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mikeszekely

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Everything posted by mikeszekely

  1. mikeszekely
    No, first I'm hearing of it. I just used the regular credit card I use for everything. Between that and all-season tires for my Porsche I'll get some points that I'll cash it for gift cards for Christmas.
  2. mikeszekely
    Whatever you're using it for, hope you find a good deal. I feel like I didn't get the best price I could have if I were a little more proactive earlier, but with NAND prices on the rise I think I still got a better deal that I would if I waited a few more months. I wound up buying a Beelink SER5 with a Ryzen 7 6800U, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD for $380. Like I said, it's going to be a Batocera box, and I'd like it to do up to PS2/Gamecube. 32GB of RAM is probably overkill, but boxes with 1TB SSDs were scarce and M.2 drives are already creeping up enough that if I bought one with 16GB of RAM and bought a 1TB drive separately I'd be paying just as much.
  3. mikeszekely
    Hmmm, I should probably buy a Beelink or Miniforum mini PC now instead of waiting. Been wanting to set up a Batocera box for awhile.
  4. mikeszekely
    Amazon. And just to check, I went to Amazon.de and set my location to 70435 Stuttgart (Porsche HQ and their main factory😁). I found all four available to pre-order with a March 2026 release date.
  5. mikeszekely
    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.
  6. mikeszekely
    It's been awhile since I messed with my copy, but I think so, if you you close the sides of the trailer before folding the front back over. The Kingdom trailer explodes a bit more than the original.
  7. mikeszekely
    No, the protruding cab is definitely the biggest offender. Mostly because your issue simply... isn't. I dunno if that's a bad photoshop on the part of some poor Hasbro intern or just a really bad angle of the storage door partly open there, but properly closed that perceived bump just isn't there. Properly closed, it looks like this (Kingdom in the middle):
  8. mikeszekely
    Excuse my VERY poor photo manipulation skills. Move the rear of the car part up, to partially cover the canopy and move the wing forward. Ideally, by having hinges that move them forward on the car itself, but by making it part of the trailer instead like the MP version. Then, like I said, ditch the effects parts and their storage cubby so the car can sit in deeper. EDIT: To be totally clear, I'm not against a new Rodimus mold that's just better and more accurate all around. I'm just saying that they were a few doable tweaks from getting a lot closer the first time.
  9. mikeszekely
    I'd imagine it'd be a pretty easy fix, honestly. Ditch the effects parts, then replace the storage for them with more room under the trailer for the cab to sit deeper inside. If they insist on the cab having a separate car mode, make the wing part of the trailer so it comes down on the right spot on the car's roof.
  10. mikeszekely
    Over a year ago I covered MMC's Shiftlane, their version a Rollbar, a retool of their version of Swindle. And then... well, nothing for a long time. But I don't really do full reviews for repaints, and I don't buy nearly as much 3P stuff I used to (and when I do, I don't really buy repaints). But... I did get the rest of the set. So the first one after Shiftlane was Chops, the MMC version of Ro-Tor. Now, the animation models for Robots In Disguise were a lot closer to the toys than the G1 Combaticons. MMC cleverly flipped Shiftlane's torso around. For Chops, they remolded the front of his torso. For the most part, that works for him. The new torso is pretty cartoon accurate, and aside from having Vortex's little feet he's accurate enough down through the legs. MMC tucked Vortex's tail and use the engine nacelles to make for more G1 cartoon-accurate, but that actually works against Chops, since Ro-Tor's toy-accurate arms were clearly the helicopter tail. Ro-Tor also shouldn't have the little arm guns that Vortex does, but Chops has all the same accessories that their Vortex did. Transformation is the same as Vortex, which is to say it's still my least favorite of the set. The helicopter mode was designed to walk a fine line between G1 cartoon-accurate and a realistic Seasprite. Again, it's the kind of thing that worked pretty well for the Vortex version, but the RiD animation was much closer to the simplified look of the toy. To that end, I don't think that Chops came out badly, per se. The realistic helicopter is fine, but some details are a bit off. Why isn't the nose red? Where's the gray panel on the side? The third release was Astrolift, aka Movor. Again, MMC made a few modifications to make the mold a bit more RiD-accurate. He's got new feet, and a partly new chest. As with Chops, the new chest is indeed more accurate, but the faux wheels are kind of unnecessary. And while the arms are made from the front of the shuttle, same as Blast-Off, details like the visible pink cockpit windows are missing. I'm not sure why MMC didn't just paint a fake windows onto part of his arm where the actual cockpit could cover over it. As for the shuttle mode, well, Movor always had more realistic colors than Blast-Off, and the realistic look pretty good with MMC's (fairly) realistic design (the engine bells are still wrong). It's worth pointing out, though, that in the cartoon Movor was drawn rather strangely, with small wings, a rectangular fuselage, and sharply angled engine nacelles, so aside from the colors Astrolift isn't exactly cartoon-accurate here. Another thing to note is that Movor was animated with the larger cannons from the toy over the wings/near the rear of the fuselage. Since MMC's Blast-Off didn't include those, neither does Astrolift... just the smaller pistol, which still folds up and tucks into a spot near the top rear of the fuselage. The fourth release was Fortiflex, their Armorhide. Fortiflex has remolded hip skirts, which better resemble the trapezoidal hips of Armorhide's character model. From the waist down, no complaints. From the waist up, though... well, Brawl's animation model was pretty different from the G1 toy, with a much smaller chest and treads for shoulders. Armorhide's animation model, being closer to the toy, kept the big tank chest and the arms where the treads were on the backs of his arms, not the front. The remolded chest does sort of look like the front of the tank, but it's clearly not as protruding, and no changes to the arms means you've got treads and dark browns where we should have tan bits from the top of the tank. Tank mode is still looking sharp, though. Again, MMC likes realistic details so we've got the periscope, mirrors, and working hatches. Although Armorhide didn't use them in the cartoon, he's still go the rear-mounted double-barreled gun that came with Brawl. Megalith, aka Mega-Octane, finishes up the set. I don't think it's particularly controversial to say that Onslaught was the weakest of MMC's Combaticons due to being the most hampered by the all-in-one gimmick, and that's certainly still the case with Megalith. However, MMC's Onslaught, due largely to his transformation, was always a bit more toy-ish than the other four, and this is something that works in Megalith's favor as the wheels on his torso and the extra kibble on the backs of his shoulders are all cartoon-accurate now. Even the large orange pelvis is. You just have to squint and remember that it's all supposed to be pelvis, regardless of where his hips and waist swivel are. As far as mold changes go, the only difference is some minor changes to the molds of his chest panels. Note that he comes with both an orange version of Onslaught's original gun, as well as the gun and boxes from the upgrade kit they did for their Bruticus. Transformation is the same, and the truck mode is basically just Onslaught's in a different color scheme. I suppose the grill could be a little more cartoon-y, but I think it's fine overall. Of course, if you're this far in, you're probably not in because you want the Decepticon Commandos, you're probably in for Ruination, so here's Eversus, the combined mode. Like Megalith on his own, I think Eversus benefits a bit from the toy-style torso. You'll notice that the head and chest are the ones that came with the Bruticus upgrade kit; Eversus does NOT have the Blast-Off chest and G1 cartoon Bruticus head were stock on Onslaught. The chest is painted with details from the Japanese release of Car Robots Dorailer. However, while the torso goes a long way toward the Ruination look, being designed first and foremost as Bruticus does hold him back in a few ways. His left arm lacks the big red guns from the RiD Ro-Tor toy, just the little ones from Vortex. And his elbow bends like Vortex, whereas the cartoon had the side of the helicopter as the front of the arm. Likewise, the front of his left arm was the side of Movor, and presented as white. The biggest difference, though, is that Armorhide connects backward in the cartoon, with the turret on the back of his leg and the front of the tank as his knee. But Brawl was designed to match the G1 cartoon, with the turret on the shin. The other reality is that in RiD Ruination frequently flipped his arms and legs, with Armorhide as the right arm, Rollbar as the left arm, Ro-Tor as the right leg, and Movor as the left. But since Bruticus only had his "standard" configuration in the G1 cartoon, MMC only designed their Bruticus with the single combination, so that's the only one that Eversus gets. So, I guess the question is whether or not the whole set is worth it. And I think that's an interesting question. On the one hand, the strong toy aesthetics and Megaltih and, by extension, the core of Eversus, actually seem to work better for Ruination than they did as Bruticus. Plus, while MMC was competing at the time with Zeta and Unique Toys, there really hasn't been too many takes on Ruination, and certainly not at this scale. I think, despite the compromises that come with being designed as a Bruticus first, this is a solid take on the characters and it goes great with Fans Hobby's Scourge. Top it off with better joint tolerances all around than Bruticus, and I'd say that I'm quite glad to have this set. But, the thing is, there are enough quirks with these designs that I don't really want to own two of each of these molds. And in the years since MMC first released their Bruticus, we've gotten another take on an MP Bruticus from Magic Square. So while this set does satisfy my desire for Ruination, it also makes me want to sell the MMC Bruticus and buy Magic Square's.
  11. mikeszekely
    Tyrant's great, but I want one that scales with SS86 Megs, not MP-36 Megs.
  12. mikeszekely
    Not super surprising, they can't sell it at a loss and make it up with licensing fees the way consoles do. Also, what even is console pricing anymore? Used to be they'd go down in price as they aged. Five years ago both the Series X and PS5 were $500, today they're S650 and $550, respectively. My money's on $600 for the 512GB Steam Machine.
  13. mikeszekely
    I'd love to see Hasbro explore lots of designs for lots of characters, but they seem fixated on Timelines doing endless versions of Optimus vs Starscream and Bumblebee vs. Megatron. And sadly, at a sort of "Deluxe+" price. I'd personally love a version of the IDW stealth bomber Megatron that scales with the SS86 toy.
  14. mikeszekely
    G2 Swoop & Sludge as well as Timelines samurai Optimus & Starscream are available to preorder on Pulse.
  15. mikeszekely
    As I understand it, the impending ban prevents the sale of DJI's stuff in the US, but doesn't prohibit you from owning or using DJI drones in the States. Maybe my in-laws can get one for me...
  16. mikeszekely
    Sludge isn't my favorite... but he's not my favorite in G1 colors, either. I unironically love blue-and-green Swoop. My second-favorite deco after yellow Grimlock.
  17. mikeszekely
    It's a shame, too. I'm imagining a hot pink Snarl and Jazz's Doritos color would cook on Slag.
  18. mikeszekely
    Because that's essentially the case. When G2 launched (very late '92 and ’93) changes from G1 were pretty minimal. Make Prime's trailer black, use metallic paint on some mini bots, flip Sideswipe's colors, release Jazz in normal colors but change the stickers, etc. Blue Grimlock and the red and green Snarl and Slag are from that '93 wave (after releasing in their G1 colors in '92). I feel like the more garish colors started to appear in '94, when they started releasing the G2 versions of the Scramble City combiners (along with more original molds like the Laser Rods). The G2 colors for Sludge and Swoop, as well as yellow Grimlock, are based on concept art for toys that were planned for ’94 or '95 but never released. FWIW, I always liked yellow Grimlock better than the blue one. That concept art is also where we got delightfully hideous stuff like Doritos Jazz and Watermelon Mirage from that Walmart-exclusive G2 collection a few years back, BTW.
  19. mikeszekely
    Coming in 2026, I can try not think about how I'll have spent over $500 on dinobots...
  20. mikeszekely
    My beef with the recent Walmart reissues isn't that they're reissuing 40+ year old toys when there are new better ones... after all, the new better ones aren't what I had as a kid. My issue with them is the new "movie" decos that are also not what I had as a kid. If you're gonna reissue a toy, make it as close to the original as possible so that I don't have to spend a small fortune on one made in the '80s with fingers crossed that it's still in good condition. But if you're going to get a toy with a new, more cartoon-accurate deco, it might as also have a new, more cartoon-accurate sculpt and new, more cartoon-accurate articulation while we're at it.
  21. mikeszekely
    I mean, I've done it before... But yeah, I don't think I'd do it now. It's far enough away that I'd have to charge my Taycan at least twice to make the round trip, and that's assuming that I just went to Microcenter and back. EDIT: Oh, sweet, I just looked and it looks like they opened one closer. Now I'd only have to drive two and a half hours.
  22. mikeszekely
  23. mikeszekely
    I want one so I can walk around in it, see good deals, and buy them on the spot. Definitely appreciate the offer, but short of seeing something cool and buying it on a whim I think I'm actually good.
  24. mikeszekely
    I wish I had a microcenter. Closest one for me is like a 4 hour drive.
  25. mikeszekely
    NGL, I'd consider it anyway, update the UEFI, and cross my fingers. Same GPU but a better CPU and more RAM than the Asus G700 I spent like $400 more on at the beginning of the year.
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