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mikeszekely

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  1. mikeszekely
    In addition to Airazor, Ultra Magnus, and Dinobot that we saw yesterday here's the rest of the second wave of Kingdom. Core-class Starscream and Megatron. Not for me, but they look good for their size and, alone with Prime from the first wave, scale better with the Titans. ER Arcee will be in the second Kingdom wave. Then, with Airzor, the other Deluxes are Ractonite and Huffer. And if you're curious, yes, Huffer can pull ER Prime's trailer. Then Dinobot is one of the Voyagers. The other is Inferno. Magnus will be the only Leader-class in the wave. Preorders will go up tomorrow. I'll probably preorder everything but the Cores.
  2. mikeszekely
    I'd hoped Ultra Magnus would be a totally new mold; I know Hasbro likes their repaints, but there's always Delta Magnus. I never for a second thought that a white ER Prime with new armor was in the cards, and given Takara's love of cartoon accuracy even if they were still taking the lead on toy development it'd have wound up being an all-in-one design like CW Magnus. Realistically, though, it was always going to be a remold of the Siege figure, just like Megatron and the Datsuns. I think what really disappoints me, then, is how little they actually remolded. For the core robot it looks like the only change was the front half of the cab (so I suspect that chunk of truck on his butt should actually slide up his spine onto his back, like the Siege figure). Not ideal, but I can live with it. And the armored robot looks pretty good, sure, with a new head that has the bigger aviator-style eyes, new shoulder parts, and a new more cartoon-style chest. What I really dislike, though, is that the leg parts are the same and the resulting trailer looks like they strapped the Siege toy's onto a more Earth-like cab instead of his car carrier. Oh well. I'm complaining because it's not the upgrade I wanted, but I'll buy it because it is still an upgrade over Siege. Although I hope DNA makes leg parts for it. Yep. I've waited this long, though, I can wait two more weeks. As long as it comes. Which is should; unlike Walmart, Target's never let me down. Runabout came today, though. Runabout is basically Runamuck, but black. I guess that's the best we could expect. If you want to know my thoughts on the mold just refer back to my Runamuck review. When I first took him out of the package I actually thought he was just a straight-up recolor. But no, on closer examination his head is a new mold. So at least there's that. Interestingly, Runabout comes with the same pistol that Runamuck did, but with red paint on most of it. That's fair, the sculpt is closer to G1 Runabout's gun. Interestingly, though, he comes with a second gun, also cast in black and painted red. And this gun is molded more like G1 Runamuck's gun. For whatever reason you can plug the barrel of the one gun into the hole in the back of the other (it seems to fit best if you put the Runamuck gun into the back of the Runabout one). I'm tempted to strip the paint off of the Runamuck-molded gun and give it to him, then using the black Runabout-style gun that came with Runamuck on another figure. With their heads tucked away Runabout's alt mode is exactly the same as Runamuck's, just in a cooler black-and-red. Which I find disappointing. As I commented when I reviewed Runamuck, this alt mode looks like a '70s-style Firebird instead of an '80s model, making in the wrong year but at least the right car. But Runabout was Lotus Esprit, with a much more wedge-shaped nose and pop-up headlights. I know that Hasbro isn't licensing real cars for War for Cybertron, but I'd rather they erred on making something more similar to the Lotus for both than giving them this almost muscle car style. When all's said and done, though, I'm just glad to have both Battlechargers without them being TFCC-exclusive repaints of Wheeljack.
  3. mikeszekely
    Eh? I'm curious how Walmart is putting Soundwave up for more preorders, but telling those of us who preordered him months ago that it's backordered. Crap like that makes me want to do as little business with Walmart as possible. I'd do none, but Hasbro keeps giving them exclusives. At least I haven't had any messages about delays on Bee or Thrust.
  4. mikeszekely
    I think this one.
  5. mikeszekely
    This is the one I got. Only drawback is that it's only 60hz, but I don't notice a ton of difference (and even hitting 60fps at 4K pushes my card, so...).
  6. mikeszekely
    Are you dead set on 32"? I bought a 27" LG I like a lot for $450. You can knock it down to $300 if you get the version with the plastic body instead of aluminum.
  7. mikeszekely
    That's a good start (and not sure why 4K isn't viable; I'm using an RTX 2080 and I'm playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla in 4K right now). I'd match that with an Ryzen 5000-series CPU (assuming bots and scalpers didn't buy them all). Then it's just a matter of finding a board to match the CPU with, preferably one with maybe two NVME slots. Do get at least a 512GB NVME drive for your boot drive, and if you can spare it a 1-2TB NVME drive for your games. Then grab a CPU cooler, some RAM, a PSU, and a case to stuff everything into and you're more or less done.
  8. mikeszekely
    Ooh, expensive week. According to my preorder chart (because I have to make a chart to keep them all straight these days) I've got Maverick, Universal Studios Megatron, Super Megatron, Sandstorm, and the Ratchet & Lifeline pack due this week. Plus Thrust next week (Runabout already shipped).
  9. mikeszekely
    While a few Beast Wars characters have turned up from time to time in Classics/Universe/Generations I'd previously skipped all but Waspinator. However, with Rattrap, Primal, and Cheetor in the first wave of Kingdom and Dinobot in the second I hate not having at least the core cast. I decided to hedge my bets and I bought Thrilling 30 Rhinox. I guess he could stand to be a little taller, but if we don't get a new one in Kingdom I'm good. Now I just gotta hope they do Scorponok, Tarantulas, and Terrorsaur. Maybe Inferno.
  10. mikeszekely
    Oh, I'd buy a Transforming KITT so hard. I'd even buy a KARR repaint.
  11. mikeszekely
    Seems like, after stacking up preorders all year, that Hasbro is starting to get some Transformers product out there. As a matter of fact, I finally got my hands on Gigawatt from their Back to the Future crossover. As I noted before, Gigawatt is a remold of Siege Sideswipe. They share the same arms from the biceps down, the same pelvis, same hips, same thighs, and same knee joints. They also share the same shoulder joints, but Gigawatt has new shoulders. The inside of his torso is the same, so he can technically mount Sideswipe's shoulder weapons. But the actual car on his back, the front of his torso, his head, and everything below the knees is new. Being made from Sideswipe means that he's the same size as him and the other Autobot cars. That makes him a good fit with the current WFC stuff, compared to the too-tall Ectotron. Aesthetically I don't have a lot to complain about, what with him being a new character. I'll just note that his hood chest is much bigger and more prominent than Sideswipe's, and his doors are left hanging open instead of tucking in for robot mode, but neither of those things are terrible. Gigawatt comes with the pole they used to get power from the lightning strike into the Delorean in the first movie, a gun that looks kind of like a smaller, grayer version of Prime's rifle, and a little Mr. Fusion. The Mr. Fusion even has some nice tampoed details on it, and there's spots on the butt and on top of the rifle where you can plug it in. I prefer on top. Gigawatt's articulation should be the same as Sideswipe's, but I'll cover it again. His head is on a ball joint. It swivels and can look down, but nothing really up. Plenty of sideways tilt, though. His shoulders rotate and extend laterally 90 degrees. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. No wrist articulation, unless you count bending inward for transformation. His waist and thighs swivel. His hips can go forward or backward 90 degrees, and he can spread them over 90 degrees. His knees only bend around 45 degrees. This is due to having chunks of thruster on them. His feet have a little up/down wiggle but not really a tilt (the joint is loose enough that he'll look like he's always leaning slightly forward). He does have ankle pivots, though. Being so extensively remolded he doesn't have as many 5mm ports as Sideswipe. He can hold his weapons in the ports on his hands, and he's got ports on his forearms and shoulders where you could plug in the hook, but the ones on his back and legs are gone. He does have some on the inside of his doors, which you can kind of use for storage, and he does retail some on his feet. Transformation from robot to car mode is almost the same as it is for Sideswipe. The only differences are that you have to flip part of the hood around, you have to unfold the front wheels from inside his chest, and there are bits on the backs of his shoulders that spin around to fill out the space behind the front wheels. Size-wise, again, he's a great fit with the other WfC cars, but the scale is definitely off if you're displaying him with Ectotron. As for the Delorean itself, yeah, it's looking pretty good. The windows have a nice tint. Most of the car seems to be painted, with a texture to simulate the Delorean's bare metal appearance. Additional details like the bumpers, rims, strips, various cables, and the taillights are also painted, plus the California "OUTATIME" license plate is tampoed on. Is it perfect? Not exactly... some of the squares on the edge of the lights should be amber, and the red should run under the thrusters. More paint could have been used on the engine area, and I think some of the black parts running from the back of the roof over the rear fenders and under the rear bumper is actually silver on the real car. But for a Deluxe-class, even one with a higher-than-normal price tag, it feels adequate. The Delorean's gullwing doors do open, although there's nothing to see in there except robot kibble. And his rifle can store under the hood, just behind the front bumper. But only if you take the Mr. Fusion off. As for the hooked rod, it pegs into a spot on the rear. I mean, yeah, if you want to recreate that one scene in the first movie. Me, I think I'm leaving this accessory in the box. Instead of doing the clocktower scene, you can do the "where we're going, we don't need roads" scene instead. The Mr. Fusion plugs onto the back (somewhat loosely), and the wheels can rotate so they're pointed rims down. Most WfC figures actually have ports these days for flight stands, and Gigawatt is no exception. Here I'm using the one that came with MP Tracks. The cynical among us might see these Transformers crossover collaboratives as a way for Hasbro to combine its brands and leverage nostalgia to sell us novelties that don't truly belong to either franchise. But hey, the being a kid in the '80s was awesome and 2020 sucks, so I love this figure. Hasbro has taken another iconic '80s vehicle and turned it into a Transformer, but by starting with a much better base the overall figure is a marked improvement over Ectotron. I don't know what licenses Hasbro has- Mattel having DC and Playmates having the Ninja turtles makes a Burton Batmobile or the Party Wagon unlikely, but maybe Airwolf, B. A. Baracus' van, or the General Lee are still up for grabs? Because I have to admit that I'm a lot more into '80s nostalgia than '90s and "Ultimate X-Spanse" isn't really doing it for me. But Gigawatt? I love this guy, and he's a hearty recommend from me.
  12. mikeszekely
    FYI, if you need a good MP-style Megatron and think the official is a bit goofy-looking (like I do) TFSource is selling Maketoys' Despotron for under $60 today.
  13. mikeszekely
    Right? I opened @sh9000's post this morning on my phone and only Hot Rod was showing until I scrolled down. Before I did I almost thought, "Oh, did Takara announce an MP Hot Rod 2.0?" I think Hot Rod is probably the SS '86 figure I'm looking forward to the most, with Grimlock and Jazz being close seconds. Agree, but I'll let it slide on a Deluxe. I agree, but with the caveat that they sometimes felt overpriced, and a lot of the engineering ideas they were using would have worked better on larger figures. Bike Robo feels fiddly and loose after awhile; Bike Robo DX is nigh-perfect. I rarely bought from the regular AT Machine Robo line, but if they announced another DX I'd preorder it. I don't even care who it is. Crasher was more of a "here's a crazy repaint idea for Mirage." But the other G1 Gobots were a deliberate move by Takara in 2004 to sell repaints of G1 Bumblebee, Cosmos, Gears, Huffer, Powerglide, and Warpath as the Gobots Bug Bite, Path Finder, Small Foot, Road Ranger, Bad Boy, and Treds, respectively. None of them looked much like the Gobot versions. In 2008 Greg Sepelak and Trent Troop wrote a short fiction for the Transformers Collectors Club describing how a cataclysm was threating the Gobot's universe. "Doctor B" (most likely Doctor Braxis) determined that the source of the threat was another universe (that of the Fun Publications "Classics" comics), and so four Guardians and two Renegades were sent to infiltrate that universe.
  14. mikeszekely
    I've said it before, and I'll say it again- I'm down for a line of MP Gobots. (Y'know, beyond Action Toys awesome Bike Robo DX/Cy-Kill.) But that evil yellow Beetle disguising himself as an evil white Bumblebee and crossing over from the Gobots universe to the Transformers is semi-canon. But honestly, the whole G1 Gobots thing is weird. Like, it was Takara's idea, but I didn't even think they had Gobots in Japan, just Bandai's Machine Robo. But it was fleshed out by the old Transformers Collector's Club in the US four years later, then followed up with a sequel but back in Japan. Speaking of the sequel, there actually is Gobot that's a white (and red) Hubcap repaint- Rest-Q. Which makes Bugbite seem extra lazy, somehow. And on that note... I guess the ship has sailed for Pathfinder and Bad Boy, probably Buggyman, Rest-Q, and Admiral Man-O-War. And Small Foot seems unlikely since a Kingdom Gears never made it out of planning. But with Warpath and Huffer on the way I suppose it's possible that Gen Selects Road Ranger and Treds could happen. That said, Pipes seems like a more likely retool/repaint for Huffer, and the rumor is that Warpath is going to be redone as Slammer.
  15. mikeszekely
    Ok, so I guess Kingdom is here? I mean, none of my other preorders are due before February, but here's Core-class Rattrap. I don't think I was prepared for how small Rattrap actually is. "Core is like the new Legends-class," Hasbro says, but Rattrap is shorter than the old Legends figures (going off of one of the Clones, at least). And it's not just that he's shorter, he's thinner, too, and less massive. Fastlane is about 1.3 ounces (42 grams), Rattrap (with accessories) is only 0.7 ounces (26 grams). At least according to my postal scale. Aesthetically the shape and sculpt seem pretty good, but his colors are a bit bland. In the cartoon he had a copper color for some parts and a shinier orange for other parts, but it's all just a pale peach color here. Meanwhile, aside from the top of his head, there's no distinction between the gray of the mouse fur and what should properly be silver on his forearms and legs. Plus some stuff, like his pelvis and torso behind the rat head, are gray instead of copper/orange. (Bonus, for size, I tossed in Bugbite. Bugbite isn't getting a review, since he's a white Cliffjumper with a new head and some metallic purple paint on his accessories.) Rattrap comes with just this blaster. Which is fine, I don't think he really needed any more accessories. Rattrap's head can swivel, but there's no tilt. His shoulders are on ball joints, but they're a bit weird. The stems don't come from his chest, they come from his back kibble, so shoulder rotation works like the lateral motion on most other ball-jointed shoulders and he can't raise his arm more than 90 degrees. Lateral movement is actually rotation, and therefore it's theoretically unlimited. However, due to the cut of the joint, that means he can't raise his arm and move it laterally at the same time. Elbows are also ball joints, bending a little over 90 degrees and pulling double-duty as a bicep swivel. No wrist articulation. No waist articulation, either. Hips are ball joints that can go forward, backward, or laterally about 90 degrees. Knees are ball joints that bend a little over 90 degrees and also serve as thigh swivels. Due to transformation there's another ball joint below the knee that can be used as a second knee bend, if necessary. Finally, his ankles are ball joint so they can swivel, plus he's got a little up/down tilt and ankle pivot. He can hold his blaster fine, but don't lose it! Unlike pretty much every other modern mainline Transformer Rattrap's hands are NOT 5mm ports, so he's not compatible with other accessories, weaponizers, Battle Masters, etc. If it helps you to not lose it he doesn't have to hold it constantly. Using a vertical tab on one side of the gun you can plug the blaster onto his backpack. Rattrap's alt mode is similarly tiny. Kudos, the sculpt is again really well done. The rat's face might be the most animation-accurate one yet! It's a shame they only used the pink on his ears and feet and not his tail, though. While Rattrap certainly looks good he doesn't actually do much in this mode. Technically he's got the ball joints on his back feet, and that's it for rat articulation. If you don't mind undoing some stuff a bit you can get a bit more articulation on his back legs and some up/down waggle on at the base of his tail. His blaster uses a horizontal tab on the opposite side of his gun to fit into a slot on his back leg. I don't personally own the Thrilling 30 Rattrap, as I'm not a huge Beast Wars fan, but after watching other reviews of it it's hard to argue with @M'Kyuun's assertion that it's a better figure than this one. I get that scale is suddenly important in the WFC trilogy, and some of the impetus behind creating this new Core class and using it for Rattrap is so that Rattrap scales properly with the other Kingdom figures (whereas I've heard that Takara used the size it did for MP Optimus Primal with the notion that it'd scale properly with T30 Rattrap, making that figure de facto MP-scale). Still, I wonder if Hasbro could have made a better figure if they'd just made Rattrap a small Deluxe, like they did with Cliffjumper. As it stands, Core-class Rattrap is just OK. The sculpt is good, he'll scale properly with other Kingdom figures, and he's half the price of a Deluxe, so if scale matters I recommend him if and only if you're going to display him with other Kingdom figures. On the other hand, he feels like less than half the cost of a Deluxe, and if scale isn't that important to you the Thrilling 30 figure seems like an all-around better toy. (If you need an evil white Cliffjumper with Bumblebee's head then Bugbite's a recommend, otherwise you can probably live without him. I'm personally disappointed they didn't repaint Bumblebee instead of just using the head on Cliffjumper's body.)
  16. mikeszekely
    My boot drive is NVME. I should look if there's a second slot, my gaming drive isn't even a SATA SSD.
  17. mikeszekely
    It's ugly, expensive, and half the games are Street Fighter II. Hopefully it'll be better than the little mini console they recently put out, but it's sounding like an easy pass for me.
  18. mikeszekely
    I was thinking that it seems a bit early for wave 2, what with the first wave not due to hit until February or March. But then I got an email from Amazon telling me Rattrap shipped and should arrive Wednesday. So yeah, I'm all for the first wave hitting early and preorders going up for the second.
  19. mikeszekely
    Got an email that Pulse shipped Bugbite. FedEx says it should come today, but I have my doubts since the tracking says they picked it up in Lewisberry, PA (about a three-hour drive from me) and took it to Kennesaw, GA yesterday (a ten or so hour-drive). EDIT: nope, he came.
  20. mikeszekely
    Yes, More Than Meets the Eye in fact. The little dude he comes with (if you got the Hasbro version and not the Takara) is called Minimus Ambus, and I won't say anything else because spoilers. If the Kingdom Ultra Magnus turns out to be a retool of of the Siege figure and again does the White Optimus wearing armor thing I would love a Delta Magnus/Blue Optimus repaint. Double love for a Shining Magnus.
  21. mikeszekely
    My Netflix Spoiler pack came from Hasbro Pulse today. Is it really a spoiler? I think everyone knows it's Nemesis Prime. Nemesis Prime is a redeco of Siege Optimus, aka the best mainline Optimus Prime figure for maybe a year until Earthrise hit. I do wonder why they didn't just use Earthrise... maybe Hasbro's worried we're getting sick of it after releasing Dead Optimus and with the Shattered Glass version coming next year, but honestly I'll keep buying ER Prime if they keep making different colors. I'm not going to complain too much, though, the Siege mold makes for a slightly more aggressive appearance and I don't mind a Nemesis Prime that's a bit different than the regular one. I'll note now that Nemesis Prime was released in Japan during Siege. The Japanese version didn't have the painted crotch, plus the silver on his ribs, the silver on his crest, and his Decepticon badge are teal. For robot mode I might have liked the teal ribs, but for the most part I think I'm fine with how this release looks in robot mode. Nemesis Prime comes with a ton of accessories, much more so than his original Japanese release. None of it's really new, though. You have the blaster from the Siege mold, makes sense. You have the trailer and drone from the Earthrise mold, which is fine since the trailer works with the Siege mold. You get Fangtron, a redeco of the Battlemaster Slitherfang, and the accompanying effect part. Then things get a little weirder. You get a trio of energon cubes, but they're not packed in the box. Instead, they're buried in black Play-Dough in a cup on the side of the box (apparently this was done with the Ultra Magnus spoiler pack, too, but I didn't buy that one). Then you get a "Dark Saber" sword, a bird named Giza, and a pair of double-barreled cannons. Those all came with the Power of the Primes Leader-class Nemesis Prime. We're glossing over the trailer, drone, and Energon cubes, as they don't do much. Let's look more at Fangtron and the stuff that came with PotP Nemesis Prime, though, as I haven't covered them before. Fangtron as a tail hinge, two hinges in his body, one in his neck, plus a mid-body swivel. You can get some fairly dynamic poses out of him, although balancing him can be a bit tricky. He turns into a shield, and with the WFC connectors on both ends he can connect to the ramps on various other figures, or the trailer door/shield that Nemesis Prime comes with. Giza has nothing in the way of articulation, but he turns into a perfectly adequate sword. Prime can hold his gun, either sword, or shield just fine. The Dark Saber has a 5mm peg on one end and a slot on the other. Giza has a tab that fits into the slot on the Dark Saber. Since Prime has two peg holes on his back, and there's a peg hole on his rifle that Fangtron can fit into, he can even carry all that gear on his back. The double barreled cannons are a bit of an issue, though. This is basically because they have two short pegs on the underside, instead of just one, with a ridge between them that's raised higher than the rest of the surrounding plastic. Basically, you can fit them into the 5mm ports on his forearms, but that's about it. OK, so I'm not a big fan of the truck mode deco. I mean, the trailer looks great (like I wish Hasbro put that much effort into ER Prime's trailer, then I wouldn't have needed so much paint and Reprolabels). I like that they put a silver stripe on the side that surrounds the headlights where the Takara version was black around the headlights and just had a teal band where Siege Prime has a white stripe). But I hate all that translucent red. Like, it's fine for the windshield, maybe the overhanging roof bits, but not the headlights and grill. Takara used teal for the grill and headlights, as well as the rims and the cannons on the bumper, and it looks much better. I also don't know about that black bit on the bumper. Maybe I'd prefer if the whole bumper were silver. Takara also had a little teal on the side windows, where Hasbro left them unpainted black, and Takara painted the fuel tanks silver. I'm not sure why Hasbro didn't; they started to paint that area with the tool boxes. Nemesis Prime can, of course, tow his trailer, but he doesn't really have room for any other accessories if he's pulling it. And he actually comes with so many that you can't fit them all in the trailer. Without the trailer, though, you have room to peg in almost everything but drone and the Energon cubes. End of the day, not all of the included accessories work all that great, and I'm not a fan of the translucent red headlights and grill, but overall this is a very good Nemesis Prime in my book and well worth picking up.
  22. mikeszekely
    The final wave of Earthrise just hit, we're months away from the first wave of Kingdom... but here's a peak at the second wave. I'm really curious to see how that Earth-mode Ultra Magnus turned out.
  23. mikeszekely
    Unfortunately I never tried any of the HA figures. I bought all the cast of the first movie in the first movie line, but after the first movie I bought very few movie toys until Studio Series. I think just Voyager Megatron, Sideways, and Breakaway from RotF, Megatron, Shockwave, Starscream, Sideswipe, Roadbuster, and a repaint of Topspin (and those last two only because of deep clearances at Target), Voyager Grimlock from AoE, and Voyagers Prime and Megatron plus Bumblebee and Barricade from TLK. That's it.
  24. mikeszekely
    Congrats. I tried again with Walmart today but they keep advertising when they're going to open sales without the backend to deal with scalper bots and server load. I managed to get one in my cart but then I got their "oh deer" page they put up when they're overloaded and the console was sold out before I could get to checkout. I hope no one's buying on Ebay or StockX, and come spring the scalpers are sitting on a pile of unsold consoles they sell below retail just to cut their losses.
  25. mikeszekely
    Well... I guess the jury's still out on an other MPM Decepticons, as I'm unaware of any new announcements and we're still three short of completing the first movie. But with four out of five movie Autobots in hand I went ahead and finished the set with MPM-09 Jazz. Yes, MPM Jazz is shorter than MPM Bee. That's movie-accurate. I find the comparison with the Studio Series version to be pretty interesting. The MPM figure has a lot more molded and painted detail, and his feet, shoulders, and biceps are much more screen accurate (plus he doesn't have the door kibble on his biceps). But he's still got kibble on the sides of his legs and shoulders, you're just trading some kibble for different kibble. And the Studio Series toy, despite being less accurate, actually has better proportions. From the back it's a similar case- MPM Jazz has much more accurate feet, and they tried to give him the sort of details on his back that he had in the movie instead of a backpack that's most of the top of the car. But... MPM Jazz's back is actually a backpack that's made of pretty much the exact same top of the car as the SS figure's, it's just folded up and presented differently. Also, I gotta ask... what's up with the black hooks on his butt? I can't find any purpose that they serve in transformation and they're certainly not screen-accurate. Dangling down seems the be the right position for car mode, but folding them up (they are on a pin hinge) just puts them in the way of his waist swivel. Anyway... Jazz comes with three accessories. First and probably most important is his blaster/shield thing. But you also get a static figure of Sam running with the cube, and... a spine. When you're not using them, the shield can fold so it's flatter against the gun part. And that leaves room for you to plug the spine into the gun. I guess the only way to store Sam is in the box. Jazz's head is on a hinged swivel that can look down a little, up a fair bit, and rotate. Both the hinge and the swivel are very loose on my copy. His shoulders are a bit awkward. They butterfly backward at his torso for transformation. They also rotate at the wheels, no issue. The issue is that he's got a lateral hinge inside his chest, then another hinge that rotates on it's own. The hinge in the chest doesn't give him much lateral movement, but if you orient the other hinge right and move his collar bits out of the way you can get a little under 90 degrees laterally. But you could just as easily orient it as a butterfly joint. Either way, it's another joint that's a little too loose. Moving along, his bicep can swivel but if his elbow is bent expect it to get caught on his bicep armor. And the elbow does bend- it's actually double-jointed, although both joints are necessary to get the maximum bend of just 90 degrees due to the weird way his forearm transforms. His wrists do not swivel, but each finger on both hands is individually-articulated with hinges at the base and at the mid-knuckle. His waist can swivel. His hip skirts are almost always in the way, but if you hinge them out you'll be able to move his hips 90 degrees forward and just under that laterally and backward. His thighs swivel. His knees are, again, double-jointed but again don't really get much past 90 degrees. Also, his upper knee joints are again very loose. Due to the way he transforms his front toe can bend down a bit, but it'll move the inner toe with it. The other toes don't move, so the outer diecast toes might not even touch the ground. He does have some ankle pivot, but it's extremely limited, maybe 15 degrees. On the box and in some promo art you might have seen Jazz posed on one hand, as if mid-transformation when he did that breakdance move in the movie. Forget it, MPM Jazz isn't doing that without additional support. I think you could, in theory, balance the figure to pull it off but in practice his loose joints just will not support the pose. Jazz's blaster fits on his arm by pinching all his fingers together then stuffing them in a hole on the back of the shield. The instructions show it attached as in the above picture, but I do believe that flipping it 180 degrees is more accurate and it will fit that way. As for the spine, well, there's a button under Jazz's backpack. If you push it in you can separate his top from his bottom. The plug on his top half that secures him to his bottom can then be plugged into a port on the spine. If you have MPM-08 Megatron it allows you to recreate Jazz's most iconic scene in the movie- the one where he gets ripped in half. Can't do that with the Studio Series! On the subject of gimmicks, you can lift up the top of Jazz's head and fold his visor in, then close it back up. This allows you to see his nicely-painted blue eyes. I'm not sure why they opted to do this, as Jazz is never seen visor-less in the film, but it's a thing you can do. While we've got a close up of his head, I have to say that I wish they'd smoked that translucent plastic. Even the blue they used on the SS toy is better than straight-up clear. Speaking of the translucent plastic, again, smoked would have been nice and even the blue of the SS toy is better than clear. The transformation is actually sort of similar to the Studio Series toy. His legs make up the rear, his arms the head lights and the sides, the top of the car from the front windshield back to the spoiler is a backpack, the and the front of the car has to do a 180 to get the hood under it before forming his chest. There's just a lot of extra steps involved. Clear windows aside the alt mode does look pretty good. I do think its a bit weird that he's got the spot of his license plate but doesn't have a plate tampoed on the way Bee and Barricade do. Other than that the clear windows and lack of license plate I don't really have anything to complain about. The instructions don't mention any vehicle mode accessory storage. I couldn't find any for the spine, and Sam just stands alongside, but there is a gap on the gun/shield. That gap happens to fit over the spoiler. With no other use for that gap spoiler storage might be an intended feature. However, while it's snug enough that it won't fall off while sitting on a shelf it's loose enough to fall off when handled, which makes me think maybe it's not intentional. I don't know. One last shot, with the Autobot cast together. And... yeah. Jazz is sort of in the middle. I like him better than Ratchet and Ironhide, but less than Prime and Bee. If we're counting Decepticons, less than Starscream and Barricade, too. Some of his issues are endemic to the Studio Series line- yes, he's got more paint and greater accuracy than the Studio Series toy, but there are still unpainted spots and kibble that make you feel like he's still falling short of that "Masterpiece" label. And before I even complain (again) about loose joints. It's like he's just nice enough that you buy into the notion that he's a premium collectible, but with enough flaws that you're sure a third party could do a better job. And with that in mind I'm not sure I'd recommend him. See, while the Studio Series is less accurate overall I'm more forgiving of those flaws and inaccuracies at their lower prices. Any three of these characters in the Studio Series cost as much or less than MPM Jazz. And frankly, for the Bay films, I think that's enough. If you really are into these designs or these versions of the characters and you want a more premium display then, yes, the MPM line will give you that, but with enough un-premium flaws that I don't know that you're really that much better off.
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