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Still waiting on Mixmaster, and I don't have any more brand new figures to write about. I do, however, have a TON of repaints and remolds... Yeah, no Mixmaster, but the other Voyager in the current wave of Studio Series is War for Cybertron Voyager-class Thundercracker. And, I mean, not a lot left to say after Starscream and Skywarp, because Thundercracker's basically the same thing except blue. It's a pretty blue, at least. Same mace weapon, and I dunno if it was always too big or if there's been some mold degradation, but he has a hard time holding it up. On the flip side, he's got a different gun than Starscream and Skywarp. It's the same Neutron Assault Rifle that came with the generic Decepticon Soldier, though, so it's not totally new. Fine with me, though, I kinda wish Skywarp had a less bulky gun than his Thermo Rocket Launcher. Get him if you want to complete the trio, but if you skipped Skywarp and/or Starscream you can probably live without Thundercracker, too. Relevant to yesterday's review of Sideways, another figure on the shelf is Cybertron Deluxe class Excellion. Now, for anyone who actually watched the Unicron Trilogy, you might have wondered how Hot Shot started Armada as a reckless, hot-headed youth who gradually matured over the course of the series, becoming a seasoned warrior and mentor in Energon, only to revert back to a reckless, hot-headed youth in Cybertron. The answer is, as I mentioned yesterday, is because Galaxy Force wasn't created as a sequel to the prior two shows, it was just cludged into a "trilogy" when it was dubbed into English. The guy we know as Hot Shot in Micron Legend and Super Link was called Hot Rod, but in Galaxy Force that guy was called Excellion. While I think there have always been parallels between Hot Shot and G1 Hot Rod, stuff like the chevrons on his shins and the spoiler wings seemed a bit more obvious on Cybertron Hot Shot... but I guess not enough for Takara, who released a more G1 Hot Rod-colored version of Excellion. Hasbro was only too happy to bring this redeco to the West, but I guess their logic was that if Hot Shot was already reformatted into an APC alt mode in his usual blue color then he wouldn't go back to his old sports car mode but changed to red, so they decided he'd be a new, separate character. And for that character, they kept the Japanese name, Excellion. Personally, I'd have liked for him to have been Hot Rod or Rodimus and really hammer that deco and design home, but you can't always get what you want. The point is, Hot Shot was already a decent update of the original toy, so you'd think Excellion would be, too. And for the most part, he is, but there are some deco changes from the original toy. In bot mode, most of the dark gray/black details are a lighter gray, except for his hips which are the same orange as his thighs now, and his hands which are now red. The single chevron on his shin is in two parts now, and his fold-out wing spoiler is orange instead of blue. In alt mode, the vents on his hood and in front of his rear tires are painted a gunmetal color instead of being left unpainted, and there's some gold paint on the rear of the car where the wings fold out. Purists who had the original toy might be fussed by the changes, but I kinda like them, as they make him even more like Hot Rod. Heck, I'd have been cool with them ditching the gray and silver on his chest for orange with flames. As a character who wasn't actually in the cartoon Excellion is far from essential, but the mold's decent enough and I like him as an alternate universe Hot Rod. Where Excellion is a Walmart Exclusive, Studio Series 86 Perceptor can only be found in Targets. I mean, this particular version, since Perceptor was already a mainline Studio Series 86 release. Aside from some extra pack-ins (more on that in a minute), I figured that the only real difference would be tweaked colors. And they are tweaked... the blue and red are just a bit darker, and the blacks on the orignal are are dark gray to better mimic the colors used in the animation. His chest is no longer a translucent part with a silvery paint around the edge, it's solid red plastic with silvery paint. But that's not all. Take a closer look, and you can see that his torso is actually slightly remolded, so he's a little wider in his lats. Spin him around and he's also got a door on his back to hide the gap that his head folds into. Transformation is more or less unaffected, though. But it alt mode, you might see something curious... Perceptor's entire torso is painted red. The two tabs that hold his chest door shut show that the plastic under the paint is actually brown. I guess that's because they put Perceptor's new chest parts on the same sprue as Ramhorn, one of the two packed-in cassette figures and very likely the reason you're replacing Perceptor in the first place. Ramhorn's pretty ok! The little rhino mode is a chonky little guy, and I like that his tape mode has some silver bits that almost past for reels if the weren't so off-centered. Like Steeljaw, his golden weapons are partsformed on and off along with his tail... and a good bit of his back. The other pack-in is Ratbat. Ratbat was previously released as a mainline Siege Micromaster pack, along with a robot bearing the name "Rumble" while being colored like Frenzy. While I liked the shade of purple and the extra colored details on the tape mode of the original version, the two-toned, red-eyed face, the gray that stays on the body and doesn't spread to the wings, and the more magenta main color on the new version are more accurate to the way Ratbat was colored in the 86 movie. Also, Ratbat a new accessory, a set of backpack boosters like the G1 toy had. So, yeah, both of Perceptor's buddies have some partsforming now, and those parts don't really belong on the cassette modes. But, as they both have 5mm pegs (and the gold bits on Ramhorn are on swivels), you can use them as weapons for anyone with the usual 5mm port fists. Just like everyone had to buy Legacy Soundwave just to get Buzzsaw, I think a lot of completionists are going to wind up buying Perceptor just to get Ramhorn. To that end, I appreciate that they included an extra accessory for Ratbat, and that they actually did a little remolded to Perceptor. That remolding on its own probably wouldn't convince me to upgrade, but at least this way I do feel like I upgraded when I was really in it for Ramhorn. Though I haven't see this one in stores yet (I got mine from Pulse), I do believe that two pack containing this Transformers Devastation Ground Soldier is also a Target Exclusive. Ground Soldier is reuse of the Runabout/Runamuck mold, though with a new head and trading a gun in for a sword. For the most part, that's fine... with the backpack on the in-game model I recognized the Ground Soldier as being based on the Battlechargers at the time, and these are definitely one of the colors they used in the game (the other being orange with red windows), but I should point out that their car mode in game had more curves, flared fenders, and a wing on the back. Ground Soldier is packaged with Elite Seeker, who's a repaint of Earthrise Ramjet with new sword accessories. Of all the coneheads, Ramjet is probably the closest to what we get in the game, what with the delta wings and the presence of the vertical stabilizers. Still, I can't help but wish, with this being the fifth color of this mold with no changes to the mold, that they would have made some changes to the wings, since the Seeker in the game does have delta wings but broader with an upward bend at the tips (more like Dirge without the canards), and though the in-game model does have vertical stabilizers like Ramjet (which Dirge and Thrust don't have), they're not sitting on top of big engine nacelles like Ramjet has. In any case, the mix of red, gray, and black make this one of the cooler Seeker designs in my book, and I can always use more nameless grunts, so I think this pack is worth it. Moving on to Amazon's exclusives, we have a pack that's a bit harder to justify. This set has Slugslinger, a bit of a dated Titans Returns mold that replaced the Targetmaster gimmick with a Headmaster one. The white plastic is a light gray, and the blue plastic is much darker (yeah, sorry, I accidentally but the new version on the right instead of the left). Technically, the new deco better matches his brief appearances in "The Rebirth," so points for Sunbow accuracy, I guess. But to me these colors seem more like they belong on Triggerhappy, and the lighter blue is closer to the G1 toy and, arguably, his appearance in the Japanese Headmasters cartoon, so I'm inclined to prefer the original. I'd heard it claimed that the tampographs were altered for the new version, but you can clearly see that they're really not. The only change is that the Decepticon badge on one of his wings has been replaced with the Mayhem Attack Squad insignia. I probably wouldn't have bothered with this set for Slugslinger, but Slugslinger comes packaged with "handsome" Sandstorm... that is, Legacy Sandstorm, but the toy-style masked face has been replaced with a cartoon-style unmasked face. Not much else has changed... the gray plastics used for the small pistol, his hands, and some of his inner workings have been replaced with black plastic, and black hands is more accurate to both his G1 toy and most of his cartoon appearances. Other than than, the orange plastics are just a bit lighter and they didn't paint the vents on his chest. In dune buggy mode, the black plastic instead of the gray for the engine is a change that is less like the chrome engine of the G1 toy and doesn't totally match the control art, but I can't say for sure if it does or doesn't match the cartoon better. I think, if you're not partsforming the otherwise useless cage on, that black subjectively looks better than that random gray. In helicopter mode there's even less difference. I guess what it really boils down to is how badly do you want a cartoon-accurate Sandstorm? I didn't have the G1 toy as a kid, so to me he absolutely needed a cartoon face. The toy-style face was my biggest complaint with the Legacy release. It just sucks that to get that head you have to not only buy another barely-changed copy of Sandstorm, you have to pay for Slugslinger, too. Last but not least, we have the Takara Godzilla Megatron crossover. In robot mode, from the neck down it's just Studio Series Grimlock in a mix and dark and light grays, with a little bit of red in some spots. From the neck up, that's actually a repaint of Studio Series Sludge's head, which kind of works better than I expected it to. It's an almost Alex Milne-esque style for Megatron. I said when I reviewed Hearts of Steel Megatron that I like a black Megatron, and with the lower part of Grimlock's torso picked out in silver and red I think it's really not that bad of a design for a Megatron. I just wished they could have swapped Grimlock's double-barreled rifle for a Fusion Cannon. The disappointment comes when you get him in dino mode, because it's just a dark gray Grimlock. Same stumpy Grimlock arms, same Grimlock head with the missing front teeth. No Godzilla spines. Even with the included blue effect part in his (admittedly well-painted) mouth, I don't think anyone's going to see this on a shelf and think, "oh, that's Godzilla!" So I supposed the question is, how much do are you willing to pay for an actual transforming Godzilla? Because, as is, I can't recommend this figure. Because DNA, maker of third-party upgrade kits, will be releasing a kit later this year that replaces the toes, arms, and head, plus adds spines and a longer tail, to turn this figure into once that actually resembles Godzilla. The kit effectively doubles the price of the figure, though; worth it for a hardcore fan of both Transformers and Godzilla like me, I think, and enough to flip my recommendation from a hard no to a yes if you're willing to spend the money on the upgrade kit.

I have an idea to restore the horror aspect of the Xenomorph:

For people that would’ve like Cat’s Eye, but wished it was about a dog

I am asking all the experts here. I haven't built a pc in 10 years so I am a bit out of the loop. I would like a b850 for my next system. Which one should I choose. I have 1 requirement it has to support a 5.1 speaker system. I am not getting rid of my working Klipsch promedia ultra 5.1. I an considering a 5070 ti (it will be a little more than I wanted to spend.) but the 5070 seems to be a giant step down. and I am waiting for the super version announcement.. I wanted a 9070xt but the prices being so inflated on that card. I am running a 24" 1200p monitor which still works. But I will upgrade to a 32" 4k eventually.

Rude... and demonstrably incorrect given the subject matter. ... your fan theories, yes. As I've gently reminded you many times now, this thread is mainly discussions about the information in official setting materials and other official publications. Your theories, no matter how convincing you may believe them to be, are still just fan theories. They're borderline off-topic in a discussion of what's said in official media, especially where they contradict the official material. Bearing in mind that 80 mecha is listed as the maximum capacity not the standard operating capacity and that that figure is inclusive of Valkyries, Ghosts, Battle Suits, and Destroids which may be stored in places other than ARMD-L... we don't actually know what the Macross Quarter's normal operating capacity is. If it's anything like a normal aircraft carrier, it's probably around 1/2 of the maximum... so about 40 machines in total. That's inclusive of Valkyries, Destroids, Battle Suits, and Ghosts, not all of which are stored in ARMD-L's main hangar space, so that doesn't seem like an unreasonable number to me. Maximum capacity on an aircraft carrier usually means measures like leaving craft out on the deck, stashing them in the elevators, the maintenance spaces, and what have you so an ordinarily unsustainable amount can be carried. We do see VF-25s being stored in places other than the main hangar at a few points, though it's not clear where. Much about the Elysion is vague and poorly documented, as we've touched on previously. That said, I don't disagree that the Elysion's supporting carriers should theoretically be able to manage ~20 fighters apiece given that we know that in normal operations they have fifteen VF-31As stationed on the Hemera. Theory and practice are two different things, however. They actually seem to operate with far fewer aircraft than that in practice. All the available info in-series and out suggests the Elysion is home to just twenty combat aircraft (plus at least two trainers and one shuttle).

You means Courage, The Cowardly Dog the Movie

I'm having the same issue with the Pose+. I just can't justify right now, even though I could easily afford to. The gimmicks are, like @jenius said, things they spent money on that adds no value in my eyes but added cost that could have been better spent elsewhere. When I'm looking at $525 shipped at the cheapest site I'm finding, I just can't justify it to myself so far. Will I kick myself later? Probably not. But I have reopened the link multiple times and started a PO, only to close it a short time later.

I know these aren't exactly matching scale and look close enough, but I can't imagine the YF-22 isn't larger than a VF-0S. Of course, i don't have the Master files sitting in front of me either. The Bandai shop i visited in Paris a few days ago had the Max and Milia VF-22's a plenty. And also Max's YF-29. But were sold out of the YF-19 (there other featured display)

I've told you, and I've shown you, there's no room on the Quarter for that kind of a mecha complement. Not a chance. The ARMD-L - the carrier section, where the fighters are supposed to go - is the size of an Essex-class carrier... with three quarters of the hull chopped off (the stern half to make room for the Quarter's arm, and the bottom half to slim it down) if you take the official 472 meter size as gospel. (Also a huge part of how large the air wings of the Essex class were was deck storage, and knockdown storage, where the whole air wing didn't physically fit on the hangar deck in ready-to-fly state). And the biggest interior hangar shot I've found (and I've been looking) shows 12 VFs, and I'm not sure as of right now whether I can fit a box containing that number inside the hull of the "canon-size" ARMD-L. Maybe in the legs, but that's not where the VFs go. The one possible solution is if you scale the ship up so that the *ARMD-L* is 472 meters - that makes a whole lot of things work much better, as now the elevators won't clip the noses and wings off of VF-25s, and the marked landing strip on the flight deck is wide enough to actually land on. And the catapult tracks are separated widely enough to use simultaneously. But at that point, the Quarter is not 1/4 the size of the Macross except maybe by displacement. On the other hand, the Elysion, without changing its size any, has at least 20 fighters per carrier, given that we can see and count sixteen VF-31As with super packs below deck in the ready hangar awaiting launch in the show, *on top* of the four Delta Squadron fighters that are in a separate part of the ship at that point. (And we know they're on the Aether because it says "Aether" on the fins). I can even work out how to fit those fighters into the hull at the "canon" size, even if barely; and some of the other scenes where they have the Deltas five wide below deck are beyond iffy at that size. And if you scale the Elysion up to the point where the model's features start to make practical sense (elevators being sufficiently large for VF-31s, bridge windows being big enough, the hangar capacity *explodes*, because things do that when you give them 800% of their original volume. I can fit 40 fighters on a single contiguous hangar deck when I do that, and there's potentially room for a second one below the first. This is what the "scaled by features" versions of the Elysion and Quarter look like, with the fighters on deck outlining the area where there's enough room for a hangar deck below. Keep in mind that at official scale the ARMD-L would also be half as thick, the outline for a possible hangar be substantially smaller relative to the size of the deck, while the fighters would be twice the size relative to the ship. I will at some point make comparable "official scale" versions so you can see the extent of where there's actual room for a hangar (and also, how big a VF-25 is relative to the marked landing strip and catapults on the ARMD-L showing how they can't be actually used at that scale) I maintain that the only ships whose size I have no complaints about based on the scale of the features of the models, are the Battle class and the Uraga. Everything else feels like someone drew it at one size and then someone else decided that "nah, it's this other size instead" without spending any energy correcting the features for the new scale. Those two are big enough at their stated size to carry any mecha and launch them with a convincing amount of safety margins. The only complaint I have are the spurs on the backs of the legs on the Battle class because they're sticking up into the landing glidepath for the marked flight deck...

Watched The Monkey on Hulu over the weekend. Lots of jokes and very entertaining death gags, but mostly a basic story that’s a bit too predictable which kinda takes out the tension.

I got this one on my watch list. It definitely looks fun and I love a bit of weird.

Now you gotta give him his his lady

Thank you. Your painting skills are amazing. The Z-Scout and Mospeada look incredible. It has always been a childhood dream to get all this achieved on a 1/55.

Not baroque enough.

Value depends on each person individually. I'm still, permanently, kicking myself for one toy/collectible from 15 years ago that I passed on because the price was more than it was worth... but now I'd gladly pay that price. That said, I paid the original asking price on Toynami's site, which was the upper end of what it's worth, in my opinion (with shipping and tax, a little under double the price of the original green one). To me, that was still worth it. $600+, though? I don't think it's worth that.

On reflection, this may be a poor choice of example on my part. I had quite forgotten that Halloween implies Michael Myers was unnatural/supernatural as early as the first movie and its novelization. Jason's a better example, since he's tough but not "shrugs off gunfire" tough until after he's implicitly (if not explicitly) turned into an undead monster. A fair point! That's a question with no right answer because, as you say, doing the same thing over and over again will inevitably result in diminishing returns. IMO the best thing that a horror property can do is pace itself. Turning your monster into grist for the sequel mill and churning out a new sequel every few years is how you dilute the special-ness of the monster and burn out its narrative potential quickly. After the first few movies, Jason and Michael had to both be explicitly supernatural to explain how they soak up so much punishment and keep coming back and the already supernatural killers like Freddy or Chucky devolved into cartoon characters spouting one-liners. In either case, the movies quickly cease to provide true horror and instead are simply gore porn where audiences aren't turning up to feel scared but rather to see how the monster kills off the latest crop of generic movie teenagers. Declawing your horror movie monster by turning it into a more family-friendly action movie antagonist is a pretty decisive way to kill any prospects for future horror storytelling, though. Once you've made your monster less scary, it's very hard to make it truly scary again. Alien and Terminator both got hit with this hard after their actionized sequels with unsuccessful attempts to pivot back towards horror with their badly diminished monsters. That it did... but to the detriment of what came after. The studio has been desperately and unsuccessfully trying to recapture the fear that Big Chap evoked since Alien 3 and generally failing to get there because they keep treating the Xenomorph like the dangerously aggressive and territorial animal from Aliens and not the obviously intelligent, patient, and cruel hunter from Alien. I mean c'mon, you can't tell me you felt any tension at all watching that xenomorph fail to negotiate an ordinary 90 degree turn in a hallway during its at-best walking speed chase with Alex Lawther's character. (Made worse by how it's animated scrabbling around on all fours like it's hauling *ss instead of moving at the leisurely walking pace it's actually going.)

Holy cow!!!! Amazing!!!! @electric indigoThanks so much. 👍

^*So, the bike with two honkin’ retractable blades and a chest full of missiles wasn’t close enough already?

For the purposes of line art, I modified the heat baffle of the backpack to recess into the backplate versus being incorrectly attached to the backpack. Works great, especially in fighter mode as it supports the backpack and aligns it perfectly. Still a few dozen tasks or so to complete this, but I think it’s coming along well.

Re: the sword, I always wanted some 40K to go with my Mospeada.

Correct, for whatever reason (I'm sure it was complicated) both for Mylene and Basara they had separate speaking and singing voices. Tomo Sakurai was pretty well known in music but Mylene's singing was done by Chie Kajiura which added a noticeable shift to Mylene's singing compared to her speech (which I've often described as somewhat sultry though I doubt that is intentional).

@Papa Rat You turned this oldie into something quite presentable while maintaining the old school feel, great work. _ After a series of space stuff, I'm onto another prop plane, Kinetic's IA58 Pucara.

Interesting...

Caught up on both episodes, everything good episode 1 did was undone by episode 2, Prometheus levels of stupid decision making to go around. And for me, for the record, Aliens>Alien, I was never blown away by Alien, it was mid, I think the Alien Isolation game did everything better then the original film.

Very sorry to hear. Apparently she was 53. Too soon. RIP. From my understanding she was not only a voice actor, but a singer as well. But if remember correctly, she voiced the Mylene character, but didn't sing the songs? Do I have that right?