mikeszekely

Yeah, I got him too. I didn't mention it because I didn't want to spoil this review I'm about to write. So Doubledealer is a Leader-class toy. At least he's bigger than Astrotrain and Optimus, right? But he's a lot smaller than the pre-Siege Leaders, and shorter than Siege Magnus with the DNA upgrades. Without the upgrades they're probably similar in size (but I'll be honest, I didn't check). Doubledealer is an interesting figure for me because I had the G1 toy as a kid, but I don't remember it too well. I remember I liked Skar (the bat Powermaster) a good bit, and I liked Doubledealer's bird mode a lot, but I think I rarely used him in robot or missile truck mode. Seeing this version in robot mode doesn't give me much in the way of nostalgia. But when I go back and look at the original G1 toy I can see that this version is in many ways very faithful. There's painted details on near his knees, feet, thighs, and shoulders that are callbacks to the original toy's stickers, and much of the sculpt is similar. What's throwing me off are the proportions. ER Doubledealer has a much smaller head, narrower waist, and thicker limbs that make him look like a 'roided-up version of the G1 toy. All-in-all, not too shabby. Doubledealer wasn't in the G1 cartoon (the Japanese version, Doubleclouder, was in Masterforce, but I didn't see that until I was an adult), or the US run of the Marvel comics (although I think he did show up in Marvel UK). I guess the toy's fiction was that he was a mercenary who did jobs for both the Autobots and the Decepticons. My impression of him as a kid was that he was a lifeless missile truck, and if Knok bonded with him he turned into an Autobot robot but if Skar bonded with him he turned into a Decepticon vulture, and Knok and Skar were always fighting over him. Regardless of the mental fiction you want to assign to him, Hasbro's got you covered. Out of the box you'll see Autobot insignia on both shoulders. However, there's a panel on the top of his shoulder. Flipping it around covers the Autobot emblems with Decepticon emblems. Like the other Leader-class figures in the War for Cybertron trilogy, Doubledealer seems to make up for his smaller stature with a lot of accessories. He comes with his large shoulder missile, his large gun, a smaller gun, two smaller missile pallets, a... thing (maybe a radar?), and a flat part with two stabilizers on it. What he doesn't come with are Knok and Skar, although you may recall from an earlier review I did that they're available as part of "Soundwave's Spy Patrol", though, as remolds of Ratbat and Frumble. Speaking of, the panel on Doubledealer's chest can open, and there's a hollow space inside big enough to fit either Knok or Skar (or Rumble, Frenzy, Ratbat, Ravage, or Wingthing) but not both at the same time. And while we've got his chest open, note the molded bit that looks sort of like the back side of G1 Knok. It's actually just pegged on, so you can pull it off. With it off, you can flip out the peg on the newer Knok or Skar and peg the engine onto their backs. Really makes me wish that Hasbro had included a second one shaped like Skar's back. But I digress. So, I think Doubledealer's head is on a ball joint. I say think because it swivels, but there's not enough up/down or sideways tilt to be useful, but a little too much to be play on a mushroom swivel. His shoulders rotate and can extend laterally 90 degrees. His biceps swivel, and his elbows are double-jointed and curl more or less 180 degrees. His wrists swivel. his waist can swivel. His hips have soft ratchets that can go forward and backward a little under 90 degrees and out to the side 90 degrees. He does have thigh swivels, but they're a little limited as the entire blue outer thigh rotates around an inner joint. His knees can bend about 75 degrees. His feet don't tilt up or down, but he does have 90 degrees of ankle pivot. The instructions tell you to put the big missile into a peg hole near his head, the radar into a peg hole on one shoulder, the small gun onto a peghole on the other shoulder, the big gun in his hand, and the missile pallets near his ankles. He also has a peg hole on the other side of his head, on either forearm, or under either foot. Without the part with the stabilizers attached he'll have a flap with two more peg holes along his back. If you want that part on him, though, you lift the flap up and use two tabs to connect it to the underside. In that configuration he'll wind up with two pegs holes behind his head, and a new single peg hole on his back. The instructions will indicate that the stabilizers, which are on ball joints, should stick out behind him like wings. They can be rotated and tucked in, though. I'll also note here that the big shoulder missile has another peg hole, and the big gun has a peg hole on top, one on each side, one on the butt, and the barrel is a 5mm peg hole. Doubledealer's bird mode gives me much more nostalgic feels. I think I used to pretend it was my pet. It's interesting, again, how it's very similar to the G1 toys in many ways; the way the head is turned to one side and stored in the back behind the wings, the way the arms fold under the bird's chest and the birds legs fold down from the wheels, and the way the upside down front of the truck is basically the bird's tail. His forearms aren't folded up and tucked between his biceps, though, so there's a bit of a gap, and folding the legs up is a bit of a pain due to clearance issues that cause them to get caught up against his thighs and minor frustrations lining up a tab inside his knee with the back of his thigh. The flap on the part with the stabilizers give him a more bird-like tail, but the part doesn't connect directly to Doubledealer in this mode. Instead, his big gun plugs into his shoulder missile to form a larger ICMB, and the stabilizer part uses a pair of peg holes to attach to the underside of the ICBM near the back. Then the ICMB uses some black clips to pinch onto the bird's back. Note that the stabilizer part must be detached from the robot back to attach it to the missile; the flap it was tabbed into is now on the bird's belly. The bird doesn't have a ton of articulation. The head can swivel, and his neck is double-jointed so it's got good up/down range, but he can't really look side-to-side. A hinge lets the purple part of his bird legs move up and down, but the rest of it is pegged into place. The wings can bend backward where they connect to his back and forward close to the tips, and there's a hinges to tuck them in or spread them out near the middle. The instructions suggest that the missile pallets plug into the bird's sides, while smaller gun and radar are plugged into the robot hands tucked into the bird's belly. He does have the two forward-facing holes under his head, one on his back, and several others on his belly in this mode, which prompted me to try to split the ICBM and have part on top and part on the belly the way I remember the G1 toy doing. It kind of works; the missile half is shorter than the G1 version, so it looks like it sits a bit far forward even though it doesn't protrude any more than the G1 toy's did, while the gun does in fact sit farther back on his back. Doubledealer is, again, a triple changer, and here's his truck mode. It's similar too his G1 truck mode, but his forearms wind up curled up toward the sky instead of in toward each other, and his chest cover spins around and sits on top instead of being removed. The result is less clean, but I'm not going to complain about less partsforming. I will note that the position of his legs (forming the front of the truck) is slightly different than their position in bird mode. It's slightly easier to get them in position for this mode, and frustrating that they didn't use the same position for both modes. Instead of using the back of his robot head to mount the ICBM, the ICBM uses a pair of pegs to fit into the flap that was on his robot back. The instructions suggest using this hands to mount the smaller gun and radar, and putting the missile pallets into the peg holes on the sides of his forearms. In this mode there's also two on the front of the truck and one on either side you could use instead, plus two on the back. The part with the stabilizers is once again partsformed, this time using a pair of pegs to lock into the peg hole his shoulder missile sits in and its mirror on the other side. The flap on it can be folded up and the stabilizers rotated up for "driving." Then you can fold it down and rotate the stabilizers out, then lift the flap with ICMB on it so that the missile is pointed up for "launch mode." The flap is even keyed to fit with other Siege and Earthrise bases like Omega Supreme, Ironworks, the upcoming Scorponok, Quintesson, or Airwave, Prime's trailer (assuming you didn't replace the door with the Nonnef one), or any of the little Battlemasters that turn into "shields." Doubledealer is... alright. I think he should have come with Knok and Skar, or at least another engine part for the Soundwave Spy Patrol Skar, but instead we got a bunch of other little accessories I could have done without. He's extremely faithful to the G1 toy, except when he's not. I'm not a huge fan of the partsforming flap with the stabilizers, but in the toy's defense it's kind of optional for all three modes. And despite having the original as a kid I don't have a strong attachment to the character, because he's appeared in very little Transformers fiction (unless you're big Masterforce fan). So, if you like what you see here, then by all means get him. He's a solid effort on HasTak's part. But if you're feeling pretty meh on him after reading this then I don't think you're missing too much if you skip him.

Just that it might have something to do with the Netflix show or the comics. Like, they're not killing off Prime already in either, but in the alternate universe that is the '86 movie he died. Too bad Siege Magnus doesn't have a spot to put AU Prime's Matrix in. Also, I forgot how bad the trailer looks without add ons. Maybe I should buy another kit. As it stands, I'm thinking about re-buying the Reprolabels for ER Prime, partly to go on Netflix Prime, and partly because I want to pull them off the trailer, paint it, and re-apply.

Hopefully it'll be a regular retail release. I do my work at night, so I had to get up early for the livestream (actually my kid woke me up before 8:00, so I went to Target and bought Ghost of Tsushima before getting online) then spend the rest of the morning trying to lock in my exclusives. After eating a late lunch I wound up sleeping on the sofa for two hours. With Hasbro making all these major characters store exclusives they've officially found a way to make shopping from home more exhausting than going to stores. It looks like it might be from the pictures. I wanted Elita-1 but didn't want to pay shipping, so I decided to do a second order with Prime and Elita. Hopefully the rest of him isn't too dirty. If it is, though, I might look at swapping parts to have one definitive Optimus. So all together I preordered Exhaust, Hubcap, Bee, Elita-1, Soundwave, Prime, the Prowl/Ironhide pack, and the Coneheads pack. And this is on top of having Centurion, Tigertrack, Maverick, Super Megatron, and a buttload of regular Siege and Studio Series coming out between now and the end of the year. EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot. Alternate Universe Optimus came today... because the one toy my collection has been missing is Prime's lifeless corpse from that scene that made me cry in the theater when I was 6.

Found the workaround. Got an order for the Autobots and the Coneheads.

It bothered me at first, but then I thought of it as his G1 sled and now I'm cool with it. It wouldn't leave me seething with rage if I could just find the Amazon exclusives already... EDIT: Apparently these are the links Seekers Autobot Alliance But they don't seem to be working as of 11:40 am EDT.

Bee Elita Soundwave looks like he's sold out already. And I swear Amazon must think the preorders start at 11:00 Pacific.

link? I'm searching and getting nothing Nevermind. I got my preorders for Bee and Soundwave. Forgot to add Elita; I'm not paying for shipping, I'll wait and see if she turns up in stores. Got Hubcap and Exhaust at Pulse. The Pit's not up yet. And while Hasbro posted about Amazon having their sets on Facebook they didn't have a link, so...?

Oh, I'm in for both Amazon sets, Soundwave, Bee, and Elita-1 at Walmart, and Hubcap and the Pit of Judgement at Pulse. Maybe Exhaust.

9:30 - Show started. Nothing major so far. They announced that Rotorstorm will be getting an IDW head, no just a repaint of Spinister's head. They unveiled Maverick. They brought up the new Siege show on Netflix and unveiled a t-shirt. 9:35 - A second wave of the Netflix collection. Five new Deluxes. Elita-1 (remold of Arcee), Wheeljack, Red Alert, Impactor, and Bumblebee (remold of Cliffjumper, but he'll have a VW alt mode). To save my time and sanity these are the new figures, Wheeljack, Red Alert, and Impactor are dirtier versions of the ones you we already got at retail. Some mulitpacks (a Voyager with some battlemasters). Optimus is one, looks like the Earthrise mold without the trailer, with a gold version of Pteraxadon and a gold version of the one that turns into a ramp/shield. The other one is Soundwave. It's a remold of Siege, but it's an Earthrise figure with a tape deck mode. He'll come with Ravage and Laserbeak. One new Leader spoiler pack. They're not saying who it is. My money is on Doubledealer, though. 9:50- Three new Generations Selects figures, but they've been leaked. Deluxe-class Exhaust, Greasepit, and Hubcap. No pics here; they've been floating around for awhile. 9:55 - Autobot Alliance and Seeker Elite. It's the Amazon-exclusives I mentioned. Hmm. I hope we get Earth-mode Bluestreak and Ratchet, too. 10:00 - The Quintesson Pit of Judgement that was leaked yesterday. Hasbro Pulse-exclusive. @sh9000 and I put up pics yesterday. They're probably still on this page or the previous one. Preorders will start at the various stores at 11:00 am EDT.

Thrust was leaked awhile back, and might be headed for a regular retail release. The real question is why does Hasbro keep releasing one character of a group and then making the rest a limited store-exclusive thing? Anyway, if you're missing the show I'll be posting stuff here.

The show hasn't even started, and there's leaks that Amazon will be carrying two exclusive two-packs. One will have Earth-mode Prowl and Ironhide (Prowl is a retool of ER Smokescreen, Ironhide might be a retool of his Siege mold). The other will be Dirge and Ramjet, both retools of ER Starscream. Would be nice if they were more widespread releases, but at least the Amazon-exclusives haven't been too hard to get. I think G2 Sideswipe is still available.

Looks like Facebook.

I think, if Hasbro is into trilogies, I'd have done the G1 Trilogy... Season 1, Season 2, and Season 3. Then the next trilogy could be the Japanese Trilogy; Headmasters, Masterforce, and Victory (maybe toss a little Zone and Battlestars in with Victory). Then Beast Trilogy (Beast Wars, Transmetals, Beast Machines). Then a G2>RiD>Machine Wars Trilogy. Then a Unicron Trilogy. Then see where the fandom is at after that. There's definitely a part of me that would love to see Hasbro just keep making better and better G1 toys forever, but lets consider what G1 characters still need to be done in War For Cybertron, assuming that they're focused on the cartoon (and unofficially wrapping up Titans Return). Bee, but we know he's inevitable. Jazz and the Dinobots, but they're rumored to be in the Studio Series. Inferno, but I'm sure we'll see a retool of Grapple sooner or later. Same goes for Runabout. The combiner teams, but I doubt we'll see them again so soon after Combiner Wars and Power of the Primes. Actually, a lot of season 2 and 3 characters that War For Cybertron haven't touched, including Perceptor, most of the minibots, and most of the Season 3 cast are covered if you count the Prime Wars stuff (and even then it seems like some of the Season 3 cast will be redone in either WFC or SS '86). Between what we know is coming, what's rumored to be coming, and what's been released in either WFC or Prime Wars I think the biggest gaps are going to be Blaster, his tapes, Tracks, Skids (who was a super minor character in the cartoon), Huffer, Pipes, maybe a new Gears, and Sandstorm. We've even gotten limited releases of Japanese-series stuff like Dai Atlas and Star Convoy. Maybe G1 is pretty close to complete, especially if you're leaving out characters that never appeared in the cartoon. And on the flip side, Beast Wars will be 25 in 2021. Aside from being a major anniversary, that's three years longer than the gap between the start of G1 and the first wave of Classics back in 2006. I do think that G1 is always going to be a bigger cash cow for the franchise, but maybe it is time to let the Beast Wars fans have their day in the sun.

Netflix is confirming the Kingdom thing... I know there are plenty of Beast Wars fans and I'm sure they're all super excited... but it looks like I'm done with CHUG again after Earthrise. Well, unless Hasbro does yet another trilogy when War for Cybertron is done. The shows were great, but if HasTak goes for a Unicron Trilogy... trilogy I'm sure I'd pick up a handful of figures. But I'm just not down for Beast Wars. Nothing against the show (it's actually quite good!), but I don't do robots that turn into organic animals. EDIT: John Warden, the Design Warden for the Transformers lines at Hasbro since 2014, is moving on to their Global Head of Design for the Power Rangers and Ghostbusters brands. I looked at some of the toys he worked on... it's basically the Prime Wars Trilogy, Age of Extinction, and The Last Knight. He's been active with the community; I remember him giving an interview on Pulse about the design for Siege Omega, but I'm not clear how much involvement he's actually had on War For Cybertron.

I'm planning on preordering the Pit. I like repaint for troop building (says the guy with 8 copies of the Siege Seeker mold, four Siege Datsuns, and going on five Refraktors). If I get one I'll keep my order for the regular Alicon, but I might cancel my order for the regular Quintesson judge.

Expected to be announced during the Fan First event tomorrow, Hasbro Pulse will have an exclusive "Pit of Judgement". The set will include a cardboard backdrop, a slight recolor of the Voyager Quintesson, a Quintesson Bailiff that's a recolor an retooled Alicon, a Sharkticon (a repaint of Legends-class Gnaw), a non-transforming Quintesson Prosecutor, and a non-Transforming Kranix. The set will be $69.99. Also, there's an image going around. It's low res, the source is dubious, and I'd take this with a grain of salt. Personally I think it's fake. But if it turns out to be real the third part of the War for Cybertron Trilogy will be Kingdom, and it's going hard after Beast Wars. Like I said, though, I think it's fake.

EXO Squad.

So... it looks kind of interesting. But I'll be honest, I'm super disappointed that this isn't the code name for a Netflix-backed Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future reboot, since nothing seems to have come of Phoenix Rising.

Hasbro's doing another Fan First Friday at 9:30am EDT (and 10:00 for GI Joe). Weird on the street is 10 new reveals. I'm hoping for details on the much-leaked '86 Studio Series.

Just got word late this evening that Unicron is officially off the boat and has left Commerce, California. Unfortunately it's traveling in the Pitney Bowes network, so it'll be at least a week, possibly more, before it reaches Pittsburgh.

Yeah. A few reviews complained that there was too much stuff in the open world and not enough compelling reasons to check everything out. They compared it to Assassin's Creed in the regard... but I honestly love those kinds of games. I've actually played through several Assassin's Creed and Far Cry games twice, so Ghost of Tsushima seems right up my alley. My only real complaint is that I don't play console games much anymore; I think Spider-Man was the last PS4 game I played. I'll probably go out and pick up a copy on Friday, but if it were on PC there'd be no probably about it.

Did you by chance happen to order Alternate Universe Prime, too? Mine's supposed to come Friday, and for awhile I was thinking if you preordered that you might have gotten it before the regular version. All you did is make me sad that Action Toys never released a Jet Robo DX with Hanna-Barbera parts like they did for Bike Robo. I swear, if I ever win the lottery I'm hiring designers and contracting Chinese factories and starting my own 3P company. And after I make an MP-style figure of this Optimus- -I'd make MP-style figures for at least the main six Gobots.

Still waiting on mine. I ordered from Show.Z with the slow boat shipping. A few people who also bought from Show.Z and had theirs ship at the same time have started to report their tracking status updated, so I think the boat arrived and hopefully it won't be too much longer until I have my review up.

My guess is that it's actually a flat panel with a mushroom peg on it that's pinned, and the hands have matching slots. You can see the background through the slots in the last pic I posted. Then you probably swap hands by sliding them off and on the mushroom pegs. That'd mean he should have wrist swivels. Well, I pre-ordered, so it looks like you guys will find out in October...

I told you guys I'd post when I had something to share. The variable geometry wings work. Reports are saying that it comes with four removable missiles, but it's not clear if they mean four separate parts or (as you can see in the picture) two parts with two molded missiles each. At a glance it looks like a pretty good F-14 ,but I'l leave it to David to tell us what's wrong with it. The robot is reported to be 7" tall, so Voyager-sized. Basically the same height as Ectotron. He looks to have a pair of shotgun weapons and 5mm peg hands, but he'll also come with swappable flatter hands to be used with the included volleyball. Because of course he has a volleyball. At this moment, the mold does look to be all-new, although I'm not ruling out the possibility of it being a heavy retool of something like Studio Series Blitzwing until I've had my hands on both. If it is a totally new mold I'm a bit disappointed that it doesn't seem to have ankle pivots. A closeup of the face, and another picture showing a little motorcycle accessory. The product description says that it has a pilot figure on the motorcycle, which is clearly not the case here. I suspect that the F-14 canopy can open, and there's a little pilot figure that can fly the plane or sit on the motorcycle, but time will tell. Estimated release date is October 7th, and preorders are available now at Hasbro Pulse for $49.99. EDIT: looks like @sh9000 beat me too it by a minute.