Hybrid Style THS-02 Convoy

This probably should have been posted a little closer to the 40th Anniversary date, or at least to my write-up of Earthrise Optimus Prime - the most recent G1-style Prime toy in my collection to be packaged with a trailer... Then again, I should probably have got to this oddity - and its two mass-released contemporaries - far sooner than I have, since I bought it eighteen years ago. 

Hybrid Style was a very short-lived, utterly Convoy-centric line which aimed to be 'Miniature Masterpiece', but ultimately failed to find much favour among fans. Only two molds were created - a remake of Galaxy Convoy (because Galaxy Force was in full swing at the time) and this G1 version, because there always has to be a G1 version. Subsequent to this 'vanilla' version, two black repaints were released, one of which was only made available in China.

Given that I own G1 Optimus Prime, Takara's MP01 (and, later, the Hasbro version of MP10), it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that I'd acquire the Hybrid Style version of the original Autobot leader... Though I confess that I had some reservations from the start, due to its small size and some rather tepid reviews online at the time.

Sixteenth Anniversary

As we mark another year of this blog's continued existence, the sense of ennui is strong. Hasbro have singularly failed to produce anything I was willing to pay full price for, even in those very few cases where I actually bought official merchandise. Meanwhile the Third Parties continue to pack in far more bang for your buck. Broadly speaking, what you get from Third Parties is a smaller range of better-engineered products at almost any scale... But the Masterpiece analogues is where they're really starting to shine. While Hasbro only recently finished off its 2007 Masterpiece Movie series with the last Decepticon, Brawl, several different companies have now released their interpretations of Dark of the Moon Megatron and Age of Extinction/The Last Knight Optimus Prime, Unique Toys released their take on DotM Mirage/Dino and revealed Revenge of the Fallen Skids and Mudflap, while amazing-looking figures of RotF Sideways and AoE Stinger magically appeared earlier this year.

As paid work (and my birthday) permitted, I made only a handful of purchases, fewer even than last year. My two Hasbro purchases both left me feeling a little ripped off, even having acquired both at a discount (a Legacy 2-pack for less than the cost of a single Deluxe, and a Core class figure for about £2-3 less than RRP). The new comic book series has been gaining a lot of praise in the fandom but, to me, it looks like an even worse version of the 1980s Marvel comics, and much of the narrative that some are describing as 'peak fiction' just seems like over-the-top nonsense to me. There have been no further rumblings about a live-action follow-up to Rise of the Beasts, but the first trailer for the CGI animated movie TransFormers One seemed to pitch it as a comedy road movie (which, I gather, is more a fault of the trailer than the movie it's advertising). There really doesn't seem to be much to get excited about... But I can't say I'm unhappy about not finding myself in accordance with the vast majority of blinkered, hardcore GeeWunners and those who think 'Bayhem' applied to a comic book story is a good thing...

So, again, we're celebrating an anniversary with a pretty negative vibe and, as always, we'll begin with the Dishonourable Mentions:

Galaxy Force Backgild

There were very few Galaxy Force toys that I didn't bother buying - even fewer that I didn't eventually buy the Cybertron version of - but the underachieving Scout class half-track vehicle, Backpack (aka Scattorshot) was one of them. This original form was a nice idea, and even followed the G1/Diaclone pattern of being a robot with his vehicle mode's front end as his chest, but the toy was too small and its robot mode wasn't very well articulated.

But when the TV show called for three of the Autobots to get upgraded forms, he was one of the lucky few, becoming Backgild (or Cybertron Defence Scattorshot), a Voyager class toy which, while broadly in the same Military vein, was a huge improvement in just about every way.

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2016 Combiner Wars Terrorsaur

The fact that the last handful of releases from the Fun Publications era of the TransFormers Collectors' Club and BotCon were branded as Combiner Wars toys, rather than coming under the Club's own brand, Timelines, was an early sign that changes were afoot.

Hasbro had pushed Combiner Wars hard - one might even say beyond its limits - and, while a custom gestalt made the ideal basis for an exclusive boxed set, they had produced so many retools of their own that, by 2016, there just weren't any surprises to be had with the format. Hasbro themselves had already moved on to Titans Return and, while FunPub's use of an older toyline was essentially par for the course, there just wasn't enough mileage left in Combiner Wars, even with a set related to (or perhaps retconning) Dawn of Futures Past - one of their very best BotCon sets.

Their take on Tripredacus was deeply uninspired, utilising some of the least highly-regarded molds, which were nevertheless among the most frequently retooled. The only real highlights of that year's show were a retooling of the RID2001 Megatron mold as TransMetals Megatron, and 2015's TransFormers Legends Slipstream mold (itself a retool of  the very first Windblade toy) as Airazor.

So... why did I also acquire Terrorsaur? Let's see if I can figure that out, shall we?

BingoToys BT-06 Spider Lady

(Femme-Bot Friday #86)

It's a curious thing that, as a long-time arachnophobe, I've enjoyed the character of Beast Wars' Blackarachnia and, more recently, Airachnid from TransFormers Prime. The obvious answer is that both characters are very much in the tradition of the Femme Fatale, whose allure would tend to outweigh any sense of danger or unease that might come from the 'spider' aspect.

And, of course, they're not crawling about on my bathroom ceiling... but that's neither here nor there, right?

BingoToys weren't particularly on my radar until BT-06. Their previous output - including a Bumblebee movie Shockwave with an alternate mode every bit as dubious as his robot mode, and a Windblade analogue that didn't tick enough of the right boxes for me - hadn't inspired me, both because the aesthetics were unappealing and the transformations were lacklustre. That all changed with Spider Lady, who is a stylised take on Blackarachnia in much the same way as Big Firebird's Nicee was to have been a stylised take on Arcee.

Is this going to be a case where the temptation of a Femme-Bot Fatale outweighs my typical preference for a halfway decent transformation and a suitably robotic robot mode? Saddle up, folks, 'cos there's only one way to find out!

Real Gear Robots Night Beat 7

Real Gear Robots was a bit of an odd moment for me, as a Collector. Cunningly pitched as movie toys, but originally planned as being tangential to the Cybertron/Galaxy Force toyline, it was precisely the sort of thing I'd aim to avoid these days.

I surely can't imagine a similar toyline being popular now, especially given how simplistic and awkward most of them were... but, for whatever reason, I found the first wave or so quite compelling.

 

Unique Toys R-06 Red Dasher

Given his mostly insignificant role in Dark of the Moon and his subsequent off-screen death before Age of Extinction, it might seem strange that I have such a soft spot for a 'character' like Dino/Mirage. Part of it, I suspect, is just that his vehicle mode - a red Ferrari 458 - evokes a certain kind of gamers' nostalgia for me, various Ferraris being staples of many popular arcade and home console games during the 80s and 90s, perhaps the most famous being the Testarossa in Sega's Out Run (or the F40 from Turbo Out Run). While I'm certainly not a 'Car Guy', I will admit to a long-time appreciation of certain sports cars - notably those from Lamborghini and Ferrari - either because they've appeared frequently in videogames or the TransFormers franchise in one form or another.

...And yet, when Hasbro finally released their Studio Series Dino/Mirage back in 2021 (a whole ten years after the film was in cinemas), I didn't bother picking it up. Not because it wasn't a licensed Ferrari - that particular license being owned by another toy manufacturer - nor even because I already have both the Takara Tomy Movie Advanced version and the Alien Attack figure, Firage, but because the whole thing was lacklustre. Typical Hasbro dull red plastic and significant transformation cheats, yet most of the vehicle mode still ended up folded onto the robot's back.

Facing facts, though, the Movie Advanced figure simply isn't a screen-accurate rendition of Dino/Mirage, and the Alien Attack version is a fussy, fragile-feeling little thing whose approximately Deluxe class vehicle mode transforms into a robot mode in a scale that somehow fails to match pretty much anything else, either from Hasbro or other Third Parties...

So, when Unique Toys revealed their take on a (roughly) Masterpiece-scale Dino/Mirage, I was very much on board. Their pattern of basically turning a car inside out - introduced with Peru Kill, refined with DX9's La Hire - made for simple, enjoyable and sturdy transformations and, while their robots have sometimes been accused of lacking the movie CGI's intricate detail, early photos of their Red Dasher looked impressive. Of course, the real question is whether it's as impressive in-hand... So, let's take a look.

Studio Series Core class Concept Art Rumble

Core class looks, for all the world, like it should be a line of pocket-money toys. They're small, they're basic... Similar to the Mini Autobots from Generation 1, but with better articulation. Unfortunately, the £13/£14 UK RRP means they're too expensive to be considered true pocket-money toys... quite apart from being far too expensive for what you're actually getting.

The figure chosen to debut Core class in the Studio Series line was Bumblebee movie Shockwave - a truly baffling choice - which came out four years after the Bumblebee movie, and two years before the Voyager class toy. In some respects, it was also better articulated than the larger version. Some might say that alone made him worth the price - perhaps even better value-for-money than the Voyager - but his 'vehicle' mode was almost identical in structure to the TransFormers Prime version of Shockwave, which wasn't exactly inspiring. There had been no concept art for Shockwave's vehicle mode, theoretically giving the designers carte blanche to create something unique. The other figure in the first wave was Ravage which, arguably, should have been included with SS #83 Soundwave, so it's no surprise that Hasbro would later decide to create more minions for Soundwave, given they're now mining the archives for concept art.

Rumble is an obvious choice, considering his popularity and the frequency of his appearances in the G1 cartoon, and the fact that both he and Frenzy have come along in almost every recent toyline, including War For Cybertron, Studio Series '86 and Legacy, essentially all being Core class, or the closest equivalent in that line... These have all been rather lacklustre, though, so let's find out if the Core class Studio Series Concept Art Rumble breaks this pattern.

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2010 (Timelines) Sky-Byte

With BotCon tackling Generation 2 for BotCon 2010, Sky-Byte seemed like a rather odd choice for inclusion in the boxed set. G2 had been the short-lived first reboot of the TransFormers brand in the early 1990s, mixing crappy new molds loaded with simplistic gimmicks with frequently eye-searing repaints applied to almost everything from the earliest, Diaclone-derived waves of G1 onewards. Sky-Byte, meanwhile, was a Predacon introduced in the 2001 Car Robots/Robots in Disguise toylines, who was a repaint of a TransMetals 2 Maximal named Cybershark.

He was also a uniquely odd beastformer, in that his shark mode was effectively in a fixed curve, 'leaping out of the water' pose, and his robot mode was one of the most extraordinarily asymmetrical TransFormers toys I'd ever seen. I'm normally a fan of asymmetry, but something about the original toy never appealed to me, though I did end up buying the Thrilling 30 version, back in 2014.

But, back to BotCon 2010 and the Generation 2: Redux set. The inclusion of Sharkticons certainly fits the G1 reboot vibe, but I'm guessing that one of the writers of the BotCon comic must have been a fan of Sky-Byte, and saw an opportunity for an exclusive version of the character using the same mold, but this time with a more extravagant paint job along with a new and unique head sculpt. The question is, does such a toy that originated in the Energon line have what it takes to represent such a bonkers character? Let's have a look...

MetaGate G-05 Red Fantasy

(Femme-Bot Friday #85)

The Bumblebee movie didn't just bring a new, unprecedented coherence to storytelling in live action TransFormers movies, but a whole new aesthetic. Gone were the overcomplicated, oddly-proportioned Autobots and the insectoid Decepticons seemingly made of needles, knives and random metal shavings; the overabundance of grey and bare metal. The framing of each shot gave characters breathing room, allowing for physical characteristics to shine through, and individual robots were easily distinguishable at a glance, even in the thick of the action. No longer were we, for example, stuck looking at Optimus Prime's armpit as he cut a swathe through legions of Decepticons in the middle of a city, or watching Starscream gob up some lubricant in hyper-sharp, ILM-crafted detail.

Sure, the movie only really featured two Decepticons for the bulk of the story, but what Decepticons they were! Shatter and Dropkick were the ideal - not to say archetypal - pairing of brains and brawn, with the former even convincing the proto-Sector 7 team to work with them, despite representing themselves as "Decepticon Peacekeepers", a flagrantly oxymoronic description if ever there was one. Silver-tongued Shatter was the standout villain, exhibiting intelligence, cunning and a keen mind for strategy, with the dulcet tones of Angela Bassett breathing life into her. To cap it all, both she and Dropkick became Triple Changers, which naturally made it difficult for Hasbro to make toys of them.

To make them viable, Hasbro essentially made two versions of each in as many size classes as possible... The Deluxe class Studio Series car mode Shatter was a clumsy, flimsy mess, but the jet mode toy was excellent, if a little overburdened with vehicle mode parts on its backpack. However, it wasn't long till Third Parties started teasing their plans to make (loosely) Masterpiece scale figures that would actually feature both car and jet modes all in one. Toyworld announced theirs first, back in 2019, but relative newcomers MetaGate - creators of the stunning, triple-changing movieverse Drift, Haiku - were the first to actually ship theirs and, even at first glance, it looked substantially better.

But let's have a closer look and see exactly what kind of dark magic had been brought to bear on this character...

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2010 (Timelines) Sharkticon: Air Shark

The Sharkticon that turned up in the Energon toyline certainly wasn't a traditional Sharkticon. Rather, it was a Decepticon, named Sharkticon, who happened to transform into a spacecraft that resembled a shark. Anecdotally, the craft was intended to resemble the Nemesis, the Decepticons' ship from G1... though it looks nothing like the recent Titan class toy. Just to add to the confusion, the mold was repainted in Takara Tomy's TransFormers United toyline in 2012, to be the Axalon, the Maximals' ship from Beast Wars.

Before that, however, the Collectors' Club repainted him for BotCon... as a G1 Sharkticon. Or, as it turned out, three Sharkticons, in a three-pack of toys identical but for the text on their respective bio cards: Air Shark, Land Shark and Sea Shark.

I knew I'd bought this figure, along with Sky-Byte, at an event... but couldn't remember for the life of me which event it was, and ended up having to search one of my old blogs to identify that it was AutoAssembly 2010, so this fellow is long overdue for a write-up. Let's get on with it, shall we?

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2013 (Timelines) Thundercracker

One interesting byproduct of my acquisition of some BotCon boxed sets is that, once in a while, they introduced me to molds I'd not experienced from the main Hasbro toylines. One such example was Revenge of the Fallen Dirge, in the retooled and repainted form of Skywarp in the Machine Wars: Termination set from BotCon 2013.

While the figure from the extended movie universe didn't appeal - its interpretation of the 'Conehead' style looked pretty ugly to me - FunPub's idea of a Machine Wars Skywarp was very well executed, and showed that the mold itself was actually great... and, as a result, I decided to pick up the Thundercracker repaint. He was originally made available with yet another repaint of the Classics Mirage mold which FunPub had already used for the BotCon 2007 hologram figure - this time with a colourscheme taken from the original Machine Wars toy. Having no interest in that, I ended up buying Thundercracker separately, on the secondary market.

So, let's see how this version compares to the toy from the boxed set...

Legacy On Clearance - AKA Not An Unboxing Post VI

Aside from occasionally voicing my disdain for the enervated mess that is TransFormers Legacy, I've not had a lot to say about the toyline because I'd bought just two products featuring Legacy branding, and one of those had it playing second fiddle to the Buzzworthy Bumblebee brand.

Nevertheless, there have been occasional announcements that have piqued my interest... at least until I apply a cost/benefit analysis and decide that I don't want to pay Hasbro's current prices for the quality of product they're pushing. One of these announcements was the Deadeye Duel 2-pack, featuring a retooling of the Bumblebee movie Arcee toy. Unfortunately, the other figure in the set was an extensive retool of the Power of the Primes Moonracer/Novastar and War For Cybertron: Siege Lancer/Greenlight figures (or, more accurately, a minor retool of Siege Chromia/Nightbird) which made its £50 price tag far less appealing. That mold was bad enough back in Power of the Primes... that they're still using it more than five years later is just embarrassing.

Once in a while, I'll pop back to the Hasbro Pulse website and have a quick look at the new offerings and, on one such visit, I noticed they now have an 'Outlet' section... which appears to be where their shelfwarmers go to die. I think, by now, the majority of my Pulse purchases have been discounted, either with the help of one of their coupon codes or in a seasonal sale, so finding Deadeye Duel on sale for £22.99, I figured I might as well put some birthday money toward it... After all, that's two Deluxe class toys for less than the current price of a single Deluxe class toy.

Granted, I already knew one of them was going to be crap, but that's still a (small) discount on the figure I actually wanted.

I'm still not convinced that the mixture of figure styles really works for Legacy, but we'll see when I do the full write-up.

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2007 (Timelines) Alpha Trion

Galaxy Force Vector Prime was one of those TransFormers toys that, even for its era, had a simplistic transformation, but which transcended this shortcoming through the sheer detail and the extravagant intricacy of its sculpting. The fact that he was an 'ancient Cybertronian' meant that he was effectively an alternate universe Alpha Trion analogue from the outset, so it seemed inevitable that, sooner or later, he would be repainted as G1 Alpha Trion.

What is perhaps a little strange is that BotCon got there first, releasing Alpha Trion as an accompanying figure to their Games of Deception boxed set from BotCon 2007, despite the character not actually featuring in the included comic...

...Because the whole thing was part of the Collectors' Club's own game of deception: the reveal of Alpha Trion was held over for their ongoing multiversal Timelines story in the bimonthly magazine... and was (spoiler warning!) one of the first Shattered Glass characters introduced! Of course, since then, Hasbro has release Alpha Trion toys with almost monotonous regularity, and in a variety of forms.

So, let's take a look at this primary repaint, and see how well it works as this deceptively familiar character...

Perfection (AKA I Made A Meme)

 

Inspired by a Facebook comment I saw the other day. I'm not sure which Optimus Prime was actually intended, and I considered adding another (half?) dozen alternatives, but I knew I wanted 'perfection' to be as niche as possible.

Now I need to go and have a lie down, having acknowledged that I have made a meme...

Another New Third Party Figure - AKA Not An Unboxing Post V

With my interest in Hasbro's output at an all time low, I've been paying closer attention to Third Party output recently. While that means fewer purchases at greater expense (though Hasbro have become increasingly enthusiastic about decreasing the gap), it does mean I can focus on acquiring figures I really want, rather than just obsessively filling shelf space with products I find acceptable, if not entirely exciting.

Thus, when Unique Toys revealed Red Dasher, their take on Dino/Mirage from Dark of the Moon, that went straight onto my Want List. Hasbro's Faux-rrari vehicle mode for the Studio Series toy just didn't work for me and, while I already have Alien Attack's Firage - the mass-produced version of a custom figure based on Battle Blades Bumblebee - and still think it's a fantastic figure, I'm enough of a fan of Dino/Mirage's design that I felt a MPM-ish scale figure with a simpler transformation had a place in my collection.

And the bonus is that he came with the Collectors' Card that was omitted from DX9's La Hire, five years ago!

I ordered this from Omegalock, at a point when it was listed as 'Imminent', and only had to wait a couple of weeks for it to be despatched. I was a little dubious as the delivery options are focussed on DPD as the courier, and they've let me down recently, but this one went OK, arriving yesterday.

Had a quick fiddle with it in the afternoon and, aside from one point of the transformation that I had to look up on a video, he's just as intuitive and straightforward as La Hire and Peru Kill.

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2012 (Timelines) Gigatron

Despite hailing from the end of Generation 1, Overlord is not a character I'd been particularly aware of until comparatively recently, since I'd 'grown out' of collecting TransFormers by the time he arrived in the UK. My first experience of him in anything like his original form was via the Titans Return version, which was a little too cut-down in terms of functionality versus the G1 original. Improved articulation only gets you so far, after all.

However, I believe that my first experience of the character was via this strange BotCon exclusive repaint of the Revenge of the Fallen/N.E.S.T. Global Alliance Bludgeon, itself a reimagining of a G1 Pretender. While that character wasn't the best fit for a movie offshoot toyline, the figure was great... and I might have been in the market for some of the other repaints if they weren't all so hard to obtain, to one degree or another.

I missed out on this figure around the time of BotCon 2012, but eventually found one reasonably priced on eBay, and took the plunge, even though a tank-only version of the character is already missing half of what made the original so interesting. How does it compare, though..?

Flame Toys FuRaiModel Kit Windblade

(Femme-Bot Friday #84)

I've affirmed many times that I am very much against TransFormers merchandise - and particularly in the form of action figures - that does not transform, but model kits are something of a grey area. I went through a phase, some years back, of collecting Gundam and Macross model kits, because I found building them to be quite therapeutic. Some Macross models can even have the bonus of being transformable, since the variable fighters have been part of the anime from the very beginning.

My exposure to Armor Girls Project, Frame Arm Girls, Variable Fighter Girls and Eastern Model ATKGirl brought an interesting new angle to both action figures and model kits, blurring the line between them at least to the same degree as the Gundam kits I've built, and with just enough 'mecha' vibe to pique my interest.

All that said, when Flame Toys started producing licensed TransFormers model kits, I wasn't overly impressed by their exaggerated take on G1 and Beast Wars. They were all weirdly-proportioned and unpleasantly angular - different from the source material, yet cartoonish enough to put me off. IDW-based designs, such as stealth bomber Megatron and Hot Rod, looked better but I didn't feel compelled to buy into the line because, ultimately, they were non-transforming TransFormers, and that didn't sit right with me.

That was, until they showed early photos of their proposed Windblade kit. Windblade has, so far, got the short end of the stick. Created during the 30th Anniversary, her first toy was flimsy, unstable and showed signs of features having been trimmed to fit a budget. Remixes for RID2015, Titans Return and Cyberverse just seemed to get progressively worse, and improvements in Takara Tomy's versions were largely limited to additional paintwork. The problem was that Windblade was seemingly conceived as a robot, first and foremost, meaning her jet modes were invariably tacked-on rather than designed around her. This alone made her ideal for the model kit treatment, and Flame Toys took a markedly different tack in her design, versus the more established characters.

The bottom line seems to be that Hasbro and Takara Tomy are still having trouble creating feminine robot forms out of jet aircraft without dumping most of the nose on the back and leaving the lower legs rather hollow. Thus, a model kit for a non-transforming figure of Windblade's robot mode seems to be about the only way to present her as a solid-looking character, at least somewhat based on the interpretations of her from the comics... So, let's take a look...

Real Gear Robots Power Up VT6

One of the most common problems with the Real Gear Robots line was that it was a combination of extremely basic engineering and the need to ensure the alternate mode was instantly recognisable as the gadget it was intended to represent. Given that many of the gadgets chosen for the line were either awkwardly shaped, or essentially small boxes with buttons.

Over the years, Hasbro and Takara have come up with some genuinely ingenious ways of transforming rectangular blocks of various thicknesses into reasonable-looking robots but, on balance, I'd say they've probably had more misses than hits.

But which category does Power Up VT6 fall into? Read on, and find out..!

 

First New Purchases In Quite A While - AKA Not An Unboxing Post IV

When I started this post, I wasn't quite sure how long it had been since I last ordered anything TransFormers related. Having subsequently looked it up, it's technically only about five months... but that was a non-transforming model kit (Flame Toys' Furai Model Kit Arcee, specifically).

It's been a touch over a year since I bought an actual Hasbro TransFormers toy... Which probably tells you everything you need to know about my opinion of Legacy as a toyline. I (technically) still only own a single Legacy toy, and that was Tarantulas, from the second wave of Legacy's first year.

However, after successfully completing a couple of freelance jobs earlier this year, I decided to order a couple of Third Party figures I was keen not to miss out on... Both of them are Femme-Bots, so look out for some Femme-Bot Fridays coming 'soon' (though that's absolutely in the Fun Publications/TFCC sense of the word 'soon').

The box they arrived in was significantly battered, though thankfully there's only minor damage to Red Fantasy's box. Before even opening either, the first thing that struck me was how heavy Metagate's latest offering is - I knew there were die-cast parts in it, but she's much heavier than I'd expected. Conversely, Spider Lady is surprisingly light, especially in comparison.

Can't wait to get these out properly and have a fiddle with them before eventually taking some photos. Their arrival gives me a bit of motivation to tidy up the coffee table in the lounge, so I can set up the light tent... But I have to admit, I'm still struggling to find the motivation to photograph Furai Model Kit Arcee - which I put together before Christmas - or even finish the post about Furai Model Kit Windblade, which I photographed almost six months ago.

TransFormers Collectors' Club 2014 (Timelines) Rewind

Since I was not a follower of the IDW comics, this was a semi-reluctant purchase for me. I'd picked up the Club's Chromedome from the 2014 Subscription Service selection because the head sculpt was cool and it was made using the TF Prime Wheeljack mold, which had been one of my favourites from that toyline.

But, in the back of my mind, I was dimly aware that an IDW-style Chromedome was somehow incomplete without a corresponding Rewind and, since that was one of the other figures from the same year's selection, I tracked one down just to complete the couple.

I can't remember now whether I bought this before or after I picked up the TransFormers United Rumble & Frenzy set at TFNation in 2016, but one would surely have contributed to my purchase of the other. Thing being, on the surface and aside from the obvious physical similarities in their G1 selves, this is a particularly curious choice for one of Blaster's cassettes... Let's find out why.

First Breakage of the Year

A mere seventeen months ago, I posted that I'd acquired the Studio Series Ironhide based on the Bumblebee movie CGI, posting my write-up of that figure a little over a week later. By and large, I've not experienced any significant breakages with my TransFormers toys... but, let's face it, I've not bought that many new toys since Legacy Tarantulas.

Just this weekend, I decided to do a bit of customising to Ironhide, since he looks so plain. It all went as well as could be expected, and I was quite happy with the results...

...Until, upon starting to transform him back to robot mode after finishing the touchups on vehicle mode, his right forearm fell off when I unpegged it from his foot. The breakage was to the mushroom peg that facilitates his bicep swivel... and, while the joint was tight, I wasn't even using that joint when it broke, it simply crumbled as I tilted the arm out from the underside of the vehicle mode.

Making matters all the more strange, the mushroom peg doesn't appear to have sheared apart, it simply cracked... The other bicep swivel joint is just as tight, but shows no sign of any problems (so far!).

I've been thinking of replacing both Ratchet and Ironhide with the oversized KOs Shock Warrior SW-01 and -02 simply because they're a better size and have much better overall presentation... this breakage pretty much makes it a necessity.