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.