mikeszekely

Depends on the price. I really don't need Kickback or Skywarp, but I'm sorely tempted to have a Shrapnel with solid purple arms and Bombshell with solid black arms and silver hips (after I swap those parts onto a purple-chested one).

I'm not exactly sure what wave this figure belongs to, as it was originally slated to be released nearly a year ago, then in April of this year, but it's just now finding it's way out after every other figure in the current wave of Studio Series figures (except Mixmaster😡). This figure is Deluxe-class Transformers One Elita-1. Near as I can tell, based on the concept art, the design if this toy is broadly accurate as long as you don't go nitpicking it too hard... but nitpicking too hard is kinda my thing. So, let me first say that the wheels in her calves are accurate, even if they don't shrink the way they do on her CGI model, and kudos to Hasbro for hiding the other wheel... mostly. Things kinda start breaking down in the torso. The rear wheel is kind of folded up comprises the bulk of her torso... the animation-accurate chest and tummy is kind of just a flap tabbed loosely into that wheel. From the back it's covered by a fairly prodigious backpack that's basically the entire top of her alt mode folded up. Her forearms are also suffering from having the screen-accurate bits molded onto the insides of large alt mode panels that extend beyond her hands and elbows. As far as accessories go, she has the rifle she used in the movie, which is similar too but not exactly the same mold as the one that came with Bumblebee. She also comes with a miner jetpack. Elita's articulation isn't bad, but it's not my favorite. Her head is a hinged ball joint with decent up/down/sideways tilt, but it's a tad on the loose side. Shoulders are also ball joints that swivel but only move laterally about 60 degrees. She lacks dedicated bicep swivels, but her elbows are more ball joints that provide a swivel in addition to 90 degrees of bend. No wrists, but her waist swivels. Her hips are *sigh* even more ball joints, that can go forward and backward about 90 degrees (as long as you move them outward slightly), but only about 75 degrees laterally. Her thighs swivel, and her knees are double-jointed and good for nearly 180 degrees of bend. Her ankles are more ball joints, and though they provide some up/down tilt they sadly do not provide much in the way of pivot. Her rifle can plug into either hand via the usual 5mm handle. Weirdly, the handle is hinged, though it doesn't actually need to be. As for her jet pack, there are two tabs (marked in pink) that fit into slots on her back pack. But you'll note that those aren't the only tabs. The wider-set tabs (marked in red) fit into Pax/Optimus' backpack. The unmarked horizontal tab at the bottom fits into Megatron's backpack, and the same tabs that Elita uses also fit into Bumblebee's backpack. Alas, there's no way to plug the jet pack into Sentinel Prime or Starscream, but they're already flyers so I guess that's fine. Elita's transformation has some neat tricks, but I think it's ultimately undercut by her Deluxe-class budget. Her head, chest, and tummy fold forward, revealing the wheels inside. Those wheels are folded in half, and they have to unfold and shift slightly. The outsides of her biceps spin around, and that's about all that's needed there. Her backpack opens and then several panels inside just keep unfolding. Her shins open and her knee spikes tuck inside. Her ankle wheels and feet tab together, then her feet shift up toward her knees, while here knees use the double joints to set the upper joint into a space behind the lower one. Tabs in her forearms near her hands lock into her thighs, while the open shin flaps fit into slots on the outside edges of her arms. Then you close it all up by plugging her backpack flaps into tabs on the backs of her arms and thighs to solidify the top. As with Starscream, be prepared for parts to just come off. For me, both her heels came off, the hinge connecting her neck to her chest came off, and her entire chest came off at one point or another as they're just friction clipped on. Inconsistencies in tightness or looseness of her ball joints have also caused me to pop an arm off at the shoulder once. The impression I get is that this toy isn't exactly inaccurate, but it's too wide. The open shins should be tighter against the body of the vehicle and wrap underneath, while forearm kibble should wrap up and over the rear wheels. You can also sort of see her head and feet just chilling under the vehicle. Again, I get the sense that this was just the best they could do managing her robot mass with a Deluxe-class budget. The spirit of just barely doing what it needs to do but could be way better continues to her alt mode accessory storage. The jet back uses a 5mm port you might have noticed to plug into a peg dangling off the back of the vehicle. As for the gun, one side has a tab, and you can plug it into the 5mm port on either side of the vehicle (in what was her shoulders). But, the shin panels stick out so far, and the barrel of the rifle is so long, that the rifle can't actually point forward while doing so. Instead, you have to have it pointing backward, which just looks awkward to me. Compared to the Generations/SS86 toys, it seems like Hasbro likes to take shortcuts on Studio Series figures. For the most part I've liked the Transformers One figures better than the Rise of the Beasts toys, at least, and based on Prime, Bee, and Sentinel I've felt pretty comfortable saying that the Studio Series figures are at least better than the mainline TFOne toys. That said, I think Elita-1 is probably my least-favorite of the TFOne Studio Series figures- not really bad, but clearly compromised due to budgets. Pick her up if you've already got Prime, Bee, and Megatron and want to complete at least those four, but if you're not into the TFone figures Elita is definitely no the one to start with.

Nah, I bought it.

You know, it's kinda weird, but I loved Bruticus, and when Streetwise, First Aid, and Groove came out I thought they were all better than even the Combaticons. But I wasn't a fan of the fact that I had to go back and consult the instructions on Hot Spot; he just wasn't intuitive enough to go on memory alone, and Blades was kinda weak. So by the time I was finished I was less in love and more like, "I'm glad that's done." But Defensor's never been my favorite combiner. I'm a lot more excited for their Devastator, which looks like it's going to have some pretty crazy articulation. @M'Kyuunwill be glad to know they don't just have ankle pivots, looks like they've got at least 45 degrees of upward ankle tilt. And they both have way beyond 90 degrees of knee bend; Scrapper's pulling a full 180! Lest anyone thing I only care about the combined mode, though, here's the unpainted prototypes in bot mode. Of course I'll want to see them painted, but Scrapper's looking at least as good as the competition to my eye. As for alt modes... ...that also works for me. I dare say that Scrapper's looking much better than Fans Toys, and while there's some details I like on XTB's I think I prefer MMC's. Really looking forward to these.

I know the spotlight is on the XTB vs FT Devastator drama, but let's not forget that MMC is still in this fight. And one of their reps was showing the latest prototypes... Now, the flat green foot with the toe stub on the Mixmaster leg is cartoon accurate... but it's perhaps too accurate. We do have confirmation that you do NOT need to transform it that way. I did really like XTB's Scrapper (FT's wasn't bad in a vacuum, but definitely less good in my book). But I'm thinking this is the set I'm going to go all-in on.

Very nice! I hear the Japanese market is also going to get a set with the Insecticons. If the deco on them is more cartoon-accurate (solid black arms on Bombshell, no black hips on Bombshell, purple hands and biceps on Shrapnel) I'd be tempted to import.

Yeah, I bought it. I had the original Zephyrus G14 and I loved it, but it was getting a bit dated (only 1080p, only 60hz, only 16GB of RAM, and an RTX 2060 Max-Q). I'd been eyeing the new model since they announced it, and between the $400 discount and a $500 gift card I got for cashing in credit card rewards I couldn't resist. Haven't had a chance to install any games yet, but the 2880x1800 120hz OLED display with HDR is a huge upgrade by itself. It's a small thing, but I had the original in white, and the light bleed through the keys made using the backlighting on the keyboard really undesirable. This time around it's much better, and I can customize the color to boot. Slightly lighter, slightly thinner, double the RAM, newer Ryzen AI 9 CPU, and an RTX 5070ti mobile and I'm pretty content so far. We'll see how it handles gaming later.

Oh, that's cool to know someone who worked on the Charger's development! Like I said earlier, I don't know if it's going to win over the V8 crowd, and I'm not sure the Daytona actually counts as a muscle car, but I definitely prefer whatever it is to the electric "Mustang."

Despite being slightly longer and nearly as heavy as my wife's EV9 it doesn't feel as big as that does. It definitely feels bigger than a Porsche, though. But yeah, in the future I'll either go back to one car, probably a Taycan 4S with the optional Active Ride upgrade, or if I continue the two car thing I'll maybe swap the Taycan for an even funner Porsche like a Boxster and get something like that BMW i4 for a daily (cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed that test drive).

I mean, that's Magnus all right. In fact, my G1 Magnus is in that exact same pose as we speak. Kinda hard to get too worked up over it until they show off some articulation.

Well, I mentioned elsewhere that my desire to baby my Porsche Taycan caused me to see out another vehicle to drive primarily in the sloppy winters we get here in southwest PA (but also because the township decided the week the kids go back to school is the best time to do roadwork), and @TangledThorns asked me to talk about it. So, my criteria was pretty simple. I wanted something with AWD; I got a good deal on my Taycan, but it's the base model that's RWD, and maybe this could have been avoided had I simply invested a bit more and got a 4S, but what's done is done. I wanted something electric; I'm not road tripping, and with prices of gas and electricity in my area even a pretty inefficient EV is going to run me about a quarter of the cost per mile, to say nothing of lower all-around maintenance costs. It had to be something my wife was ok with; her own car was in the shop for an extended period of time, and though they eventually gave her a loaner (that she never really cared for) we kind of realized that we'd get more value out of a backup vehicle either of us could use than strictly something I'd drive. And, mostly, I wanted something cheap. This car is, after all, essentially a spare. We don't need all the bells and whistles of our daily drivers. Turns out there are a lot of brands offering relatively low-cost, low-mileage leases on EVs right now. Some, like the Honda Prologue and Volkswagen ID.4, couldn't be found anywhere within 100 miles. But we shopped what was in the area, and we eventually settled on, of all things, the Dodge Charger Daytona R/T. (Largely due to my wife's company being a supplier for Stellantis). I'll be honest, the Charger Daytona has fascinated me since Dodge first unveiled it last year. I mean, MOPAR enthusiasts were already turning their noses up a promised gas-powered turbocharged straight six version, insisting that any real muscle car has to have a naturally-aspirated V8... no way were they going to buy an EV! But rather than bolting a muscle car name onto a fastback SUV like Ford did, the new Charger really does look like Dodge tried to make a genuine successor to the name. Even the haters admit that the car looks pretty cool, with a faux grill, and headlights that blend elements of the first & second-gen Chargers with the outgoing 7th generation and taillights that mix the modern with the third-gen, and a long, squared-off retro-modern body akin to the Challenger that it's also replacing. The Scat Pack trim even has a ducktail spoiler like the third-gen Charger did. Capitalizing on the retro vibes, Dodge brought back the Fraztog logo from the '60s and '70s, a logo that would have appeared on the original Charger. With that Fratzog logo comes something Dodge calls "Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust." See, by law, EVs have to make a certain amount of noise so that pedestrians can hear them. Now some, like my Porsche, simply amplify the natural sounds of the electric motor. Others, like BMW, make cool spaceship noises. Dodge, in an attempt to play into their muscle heritage, basically mounted a speaker to the rear of the car to play fake V8 engine noises. It's kind of cool when you turn the car on- there's a sound like a jet turbine winding up, followed by a loud rumble that caused both my wife and my mother to jump like my cat when I sneeze, and as it idles it almost could be mistaken for an ICE engine. But as you accelerate, the sound that comes out of it has a tinny quality that sounds more like an Outrun arcade cabinet than V8. Worse, it revs up and then just kind of whines there, as there aren't any gears to shift through. I think I'd enjoy the Fratzonic Exhaust more if Dodge took a page from Hyundai's book and added fake gears you can manually shift like the Ioniq 5N. Fortunately, you can put the car in "stealth" mode, which shuts the speakers and the fake noise off and relies solely on the sounds of the electric motors. It doesn't matter how good a car looks, though. Ultimately, it's about how well it drives. And, well, it's fast! The R/T Stage 1 I bought can do 0-60 just under 5 seconds, or a hair faster than my Porsche. Opt for the Stage 2 Scat Pack and you can cut that down to just over 3 seconds, which on numbers alone makes it faster than any Hellcat. But I think that's where the similarities to previous ponies with the Charger name kind of ends. See, when you step on the accelerator, you go. No burnouts, no smoking tires, you just go. What's more, the car moves smoothly and confidently. At nearly three tons it's not going to tear through the corners the way my Porsche does, but it's rather difficult to kick the tires loose into a slide. This car's not going to be doing any donuts. Oh, yeah, three tons. Yeah. I went to look at new Charger thinking, "like a Challenger, but electric." No, in person, this thing's nearly a foot longer and four inches wider than a Challenger. My wife's Kia EV9, a three-row SUV, is just a tad shorter than this behemoth. If a technician took the 100kw/h battery off the car it'd still weight more than my similarly-electric Porsche. And yet, it's really not that bad when you. It cruises comfortably, accelerates quickly, and aided by the regenerative brakes it was capable of stopping just as quickly (Car and Driver found the Scat pack to stop from 70mph slightly shorter than both the Hyundai Ioniq 5N and the BMW i4 M40). It's only in sharper turns or successive curves that I really was aware of the size, and again, that's me comparing it to a Porsche. Compared to just about any SUV I've drive I'll happily take the Charger. Pair the composed ride with the interior... it's quite spacious. Despite being a coupe, passengers in the rear have leg room for days, and the seats are wide and a bit plushy. My mother, who has a hard time getting in and out of my Porsche and who finds the bolsters on its bucket seats at tad too aggressive for those of a plumper build, was quick to tell me she actually prefers riding in the Charger. Now, I don't know that I'd go that far from where I was sitting (the driver's seat!). I definitely took the Charger on a few winding back roads and though, "man, my Porsche would just eat this up!" But on the other hand, I didn't even slow down as I barreled over steel plates in the road near my parents house that I'd have to gently coax my Porsche over. After months of worrying about the ground clearance on some steep hills it was actually kind of liberating to simply not care. Unfortunately, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Despite having the car for all of five days, I've already had to take it back for service. On Sunday, after going with a friend to see a movie, the car just wouldn't start. A screen came on telling me that the battery needed service, and the car seemed to being reporting that it was charging despite not being plugged into anything. After consulting the internet, I turned it off and waited for all the screens to go completely dark, and was eventually able to get it started. At least I could get it home, I figured. And for the next seven miles, no problem, but as I come to a light a bunch of warnings come on- "parking sensors off," "stability control off," "speed may be limited." A turtle icon comes on the dash, and the car refuses to go more than 5mph. I manage to turn off into a parking lot and again shut the car down completely and restart it. Took back roads the rest of the way, but didn't have any other problems. In total fairness to Stellantis, I eventually realized I may have left a dome light on while I was programming the garage door opener, which could have drained the 12v battery, and after extra double-checking that all the lights were off I'd since driven it to get groceries on Monday, took it 20 miles through backroads back to the dealer today, then drove it home again without any further issue. And, credit to the dealer, they spent an hour and a half pouring over the car to try to find a problem. They did find that the pump for the washer fluid was dead and ordered a new one that they'll put in after they get it, but both batteries and the connections between then checked out, and all the latest software updates have been applied, so they couldn't do much more there than make a record of it and pass it along to Stellantis. Fingers crossed that it was just my bad, I guess. QC aside, would I recommend this car? Probably not. See, it really comes down to price. I think Dodge was like, "it's faster than a Hellcat, so we'll price it like one!" Down the line, when they inevitably cram a HEMI into it, that might be enough to attract the MOPAR crowd, but right now, as an EV, for everyone else? I don't think Dodge actually built a muscle car, I think they built a grand tourer. The sticker price on this R/T Stage 1 is comparable to a BMW i4 xDrive40, and I took one of those for a ride, too. Trust me, all things being equal, you want the BMW, which ranks among the very best cars I've ever driven. Depending on the options, the Scat Pack will run you another $10-$15k Even with different sales incentives, there are other EVs that are nearly as quick that bring more features to the table. That being said, you might be able to find a good deal on a lease. I got a 3-year, 10k miles/year (a number which I rarely hit in just one car, let alone spread over two) lease for $1000 down and $300 a month. At that price, it genuinely is a stylish and fun alternative to the sea of electric crossovers everyone else seems to be offering, an alternative I'm glad exists even if the pony purists hate it.

Hmm... I think there will be an NDA involved so I can't say too much, but it seems my wife and I have a settlement payment coming our way. I think I might cash in some credit card points for a Best Buy gift card and buy that laptop after all.

No that's the thing, I got the trim with RWD. And I already baby it; they put oil and chips on a road near my house and I didn't know it. I was driving 15mph and still wincing every time I heard a stone ping off the undercarriage. So I leased one of those new Dodge Charger EVs that seem to appeal to nobody but me... too electric and AWD for the MOPAR crowd, lacking the comfort and refinement of other EVs in the same price range. But it's dumb fun, it's got AWD, and since Stellantis is a customer of my wife's company I got it for $300/mo, 3 years, and only $1000 down. I upgraded my desktop this year, too, and no regrets there- I'm pretty much always going to prefer playing on a 49” 32:9 OLED. But my wife's mom has some issues trying to get a visa this year, so I'm thinking I might be traveling sooner than later.

Seems that early benchmarks on the Xbox Ally X suggest the Z2 Extreme isn't much of an upgrade. Sounds like my ROG Ally X is safe for another year.

Oh, that's the laptop I've had my eyes on! I'll have to check my budget, though; Pennsylvanian winters get pretty sloppy so I just leased another car so I can keep my Porsche in the garage.