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I've actually been thinking gunpod is actually the one thing most likely recycled on the 24 lol. Given that on YF-19 it was virtually the only thing copied to the VF-19F/S, and then same with 21 to 22, 17 to 171, and even between totally different valks from 29 to 30. So it's entirely reasonable that it has the same one as the 25, if not then splurged on so hard that 25G's sniper was standard issue lol. That said, more different and new designs are always cool. Especially if the 24 is supposed to be that much higher spec than the monkeyed export derivatives.

I really want a Patriots and Bears helmet Transformers. However, it seems like it is impossible to buy them from Europe. I couldn’t find them on BBTS or the EU Hasbro Pulse site. Where did you buy Steelsmash from?

That's pretty much the only reason I bought the ones I have. They've got some nice features that improve battroid (minus the ugly elbows), but they just fall behind in fighter mode in general when compared with most of the other recent releases.

I really don’t remember the matchbox one too well, but at least they put the elbow covers on in a way to actually cover the elbows

Fair enough. I myself very rarely open the canopies on any of my VFs anyway 😅. As for my 3Z VF-1S, and any other VF-1 I may acquire from them in the future, they're gonna stay 99% of the time in battroid cuz that's mode they shine the most in, imo.

Yeah, they had to make em small to fit their toy

Got something I had always wanted as a kid, the army men AC-130.

I went to ThreeZero first. At first they told me to ship them the item at my cost and then they would maybe be able to repair it and then ship it back. I told them to just send me the replacement canopy and attachment piece and they said that postage was not operating to the United States because of tariffs. I was not expecting for BBTS to have replacement parts for the ThreeZero VF-1S, but I was hoping they could facilitate receiving the replacement piece and forwarding it to me. They offered for me to ship it back as defective and they would credit me what it was worth, so technically, I could do that and buy another, but I thought that this would be another crap shoot for QC issues. I would rather deal with a permanently glued canopy on a toy that can still transform and zoom around my bedroom then take a chance on some new problem on a different ThreeZero VF-1S. Twich

It wasn't an option to get the refund and just purchase a new one, or is there a substantial price difference? I didn't realize that there were others with QC issues with the 1S. I got my replacement parts from 3Z a little over a month after requesting them... for a scratched vertical stabilizer and damaged right shoulder pouldron out of the box. They gave me the whole backpack with both fins and 2 shoulder pouldrons.

Zentradi (and Meltrandi) Battle Suits aren't true powered armor. Officially, they're described as being something like a hybrid of powered suits and a battle pod in the sense that they are humanoid in configuration but the operator's body is situated almost entirely in the battle suit's torso and head and the limbs are mostly controlled indirectly. As such, you wouldn't see any blood from damaging the suit's arms or its legs below the knee because none of the pilot's body is in those parts. They're entirely mechanical. You probably wouldn't see blood from one even if you did hit the pilot, though. The cockpit's pretty close quarters but not skintight and the pilot inside it is also wearing an armored space suit. So if the pilot is injured, blood is likely to end up either inside their suit or inside the cockpit rather than leaking out of the battle suit itself. The one exception that sticks out in my memory is from the opening of Macross Plus, where Isamu is fighting against rogue Zentradi and stabs one of their battle suits with his VF-11's bayonet. That gets a LARGE amount of something reddish-orange that might be the pilot's blood. There has been no word on if the New UN Forces have captured a factory satellite that manufactures the Nousjadeul-Ger battle suit. The New UN Forces must have at least a few that are still in good working order, though. The in-universe version of DYRL? was shot with real ships and mecha to an extent, so several Nousjadeul-Ger battle suits were likely used in the filming of the movie c.2030. New Edwards Test Flight Center on Eden seems to have at least two working Nousjadeul-Ger units that we see used in simulated combat testing with paint rounds. Whether they belong to the base proper or were borrowed from a squadron stationed nearby for aggressor duty is never stated. We do know that the New UN Forces captured factory satellites making the Regult battle pod and Queadluun-Rau battle suit, and that those facilities have been used to develop and produce improved versions like the Regult Type-104 and Type-106 and the Queadluun-Rhea/56. The gradual breakdown of the New UN Spacy's captured Queadluun-Rau suits was supposedly part of what prompted the mission to seize and restore the factory satellite that had been making the Queadluuns for the Boddole Zer main fleet. (This also led to the development of the YF-21 and VF-22.)

The Male ones, perhaps. The female power armors... er, nope. Not really happening.

I would think that would be the preferable option. You can buy yourself a replacement if you want it, or be content with the broken one you got for free. 😋

Good god, they're micronized Zentraedi! 😲

I have quite a morbid curiosity regarding the Zentraedi power suits. Logically, since they are power armor, I'm surprised that we never seen then being bashed to death or dismembered (with blood and all) since they have (relatively) more of the pilot inside the limbs compared to a Variable Fighter or Destroid. Perhaps caused by an unfortunate run in with someone infected with Vars. And speaking of Zentraedi power armor, wonder if they are still being made by the NUNS. General Galaxy could be perhaps be one of the contractors there.

I think the gold color may be a bit more golden than the more metallic yellow they used on the first release. That's it from what i've gathered.

As one of the only people on the planet who likes Rodimus more than Optimus, my understanding is that the Kingdom version isn't meant to be a replica of the G1 figure but an interpretation of it (even though he didn't appear in the animated series). At the same time, while people hate the cab's vehicle mode, both it and the Hot Rod figure feature extensively more engineering than regular Voyagers/Commanders, which accounts for their smaller size. I have a feeling a Commander Rodimus Prime will be the item that closes out the SS86 line, and if any remolds or changes are going to be made, it would likely be to the trailer just because of the complexity of engineering of the cab/robot. Honestly i'd rather they go with a completely new mold, but I don't see them doing that due to cost-effective reasons. So yeah. Most likely we'll get the same cab with maybe a head remold, and a remolded or new trailer. I hope.

With the wrinkles in the brow, looks like "Worried Blue Batman"...

Very minor update, I kitbashed the gunpods of the 11, 11d, and 25 to get something that looks more "Macross appropriate" than the Gundam thing I had it holding before.

When Hasbro started doing these Transformers crossovers they started out with some pretty obvious ones, like the Delorean and Ecto-1, the gradually started to drift into some that were some head-scratchers, like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park. But this crossover might be the most head-scratchiest of all... this is Steelsmash, part of Hasbro's Transformers Collaborative... with the NFL? Now, Steelsmash is the only version I picked up, but for the most part everything here applies to Starblitz, KC-59, and Tundra Prime, the other three figures released in this line (so far). They all have the same body, colored to look like the uniforms of the represented teams; the Pittsburgh Steelers for Steelsmash, Dallas Cowboys for Starblitz, Kansas City Chiefs for KC-59, and Green Bay Packers for Tundra Prime. The only real differences are the heads. Now, the yellow dome on top of Steelsmash did give me sort of steelworker helmet vibes and made me think of the Steeler's mascot, Steely McBeam. But a quick check told me that Starblitz has the exact same head, and the other two have similar tops of their heads, they just swap the visor and mask look for eyes and a face. Anyway, from the waist down Steelsmash and his roughly Deluxe-sized friends do have an athletic sort of look, but short arms and a fat gut kind of spoil it. What really spoils it, though, is the copious kibble. Sides of the legs, backs of the calves, forearms, shoulders, backpack, all kibble. If it isn't obvious, these guys are super shellformers. Oh, and not just shellformers.... partsformers, too! Half of Steelsmash's accessories are just the chin strap and face guard for his alt mode. The rest of his accessories are a little helmet and football. Steelsmash's head is on a ball joint. It swivels, but depending on the angle not much tilt. Shoulders are ball joints that swivel and move laterally about 75 degrees. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. No wrist articulation. His waist swivels, and due to the nature of his transformation, he's got a nice ab crunch. His hips can go about 90 degrees backward, and slightly more than that forward and laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. His feet have hinges for transformation that give him pretty good up/down tilt, but the feet themselves are attached on ball joints that give him ankle swivels and a little under 45 degrees of ankle pivot. The little helmet splits and hinges open so you can wrap it over his head and close it. As for the football, there's a small hole on it. This hole corresponds to small pegs on the insides of his fists. It doesn't look like he's holding the football so much as it's stuck to his hand. For the rest of his partsforming accessories, you can plug the face guard onto the chin strap, which you'll eventually do for alt mode anyway, then use the tab on the inside of the chin strap to plug the combined mass onto his backpack. Yay, more kibble! Steelsmash's transformation isn't particularly complicated. You pull out his backpack enough to fold his head in (and it fits with the helmet on), lift his tummy up and over to meet his backpack, bend his feet up to his shins, fold in his hand and bend him over at the waist, then kind of curl him up and start lining up the panels on his legs, arms, and shoulders with his tummy and backpack to get a a helmet shape. For ease of effort, I recommend attaching the chin strap first by plugging in the four pegs into holes on the sides of helmet, and then plugging the face guard into the chin strap, lining it up the the parts that are already on the helmet and plugging it into the sides as well. Aside from seems were various kibble panels line up, it's a pretty accurate representation of the Steelers' helmet. The holes, vents, and contours are all a match, with the team logo tampoed onto the right side. The white straps and black face guard match the real deal, and they even painted the white at the base of the helmet. The only concession to being a Transformers product is the small Autobot badge on the white bit above the face guard. My one gripe isn't that it's a bad representation of the real helmet, it's that the inside is full of folded-up robot, so you couldn't, say, make it look like Star Convoy is wearing a football helmet. Or, conversely, that there's not enough robot in there. Imagine if he had a robotic head inside the helmet, and you could plonk the football helmet head down in place of Cerebros or Zarak on Fortress Maximus or Scorponok. Anyway... as mentioned, you can leave his little helmet on during transformation, and his partsforming bits, well, partsform. That leaves the football. Turns out, there's a little peg inside the chin strap, so you can store the football inside the helmet. Convenient! Now, I'm not particularly into football (American or soccer), but where I live I'm very much the outlier as pretty much everyone around here ranks Steelers football ahead of church for important Sunday things, so I did feel compelled to represent the home team. But do I actually recommend Steelsmash or his brothers? If you happen to be into the NFL, especially if your team is one of the four represented so far, then I suppose there's a bit of novelty in having a thing you like crossover with another thing you like, sure. And if you're an NFL fan but your team isn't represented, don't fret, I've heard that Hasbro plans on doing all 32 teams eventually. That being said, if you don't care about football, no, I don't recommend these guys at all. Like, at least guys like Code Red, Ectotron, Maverick, etc have weapons and turn into vehicles. How is a football player going to help the Autobots? Catch the football next time Blitzwing shoots one? And when Optimus orders the Autobots to transform and roll out, does Steelsmash just turn into a helmet and plunk onto the ground? As NFL memorabilia, fine, but as actual Transfomers Steelsmash and friends are kind of dumb.

The hype is real

Yeah… Hahaha. I see, that makes way more sense.

Hi everyone! I've been a long time lurker here and only recently registered once I started working on my own little tribute project. Hoping to do some renders and eventually put together a short film/animation. Finally managed to find a decent (and free lol) model and textured it myself. I'll post more renders as I figure out the storyboard and the rest of the shots, but here's one of the first renders as a teaser! Hope you enjoy my little journey