Studio Series #93 Hot Rod

I still haven't watched The Last Knight (and still don't intend to), but I have watched enough clips to know two things: that Hasbro's first attempt at a Hot Rod figure back in 2017 was hopelessly inaccurate, and that the writers couldn't decide whether he was supposed to be French, or just somehow 'stuck' with the accent, considering he frequently uses French idioms in his dialogue (consistently addressing Vivian Wembly as "mademoiselle", introducing himself with "Je m'apelle Hot Rod", etc.).

His design was pretty good, though, carrying just enough of the Diaclone DNA exhibited by the likes of Bumblebee and Jazz in the first film - even more surprising considering how quickly Bay's movies distanced themselves from that aesthetic - while fitting in with the sleeker, increasingly humanoid styling of the later films.

Given that I bought DX9's excellent La Hire more than three years ago, one could be forgiven for wondering why I'd bother with Hasbro's Studio Series update of their figure from The Last Knight's toyline... And, granted, it does seem strange to spend £26 on a Deluxe class figure that I know isn't going to hold a candle to a larger, more intricate, elaborate and accurate Third Party Masterpiece-analogue, that I already own, and for which I paid just £77. SS Hot Rod may be just one third the price, but can a Deluxe class toy, as produced by Hasbro in the 2020s, possibly be even one third as good as La Hire?

Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there?

Unique Toys R-03 Dragoon

I have a complicated relationship with The Last Knight, the final movie in Michael Bay's increasingly bizarre series of live action TransFormers movies. I refused to see it in the cinema, because it looked like a mess, and have continued to refrain from viewing it ever since. I didn't like the idea of shoehorning dragons and Arthurian legend into TransFormers (or vice versa), I have never enjoyed the excessive focus on human characters in movies ostensibly about giant alien robots, and the whole 'Knight' motif looked ridiculous...

...Nevertheless, I found the new design for Megatron strangely compelling. There was just enough G1 essence squeezed into his 'Black Knight' look (the stylised helmet, the arm-mounted cannon, Frank Welker's voice) and his vehicle mode (a coherent, albeit still very alien air/space craft) was vastly more impressive than any of those that preceded it, that it turned out to be one of the least aggravating designs for the Decepticon leader in the whole series.

Since I tend to prefer Leader class toys, when available, for Megatrons and Optimus Primes, I picked up the larger version from Hasbro's almost comically misnamed 'Premier Edition' line and, while it was a decent enough toy, it took some serious liberties with the design and its paint job was not just typically miserly but also amateurish and sloppy in its 'weathering' effects.

Since I'd already acquired Unique Toys' inaugural movie effort, Peru Kill, I wasn't particularly suprised when they unveiled their take on TLK Megatron, and it looked every bit as impressive... But does the end result meet the high expectations set by their first movieverse figure?

DX9 Kaleidoscope 03 La Hire

In all honesty, I hadn't been paying much attention to DX9 among the myriad Third Party producers of transforming robot figures. Their Kaleidoscope line has been quite random (the first figure not a direct TransFormers rip-off, the second a Beast Wars hybrid) and the War In Pocket line looked generally quite ugly.

Then came a huge surprise. Around the time that newcomers TFEVO revealed their take on a Masterpiece-style Hot Rod from The Last Knight, DX9 (in collaboration with Unique Toys, apparently) revealed their own version of the same thing. Initially, the TFEVO version looked superior due to its more intricate transformation and pretty stunning screen-accuracy in both modes, and I preordered it as soon as it became possible to do so... However, when review copies started to circulate, it became clear that the newcomers QC wasn't quite up to the task, and Hot Fire was a nightmare of floppy joints and tiny parts that had to be arranged just so. After I cancelled my preorder, I started to keep an eye on DX9's version in the hopes that it would be closer to Unique Toys' take on movie Lockdown in terms of build quality and mostly-intuitive transformation.

La Hire became available for purchase quite recently, and without much fanfare... Which would often be a bad sign. Throwing caution to the wind, I didn't even wait for more YouTube reviews to arrive before ordering, so lets take a look and see what DX9 have produced.

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...

The Last Knight/Premier Edition Cogman

There's something of a recurring theme in the TransFormers movie franchise, where a character turns up in the toyline despite being cut from the movie, or a particular element of their character plays an important part in the toy even though it was glossed over in the movie... And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I mean, on the one hand, it frequently shows how little regard the movie makers have for the property, yet shows how invested Hasbro are in the franchise, and taking advantage of features that define a character... even if it becomes utterly inexplicable one the toys actually hit the shelves. On the other hand, perhaps it simply proves how little Hasbro cares - that they're willing to let these movies waste a good idea that they decided to make use of in the toy?

Thus, we have Cogman as an Aston Martin... Or rather, we have Cogman, a 35mm tall action figure who turns into a larger version of his own head, packaged with an Aston Martin that transforms into a giant robot for Cogman to be the head of. Rumour has it, Nitro has a removeable head specifically to accommodate Cogman, though this was edited out of the movie. All this sounds like a bit of a trainwreck... so let's just see how the toy shapes up.

The Last Knight/Autobots Unite Hot Rod

Hasbro seems to have caught a lot of flack for re-using one of the more disappointing Age of Extinction molds for a new character in The Last Knight. Lockdown wasn't irredeemably bad and, in some respects was actually a lot of fun... And being much the same sort of car as Hot Rod becomes (after being a Citroen DS when first introduced) it makes a certain amount of sense, not least because it saved them some engineering costs.

That said, Hot Rod in the movie seems to have taken much the same role toward one of the new characters as Bumblebee did in the first movie, and his robot mode features suggestions of a Bumblebee-style transformation... Can the Lockdown mold really do him justice?

The Last Knight/Premier Edition Megatron (Leader class)

Way back toward the end of May 2017, an announcement turned up on the TransFormers fan sites that Amazon UK had put up preorder listings for The Last Knight's Leader class Megatron for about £45. Before I'd made up my mind about whether I wanted it or not, the price and order button were removed. Later, without any fanfare, the preorder became available again and, being a somewhat impulsive creature, I ordered it.

Then I just had to wait for it to arrive... a wait of a little over a month. But, hey, at least I didn't have to pay the current price tag, which seems to be closer to £65!

And, since we're now three toys into this line, I'll spare you any detail about the box... Not least because the only difference (other than size) is that someone at Hasbro decreed that Leader class Megatron actually deserved four whole lines of bland bio in four languages.

Quick Teaser

Regular viewers may have noticed a bunch of new acquisitions from my Want List getting marked as 'On Order' or 'Bought' (so much for slowing down to conserve space - definitely need to do some housekeeping/shelf-to-storage rotation soon!). While I managed to take photos of much of it over the last, glorious weekend, I'm still having trouble sitting still long enough to compose a good write-up. Not for any significant reason, I'm just not really in the mood for concentrating on things in weather like we've been having lately, and with all kinds of other crap on my mind.

Still, one particular new purchase - preordered from Amazon a while back - only arrived today, so it missed the flurry of photography over the last couple of days. Considering how little toy blogging I've done over the last month-and-a-bit, I figured I should make an effort to pop something up here straight away, in lieu of a decent post.

Of course, as the old saying goes, the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley... and I barely managed the below before the battery conked out...

Once more, with the flash? Why not..?

The Last Knight - Trailer Reactions (and Further Toy Musings)

I'll put my cards on the table and preface this opinion piece by saying that I'd made up my mind - quite some time ago - to avoid seeing TransFormers: The Last Knight. It was evident from the earliest trailers that it had taken the franchise's ongoing retconning game way too far, linking the story of these shapeshifting alien robots with Arthurian legend pushed things into the realms of the utterly ridiculous... and that's coming from someone who read the UK Marvel comics circa Man of Iron. That said, a glut of trailers - some almost character-specific - have been released (and there may well be more to come, even now), and I've been watching them for a reason to change my mind.

I haven't seen one yet.

The Last Knight/Premier Edition Optimus Prime

I'll be honest: I didn't bother picking up any version of Age of Extinction Optimus Prime. I was vaguely interested by the improved CGI accuracy, remolded parts and superior paint job of Takara Tomy's Movie Advanced Armour Knight Optimus Prime, but the model itself still looked like a trainwreck. The entire robot was folded up inside the cab, most of nose of the truck ended up on the backs of his legs and the entire rear section hung off his back, untransformed in any way. Compared to the previous Leader class figures, it was a disaster of reduced budget and oversimplified transformation, mitigated only by the extra attention Takara Tomy lavished upon its appearance but, even so, the £150+ pricetag is way more than I'd ever be willing to pay.

Cut to the run-up to The Last Knight, when images of a smaller, yet more impressively designed reworking of the new Optimus Prime character model showed up, actually looking pretty decent. Despite my misgivings about the character's redesign, the toy certainly looked as though it would be worth a look, and so became something of an impulse buy...

...But was it worthwhile after all?

The Last Knight/Premier Edition Barricade

Despite an astonishing lack of character, Barricade was one of the more interesting Decepticons in the first live action movie, if only because he was the first one sent to track down the AllSpark's location, and he chose to disguise himself as a police car. His fate was uncertain at the end of that movie, and he didn't appear in Revenge of the Fallen, only to resurface - briefly, and without explanation - in Dark of the Moon which, again, left his fate uncertain.

Now, having been absent for Age of Extinction, the Bad Cop is back... with a new vehicle mode and a whole new look... So, what's the 411?

The Last Knight/Premier Edition Berserker (AKA Crankcase v2)

The toyline from Dark of the Moon was extremely variable. Much of it was remakes and fine-tuning of existing figures (most notably those Autobots who actually survived the first two movies) and a whole lot of the random Decepticon background 'characters' never made it into toy form. The Dreads - an indentikit set of spike monsters that transformed into identical SUVs - didn't all make it onto the shelves in the same size class, and the only one of them to come out as a Deluxe, Crankcase, was a hopeless mess of car panels and fragility.

Cut to the fifth movie in the increasingly ridiculous live action movie franchise, and we're introduced to a Decepticon supposedly known only as 'Berserker'... who looks remarkably similar to Crankcase. Berserker somehow managed to be part of the first wave of The Last Knight's toys, and early photos suggested that Crankcase's character model has finally been done justice... So let's take a closer look...

TLK Definitely Out...

After a false start last weekend - when I was under the mistaken impression that The Last Knight toys must have hit the shelves because photos were cropping up all over the internet - I popped back over to the recently-opened branch of Toys'R'Us in Uxbridge this morning, with a somewhat greater sense of certainty that I'd find something new and exciting...

The Last Knight/New Designs - Early First Impressions

So, we've been seeing photos from a couple of toy shows featuring toys from the line accompanying the new live action movie, The Last Knight and many of them look... familiar. Bumblebee is yet another reshelling of the honed-to-perfection figure they got right back in the Revenge of the Fallen toyline (only to take several steps backward with each subsequent figure, culminating with the over-simplified mess of a toy based on the over-complicated mess of CGI that was Age of Extinction 'Bee). Drift and Crosshairs are reshellings, with the most exciting aspect of the two of them being Drift's new, eyeball-melting orange colourscheme and an inverted transformation versus the AoE Deluxe. There's a new Optimus Prime - obviously - which looks leagues better than either of the Leader Class figures from the AoE toyline, despite being only a Voyager. The only major improvements are with the Decepticons... A new Barricade looks decent, a new seemingly generic character known only as 'Berserker' is the Crankcase toy we should have got in the Dark of the Moon toyline, rather than the brittle piece of crap than came out at the time...

...And the new Megatron...