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..?

AM20 Arms Micron (TFPrime) Ironhide

Here's another of those strange situations that sometimes occur within the TransFormers brand. Illustrator Ken Christiansen, in his role as freelance designer/concept artist for Hasbro, submitted an awesome design for a TransFormers Prime version of Ironhide - channelling equal parts Generation 1 and movieverse. Hasbro, in their wisdom, took the design, changed the colour, and released it as Sergeant Kup instead, with Ironhide only appearing in the Cyberverse Commander size class.

...Only for Takara Tomy to later return to the originally intended colourscheme and release it within their Arms Micron spin on the TransFormers Prime toyline, along with a single Mini-Con weapon in place of the twin cannons from Christiansen's original design.

Really makes you wonder what's going on behind the scenes at both companies, doesn't it?

TransFormers: Prime Dark Energon Starscream

The whole 'Dark Energon' phenomenon rather passed me by, to be honest. As far as I can tell, the toys never made it to UK shelves, and by the time I discovered them in specialist TransFormers webshops, they were pretty much all sold out. My one encounter with them 'in the wild' was at a London Expo, where they had only Bumblebee and Knockout and, while the former was an interesting homage to G1 Goldbug in its colourscheme, the latter basically worked out as a weird intermediate stage between the original red Knock Out and the Beast Hunters remix.

The one toy that interested me out of the few that got the Dark Energon treatment was Starscream, because his colourscheme was pure Skywarp, only translucent. Facing the fact that Hasbro seemingly had no plans to repaint either the FE Starscream mold or the Voyager version as either Thundercracker or Skywarp (leaving it to Takara Tomy to do the decent thing), getting my hands on Dark Energon Sky-Star-Warp-Scream seemed like a cool way of halving the expensive import costs, and giving me a more interesting take on Skywarp to go along with an eventual Thundercracker.

Of course, you already know how that turned out, because I bought both of the Arms Micron repaints... but let's take a look at the toy that almost became my TFPrime Skywarp...

Arms Micron (TF Prime) Thundercracker

I've often noted in this blog that the appearance of one of the Seekers in a TransFormers toyline will often lead to the appearance of the other two but, certainly in recent years, Hasbro has not followed this strategy quite so closely as they once did. Aside from oddities where Combiner Wars Thundercracker actually preceded CW Starscream and Skywarp, we tend to get a Starscream first, and then either a Thundercracker or a Skywarp from Hasbro (usually the former, it seems), while Takara Tomy will release the other as some sort of region-exclusive.

The TransFormers Prime toyline, being quite small due to the limited cast in the TV show, seemed like the ideal line to bolster with Starscream repaints, and yet the only ones we got were literally alternative Starscreams. Given that two versions of Starscream were created - the First Edition Deluxe and the mainline Voyager - it seems ridiculous in retrospect that Hasbro didn't turn either into Thundercracker or Skywarp...

...Thankfully, Takara Tomy wasted no time in producing the other two Seekers in their Arms Micron version of the line, repainting not only the Deluxe class figure, but also the Arms Micron mini-figure packaged with the toy.

TransFormers: Prime Ratchet

While TransFormers: Prime owed a significant aesthetic debt to the live action movies, it owed at least as much to the previous TV series, TransFormers Animated, both in terms of its character setup (few Autobots against a legion of enemies, both Cybertronian and human) and the specifics of its cast. Optimus Prime is a given in any toyline - thanks to the lessons Hasbro learned with the 1986 animated movie - and Bumblebee has become a staple character in recent years by becoming the new Hot Rod, but it's still quite rare for other G1 characters to resurface in any recognisable form.

Ratchet's persona in TFAnimated was that of a traumatised war veteran, haunted an encounter with Lockdown, an irascible but reliable medic/engineer who gradually softened over the course of the series. TFPrime's Ratchet... was much the same, but didn't become appreciably friendlier as time went on. He was sometimes reckless (experimenting with synthetic Energon using himself as the guineapig) and proved himself in battle on several occasions, but, with the exception of a couple of spotlight episodes, he was mostly a support character, remaining in the Autobots' base rather than getting involved in their missions. Nevertheless, he was a brilliant character, voiced by the inimitable Jeffrey Combs, so even the briefest appearance in an episode was often a highlight.

Does the toy follow suit?

Mastermind Creations Cyber Engine Knight Morpher KM-06 Stormer

It was always my intention to spread out my write-ups of Mastermind Creations' Knight Morpher Seekers simply to avoid the risk of monotony, writing about the same mold in three different colourschemes, but I'd hoped to get through more than one per year! At least this one is only eight months after the last, rather than the 21 months I left between the first two...

In any case, the Steampunk Thundercracker is the last of the set, and I think it's a shame Mastermind Creations haven't continued the Cyber Engine Knight Morpher subline, but Reformatted seems to be more generally appealing and, having now actually read Hearts of Steel... I think leaving it behind after the Seekers was probably for the best.

Mastermind Creations Cyber Engine Knight Morpher KM-07 Warper

As a Seeker OCD sufferer, the moment I purchase a Starscream these days, I'm instantly compelled to desire - and, with any luck, acquire - the same mold as both Skywarp and Thundercracker... So it's lucky for me that the Third Parties are far more inclined than Hasbro to enable my compulsion. I don't think there's been a single Third Party Starscream that hasn't been swiftly repainted as the other two original Seekers, and many are subsequently retooled into the Coneheads. Hasbro, meanwhile, seems to think that niche characters like Sunstorm and Acid Rain/Storm are the more likely moneyspinners...

When Mastermind Creations started producing the Hearts of Steel Seekers, under their Cyber Engine Knight Morpher banner, they wasted no time in producing the three G1 Seekers, and tracking down all three on the secondary market, thankfully, didn't take me too long, back in 2015.

So let's take a look at the next on the list... the super-sinister black repaint...

Generations Laserbeak

Every so often, Hasbro seems to have read my mind in a particularly bizarre and sadly incomplete way. I noted when I wrote about Tokyo Toy Show 2010 Dreadwing & Smokescreen that the Mindwipe/Strafe/Dreadwing mold was basically suitable for a custom movie Soundwave, had he not been turned into a car. Since Smokescreen could then have doubled for a Cobalt Sentry Garboil analogue, when images of Hasbro's own Laserbeak repaint (released only in the Asian markets initially) surfaced, the only surprise was how good it actually looked.

DotM Mechtech Que (aka Wheeljack)

When Hasbro decided to cancel the Dark of the Moon toyline early, it has to be said that there were probably sound business reasons for doing so - the line was, in a lot of cases, a step backward and the law of diminishing returns had applied itself quite harshly to the toyline. Still, this evidently left Hasbro with stocks of packaged figures that weren't going anywhere for a while.

It seems that Takara Tomy eventually released 'Autobot Que' in their own packaging, while the Asian market received Hasbro's release of 'Wheeljack'. The character was only ever referred to as 'Que' in the movie - a nod to James Bond's Quartermaster, apparently, and so possibly only a nickname - but the technical genius and the sack of gadgets are certainly Wheeljack through and through.

Considering the brevity of his role in the film - introduced with no explanation, stuck in the background with minimal dialogue, handing out weapons, then unceremoniously captured (off screen) and executed (graphically, on screen) by Soundwave and his team - it's no surprise that Hasbro didn't mind not making him (easily) available to the fans... But is he worth tracking down?

AM06 Arms Micron (TF Prime) Skywarp

Hasbro have really been dropping the ball of late. Ever since the first live action TransFormers movie, they've had an alarming habit of releasing a Starscream, and then either Skywarp or Thundercracker, with the missing Seeker becoming some hard-to-find exclusive, frequently from Takara Tomy only. While they have begun to correct this baffling omission (releasing all three as Leader class figures in Combiner Wars based on Generations Jetfire), they declined to create any repaints of the Voyager class Starscream from TF Prime, and only released alternative versions of Starscream using the First Edition mold, rather than repainting into other characters.

Thankfully, then, Takara Tomy were not afflicted with the same unreason, and happily produced the appropriate repaints of the FE figure as part of their Arms Micron take on the TF Prime line (albeit with one as a retail chain exclusive). Since buying these invariably means importing - with the additional expense that implies - I ended up getting Skywarp on the cheap, second hand, via eBay... Which may not have been the best plan...

Mastermind Creations Cyber Engine Knight Morpher KM-05 Screecher

IDW's Hearts of Steel is on the list of comics series that I'm vaguely interested in investigating. Its central conceit is that the Cybertronians who crash landed on Earth were awoken not in the 1980s or 2000s, but instead at the time of the American Industrial Revolution. Designed by the implausibly talented Guido Guidi, the giant alien robots took on a unique and original appearance. The Autobots appear to have been largely locomotives, but the Decepticons were, as usual, rather more varied - Shockwave became an ironclad paddle-steamer battleship, for example.

When I first saw images of a model based on Hearts of Steel Optimus Prime, it was an independent fan project... but after a while, it seems Mastermind Creations picked it up and turned it into the first of their 'Cyber Engine Knight Morpher' series, following up with an interpretation of Shockwave and, eventually, the anachronistic HoS Seekers.

TransFormers: Prime Wheeljack

Introduced in Generation 1, Wheeljack, in one form or another, has been popping up in various continuities of TransFormers since the Unicron Trilogy but, aside from the familiar head, it's never been quite the same character that G1 gave us. In fact, on several occasions, he's not even had the right name, let alone the right character. In the Unicron Trilogy, 'Wheeljack' looked suspiciously like Sideswipe, and had sided with the Decepticons. The character that looked like Wheeljack was named 'Downshift' and started out as a blatant homage to the G1 character in both paintjob and overall styling, later becoming a 1970s-style green and black muscle car whose head and feet were the only features that closely resembled the G1 character. None of them were the 'clumsy professor' of Generation 1, though.

Then along came TransFormers Prime, with a character who looked very much like the character of old in robot mode, and with vehicle mode which was a clear homage to original... But is it the Wheeljack we actually wanted?

TransFormers: Prime First Edition Starscream

When I decide I like a mold - particularly if it's made to create some contemporary variation on one of the G1 Seekers, and especially if it makes all three - I tend to make it a mission in life to get as many iterations of the mold as possible. Since the Voyager class version of TF Prime Starscream hasn't - as yet - been reused for anything, I've only got the one instance of that mold. However, the Collectors' Club created a TF Prime-style Timelines Slipstream based on the First Edition mold, and that was pretty spiffy.

Thus hooked, I'm now fairly well on my way to getting all variants of this mold, but the first one I had to get was the original, rather hard to find, Deluxe-sized Starscream... 

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2012 (Timelines) Shattered Glass Turbo Tracks

(Femme-Bot Friday #28)

Because we all know this is actually Timelines Road Rage, right?

Road Rage is also a far more interesting character than Shattered Glass Tracks because, in robot mode, she's a mild-mannered diplomat while, in vehicle mode, she's a foul-mouthed speed freak, contemptuous of anything else on the road. Which must be awkward.

As is often the case, I've now written up a couple of variants of this mold without first dealing with either the original Classics Tracks or the slightly remolded Wheeljack version... so just to compound my heinous error, here's yet another Exclusive version of this Classics car...

TransFormers: Prime Soundwave

Considering the TransFormers brand is, in several very meaningful ways, all about change, it's surprising how many in the Fandom are quite rigid in their view of some characters. Just look back at the outcry over the look of the robots in the original live action movie, and the extreme reactions elicited by just about every new TransFormers continuity as product shots appear on the web.

So when TransFormers Prime completely reimagined Soundwave as a virtually silent 'Big Brother' to the Decepticon ranks, not even fully trusted by Megatron, and transforming into - of all things - a military drone aircraft, not dissimilar to General Atomics' MQ-9 Reaper, the reaction was generally quite positive, or accepting at the very least, because his portrayal in the series was very well thought out, and suited the darker tone of the show perfectly.

But how does one go about turning a spindly drone into a transforming robot toy, even if that robot is just as spindly as his alternate mode?

Perfect Effect Motobot PE-DX02 Aranea

(Femme-bot Friday #23)

Perfect Effect's Motobot RC was certainly an interesting addition to their lineup, considering some of their underwhelming early efforts. As their first foray into full-size transforming figures, it was highly ambitious and pretty well executed. I'd been keen to get my hands on one of them from the first moment I saw them, however, my interest in the original Motobot paled into insignificance when the first remolded variant was announced... because rather than just rehash the same basic design with a couple of new parts, the remold was every bit as ambitious as the original, and they had only the core structural parts in common.

Plus, the remold - hinted at in the comic packaged with RC - was an intriguing Beast Wars/TransFormers Animated mashup homage to Blackarachnia in Perfect Effect's own futuristic biker-bot style.

Apologies in advance for some inconsistency in the photos - what's here comes from two different sets of photos, taken at different times on different days, and in very different conditions...

AM12 Arms Micron (TFPrime) War Breakdown

I don't mind saying that getting hold of this was rather more complicated than it needed to be. It started out easy enough - I simply found him available via Amazon's Marketplace - but, once ordered, he failed to arrive within the estimated deliver date range, so I had to get in touch with the seller and ask them to try again. They couldn't have been more helpful, to be honest, first of all offering to send a near-mint replacement, then tracking down a factory-sealed replacement within a week. They also sent the replacement with tracking, and he arrived very quickly.

But all of that would have been unnecessary if Hasbro had chosen to distribute him at all.

I'll also admit that my write up will be neither as concise nor as eloquent as the video review by Thew Adams, which convinced me I couldn't pass this one up in the first place, but that's not going to be a surprise to anyone.

Anyway, Breakdown - voiced by the perpetually gruff Adam Baldwin the the TV show - is Bulkhead's nemesis. An equally big bruiser-type, with a similar style of alternate mode and a similar preference for melee weapons. Hasbro apparently felt the model wasn't cost-effective, and so declined to release the Voyager version at all. Thankfully, Takara Tomy had no such issues...

On 'Action Figures'

By and large, when I got into TransFormers, I lost interest in 'normal' action figures. Nothing at the time compared to the fun of a robot that was also a vehicle. I do find it interesting, though, that the TransFormers Collectors' Club is operated by the same company as the GI Joe Collectors' Club. Sure, the two properties have crossed paths in the associated fiction (GI Joe became the B-Strip in the UK TransFormers comics for a while, long before the first GI Joe Vs TransFormers story surfaced). In fact, the way the two properties have interacted seems to have been a kind of barometer for the fortunes of Hasbro's military action figure line: each time its popularity wanes, there's a crossover... and in recent years, that's even happened with the convention exclusives.

Back in 2013, the San Diego Comic Con exclusives included two GI Joe vehicles repainted to resemble TransFormers characters (VAMP/Hound and Skystriker/Jetfire), a humanoid Bludgeon figure, and a (non-articulated) figurine of Ravage to accompany the Baroness. The year before, Cobra's HISS tank got repainted into Shockwave, and the year before that, the Skystriker was repainted as Starscream (packaged along with a Cobra Commander action figure with a Megatron gun accessory). This year, the TransFormers Collectors' Club itself - rather than the GI Joe club, strangely - is getting in on the act, repainting TF Prime Soundwave as a Cobra BAT and the Wheel Blaster Bike from the GI Joe: Retaliation movie toyline as Technobot Lightspeed. I'm not convinced of the wisdom of the TFCC in releasing a non-transforming TransFormers character as a GI Joe crossover exclusive, but it has been suggested that interest in the GI Joe club has been waning, and this is Fun Publications' attempt at bringing in new members... from their other pool of collectors.

But I digress.

About ten years ago, one of Takara's 'other' toylines, Microman, was celebrating it's 30th Anniversary, and did so with a whole bunch of licensed figures. I ended up buying a selection of Aliens Vs Predator figures (horribly fragile - several broke within days), Street Fighter and Batman figures, on a whim and based on how cool I thought they looked. Microman are approximately the same size as the main GI Joe range of 3.75" figures, but rather better articulated, so I thought it'd be interesting to try posing some of my Microman figures along with some of the motorbike TransFormers (and Third Party figures) just to see how they work.

To begin with, here's the obvious choice: Perfect Effect's Motobot RC with Microman (or, more accurately, Microlady) MA-10, Catwoman...

There's no arguing that RC is a large bike and, from this angle, Microlady Catwoman seems a bit too small in comparison. Her leg is sticking out quite a way, though, and her foot is more-or-less in a comfortable 'riding' position. As it turns out, the main problem is that the plastic of her leg, being unyielding, doesn't fit around the body of the bike as well as a real person's leg would, and the ball-jointed hips don't offer quite enough freedom of movement to let her 'hug' the bike the way a human would.

The figure's waist, chest, and dual shoulder joints allow for an excellent riding position in the upper body, and the neck has just enough range to allow her to look forward while riding, where a lot of human action figures still only have swivelling necks.

From this angle, the figure seems to be the right size for the bike - in fact, a quick glance at the kickstand reveals that it is Catwoman's leg propping up the bike, rather than the miniscule, flip-out foot. This speaks volumes for how well-scaled they are, given that her backside is more-or-less in the tiny block of 'seat', her arms look natural enough and the hands connect very securely to the handlebars. It's almost as if Perfect Effect designed their Motobots to scale with Microman figures. In a way, the only thing that lets this Microlady figure down is the large, solid buttplate, which never moves naturally and, on mine, at least, seems to rattle around loosely.

This Catwoman figure has been in storage since not long after I bought her and, annoyingly, when I got her out of the packaging again to take these photos, I found one of her shoulder joints broken. If I remember correctly, the mid-2000s were a bad time for Takara's quality control, and the 2004 anniversary was just the year before the merger with Tomy. Still, Microman figures were always well-designed, even when they weren't well-executed, and I actually had a few toys from the early 'Micronauts' toyline (the Mobile Exporation Lab, Warp Racer, Ultronic Scooter and another three-wheeled thing with a double-barrelled missile launcher) distributed in the UK by Airfix so I had some fond memories of that style of figure.

Other than Catwoman, I have Batgirl, a comics version of Batman, the Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale version of Batman and a weird futuristic Batman with chromed flight gear, Sakura and Chun Li from their Street Fighter series, a couple of Predators, two Alien Queens (one was going to be a birthday present for a friend, but we had a falling out not long before the day) and a set of Alien warriors, at least one of which broke within seconds of opening the packaging, and all of which were slightly floppy in one joint or another.

I know where Sakura, Chun Li are... and they're with another figure (but I can't remember which one!)... so, assuming I can find them, there may be further photos along these lines. Perhaps the Nolan/Bale Batman riding Aranea..?

So... Action figures have their uses, after all...

Perfect Effect Motobot: PE-DX01 RC

(Femme-Bot Friday #11)

Perfect Effect started out making small and, frankly, quite odd accessories for TransFormers, some of which transformed. My first experience of their figures was PE-01R/F, a pair of TargetMasters modelled after G1 Frenzy and Rumble (and given the correct names for the colourschemes, rather than following the long-running error in the G1 cartoon!). I'll write them up in detail eventually but, suffice it to say, I have mixed feelings about them.

The company very quickly graduated - like so many other third party toymakers - into full-blown TransFormers-style figures, starting with a Reflector analogue then, in 2012, only three years after their debut on the scene, releasing one of the most ambitious third party models that had been seen at the time - a homage to G1 Arcee by way of TRON, which nodded to both the live-action movie interpretation and TF Prime. RC initially came in pink (G1 homage) and blue (TF Prime homage, perhaps), so I had to carefully consider my options when choosing which to buy for myself. With MMC's Azalea already on my shelves, I began to feel the need for more pink femme-bots to balance things out.

TransFormers: Prime Arcee

(Femme-Bot Friday #9)

I've already raved about the First Edition version of this character, but that was rather harder to come by than the mass market 'Robots in Disguise' version. Naturally, this is a smaller, simpler model - cheaper to produce, that is - to fill what was to Hasbro, apparently, an unexpected demand for toys based on their new TV show.