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  2. Well, @Anasazi37 and @BroTaku79 are surely the ones who could find an answer if there is one.
  3. Man lived an incredible life, no matter how you look at it. Reminds me though, both of my grandfathers were born in 1925, so their 100th birthdays would be coming up shortly. Time certainly flies.
  4. You’re very talented. The way you transformed tape like that is pure magic!
  5. Bit of a horror-heavy season, eh? All in all, I'm pretty disappointed by this episode. It's not awful or even particularly bad... but it is painfully mediocre and terribly cliched. Its only real purpose seems to be setting up Dr. Korby's TOS-era fascination with finding a practical way to achieve physical immortality (c. "What Are Little Girls Made of?"), which I have to say doesn't feel particularly necessary or value-added.
  6. Another sad loss of an Apollo era astronaut. It's a shame he never got the chance to walk on the moon. Granted, he got to see it in a way very few humans have, but it's not quite the same thing, is it? However, after an explosion and rapid O2 and power loss, he led his crew successfully by virtue of his intelligence, strength, courage, and optimism to keep themselves alive and their ships viable enough to return home, an extraordinary accomplishment for which he'll be forever remembered. RIP Commander Lovell
  7. Today
  8. Connery's Egyptian-cum-Spaniard with the obvious Scottish accent asking his French costar playing a Scotsman about haggis was such tongue-in-cheek comedy gold. "How revolting!" I have to wonder what a laugh they had making that scene. As to a reboot- why? The original movie was unique and pretty well done for its time. It had some notable performances by the leads, cool music (Queen!), swordfights, immortals, and a neat story. MacLeod won the prize. No more needs to be said or done. I didn't even like the tv show. Highlander 2 doesn't exist. I wasn't aware of the third film. I may have seen it back in the day, but it left so little impression on me that I forgot it completely. I don't think I've seen Endgame or The Source. Why can't Hollywood create anything new? Unwanted, unneeded reboots suck. Just look at the RoboCop reboot. Forgot about it? Exactly. Oh, and James MacAvoy would make a good Highlander- he's actually Scottish, not a huge guy, and adept enough to learn swordplay if he hasn't already done so. Ewan MacGregor and Gerard Butler, also Scotsmen, would have made nice cameos as other Immortals, as both are no strangers to swordplay and both can carry a movie on their own.
  9. MKT thank you for the pics. Look forward to more pics from your copy. Rick Hunter's face has scar in the Shadow Chronicles?
  10. That's a good quesiton... the included stand and double arm situation leaves a lot to be desired on the Riobot Tread/Legioss combo. I was also let down the Tread couldn't be displayed in soldier mode on the stand because there's no adapter (feels like that would be really easy to do since the bottom of the Tread in that mode is a cavity). Also, there were several members who had their Legioss stands break because the peg on the arm can't stand the weight of the Legioss pushing down on it over time... seems like a decent opportunity there.
  11. The similarities aren't surprising since Hasui designed both sets of Constructicons. Shame he wasn't a little more innovative or based this new design on the OG toy instead of his lackluster CW toy. I had a bad feeling and you confirmed it. Man, I hate it when a utility vehicle gets short shrifted of its functionality. Even the G1 toy's deck could rotate. Little rollers on a treaded vehicle should be requisite, too, though the non-rotating deck is what irks me far more. Unfortunately, both arm bots seem to have absorbed more than their fair share of design shortcuts. If Takara's philosophy regarding combiners is that they can take more shortcuts b/c no one will care since they'll be combined all the time, they're mistaken. Looking forward to your review of complete Devastator once you have Mixmaster in hand. I get the sense, thus far, that unlike Bonecrusher and Scavenger, Devy, who I'm sure was the real focus, will not disappoint.
  12. Just had a thought here after reading all of the posts here, as know it shouldn’t be in this thread in general, however I’m going to ask. With the advent of the Sentinel Tread showing up recently (or about to make it’s rounds eventually), there will be collectors that will be interested in combining the Legoiss and Tread together on the Archi Stand and how would the weight distribution be distributed between the different arms and special adapters that will have to be made?
  13. Given the somewhat more limited improvements over their Combiner Wars selves compared to Megatron, I feel pretty comfortable suggesting that SS86 Megatron has overtaken Devastator as the hot item this year. But Devastator's still on a lot of minds, and it just so happens that I also received Deluxe-class Studio Series Scavenger. Unfortunately, like basically everyone but Long Haul so far, SS86 Scavenger seems to take more inspiration from the Combiner Wars toy than Sunbow's control art. Same narrow hips, same lack of the angled collar, same "ironing board" midsection that's basically flat with some molded detail instead of the more three-dimensional cartoon look. In some ways, I think SS86 Scavenger actually looks worse. His proportions are squatter, with a longer crotch that looks like he's walking around with a fully-loaded diaper. Officially, his shovel is meant to curl up onto his back, also like the Combiner Wars toy. In the cartoon, though, Hook's shovel was more like a tail or a third leg, coming off his butt and reaching toward the ground. Scavenger's sole accessory is this gun. As near as I can tell, it's pretty cartoon-accurate, but I wonder at the little peg hole on it. There are no corresponding pegs anywhere on his body. Scavenger's head is NOT on a ball joint, just a simple swivel. A transformation hinge gives him the slightest downward tilt, but he can't look up or tilt his head sideways. His shoulders are ball joints, which allow his arms to move 90 degrees laterally and swivel. His elbows are also ball joints, bending 90 degrees and pulling double duty as bicep swivels. No wrist swivels, no waist articulation. Hips are *sigh* ball joints, capable of moving a little over 90 degrees forward and backward, and 90 degrees laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. No upward tilt on his feet, but the front half can bend downward due to transformation, and his ankles pivot 90 degrees. Scavenger can hold his gun without issue, but there's no place for robot-mode storage. His shovel has three hinges and a swivel, so he can bring it over his head like a scorpion tail, or you can have it dangling from his back more like the cartoon. The engineering in Scavenger isn't too far off the CW toy. Once again you open his ironing board to fold in the head, the cab folds over, the sides of his chest fold back, and his arms use the hinged ball joints in his shoulders to slide down in line with his chest to form the upper half of the vehicle. The legs, if anything, are slightly less complicated as you just fold in the toes and swing the legs up and around on their ball joints enough that you can tab them to his hips and sides. For what it's worth, Scavenger feels a lot more solid in alt mode than the CW version does, and that third hinge on the shovel is one more than the CW toy had. But still, Scavenger is still copying the CW toy more than the Sunbow art. He doesn't have the section on front of the shovel where the animators drew the G1 toy's peg for attaching the arm. The cylinders (I assume they're supposed to be air intakes and exhausts?) on the Sunbow at is also missing. In place of them we have in indent where a purple ball joint is clearly visible. Finally, the rear of the shouldn't line up with the treads, it's meant to overhang them. I wonder how many of these wrong details got copied from CW because so much of the basic engineering was copied? I mean, the CW and SS toys both have the feet at the front of the treads, the shoulders at the front of the deck, and the hands and waist at the back... exactly the opposite of the G1 toy. I know CW did it because the middle of his torso folded out and Devastator's forearm attached to it, and guess what? 86's chest folds out, and Devastator's forearm attaches to it. And that means that, just like CW Scavenger, 86's deck does NOT rotate. He doesn't even have any wheels to roll on. About the only thing you can do in alt mode is move the shovel using joints at the base, halfway between the swivel and the bucket, and right at the bucket. Oh, and there's a 5mm port on top of the deck you can plug his gun into. Scavenger joints fellow Deluxe and fellow arm Bonecrusher as the weakest of the SS86 Constructicons. There are some improvements over the CW toy, if only in the stability and solidity, especially in the hips, but ultimately he follows the unfortunate trend of copying way too much of CW Devastator's homework when I really would rather they started from scratch and tried for more clever engineering and better cartoon accuracy. I guess Habsro figures the individual modes don't matter all that much if he's going to be combined most of the time anyway... so hopefully Mixmaster will arrive soon and I can tell you if the whole shebang is worth it or not.
  14. Coming along great @pengbuzz! Well worth the save and recovery. Good work on that Scout @Papa Rat!
  15. https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/proposed-spacecraft-could-carry-up-to-2-400-people-on-a-one-way-trip-to-the-nearest-star-system-alpha-centauri
  16. There's always Cobi if you need something cheaper. They're a great display piece if remove the pilots.
  17. I’m still more of a mostly airbrush person these days, but Lacquer hand brushing is all the rage with the Machinen Krieger guys. It’s wild to watch how it works. Paint on Plastic YouTube channel gets into it a lot and the guy running the channel worked with a lot of the big names involved and has many studio pics in books and magazines
  18. They should do that with all releases....
  19. Sounds like that speech from RDJ in Tropic Thunder
  20. Why is every company seemingly allergic to War Machine Mk I?
  21. Yesterday
  22. Brick Veteran's 1st Phantom set is going to be a gorgeous example of a USN F-4J, and here I am with a depleted play money budget:
  23. Agree. Has/Tak did good with these two. Ah, so. Ever new avenues to part us from our filthy lucre! Like a hungry fish, I keep biting. As I mentioned previously, I think ER Prime scales nicely with the rest of the Autobots, at least with all the first season bots. His truck mode is relatively small, but in bot mode I think he scales well. I hadn't actually given much thought to the whole resizing aspect beyond SS86 Megatron to match Prime, but yeah, I suppose any number of them will have to be upscaled slightly to fit the new SS86 scale. To that end, I wonder how much larger the new Seeker will be? I'm actually looking forward to it despite the fact that the nose section, as usual, is truncated vertically, it has no main landing gear at all, and the horizontal stabs need be parts-formed to the backs of the wings for cleaner legs instead of an engineering solution. They're touting it as a mini-masterpiece, but IMHO, it falls a bit short of th...wait, MP-52- nope, right on brand. As to varying size adjustments, I hadn't noticed them, but I trust your observations. The toys have been shrinking somewhat over the years, so maybe they're trying to reverse that trend. I really insist on G1 Megatron's having a gun mode, but I know it's a situation beyond Hasbro's control and as compromises go, this one is acceptable. It would have been cool if Romulus scaled to SS86 Prime, but just like the rest of us, they had no idea that Has/Tak were going to upscale him. I keep hoping that Magic Square will upscale their Doomsday, IMHO, the best G1 Megatron toy ever made. I think they'd make bank if they upscaled to both SS86 and MP scales with that figure. I'd be down for both. According to the TF Wiki, Octane is supposedly inspired by the Boeing 767, but it could be a 737 variant as well. At any rate, it's not a 747, so notably smaller than the shuttle. One of the greatest detriments of triple changers is the oft extreme disparities in sizes of the two alt modes, with Broadside being the worst offender by far, followed by Astrotrain, Octane, Blitzwing, Sandstorm, and finally Springer, whose Cybertronian modes offer more leeway than the aforementioned T-changers with Earth alts. Anyway, Octane would be better served if they chose a small air refueling plane; unfortunately, the smallest US tanker is the C-130 which is much larger than a tanker truck. The P-3 Orion Firefighter is much closer to tanker truck dimensions, even if it traffics in fire suppressant instead of jet fuel, but I'd accept it as a comparably sized plane alt for Octane.
  24. I'm sure if you yank hard enough, you can have that version for free.
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