TransFormers Collectors' Club 2007 Exclusive (Timelines) Airazor

I'll be perfectly frank here - there was one reason that I joined the TransFormers Collectors' Club, and that reason is this model. The moment I saw it, I thought it was awesome. It takes one of the quirkier molds from the Energon line and turns it, quite successfully, into one of the coolest characters from Beast Wars.

Slugslinger may not have been the obvious choice for this accompaniment to the Dawn of Futures Past BotCon set (made, as it was, largely from Galaxy Force/Cybertron models), but it was one of my favourites... surely this is ideal stuff for an exclusive?

Generations Dirge

It must be slightly embarrassing, if not outright upsetting for the Official TransFormers Collectors' Club that, only a short time after their Games of Deception BotCon set completed the full roster of G1 Seekers and Coneheads (albeit with mixed success), TakaraTomy's Henkei line suddenly decided to add Dirge and Thrust to the mainstream lineup... but for Hasbro to then follow suit in the Generations continuation of the Classics line must have been like rubbing salt in the wound.

Still, proper G1 authenticity always wins, right?

Galaxy Force Thundercracker

Considering how much G1 referencing went on in Galaxy Force/Cybertron, it's worth noting that it wasn't so completely slavish that it gave us another set of Seekers all repainted from the same mold. In a somewhat surprising move, while Starscream got a Voyager-scale (or Supreme-scale in the US/UK) model of a futuristic/Cybertronian jet/spacecraft, Thundercracker - the only other Seeker to appear in the TV series - took a completely different form, was released in the Deluxe size class only... and wasn't even in his traditional colourscheme...

Galaxy Force Exillion

As much as Galaxy Force paid homage to Generation 1, it also threw in a few curveballs. At some point, Hasbro stopped using the name Hot Rod and switched to Hot Shot in the Unicron Trilogy, saddling that name with a couple of terrible toys of stereotypically hot-headed characters 'with great potential'. TakaraTomy, meanwhile, used Hot Rod in its Micron Legend range, switched to Hot Shot for Superlink... then changed tack completely for Galaxy Force and came up with the name Exillion for their Hot Rod analogue.

In just about every way, it looks like it should be Hot Rod - it positively oozes G1 Hot Rod references and, in fact, for a limited edition packaged with a DVD, they even gave him G1 Hot Rod's colour scheme... and imaginatively named him 'Exillion Red Version'. Then Hasbro, in their wisdom, released their own red version of the mold they called 'Hot Shot'... and called it Excellion. Confused yet?

So, how does this miscoloured homage stack up?

Revenge of the Fallen... The Fallen

When the title of the second live-action TransFormers movie was announced, a ripple of interest travelled through the fandom... What did 'Revenge of the Fallen' mean? Was is the fallen Decepticons, such as Megatron, returning to wreak their revenge..? or was the Bayverse about to introduce a character invented by the comics? When it was finally revealed that the 'Fallen' of the title was, indeed, 'The Fallen' there was the usual round of cautious enthusiasm dampened by the fans' expectation that Michael Bay's franchise would continue to ruin everything they hold dear... and sadly, they weren't wrong.

One of these days, I'll learn... One of these days, when there comes a TransFormers character so bizarre, that no genuine alternate mode can possibly exist, I'll decide not to buy it. Unfortunately, I didn't learn this lesson for the original TransFormers movie, so I bought Megatron. Nor did I learn in time for Revenge of the Fallen so, not only did I buy Megatron again, but I also bought this, the Voyager class interpretation of the Bayverse monstrosity that is the titular Fallen...

FansProject CA-09 - Causality: Car Crash

Regular readers may have picked up on the fact that I'm a bit of a fan of FansProject. Their City Commander set, the Warbots and the Crossfire set were awesome and, when the latter pair were re-released with new heads and new paint jobs as the first two entries in their Causality series, I snapped them up at the first opportunity - they are far too good to just be components of an old Superlink/Energon combiner. I'll get to them individually eventually, but my latest acquisition, from the MCM London Comic Con recently, kinda takes precedence for reasons of nostalgia... See, the Stunticons were the first G1 gestalt set that I completed... and Causality-09 (aka Breakdown) could well be the first step toward completing my first wholly third-party transforming robot gestalt.