enough G1 essence squeezed into his 'Black Knight' look (the stylised helmet, the arm-mounted cannon, Frank Welker's voice) and his vehicle mode (a coherent, albeit still very alien air/space craft) was vastly more impressive than any of those that preceded it, that it turned out to be one of the least aggravating designs for the Decepticon leader in the whole series.

Since I tend to prefer Leader class toys, when available, for Megatrons and Optimus Primes, I picked up the larger version from Hasbro's almost comically misnamed 'Premier Edition' line and, while it was a decent enough toy, it took some serious liberties with the design and its paint job was not just typically miserly but also amateurish and sloppy in its 'weathering' effects.

Since I'd already acquired Unique Toys' inaugural movie effort, Peru Kill, I wasn't particularly suprised when they unveiled their take on TLK Megatron, and it looked every bit as impressive... But does the end result meet the high expectations set by their first movieverse figure?

On Hasbro Pulse, and Courier Frustrations (with Addenda)

I learned yesterday - to my immense pleasure - that Hasbro have finally extended their Pulse webstore to the UK... just a little over two years after it launched in its current form.

 

Naturally, I wasted no time in putting through an order - Kingdom Airazor - and was somewhat concerned to note that Hasbro's courier of choice is Yodel.

 

There isn't a single courier out there that does not have its detractors, but my recent experiences of Yodel have been particularly noteworthy. I quite like that they identify their drivers by name, because it means I can be sure that I've had the same driver deliver to me three times in the space of about six months. Here's a brief summary of those experiences:

 

Magic Square Toy/Mukudo MS-G01 Peach Girl

 (Femme-Bot Friday #76)

In one form or another, the Super Deform phenomenon has always had a connection to TransFormers. Many of the original Mini Autobots (such as my first TransFormers purchase, Cliffjumper) were based on SD-style Choro-Q/Penny Racer toy cars, and there have been several overtly SD TransFormers toys more recently - both official, like Takara's Choro-Q Robo subline or the more recent Q TransFormers, and Third Party, such as Master Made's SDT series or Hero Hobby's Tiny series.

That being the case, the only strange thing about Mukudo's take on an SD Arcee is how long it took to happen, and particularly that it emerged after not only a selection of mainline and other Third Party figures, but after the official Masterpiece as well.

So, let's take a look at this dinky, cutesy and surprisingly late addition to my Arcee collection and see how she compares to other contemporary Femme-Bots...

Robots in Disguise Rail Racer

While the three components of Hasbro's Rail Racer were sold separately, Takara's version - JRX - was available as a single boxed set containing all three toys, each one featuring a lavish paint job to conceal the extensive use of translucent plastic in their construction. Given that none of the individual members of Team Bullet Train are exceptionally good, and that they're an unusual size (they'd probably be considered Voyager class these days), Hasbro's decision to break the set up into three supposedly Mega class boxes (probably only to accommodate their length) seems like nothing more than a means of maximising profits. By my estimate, the set of three would probably have amounted to the equivalent of single Super class figure like Optimus Prime or Ultra Magnus.

In retrospect, I'm more than a little weirded out by Hasbro's choice of size class descriptors: Spychangers (the Matchbox-sized vehicles), Basic (mostly G1 gestalt limb repaints), Deluxe (covering everything from the Autobot Car Brothers to the components of Landfill/Build King and G1 gestalt torso repaints), Mega (Team Bullet Train, Sky-Byte and two 3-packs of larger Basics that were effectively Beast Machines overspill), Ultra (Megatron and Galvatron) and Super (Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus), with roughly Super-equivalent toys like the Dreadwind/Smokejumper set and Scourge being outside the official size classes, apparently because they were US store exclusives. These designations are almost painfully 90s and, personally, I feel that they set Mega, Ultra and Super in the wrong order.

But I digress... Let's finally take a look at the members of Team Bullet Train in their combined form, as Rail Racer!

 

On Fiction, Part 5: A New Cartoon

It has been announced that a 'new' TransFormers cartoon is in the works, as a collaboration between Nickelodeon and eOne. I'm currently not sure what to make of this news but, for the most part, it feels broadly positive. Hasbro aren't keeping all their eggs in one basket, and with the Netflix War for Cybertron series set to conclude with Kingdom later this year, and the next live action movie supposedly set for release in the summer of next year, they're clearly looking to maintain brand awareness in the visual media.

Robots in Disguise Railspike

Every TransFormers team needs a leader, and for Team Bullet Train, that's Railspike. This role also makes him the uppermost section of the Rail Racer gestalt and, considering how Midnight Express handled being the legs, one would have to become concerned about how so similar a cylindrical vehicle could handle being both an individual robot and the upper chest, arms and head of a combiner.

It's probably not a good sign that neither Hasbro nor Takara Tomy ever repainted this mold, or used the same template with alternate vehicles... But let's see how Railspike works out on his own merits...

Robots in Disguise Rapid Run

Components of TransFormers gestalts have always tended to be a bit weird. Five-component teams, like the original G1 teams, had a certain balance, and two-parters like the Energon Powerlinx gestalts at least had simplicity on their sides...

 

Other combiners, such as G1 Devastator, or the combined form of RiD/Car Robots' Team Bullet Train, somehow end up with one component that feels almost redundant, so minor and perfunctory is the role they play in the larger robot. With Devastator, that was Long Haul... with Team Bullet Train, it's Rapid Run.

But is he a decent toy in his own right, or just necessary cog in the gestalt machine that is Rail Racer? Let's find out!

Robots in Disguise Midnight Express

I have to admit that, much like the RiD Dreadwind & Smokejumper set, I can't remember when I acquired Team Bullet Train - each sold separately in the west, despite being a boxed set in Japan - but I do know that I bought them all together, most likely from eBay and, if the metadata on my original photos is anything to go by, about ten years ago.

As far as I can recall, I wasn't even aware of them when I bought RiD Optimus Prime, Ultra Magnus, Megatron and Galvatron... Possibly not even when I later acquired Scourge or the Car Brothers. In fact, pretty much all I can remember is that I thought they looked like crap when I first saw them... but my feelings toward them later changed dramatically and, while I really coveted the Takara version with its translucent plastic, I ended up 'settling' for Hasbro's version.

The concept - a set of three bullet trains that transform into individual robots and also combine into a single, larger robot - seemed somehow almost stereotypically Japanese (rightly or wrongly, I see Japan as being a little obsessed with trains, not least because of the Densha de GO! arcade games which involve nothing more than the seemingly mundane and routine task of driving a passenger train on a set route, yet have been adapted to home consoles from the original PlayStation to the Nintendo Switch) and, while my appreciation of the RiD/CR line is still a little variable (too many Matchbox-style 'Go-Bots', G1 repaints and Beast Wars cast-offs for my liking), Team Bullet Train/Rail Racer is now among my favourite TransFormers toys.

Let's take a look and try to figure out why...

 

Alternators Optimus Prime

As previously mentioned on this blog, any Optimus Prime mold is fair game for later reuse as Nemesis Prime, so it was a bit silly of me to write up the repaint first... Or was it?

Because, for one reason or another, I ended up with two other iterations of this mold: the Alternators Nemesis Prime figure I've already dealt with, and the Binaltech version, Black Convoy, which turned out to be a bit of a lemon. I picked up the Alternators version of Optimus because, for a while, it seemed as though he wouldn't get a Binaltech release... but he did eventually show up in the much-maligned Kiss Players subline, replete with die cast parts and a unique paint job, in 2006. He also saw a release in under the original Binaltech branding two years later.

Of course, with three iterations of this mold in my collection, is there anything particularly interesting to say about this?

Superlink Shadowhawk Cosmo Type

If there's one thing that can be said in favour of Energon/Superlink, it's that it did things very differently from both Armada/Micron Legend, which it followed, and Cybertron/Galaxy Force, which it preceded, albeit with mixed success. A lot of the larger figures were slightly higher-tech looking, but still much the same level of intricacy as the former, while the smaller size classes included an imaginative range of robots and alternate modes, some of which ended up getting reused in the earliest movie toylines.

One of the oddities of the line was that Takara released a few variants that appeared even in the US version of the TV show, but weren't picked up by Hasbro for release in the Western markets. One such figure was the blue repaint of Shadowhawk/Divebomb, and the somewhat limited nature of its release put the so-called 'Cosmo Type' on my radar.

Studio Series #64 Cliffjumper

When this figure was first revealed, I was quite keen to pick him up, despite his tragically brief role in the Bumblebee movie (something of a running theme for the character in recent years), because Cliffjumper was the first TransFormers toy I ever bought, and I still have fond memories of him. I liked (what little we saw of) the design from the movie, particularly the Bayformer-yet-G1 head, and the toy seemed to have a nice, sleek vehicle mode, somewhat reminiscent of Jazz/Sideswipe from the War for Cybertron/Fall of Cybertron videogames.

 

Once I watched some video reviews and saw the figure in a bit more detail, I was put off - transformation was a clumsy adaptation of Offroad Bumblebee, leaving him with a massive backpack... However, finding a small leftover in my Amazon Gift Card balance from Christmas, and a single Cliffjumper toy remaining in their stock, I decided to order...  

 

War for Cybertron: Kingdom Blackarachnia

(Femme-Bot Friday #75)

A fitting follow-up to Big Firebird's inaugural entry into the 'sort-of-TransFormers-but-not-quite' market, since Beast Wars Blackarachnia was one of the first - if not the first - TransFormers TV show character to have blatant robo-tits, even though her toy was largely androgynous thanks to its original use as the male-coded Tarantulas. The TV show was able to better differentiate between the two Predacon arachnids, and the character designers clearly didn't want any ambiguity around her role as the Femme-Bot Fatale, giving her the proportions of a pin-up.

It's also interesting to see a mainline Blackarachnia toy so soon after the mostly well-received Masterpiece, since that figure's nigh-flawless robot mode came at the expense of a bulbous and hopelessly inaccurate beast mode.

What better way to begin, then, than by looking at how it's done with a Deluxe class toy?

War for Cybertron: Kingdom Optimus Primal

It surely goes to show what a terrible toy blogger I am that this will actually be the first Optimus Primal toy from my collection to get a post on this blog, despite having owned the original, Kenner-branded Beast Wars/Biocombat toy since I discovered it while idly browsing a department store in the mid-90s, and the Beast Wars Reborn version since its release in 2006. Problem is, either I never got round to photographing them, or I somehow lost the images at some point in the distant past. Right now, the original figure is in a cabinet I can't easily access, while the re-release is boxed up and in storage. Whether that works in the Kingdom toy's favour or not remains to be seen...

The original toy is still quite close to my heart, even though I only really bought it for a laugh and, at the time, found the idea of TransFormers turning into animals quite ridiculous. Frankly, I'm finding the G1/Beast Wars crossover that appears to be implied by the first two chapters of the Netflix show just as ridiculous, but at least some of the new toys are looking quite good.

So, as has almost become the tradition with this blog, let's look at the most recent interpretation of the Beast Wars Maximal leader, Optimus Primal.

G1 Protectobots/Defensor

Back in the days of Generation 1, I wasn't very successful in completing gestalt sets. I picked up all the Stunticons, Terrorcons, and all of Piranacon's limb-bots, but only acquired Snaptrap comparatively recently, on the secondary market, having already bought the Collectors' Club's boxed set back in 2008... On the Autobots' side, I didn't manage to obtain a full set of Protectobots, and didn't even start the Aerialbots or the Technobots.

Since I was closest to completing the Protectobots, I made a point of trying to obtain the two missing components - Streetwise and Hot Spot - as soon as it became practical. Both are reasonably easy to find on eBay, but the former is frequently broken, while the latter is normally missing some, if not all of his accessories - particularly the 'arms' for his base mode. I got lucky eventually, though, and even managed to get my hands on Streetwise complete with his packaging and a Hot Spot who was complete apart from missing stickers...

Still, Defensor is as good as complete, so let's now - finally - take a look at... The Protectobots!