Black Mamba Deformation LS-01 Ares Nitrogen

Hasbro's Nitro (Zeus) figure, despite having a typically poor paint job, turned out to be one of my top figures of 2017, so when I learned that KO merchants/upscalers/upgraders Black Mamba were producing their own oversized version of the character, my interest was immediately piqued. A better paint job alone would make the figure worth a look, but the promise of making him larger, tweaking the engineering and adding a few die cast parts put 'Ares Nitrogen' firmly on my radar, and the first photos of the fully-painted figure rocketed him right to the top of my want list...

...But with Studio Series Thundercracker - based on the same mold - now available, is it worth tracking down an oversized upgrade on the original?

The Last Knight/Premier Edition Nitro

Or 'Nitro Zeus', to give him the movie character's full title. Then again, I still haven't seen The Last Knight, and have no intention of doing so, so I have zero connection to the movie character or his nonsensical naming therein. Nitro was one of those toys which, almost like those from the extended range from the original movie and Revenge of the Fallen, simply struck me as being a pretty awesome TransFormers toy, at least as far as the early photos went. I was lucky enough to pick him up at TFNation last year (by the time I got in, there were only two left on the only stall that seemed to have them, and the other one was minus the head!), and he's now the last of The Last Knight's toys that I need to write about...