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.

Hasbro Fan First Tuesday - April 2022 - Post-Mortem

While I'd received some sort of notification about the 'Fan First Tuesday' event this month, I'd honestly forgotten all about it till I saw a reminder (possibly on Reddit) on the 12th. After quickly calculating what the BST equivalent of 11 AM ET would be, I dutifully tuned in with low expectations...

...And was not especially impressed. So unimpressed, in fact, that I've put off writing about it at all for a little over two weeks. I considered not bothering... but only after I'd started writing something, and then wasn't inclined to simply delete the work in progress.

Didn't stop me finding all kinds of ways to distract myself as I finally completed this post today, though.

So... Here we go...

Desert Island (Golden) Disks?

Last week, I received a slightly early notification that another of my Hasbro Pulse preorders - specifically Golden Disk Collection Terrorsaur - was ready for despatch. I believe it was only one day earlier than it was due to ship, but Hasbro UK were clearly very pleased with themselves.

As has been the case on the last couple of Yodel deliveries, the shipping notification was swiftly followed by the courier's own notification that the package was on its way, with the usual estimate of delivery in two days' time... and, of course, it arrived the following day.

When I was out for most of the day, helping my folks with their loft clearance and then going on to my local computer club in the evening. Thankfully, Courtney was working from home and able to accept the parcel, so it was waiting for me when I got back home that night.

I've had a quick play with him, and am largely pretty happy... The windowless presentation box appears to be on a par with Hasbro's usual 'event' sets, features generic art on the front... and Terrorsaur himself is strung up in an awkward position, which had me thinking uncomfortably of shibari for some reason...

As always, full write-up coming 'soon'...

Big Cat Arrives

And so, just a day after the arrival of Kingdom Slammer, and the day before he was originally due to ship according to Hasbro Pulse, Tigatron has arrived.

I've got a few other things on my plate at the moment, so I'm probably not going to get either photographed fully till I've dealt with at least the most pressing stuff but, in the spirit of keeping things up to date, here's a quick photo:

Looks pretty good, I think, aside from the rigid tail and the Gut Gun sticking out of his belly... Full write-up on the way, eventually.

Perhaps I should start an Instagram account for situations like this..?

On Hasbro Pulse, and Courier Frustrations II

While I'm very grateful that Hasbro Pulse UK exists, I have to admit I still have serious doubts about Hasbro's distribution strategy. A couple of months back, I preordered Kingdom Tigatron, then Golden Disk Collection Terrorsaur and Studio Series Jolt, then Kingdom Slammer, as each were added to the shop. All but Jolt were labelled as due to ship this month, with the first and last scheduled just a few days apart, and Terrorsaur expected toward the end of the month. Jolt shipped on his own as soon as he came into stock back in November, so Hasbro are clearly happy to split orders if that seems appropriate, even when not specifically requested.

Hasbro PulseCon 2021 Post-Mortem

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

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

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

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

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...

Shattered Expectations

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

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

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

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

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

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:

 

On Hasbro Pulse, and Courier Frustrations (with Addenda)

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

 

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

 

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