Cybertron Primus

Here, finally, we have the last of my ancient Draft posts for this blog, now with the advantage of sparkly new photos because the originals (taken in February 2011!) had the same busy background of shelves that all the other images from that era had. Looking back, it's kind of bizarre that it's taken me more than 14 full years to complete this post considering Primus is such a significant figure in TransFormers lore and, in the Cybertron/Galaxy Force continuity amongst others, literally the home planet of the TransFormers.

Given the struggles Hasbro/Takara Tomy had in creating a reasonably convincing Unicron figure for the Armada toyline, one would think they'd have second thoughts about another toy that transformed into a planet. However, idea that Primus - Simon Furman's supposed 'God' of Cybertron - actually transformed into the planet Cybertron itself was clearly too tempting to pass on. There are plenty of other things he could have been instead, if they'd thought about it and, given the average fan reaction at the time to large plastic robots that transform into imperfect spheres, a bit of imagination probably would have been appreciated by many. After all, this was a character who had never before been clearly or definitively depicted in any of the associated media (the weird, Rodimus Prime-inspired version from the 1980s Marvel comics doesn't really count). That said, one can't argue with the dramatic power of a planet that transforms into a colossal robot...

Also, when Galaxy Force/Cybertron rolled around, Unicron had become a black hole (in the TV show) and a tank-thing resembling The Ark from G1 (in the Hasbro toyline), and the revelation of Primus became a plot point, so it was pretty much inevitable that he'd appear in some form.

So, with a still semi-recent, colossal Legacy Unicron toy thanks to the HasLab crowdfunding scheme and a smaller Third Party rival already available, let's - finally! - take a look at the second TransFormers planetformer Hasbro actually released. The only real question was whether the design and engineering teams had learned the right lessons from the reception of Armada Unicron...

Cybertron Crumplezone

Much like Ransack/Gasket, Crumplezone/Landbullet was a toy I decided I didn't want or need - on import, at least - until I experienced the figure as pre-Beast Wars Optimus Primal in the Dawn of Future's Past boxed set from BotCon 2006. As its own figure, This toy looked ugly and poorly-proportioned, with a hideous pairing of muted, military green and eye-searingly bright acidic green, and the vehicle mode wasn't particularly exciting.

However, DoFP Optimus Primal worked really well, and showed me what a fun toy he was, so I ended up buying the Hasbro version on the cheap. Being one of the larger Cybertron/Galaxy Force figures, he features some electronics, but is that enough to redeem such a terrible colourscheme on so ugly a toy?

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:

 

Galaxy Force Dark Ligerjack

There's something a little bit sad about Galaxy Force Ligerjack. Obviously the character is one who, having been defeated in battle, obtained an upgraded form - supposedly through the power of the key, according to the cartoon, though that's not a feature reflected in the toys - but also the toy itself is only part of what it should have been. Designed from the start to combine with Galaxy Convoy or Master Megatron/Galvatron as a new arm, his original design included fingers and thumbs for this additional mode, and the key gimmicks were rather more extensive. Evidently too costly for the final toy, these additional features were removed, leaving gaping holes and rendering the arm form a bit useless.

My reason for not buying standard Ligerjack was mainly that I disliked his colourscheme... so, naturally, when the 'Dark' version was announced, it made it onto my want list immediately.

TransFormers Encore 07 Sky Lynx

Generation 1 was a strange old time... For all the Japanese/Asian market exclusives we get these days, Hasbro's approach to the franchise back in the day led to several TransFormers-branded toys that were not, at the time, released anywhere but the USA, and the final waves apparently only surfaced in Europe, long after I'd stopped collecting.

Toys like Shockwave, Omega Supreme and this one were licensed for US distribution from companies other than Takara, and who frequently already had some sort of domestic and non-US distribution in place with other companies (ToyCo's Astro Magnum came to the UK as Tandy/Radio Shack's Galactic Man, while Toybox's Mechbot-1 turned up in Grandstand's Converters line as Omegatron). Takara - quite rightly - declined to distribute toys made by others and, even in those days, Hasbro's distribution in the UK was less than optimal.

As far as I can tell, though, the toy that became Sky Lynx wasn't picked up for distribution by anyone else in any other territories, making him that much rarer and harder to find until Takara Tomy's 2008 Encore-branded re-release. This, naturally, has seen its price increased on the secondary market but, right at the start of the year, I found a second-hand Sky Lynx on eBay, priced at a little over half the current average, once shipping from Australia was taken into account

Naturally, I hit the 'Buy It Now' button as soon as I saw it - opportunities like this don't come along very often!

TransFormers Animated Bulkhead

In many ways, this should have been posted as a direct follow-on from the KuBianBao upsizing of movie Hound, since TF Animated Bulkhead surely played a part in the Bayverse reimagining of the old G1 favourite. While the mass release of TF Prime Bulkhead was fudged to stop him looking 'fat', the First Edition paid greater attention to the CGI, leading to a vastly superior toy. The toys made of TF Animated Bulkhead - regardless of size class - didn't even try to disguise how chunky the character was, and they all ended up with fairly stumpy legs, as was appropriate to his animation model.

And, like most TransFormers figures at that time, Bulkhead was made available in just about every size class. All of them had their shortcomings, but only one of them - the Leader class version - was anywhere near the right scale for the rest of the toyline. While the line as a whole wasn't overly concerned with scale - Bumblebee being one of the largest Deluxes, despite the character's diminutive stature on the show - I've always like to try to get the characters matching up as well as possible. While the Voyager class version of the toy was more accurate to the character's overall appearance on the show, even this Leader class version was technically undersized in robot mode... but it was the closest available.

Of course, 'best available' doesn't always equate to 'best overall', and it's not as if Leader class figures always made best use of their budgets back when they were all huge and packed with features...

Energon Omega Supreme

With a whole new version of G1 Omega Supreme coming out of Hasbro in the War for Cybertron line, I figured now was as good a time as any to look at one of the few non-G1 style TransFormers toys to bear that iconic name. Appearing as part of the Energon/Superlink line, this toy was the same size class as Armada Unicron... And I don't know a lot about him in terms of character because I still haven't been able to force myself to sit through the TV show.

But, where the original toy was a rocket base with a motorised tank that turned into a walking robot, brought by Hasbro from a company called Toybox and shoehorned into the US TransFormers line, while being made available in the UK as part of Grandstand's Converters line (putting the toy on a par with Tandy/Radio Shack's Galactic Man), the Energon toy took a very different tack, and presented two unique vehicle modes that combine into a single enormous robot (technically making him the largest Duocon - or Duobot, 'cos he's an Autobot - in TransFormers history, and a distinct variant of the line's Powerlinx/Superlink combiner concept), with the old G1 HeadMaster gimmick thrown in, just for larks.

Not sure what to make of it? Neither was I... so let's see how this fifteen-year-old, pre-Titans Return Titan measures up, and find out how many variations of 'Omega...' we can squeeze in.

Energon Treadbolt

(Femme-Bot Friday #66)

A few years ago, a good friend of mine developed a habit of buying almost anything with TransFormers branding and gleefully presenting it to me at the earliest opportunity. She also really loved visiting charity shops so, when she happened upon a TransFormers Energon toy sitting all alone and virtually complete, she snatched it up at a knock-down price and handed it over the next day.

Being based on a poorly-regarded Armada mold, Treadbolt isn't a toy I would have bought myself, but was more than happy to receive as a gift, particularly since the only thing missing was the missile for the Mini-Con activated missile launcher in the robot's side - even the collectors' card was included.

Funnily enough, it was only a couple of years ago that I discovered Treadbolt is actually a Femme-Bot, which naturally made her vastly more interesting, not least because she's a repaint of the Constructicon-themed Autobot Armada Scavenger, and essentially uses the G2/European Constructicon colourscheme.

Galaxy Force Galaxy Convoy

Galaxy Force (or Cybertron in the US and Europe), the final component in the so-called Unicron Trilogy (or Micron Trilogy, in Japan) had a whole lot of G1 references in its toyline, from characters to colourschemes. For its Optimus Prime mold, however, it went for a mix of G1 and, curiously, Car Robots/Robots in Disguise.

It's also pretty colossal, coming in a box not a lot smaller than that of Megalo Convoy, and perhaps represents one of the last 'playset' Optimus Prime figures Hasbro and Takara produced before the gradual decline in size occurred across the movie toylines, and a whole ten years before Combiner Wars led to Titans Return (which is both a toyline and a mission statement) and its enormous cityformers.

So, in 'honour' of the recently-revealed War for Cybertron (2019) so-called Leader class Optimus Prime, let's take a look at the toy that inspired it... 

Armada Overload

It's funny, in collecting, how one thing can easily lead to another. I first saw Overload over a decade ago, and thought it looked like crap. Like most of Armada, it seemed to be oversized, unnecessarily bulky, lacking in both detail and articulation... Basically, an easy pass.

I'd felt much the same about Jetfire, even after buying the Collectors' Club's usage of the mold as Astrotrain back when I first joined, and it was only more recently - having finally replaced my broken Armada Optimus Prime cab - that I rediscovered how cool that toy actually was, and set about tracking down Jetfire just so I could create the proper Jet Optimus (aka Superpants Optimus Prime), which then led me to reconsider Overload.

Since, throughout 2018, Overload - and the Energon repaint, Ultra Magnus - turned out to be ridiculously expensive on the secondary market (upwards of £100 boxed, or in the region of £50 loose and not necessarily complete), I decided to have a quick shuffle through The Spacebridge's tubs at TFNation 2018... £20 later, I walked away with this figure, missing only the missiles for his spring-loaded launchers.

Robots in Disguise Omega Prime

When I picked up RiD Ultra Magnus, all those years ago, one of the toy's features that really interested me was that he was designed to combine with RiD Optimus Prime. That simple fact was what led me to track down that first fire engine Prime and, later, fill out the RiD Autobot ranks with the three 'car brothers'. The most impressive aspect of this gestalt was that the two component toys featured electronics of their own, and the combined form had a unique set of features...

These figures were recently re-released as part of Takara Tomy's Encore line, but got a remarkably poor reception due to a whole long list of QC problems, either due to shoddy assembly, the quality of the plastics used, or simply the age of the mold. It's a real shame, as it was an expensive set and its release deserved to be a real event, but not such an infamous one. So let's have a look at the original RiD Omega Prime...

Armada Jetfire

It seems strange to be revisiting Armada - in the sense of actually adding to my Armada collection - but I'm pretty sure my few purchases of this year will be the last from that particular toyline. At the start of the year, I bought a replacement Optimus Prime cab to replace the one I broke while trying to photograph Timelines Astrotrain in Superpants mode the first time. In doing so, I was reminded of how much fun Prime was, and so felt compelled to get Jetfire so I could get some shots of the proper Jet Prime/Jet Optimus, and so spent a while trawling eBay.

Since a brand new, boxed Armada Jetfire turned out to be pretty expensive at that time (prices in excess of  £100 - far more than this toy is worth!), I decided to go for a second hand one, as complete as possible. Many of those available unboxed on eBay were missing parts, partially broken (the accompanying Mini-Con in particular) or both. The most likely one I found was without its missiles/bombs, but I was later able to obtain these separately.

I already know the mold and its shortcomings thanks to Timelines Astrotrain, but let's have a closer look at the original version of the mold...

TransFormers: Bumblebee Power Charge Bumblebee

While the early trailer suggests the writer and director of TransFormers: Bumblebee have a better grasp of what could make TransFormers an awesome and awe-inspiring franchise than the likes of Orci, Kurtzman and Bay, I'm still not entirely convinced that Bumblebee is the ideal starting point for a reboot. Focus on one character, sure... but the TransFormers franchise is already creaking under the weight of Bumblebees, so making him the focal point fills me with equal parts of dread and outright loathing, and I'm having to tell myself that I'll want to see it because Travis Knight has worked on some excellent movies, and the quality of the cast - headed by Hailee Steinfeld (brilliant in True Grit back in 2010) and featuring the luscious tones of Angela Bassett as one of the Decepticons - is very encouraging.

Ultimately, though, we'll get what we're given... and for the toyline, that means a whole lotta Bumblebees. Toys are just starting to hit UK retail this month, well ahead of the film's Boxing Day release date... and a chance visit to The Entertainer netted me the latest in Hasbro's gimmick-laden, super-sized Bumblebee figures.

This isn't going to go well, is it?

Armada Skywarp

While Takara Tomy made two versions of Micron Legend Starscream, Hasbro took the colourscheme of the Supermode version and released it as Thundercracker. Since Armada happened back in the days where Hasbro would happily feed the fans' Seeker OCD, they also released a Skywarp to complete the set (following up with a nonsensical Ramjet repaint in the Universe line, then neglecting to round out the Coneheads with an Armada-style Dirge or Thrust).

Unlike Thundercracker/Supermode Starscream, however, Skywarp got some remolded parts to properly differentiate himself from the others, beyond a simple change in colourscheme... but how big a deal was it really?

Device Label Broad Blast (aka Blaster)

Music Label and Device Label were two very short-lived offshoots from the TransFormers brand, created by Takara Tomy, which featured functional memory sticks (2Gb - paltry by today's standards) and optical mice which transformed into robots. They were so short-lived, in fact, that they seem in retrospect to have been created to facilitate one particular model in each case (Soundwave, under the Music Label banner, for example).

The last two releases in the Device Label line were a third repaint of the memory stick (as Cheetor, supposedly, Takara Tomy having used the same mold first as Ravage, then as Tigatron) and a the only model never to be repurposed: a functioning 4-port USB hub made to look like a Toshiba laptop. How does Blaster fare with such a strange alternate mode? Let's find out...

UFO Toys UP-2 Mega Arm & TF Dream Factory PJ-01 Evil-Blood Blade

I originally wrote about the Leader class Megatron figure from the Revenge of the Fallen toyline over six years ago, when I found it to be a rather poor attempt at realising the movie's CGI as a plastic toy. Given it's simplicity and lack of screen accuracy, one could be forgiven for thinking it wasn't even from the same toyline as its counterpart Optimus Prime, which is still one of the best TransFormers toys to come out of the movie line.

The problems with Megatron were mostly due to the CGI design being shit. Megatron in the movies was never recognisably Megatron, and not just because he didn't turn into a gun. After all, Megatron has been a jet/spacecraft thing before (Energon, Animated) and since (Prime, Generations), he's been a tank about a billion times (G2, Armada, Classics, off the top of my head) and since (Generations/War for Cybertron, twice so far in Combiner Wars). The problem was that, while all the other Decepticons and Autobots looked like robots that turned into vehicles, Megatron had been conceived as a character who felt that disguise was beneath him. The inevitable result was that he didn't look like much of anything in either robot or vehicle mode until Dark of the Moon and by that point he was, for the most part, a rusty shell of his former self.

As a result, the toys were terrible until the Dark of the Moon toyline, with the first being a misshapen jet/spacecraft made out of spikes, and the second being a misshapen tank made out of spikes. Both turned into misshapen robots made out of spikes, both had limited or poorly-designed articulation and neither one truly felt like they lived up to the potential of any of the available size classes. One would think, though, that Hasbro would have been able to do a better job of representing the rebuilt Megatron and his 'Murder Arm' considering the fact that his primary claw/blade pretty much disembowels Optimus Prime before his arm cannon finishes him off is quite a major 'plot' point in the movie, such as it was... and yet what we got was this:

"So... disappointing."

A downright shabby, poorly articulated, spring-loaded missile-launching mess, with a limply spring-loaded blade attached to a large, clawed plate... and then there's the other arm, known less than affectionately as 'the gimp arm', which is essentially the animatronic skeleton of a Skeksis spliced to a short, shrivelled arm on which the elbow is evidently also the wrist.

A tank... though almost by default.

Its vehicle mode looks like a robot doing weird alien yoga thanks to not even attempting to disguise the head (accurate to the movie CGI though that may be). Whereas RotF's Leader class Optimus Prime managed to include lights and sounds without sacrificing intricacy, this one - much like its predecessor - faked or bodged its detail to accommodate utterly lacklustre effects, and could have been made just as well in a smaller size class... My RotF Megatron has been stuffed into a box in the bottom of my wardrobe - along with the original movie's Optimus Prime toy, several others which were superseded by better toys, and a whole host of other junk - since I bought the Dark of the Moon Voyager toy.

But RotF Leader class Megatron need no longer suffer these ignominies. Two third party companies have independently developed replacements for both arms of this toy and, while it seemed pretty pointless to upgrade to UFO Toys' left arm and leave the right with its ugly, spring-loaded toy arm, the appearance of TF Dream Factory's take on the 'Murder Arm' suddenly seemed to turn both into must-have upgrades.

Armada Laserbeak

Obviously this is going back a few years in my collection but, unless I'm very much mistaken, Laserbeak was one of the first TransFormers: Armada figures I ever picked up... and so is quite possibly responsible for getting me back into collecting the mainstream toy releases.

While Laserbeak is traditionally a Decepticon, the Armada version was an Autobot. In the TV show, he was little more than a drone - somewhat similar to TF Prime Soundwave's minion - so, on the surface, he seems like a strange choice for a standalone toy, particularly since he could easily have been made as a Mini-Con.

Cybertron Cryo Scourge

Hasbro has a habit, when crafting some of its characters, of re-releasing them as their opposite to some degree. Hence we have a Nemesis Prime in as many continuities as possible, and Transmetals 2 Megatron got remade in shades of blue and re-released as RiD (2001) Cryotek.

A similar, yet different path was taken with Cybertron Scourge (aka Galaxy Force Flame Convoy) where he has somehow become "irreversibly mutated" by "long exposure to the freezing waste of deep space" which somehow transforms all his fire-breathing, etc. into ice powers. Because SCIENCE! (with apologies to my Physics student girlfriend who would no doubt facepalm at the mere suggestion).

So, is it time for me to break out the ice puns?

Armada Thundercracker

Hasbro and Takara/Takara Tomy are an interesting pair of companies: they are ostensibly working on the same toyline in TransFormers, but frequently handle them in a very different way (and often with a very different story coming out the redubbing of the same TV series). One case in point - rather ancient now, being from a toyline that appeared 14 years ago - was the Decepticon jets in TransFormers Armada, where Takara Tomy introduced Starscream and had him later develop a 'Supermode', while Hasbro evidently took one look at Supermode Starscream and decided he looked sufficiently similar to G1 Thundercracker to turn him into a unique character for their version of the continuity...

Generations Platinum Edition Trypticon

Back in the 80s, the idea of a giant alien robot that transformed into a city seemed quite cool, even moreso after the bit in the 1986 animated movie where Ultra Magnus orders Springer and Arcee to "transform Autobot city" (even though that didn't actually involve Omega Supreme, Metroplex or Fortress Maximus, all of whom had appeared in the Marvel comics by that point) because that was a pretty exciting sequence early on in the story, and showcased some of the most impressive, intricate animation in the entire movie, surpassed only by Unicron's transformation toward the end of the movie.

Sadly, the UK tended not to get the larger, more complicated TransFormers toys in those days so, while Metroplex got released on this sceptred isle (and made his way into my collection), we didn't get Trypticon (similarly, we later got Scorponok but not Fortress Maximus).

At least, we didn't get Trypticon back in 1986. For whatever reason, Hasbro have seen fit to grant him a re-release as part of their 2015 'Platinum Edition' line... I thought I'd given up on buying Generation 1 toys after completing my G1 Seacons by finding a Snaptrap in reasonable condition on eBay... But when I found Trypticon on Amazon at a vastly reduced price, I ended up taking the opportunity to grab one of my few remaining 'Holy Grail' G1 toys.

But how does a nearly 30-year-old model stand up against today's TransFormers toylines, and does it really have a place on the shelves of a 40-something collector?