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You are doing the right thing by not selling your mods. But I wonder if you and Senovis/Vertex Nebula could do a special arrangement where you could "license" his base work that you tricked out so beautifully? (I'm just not looking forward to doing what you already have done with the mesh we purchased.)

I forgot the black part at top on the 25 already already sticks out and has to fight with the chest cover and the neck plate on the way in lol As for the shield, it's not just the hump ending early up the fuselage, but the shield also seems to only start where the hump would have ending on the 25. Its edge seems to line up 1/3 of the way back from the front of the tail fins, where as the 25's starts right at the front where it meets the hinge. The 24's shield definitely looks much shorter than what the 25 has.

Watched the first episode of Ha Ha You Clowns on Max or HBO Max or whatever it’s called these days. It’s a new adult swim show that I knew nothing about. I had a few minutes to spare and the first episode is only 12 minutes, so I figured that if I hated it that I wouldn’t have lost much time. Honestly, since I went in with no information about the show, it was a complete surprise. There’s definitely some adult humor, but I guess I kinda figured it would be more of the adult cartoon style done to death kinda shows. The characters are fairly dimwitted, but the difference here is that the characters aren’t naturally aggressive and the show really doesn’t deal with hateful or even spiteful humor the way most modern adult cartoons do things. If not for a few adult jokes, I’d actually say this is the most wholesome tv show I’ve seen this century. It’s definitely not the smartest show and doesn’t have a lot of big gags or anything, and nobody is antagonistic, but I really liked this for being such a different type of show. Basically it’s a household about Three meat heads and their father after the mother had passed away and just trying to work together to get through a rough emotional situation, but everyone has eachother’s back. Anyway, if you’re looking for something different than the usual then this might be a good way to spend 12 minutes of free time

And Starscream is finished as well! There were some extra pieces in the box, like different chest/intake pieces, and I think those are meant for the Blitzwing kit. And the two of them together.

With names like "Forklift Warrior," "Hook Warrior," and "Load Warrior," I thought this next guy would be something like "Bulldozer Warrior." But maybe something was lost in translation, because Dream Star Toys' version of Bonecrusher wound up being called "Pushing Machine Warrior." Pushing Machine Warrior is, broadly speaking, more of the same from DST. Gorgeous metallic greens and purples, curves and facets that give the bot an almost organic shape, and minimal visual cues that really recall the G1 character. No tread legs here... it's actually his arms that form the treads. The almost entirely green color of the animation is broken up by purples on the chest and gray thighs. But he's not totally unrecognizable. The vertical green "straps" flanking the purple on his chest with the red details do a rather good job of recalling G1 Hook's shovel chest. The shovel isn't his chest, though. It's mostly folded into his calves. The cab protrudes a bit, but it's far from the worse backpack we've seen on a toy. A few flaps of tread adorn his arms, but the bulk of the mechanical bits can be passed off as shoulder pads. All-in-all, Pushing Machine Warrior suffers from minimal kibble. Forklift Warrior, with his sole gun, is starting to turn into something of an outlier. Pushing Machine Warrior does have his gun, but he's also got a pair of translucent red-bladed shortswords. Also a big honking leg for the Megatron build-a-figure (that we'll talk more about once he's complete). Pushing Machine Warrior's head is on a ball joint with great up, down, and sideways tilt. His shoulders rotate on ratchets, but lateral movement is a ratchet in the chest, on the wrong side of the swivel (a common problem on these Warbotron offshoots, and one less easily overlooked on a more expensive "premium" figure than on the Mecha Invasion guys). They're a bit limited to under 90 degrees, mostly due to the treads on top banging into his head. His biceps swivel, and his double-jointed elbows bend nearly 180 degrees. His wrists swivel, and his fingers are individually-articulated with three pinned knucklers on his fingers, while his thumb has a ball joint at the base and two pinned knuckles. He's got a ratcheted waist swivel with a small ab crunch. His hips use a soft ratchet to move 90 degrees forward or backward, and a stronger ratchet for 90 degrees of lateral movement. His thighs swivel, and though his knees are double-jointed (both using ratchets) the kibble in his calves does stop his knee bend at just over 90 degrees. His feet can tilt up and down, and his toes have a separated up/down tilt, and his ankles pivot 90 degrees. Aside from the shoulders, you should have no trouble getting this guy into some sweet poses. Assuming you can get him to hold his weapons. The thin handles on both the gun and the swords have small slots cut into them. These slots should, in theory, fit around little tabs in his palms. In practice he seems to hold the swords ok, but the gun just immediately comes off the tab, leaving the friction in his fingers to do all the work. And, alas, there's no other storage for the gun in his robot mode. The swords can go on his back, though. There's little pegs on the hilts, and they fit into these little ports on the sides of the cab on his backpack. Transforming this guy is, once again, not particularly hard when you know what you're doing, but made difficult the first time by confusing, unclear instructions. There's some swiveling involved, but his arms turn entirely into the treads. His torso opens up and his head folds into the cab, and the bulk of his upper torso. His legs kind of explode, folding over his calves, but with a number of panels that have to be unfolded just right to make up the front end and shovel. while his feet lay over what's left of his torso to form the rear. Then the cab kind of swings back in and plugs on top. From some angles I think he look like a pretty cool bulldozer, though from the rear his obvious robot toes and the ripper dangling off his robot chest are a bit obvious. DST designed the swords to use their hilt pegs to plug in hear the front of the treads, then the handles unfold and attach to the shovel. This would probably be a good idea, were it not for the obvious red blades, and the fact that they don't secure anywhere along said blades, making them extremely prone to simply popping off. That said, the hinges in the sword handles do allow them to articulate with the shovel, which has a few joints and collapsing hydraulic pistons. The treads don't work, and there's no wheels for him to roll on. As for his gun, it folds up into a neat little package. That package, you'll note, as some little pegs on it. Those pegs can plug into a port on the inside/underside of his chest as part of the ripper. The back of Megatron's leg can open up to reveal a fist inside. Swing it out, close it back up, and fold in the heel and toe and you've got one of Devastator's forearms. Untab the treads, rotate them, and tab them back, remove the gun and scrunch up the ripper (it doesn't actually lock into place as near as I can tell) and fold back the shovel on Pushing Machine Warrior. You'll find a T-peg that slides into the top of the leg-turned-arm, and two clips will fold down to lock in into place. And that's his arm mode. I'm not sure why the DST Aerialbots never really did anything for me, but once again I'm digging the overall design and aesthetic of their Constructicons. Pushing Machine Warrior is another win in my book, I just wish they'd work on their instructions.

Let the emo be dead.

I actually liked the character as a crazed baddie in the first and maybe even second film, but the third film went so far off the bent rails from the second movie, that there was no way that train wasn’t going off a cliff. Let the sequels be and move on and please don’t do a prequel type story either

Remaking the original is a bad idea. The CGI and special effects weren't the problem. Sure, they're not as flashy as Legacy or Ares, but they've held up reasonably well. The problem with the original is the slow pacing.

Plenty of room under there for them. That block already has that pointy thing at the top of the nose cone that makes me cringe every time I transform my DX and expect to shear it off with the chest plate. these are on the sides and out of mortal danger if I just leave them. 😉

Iger and Bergman 100% made the right call there. There's no way they were going to be able to sell the audience on more of Ben Solo, after that painfully cheap and forced redemption in the last movie of the sequel trilogy. He was such an ineffective and unintimidating villain that they literally had to bring someone else in to pinch hit for him in the final film of the trilogy. Lucasfilm might have thought that was a good idea, but their judgment under Dave Filoni is suspect at best. Let the past die, Adam. Kill it if you have to. It's the only way to become what you were meant to be... the guy they hire when they can't get Keanu Reeves.

That makes a ton of sense and is a solid rationalization for the transformed shape. My engineer brain immediately wants to whine that if we're letting reality slip in, then it's no where near enough surface area to be an effective radiator, but the rest of me can buy off on that. Nice one! While working on the shield today and staring at the line art for reference, it suddenly dawned on me that the "hump" down the middle of the back doesn't go all the way out onto the shield like it does for the 25. I somehow missed that until now. Annoying, because that's an awful lot more work to change, but I can't unsee it now, so I guess that's next.

Wow I can't keep up with all the new kits, its an amazing push from all these companies!!

Clone Solo, lol

Stars and Stripes masked Casey

Well, he could always be a clone. That seems to be a thing...

I agree with the logic that this was a dead character and a post death movie of them being alive could break the universe, but they had a good actor an award-winning director wanting to make a movie - you do what it takes to make that work.

Holy crap! This was unexpected. Itagaki-san provided many hours of quality entertainment for me. Loved his work and his aesthetic. His games treated you like an intelligent human, generally didn't hold your hand, and punished you for failure, but kept success within reach - if you got gud. I also remember he would answer questions in a monthly column in one of the game mags, he did that for a while. He sometimes answered the question straight, sometimes irreverently, but always entertainingly. Wherever you are now, It's more fun and much more awesome now that you're there.

So is that the package art in the background? Mercy Rabbit is back for this one?

I'm loving the Tread. It looks great!

Definitely. It looks like the times it was made in, and actually a bit ahead of its time in many ways

They’re available on their own website and a few oddball spots that sell third party items. Haven’t seen them on too many of the bigger places though

Oddly a lot of hobby and toy shows end up with a few booths that don’t allow pics or videos. It even happens with games as well. Sometimes it’s due to licensing and other times it’s due to incomplete items and other times it’s something that just can’t be explained by reasons unknown

What Bandai versions are you referring for the Zentradi soldiers? Has anyone ordered the new soldiers, and how do you find them?

I'm certainly not the Takatoku guy 'round these parts, my middle name is 'Sprue' But when I went through my hundreds of model kits before ebay and the like appeared (meaning all store bought) I never had a missing decal or instruction sheet. In fact the Nichimo kits often have an 'inspector' label in some of the boxes. I'll be the first to say my world is a SUPER small sampling, and might not even be directly comparable, since the model kits all come in sealed bags thrown into boxes vs Takas that have all loose pieces layered and taped in, but I don't think the Japanese manufacturers in the day were as careless as we may think looking at the current, often 'frankensteined from various sources' inventory found in the markets today. Just my 2 cents!

Thanks for that! Always love seeing what kits they have coming out. Shame about the others not letting any videos be taken in their booths. You'd think they'd want free publicity!