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...

Retro G1 Gears

Given that Hasbro have been recycling G1 now for almost five times longer than G1 actually existed, back in the day, it became increasingly baffling to me that each new iteration - particularly from the Prime Wars trilogy onward - that the focus has been wholly on the G1 cartoon rather than the G1 toys. Sure, the argument rages on, that the cartoon is the main reason TransFormers exists as a brand, but that's a particularly American point of view, and has me questioning whether some of these people are actually TransFormers fans, or simply fans of a TV show they view through nostalgia goggles, and afflicted with a compulsion to buy branded merchandise.

However, about 20 years after the Classics reboot, which brought a fresh new look and contemporary engineering to the old-favourite characters, Hasbro seem finally to be acknowledging that some TransFormers fans actually want familiar-looking, contemporary remakes of their old G1 toys... and so we have the Retro G1 line.

Essentially, it's a mix of latecomers in the grey area of an ongoing line that is War for Cybertron, Legacy and Age of the Primes, and including toys which, for whatever reason, are popping up first in the Studio Series '86 line. Their plastic colours and head sculpts are more toy-accurate, but it's like something the TransFormers Collectors' Club would do: a repaint with a new head, packaged under its own brand... only this is specifically targeted at the 40- to 50-something nostalgia hounds rather than the Premium Collector bracket. The inaugural pair were - to no-one's surprise - a repack of the War for Cybertron: Earthrise Bumblebee (which, having been a Netflix exclusive to being with, has since been repainted about a billion times already) that kept the animation-style head, and Legacy Gears.

Much as I might have wanted a new G1-style Gears, it wasn't just the ugly, animation-style head that put me off buying the Legacy toy... So let's see if this cynically-marketed re-release is enough to make me change my mind about an entire mold.

Holiday/Birthday Haul

Since I'm now working full time again, Courtney and I took advantage of our respective paid annual leave to get out of town for my birthday this year. We settled on Eastbourne, because I like cheesy coastal resorts, and Eastbourne has a good reputation. The trip itself was only for three nights - heading down on the Monday of my birthday, returning on the Thursday - and, for once, we didn't meticulously plan a full itinerary in advance, because the idea was to relax.

Weather permitting, we were aiming to spend a lot of the time just on the beach, walking along the coast, and unplugging. I had a handful of recommendations for eateries in the area, and had looked up a few shops that were potentially of interest to someone of my collecting habits, but these were all secondary to just chilling out... at least as far as the UK heatwave would permit.

We didn't get to all the shops I'd flagged, but I did manage to pick up a couple of interesting items:

Neither are toys that I was particularly keen to obtain. The Blockees figures all seem weirdly-proportioned to me, and the whole Legacy toyline was a disaster as far as I'm concerned... But Beast Wars reboot Antagony was being sold at a discount and, as a Femme-Bot, was of (marginally) greater interest to me than the Inferno mold she re-uses.

Neither have changed my mind about their respective lines - I certainly don't see myself buying any more Blockees, despite them being pretty decent, simple model kits with light-up parts, but I have already ordered the Antagony upgrade kit which - sadly - turns her into a non-transforming action figure, albeit one that looks far better than Hasbro's stock lazy repaint.

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...

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.

Buzzworthy Bumblebee: Creatures Collide 4-pack

By and large, the Buzzworthy Bumblebee line has been filled with products I have been perfectly content to live without: regardless of which line the toys are derived from, they have been mostly superfluous repaints. When it comes to the boxed sets, there have been far more misses than hits. When the Worlds Collide set came along, I ended up buying the Blackarachnia figure purely because she's a Femme-Bot and it was a decent reference to the original Beast Wars toy's box art, while the other figures were reportedly a mess of loose joints.

This second 'Collides' set was, at first, marginally more interesting. I wasn't overly fussed by the scarcity of the Netflix-branded Earthrise Bumblebee toy because, having already bought Cliffjumper, I knew it wouldn't be a patch on the Classics toy from 2006... But Goldbug was another matter, because I'm quite fond of the G1 Throttlebot, and he's sufficiently distinct from Bumblebee. Similarly, I'd passed on the TV show-inspired Kingdom Scorponok figure because I was disappointed by the look of it but, now I own a reissue of the original toy in show-accurate colours, a toy-coloured repaint of the Kingdom figure was potentially a fun comparison. Skywasp was a stupid/amazing pun, and so instantly interesting, in spite of the new mold's obvious inferiority to Generations Waspinator... Which left Ransack: a repaint of the Legacy Kickback figure that's barely an improvement on the G1 original, representing one of the 'Deluxe Insecticons' which, back in the day, had a wholly unique mold that was never made available in the UK.

So, when presented with this set at a RRP of £93, I turned my nose up and avoided it, even though that breaks down as four figures for slightly less than the price of four individual Deluxes. However, seeing it cut down to £45 at GAME, it seemed like a sweeter deal... But let's see how I feel about it with the figures in-hand...

TransFormers Legacy Tarantulas

While I've amassed a fair old collection of original Beast Wars toys, Tarantulas is one character of whom I've never owned a single toy. Even the Telemocha re-release didn't grab me... Though that's perhaps more because I just felt the original Beast Wars toy failed to adequately represent either him or Blackarachnia, and the TransMetals upgrade never really appealed to me because I was very late to my appreciation for its ostentatious chrome and gaudy colourschemes. Nowadays, I'd be somewhat keen to get my hands on the TransMetals version, if it weren't for the fact that I'm basically out of space on my single Beast Wars/Machines shelf.

After the third chapter of Hasbro's War for Cybertron Trilogy turned into a haphazard convergence of G1 and Beast Wars, I ended up buying more of the latter selection than the former... But, while two versions of Kingdom Blackarachnia were produced, Tarantulas remained notable by his absence.

But then Legacy arrived, and it wasn't long before Tarantulas was announced. It wouldn't be unreasonable to presume that he'd effectively be Kingdom Tarantulas, rebranded for the newer line... but, to my surprise, that has turned out not to be the case. Come into my parlour, and lets find out what makes this figure something different.

New Purchases - AKA A Third Not An Unboxing Post

During some recent tidying, my girlfriend uncovered a box containing my old Nintendo Game Boy Color and the 17 game cartridges I bought for it many, many years ago. I'd pretty much forgotten its existence, since it hadn't seen the light of day in the eight years Courtney has been living with me. I remember bringing it to my flat, but I wouldn't have been able to remember where I'd put it... And, since I've not used it in so long, I figured it was time to sell it all on.

What has this to do with TransFormers? Well, I've bought nothing new since January, and the act of selling those 17 games made for a surprising windfall. As a result, I decided to spend a small part of it on acquiring the handful of toys I'd actually been looking forward to from Hasbro, and take the opportunity to have a more serious look at obtaining a couple of Third Party figures I was starting to think I'd have to miss out on (unless their release conveniently coincided with Christmas).

It also seemed like a good opportunity to try out a couple of new e-retailers I've found - Dinobot Island Toys and Star Action Figures - both of whom have been added to my sidebar's 'Cybertronian Datanet' section for a short while now. They seem to have a good range of stock, all of which is a few quid cheaper than the likes of Hasbro Pulse, Smyths, and some of the other online stores I've used in the past. They also, between them, had everything I wanted to buy, where my regular options were out of stock when I was ready to order.

Of course, my orders went through at precisely the time the CWU (Communication Workers Union) were going on strike, which naturally had an effect on postal services. That said, I put my orders through on 27/8 and 31/8, they were despatched on 30/8 and 1/9, respectively, which is quick service on the part of the two stores, in spite of the Summer Bank Holiday Weekend.

Additionally, both packages arrived in this morning's post, so I'd say that's still pretty good service on the part of the Royal Mail, in spite of any backlog caused by the (very necessary) industrial action.

Full writeups will, of course, be coming... but here are a few pics to tide you over.

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...

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.

TransFormers Legacy: already a joke

So, Hasbro have chosen to pre-empt their own online PulseCon event - running Friday 22nd to Saturday 23rd October - by revealing a couple of toys from the upcoming TransFormers Legacy toyline: new versions of Skids (from G1) and Bulkhead (from TF Prime). It's a bold move... but also means they can get a feel for the fan reaction without their own servers being bombarded.

Call me a cynic, but I think that might be the main reason... Because, if these two toys are representative of what TransFormers Legacy is going to be, Hasbro have pretty much lost me as a customer.