mikeszekely

Stopped at my local Target once or twice this past week and didn't find diddly. But today my wife wanted to go to a restaurant that's by a different Target so I stopped there after we ate. I didn't say any Earthrise stuff on the shelves, but unlike my own Target where the they're swimming in Siege Thundercrackers, Chromias, and Hounds this Target's shelves were kind of empty. An employee happened to be walking past with one of their handheld scanners, so I stopped her as mentioned that the shelves were a little bare and asked if they had any stock in the back. Unfortunately it was a no on the the Deluxes, but they'd apparently got a case of Voyagers in that day or the day before. After a few minutes of searching I managed to go home with both Starscream and Grapple. Let's start with Starscream. I think ER Starscream is definitely a good-looking figure. He's got enough greebles to be visually interesting but not busy. The colors are mostly cartoon-accurate, from the light gray to the red to the lighter blue. Only his silver face is a little off, but people seem to forget that Starscream's face was a very dark gray in the cartoon. Speaking of heads, unlike ER Prime who reused Siege Prime's head ER Starscream has a new and (IMHO) improved head. His proportions are also improved over Siege's; his pelvis is a little shorter, his hips a little lower, his arms a little shorter, and his torso a little longer. He does have a little more kibble on his ankles, much like the Classics mold, but it reminds me of the G1 toy and I don't actually mind it (although on the flip side if Newage and Magic Square could figure out how to get rid of that kibble on a Legends-class toy why can't Hasbro do it on a Voayger; Magic Square's solution seems particularly doable). Really, my only aesthetic complaint his I'd have liked for more of the orange cockpit to show on his torso. That light gray band over the top of his chest is thicker than I'd prefer, but perhaps it's structurally necessary. Starscream doesn't come with a lot of accessories. Just the usual pair of null rays. The undersides of the null rays are disappointingly hollow, but the sculpt is a noticeably improvement from, well, pretty much any other official Seeker figure. Starscream's articulation is better than the old Classics version, but maybe a step down from what we've been getting in the War for Cybertron trilogy. His head is on a ball joint with a fairly good up/down tilt and a slight sideways tilt in addition to the usual swivel. His shoulders can rotate and extend laterally 90 degrees. A nice thing about this figure versus the old Classics is that his wings have hinges and can fold backward, giving the backs of his null ray a little extra clearance. His biceps swivel. His elbows can bend a little over 90 degrees on a single hinge. Due to his transformation his wrists can bend up, but he doesn't have any wrist swivel. Or, for that matter, a waist swivel, which I believe is a first for the WfC figures. The entire front of his pelvis folds up to give his hips a little extra clearance, but they're still kind of limited. They can go forward or laterally about 60 degrees. Backward is even more limited. His thighs can swivel. His knees are a single hinge but they get over 90 degrees of bend. His toes and heels can bend down, mostly due to transformation, and he's got about 45 degrees of ankle pivot. For that G1 Starscream look you'll most likely want to attach his null rays to the 5mm ports on the outside of his shoulders. Although I'd have preferred to have them on his bicep so they can swivel with his arm he doesn't have any 5mm ports there. He does have some in his fists, on the underside of each forearm, on the side of each leg just below the knee, on the side of each foot where the horizontal stabilizers are folded up against the vertical ones, under each heel, and three on his back (one on each wing and one in the middle of his back, although the jet nose kind of covers that one). With so many aircraft enthusiasts around here jet modes tend to take a lot of flack, but honestly I think ER Starscream's jet mode is fine. It's cartoon-accurate (although I kind of prefer a toy-style blue nose), and about as close to an F-15 as Hasbro can get without paying royalties to... I guess Boeing owns the design now? Yes, he's a little boxy underneath, but the F-15 is sort of a boxy fighter. The only thing he's really missing are some patches of darker gray, but that seemed to be more a case of the animators putting dark spots on the cartoon model where the G1 toy had the black joints that the wings plugged into than a feature of the F-15, and I prefer Starscream without them. ER Voyager-class Starscream reminds me of another fairly recent Voyager-class Starscream: Studio Series Starscream. See, that figure borrowed a lot of engineering from the Deluxe-class Dark of the Moon Starscream with some improvements that went along with the larger size. And, while perhaps not as close, ER Starscream definitely borrows heavily from the 14-year-old Classics Starscream. The transformation is something like two thirds the same, and a lot of what ER Starscream does differently boils down to variations on the same basic idea. For example, his lower legs still collapse over his thighs, but instead of simply compressing down like Classics the front of his legs open and they collapse Combiner Wars-style. And while his arms still fold inside his torso, his forearms collapse around his biceps (make sure the inner elbow joint stays straight and pokes through the space his fist would normally sit) and his wrists bend up on top of his forearms, which has the added benefit of filling in some of the hollow space vacated by the cockpit. The other big difference is his feet, which fold down instead of up and, along with his heels, become the exhaust nozzles. Not super accurate, but it is what it is. Oh, yeah, and the fans in his chest don't fold out to become landing gear like they do on the Classics. In fact, ER Starscream doesn't have any landing gear. He sits on some raised greebles on his knees and collar. Starscream has one 5mm port on top of his jet mode, behind the cockpit, two on either side (one on the each forearm, one on each leg), and five on the underside (one under each wing, one under each horizontal stabilizer, and one under the nose just in front the hinge behind his tucked-in head. Your first instinct might be to plug the null rays into the underside of the wings. Doing so will expose a little of that hollowness I mentioned earlier, plus they stick out a lot farther than they did in the cartoon. Personally, what I like to do is plug them into the ports on his legs instead. None of the hollowness shows, and I kind of like how only a little of the null rays peak out, closer to the fuselage. I have mixed feelings about this figure. One the one hand, I think it looks very good. It's probably the best Starscream figure HasTak has produced (yes, I'm including MP-03 and MP-11) in that department. And if you're going to improve on an older figure you could do worse than the Classics Seeker. On the other hand, I feel like they could have improved it more. The lack of a waist swivel, wrist swivels, and the somewhat limited range in the hips are a definite downer. Even if they had solved those articulation issues the underlying engineering is still fourteen years old. There's nothing new or clever about it anymore. In that sense the spring-loaded calves, the someone unique way of folding the hands in and collapsing the arms, and the way the nose folded around to make the shoulder pylons make Siege Starscream feel more fresh. So, weirdly enough, I find myself hoping for repaints/remolds of ER Starscream for Skywarp, Thundercracker, and the Coneheads, but I'm less inclined to replace Siege Acid Storm, Nova Storm, Ion Storm, Redwing, and Hotlink with this mold, and frankly if by some miracle I can get Sunstorm and Nacelle I'd prefer they also use the Siege mold. I guess I ultimately do recommend ER Starscream, because it is my favorite CHUG Starscream. But it's kind of a tepid recommendation, because previous War for Cybertron figures felt like Hasbro was really starting to step up its game but ER Starscream is a bit "been there, done that."

Is anyone playing The Division 2? Is it worth $3? I see Destiny 2 is free now. How much story/lore are you missing if you never played the first one?

I looked at Hasbro Pulse and Amazon and didn't see any preorders yet, but add these guys to the pile of Earthrise reveals for this year. I wish Sunstreaker had a spoiler and a better weapon than his engine thing, but otherwise I'm not complaining.

Yeah. I mean, the tank looks more cohesive, but at the cost of an even more ridiculous partsforming tank barrel, while the bulk of the figure looks like it's still mostly Siege Megs.

I alluded to this yesterday; I'm not a fan of Siege Megatron's sword, or how it's integral for the alt mode. So what I did was I removed the screw from the black part that holds the gray blades in place, then popped them out entirely. You wind up with just a gun/tank barrel. Note the hole where the blades were attached. It happens to be 5mm, and will come into play later. Megatron's gun barrel sat on his back in the G1 cartoon. But that's not the only version of Megatron with something like a gun barrel there; Don Figueroa put one there when he did The War Within for Dreamwave back in the day, Andrew Griffith gave him one for the body he had after the stealth bomber one in IDW, and Alex Milne gave him one for his Autobot body later on in IDW. So I thought it'd be idea if the gun attached his his back with some of the barrel peaking up over his shoulder. However, the 5mm pegs on Siege Megatron's backpack are up pretty high, and the gun sticks out too far above Megatron's body. So like I said, I decided to make an adapter. While a lot of people told me they use Fusion 360 for designing their stuff I'll be honest and say that I found it awkward and unintuitive to use, considering all I wanted to do was make a rectangle with two cylinders on it. Even when I thought I had something (it was too long), getting Fusion 360 to give me an STL file I could take to my printer was like pulling teeth. Maybe it's not so great for power users, but I eventually gave up on Fusion 360 and went to a web-based tool called Tinkercad. Anyway, what we do with this piece is to plug one of the pegs into Megatron's back, so the strip runs down his backpack and the other peg is near the bottom. You can then fit the gun onto it using the hole left when we removed the sword parts. That looks a lot better, I think. Something I'll mention here, and I don't know if this is related to my printer (an inexpensive XYZprinting da Vinci mini W+), the materials (PLA), or something endemic to other 3D printers, but the pegs should be identical. I started by making it a cylinder with a diameter at 5.2mm, because I'd rather file it down than have it too loose, and I copied-pasted it to make the second peg before sticking the pegs to the rectangle. When I printed it one peg did indeed need some filing, but the other peg was a tad loose. I guess YMMV. Anyway, here's how everything looks in alt mode. The tank barrel is a little less cohesive, because I removed the round bits that held the blades and would have sat in front of Megatron's shoulders at the front of the turret. And while Siege Megatron has plenty of 5mm ports you can plug my little part into there really isn't any place to stick it that looks like it actually belongs (although it might look a little better with some paint). Still, I'm pretty happy with it overall as it addresses one of my biggest gripes with the figure.

Hey, @M'Kyuun, did you happen to see this? It's coming from a company called Matrix Workshop, which I believe makes 3D-printed stuff. I was hoping for a more professional upgrade, like Dr. Wu or DNA, that would have covered up a bit more, but it's a start. I'm not sure if Matrix Workshop's stuff is available elsewhere, but their stuff along with a lot of other 3D-printed/garage kit-style upgrades and accessories are available at a place called TF Safari. I decided to check them out, so I have a pair of Matrix Workshop ion rifles coming for Siege and ER Prime, and kits from a company called Ratchet Studio to fill all the gaps on Siege Ratchet and Ironhide. I'll let you know how it goes. Speaking of upgrades, it always bugged me how the pegs on Siege Ultra Magnus' shoulder missiles is set so far below the bulk of the missile. Instead of sitting on his shoulder, like it should, it looks like it's floating next to the white pylons on top of his shoulders. Well, if you've noticed the inside edge of the missiles have a squarish hollow space. If you have a 3D printer there's a file on Thingiverse that you can print that stuffs into that square and has a peg sticking out of it. The fit's pretty snug, and it lowers the missile down to something that looks a lot more reasonable. You can see the difference- I have the missile on Magnus' right shoulder plugged in with the original peg, and the one on his left plugged in with the 3D-printed peg part. I can't keep relying on what other people are doing, though. I bought a 3D printer, even if it is just very entry-level one. I need to learn how to design stuff to print by myself. First thing I want to try is a to make a part that's basically a thin, flat rectangle with a 5mm peg on opposite sides at opposite ends. I never liked the sword, or how it's necessary for the alt mode. The plan is to remove the sword parts from the middle part that becomes the tank turret, then use the part I'm going to create to set it lower on Megatron's back than it can currently sit. Have it peak over like the gun barrel on Megatron's Sunbow model.

The elbows (and a couple other joints) are a dark gray. It's the same plastic you see on the bottom of the trailer. Yes, the wheels on his legs and trailer are black plastic with silver paint on the rims. They're the only parts molded in black. No. The G1 trailer has large peg hole, and the back of Prime's legs made a peg (larger than 5mm) that tucked up into it. Due to sharing some leg parts it'll fit on Siege Prime, though. And, although it looks comically small, it'll work on Studio Series Bumblebee Prime (I didn't try it on the other SS Primes, but the post on SS DotM Prime's trailer is thicker than ER's, so even if there's no height or clearance issues it'd be a loose fit).

Did you mean gray? Because almost nothing on ER Prime is black. Even the ion rifle is gray plastic painted with a metallic black/gunmetal. (PS~ The parts of the trailer with the the wheels are held on via a pair of screws each, and the tires are the kind that have those push-in posts. If you can find a blue paint that matches Prime's blue close enough it'd be a simple matter of removing them, popping the tires off, and painting them blue.) Totally agree. I might paint it myself (and repaint the ones they did paint with a darker yellow), but I'm kind of hoping Toyhax does a set with for him that'll cover it, plus replace the dull paint on the trailer with stickers like the G1 toy's. So about that. You can see what look like hinges an pins in it, and until I had him in hand I thought it must transform somehow. It doesn't. Upon close inspection, the blue parts of ER Prime's lower legs are the same parts as Siege Prime's (the head, too, but I'm pretty sure everything from the knees to the neck is new). Instead of spinning at the knees during transformation like Siege Prime, ER Prime spins at the waist. So the tires don't flip, and the back of the leg doesn't fold out with panels to fill in the sides. All that gray stuff is basically stuff to fill in the leg where they didn't use Siege Prime's parts, and there's no reason it couldn't have been blue. I'm not sure how it's connected, either. I can't see any screws, just a pin through the ankle and a pin running vertically through part of his calf. Either way, it doesn't seem like it'd be easy to paint.

I looked into it, and Jon Bailey (the HISHE voice) isn't Prime in this (although he did Prime in the first part of Machinima's Prime Wars series before Peter Cullen took over). The guy doing Prime in this is Jay Foshee, who does Prime's voice in Cyberverse.

It sounds like the guy who does Prime's voice for HISHE to me.

Or a Hasbro cost-cutting move. Could go either way at this point.

While the official thread is bumping with all the Toy Fair reveals, I'm going to sneak in another "I bought it on clearance" Planet-X review. This time we're looking at Mors, their version of War for Cybertron/Fall of Cybertron Starscream. Speaking of War for Cybertron, Mors is a bit bigger than Siege Starscream, and maybe even a hair taller than Siege Megatron or Optimus, so even though most people would say that Planet-X's Fall of Cybertron figures are CHUG-scaled they're still probably a little big for use with your Siege/Earthrise stuff. However, he's roughly a head shorter than Pluto so you're fine keeping him with other Planet-X figures. Aesthetically he's pretty accurate to the game's design. He's missing some blue on the sides of his legs, some of the gray and red on his chest should be flipped, and the backs of his hands should be the same light gray as his lower legs/shoulder pads, but I had to Google game images and play "spot the difference" to find those things to nitpick over, and it's still a step up from the old Hasbro Deluxe version of the character. It's not a huge deal to me, but it's worth pointing out that most of what you see is seems to be plastic. All that red is plastic, and the shinier blue on his arms, hands, head, and toes all seems to be plastic. It's a shiny plastic that almost looks like metallic paint, but still plastic. Mors comes with a handful of accessories. You've got pair of guns that I believe are based on the Nucleon Charge Rifle from Fall of Cybertron (the sniper rifle). You've got a game-accurate mace with a translucent purple and very spiky core. And you've got a crown that does seem to be painted gold with a red deco on the crest, very reminiscent of the one from the '86 movie (and a secret from the game). Mors' head is on a ball joint for a little up/down/sideways tilt and swivel. His shoulders can rotate and extend to the side 90 degrees. His biceps can swivel, and his elbows are double-jointed and can curl all the way up. His wrists swivel, and they're hinged for transformation with enough of the hinge still clear that he's got some up/down tilt. His fingers are molded as one piece pinned at the base so his hands can open but he can't point. His waist can swivel; it can't do so 360 degrees due to the alt-mode nose getting caught on his waist, but he can turn almost 90 degrees to either side. His hips can bend forward and backward over 90 degrees, but he can't quite do the full splits. His thighs swivel around the joint, and his knee is a single hinge that gets over 90 degrees of bend. His feet are on ball joints, so they can tilt up and down a little, swivel, and his ankle can pivot although only about 30 degrees. Plus, if you need it, his heel can fold up, and his front toe can tilt up or down. As for the accessories, in the game their hands turned into their weapons, but concept art still had the cannon on Megatron's arm, so that's how Planet-X did it. But I couldn't find any artwork of Starscream using his guns in any way but as his hands, which you just can't do with Mors. So, you can plug them into the 5mm peg holes on the backs of his forearms. Or you can plug it into his fists like he's holding an actual rifle. At least the other accessories are pretty straight forward. You can either take the top of the mace off and slide it into his hand, although that will only let him hold the top half of the handle, or you can just open his and and push the handle in. As for the crown it fits fairly snugly onto his head. Not so snug that it's hard to get on and off or you're going to worry about scratches, but snugly enough that you can turn him upside down and even give him a little shake without it falling off. I have to give Planet-X a lot of cred, because they're clearly paying attention to little details. The flaps at the top of Mors chest can bend forward or back a bit, and the edges of his wings slide in and out, allowing you to replicate the idle movement of the in-game characters. And, if you recall from staring at him in the game while playing as him or from concept artwork, even Mors' back is game-accurate. Which brings us to his alt mode, which is, well, a little less accurate. The in-game version is wider, especially at the back, has more white showing, and a second set of vents where Mors' arms are peaking out. In the interest of fairness, though, Mors is a toy that actually transforms, not just some polygons that magically flip into a different model. I think Planet-X did a pretty good job with what they had to work with, and they did get a lot of details right like the stumpy, forward-swept wings, the the open tail, one set of blue vents, and even the lines in the off-white part of his back. The engineering here is good, too, once you figure out how everything is supposed to move. He doesn't have any of the clearance issues that Vulcan or Jupiter had, and comes together better than Pluto. As with the robot mode, you have some moving parts on the fuselage and wings. There's a landing skid under the nose, but you really need to decide if you're going to display him with it during the transformation because you'll have to undo a bit of it if you change your mind. There's no other landing gear; in the rear you fold his toes up 90 degrees and he rests on them. The canopy can be tough to get at, but it does open revealing a little painted seat inside. The rifles can peg into peg holes on the underside of his wings. It almost looks like you could use the peg holes on his arms, but there's not quite enough clearance in jet mode. The rear of jet, under his feet, has some translucent red plastic for boosters. All-in-all I think it's close enough to the game's model, although if you look at the underside his head's not totally hidden. It's kind of funny, I really wanted the Hasbro figure when it came out, but that was in those days when Hasbro's distribution was so poor that even shopping between Target, Walmart, K-Mart, and Toys R Us entire waves of figures just never showed up, and I never got found it. Fast forward to today and I don't really need a Fall of Cybertron Starscream in my life. But I have one, because it's a well done figure that's going for just $35 or so at BBTS right now, and if you've got room in your collection for Mors he's definitely worth picking up at that price.

It's no Prime or Animated, but Cyberverse is honestly pretty good. Much better than RiD.

It's being done by Rooster Teeth (Red vs Blue, RWBY), so I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

That's not enough to justify a $10 markup. ... It must be two spoilers. One for the cab, and another, bigger one for his trailer.

Oh, looks like ER Arcee's hoverboard can be attached to her back. Anyway... You guys might have heard that Netflix is going to have a show made by Rooster Teeth based on the War for Cybertron trilogy. And now Walmart's got some preorders up for some figures based on the Netflix series. They may or many not be Walmart exclusives, and it sounds like they ship in April. Don't get too excited- there doesn't seem to be any new molds, they're all just repaints of Siege figures. We're looking at Chromia, Hound, and Sideswipe, just even dirtier. We're looking at Megatron in a box set with some Battlemasters. Cool enough, I guess, if you missed those figures. There are three figures with more extensive redecos than just more dirt, though. Scrapface, a variant of Refractor with Smokescreen's colors. Kinda neat. I might pick him up if I see him at my local Walmart. Decepticon Mirage. Mirage wasn't my favorite Siege mold, but at the risk of sounding like Thew something about that purple and black color scheme is just working for me. Preordered, I must have it. Speaking of purple and black, here's Hotlink., aka "the purple one." Honestly, I think there's too much black on him, and he's looking a bit too Skywarpy for me. But what they heck, I might as well own every variant of this mold. So, yeah, preordered. While we're at it, can I get Bitstream and Sunstorm, please? This might be the most curious piece of all. It's the Ultra Magnus Spoiler pack. It runs $60. We don't know what's in there, aside from some kind of Ultra Magnus. I mean, safe bet is a repaint of Leader Magnus, but what it is or what he's packed with that justifies the extra $10 and why his deco or accessories constitute a spoiler for the show I couldn't say. I'm really curious to know what's inside, but at the same time I just installed the DNA kit on the Magnus I already have, and I'm not looking forward to buying another one, so...

I know Cyberverse is more of the kids line, but I also know plenty of collectors (myself included) started grabbing them once they started releasing actual Deluxes instead of Warrior-class or what have you. If you want to know what you still need to complete that build-a-figure, here you go: Hot Rod Grimlock Arcee Thunderhowl I haven't seen season two or three yet, so while I think Grimlock is a fine addition and I'm not exactly mad at Hot Rod or Arcee, I do wish that they'd done Windblade instead of one of them (since she and Bee are the basically the only Autobots outside of flashbacks for most of the first season). As for Thunderhowl, maybe he's a bigger character in episodes I haven't watched? But for now I'm I'm scratching my head wondering who the heck this guy is and while the entire wave is Autobots when we really need more 'Cons. Where's Starscream, or Slipstream, or Soundwave?

Preorders are up on Amazon, now, too. I ordered the Micromaster tapes, Arcee, Runamuck, Smokescreen, Fasttrack, Snapdragon, the Quintesson, Megatron, Skylynx, and Scorponok from Earthrise and Scavenger, Overload, Cliffumper, and Sentinel Prime from Studio Series. I'll probably still get Allicon and Doubledealer, but I'm not committed yet. As for Studio Series, the others (possibly including Skipjack) are more of a "if I see them while shopping at Target" thing, but I can definitely do without.

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Siege and I'm really into what's coming in Earthrise, but the War for Cybertron isn't the only thing going on. We have some Studio Series reveals, too. Starting with Revenge of the Fallen we've got Deluxe-class Soundwave. In case you thought a weird satellite is better than a Mercedes. Voyager-class Scrapper, who I think looks pretty cool. And to finish out Devastator we have Leader-class Overload. Who, naturally, is most of Devastator's body and won't be out until October. I'm not a fan of the chunk of Devastator's neck that's just sitting on Overload's bed, but if I'm being fair most of the Studio Series Constructicons have been kind of crappy figures on their own that we're just buying to make Devastator. Also, not pictured, is Voyager-class Skipjack. But he's literally just Rampage but yellow instead of red. He seems to exist solely because the robot that appeared in the movie was red, but Devastator's foot in the movie was yellow. Moving on to Dark of the Moon we have Voyager-class Sentinel Prime, who's looking way better than previous toys. And Deluxe-class Topspin, who... meh. Then we finish our journey with the Bumblebee movie. We've got a Deluxe-class Cliffjumper who looks pretty freaking great (even if I suspect will get repainted as yet another SS Bumblebee). Then last but not least we've got Voyager-class Blitzwing. And... yeah. I mean, the robot looks great. But c'mon, Hasbro, if you can get licenses for movie-accurate cars you should be able to do it for movie-accurate planes, because that is NOT an F-4. It actually looks like that crappy Nitro-series toy.

We saw some of this yesterday, but yeah. Deluxe-class Runamuck. No complaints from me, save that I want Runabout, too. Deluxe-class Allicon. Not gonna lie, he's looking a little rough, especially with the arms hanging on arms thing. It really looks like the alt mode head is a backpack, and the transformation is nothing more than putting it into place and and rotating the torso 180 degrees. Voyager-class Snapdragon. Better than Apeface. Voyager-class Quintesson. The "robot" mode is spot on. I'm not exactly loving the alt mode, but considering that they didn't have alt modes in the cartoon it's fine. Leader-class Doubledealer. It could use some darker blue on the arms and legs, and maybe the head's a bit too small, but I think it's mostly on point. The problem is, despite actually having a G1 Doubledealer as a kid, I just don't care enough about the character to be like, "I'm definitely spending $50 on this!" These guys, plus Arcee, Scorponok, Megatron, Skylynx, Fasttrack, and Airwave Modulator are all up for preorder on Hasbro Pulse (nothing on Amazon yet). Plus, if you hurry you can snag a preorder for Generations Selects Soundwave Spy Patrol, which looks like the only way you're getting a proper purple Rumble.

The whole Windblade thing is quickly escalated to the point where I'm just steering clear of the whole thing. Whatever will be, will be; I'm not getting involved. I mean, yeah, ER Arcee definitely looks like she's wearing most of her alt mode on her back. But to be frank, the same could be said for Generations Thrilling 30 Arcee. The big difference is that a large chunk of the rear comes off of ER Arcee but folded in half and hung of T30's back. Ok, sure, I'll grant you that part of T30's chest did form the nose of the car, and that doesn't seem to be the case on ER Arcee. But ER Arcee looks like she's got a waist swivel and won't have those birthing hips, so I'll call it a fair trade. I gotta disagree here. I mean, on an MP figure that costs hundreds of dollars then yes, I agree, the engineering should be a lot better than pulling a shell of faux parts out of a giant backpack and wrapping it around a super Sunbow action figure. The newer Takara MPs are even more disappointing in light of some of the clever engineering some other companies are doing, especially UT's Bayverse stuff. But on a $20 Deluxe saddled with the budget restrictions Hasbro imposes to hit that specific price point I'm going to cut the engineering a lot more slack. As long as it's not a pain to transform I'm going to judge it more on articulation in robot mode and how it looks in both modes. With the exception of her face (which might just need some red on her lips), ER Arcee looks like an upgrade over T30 (or in my case, Takara Legends Arcee) to me.

I got an oil change yesterday, and stopped by the Target by the dealer. Nada. Today I ran out of bread so I swung by my local Target after dropping my kid off at school. They had no Deluxes, and while they were well-stocked on Voyagers they were pretty much all Siege Thundercrackers. They did have Astrotrain with the Earthrise packaging, and a few Earthrise Micromasters. Oh, and this guy: Earthrise Leader-class Optimus Prime. When this Prime was first revealed I thought, based on his overall aesthetics, he might be a retool of Siege Prime (left). Then I noticed the wheels on his back and the way the fuel tanks tuck into his thighs, and I thought maybe it was a retool of Studio Series Bumblebee Prime (right). But I'm happy to report that he's pretty much an entirely new mold. One Hasbro clearly put a lot of love into; his hands tuck away, but instead of hollow forearms he's got flaps like an MP or 3P figure. While he's got the usual light-gray plastic on his thighs and pelvis he's sporting silver paint on his ribs, ab-grill, around the windows and windshield wipers, on his smokestacks, on his face and headcrest, on the vent on his chest, on the vents on his chest and shins, and on his toes. I'm not sure if it's just the plastic (although the color is different compared to his legs), but his hands and head might be painted or have some kind of finish as they have a metallic sheen. The windows are molded in red plastic, but silver paint was applied to the inside before translucent blue "glass" was attached. The proportions are good, and he's lacking the splatter that was so prevalent in Siege. He's not totally perfect. He's got wheels on his back, and gray plastic for his biceps and elbow joints, plus a lot of the inside and backs of his lower legs (I originally thought that they must transform somehow, like the SS version, but nope, it's just gray for no reason). The wheels are visible on the outsides of his legs, and he's missing the little squares of fuel tanks. Most noticeable to me is that they painted the yellow bits on his hips, but didn't paint the yellow on his crotch. Still, we're talking about a mainline Hasbro figure, not a Takara MP or some 3P figure, and on that note this blows pretty much every G1-ish mainline Prime out of the water, including the Siege Voyager and the Power of the Primes Leader-class. Just in case you needed a little extra comparison, here he is with Siege Leader-class DotM Prime and the original G1 toy. Of course, you probably noticed that Prime himself is more or less exactly the same size as the previous Siege Voyager, but I did say this is a Leader. What does that extra money get you, besides paint? Why, you get Prime's ion rifle, of course. It seems a tad chunky, and I'm not a huge fan of the unpainted gray pegs, but on the other hand it's cast in that gray plastic and the black color is paint. You get the Matrix. The Matrix seems to be cast from a solid piece of translucent blue plastic, so all that copper and silver color you see there is more paint. Finally, you get a trailer. The trailer is made from two different gray plastics, with silver paint on the rims, blue paint for the stripes, and a red tampoed Autobot insignia. Some white in the stripe would have been nice, but it is what it is. The trailer has a trio of 5mm peg holes on the bottom, plus some folding landing gear for standing up on its own. Prime's head is on a ball joint that can look up and down a fair amount, plus a little bit sideways in addition to swiveling. His shoulders can rotate and extend 90 degrees. Due to his transformation, he's also got some backwards butterfly motion. His biceps swivel, and his elbows can bend 90 degrees. His wrists can swivel, and his fingers pinned at the base and can open like an MP carbot's, which is rare for a mainline figure this size. His waist swivels, although it gets caught up on the wheels on his back and can only turn about 45 degrees in either direction unless you start to unfold them. His hips can bend 90 degrees forward but only about 30 degrees backward (again, due to the wheels on his back). They can also extend 90 degrees laterally. His thighs can swivel. His knees are a single joint, but they can bend 140-150 degrees. His feet don't bend, but you can bend his toes or his heels downward if you like. And his ankles can pivot about 60 degrees. Although his hands open, they're still basically molded into 5mm pegs, and that's how he holds his gun (or other Siege accessories). In addition to his hands, Prime has 5mm peg holes on the sides of either shoulder, out the outside of each forearm, in the middle of his back, on the outside of each leg between his wheels, and two on the underside of each foot. While they can be used for a variety of accessories, as previously mentioned his rifle folds out and you can use the peg on the side to store the rifle on his back. The Matrix stores inside Prime's chest, as you'd expect. You'll note again the copious molded detail and silver paint inside. Since Prime's hands can open he can kind of hold the Matrix, but without forward butterfly joints he can't bring his arms forward enough to grab it with both hands at once. We can't forget about the trailer. It opens, similar to the G1 toy. Inside you'll find four more 5mm ports on either side, a 5mm peg on the trailer floor, and another 5mm peg on the ramp (a ramp which has those notches and can be attached to Siege Omega Supreme, and presumably Scorponok and some of the other upcoming Earthrise figures (but NOT the older Titans Return/Power of the Primes bases). You'll also find the repair drone, which has a decent enough sculpt but I can't help but be disappointed by the the fact that the whole thing is done in two kinds of gray plastic. With all the paint they used on Prime himself I'd have liked for the drone to be blue with a silver cockpit. Oh, and the drone doesn't have it's antenna, nor does it have firing missiles. But it does have a pair of 5mm ports on the front you can use for Siege accessories, including blast effect parts. The drone's arms are ball-jointed at the shoulders, nothing at the elbows. It can swivel where the bottom of the drone is connected to the armature holding it up, and that armature has three hinges. Alas, the trailer does not come with Roller. Perhaps Hasbro is planning a transformable Micromaster Roller? I'd be down for that. But that's still not all! The drone comes off the trailer where the base of the armature connects to it via a pair of 5mm ports. The armature itself has a 5mm peg on the front of the bottom segment, so it can attach to Prime on one of his 5mm ports (the instructions suggest the same one you use for storing his rifle. Plus, you can pull a chunk out of the trailer's ramp, the one with the 5mm peg, allowing it too to mount on Prime. Perhaps as a shield? The engineering in Prime's transformation borrows from many Primes that came before it, in addition to offering some new tricks, and yet it remains surprisingly uncomplicated. Some of the cab's sides and and front are flaps, including grill, headlights, side windows, just above his front fenders, but instead of tucking into a big backpack they actually fold in and curl up into his chest. Size-wise, it's every so slightly smaller than Siege Prime or Bumblebee Prime. Of course, Prime can pull his trailer, like Studio Series DotM Prime or the G1 toy, but this is where I think my single biggest complaint about this figure comes into play: the trailer is tiny. While the trailer is of a similar width and even slightly taller than SS DotM's trailer, it's narrower and significantly shorter in terms of both height and length than the G1 trailer, even though Earthrise Prime's cab is similar in size to the G1 cab. I'm not sure how I feel about the translucent blue on the headlights, the trailer could use some paint on the lights, and the door of the trailer is broken up with tech details. It's still a very nice cab, though. Again we have silver paint on the grill, bumper, around the headlights, on the cab stripe, a little on the front fenders, on the rear rims, and on the flip out fuel tanks. Something to note about those fuel tanks is that they unfold from his thighs like SS Bumblebee Prime's, but unlike that figure Earthrise Prime's lower legs don't really transform, so nothing fills the gap they leave. And since they don't lock into place, they're prone to getting pushed back in when you handle the figure. Oh, and the fact that the front rims don't have silver paint is a little jarring (the rear wheels seem to be black plastic with silver, while the front wheels were cast in gray plastic and the black is paint). The cab itself has a 5mm peg hole on either side and three on the back. The hitch area has one on either side between the rear wheels, one in the middle between Prime's legs, and one on the edge of the passenger side. You can use them to store the rifle, or even tow the repair drone. If you want Prime to pull his trailer it attaches to one of the peg holes, but again it had three holes on the bottom, and the instructions even show his rifle folded up and stuffed onto the bottom of the trailer like so. Of course you can open the trailer and store the rifle inside, too. Something I've kind of said more than once during this review is that this is not a perfect G1 Optimus Prime figure, but that this is also not a $150-$400 MP figure. Sure, I was blown away by MP-10 when it came out, thinking that it was the kind of figure I wish the G1 toy was when I was a kid, but that was tempered by the fact that I'd bought an adult collectible. So while there's a few details that are off, and it doesn't come with Roller, I'm still blown away by Earthrise Prime because this is the $50 mainline Optimus Prime I'd have loved to have had as a kid. Needless to say, I can't recommend this figure enough. While the quality of Hasbro's mainline figures have improved since the War for Cybertron Trilogy launched and I've been pretty happy with most of them, Earthrise Prime feels like a truly special figure that no Transformers fan should miss out on. I can only hope that new Voyager-class Megatron is even half this good.

I think Commander is right. Ultimate might be my bad. Anyway, couple more reveals, courtesy of Hasbro by way of TFormers.com (hence their obnoxious watermark). Voyager-class Megatron Deluxe-class Smokescreen Deluxe-class Airwave Modulator And then, although the images are a tad tiny, Walmart gave us our first look at Deluxe-class Allicon, Voyager-class Quintesson, Deluxe-class Runamuck, Voyager-class Snapdragon, and Leader-class Doubledealer. I'm not really feeling Airwave Modulator or Doubledealer, but I'm in for the rest. I can't help but feel like Hasbro's taking advantage of us, though, what with the releasing new and better versions of toys we literally just bought (Prime, Smokescreen, Starscream, and Megatron, plus who knows if they'll do more Datsuns and Seekers).

In case anyone's reading this thread and wondering about what Linux is good for, I'll say this: while there are people out there that prefer Linux for a variety of reasons, no, I don't expect the average Windows user would be comfortable ditching Windows for Linux. And given how tribal they can be, I expect Mac users to be even less inclined to go Linux (even though MacOS is more similar to Linux than Windows is, as MacOS and Linux are both based on UNIX). What I personally like to use Linux for is older computers. While some of my family and friends might get along fine with a computer they bought over five years ago Windows always seems painfully slow to me after too many services packs or "Feature Updates". Many Linux distros run lighter than Windows (some are super lightweight and can even be installed on old Windows XP machines), and can breathe new life into an older computer that you might not use as your main computer, but that you might like to have around as a secondary machine. Now while there are a ton of versions of Linux, and Linux can do all sorts of things (especially when you learn the ins and outs of Terminal), if you're going to replace Windows on an older computer you probably want something that's easy to use with minimal fuss, even if you are normally into tech. And that's why I've focused on the distros I did. Using two laptops I actually installed five different distros tonight and briefly messed around with them. So, my opinions aren't meant to be deep reviews or anything, but more like quick opinions based on how the distro looks and feels, how easy it was to install the Chrome browser, the options in Settings, the file manager, and the package manager and/or app store. (Not long ago I'd have graded on how easy it was to install, but they're all pretty easy these days.) Elementary OS: This distro has a reputation for being one of the prettier ones, and it's hard to argue with that. If you've used a Mac before you might feel at home here, with a dock-like panel at the bottom for your apps and a bar along the top with menus and stuff you might find in the corner of a Windows task bar. I installed this first, based just on what I'd read, because I expected to like it the best. Unfortunately I'd say it was the biggest pain, as configuring it the way I expected it to behave required a lot of time in the Terminal. Heck, even installing Chrome couldn't be done without getting into the Terminal and typing commands (although I did get it done). Manjaro: Ok, so it's sometimes not enough to pick which version of Linux you want to use. Desktop versions of Linux has what's called a desktop environment, and many give you different options. Years ago I'd used Kubuntu, a version of Ubuntu built around the KDE environment, so when choosing which version of Manjaro to download I grabbed KDE Plasma. Honestly, I didn't play with this one too much and I'm not giving it a fair shake, but I did this one last. KDE Plasma is very busy-looking compared to the others, and I just didn't want to be bothered with it anymore. Solus OS: This one kind of has the opposite of Manjaro's problem, in that it's pretty spartan. However, it's pretty straightforward with a custom desktop environment called Budgie that works a bit like Windows. I didn't have to do much to get it up and running the way I wanted it. It's got Firefox for the default browser, and I was able to find stuff I normally use in its package manager. There's even a "third-party" section with stuff like Chrome. It's a good choice for Linux novices, I think. Zorin OS: This one's a bit of an odd duck. For one, I think the default theme is the worst of the distros I tried tonight. For two, to get the most out of it you need the "ultimate" version, and unlike most other popular versions of Linux Zorin Ultimate runs $39. What you get, though, is pretty versatile. For one, it's actually based on Ubuntu. This is a big deal because, while not as popular as it once was, Ubuntu was arguably the gold standard for desktop Linux for a long time, and a lot of software can easily be found already packaged to run on Ubuntu and it's relatives. In fact, while Chrome wasn't showing up in Zorin's package manager I was easily able to download the Ubuntu version from Chrome's website and install it with a click. For three, even though I think the default desktop is technically GNOME it's been heavily customized. Out of the box it looks and behaves a lot like Solus' Budgie desktop, and Windows users will feel right at home. But if you look under the Appearances tab in Settings you'll find that you can arrange it a couple of different ways, including something more touch friendly, something that looks and feels like MacOS, and something that looks like Ubuntu's Unity desktop. I'm running it on an old Dell (formerly a Windows 7 laptop), and I'll leave it there since I'm using that one mainly for my daughter to play educational games with. If you like tinkering to get things just right this is a pretty good OS, but I don't think it's really worth spending $39 over when you'll get a similar experience from Solus. Deepin: I'm honestly surprised this one isn't more popular. Of all the distros I've looked at this one has the most polished feel to it, less like open source software developed by a a team of passionate coders and more like a commercial product. Indeed, I understand Huawei is selling Matebooks in China with Deepin instead of Windows. It's custom Deepin desktop environment is very easy to use. On first launch it'll ask you to choose if you want "fashion mode," which looks like MacOS, or "efficient mode," which looks like Windows. What's nice is you can right click on the taskbar/dock to switch back and forth between them on the fly, so you're not locked into your pick. Another thing they do differently is that instead of opening in an app window clicking on the settings will open a panel on the side, sort of similar to Windows 10's notification panel. Installing Chrome was super easy- it's installed by default! And the real highlight here is the Deepin App Store. Unlike the package managers found in some other versions of Linux, which just show everything in hosted in its linked repositories as categorized lists, Deepin's App Store looks like, well, an app store. There's categories, rankings, reviews, and all the sort of stuff you'd expect from a modern app store. The selection is good- I can find VLC, LibreOffice, console emulators, Gimp, even Steam in the store. I'm not sure if there's paid software in the store or not, since everything I'd clicked on was free. If you're a tinkerer you might find that Deepin isn't as customizable as many other distros, but I think the trade off is that it doesn't need as much customization. This is a pretty great distro, the one I'll be using on my wife's old computer at my desk next to my Windows machine, and one I'd definitely recommend if you're just starting out with Linux. The only real issue I can see so far is that it's a little more resource-heavy than some of the other distros (but I'm not having any issues on my wife's old computer, an Acer with a Pentium and 6GB of RAM that came out right around the time Windows 8 did and was positively crippled running Windows 10). The one distro that I didn't test tonight that probably deserves to be mentioned is Linux Mint. Like Zorin it's based on Ubuntu, but the philosophy behind Mint seems to be "what if we made Ubuntu even easier to use" (which says something, because the point of Ubuntu and the reason it took off like it did in the first place was because it was designed to be "Linux for Humans"). While it's been overtaken recently it spent quite some time as the most popular Linux distro in the world, and while I haven't used the most current version I've used Linux Mint off and on for a few years now. It's another great choice for a Linux novice, as it's easy to install and runs well out of the box, but it's also very flexible so as you get more comfortable with it you can start tweaking things until it's exactly how you want it. I'd probably still be using it, and I might go back to it on the old Dell, but as I said earlier even with the Cinnamon desktop it's starting to look a little dated compared to more current versions of Windows or MacOS.