Generations Selects Legacy: Evolution Antagony

Femme-Bot Friday #90

These days, even now I'm back in full-time work, impulse buys of TransFormers toys are few and far between, because my abiding impression is that overall quality has dropped substantially versus toys from a few years ago. Where a new figure is a remake of an earlier Generations toy - especially something like the Kingdom Waspinator mold feeling like a cheap knockoff of the 30th Anniversary toy - I'm even less inclined to pick up the newer version.

However, Legacy Inferno was the first new toy of the Beast Wars character since the 1997 original, which I've never owned, and Antagony was a BotCon 1998 exclusive repaint as a Femme-Bot, which I've also never owned... The new toy appeared to be such a hopeless simplification of the original, losing most of its impressive features, so Inferno was among the majority of Legacy toys that I skipped.

And yet... when I happened upon Generations Selects Legacy: Evolution Antagony - ostensibly a limited edition repaint by Hasbro themselves - at a branch of Game inside a Sports Direct in Eastbourne, that old impulse arose. Could this be another case of buyer's remorse? Let's take a look...

APC Toys Destruction Galaxy Mob Air General

I think I've already indicated that I'm a huge fan of the TransFormers Prime Vehicon mold (the RiD version, at least - I have yet to handle the First Edition version, but I believe it's broadly inferior). Not only did I end up buying three copies of the ground Vehicons, but I ended up getting the TransFormers Adventure Ground Vehicon General (accidentally) as well. Even today, I'm impressed by the way it transforms in that, while it's technically a shellformer, it does more with its shell than simply collect it on its back.

Then there's the Jet Vehicon, which is essentially the same, but with wings which... end up on its back. Nevertheless, I bought the Arms Micron version of that (just the one, but after buying the Cyberverse scale toy, which was the only version made available in the UK), and wanted to buy the Jet Vehicon General/Ace as well, because it gave me a valid excuse to buy, essentially, a fifth instance of the same toy. However, once again, the only version available in the UK was the Cyberverse one... which, while cute, didn't quite scratch the itch. The Deluxe class toy, unsurprisingly, proved more elusive than the standard Jet Vehicon, coming in the final selection of Arms Micron toys.

So, props to APC Toys - who already impressed me with the Airachnid garage kit they mass-produced - for not only remaking the standard Vehicons, but also the Generals/Aces... and the upgraded paintwork made this one an absolute must-have. I added it to my Christmas/Birthday list shortly after it became available, and my sister ordered it as my Christmas present last year.

Bottom line, though, this is essentially the fourth iteration of the Deluxe class mold that I've owned so, for a more detailed assessment, look at one of the previous write-ups.

TransFormers Legacy: Evolution Deadeye Duel 2-pack - Kaskade vs. Javelin

(Femme-Bot Friday #87)

It struck me in the afternoon of January 1st that, as of this year - and, more specifically, yesterday - Femme-Bot Friday has been a feature of this blog for ten years. That being the case, I thought it appropriate to try to post something special... which might have been easier if the franchise had offered a greater quantity of worthwhile Femme-Bots. It would have been wonderful to hit FBF#100 for this anniversary, but that could only be achieved by re-posting Femme-Bots that I'd posted about before FBF became a thing.

And, while it would have been ideal to celebrate 10 years since I kicked off this feature with a post about Flame Toys' Arcee model kit, I haven't yet taken sufficient photos for that figure (lack of time, motivation and daylight over the last few months being largely responsible), so we're just going to have to make do with a Legacy: Evolution versus set that - miraculously - pits two unique Femme-Bots against each other. Little did I know, before I started writing all this, but this set actually refers to a specific story in the IDW comics, though the two featured characters don't exactly face off.

Is this unprecedented boxed set worth the investment? Well... That's an especially astute question, given my opinion of Hasbro's current output...

Galaxy Force (Toy's Dream Project) Fang Wolf Black Version

I mentioned in my write-up to Cybertron Snarl that the figure had been an easy pass - the toy didn't look that great, not least due to a bizarre choice of colourscheme. Even the Takara version looked a bit crap, so the one I bought myself was for the purpose of a custom repaint, and then a friend bought me another for my birthday. However, when the Toy's Dream Project repaint was announced, that caught my attention because the mold itself isn't bad.

Like the TDP Soundblaster and the more sober official repaint Dark Ligerjack, and as the name 'Black Version' would suggest, it's a darker repaint... though mostly grey rather than actually black. I've mentioned before that I'm a sucker for a 'black' repaint, but is a darker colourscheme enough to properly demonstrate this mold's merits?

Big Firebird Build EX Series EX-01 Plus Mooka (AKA Mocha)

(Femme-Bot Friday #81)

I know.

I originally said I wasn't going to write about this figure here, but on my oft-neglected, more general toy blog... However, sometime between Mocha/Mooka's announcement and actually receiving the toy in the post last year, I realised that was the wrong decision. While it still doesn't fit here in the sense that it's not a Third Party take on a TransFormers character, it doesn't fit there in that it's clearly an adult collectable rather than a toy. In many ways, posting about the Cyclion there was somewhat mistaken.

However, I've covered Go-Bots and myriad other Third Party figures, so the TransForm-A-Blog is clearly not wholly about TransFormers. Plus, Mooka is derived from a figure that was originally conceived as a stylised take on Arcee, so I've decided to post this here, and henceforth try to keep Toys, HEXcetera... focussed on things that are more general action figure material.

So, prepare yourselves for another controversial and divisive Third Party Femme-Bot, this one seemingly deliberately reworked to play into some of the complaints made about Nicee when she first emerged.

Buzzworthy Bumblebee/Worlds Collide Blackarachnia

(Femme-Bot Friday #78)

The Buzzworthy Bumblebee line has become a source of seemingly never-ending puzzlement for me. Quite apart from the fact that Hasbro still insist on pushing Bumblebee as somehow central to the TransFormers brand - perhaps moreso than either Optimus Prime or Megatron - they have created a whole new toyline whose express purpose is to put as many different versions of that single character on the shelves, and they somehow fail to see a problem with that.

But then, not content with shoehorning perfectly good Beast Wars reboot toys into yet another of their interminable ostensibly G1-rebooting toylines, they've created a Buzzworthy Bumblebee boxed set that takes two Kingdom beastformers and jams them in with a five-years-late Titans Return toy and a repaint of Earthrise Cliffjumper as Bumblebee, even though there was a perfectly good, dedicated Bumblebee mold in the War for Cybertron Trilogy line (released as a Walmart exclusive in the US, but seemingly more widely available in other territories) which they could have used.

Then again, this is the same company that made both a Bug Bite and a Shattered Glass Goldbug out of the Cliffjumper mold, neatly missing the point of the choice of molds used in the predecessors.

So. Worlds Collide: a Buzzworthy Bumblebee boxed set, exclusive to Walmart in the States (availability in the UK still to be confirmed) comprising Nemesis Primal (a character who did not appear in the Netflix show, and who may be Nemesis Prime cosplaying as Optimus Primal or Optimus Primal corrupted by Unicron), Fangry (a Titans Return retooling that was seemingly - and bafflingly - the main draw of this set for many fans), the aforementioned Bumblejumper (or would this be Cliffbee?) and a reworking of Kingdom Blackarachnia based upon the the appearance of the original Beast Wars Blackarachnia's toy.

As you can imagine 75% of this set was of zero interest to me... and when reports of the QC problems - ranging from insanely loose legs on Fangry to insanely tight arms on Nemesis Primal - emerged, I felt my lack of interest was vindicated. Naturally, though, those gullible fools who bought the set for just one of the figures started splitting it up and trying to make back their money via the secondary market. While I found one UK seller looking to offload his Blackarachnia, their Buy It Now price was seriously over the odds (approx. half the price of importing the full set from the US, with UK shipping on top of that? Seriously?) and they declined my offer (approx. one third the price of importing the full set from the US, so pretty fair, I thought). Thankfully, I found a couple of US sellers offering a much more reasonable price (slightly higher than a standard Deluxe) and with acceptable costs via eBay PackLink shipping, and so I snapped her up.

And so, coincidentally exactly nine months after I wrote about the Kingdom toy, here she is!

War for Cybertron Trilogy Centurion Drone

Something I wasn't aware of when I wrote about Brunt was that his design had been based on the Centurion droids from the IDW comics, as a massive improvement on the crummy, seemingly Fantasy-influenced design of the green, dome-headed droids from the G1 cartoon. It seemed only logical, then, that a repaint should be in the works, since the figure seemed to be very much geared toward those who like to build armies of identical figures, like the Vehicons from TransFormers Prime.

Leave it to Hasbro, then, to re-release the figure only as part of a limited edition boxed set, along with a set of accessories missing from their individual toys. And, typically, it was long sold out by the time Hasbro Pulse reached the UK.

Since Brunt was - for my money - about the best toy in the entire Siege line, I was keen to get hold of the repaint, even if troop-building was out of the question (had been desirable to me in the first place, which it... wasn't... honest). The set was re-released by Takara Tomy earlier this year, but that set was equally hard to find. Thankfully, the repaint figure was the only part of the boxed set that I wanted, so I figured it was only a matter of time before someone put it up on eBay having bought the set for the accessories. Back over the summer, that's exactly what happened, so I snapped him up.

Wonder Festival 2007 Binaltech BT17 Black Convoy

I had to think long and hard about posting about this figure because, while Perfect Effect's Leonidas is undoubtedly the most disastrous purchase I've made in all my years of collecting, Binaltech Black Convoy comes a very close second. Made available at the winter 2007 Wonder Festival in Tokyo for the very reasonable price of ¥6,500 (a mere £42 in today's money), I acquired this on eBay at some point after the event. Once out of its packaging (a bubble pack, much like contemporary Alternators toys, rather than the traditional Binaltech box), it quickly became apparent that I'd bought a bit of a lemon: one of the joints connecting the bonnet to the car had been subject to a glue spillage and was immobile at an awkward midpoint, useful neither for robot mode nor vehicle mode.

At the time, it felt kind of like the universe's response to my avarice, considering I'd already acquired the Alternators versions of both Optimus and Nemesis Prime, and this figure basically went straight back into its packaging. There it remained until a few months ago, when it fell off the shelf it was on. Naturally, since the packaging was open, the figure slipped out on the way down, leading to one of the wing mirrors breaking off.

Since the box is clearly no longer a safe storage place, and I've been debating what to do about the wing mirror (temporarily on hold, having discovered that every tube of superglue I own has dried up), he's been sat on one of my main display shelves just to keep him reasonably safe and out of the way... Earlier in the week, I had to do a bit of hoovering, and so cleared the space in front of that cabinet, I figured I might as well pull him out and snap a few photos...

Superlink Shadowhawk Cosmo Type

If there's one thing that can be said in favour of Energon/Superlink, it's that it did things very differently from both Armada/Micron Legend, which it followed, and Cybertron/Galaxy Force, which it preceded, albeit with mixed success. A lot of the larger figures were slightly higher-tech looking, but still much the same level of intricacy as the former, while the smaller size classes included an imaginative range of robots and alternate modes, some of which ended up getting reused in the earliest movie toylines.

One of the oddities of the line was that Takara released a few variants that appeared even in the US version of the TV show, but weren't picked up by Hasbro for release in the Western markets. One such figure was the blue repaint of Shadowhawk/Divebomb, and the somewhat limited nature of its release put the so-called 'Cosmo Type' on my radar.

Superlink Black Rodimus Convoy (TV Magazine Exclusive)

Proof positive, as if any were needed, that giving a toy a black repaint will entice me to acquire it, however terrible that toy may be, this is the disappointing and clumsy Energon Rodimus mold, with a swanky new colorscheme...

Seriously, sometimes I curse my compulsion for black repaints.

Universe 'War of the Waves' Air Raid vs. Storm Surge

Hot on the heels of Energon Skyblast, we have a carded pair of vaguely movie-related Unicron Trilogy repaints, one of which is a Skyblast repaint!

War of the Waves was apparently a Black Friday exclusive at Walmart in the US, which would most likely have made it an Asda exclusive here... But I've never been a regular patron of Asda, and didn't exactly scour their toy shelves at the best of times. If it didn't come from Toys'R'Us, it was more likely acquired at Sainsbury's or Tesco, neither of which have consistently stocked any US store exclusives. In fact, the only one I remember even seeing in any supermarket was the Walmart exclusive racing repaint of Sidearm Sideswipe, which was a Sainsbury's exclusive over here.

I'd also assumed, based on the 'digital camouflage' paint job on Air Raid and the Sector 7 insignias stamped onto both toys, that this was a movie-related two-pack, but the instruction leaflet - shared between both figures in the pack - clearly labels it as being part of the Universe line... which both was and wasn't an extension of the movie line...

So, let's take a look at this curious, cross-generational two-pack.

TransFormers (Movie) Strongarm (Target Exclusive)

Based on an Energon/Superlink Omnicon mold which I declined to purchase when it first emerged, something about movie Strongarm nevertheless tickled my fancy, because I can remember having to return the copy I originally bought to the Harrow branch of Woolworths for a replacement, because parts of it had become glued together during its construction. Whether this means it was a Woolies exclusive in the UK, I can't say...

I can also remember being somewhat interested in the BotCon 2005 'Descent into Evil' repaint as Outback (named Fallback in that set for legal reasons), but have never felt like paying the secondary market prices for it... It's possible I bought this to see if it would be worth trying to acquire Fallback, or it may simply have been a substitute.

Either way, this is the first - and, so far, only - iteration of this mold I own, so let's have a look...

Robots in Disguise Prowl

Of the three RiD Car Brothers, I've always felt that Prowl was the least crap-looking. This may be largely due to the choice of vehicle mode, but he's also the most TransFormer-y figure of the set because of the way certain car parts become aspects of the robot rather than just hanging off him.

In keeping with tradition, Prowl transforms into a police car... but, while the colourscheme of the original version was a clear homage to G1 Prowl, the version I picked up - his 'Super' form, albeit unacknowledged on the packaging - does things a little differently...

Cybertron Skywarp

I've mentioned my Seeker OCD several times (probably every time I write about a Starscream, Skywarp or Thundercracker, to be honest), but there are occasions when it manifests itself in completely illogical ways. The Cybertron version of Skywarp is just one such occasion, since it's a repaint of Thundercracker, which had previously been a unique mold in the toyline rather than the traditional repaint of Starscream.

Making matters all the more interesting, it followed the example of Galaxy Force/Cybertron Thundercracker by largely ignoring the traditional Skywarp colourscheme. When I wrote about the original, I noted that I was sufficiently impressed by it that I picked this one up... but, having the repaint in hand, is it still impressive enough to forstall any buyers' remorse?

3H BotCon (Europe) 2002 Universe Rook

It's interesting to note, in retropect, that my purchasing of older BotCon exclusives - those that preceded Fun Publications' acquisition of the license from Hasbro - has followed a similar trajectory to my earliest collecting. Tap-Out was the first 3H BotCon figure I picked up, and was a repaint of the first TransFormers toy I ever bought, Cliffjumper. It gets less precise after that because, while Glyph - based on Bumblebee - was the next BotCon repaint of a G1 Mini Autobot that I acquired, the second Autobot toy I bought was Windcharger... and it took me several years more to finally get round to buying this BotCon repaint of that mold.

Rook was originally made available at BotCon Europe 2002 - an event I wasn't even aware had existed until a few years ago, since it preceded my return to TransFormers collecting by a year or two - and is based on the slightly remodelled version, released as a novelty key fob in the early 2000s, but is otherwise just a repaint... and the only reason I really thought about picking him up is that Rook appeared in Fun Publications' TF Collectors' Club magazine a few times. He's not even that hard to track down, or expensive to buy, so it eventually became a bit of a no-brainer...

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 (Movie) Hardtop (Target Exclusive)

There are times when I really don't understand Hasbro. Their strategy with the TransFormers brand generally seems pretty haphazard, their strategy with specific toylines often seems not to be fully thought through... but their strategy for store exclusives can be utterly baffling. The only consistent thing is their inconsistency.

When the first TransFormers live action movie came out, the new toys featured novel and impressive engineering, the likes of which had genuinely never been seen before. It may not have been perfectly accurate to the on-screen CGI, but the movie toylines were the first step in a quantum leap in toy engineering than continued over the next few years.

And yet, for a set of Target Exclusive, movie branded Scout class figures, Hasbro mined their back catalogue for repaints. The selection was, somehow, very Energon-centric despite the clear disparity in aesthetic. Then again, the other line selected was Cybertron, which generally wasn't much better. Hardtop - a repaint of the Cybertron figure of the same name - turned out to be the best match, at least as far as his vehicle mode was concerned, since it's not a million miles away from Landmine.

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?

Universe 'Standoff Beneath the Streets' Springer vs. Ratbat

Hasbro used to release quite a few multipacks of TransFormers toys, but I didn't tend to pay much attention to them. Either I already had one of the figures in the set in one form or another, or at least one of them was crap (witness the sheer number of multipacks that included a variation of the awful Armada Sideswipe mold).

However, when the 'Standoff Beneath the Streets' set turned up, it seemed like a good deal: two great figures from the Cybertron/Galaxy Force toyline repainted as G1 characters in a set which - I gather - paid homage to a particular IDW storyline. The only downside was that one of the characters, Springer, was traditionally a Triple Changer, but the mold used was not. 2007's BotCon Springer gave him a single, ground-based vehicle mode, Hasbro were now giving him his helicopter mode via the GF Live Convoy mold.

But, for me, the main event was the first re-use of the Noisemaze mold - one of the most interesting figures in the Galaxy Force line.

TransFormers Cloud Starscream

I don't know a great deal about TransFormers Cloud, not least because the toys - by and large - didn't interest me. Most were pretty dull repaints, with the occasional new head sculpt, but only two tickled my fancy: Hellwarp - a repaint of the Generations Sky-Byte mold in Skywarp colours - and this one, Starscream.

Neither were priority figures when they first appeared, but when the Bumblebee movie turned up, featuring a character named Blitzwing, who transformed into a jet coloured suspiciously like Starscream, the latter figure got bumped up the list since it occurred to me - thanks to my weird way of thinking - that he could function both as Cloud Starscream and a Generations version of Bumblebee movie Blitzwing (even though he never transformed into a tank, or gave any indication of being a triple-changer in his brief appearance).

Of course, I already own both Generations Blitzwing and Generations Doubledealer - the latter's head sculpt being reused here - so let's see what makes Cloud Starcream unique...