TransFormers Collectors' Club 2014 (Timelines) Rewind

Since I was not a follower of the IDW comics, this was a semi-reluctant purchase for me. I'd picked up the Club's Chromedome from the 2014 Subscription Service selection because the head sculpt was cool and it was made using the TF Prime Wheeljack mold, which had been one of my favourites from that toyline.

But, in the back of my mind, I was dimly aware that an IDW-style Chromedome was somehow incomplete without a corresponding Rewind and, since that was one of the other figures from the same year's selection, I tracked one down just to complete the couple.

I can't remember now whether I bought this before or after I picked up the TransFormers United Rumble & Frenzy set at TFNation in 2016, but one would surely have contributed to my purchase of the other. Thing being, on the surface and aside from the obvious physical similarities in their G1 selves, this is a particularly curious choice for one of Blaster's cassettes... Let's find out why.

Ocular Max (MMC) Infinite Finity IF-01A Eris: Kultur Subjugation Alternative

 (Femme-Bot Friday #83)

I'd be the first to admit that my knowledge of IDW's TransFormers comics is sorely limited. I used to get the Marvel comics back in the 1980s but, as an adult, comics just don't appeal to me quite so much. First and foremost, they take up space that I'd prefer to use for other things. Secondly, the individual paper comics require much more careful handling and storage than graphic novels (what Marvel UK used to refer to as 'Collected Comics' back in the day) so, on the rare occasion I buy anything comics-related, it will be in that form. But, more than that, my interest has always been mainly in the toys, not any of the associated fiction, so the comics never seemed especially important... Especially after they started following the US version in messing up all the characters in both appearance and portrayal.

I acknowledge that this has probably led to me missing out on some excellent stories, as well as the introduction of new characters who had not been part of G1 or G2 in the Marvel comics... but media-only characters always feel like a waste of time to me, considering any and all TransFormers media is, fundamentally, advertising for toys. I may have encountered analogues to some of them via the TransFormers Collectors' Club, but they carried no special significance to me because I hadn't been following the comics.

However, there's always one sure-fire way to grab my attention with a tertiary character, and that's to make them a Femme-Bot. And here, Ocular Max - aka Mastermind Creations - have done just that. Some years back, they turned the character of Tarn - erudite leader of the so-called 'Decepticon Justice Division' - into a figure in their Reformatted line - Kultur. It looked interesting enough but, lacking any connection to the character or even the concept of the Decepticon Justice Division, it wasn't as interesting to me as the myriad repaints of Reformatted Azalea. While the majority of Ocular Max's output seems to have been G1 Animation-style figures, the Infinite Finity line seems to been created with the intention of branching out, possibly with an IDW focus, while maintaining a degree of continuity with Reformatted.

Eris: Kultur was the first figure from this line, revealed in 2020 and first released - available exclusively via web store Planet Steel Express - in 2021, with its original colourscheme being a very limited run specifically for that web store. I wasn't really in a position to order it at the time, but MMC/Ocular Max hinted at a recolour to be released later, so I hedged my bets and waited.

And so, here is the result of my... patience..? Or, at the very least, the response and solution to my Fear Of Missing Out.

War for Cybertron: Kingdom Slammer

While I didn't buy Generations Metroplex - essentially the centrepiece of the Thrilling 30 portion, celebrating that anniversary of this toyline - I do own the original, and have always been sufficiently intrigued by his companions that I would sit up and take notice if they ever got independent toys of their own. When Sixgun was given the Weaponiser treatment in the Siege toyline, I somewhat expected Slammer to follow a little sooner than two years later... but, let's face it, much of this War for Cybertron line has been long-delayed supplementary Generations/30th Anniversary material...

As with his Siege comrade, Slammer has been updated into Weaponiser form, though this feature appears to be a less significant part of Kingdom's 'play pattern' due to the introduction of the 'Fossilisers'. Let's see how this affects him, both as an individual toy and as accessories to the others!

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.

TransFormers Animated Shockwave

It's not often that I have to contemplate adding a spoiler warning to a toy post, but I'd like to think that, by now, TransFormers Animated has been seen in its entirety by everyone who actually wants to watch it, and so the story spoiler inherent in this toy is thereby no longer likely to affect anyone's enjoyment of that show.

 

Essentially, Shockwave had a small but pivotal role in the show, with far-reaching consequences for several other characters, thanks to the very interesting spin the show's writers put on the G1 stalwart. Not content with having him follow tradition and be the de facto Decepticon commander on Cybertron, in Megatron's absence, they made him a spy, infiltrating Autobot Boot Camp and, from there, Cybertron Intelligence, thanks to abilities which allowed him to adopt an Autobot disguise, known as Longarm, with its own unique robot and vehicle modes.

 

Naturally, this was more successful in the cartoon than it could ever be in three-dimensional plastic, but the TF Animated toyline performed some minor miracles with its engineering in some cases, so it's really just a question of whether or not Shockwave is one of the better attempts.

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...

Studio Series #56 Shockwave

While I've not liked all the designs of the robots in the live action movies - particularly the randomly spiky Cybertronian forms of the Bay movies - there's no denying how striking they are, and how imposing they managed to appear in the films. Given that some Decepticons didn't even transform on-screen, they could have been given just about any alternate mode imaginable.

One such character was Dark of the Moon's distinctly non-traditional interpretation of Shockwave. Gone was the logically-minded custodian of the remnants of Decepticon Cybertron and, in his place, we got a fairly generic, virtually mute metal monster with a honkin' great cannon on one arm (and the wrong arm, at that) and an enormous, city-munching robo-phallic tentacle monster for a 'pet'. Pretty much the only things the production artists got right were the head (cyclopean, albeit heavily embellished versus the G1 character) and the power cable for his gun arm.

Not that I'd expect a movie bot to transform into an enormous space gun but, given that Shockwave's appearance in the game of the very first movie had him transform into both a helicopter and a howitzer, there's already precedent for something out of the ordinary... And yet the original toy just had him turn into a spiky tank... Now, about five years later, Shockwave has been granted a Studio Series makeover - packaged as a Leader class figure, no less - so let's see what sort of improvements Hasbro have made...

Street Fighter II X TransFormers Convoy [Ryu] vs Megatron [Vega]

Considering I already have three iterations of the Generations Blitzwing mold, I decided I wouldn't bother with the Titans Return remake, either as Megatron (the form it was first released in) or as Blitzwing. Conversely, while the Optimus Prime version of the Octane mold was of no interest to me, I've ended up with not only TR Octane (in fact the first and only contemporary Octane in my collection!), but the Tokyo Toy Show 2017 Nemesis Prime/Black Convoy version as well.

All of which is to say that, of these two Street Fighter II crossover repaints, only one was entirely new to me... but the idea was certainly bonkers enough to get my attention, and I ordered both of the Street Fighter II X Transformers boxed sets as soon as they became available.

If you've ever wondered how an arcade beat-'em-up would translate into TransFormers toys, read on!

War for Cybertron: Siege Brunt

'Brunt' has to be one of the best names ever to grace the TransFormers toyline, right along with 'Scourge' and 'Dirge'. The word means "the worst part or chief impact of a specified thing" and is a very apt monkier for a tank with such an enormous cannon, which can split up to form additional components of the G1 Trypticon toy.

Pretty much my fondest desire, when the concept of Weaponisers turned out to be reimagined versions of all the partsformers packaged with the G1 city-bots, was for a Siege Brunt that paid worthwhile homage to the original. It didn't take long for the first pictures to emerge and, for me, Brunt became the real must-have of the line, even though there are already more than enough tanks in my collection, let alone the toyline as a whole.

Since I already have the G1 version, let's take a look at this newer, more elaborate homage to partsforming...

War for Cybertron: Siege Skytread Flywheels

One of the biggest surprises of the Power of the Primes line was the appearance of the G1 Duocon Battletrap in the form of two combining figures - Battleslash and Roadtrap. Before the first images turned up - a remarkably short time before the two figures actually arrived in shops - there had been no hints of Duocons featuring in PotP, but they turned out to be the most innovative offering of the line, which was otherwise a retread of Combiner Wars with added elements of Titans Return.

Of course, making Battletrap surely meant that a full Duocon Flywheels was on his way, to replace the poorly-executed and otherwise redundant Titan Master/Triple-changing Vehicle combination, Skytread, released under the Titans Return banner, right?

Well... Kinda... In fact, it didn't happen at all within Power of the Primes, and when the second Duocon was finally revealed, he turned out to be a closer homage to the G1 toy than Battletrap had been...

Titans Return Sixshot & Revolver

G1 Sixshot was another of the later G1 toys that was never released in the UK but, even if he had been, I'd probably not have picked him up simply because his arrival would have been toward the end of my original collecting days, if not after.

In the intervening years, I've considered picking him up on eBay - either the original or the 2002 Encore re-release - and also started looking at the third party options, from Mastermind Creations' Terminus Hexatron to Iron Factory's Shadow Tengu, but more-or-less decided not to bother as all I really remember about Sixshot was a single appearance in the G1 cartoon, during which he appeared in the middle of a battle, and attacked something once in each of his modes... then, as far as I can recall, disappeared for the remainder of the episode. Suffice it to say, he didn't make much of an impression at the time.

Then the announcement came that there would be a new, super-articulated Titans Return Sixshot - a Leader class figure, no less - and my interest was somewhat rekindled... But does this remake, 30 years in the making, really improve that much over the original?

Titans Return Overlord & Dreadnaut

While I felt a little deprived over the likes of Fortress Maximus never appearing in UK toy shops (since he actually appeared in the Marvel comics, albeit at the same dubiously variable scale as he seems to have used in the cartoon), I wasn't even aware of the likes of Overlord until I became an adult collector, because I'd stopped collecting by the time he was released over here... and, these days, the lustre of most G1 toys has faded somewhat.

Overlord, being one of the 'playset' TransFormers toys, may yet have had a place in my collection, alongside my original G1 Metroplex, Scorponok and (2015's Platinum Edition) Trypticon as well, because he's unique in that he's a triple-changing dual-Powermaster with a fairly decent, quite sprawling base mode, but the lack of articulation in the robot mode is more of a sticking point for me these days than it would have been only a few years back.

But then Hasbro decided to update him for Titans Return, and a widespread release was more-or-less guaranteed (the 'less' part being dependency on Hasbro's increasingly dodgy distribution). As usual, I umm-ed and ahh-ed about whether or not to get him, more or less deciding against based on a couple of YouTube video reviews... but then caved in and forked out £60 for him at TFNation 2017.

So, was he worth it..?

TransFormers United 2-pack: UN-20 Rumble & Frenzy

If there's one thing I find frustrating and disappointing about the TransFormers brand, it's the reliance on tanks to solve just about any issue with updating a character's form. Megatron can't be a gun anymore because gun toys are considered more dangerous and contentious in America than real guns? Make him a tank. Shockwave can't be a space gun anymore because space guns are still guns? Make him a space tank.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so fussy about a toyline which is still, let's face it, predominantly made up of cars... but surely there are better updates to contentious G1 alternate modes than tanks?

And yet, just because the extended Classics line had no Soundwave of its own (despite there being a sort of contemporary figure in one of Takara Tomy's short-lived offshoot lines), two of his more enduring minions appeared in somewhat familiar and sadly unimaginative forms...

Generations (30th Anniversary) Doubledealer

As far as I can recall (and without popping back to my parents' house to raid the cupboard in which most of my G1 toys remain to this day) I only ever bought two Powermasters: Optimus Prime and Doubledealer. The former was a no-brainer (albeit quite disappointing in-hand, as it turned out) simply because it was the latest incarnation of Optimus Prime (and was accompanied, in the Marvel comics of the day, by a very strange story). The latter was rather more unusual, in that it was a Dual-Powermaster Triple-Changer with an Autobot mode and a Decepticon mode.

Sure, it wasn't unprecedented - Punch/Counterpunch came out the year before - but this was the first time a faction-switching Triple-Changer made it over to this sceptred isle. The idea of an effectively neutral character, willing to work for either side, tickled me, as did the fact that the humanoid robot was an Autobot and the bird-like robot was a Decepticon, with the vehicle mode bearing no visible insignia. This 'Thrilling 30' update, based on the Blitzwing mold, plays things a little differently...

TransFormers Collectors' Club Botcon 2013 (Timelines) Boxed Set: Machine Wars: Termination

Machine Wars falls into one of the many gaping holes in my knowledge of/interest in TransFormers. I got into Beast Wars long after the event, having bought only Optimus Primal and Megatron while they were in the shops (and then only because I chanced to see them). Beast Machines was - and is - eminently avoidable as a toyline though I'm a massive fan of the TV series, and Machine Wars - if TF Wiki is to be believed - was simply an aborted attempt to bring the TransFormers brand, revitalised by Beast Wars, back to its mechanical origins. Most of the line appears to have been large, overly simplistic crap, though some of its toys were repurposed from G2 molds and into later Universe lines.

So... the question has to be asked: what possessed the TransFormers Collectors' Club to choose Machine Wars as the theme of it's 2013 BotCon set? And how would such a tiny selection of characters be represented? Well, amusingly, it seems that they ignored what little story Hasbro might have crafted (though they probably didn't) and created their own take on the mini-line...

DotM Mechtech Shockwave

When the movie series introduced characters with familiar names, it was a fair bet that the character would either look or behave nothing like the traditional bearer of that name, which accounts for a lot of the fan anger directed toward the franchise. However, when a character as iconic as Shockwave appears, surely he'd have to be the logic-fixated cyclopic scientist we all so fondly remember... Right?

Combiner Wars Megatron

Considering that Combiner Wars Optimus Prime - based on the Motormaster mold - is a combiner torso, one would surely expect his Decepticon counterpart to perform the same function but, for the moment, at least, Megatron is his own standalone robot without any gestalt potential. Even stranger, Combiner Wars Cyclonus becomes the torso of Galvatronus, at once keeping in the tradition of Cyclonus being partnered with Galvatron (no hints yet of a CW Scourge, but they'd probably just churn it out as another repaint of either Alpha Bravo or Firefly, going by what we've seen of things to come in 2016), while irreversibly separating Galvatron from Megatron.

So... here we have the G1 version of a new tank-based Megatron (Hasbro losing points for originality straight off the bat, not even taking into account the almost immediate Armada repaint)... How does he stack up against the myriad others out there..?

Generations (30th Anniversary) Blitzwing

Triple-Changers - specifically Astrotrain and Octane - were reintroduced fairly early on in the Classics line. Sadly for them, the Deluxe class size was basically inadequate to the task. For a while, it seemed that Triple-Changers were put on the backburner as a result, before their sudden and triumphant return in the form of 'Thrilling 30' Springer.

One Triple-Changing reboot deserves another, and so came Blitzwing - more G1-oriented in most respects, but with a curious TF Animated-inspired twist...

Galaxy Force Ramble Drones

When I first got back into TransFormers, Galaxy Force was pretty much the perfect toyline for me, combining nostalgic character references with bold new designs and levels of articulation that just hadn't been possible when I first encountered the toy line back in the 80s.

While some homages were more obvious than others, the toy designers didn't shy away from taking things in unexpected directions, and some references were broader than others. Soundwave's design came across as a fairly logical extrapolation of the G1 character, except that he only had one minion.

Or did he? Technically, the Ramble drones were nothing to do with GF Soundwave, coming across more like evolved Scraplets, and the fact that their name was romanised to 'Ramble' rather than 'Rumble' seemed to confirm that these weren't intended to be a homage to G1 Rumble (and Frenzy), but that seems to be just a symptom of poor translation.

N.E.S.T. Global Alliance Bludgeon

Bludgeon will always seem to me to be a weird addition to the live action movie toylines. Originally a G1 Pretender, his shell was a ghostly samurai in orange armour (because Pretender technology makes for a perfect disguise!) and he transformed from a dumpy robot into a dumpy tank. The first movie Bludgeon appeared in a two-pack, as a repaint of Wreckage packaged with a repaint/remold of Blackout as Whirl. For the extended Revenge of the Fallen toyline, something entirely new was created, going back to his roots, but in a startling and original way.