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A trailer for a trailer? About as fun as being made to watch ads youtube when watching a trailer for a movie...

When Hasbro launched their Timelines series with a couple of Hearts of Steel designs it seemed to me like it'd be either be a one-off (we'd get the two 2-packs and that'd be all), or they'd keep going with more Hearts of Steel designs. So it was a bit of surprise when Hasbro confirmed that, yes, it would just be those four characters... but repeated over and over in different timelines. But here we are, starting over again in feudal Japan with Optimus Prime. If I'm being honest, the very first thing I noticed was that Prime seemed a bit on the smaller side. And sure enough, when I put him with the previous Timelines Optimus and Devastation Optimus he is, in fact, roughly a head shorter. Not just that, but there's a bit of that unpainted gray plastic. Yeah, there's some painted accents like the blue on his chest, the silver on his tummy, and the gold on his pelvis and shoulders, but on the whole it seems like he's got less than the Hearts of Steel toy. I hate to be one of those guys criticizing Hasbro's penny-pinching, but it is a bit frustrating to see a smaller toy with less paint that also costs $8 more than the two Hearts of Steel sets. You can't shake the feeling that you're paying more for less. Ok, but remove the comparison to other Deluxe-class Primes and lets just look at the toy on its own merits. What we've got here is a totally original design, unbeholden to any comic books or cartoons, just a simple idea: what if Optimus Prime, but in feudal Japan? So, that'd make Prime a Samurai, right? To that end, Prime's head is sculpted to look like he's wearing a kabuto, his shoulders are dominated by large osode, the backs of his hands have molded tekko, and his shins taper to give the illusion of knee and shin guards above sandaled feet. I personally think they could have gone a little harder on the samurai motif... his torso and shoulders are still fairly G1 and not particularly armored, and his pelvis flap doesn't really resemble the thigh guards a samurai would wear. I suppose the flip side of that, though, is that the colors, chest windows, and tummy grill make it very obvious who this robot is at a glance. Rather than a rifle, Prime comes with this naginata. I guess they could have given Prime a masakari, but it turns out the battle axes used by samurai and sōhei of the era were not particularly distinct. Prime's head swivels on a ball joint, with limited up/down/sideways tilt. His shoulders swivel and can move 90 degrees laterally; the osode are hinged and can move independently and get out of the way. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. His elbows are ball joints, so they can swivel, but they can also bend inward. His waist swivels. His hips can go just under 90 degrees forwards and backward, and a little over 90 degrees laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend a little over 90 degrees. No up/down tilt on his feet, but his ankles pivot 90 degrees. To get the naginata into Prime's hands, you have to first pull the blade off, then slide the shaft up through the bottom of Prime's hands. There are three sections of the shaft that are a little wider, providing points of greater friction for Prime's hands to stop at. When Prime's not using his naginata, you can store it on his back by plugging a cutout on the blade onto one of the two odd-shaped tabs on his back. The instructions also make it clear that, if you prefer, you can plug the naginata onto either of the osode, but that's really more for alt mode. Speaking of alt modes, Prime's transformation is an interesting one. Begin by swiveling the waist 180 degrees. Fold out the gray tab in his right calf, bend his knees slightly, and fold back the backs of his thighs so that they tab into place on his calves. Bend his thighs forward without engaging his hips, and you'll pop little ox legs out of his thighs. Now use the hips to bring the thighs back down along with the ox legs, and fold his pelvis flap in against his crotch. Pivot his ankles in, and tab his legs and feet together. Untab the gray parts from the sides of his torso, bring his arms out, and then use the hinges on his back to swing the arms down and away from the torso. Open flaps on his chest and back, then rotate the robot head into the torso while bringing the ox head out. Swing the ox legs out from the sides of his torso, then close the flaps you used to swap the heads. Rotate his shoulders so that when you double-hinge the osode up on top of his shoulder that they'll tab into slots on the gray parts Fold out the flaps under the osode, use the ball joints to fold in his hands, then swivel the bicep so that the arms tab into the flaps you just folded out with the fists tucked toward the underside of the osode. Note that a lot of these tabs will leave parts at angles; that's actually what you want. Hinges on the gray parts will bring the arms together such that the osode will form the roof of a cart. Take that roof and bring it down over his legs. Tabs will go into his thighs, on his legs near the wheels, and his wrists will tab into his toes. It's kind of neat how Prime's torso turns into an ox, and his limbs turn into a cart, giving us a goshoguruma. Goshoguruma, literally "Imperial Palace carriage," were used exclusively by the nobility because 1.) Oxen have a slower but steadier gait than horses, which made for a smoother ride, and 2.) peasants weren't allowed to use wheeled vehicles during the Edo period. Goshoguruma are a very distinctly Japanese mode of transportation, then, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that they were NOT the majority of samurai, who would use either human-carried palanquins or horses to get around. In any case, we've seen Optimus Prime transform into a lot of different stuff over the years, including trains, pens, and the original PlayStation, but I find this one of the more interesting and inventive alt modes he's been given. Interesting and inventive... but doesn't do much. The wheels on the carriage roll, and that's about it. The ox has no articulation. You can store Prime's naginata on the roof of the carriage using the pegs I mentioned earlier on his osode. I'm honestly not sure what to make of this Prime. As I said, it's a bit frustrating that he's a little smaller with less paint than Hearts of Steel Optimus, and I was already coming into this disappointed that we seem destined to get the same four characters endlessly re-hashed when we all really wanted Hearts of Steel Shockwave... to say nothing of the fact that, even if they didn't continue Hearts of Steel, it might still be nice to get some other characters like Hot Rod, Grimlock, Soundwave, etc once in awhile. But I can't stay made at a Samurai Optimus that turns into an ox-drawn cart, including the ox. It's weird and it's fresh and I'm kind of here for that. But, he's part of a two-pack, so before you pull the trigger (or not) you might want to tune back in tomorrow to check out his rival.

As far as we know... not really. It's absolutely not the safest thing you could choose to do. Strong gravitational fields complicate the math for a fold jump (which is why ships usually fold into or out of high orbit or interplanetary space) and emerging so close to a planet's surface carries the significant risk of crashing immediately thereafter or ending up defolding into a terrain feature. That said, it doesn't actually create any significant negative consequences for the ship itself or its immediate surroundings because the fold system is exchanging the area of space occupied by the ship for an equivalent volume of space inside the planet's atmosphere. You're teleporting a chunk of the planet's atmosphere into the void, which probably is not sustainable long-term, but since the volumes of space being exchanged are equivalent it's not going to cause the kind of havoc that folding OUT of an atmosphere would, since in that case you're swapping the volume of the ship for an equivalent volume of vacuum and the ensuing collapse can get messy (as seen in the original series).

Well, that'd depend on the size of the emigrant fleet more than anything. After all, the 1st Generation ones using Megaroad-class ships had populations in the tens of thousands. That's probably not a particularly tall order. The 3rd Gen and later ones that have populations in the millions... that could take a hot minute. Especially for a 5th Generation one like the Island Cluster-class Macross Frontier. That fleet had a population of ~10 million but the ship had capacity for 10x that. Building a city capable of housing and supporting 200 million people isn't gonna be quick. 'course, those City-class and Island Cluster-class ships are designed to basically be prefab cities you can just drop from orbit, so building a whole new conurbation probably wouldn't be the highest priority. I'd assume it'd probably be driven more be need than anything, so a slow expansion of a meticulously planned city over a course of at least a few years if not several decades as the population grew to require that extra space. If they really needed to with the quickness, those later ships could probably throw something together in a year or two given that they're equipped with massive semi-automated factories.

Oh no. I really hope things turn for the better. I know things look bleak, but I hope you can keep your hopes up and know that all of us here are hoping for her to pull through and beat this.

And my wife is back in the hospital. 😭 Cancer is blocking her airway in her lung; talking surgery or radiation now. Going to go curl up in a corner and hide under every single blanket I can find.

DNA DK-36.

Thanks !

At four hundred years old, you're either going to be insane or almost Spock-like, or a laid back hippy-type who has seen most of everything.

Just watched episode one, and I was expecting not to like it. Turns out, I did... Yes, there were some goofy moments. but for the most part I think it was fine. Some editing goofs, like Ake ordering all shields front when the enemy was behind them, but that was gone so quick it hardly mattered. The dialogue was alight too. Not Shakespear of course, but Disco-level either. Still not liking much of the sets, esp the lighting on the bridge and the way pulses so distractedly. I am liking Holly Hunter as Ake. I did like when she was talking with Braka and she just casually draped herself over the Captain seat to keep him from sitting in it. Also Sandro Rosta as Caleb Mir. Most of the cast are okay, though I hope the one playing the hologram cadet tones it down a bit. Didn't see episode two yet, so I'll see how it goes from there, but for the first episode, there have far worse.

Hence my confusion, I thought Pelia worked as a member of Guinan's race as just a one off goofball, honestly, it would have made the character better, and in my head canon Lanthanites are an offshoot of El-Aurians. But still, Holly Hunter should be playing a more serious character, maybe a burnout, but not the goofball hippie, she is, after all, not Carol Kane, who is a freaking treasure.

It has to be a rib on the fans of MOTU. That is so stupid.

@F18LEGIOSS2I'm excited to see your Legioss project, ideas you have put into it, etc. You can PM me if you have any question for the solidworks ya.

I don’t think it really matters who’s in charge, if they’re just gonna make the same overall mistakes of the past then it’s all doomed. If they’re learn from the failures, then that’s where things will change. Shows like Obi Wan, Ashoka, and the Acolyte need to be taken as lessons in what went wrong and how to focus on what can be better. If it’s a guy that helped run things into the ground, hopefully he can pick himself up and rebuild and repair and hopefully even improve from past experiences. Although personally I kinda doubt that will happen, I do not mind being totally wrong and would love to see good things finally pop up on this dead streaming service or even in the theaters

Completely reasonable confusion. After all, the Lanthanites and El-Aurians are both sharing the hat "nearly immortal Human Aliens who have lived among Humans throughout history without revealing their presence". They definitely have different aesthetics, though. The El-Aurians tend to be confident, dignified, and serene and their reputation as listeners and advisers who give sage counsel from their centuries or millennia of life experience is such a meme even in-universe that Mariner disgustedly remarks that a 30 year old El-Aurian is "just a regular person". The Lanthanites we've seen (all two of them) seem to be the polar opposite. They're irresponsible, unprofessional, seemingly ill-equipped to deal with their own long lifespans, and tend to give off a sort of elderly ex-hippie vibe. This is completely spot-on, though.

Thanks Greg, you're the main reason it happened @tekering yes the Mechanical arm is part of the kit. I was toying with the idea of making it foldable and actually able to store away inside its compartment, but wasn't sure how much working the old plastic could handle, so I decided to just leave it as intended - an add-on bit. Making painted resin look clear is a tough gig man, I don't know if silver would work any better than white. Maybe try curving the lines on the white to emphasize the domed curvature of the 'canopy', then mask around it and do a few layers of gloss clear? Next up is completing a kit I left unfinished a little while ago. Because Plamax chose to make their VF-1J Kakizaki a 'Japan Only' item I chose to get a 2nd Hikaru 1J to paint up as Max's machine, and do my Max VF-1A in Kakizaki's tan/brown. Base coat just about done. ( white is bare kit plastic).

Kind of a Hi Zack Scopedog hybrid

They’ve tried it and it usually doesn’t go well. Nobody wants to remember the music or tv of that era. Not saying there wasn’t some good stuff, but honestly it was kinda the era that takes away everything that was memorable in tv and movies like not having cell phones or easy ways to contact people. Grunge was kinda fun, but kinda buried cool tough music from the 80’s. MTV went downhill and started bringing in reality junk. And somehow cartoons got cancelled in favor or Jerry Springer and other even worse talk shows. There were some good things here and there, but it was also an era that lacked hope in comparison the previous decade. Even the regular tv shows got that odd dark video look kinda like a soap opera.

Be a great way to serve that liquid death.

That’s the one where he meets that other Jenius sister with the modified armor. yeah, pretty much chaos depending on the environment surrounding and how large the craft is

@Chas The Bronco looks great!

These are cute lol. I’d like to have my beverage served in a Death Star please.

I think one of the reasons Hound sold out at Target last week was because it was on sale for $19.99. It is now listed for $27.99.