mikeszekely

Well... I ultimately decided not to get NewAge's Megatron. They tend to run a bit much for their size, and while their engineering and materials do seem top notch it's hard to justify when you already have a perfectly good Legends-scale Megatron. That said, I did the next best thing, and picked up a copy of Jinbao's Destroy Emperor. If you're familiar with Jinbao, chances are that you know them from either their up-sized copy of MMC's Feral Rex or their up-sized copy of Generation Toy's Gravity Builder. And since I started by talking about NewAge's Agamemnon, you can probably guess that this is an up-sized copy of of that. As such, any discussions of engineering or aesthetics should apply to Agamemnon as well, but build quality, joint tolerances, accessories, and paint/deco might be different. With that in mind, Destroy Emperor is a little less than a head taller than Doomsday, and I believe that Agamemnon and Doomsday are roughly the same size, so there's your upscaling. In a vacuum, I think Destroy Emperor looks fine (from this angle), and has most of the details you'd expect from a good G1 Megatron. The problems don't really start until you have him side-by-side with Doomsday. Then you start to notice that his lower legs are a bit thin, his midsection is a bit too tall, and his chest is a bit narrow. There's very visible hinges in his waist, a large oval in his crotch, and a bit more kibbly-flaps on his arms and shoulders. If I'm being nitpicky, I'd also point out that the gun barrel on his back should be turned so the front sight should be facing forward, not to his right. However, you can actually pull the muzzle off, turn it 90 degrees, then put it back on, though you'll have to do it again in alt mode or it'll look like the barrel is on sideways. The back and sides don't do Destroy Emperor/Agamemnon any favors, either. His back is just a mess. Sure, Doomsday's got a trigger guard folded into the small of his back and a split in his butt with a little trigger tail, but Destroy Emperor is maybe half as thick and he should be with nothing but a mass of hinges with a trigger and guard poking through the middle. What's more, I don't know that these pictures really show it clearly, but his feet aren't flat, and I've had issues with him wanting to lean to his right. To be totally fair, MP-36's back is kind of a mess, too. getting a Sunbow-style Megatron to turn into anything resembling a decently-proportioned Walther is clearly a challenge, and I'd be inclined to forgive Destroy Emperor's aesthetic issues, especially at this scale, except that Doomsday is right there next to him and looking, in my opinion, miles better. At least Destroy Emperor comes with a lot of accessories. You of course get his fusion cannon, stock, and silencer. You get the Key to Vector Sigma, an Energon mace, and an orange plug for his gun barrel. You get an alternate face, a gray bit with a small straight translucent purple effect part, a trio of of longer effect parts, and a single chunky effect part. There's two bits of sprues with some alternate left and right pointing hands and left and right open hands. He comes with the pistol Megatron uses to murder Prime in the '86 movie. Now, all of that comes with the actual Agamemnon, but Jinbao went a bit further and also included a second alternate face, a weird little gray thing, his mind control helmet, and the parts to build a display stand. Destroy Emperor's head is on a ball joint. He can look up a bit and tilt his head sideways a little, but he doesn't really have the chin clearance to look down. His shoulders swivel, no problem, and they can move a little under 90 degrees laterally. Due to how he transforms, there's a little bit of a butterfly there as well. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. His wrists swivel, as does his waist, but there's no ab crunch. His hips are a little weird.* They connect to his pelvis via ball joints, but those joints are only for transformation and for moving 90 degrees laterally. Below the ball joint is a thigh swivel, then a dedicated hinge that's lower than his pelvis armor that allows him to kick his legs over 90 degrees forward, but only a miniscule amount backward. His knees are hinged and bend about 120 degrees. His feet lack an up/down tilt, but his ankles pivot about 90 degrees. For those keeping score at home, that winds up being not hugely different in most areas from Doomsday, except that Doomsday has an ab crunch. *It's my understanding that this is exactly how the first run of Agamemnon worked, but subsequent runs have a different hip design. The fusion cannon has a weird h-shaped hole under it, and a massive tab folds out from Doomsday's left arm for it to attach to. My first thought is that the chunky effect part fits into the cannon, which it does, except that it doesn't look great. It looks less like a blast of energy and more like a crystal... in fact, if it were green instead of purple I'd say it's the Crystal of Power from "Fire In the Mountain" (aka the episode where the Autobots dig up and undo Skyfire's heroic death in "Fire in the Sky" because they need a ride to South America). The stand is fairly simple. There's no ratchets or anything, once the arm and tip are put into place they don't move, and you have to pull them apart to reposition them. The tip plugs into a hole in Destroy Emperor's butt. A butthole, if you will. The stock and silencer become a gun emplacement, like the G1 toy/Doomsday/MP-36. The orange barrel tip has a little peg that fits into the muzzle. It's easy enough to remove. The mind control helmet plonks right on top of his head. Most of his other accessories like the gun, the gray piece with the little effect part, his mace, and the Key to Vector Sigma have small pegs that fit into his default fists. The fists themselves use similar pegs to plug into his wrist, so changing hands is as easy as yanking the default hands off and plugging a different one it. You can plug the mace directly into his wrist as well, though the fit is very loose on my copy of Destroy Emperor. If you're thinking that the little effect part makes for a pitiful beam saber, you can pull the effect part off and use one of the longer, more jagged ones. However, I'm not sure that it's meant to be a beam saber at all. It's more like an adapter plug that lets you attach those effect parts to the end of his fusion cannon. I thought maybe the small effect part might make for a good beam from the pistol, but the pistol has a front sight on it and there's no cutout to accommodate it. Here's all three faces lined up. The stoic face and the smiling face were the ones that Agamemnon originally came with. The third face is an angry face. I have hard time imagining that Jinbao created it themselves, so maybe it's from a different Agamemnon release. Regardless, swapping his face is exactly the same process as Doomsday- pry the entire front of his head off, as it's simply pegged in, and swap in the face of your chosing. That just leaves that weird gray bit. It's meant to be a back filler. Rather than copy one of the 3D-printed designs that covered most of his back, it's just fills in some of the space on his left side. There's a slot there, and a tab on it plugs right in. I'll say it makes him look more balanced, like he's not missing a chunk of himself, but it doesn't really hide the mess, and it needs to be removed for transformation. Speaking of transformation... honestly, this might be my all-time favorite Megatron transformation, because it's simultaneously simple but clever. You start by removing his fusion cannon and folding in the tab on his arm. Lift the hinges and gun barrel on his back up 90 degrees, so the barrel is pointing straight out over his right shoulder. Lift his belly panel and fold the hinge out behind it, then thread the entire thing back through his stomach to extend with the trigger guard behind his back. Rotate his waist 180 degrees. Push up on the bottom of his chest slightly and pull his arms out, then fold his chest forward and spin in 90 degrees, so the part that was connected to his right shoulder is now covering his face. Lift his back hinge up another 90 degrees, so it tabs into the edge of his chest, and spin the barrel into place. Grab the sides of his pelvis and shift them down; that oval on his crotch is concealing hinges. In addition to bringing his legs closer together, it's going to uncover a hinge in his waist that'll let you swing the entire thing forward 90 degrees. Fold the panel on the back of his RIGHT shoulder out, collapse his forearm over his bicep on a slider and flip some of shoulder kibble down over his forearm. Use the butterfly joint in his shoulder to shift his arm forward 90 degrees, then with his hips out of the way, you can swing the whole arm and the side of his body it's connected to around to tuck his hand into the side of his chest where his left shoulder was. The left arm is a bit more complicated. You want to fold out the panel on his shoulder, open a panel on his forearm, and bend his elbow 90 degrees. Then, using a hinge near his wrist, bend his forearm so it flips over with his fist pointing in toward his wrist, then use another hinge to straighten his arm with the fist tucked up against his elbow. Fold the armor around his forearm back around, and flip a flap on his shoulder kibble (it sounds complicated, but it'll make sense in hand). Now, you're going to use the butterfly joint to shift the arm forward and the hinges to swing the arm around like you did on the right, except this time instead of forming the back of the gun while his chest is the front his arm is forming the back of the gun AND filling in the gaps on his back. Fold down his heels, open his calves, untab the insides of his lower legs, and spin them 180 degrees so they're poking out between his feet. Fold the hammer out of his left heel, and then you should be able to tab his heels and lower legs together. Turn the outer edges of his legs 180 degrees, then bend his knees. The dark gray inner bits from his legs should slide into a gap between his arms, and his heels will tab in place and close up the back of the gun. Close his calves on the back of the handle and his hip skirts will tab into his thighs, then finish him off by taking the prongs on the flap behind his tummy panel and plugging them into holes in his hips to lock the trigger guard in place. It's all very fluid, nothing feels like it's fighting your or has to be forced past anything, and you get the sense that you can focus on one chunk at a time before moving onto another whereas Doomsday has you practically exploding his legs and rearranging them. It's a pretty good-looking gun mode, too, though unlike Doomsday one side is definitely a bit cleaner than the other. The side with the front of his chest has a few hinges under the slide, nothing to egregious, but the side with his back has a few more hinges and seams due to how it transforms. And yeah, if you're looking down from the top, you can see the colored circles and rectangles from his tummy on the inner edge of the trigger guard, but ultimately I think it's fine. Maybe Doomsday is a little cleaner-looking overall; shins shins make for a smoother front on the grip than Destroy Emperor/Agamemnon's thighs, and I might be a bit pickier if this were blown up to MP-scale, but I think it's perfectly fine for a Legends-scale toy. Frankly I think it'd be fine all the way up to a Generations-scaled figure. Unlike Doomsday, the fusion cannon does have to partsform to become the scope- it's actually connecting to the insides of the lower legs we slid between his arms. The stock uses a pair of tabs to grab into a pair of slots on the back of the grip, and the silencer will slide right over the barrel- you don't have to remove the tip like you did with Doomsday. That said, it's almost certainly going to come off and get stuck in the silencer anyway when you take it back off, and leaving you to pull the silencer apart and grab a pen to push the tip back out. Not sure if that was an issue with a legit Agamemnon or not. The gun mode doesn't really interact with any of the other accessories, as the silencer is too big for the blast effects (although, with the beam saber hilt/effects adapter you can attach the effect parts directly to the barrel without the silencer on), and there's nowhere the seems intentional to use the stand. For the same of this picture, I stuck the peg on the stand through the slit in the trigger guard. It's fine, though. As good as he looks in alt mode, and as easy and smooth as his transformation is, Megatron's gun mode doesn't particularly do much and you're probably going to have him in bot mode most of the time anyway. When it comes to a Legends-scale Megatron you've definitely got a hard choice to make (or realistically already made, since I'm way behind on these guys). Personally, on looks alone, I'd give the edge to Magic Square's Doomsday. I think he's just a bit cleaner in both modes, and has better proportions in robot mode. But that nylon plastic leaves him with frustratingly wonky tab tolerances, and there's a panels on his shins that you kind of have to force past the sliders on the inside when you're transforming him that make him a bit more of a pain to handle. Magic Square's weaknesses are Jinbao/NewAge's strengths, though. What Destroy Emperor/Agamemnon lacks in his thinner proportions, arm kibble, and messy back he makes up for with solid materials that tab solidly in place and a fluid, clever transformation that makes you want to play with him. The question of which one to get, then, will likely come down to your priorities. If you want the best-looking bot and don't care about the transformation, then Magic Square. If you like transforming your figures and want what is easily the best Megatron transformation I've experienced, then go with NewAge. Or if you want a good-looking bot for your display but still want a cheap way to experience NewAge's engineering, at just around $20 or so you're not going to break the bank if you buy Doomsday and Destroy Emperor.

Maybe that price tag is so high because it covers a stint in rehab when you finally convince it to stop using steroids...

Quick addendum to my recent Optimus Prime reviews with stuff I literally just discovered today. 1. Legacy United Deluxe Optimus Prime's smokestacks are attached via 5mm pegs. That's it. Despite what I've pictured here, he doesn't hold them as pistols all that well due to the pegs being kind of short and his hands sitting well below the plane of his forearms, but they're super easy to pop off, and they leave 5mm ports behind if you want to play with him and some Weaponizers/Armorizers/Junkions/Fossilizers. 2. Studio Series 86 Commander-class Optimus Prime actually does have a way to carry his ion rifle without stuffing it in his trailer. I missed it at first, because I'm used to stuffing 5mm pegs into 5mm holes, or dedicated tabs into dedicated slots. But Prime's rear doesn't have any tabs that fit into the rifle's slots, and the magazine on the rifle prevents the 5mm handle from reaching the 5mm port in the hitch. But that magazine is actually the key! On the panels you folded up from his calves over his thighs, there's some square-ish holes that I mistook for the usual Hasbro waffles. Turns out that they're the same size and shape as the magazine, so you plug the magazine into them and presto, alt mode rifle storage.

Haven't you? This isn't insider knowledge, just a bunch on my part, but I'm feeling confident that SS86 Megatron will be a heavy retool of Megatronus. I can't speak to anything but Transformers, but I love that the marketing people have kind of taken a backseat, so it doesn't come across as corporate pandering. They've let (some of) the design team became the face of the brand, and they're clearly passionate fans like us. Their enthusiasm is catchy, they're clearly listening to and engaging with the community, and the peeks they give about what goes on behind the curtain helps us known that they're not always happy with the budgets either, and sometimes it's a repaint or nothing.

Links good for everyone in about 15 minutes. Bonecrusher Scrapper The Fallen will be available later with the rest of wave 1, and Bumblebee and Apelinq should go up tomorrow.

Speaking of nuggets, here's one. It's public knowledge that the new trilogy is Age of the Primes, and I've previously told you that Solus Prime, Alchemist Prime, Micronus, Prima, Alpha Trion, and Onyx Prime are coming in 2025 in addition to the Fallen. I have no idea if another Vector Prime is in the works or not, but for now let's say the Legacy one is all we're getting. So that's 8 out of 13. Well, who are we missing? I'm not going to go into a history lesson explaining why sometimes a character is or isn't on the list, because it's changed. However, there was one list that was codified in 2010's The Covenant of Primus that seemed to be the definitive version (which not only listed who they are, but assigned each of them a unique relic)... until Transformers One came out with slightly different one. Well, the already-released Vector Prime, Megatronus, and the six others leaked are on both lists, as are four others- Liege Maximo, Nexus Prime, Amalgamous Prime, and Quintus Prime. In Transformers One, the last Prime is Zeta Prime. However, in most continuities Zeta is simply part of the lineage of Matrix bearers since the original 13 passed into legend, usually either right before Sentinel Prime or right between Sentinel and Optimus. In the The Covenant of Primus, the last Prime is simply called "Thirteen," and it's very heavily implied (but not outright stated) that Optimus is Thirteen, who chose to kind of die and be reborn as a regular guy. Does that mean, with SS86 Optimus, that we already have Thirteen? Well, take a look at this art from the side of the Fallen's box. After watching Mark just show off the figure, the statue in the middle is pretty recognizable as The Fallen. And that symbol above him is the symbol for the Fallen cooked up during Power of the Primes, when they were doing those little Prime Masters. The guy on the left might not be immediately recognizable to the readers of the Covenant or the IDW comics, where he looked more like robo-Loki, but G2 fans will know that's Liege Maximo (and the symbol above confirms it). The guy on the right? The first thing I noticed was that his torso looks like Powermaster Optimus/Super Ginrai, and what I can make out of the head is certainly very Optimus-esque. But the shoulder's are a bit square, with what appear to be turrets on top and no guns on the sides. There's little wheels on the inside of his forearms. His shins have entirely different (yet still familiar) molded shapes. No, the Super Ginrai cab-chest is all wrong, but everything else is definitely looking familiar... And I did tell you guys that Star Convoy is 2025's Titan... Oh, one more thing. We're still getting four Generations waves in 2025. I think I've already said 2025 is starting with a 5th wave of Legacy United that's basically a bunch of repaints and package refreshes, then three waves of Age of the Primes. But it sounds like part of the reason they're allowing a 5th wave of Legacy United (aside from giving people who couldn't get some store-exclusives like Cosmos and Galaxy Shuttle another crack at them) is because going forward there will only be three waves. The thinking seems to be that this will allow people to have a better chance at getting them in the store, and to give stores more time to sell through before the next wave (though, judging by the number of Legacy Arcees and Crosscuts that have lingered on shelves while entire waves were skipped here, I'm not sure that'll help). The confusing part is that I'm hearing this won't actually affect the number of releases per year, though. It was explained to me as, "you're not losing a figure, if there were going to be ten Deluxes you'll still get ten, just in one fewer wave." But if a wave usually has four Deluxes, four waves is sixteen, and three is twelve, so maybe the implication is that if they planned ten molds we'll get ten molds and two repaints instead of ten molds, two remolds, two straight-up repaints, and two package refreshes?

I need to stay off the other site for awhile, I'm just tired of the whining. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of people jazzed for the new Constructicons, and some offering valid criticisms like Bonecrusher having kind of weird proportions, but there's entirely too much, "Why is this Devastator the same size as basically every other combiner and not obnoxiously huge like the Combiner Wars toys? Why do toys based on the G1 cartoon look so much like older toys also based on the exact same cartoon? Scrapper must be a ripoff because he's the same size as Bonecrusher, and Bonecrusher is a Deluxe (never mind that they're both the height of Voyager SS86 Ironhide, that we have no idea the actual difference in parts count, that we know Scrapper has ratcheted joints in his torso for Devastator's ankle, and that Scrapper comes with Devastator's gun in addition to his own), so Hasbro must be ripping us off! Speaking of ripping us off, why will this Devastator cost $210 when it's like half the size of Combiner Wars Devastator? That thing only cost $150 ten years ago! I can't understand things like inflation ($150 in 2015 is roughly $200 today), the the fact that these guys might have more complex engineering (Scrapper has elbows this time!), or more accessories (everybody has their own individual guns, Devastator looks like he might be a pantsformer this time, Evan hinted that the combiner kibble might turn into a trailer that Long Haul can pull, etc). Why is Hasbro doing more G1 stuff anyway instead of Bayverse (I conveniently forgot that Dark of the Moon Que and Age of Extinction Optimus were announced literally yesterday)? The designers should all be fired for not being able to make 3P MP-level products on the piddling budgets Hasbro allows them! Worst toy ever, know way am I buying it (even though I probably already have Pulse open to the "new" section so I just have to refresh at 1:00)!"

Courtesy of Ravenwind at TFW, I don't think Devy will look too bad with the Dinobots, based on Menasor.

Well, despite RSVP-ing Hasbro doesn't see fit to send me a link to the 1027 stream.😒 And while the people at TFW2005 don't seem inclined to post the link there, they're more generous with posting clips. Nice to see that Scrapper has elbows, but he and Bonecrusher look an awful lot like Combiner Wars. EDIT: Got a link. EDIT AGAIN: It sounds like preorders for Devy will go up tomorrow, preorders Apelinq and Bumblebee go up Tuesday.

I'm not sure exactly what figures are supposed to be in what waves anymore for Studio Series. It sounds like they're shuffling things around because the Constructicons are getting pushed up. But I do know that, in addition to the stuff that went up for preorder this week (Galvatron, Hatchet, Skywarp, and Double Punch) that we were expecting Leader-class Apelinq, who's a retool of Primal. As well as Deluxe-class Bumblebee Bumblebee. There was some speculation at the time that this would probably be a retool of ROTB Bee and be the Camaro from the end of the movie, but it's actually a retool of of the original SS Bee. I'm not clear on just how extensive, or if the alt mode will actually hold together this time, but he looks to have at least new limbs, and I've heard that the door wings are on swivels this time. Word is that these guys will be available to preorder this week. Beyond that, there were a few spacebridge reveals at the MCM London Comic Con. No surprises, since basically the entire line for 2025 was leaked, but it's interesting to see some of them since they look like they're using renders of the toy (or possibly prototypes, because those are not Prime's final colors) instead of artwork. Deluxe-class Dark of the Moon Que Voyager-class Gamer Edition Ironhide Leader-class Age of Extinction Optimus Prime As well as package refreshes for SS86 Jazz and Dark of the Moon Shockwave. Nothing new on SS86 Devastator or Age of the Primes, but tomorrow is Hasbro's 1027 event. Dunno about Age of the Primes, since we still have another wave of United coming, but I'm 99% sure Devastator is tomorrow.

Layoffs are happening at Hasbro. John Warden, whom they just moved from G.I. Joe to Transformers, is one of the casualties. Bmac is safe, Evan and Emily appear to be safe, haven't heard anything on Mark but I think he's safe.

You know, I said this, yet I have two Legends-sized Magic Square Optimus Primes, plus NewAge's, and yet I don't have a Legends Megatron. Until now, that is. When I ordered Dr. Wu's Menace King, I went ahead and also ordered Magic Square's Doomsday. To be clear, this is a recent S-variant reissue. Other variants exist, with slightly different decos and accessories. I can only comment on what I have in front of me. And what I have in front of me looks pretty good! I think I personally prefer more metallic colors, but what we have here is definitely cartoon accurate and looks pretty great with their Light of Victory version of Optimus. After seeing so many other takes on Megatron, what I really appreciate from this design is how clean and well-proportioned it is. His legs aren't too skinny, nor are they too chunky. His chest isn't too wide or too narrow. His pelvis doesn't look like a big black diaper. He's not burdened with a bunch of kibble on his arms or back, either, aside from stuff like the gun barrel that's supposed to be on his back, a trigger guard that tucks fairly neatly into the small of his back, and a trigger in his butt crack. This has got to be one of the cleanest Megatrons I've had the pleasure of looking at. That said, zoomed in this close you can see some mold flashing. You might have also noticed that some spots, like his forearms, are coming untabbed. It really comes down to Magic Square's choice of materials. Yes, that nylon plastic is sturdy and pliable, but it's also too soft for it's own good. As I said, I know other versions of Doomday come with different accessories. I think the original release came with a ton of stuff. This release just came with a fusion cannon, the parts to make the stock and silencer, and two alternate faces. Doomsday's head is on either a ball joint or a mushroom swivel. It looks like it's a ball joint that's just set so deep that it can swivel but not tilt. However, the other end is hinged at the chest, so he does have decent up/down tilt. His shoulders are ball joints that can rotate and move laterally about 75 degrees. His biceps and wrists swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. His waist swivels, and he's got a 90 degree ab crunch. His hips are a little weird. They're on ball joints, and at first it seems like he can only move them slightly forward, 90 degrees backward, and nearly 90 degrees laterally. However, the ball joints are hinged, and can drop down. This gives him the clearance to bend his hip nearly 90 degrees forward under his pelvis. He has two thigh swivels; the first one is his entire thigh around his hip, and the second is a cut just above the knees. Speaking of knees, they bend a little over 90 degrees on a single hinge. His feet can bend down about 45 degrees, and his toes can bend up nearly 90 degrees. If I'm being generous he has maybe 45 degrees of ankle pivot. Doomsday's fusion cannon can attach to his right arm. The peg has little wings on it, and the hole in the bottom of the cannon is keyed so you have to put the cannon on sideways, then turn it 90 degrees. When you do a tab on the edge of his forearm will fit into a slot on the cannon, locking it into place. Unlike Menace King, whom we looked at yesterday, you can combine Doomsday's stock, silencer, and fusion cannon for a G1-style gun emplacement. As for the alternate faces, Doomsday's stoic face and forehead are simply tabbed onto the back of his head. Slide it off and replace it with another expression, in this case either a yelling face or a laughing face. Just be careful not to loose the eyes, which are a separate piece. You only get the one pair of eyes. The upper half of Doomsday has one of the smarter transformations I've encountered in a Megatron. His arms detach from his torso and swing down on armatures. The backs of his shoulders open up, as do his forearms, and his the outer armor on his forearms spin around to cover his elbows. His wrists just fold in. His chest double-hinges up and to the right, allowing you to open his back and tuck his head in, as well as move the barrel around and in place. Move the trigger guard and then the upper half of his torso will spin 90 degrees to his right. His vented lats fold backward, taking the arms with it, and his arms tab together. Spin him 180 degrees at the waist, then lift his hip skirts and double-hinge his pelvis out, and you'll find another swivel his his crotch. Spin that swivel 180 degrees, so his legs are facing his front but the trigger trigger has been spun around to his crotch. Bend him at the ab crunch, and you can start to see how his chest comes back down and his arms lock in behind where his left shoulder was. Things get trickier with the legs. The hips drop down, and you need to orient the ball sockets just right on the ball joints, and spin his thighs around so the inside is facing out but the rest of the leg is still facing forward. Then his legs open up, and with fairly unclear instructions, you fold in some panels, you fold out some other panels, and use some sliders to ultimately both make his legs a little thicker front-to-back and a little thinner across the shins, as well as move the shins up over most of the thighs. With the legs in place, you can move the hip skirts in to lock the legs to the arms and fill in the grip, then pull out the trigger and lock the trigger guard into his crotch. Honestly, the process itself isn't that bad once you know what you're doing. I prefer it to MP-36's transformation. Most of the frustration really comes for the wonky tolerances of the nylon plastic, and the fact that my old fingers aren't quite as dexterous as they used to be. I wouldn't say that Doomsday's alt mode is the most realistic Walther I've seen, but I'd say it's pretty serviceable, especially given its smaller size. I mean, it cleans up better than Menace King, anyway. I think my biggest complaints are the gaps in the back and the lack of a safety. Also, no matter what I do, he seems a bit crooked. The fusion cannon attaches the same way; I don't think you actually even have to remove it for transformation. The stock slides into a clip on his heels. The silencer fits over his barrel, but you have to remove the tip of the barrel first. I don't have easy access to any of my displayed combiners right now, due to how my room and shelves are currently organized, but I did have my old Zeta Combaticons in storage. I grabbed their Vortex to see if he could hold Doomsday, and the answer is "not really." Doomsday's grip is just a bit too wide for him to really close his fingers around it. That's not really a big deal to me, though. It'd have been better if he'd come with an accessory that was himself in alt mode for other Legends figures to hold (something I believe was included with his original release). Doomsday is a figure that is alternately brilliant and frustrating. He looks fantastic, he poses well, and the transformation is one of the better ones for turning a cartoon robot into a gun that I've come across. The frustrations are mainly that the engineering might be a bit ambitious for a figure this small, and the materials. Magic Square needs to stop with the nylon already. Tabs don't secure the way I want them too, and after one transformation he's already got joints that are getting loose. Change the plastic, though, and upsize this to scale with Studio Series Optimus or even Magic Square's own MP-style Light of Peace Optimus, and you'd have a strong contender for the best Megatron ever made. For now, I think I can recommend this guy as a companion piece for Magic Square's Light of Victory, and potentially as the best of any Legends-scale option for Megatron, though I should probably check out NewAge's before making that call.

So I don't mind Prime having more pronounced, obvious vents instead of just a series of rectangles, but I'm firmly in the camp that the vents should be blue. They're blue in the cartoon, and blue on the G1 toy. Near as I can the whole silver shin vent thing started with MP-01. Otherwise, yeah, I'm hoping for a toy version down the road. Oh, btw, this is the tool I used to get the pins out and swap Prime's heels. It's like $6-7. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H5F43N3?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_dt_b_product_details

I think it boils down to "blame the cartoon." The truck's animation model doesn't have round tanks. And, of course, neither does Prime's robot mode. Unlike a lot of other recent offerings from 3Ps (and I think MP-44, but don't remember) SS86 Prime uses the same fuel tanks in both modes. FWIW, I do prefer round tanks in truck mode (and in the case of SS86, I wish they weren't so protruding). But I hate how they were implemented on Earthrise/Netflix/Laser Optimus. If they secured in place in truck mode it'd be fine, but you just fold them out and hope for the best, inevitably pushing them back in as you handle them.

I'd been saying for, oh, about 25 years now that the story from VF-X2 needs to be animated. For a good chunk of that time it was just because it had a pretty good story, but Macross Frontier has since established the conflict depicted in the game to have deep ramifications on the the worldbuilding in subsequent Macross products. I think it's too important now for the story to be left in a doesn't-really-hold-up-anymore PlayStation game.

It's a neat trick, but it's not going to convince me to take my Porsche savings and buy a Rivian instead.

Optimus Prime and Galvatron were some of the first figures Dr. Wu released in their Extreme Warfare line. And while I suppose it's nice that both factions have a leader, the simple fact is that if you have an Optimus you need a Megatron. And at long last, Dr. Wu has rectified this oversight by releasing their newest figure, Menace King. Out of the box, I'd say that Menace King is an aesthetic upgrade over their Galvatron. Aside from the barrel on his back being a bit chunky he's got pretty good proportions, and I appreciate the gunmetal paint on his shins. I can't help but notice that he's missing the hammers on his shoulders, and his forearms are actually asymmetrical. From the side we can see that bis boots are a bit chunky, and from the back he's got a trigger and guard dangling off his left arm and a few very visible screws. Before I judge him too harshly for that, though, I'll remind you that this is a Micromaster-sized figure. This guy is shorter than Hasbro's Legends-class Megatron, and doesn't even come to the top of Commander-class Optimus' shin. Normally Dr. Wu sells figures in packs of two, but Menace King is alone in his package. Unlike many other Dr. Wu figures, though, Menace King has accessories. There's his fusion cannon, of course, as well as parts to make his stock and silencer for alt mode. Unlike the MP and G1 toys, though, they don't seem to have any other combinations or uses in robot mode. Articulation is a tad disappointing on Menace King. His head's on a hinged ball joint, which combine to give him some impressive up/down tilt and a swivel but no sideways tilt. His shoulders are also on ball joints for swiveling and moving laterally 90 degrees. His left arm has a ball joint at the elbow, which bends 90 degrees and doubles as a bicep swivel. His right arm, though, only has a hinge and no bicep swivel at all. Sadly, this leaves him unable to pull of a pose with his cannon on top of his arm. No wrist swivels, but he does have a waist swivel. His hips are on ball joints, but his pelvis is in the way. This leaves him with only about 30-35 degrees of forward or backward motion, and about 45 degrees of lateral spread. The only thigh swivel he has is the movement of his leg around the ball joints in his hips. Due to his transformation his knees are double-jointed. I get the sense that only the top joint, which bends a little less than 90 degrees, is meant to be used for bot mode, as engaging the lower joint reveals some alt mode details, but as long as you're ok with that you can actually get almost 180 degrees of knee bend between the two joints. His feet can tilt down, but not up. He lacks a true ankle pivot, but his toes are on swivels so you can fake as much as you need. Menace King's cannon has a slot that fits over a squarish tab on his right arm only. Menace King's transformation isn't too complicated, but it's one of the more ambitious ones we've seen from Dr. Wu. His fists fold in, and he raises both arms 90 degrees laterally. His waist swivels so that his toes are pointed toward his left, then the top half of his torso can swings out and away to the left. That'll put his left arm in position to tab into the top of his midsection. Turn his left forearm 90 degrees so that the ball joint the trigger is attached to is pointing up, then fold his entire arm under his chest, spinning and orienting the trigger so that it plugs into his crotch. Straighten and fold the barrel around from his back to the spot his left arm just vacatated. Lift his hip skirts and fold out the little bits tucked underneath them, then fold his feet down and bend his legs at both knee joints so that his feet can reach the tabs on his right side, just above his butt. Before you tab his legs together and plug his feet into the aforementioned tabs, though, take the outside of his legs and spin them 180 degrees. Once everything is in place, fold his hip skirts back down and attach them to his thighs to complete the pistol's grip. I'll be honest... I think his gun mode looks a bit messy. One side has the mechanical details from his waist still plainly visible, plus a big pin through the barrel. The other side has a quartet of prominent screws. The trigger and guard are a single piece on a ball joint with black paint inside. It's also a bit gappy because things don't tab in as well as they should. Now, truthfully, if this were a larger figure I might consider the messy gun mode to be a dealbreaker. However, once again this guy is tiny. Considering the trouble that other companies have had pulling off a decent Megatron that turns into a gun at larger scales the fact that Dr. Wu crafted a good-looking robot that turns into a fairly proportional gun at all seems like a small* miracle. *Pun intended. Menace King's fusion cannon plugs onto the same tab as it does for bot mode to form the scope, though it has to be removed and turned around. The silencer has a notch in it for the sight on the barrel to fit into, and the rest of the parts become the stock, which fills in a gap under the grip. With the stock, scope, and silencer it's unmistakably Megatron, even if it's a bit gappy. As small as Menace King is, he's too large for most fingers smaller than, say, MP-44 to told, but a bit too small for most Titan-class figures and 3rd-party combiners. The sweet spot is going to be Hasbro combiners, like Legacy Menasor or the Combiner Wars teams, with aftermarket articulated hands. Here I've got him held by Legacy Menasor with the DNA upgrade kit. I removed the trigger from the ball joint, and I think it would be nice if his grip was a little more secure, but he's holding Menace King by the friction in those DNA fingers. Menace King definitely has a couple of flaws, but they're flaws I'm inclined to forgive due to the scale and price. Like Dr. Wu's other Extreme Warfare figures he looks better and more accurate than Hasbro's own Core-class figures despite being smaller, and posing them with your Combiners or Titans makes them look even bigger than posing them with Core-class figures. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, yeah, I recommend this guy, I love the scale, and I want Dr. Wu to do the entire Sunbow cast.

Micromaster Rocket base. I had it as a kid, and I remember loving the rocket and Countdown but having little interest in the rest of the base. Presumably, as Siege was when Hasbro was pushing Micromasters again, they had the budget to include one with Omega and figured that Countdown was the most thematic since, as JB0 noted, he kind of turns into a rocket base. That said, Earthrise Sky Lynx gained a based mode that's similar to the Rocket Base, but with his own shuttle instead of a rocket, plus I think it was Amazon that was doing a couple of packs around the same time, and one of them was "Botropolis Rescue Mission." It came with the Modulators Overair and a redecoed Ironworks, plus the missile that came with Earthrise Doubledealer, and all of it was designed to look like the Rocket Base.

If you missed it before BBTS is selling an exclusive reissue of Siege Omega Supreme for their 25th anniversary.

If you get one really good figure you actually one, and one worthless piece of garbage, then maybe this sort of mental math doesn't quite work. And while I am leaning toward suggesting that Loader probably could be a $90 toy on its own, that's definitely not the no-brainer choice that a $45 Loader is. So we have to ask, who comes with Loader, and is he worth the other $45? I'll answer the easier question first- the guy who comes with Loader is Mixer, Mecha Invasion's version of Mixmaster. Mixer is, in a lot of ways, closer to the source material than Loader. He's got a big mixing drum on his back, he's got wheels on his arms, and his lower legs and feet are made from his cab. I actually prefer his head to Generation Toy's, as I think it's more recognizably Mixmaster than GT's slightly generic toy-style approach. Mixer is definitely still stylized, though. He's missing the "hood" where the G1 toy's missile went, and rather than the roof of the cab being his shins and feet the front of the cab is sort of squished up and perched over actual feet. It might not be a big deal for some (most?), but I think his torso with the big silver and gunmetal chunk running down the middle is a bit generic. There's a vent on the right side of his chest that sort of references the red bit (Sunbow)/sticker (toy) on G1 Mixmaster's chest, but it feels sort of random when he doesn't have that key-shaped panel dominating his chest. Like Loader, makes for a very clean robot. Yeah, his fuel tanks are curled up onto his shoulders, and he's got the mixing drum for a backpack... but you kind of need that mixing drum backpack to be Mixmaster, eh? I suppose I should also point out that Mixmaster does have a connector port on his butt, but you're not going to see it from most angles. Like Loader, Mixer gets a gun, an LED circuit board, and a button cell battery. Again, the batter goes into the cradle on the back of the board with the rough negative side pointing toward the board and the smooth positive side with the text pointing away from the board. Mixer's articulation is similar to, but slightly worse, than Loader's. Again, his head is on a ball joint, and he can look up a good bit and tilt his head sideways more than you're likely to need, but his chin means he can't really look down. He's got the same sort of Hot Rod shoulders as Loader, so they swivel and move 90 degrees laterally, just not at the same time. Biceps swivel, elbows bend over 90 degrees, and his wrists swivel. His waist swivels, but he doesn't have an ab crunch. The reason is that the ab crunch joint on Loader is the combiner elbow. Mixer does have a joint for his combined mode, but transformed properly it's on his back side, trapped behind his mixing drum. That said, you can arch his back slightly, and if you really want to fake an ab crunch you can undo the silver part of his torso, open his back, and turn the joint around. It'll stick out and you won't be able to close the silver part of his torso back up, but you can get a picture out of it. Moving along, his hips are ratcheted and do 90 degrees forward, backward, and laterally. His thighs swivel 45 degrees in and out. His knees are double jointed and ratcheted on both ends, bending a combined 180 degrees. His feet have a very slight upward tilt, 45 degrees of downward tilt, and 45 degrees of ankle pivot. You'll note, again, there's no hand articulation beyond a wrist swivel. His gun's handle slots into the hole in either fist, and there's no bot mode weapon storage. As with Loader, you can install the circuit board by opening the back of Mixer's head and placing the board in with the LED side toward the front and the battery toward the back. Mixer's gun also has a magnet in the barrel that you can use to turn the LED on and off. Like Loader, Mixer's got a super simple, elegant transformation. Pull his mixing drum out on the double hinge. Swivel the shoulders 180 degrees, and bend the fists inward. Flip the silver panel on his torso up so it covers his face. His arms then collapse into his sides, with his knuckles tabbing together above his head and his forearms tabbing onto that silver piece you covered his face with. Spin his waist 180 degrees, fold out the spout on the back of the drum, then push the drum back into place. You're halfway done already! Fold in his heels, then swing out the small black bits directly under the windows on his shins. With them out of the way, you can fold the nose of the cab out, then flip his feet around to fill in the void vacated by the nose of the cab. Flip the little black bits back down, then push his legs in on the sliders mid-thigh so that the two halves of the cab can come together. Bend his hips forward 90 degrees, then use the double knee hinges to swing the cab back down. Swing his fuel tanks around, then slide them inward so they grab onto the tabs below his smokestacks and you're done. Two things jump out at me looking at Mixer's alt mode. The first is that I do prefer a cartoon-style purple mixing drum; I just think that's visually more interesting that so much green. But the second thing is that, with engine in front of the cab, the guard on the front, and the vents in front of the door, is that Mixer's alt mode reminds me less of G1 Mixmaster's and more of the Mack Granite used for Revenge of the Fallen Mixmaster. Hmm... come to the think of it, Revenge of the Fallen Scrapper walks on Shovel feet. I wonder if we'll see any Bayverse influences on the other four? In any case, while there's no metal in his joints like Loader got, his fuel tanks and stabilizers are metal. There's not a ton left to say about his alt mode. He rolls on rubber tires, but the stabilizers don't move, nor does his mixing drum spin. You can store his gun in his alt mode, though. Before you tab his legs together to form his cab, line up the handle with the bigger notches under the cab, while the smaller notches with tabs will fit over and slot into the bottom of the gun. Just like Loader, Mixer is shaking things up by becoming an arm instead of a leg. It's easier to get to arm mode from his truck mode. You simply pull out the fuel tanks and spin them around over the rear tires like you're going to robot mode. Fold up the spout on the drum, then extend the drum on its double hinge. Spin the drum 180 degrees, so the spout is behind the cab, then pull the drum open. Inside you'll find the combiner hand, just flip it out, close the drum, and hinge the drum back down. Tabs on the combiner wrist will plug into the back of the truck, locking everything in place. Then it's just a matter of rotating the cab and the combiner elbow 90 degrees, then rotating the cab alone back 90 degrees, so that the combiner port under the cab will face in toward Devastator's right side but the combiner elbow is facing forward. I think I neglected to mention this yesterday, but you can leave both Mixer and Loader's guns in their alt mode storage spaces. However, it appears from the instructions that the individual weapons will combine into a larger weapon for the combined mode. Mixer's weapon appears to be the handle; the arrow-like fins on the barrel are tabs that wedge into hollow channels on the palms of the combiner hands. Moment of truth time... I think Mixer is a small step down from Loader. Now, it could be a personal bias- Scrapper is my favorite Constructicon, after all. Or it could be because Loader has a little bit more articulation. Or maybe it's because I think his alt mode weapon storage is a bit more clever. Whatever the reason, it's a very small step, and Mixer shares most of Loader's strengths- mostly good articulation, tampographed details, solid build, good alt mode weapon storage, and a simple, elegant, fun transformation that unobtrusively stores his combined mode bits, no partsforming required. Of course, he's got the same weaknesses, too. He's too stylized and "cheap" to belong with your MP collection, but also to large and too "premium" to go on your Generations shelf, so deciding if and where this fits in your personal collection can be a challenge. All I can say for sure is that this set brings me joy. It's refreshing to get big, chunky bots that are fun to play with and transform. There's no 100-step transformation that takes longer to complete than watching a full episode of the G1 cartoon. You don't have to worry about scratching the paint or treat it like an adult collectible. And at $90 for the pair they don't cost an arm an a leg, so if you're curious to check them out for yourselves they're a low-risk gamble. As for me, if they can keep up the quality while keeping the prices low I'll be very interested to check out their future projects; I understand that they're working on Dinobots in addition to their Constructicons.

I order a lot these days from TFSafari and ShowZStore. I'd been giving a slight preference to TFSafari, because it seemed like I was getting stuff quicker from them. But I gotta tell you, I have three packages out from a single order with them, one shipped on October 2nd and two on October 3rd, and none of them have arrived yet. It's like the parcel carrier takes over a week to hand them off to USPS after they get through customs (and then for some weird reason once they got to my local USPS hub they sent them to another hub instead of delivering them, so...?). Meanwhile, I ordered from ShowZ, they shipped on the 12th, and my stuff was delivered a week later. Might have to start shifting more of my business back to ShowZ. Oh, what was in the package? Only the first Giant Legion pack from Mecha Invasion, so tonight you guys get my review for their first figure, Loader. To be clear, I'm saying that these figures are from Mecha Invasion because that's how sites are listing them, but aside from "Giant Legion" there's no branding on the box or instructions, and no contact information. Frankly, they can call themselves whatever they want, I'm like 75% sure it's Generation Toy/Transform Mission, so I'm going to compare these guys with GT's (previous) Constructicons. Anyway... Loader is, of course, their take on Scrapper. Now, GT's Scrapper was already fairly stylized, but you had the slightly-protruding middle of the chest, flat head, wheels on the shoulders and legs, and a big ol' shovel on his back. Loader is far less conventional. He's got the masked face of Scrapper, and the colors (aside from black hands) are about where they should be, but that's about it. You can still tell it's Scrapper, though, because the shovel is still there... it's just his feet! As unconventional as the design is, the result is an undeniably clean figure. One of my peeves with Generation Toy is was their tendency to fold over panels and flaps without always securing them, but you've got none of that here. The only bits that aren't totally locked down are the black parts of his shoulders. There's a strange mix of choices here, though. From how much bigger he is than GT's Scraper, you'd assume that Mecha Invasion expects these figures to go with your MP collection. There's metal parts on his crotch and knees, and lots of little painted details and tampographs. But, aside from the little painted details, there isn't much paint on Loader. He's fairly light, and in an era where MP is going harder on Sunbow than I'd prefer Loader's about as far from Sunbow as you can get while still being recognizable as Scrapper. Then there's his hands... solid black pieces with holes in them. He doesn't even have the basic hinged "typewriter" fingers that MP carbots (and even some Generations toys) have. Loader comes with this double-barreled gun (that looks like something G1 would cook up, IMHO), as well as a button cell and a small circuit board with an LED on it. The battery fits onto the back of the board, with the rough negative side toward the board. Articulation on Loader is pretty good. His head is on a ball joint that can tilt up/down/sideways in addition to swiveling. His shoulders swivel and can move laterally 90 degrees, but unfortunately the lateral hinge is inside toward the body and the swivel is on the other side of the hinge, so he's got Hot Rod shoulders. His biceps swivel, his elbows bend over 90 degrees, and his wrists swivel, though there's a bit of a clearance issue there. His waist swivels, and he's got 90 degrees of ratcheted ab crunch. The wheels on his hips hinge out of the way, so his hips can go forward, backward, and laterally 90 degrees, ratcheted all around. His thighs swivel, though only about 45 degrees in or out. His knees are double-jointed and bend 180 degrees, exposing metal pistons in the process. His feet swivel, tilt up a little, and tilt down almost 90 degrees, and he's got 90 degrees of ankle pivots. You can make Loader hold his gun in either hand by shoving the handle into the hole in the fist. He doesn't seem to have any weapon storage in bot mode. He does have light up eyes, though. Open the back of his head, then stuff the battery-filled circuit board so the board is pointing in toward his face and the battery side is facing the back of his head. Once installed, check out the barrel of his gun. You should see some magnets in there. Simply move the magnets near Loader's head and the light should come on. Do it again to make the light go back off. Transformation is one of my favorite things about this figure. Usually 3P figures, even ones I like with clever and intuitive transformations, still have more steps than a mainline Leader or even Commander-class figure. Loader, though, is somewhere between a Deluxe and a Voyager in complexity. Fold the flaps on the outsides of his feet around the the fronts to open them up, then swivel his feet 180 degrees. Fold out the metal part of his crotch, then bend his legs forward so that small holes at the bottoms of his thighs can plug onto the metal part. Tab the hip skirt wheels into his thighs, double bend the knees, and tab the feet together. You're halfway there already. Turn his waist 180 degrees. Untab his neck from his torso and pull out his backpack, then fold his head into the backpack. Fold the top of his torso forward, revealing the combiner hand*. Rotate his biceps 180 degrees, swing his arms back 90 degrees, then start to move them laterally into the spot where his head was. As you do, you'll be able to swing the black tops of his shoulders forward and then swivel them so they sit flush and allow his arms to be tabbed together with his the black parts of his shoulders tabbing into the top of his torso and encapsulating the combiner hand. His wrists swivel forward, then his elbows bend 90 degrees, stuffing his hands into the back of his torso. Then his backpack and head shift on a double hinge to cover his hands and form the cabin. I think he's a pretty good-looking front loader, too. There's molded doors and windows on the cabin, molded ladders leading up the cabin, lights on top of the cabin, taillights on the rear, painted vents and caution stripes, and pistons in the shovel's arms. It's not as elaborately detailed as GT's, and you can't really unsee his legs in the shovel's arms, but I think it's very recognizable as Scrapper in this mode. Loader's knee and ankle joints translate into working joints for the shovel in this mode, and he rolls on fat rubber tires. Something else I really dig here is the weapon storage. You're better off storing it mid-transformation, as we'll have to undo a bit if he's already in loader mode. Move the cabin, straighten his arms to get his hands back out, then split and spread his arms. You might even want to fold the combiner hand out a bit, but you should see a peg hole in the void that his robot hands were tucked into. The barrels on his gun wrap around the stock, and the whole thing plugs right into that peg hole. There's room enough for everything to fold and tab back into place. *Yes, I said "combiner hand." It seems that Mecha Invasion's unique take on the Constructicons isn't limited to Loader. Rather than turn into the Gestalt's right leg, Loader turns into a left arm, so we can expect their Devastator will also be a stylized, unique design. No partsforming is required, either. Open up the loader like you're going to store his weapon, but fold out the combiner hand and leave it out as you close everything back up. Rotate a quarter turn at his robot waist, so the bottom of the front half of the loader is facing toward an imaginary Devastator's left side while the bottom of the back half is facing forward, and that's it. I'll covered the combined articulation when Devastator's all put together, but for now it looks like he'll have a bicep swivel and a ratcheted 90 degree elbow bend. I'm not exactly sure where exactly Loader fits into my (or your) collection. As I said earlier, he's too stylized and has some "cheap" design elements that don't really fit with Masterpiece-style figures, but he's way too big and has enough premium touches that he definitely doesn't go with Generations, either. It's hard to outright recommend something if I don't really know what you're supposed to do with it. But, here's the thing... when it comes to the fun factor, Loader is one of the best toys I've bought this year, and one of the best 3P figures I've ever bought. It poses well in bot mode, looks good in alt mode, and has an elegant simplicity that makes flipping between modes an absolute joy. It's so refreshing to pick up a toy that isn't a mainline Hasbro figure and transform it in under five minutes. And you want to know the best part? Loader only runs about $85-$90... and he comes with the second figure in this set! You can think of him as being a mere $45 or so on his own... that's like halfway between a Hasbro Voyager and Leader! So, I can't blame you if you're thinking you've got no place for Loader on your limited and dwindling shelf space. But if you can find the room in your heart and home then I do highly recommend checking Loader out, as I think he's a much better toy than a lot of figures that cost double or triple what he does.

Hasbro seems to have patched some of their leaks, I guess, but the official word since Pulsecon is that their 10/27 event is all about Devastator.

Eh, you know me, I'm probably in for all four figs they showed slides of (preorders, I hear, are Tuesday). Some quick thoughts- -I just hope, after going in on Scorponok and Doublepunch, they give me a Sandstorm, too. -I just hope, after going in on Starscream and Skywarp, that they give me a Gamer Edition Thundercracker, too. -Galvatron is a straight repaint of the Legacy Kingdom toy. I never got the non-battle damage Legacy version, so I'm probably going to get the Studio Series release, but it's going to come down to how blurple he actually is. -Hatchet's cool, in a weird sort of way, but it makes me realize that I have Studio Series Crowbar but never bothered with Crankcase. And the Studio Series version of Crankcase is literally just a repainted Crowbar and not at all screen accurate. If I'm not mistaken, Crowbar was a retool of The Last Knight Berserker... maybe I'll track down one of those, repaint his chest and forearms to get rid of the graffiti, and pass that off as Crankcase since Berserker reused Crankcase's CGI model in the first place. -Of course I'm in for Devy. I don't even need to see it. But I'm looking forward to seeing it on 10/27, if it doesn't leak sooner.

Honestly? If you're cool with Dinoking being roughly Voyager-sized, and you're really only in it for the combined mode, maybe. If you're really into Victory, I don't see Hasbro doing another better Dinoking anytime soon. I suppose you could pick up Fansproject's version... it's still fairly available, and it should be closer in size to Menasor or a Combiner Wars gestalt (but it's also around $250 and fairly stylized). If you don't need more Victory figures in your life, or you want good individual Dinoforce guys, then no. The improvements over Volcanicus are all in the combined modes, and these were never great figures individually. It doesn't help that it's a $90 set coming on the heels of a $90 Optimus Prime that's probably my favorite toy I bought this year. It's like, if you're only going to buy one $90 Transformer right now there's a clear winner.

Hmm... I looked again at my notes. Unless some Studio Series stuff schedule for January comes out early, I think we might actually be done with new molds outside of collabs for the remainder of the year. Scratch that, there could be a new Core-class mold or two, but I'm not buying too many of those anymore. That said, I do have one new Core-class figure to talk about... or more accurately, six Core-class remolds, because it's the Pulsecon Dinoking boxset. This boxset wasn't much of a surprise. I expected that the Core-class Dinobots could get retooled from the moment they said that Volcanicus would be six members instead of five, and that Slag was going to be the head and chest. I was positive the minute they announced the new sixth member would be an ankylosaurus. On a superficial level it made sense; Dinoforce used the same five dinosaurs as the Dinobots, plus an additional ankylosaurus. But then you think about it, and you remember that Dinoforce were Pretenders, and that the dinosaurs were their Pretender shells, not their actual alt modes. Their actual alt modes were more abstract monsters, the same abstract monsters that Hasbro stuffed into alien monster Pretender shells instead to make the Pretender Monsters. Could Hasbro really get away with repainting and putting new heads on their Core-class Dinobots? It probably helps that the set comes with a ton of new accessories. To be clear, the set still comes with the little Snarl sword, Grimlock tail, Slag tail (with Gestalt head stored inside), and Scarr's tail (though heavily retooled). Gone are the two Swoop missiles that turned into a hand. But in it's place we've got a pair of missile pods, a scythe, two guns, a connector part, an axe blade, a club, and a new hand on a large blue box. I'm going to start at the bottom and work my way up, which I think is fine because Goryu (literally "strong dragon" or "strong dinosaur") is the leader of Dinoforce. Again, he's really just Grimlock with a new head and paint. The club is meant for him, as he's often seen riding his Pretender shell and waving it around in the Victory cartoon. While the Grimlock-style molded details aren't exactly a match for Goryu, the colors and head do a fairly good job of selling it. Some of the molding is even painted white to mimic the Zaku-style tubes on Goryu's torso, and the dino toes on his forearms can almost be mistaken for Goyru's clawed fingers. One change I might have suggested, though, is to have made his lower legs white isntead of silver, and his hips, thighs, and pelvis green. Rather than turn into a monster robot with a separate T-Rex Pretender shell, Goryu goes the modern Hasbro route where the Pretender shell is sort of baked into the figure itself. It kind of works for Goyru. We can see now that the silver on his robot legs, along with the silver on top of his dino head, and mostly-green body sort of mimics the silver armor and green skin of the Pretender shell. Goryu can store is club in this mode by flipping the combiner peg out of his back and plugging it into a port on the side of the club. The other leg is Doryu ("earth dragon"). If you just looked the JG1 toy you might be inclined to think that a blue-and-white Snarl doesn't look all that much like Doryu. To be fair, the colors Hasbro used don't match the JG1 toy, but they are closer to the Victory cartoon. The things that are really working against Doryu here are that he had a pretty generic character model in the cartoon, there's nowhere really to hide Snarl's tail, and the face isn't a great likeness. The new scythe accessory belongs with Doryu. Another area where Doyru suffers is that for both robot and combined mode it's necessary to use the inner robot's colors, but the inner robot turned into a weird bipedal wolf-faced monster. The Stegosaurus that was the Pretender shell was, like Goryu, green with gold and silver armor on its back. So the only accurate thing we can say about a blue-and-white Snarl is that it's a Stegosaurus. Like Snarl, the sword can store underneath him Doryu dino mode. As for the scythe, the blade can tilt upward, and the shaft can plug onto a tab on Doyru's back. Rairyu ("thunder dragon") has the misfortune of being a retool of the worst of the Core-class dinobots. But hey, at least he gets weapons, unlike poor Sludge. The missile launchers plug into the sides of Rairyu's arms. I'm not sure it's fair to say that this mess of a figure looks particularly like either Rairyu or Sludge, but aside from the black on his pelvis the colors are pretty accurate. Rairyu's Pretender shell actually had gray skin instead of green, with gold, silver, and black armor, so like Goryu painting Sludge's Brotosaurus mode makes for a semi-passable alt mode for Rairyu. And he can carry his new missile launchers by using angled pegs on the sides and plugging them into peg holes on his hips. Kakuryu ("horn dragon") is the guy who looks like least like his JG1 toy, which was almost entirely black and white in robot mode. However, this is due to the animators of Victory wanting Kakuryu to look more like Dinoking's chest. His hands, head, upper arms, crotch and toes remained black, his legs remained white, but his torso and forearms were changed to gold. I guess it would have been nice if this toy's thighs were also changed to white, but otherwise it's not too bad. The biggest difference is really the dino head behind his robot head. According to the instructions, Kakuryu gets the large gun. The smaller double-barreled gun has a 5mm peg instead of a smaller one, so none of Dinoforce can hold it by itself. Instead, you're supposed to plug it into the top of the connector piece, and the axe blade into one side, to make an axe for Kakuryu. You can store the tail with the gestalt head on Kakuryu's back. Kakuryu has the same problem as Doyru in that his dinosaur Pretender shell was green with silver armor but that doesn't work with his robot and combined modes. Also like Doryu, his inner robot's alt mode is also a bipedal monster, but because his colors are changed to match the animation Kakuryu's triceratops mode isn't even colored like his JG1 alt mode. All the gold and white with hints of blue and red is giving me G2 vibes. To stow all his gear in alt mode, turn the axe blade and small gun 90 degrees, then open Kakuryu's back to reveal a peg hole. Plug the connector in, then use a peg on the side of larger gun to plug it into the other side of the connector. Yokuryu ("wing dragon") didn't have a crest, and he could use a little more blue on his torso and pelvis, but superficial similarities to Swoop like wings on his back and his alt mode's face on his chest work in his favor here. As mentioned, he swaps the gun/missiles that become a hand for a larger hand with a block of forearm on it. It has a peg so he can hold it like a cannon. It's kind of stupid-looking as a weapon, but we'll forgive it later. Yokuryu's Pretender shell was brown-skinned with gold and silver armor. However, his inner robot, while not exactly a pterosaur, has white wings, white limbs, a white head, and a blue body, so he deviates less in his alt mode than some of the other guys in this set do. To use his accessory, you turn it over and plug the combiner peg on his chest into a 5mm port behind the peg he held in bot mode. You could say that he's carrying a cannon, but I'm content to simply call it a flight stand and leave it at that. Last up we have Gairyu ("armor dragon"). Gairyu is green on his torso, pelvis, and forearms where he's supposed to be. His green thighs match his JG1 toy, but not the cartoon. Meanwhile, his black shoulders, biceps, hands, and lower legs, his green forearms, and the white stripe on his belly match the cartoon, but not the JG1 toy. The head itself, with the spikey ears, is also a match for the cartoon, but without his wings and the hood made from his alt mode head you could almost mistake him for Goyru. And, the other five guys had to be five better-known Dinobots first, so they have an excuse for being less-than-accurate. Scarr, on the other hand, exists entirely so the set could be redone as the Dinoforce, and should have been designed with Gairyu in mind from the get go, and therefore probably should have been a bit more accurate in the first place. Gairyu's Pretender shell is brown with white spikes and silver and gold armor on his back. His inner robot's alt mode is almost entirely green with white limbs and a white tail. So dark gray with green limbs and a green head isn't really correct for either. Goryu and Doryu transform exactly the same way as Grimlock and Snarl. However, once you've got them in their alt mode configuration you plug their crotches onto these I-shaped tabs to give them actually feet in leg mode now. Also, don't plug the Snarl sword onto Doryu. Rairyu and Kakuryu transform identically to Slag and Sludge, including partsforming the triceratops tail onto the brotosaurus guy. Yokuryu and and Gairyu transform mostly like Swoop and Scarr, but the retooled ankylosaurus tail and the Yokuryu's new cannon fill in the forearms of the their arm modes far better than the accessories that came with Swoop and Scarr. On paper, you wouldn't expect a combination that is 99% still Volcanicus to be all that improved. However, simply adding a little height via the feet and some more bulk to the forearms does make Dinoking seem more proportional than Volcanicus. His waist is a bit too skinny, still. The gold chest and the red paint on the triceratops frill, the white waist, black pelvis, and white thighs are all Dinoking accurate. The most-green bicep and mostly-black forearm and hand on the left works pretty well. The right arm suffers again from not enough blue on Yokuryu's torso, but it's not that far off. The exposed white robot-mode shoulders of Doryu and Goryu leave white stripes across Dinoking's shins that shouldn't be there. We can arm Dinoking up by combining his accessories. The small gun has a port on the top that allows it to plug onto the bottom of the larger gun's barrel to become a pistol seen in at least one episode of Victory. It's also basically the weapon the JG1 toy had. However, more often than not Dinoking fought with a massive axe in the cartoon. You can make the axe by plugging the bottom of Doryu's scythe into the top of Goryu's club. Kakuryu's axe plugs into the top of the scythe, minus the small gun. Instead of the small gun, plug Doryu's sword into the top. Dinoking's new parts have some benefits not just to his proportions, but to his articulation as well. Both of his hands now have wrist swivels. On his left arm Gairyu's robot arms don't leave any clearance so he still doesn't have a bicep swivel and can only bend his elbow inward, but you do have the clearance to turn Yokuryu's waist, giving Dinoking's right arm a bicep swivel, and you can use Yokuryu's hips and his knees as a double elbow joint, good for just over 90 degrees. Finally, his new feet have built-in ankle pivots. Dinoking's hands are 5mm compatible and you can plug is weapons into either hand. For storage, you can plug the 5mm ports on the club part of his axe onto a 5mm peg on his back. The instructions suggest pluggin his gun into Gairyu's hand on the back of Dinoking's left arm, but I don't see any reason why you can't use the 5mm peg on the bottom of the small gun to plug it into the axe handle in the 5mm port on the opposite side as the one you used to attach the axe to his back in the first place. While the extra parts do make Dinoking somewhat improved over Volcanicus, the key word is still "somewhat." The individual Dinoforce figures are still severely hampered by the realities of the Core-class budget, especially Rairyu. Dinoforce also suffers in ways the Dinobots didn't, simply because these molds were made to look like the Dinobots, not like Dinoforce. And as group of Core-class figures, Dinoking is pretty small, roughly the same height as Earthrise Optimus or Megatron and eye-to-crotch with Deathsaurus or Victory Saber (or, for that matter, Legacy Menasor or the Combiner Wars gestalts). It's cool to get another Japanese G1 character, and Dinoking is the best use of these molds, so I'd recommend picking this set up rather than the invidual Dinobot releases. That said, if Hasbro ever gets around to a proper Monstructor I hope they do something less like Dinoking and more like Mensaor.