mikeszekely

It's nice to see that TFC is still moving ahead with that, considering that the only thing I can think of that they released this year was a repaint of last year's S.T. Commander and I was worried that they're dead. But I don't see myself replacing Ordin with TFC's. Anyway, TFSource might have screwed up my order and I still can't finish my reviews of CHUG-style Grimlocks... but how about an MP style one? Yes, at long last we're finishing Gigapower's Gigasaurs with a look at Superator. While I quite liked MP-08 ten years ago when he first came out, I seem to recall even then there were complaints that he was too small. If I'm remembering that wrong, there were definitely complaints when MP-10 came out as the new standard for Takara's MP scale and he was still roughly the same size as MP-08. Well, like the other Gigasaurs before him, Superator is an appropriately larger figure. And Superator brings the other usual Gigapower trappings, including a grayish silver paint over most of the body, multiple painted accents including on the insides of his wings, luscious red chrome on his red bits, and a brilliant gold chrome on his chest and dino claws that makes my Hasbro MP-08 look positively dull by comparison. There's been some complaints about his legs being too skinny, and I'm not sure I agree with that. Proportionally, they look pretty similar in-hand to MP-08's, after all. His chest is broader, though, and although his shoulders don't sit as high on his body as MP-08's his arms are thicker. Maybe that's what's throwing people off. Regardless, I think an improvement over both MP-08 and Fans Toys' Grinder, at least aesthetically. My only real complaint would be that the soles of Superator's feet swivel out for transformation in a manner that's basically identical to MP-08's but they lack any kind of detailing on the sole-side, whereas MP-08 had those thrusters. Superator doesn't come with a ton of accessories. Like the other Gigasaurs he comes with a sword sporting a black hilt and red translucent blade, with a switch on the bottom for activating the LED. He comes with a gun, which actually doesn't seem to have a spot for an LED. I do dig the smoked translucent plastic for the barrels and over a gold-painted sbot between them. Speaking of smoked translucent, there's a smoked translucent panel to go over his chest. He, of course, comes with his crown, which seems to be standard issue for a Grimlock toy these days. And, in lieu of a way to change the eye color on the default blue-eyed head, Gigapower included and entire second head. The red-eyed head doesn't have exactly the same sculpt, though. See, the blue-eyed head has smooth cheeks, ala G1 Grimlock, but the red-eyed head has fangs molded onto the cheeks, a detail that I believe was first used on Dreamwave's War Within design for Grimlock. It's a shame that you can't mix and match the eye colors with the different faces (and no, the red-eyed head isn't lighter, it's just how my camera picked up the lighting). I didn't count his dino arms as accessories, but it's worth noting that they are not installed in the box. Superator's articulation is an improvement over the decade-old MP-08, but it's perhaps a tad underwhelming by 2019 standards. His head is on a ball joint that can look down and up a decent amount (although pushing his head too far up will pop it off the ball joint), tilt a small amount sideways, and swivel. His chin is a little long, though, and you almost have to make him look up a little for it to clear his collar when you turn his head. His shoulders rotate on ratchets, and extend laterally just shy of 90 degrees on another ratcheted joint. His bicep swivels, which are quite tight, are ratcheted. His elbows are double-jointed and ratcheted at both ends but still only combine for 90 degrees. His wrists swivel, and each finger is individually articulated with pins at the base and middle knuckles on each finger plus swivels to allow his fingers some splay. The thumb also has two hinged knuckles, but the very base is a ball joint so he can swivel his thumb and fold it down over his palm. His waist swivels, and interestingly enough there's a button on his back. If you press it, you'll unlock a 45-degree ab crunch. Like MP-08, his wings can be angled up on a ratcheted joint. His hip skirts are hinged to allow his hips to bend almost 90 degrees forward, a little less than 90 degrees backward, and 90 degrees laterally, all on ratchets. His thighs swivel. His ratcheted knees bend 90 degrees, but they can also go one click in the wrong direction due to his transformation (which you can use to kind of cheat his lower leg into the position it'd naturally be if his hips could bend the full 90 degrees forward. Like many of the other Gigasaurs a ratcheted transformation hinge can also allow him to bow out at the knee. And you may need to do that to keep him flat-footed, because his ankle pivot is worse than MP-08's. It's practically non-existent, which isn't something I should have to write on an MP-style figure in 2019. For crying out loud, DX9's little Legends-class Grimlock has 90 degrees of pivot! It's probably worth mentioning here that my biggest complaint with MP-08, even at the time, was just how floppy he was, especially mid-transformation. Nothing is floppy on Superator. Pick him up, give him a good shake, and nothing moves. He holds his weapons fairly well using the time-tested method of pushing tabs on the handles into slots on his palms. While they feel pretty secure, the vibration from his shoulder ratchets can pop them loose. Dino mode is, again, par for Gigapower's course. Unlike FT's Grinder, which I felt took a few liberties with the angled claws and the default dinosaur head having a more organic shape, Superator hews pretty closely to G1 and doesn't stray too far from MP-08. Again, he's covered in paint, and the gold chrome is brighter, which helps it not look so green under the translucent plastic on his neck. The molded greebles are a bit sharper, and painted up a little more like the G1 toy. Just as his arms were a bit thicker proportionally in robot mode, his legs are a little thicker now than MP-08's, with thicker, stumpier claws. Aesthetically, my complaints are fairly minimal again. I prefer blue eyes for the dinosaur mode, but by now it's pretty well established that the chrome releases have red eyes and the blue eyes are on the metallic versions. From what I've heard, a color-changing gimmick ala MP-08's was something the designer wanted to include but Gigapower nixed for whatever reason. The rocket booster wing hinges seem a tad too large. There's no detail on the underside of the dino foot. Once again, this was something I think MP-08 did better, with the other side of the wrist having boosters molded in that were exposed when you tucked in the hands. And lastly, the flat space Gigapower left for an Autobot emblem doesn't hide away in dino mode the way MP-08's did. This isn't a huge deal for me, but again it's apparently something the designer wanted to include but Gigapower ultimately nixed. In dino mode Superator's articulation is a bit closer to MP-08's. The dinosaur head can swivel 360 degrees on ratchet, and it's got about 90 degrees of range from parallel with his spin to a right angle with his spine, also on a ratchet. His ratcheted jaws can open about 90 degrees, revealing chrome inside his mouth and on his teeth, plus a silver-painted flamethrower. His dino shoulders are ball joints, and his got elbow hinges that can bend 90 degrees. He's got wrist swivels, but turning his wrists pushes them off the mushroom pegs. Each of his claws are pinned at the base so they can wiggle, and the pinky claw is slightly shorter than the other two. His hips can still rotate and extend on ratchets. His knees can't bend too far, largely due to his elbow pads hindering the joints. No dino ankle pivots, but that's somewhat expected, I think. The claws on his feet can bend up and down a little, though. And his tail has a tiny amount of swish at the base. A slot on his back does allow his gun to be tabbed onto it. I couldn't find any storage for his sword, though. Weirdly, there are hexagonal peg holes on the his dino thighs, but they don't seem to serve a purpose. Oh, and be advised, there have been reports of breakages. See, to fold in is robot fists the front of the forearm folds up. However, the clearance needed to open the forearm is pretty tight. If you encounter any resistance stop immediately. What you need to do is bend the elbow backward at the lower joint, and you'll see a little seam start to appear between the hinge and the elbow joint. Once you do that, the flap will open with no problem. Again, though, it seems like this problem could have been avoided if they'd copied MP-08 and put the flap on the inside of the forearm instead of the front. And there you have it, folks. After four long years the last of the Gigasaurs has been released. I can't help feeling, though, like the line didn't go out on quite the bang I'd hoped. Don't misunderstand, I think Superator is the best MP-style Grimlock on the market today, beating out MP-08, the upscaled Reximus KO, and Fans Toys' Grinder. But while you could see the steady improvement in the Gigasaur line from Guttur to Grassor to Graviter, Superator (and Gaudentor before him) feel like a bit of backwards step, especially with the extremely poor ankle pivots. In Superator's case the regression is somewhat exacerbated by the fact that, even though he fixes the size, proportions, articulation, and floppiness of MP-08 there's still some things that MP-08 did better. The real kicker is that some of those things, like the color-changing eyes and the hiding chest symbol, are things that were apparently planned at one stage but killed at some point. As a result, Superator feels a little rushed, like Gigapower just wanted to hurry up and get him out so they could be done with dinobots. So Superator is a good figure and the best MP-Grimlock available, and I do recommend him. He's just not the definitive Grimlock I was hoping he'd be.

Hmm. Eknight told me September. EDIT: but they're in the US. Dunno if that makes a difference. Didn't the first run get a Voltron slipcover to to over the Golion box or something?

If I can get my hands on that set I'll have seven of that mold, and they haven't even done Coneheads. EDIT: I do wish that Blue Raspberry was the grape one, though.

There's a spot on the shelf for it at my local Target, but no stock. In fact, according to Brickseek there isn't a Target for 100 miles with any in stock.

Does it help if you think of it as a berser-car, but in the Mortal Kombat universe?

IIRC the lion's share of backers for the sail barge came in the final week. Plus the Takara mall and some retailers are taking orders, and we don't know when/if they're counted in the 8000.

I didn't have any of the Stunticons as a kid. My impression of them is comes entirely from the cartoon, and compared to that I find the toy heads overly generic. So this doesn't interest me at all, but it's nice that XTB is providing it for those that want it.

And speaking of Studio Series, I managed to get my hands on a figure that never seemed to come in stock in most online stores, going from no listing straight to "out of stock." I set a stock alert on Amazon, got emailed maybe four or five times that it was in stock only to check the link and have it still showing as out of stock before I got lucky and actually completed an order. It's Voyager-class Long Haul. Long Haul is one of the Bayverse designs I actually kind of liked (perhaps due to the fact that he wasn't designed by the people who worked on the first film, and his design actually began as fan art by Josh Nizzi that impressed Aaron Archer and Michael Bay enough that they hired him). I mean, it's got the Bayverse aesthetic, but at the same time he has a humanoid shape without extra eyes, chicken legs, or the other oddities the Bayverse foist on a lot of the Decepticons. He's green like the G1 version, turns into a dump truck like the G1 version, and you can tell what he turns into when you look at the robot. And frankly, the original Voyager-class toy was kind of a mess, with a tiny torso and long, thin limbs. This version is much closer to the CGI model. He's properly thick and chunky. Pretty much anything I could do to criticize the aesthetic boils down to this being a $30 Voyager-class toy and not an MP. I will say that I wish they could have done a little more to condense his backpack. I'm will say I'm not sure if I like the size, though. I have him here with Deluxe-class Scrap Metal, but I'll say that he's maybe a head shorter than Studio Series Optimus and roughly eye-to-eye with SS Ironhide. I'm not sure what the official sizes are, but I've seen 28' listed for Optimus and 30' listed for Long Haul. If they're counting Long Haul's backpack, then I suppose this is correct, but for some reason I thought he was bigger. Long Haul doesn't come with any accessories. He does have nubs on the ends of his (screen-accurate) arm kibble, though. Hasbro left them unpainted, because they double as tabs, but they'd properly be red, and in the movie he used his arm kibble as missile launchers. His articulation is kind of so-so. Screen-accurate or not, the kibble on his arms and the tires on his shoulders like to get in the way, and his thick, squat proportions don't do him any favors, but with patience you can still get him into some fairly dynamic poses. His head is on a ball joint and he can swivel his head, but the placement of his head and collar means he can look up and that's about it. His shoulders can rotate and extend laterally 90 degrees, but again working the arm kibble around the tires can be a chore. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend a little over 90 degrees. No wrist or hand articulation. His waist is on a ratcheted swivel. His hips are also ratcheted forward/backward. By default he can only move his legs forward one click, though, because of his thighs banging into his torso, and he can get roughly 90 degrees backward. The hips spread on friction joints about 45 degrees. His thighs swivel. Now, there's a second swivel at the knee that's used for transformation. If you swivel the thigh, then swivel the knee you'll have enough clearance to bend his hip forward over 90 degrees and his leg will still look normal, as long as you don't bend the knee. Speaking of knees, they can bend 90 degrees. The front of his foot can bend upward for transformation, and he's got up to 90 degrees of ankle pivots. Long Haul does indeed still turn into a dump truck, but the accuracy seems to be off just enough that Hasbro can say it's a generic dump truck and not have to pay Caterpillar for licensing on the 773B. The front bumper should be shorter, ending so that the steps are in line with the ladders flanking the grill. The headlights should stick out a bit further, and the area above them should be flat with black stripes. And he's missing the railing on the cab and the deck next to it. I expect that some of these changes, like the protrusions over the headlights, are due to the front of the truck forming the soles of his feet (those protrusions are basically heel spurs). They could have left the railing on it without affecting the other modes, though. For the most part, I'm sure there's someone out there who cares as much about dump trucks/construction vehicles as some of us care about cars, planes, trains, etc, but I think most people are going to look at Long Haul, see that he's a green dump truck, and figure that's good enough. Long Haul rolls, and that's about it. His bed can't move and he can't dump, or even really haul much of anything since the bed is really more arms and kibble than an actual truck bed. And when you flip him over you can see that there isn't a whole lot to his transformation. But, I suppose there doesn't need to be. When the rest of the Studio Series Constructions come out (which won't be for awhile, since we've still got five to go), Long Haul will be Devastator's right foot. And, yeah, that's a pretty decent foot. Due to the way he transforms for this mode (which kind of boils down to taking the truck mode, turning him upside down, then bending his hips 90 degrees) his waist swivel will become a ratcheted ankle, which I think works fairly well. Based on the drawing of how everyone will fit together I think we can use Long Haul's foot-mode size to and estimate the combined Devastator will be roughly 3 Long Hauls tall. So, despite being made of four Voyagers, two Deluxes, and two Leaders I think he'll be shorter than his Combiner Wars counterpart, but bulkier. Anyway, at the end of the day Long Haul isn't the most spectacular figure, but he's certainly not the worst the Studio Series has to offer, either. Chances are most people are really mostly interested in him as a foot, anyway, but I think it's a solid representation of the character in its own right, and I'll give it a recommend.

Between new figures hitting stores and the SDCC reveals Siege has been getting a lot of attention lately. But Studio Series is chugging along as well, and at a toy show in Mexico we got some new reveals. First is a repaint of WWII Bumblebee as Hot Rod. Now, if I didn't buy the mold as Bumblebee, safe money says I pass on "Ut Rudd" as well. A bit more interesting is a 3-pack of Arcee, Chromia, and Elita-1. Each one is unique; it's not three colors of one figure. But they look to be tiny, and probably not very complex. They're roughly half Hot Rod's size, which I guess aligns with the goal of having the robots in-scale with each other. All three will the sold together as one Deluxe. Moving up the interest scale, we're getting a Deluxe-class DotM Soundwave, and after, what, I think four other Bumblebees we're finally getting 2007 Camaro Bumblebee.

If you look at my pics, you can see seams where sections of the fuselage split, yeah? The last segment, with most of the tailfin, sits inside the leg. The segment right before it, with the kink, is actually the outside edge of his lower leg. The part of the wing with the thrusters is the inside edge of his leg, and the rest of the wing (that isn't on his backpack) wraps around to make the back of his leg. Now, you see those big, reinforced slits near the tips of the wings? When you fold the wings around the fuselage to make his legs those slits slide over the kinked bit of tailfin to lock it all together. Presumably, if the geometry of the tail was more accurate, the slits in the wings would have to be larger, perhaps infeasibly so.

While I like Zeta's Superion a good deal there have been a few things on my mind. For one, as good as the gestalt is, the four Aerialbot limbs aren't so hot. And while I think their Silverbolt is the best single-release they've done I remarked in my review of Fans Toys' Motormaster that Zeta's Silverbolt seemed a little cheap by comparison. Combine that with the fact that Fans Toys figures usually sell out pretty quickly and that Motormaster was a noticeable improvement over a lot of their other recent releases and I was wrestling with FOMO by the time they released Maverick, their Silverbolt. Ultimately, I caved in and bought a copy. Did I make the right call? Read on to find out! If I'm going to give credit where it's due, Maverick is the more cartoon-accurate of the two. He's thicker. There's a recess above his feet. He's got gold kneepads, a thick, diaper pelvis, a "U" shape in the middle of his torso, the protrusion at his collar, black behind his little shoulder wings, and the diagonal lines on his forearms. And he's definitely feels like he's got better materials than Zeta's, with loads of diecast and paint on nearly every surface. Yet for all of the vaunted "Fans Toys Quality," I think Zeta's actually looks cleaner or more refined. I'm not a fan of the red stripes on the tops of Maverick's thighs. Actually, I would have preferred if they used either a paler yellow or a metallic gold instead of the yellow they used, which is nearly identical to what they used for their Weirdwolf. The pair of white tabs flanking his head are a little unsightly, but not as much as the visible mushroom swivels and diecast joints in his lats, or his asymmetric forearms where his left arm has a big tab and his right has a large notch. I think it's worse from other angles, too. Yes, they both have backpacks, but Zeta's folds up so that he's got cartoon-accurate wings. Maverick's got that part of the wings on his legs, with a section more toward the front faking it and the nose hanging off his back like coattails. Plus, Zeta's looks like it's sitting snug, while Maverick again has noticeable diecast joints including a large diecast bar sticking out of his back and hanging like a bridge over his backpack. Maverick comes with a gun. It's one of the smaller Silverbolt guns I've seen, and it feels the most cartoon-like. He's also got an entire second head with a yelling face, and an extra face that looks kind of like the default but it has a chin strap. I'm not sure why the yelling face comes with a second head but the third face doesn't; there doesn't seem to be any difference in the actual heads. Like their Motormaster, Maverick doesn't come with any combiner parts. The latest word I'm hearing is that the next three each of Aerialbots and Stunticons won't either, that everything needed for combined mode will come with the last member of each team, and that the last member of each team will be priced around the same as Maverick and their Motormaster. In an era where combiners have been coming down in price that'd make Fans Toys' close to $700 a piece. Not only does Maverick look a little unpolished to me, I'm sorry to report that his articulation is fairly poor. His head is on a hinged swivel and can look up an ok amount but not so much down. His shoulders rotate on ratchets and can technically only extend about 45 degrees laterally on another ratchet. You can get more, up to a little past 90, but doing so involves partially pulling the shoulder apart like you would for transformation. His biceps swivel. His elbows are single hinges, and they fall a bit short of 90 degrees of bend. His wrists swivel. His thumbs are on ball joints at the base with a single hinge above it. His fingers are individually-articulated with a pin hinge at the base and a second hinge mid-knuckle. He has a waist swivel, but he can only turn about 15 degrees before it's blocked. His hip skirts can swing forward, pulling the sides along with them, so that his hips can bend about 90 degrees forward and a little less than that backward on a ratchet. His hip skirts can't move up out of the way for lateral movement, but they can fold in like they do for alt mode. With the skirt out he gets a little under 90 degrees, with the skirt in he can reach 90. Those joints are just friction joints, too, which seems a little inadequate given the diecast weight of the legs. His thighs swivel around his hip joints, and his knees bend 90 degrees on ratchets. If you move the slide-down covers above his feet out of the way his feet can tilt up, but not down. His ankles do pivot, but only about 15 degrees (you're looking at about the maximum in the above picture). The gun is your standard MP fare; tabs on the handle fit into slots on either palm. He holds it securely. Maverick's alt mode does look better than Zeta's. It's got the black nose, gold cockpit, and gold windows that Zeta's was lacking. It's also a big longer, and the proportions seem better as long as you can ignore the humps just past the midpoint of the fuselage. The vertical stabilizer has a simple cartoon-accurate yellow stripe instead of Zeta's goofy "Cyper Mission" mark. And yes, there's some large red chunks sticking out from under the wings. They're not Concorde-accurate, but they are cartoon-accurate. An interesting thing here is that Maverick is significantly thinner than Zeta's Silverbolt. This is because Zeta, like pretty much everyone else who ever made a Silverbolt toy, formed most of the plane from the backpack and squished most of the robot into a block stuck on the underside. Fans Toys tried to stuff more of Maverick into the actual plane. His head, the middle of his chest, his midsection, and his pelvis are actually jammed into the fuselage, his calves unfurl into much of the wings and tail. His pecs and collar move some of their mass to the sides, and his forearms split in half. Those pecs and shoulders swing around on diecast arms to sit near his hips. The thing is, while Maverick does ultimately end up with a thinner block of robot on the underside, he still ends up with a block of robot on the underside. Plus, trying to stuff his thighs partly into the fuselage is why he's got the humps on the other side. And this is all at the expense of a transformation that, while not as frustrating as Rouge or Quietus, isn't particularly elegant or fun. Oh, and you notice that there's a red bit sticking off on one side that's lying flat on the other? That's because the pin hinge that part is on is super loose on both sides of my copy. Ultimately, shaving a few millimeters of thickness doesn't really feel worth making his transformation so much more complicated than it otherwise needed to be, especially because his shifting pecs and shoulders are the direct cause of his shoulder articulation issues. Maverick doesn't do much in plane mode, anyway. He does have rolling landing gear on diecast pieces. His nose can tilt down, but the droop is too far away from the cockpit and doesn't have a visor. As near as I can tell there is no storage for his gun in alt mode. Well, as I said at the beginning of this review, I like Zeta's Superion just fine. I don't need to replace it with Fans Toys', but I thought that I might use Fans Toys' individual releases as the non-combined Aerialbots. But if I'm being honest Maverick isn't giving me a lot of confidence. Fans Toys would do well to figure out that there is such a thing as too much diecast, especially when you're going to jam it into the torso of a 20" combiner. They need to stop overdoing it with the engineering when a simpler solution exists, especially when that engineering interferes with articulation. The fact that Fans Toys' stuff sells out so quickly and you're worried you might miss out on this guy if the other four and/or the combined mode turns out to be good is the only reason I can suggest for buying Maverick, otherwise feel free to pass. While he's not the worst figure Fans Toys has released in the last few years he's a major disappointment after their Motormaster, and I'm not convinced that he's actually better than Zeta's Silverbolt.

That's a Hasbro Grimlock in the middle, yeah? Did you paint it yourself? It is that a Takara?

Well, taking a break from Grimlocks, the one character I might have more of (besides Optimus) would be Seaspray. And while there are more Seasprays than you'd probably think, for quite some time your choices for an MP Seaspray have been ToyWorld's Wavebreak (and now the shinier Zeta version, Deepsea) or Fans Toys' Spindrift. Both, in my opinion, were kind of mediocre. Wavebreak had poor articulation and an alt mode that's nearly as wide as it is long, and Spindrift was over-engineered and looked like he'd been spending too much time at the gym. So I've really been looking forward to this guy: X-Transbot's Neptune. So in the cartoon Seaspray was basically a refrigerator with stumpy limbs and a beer gut, and if you look at Neptune and want to say that he's still kind of slender I wouldn't say that you're wrong. But my mental image of Seaspray is colored as much or my by the G1 toy, which is one of the few toys that I had as a kid that I still have to this day. And the G1 toy definitely has that beer gut, but it isn't quite as stumpy as the animation model. I'd argue that Neptune's a happy middle ground between the cartoon and the toy. His torso is still mostly a box, and he does have that beer gut. His feet even do some extra folding I've never seen on a Seaspray to bring his boat feet down in size to be more like the animation model. But yes, he's a little taller and narrower than animation model would suggest. It's been suggested that the blue paint that XTB used is too dark or too metallic. Yeah, you can definitely see that it's a bit darker than Spindrift (or the G1 toy), but I don't think it's necessarily too dark, especially depending on the episode you're using for reference. And while it photographs as a very shiny metallic it's really not that shiny in hand, and I can't emphasize that enough. In hand, it just has enough of a sheen to look wet, which is totally appropriate for the character. A bigger color complaint for me would be around the eyes, which is kind of a dark silver. I'd prefer it to be a darker gray or gunmetal. Anyway you shake it, though, I feel like Neptune's a big upgrade over Wavebreak and Spindrift. Neptune comes with a ton of accessories. There's a set of red eyes you can use with the default head, or a whole new toy-style face (although a proper toy face would have black eyes), and a screwdriver for opening the head to do the swapping. There's gun, done in blue but otherwise similar to a number of other figures. Then there's also some effect parts, waterskis, a handle on some rope, a beach ball, a bucket, and a shovel. My skis came oriented like this, which seems to be backward. The water effects on them are just tabbed in, so it's easy to switch them around. Neptune's got pretty great articulation, even for a figure this small. His head is on a hinged swivel that can look up and down just enough to visually convey that he's looking up or down. His shoulders can rotate and extend laterally slightly over 90 degrees, and he's even got a bit of forward and backward butterfly. His biceps swivel, and he's got double-jointed elbows that curl 180 degrees. His wrists swivel, and his fingers are molded as a single piece hinged at the base knuckle like an MP carbot. His waist swivels, although the swivel point is slightly behind his pelvis. I think it's fine for most poses, just know that it can look a little weird if he swivels too far. His torso is actually connected to his pelvis on a double hinge, so he has an ab crunch, and he can arch his back. His hips can go 90 degrees forward, backward, or to the side. His thighs swivel just below the hip joint, and his knees are a single hinge that still gets you over 90 degrees. His feet can tilt up and down a little, and his ankles can pivot up to 90 degrees. There's no gimmicks when it comes to holding his gun. The handle is a simple square peg, and his closed fists naturally make a square hole. Nothing but the friction in his finger joints secures the gun in place, but the gun is small enough and the friction tight enough that it's not a problem. You'll notice that there are some rectangular panels on his forearms. Those open to reveal some red-painted gizmos that, if I'm not mistaken, were communicators he used in the episode "Make Tracks." His tummy opens up, too. It's necessary for one of his gimmicks, but what wasn't necessary was that XTB molded some circuits in there that are vaguely reminiscent of a scene in "Sea Change" where Seaspray "adjusts his dial" to pick up Deceptitran's distress signal. As for his bucket, shovel, and beach ball I can't recall them appearing in an episode of the cartoon, but you can certainly pose Neptune playing with them like he's having a day at the beach. His hands can hold onto the shovel and bucket; posing with the ball is a little trickier. Neptune's alt mode is a thing of beauty. More than any other Seaspray I own it looks like the G1 cartoon or (especially) the G1 toy, but upscaled. The upper decks have the right shape and that bit of overhang at the back, and the roof is dominated by bright yellow rectangles. XTB added some nice details, though. The windows are translucent blue, and there's molded windshield wipers above the front windows and below the upper deck windshield. And if you look closely there are some silver-painted dock cleats molded near the front of the vehicle. Even better, the transformation is pretty smooth and intuitive. It really makes you wonder why Spindrift was so complicated and came out looking so wrong in both modes. I guess it makes Fans Toys wonder the same thing, though, since they're apparently re-doing him. Neptune has four little wheels on the underside so he can roll. The propellers can spin, and during transformation Neptune's belly flips around to reveal the little gun seen on his roof in the episode "The Golden Lagoon." A nice side effect of this is that if you put an Autobot insignia on his tummy in robot mode it'll be hidden in alt mode. Likewise, notice the squared-off section on the blue roof, just in front of the yellow rectangles. That square splits in half, and each half rotates to the inside of the foot for bot mode. If you put an insignia there you'll have cartoon-accurate placement in both modes that doesn't show up in the other mode. Now, as far as accessories go, there's nothing really to do with the bucket, shovel, and beach ball except let someone else play with them. He does, however, have storage for his gun. And, notice the notches on the white part of his underside? And the black ring sticking out the back? The effect parts clip into those notches, making it look like Spindrift is kicking up a spray of seawater as he zooms along. And the rope can hook onto the ring. Meanwhile, those skis that he comes have a number of bumps can grooves that the wedge around the tires under MP Bumblebee's feet and clip over the bumpers on his toes. With the skis securely fastened to Bee's feet, you can stick the handle at the other end of the rope into Bee's hands to recreate the scene of him waterskiing with Seaspray at the beginning of "Sea Change." Now, I'm not going to tell you that Neptune is perfect. I can find at least some flaws with just about any given figure. In addition to the minor color issues I've already mentioned, I'll say that I wish the double hinge in his waist was a little tighter. I wish there was a way to get the lined toy face to work with the cartoon eyes. When the upper deck swivels around for robot mode I wish there was a way to lock it in place. But I think they're all pretty minor complaints on a figure with good articulation, a good transformation, loads of accessories, and an overall good sculpt with proportions that strike a good balance between the cartoon and the toy. He is, by a wide margin, the best Seaspray you can buy, but I'll go one further than that and say that he's probably the single best release from X-Transbots to date. I highly recommend this figure. If you don't have a Seaspray for your MP collection, this is the one to get. If you do have a Seaspray in your MP collection Neptune is good enough and inexpensive enough that I think it's even worth upgrading.

I haven't decided if I'll go after the other Planet X dinos or not. Slag and Sludge look pretty good, Snarl looks ok, but their Swoop looks so doofy (game accurate or not). And it looks like my last Grimlock review might be held up, since TFSource sent the wrong thing. At least there's other goodies in the box I can talk about.

If you read my post here, where I talked about the various official Grimlock toys Hasbro has released and which might work with the Siege line, you'll already know that I picked the old Voyager-class Fall of Cybertron Grimlock as the best of the official bunch but still wasn't really satisfied with it. I wondered if a third-party might be able to deliver something better. And where better to start than with Planet X's Vulcan, an unofficial version of the same Fall of Cybertron design? I'm not going to lie, I was a little disappointed when I first took Vulcan out of the package. Maybe I'm a little spoiled by "premium" MP-style figures, but Vulcan isn't particularly hefty as he contains no diecast, and the paint applications are for the most part delegated to pinkish accents here and there, plus a little "gold" on his shoulders, shins, and feet. The light-piped head is practically identical to the Hasbro one, and while they're a bit more caramel than Hasbro's khaki his gold parts aren't actually gold. After reviewing things like FT's Roadking and XTB's Stunticons, which are still sitting on my desk, there wasn't anything that jumped out at me as saying "this is a $125 toy." Regardless of whether or not Vulcan's improvements over the Hasbro version are worth $100, side-by-side those improvements become immediately obvious. He isn't covered in paint, but there are definitely more paint apps on him. He's a bit taller and much beefier, and that extra beefiness is more game-accurate. Likewise, his black fists and thighs and his red midriff and pelvis are also more accurate. I'd say that he could still stand to be slightly taller to scale how I'd like with Prime, but I think we're finally hitting the lower end of "correct" scaling. When you spin him around Vulcan still has a pretty large backpack, but everything is actually sitting against a solid back. Vulcan doesn't have the super hollow torso of the official. The insides of his shoulders, biceps, and thighs are similarly solid. And while the front of his shins do have hollow spaces the parts that sit in them do a much better job of filling those spaces than on the official. Vulcan comes with the same accessories the Hasbro version does- a game-accurate sword and shield. Like the Hasbro versions they're largely done with a translucent orange plastic, but unlike the Hasbro one the gray parts aren't just painted over the translucent plastic, they're separate pieces. They're also bigger. I couldn't find the sword for the Hasbro version, but you can see that the Vulcan's shield dwarfs the official. It's been a long time since I've played Fall of Cybertron, but I feel like the shield in the game was pretty large. Now, I know Grimlock didn't use a gun in Fall of Cybertron, so it makes sense that Planet X wouldn't have included one. I still would have liked having Grimlock's double-barreled rifle, though. Vulcan's head is on a ball joint, so he can look up a little and tilt his head sideways a bit. His chin prevents him from looking down, though. His shoulders can rotate, and he can extend them laterally 90 degrees. His biceps can swivel, and his elbows are double-jointed. Due to the size of his shoulders and forearms, though, he's still limited to bending his elbow a little over 90 degrees (which is fine. His wrists can swivel, and a pin through the base knuckles of his fingers allow them to open and close like an MP carbot's. His waist can swivel. His hips can move forward, backward, or laterally a little over 90 degrees on friction universal joints; I do kind of wish they'd used ratchets for at least the forward/backward joint. His thighs can swivel. He's got a pair of ratchet joints at each knee, but you really only need the top one. No matter how you configure them you're only going to get 90 degrees of bend. The front of his foot is on a hinged ball joint, which allows it to bend down and provide about 45 degrees of pivot before the heel starts banging into stuff. I'm not convinced folding out that heel is necessary, though, so the faux pivot is essentially unlimited. Unlike the official version there's no peg holes on Vulcan's forearms. He holds both of his accessories via 5mm peg holes shaped into his hands. The hand guard on the sword even hinges open so you can slide the sword into his hand before closing it back up. The 5mm grip also means that he's theoretically compatible with other Siege weapon gimmicks like Battle Masters and Weaponizers, although in practice you may find the claws on his wrists and the overall bulk on his forearms kind of gets in the way. Vulcan's not stuck carrying the accessories in his hands, though. A peg on the sword allows it to be attached to the shield, then the whole the can be pegged onto his back. If you're not a fan of sticking stuff on his already-large backpack, or if you just don't like the shield, Vulcan also peg holes on both hips that you can peg the sword into. OK, so I was maybe a little underwhelmed by Vulcan's robot mode. Well, Vulcan's dinosaur mode totally makes up for it. Seriously, the engineering Planet X came up with is borderline witchcraft. While the Hasbro version seems to shrink as its legs fold up to cover the thighs and most of the torso to become an awkward-looking tail Vulcan somehow expands and seems larger in dinosaur mode. His forearms extend and the shoulders slide up to make the arms longer, and the backpacks absolutely unfurls before locking back together as everything from the dino rib cage up. An actual tail explodes out of his calves like clowns from a tiny car. Panels fold out and lock down so everything feels solid. He's free from the entirely hollow underside that the Hasbro version suffers from. In fact, his robot chest is properly at his underbelly instead of his butt, which is made from his shins. His knee pads are hinged to reveal little rocket thrusters, and that's a game-accurate detail. And everything sits together in such a way that the dinosaur body feels like a continuous piece. Aside from a little of his thighs and pelvis being visible from some angles the robot-mode parts aren't immediately apparent. Planet X didn't spend all their dark magic on looks, either. Vulcan's dinosaur head has about 90 degrees of up/down range, and it can swivel around so he's tilting his head, sure. But Planet X also put the head on a slider, allowing it to extend forward enough to give clearance to another swivel that allows him to also turn his head to the side a bit. His jaws open wide (and stay open, unlike Hasbro's) to reveal a tongue-like flamethrower and some legitimately sharp teeth inside. His little arms are on swivels for rotation and a pinned hinge so they can extend 90 degrees outward. The elbows can bend, and the claws can open and close. His shoulders are now his hips, with all the rotation they had before, although lateral movement is limited to maybe 30 degrees. His bicep swivel becomes a thigh swivel, and his double-jointed elbow is now a double-jointed knee. Plus, in the process of extending an additional joint is reveal in the forearm to give his dino legs a bit of digitigrade forward bend. It's too bad they couldn't have magically worked in an ankle pivot, too, but even sorcerers must have their limits. Finally the tail has a trio of hinges. He can't really bend his tail up or down, but he can get a bit of curl going. Weapon storage is identical to the Hasbro version, which is to say that they use pegs to plug into the dino hips. It doesn't look great, especially given how big the shield is, but it's something. While, subjectively, I might want more of a premium feel for my money I can't deny that Vulcan is an excellent figure. My only big complaint is that his tail is connected to his calves via these armatures, and they have to swing past his hips and around his knees as his legs fold up. One side, for whatever reason, really doesn't have the clearance to do that, and you're really forced to bend the plastic armature to force the tail past. Now, the the armatures are made from a sturdy, flexible plastic for this reason, but it's still not the kind of thing that gives you the warm fuzzies. Aside from that one detail and a desire for more metallic paint (especially for the gold), you've got a big, burly robot that turns into one of the best T-Rex modes I've seen on a transforming figure. He's a good size for Siege. And he's very game-accurate, although that could be a two-edged sword if you're looking for something with more of a G1 vibe. It's an easy recommend from me; the dino mode is something that needs to be experienced first hand. He's my reigning champ for a CHUG-style Grimlock, for sure, but is there an even better option? Tune in later this week when I look at a few more options and decide who gets the crown.

Gabriel was around $30 more than Ultima Guard at retail and I'd say worth the extra money, but I guess if you're finding discounts on Ultima Guard then I guess that does make the choice a little harder. Without having handled Hasbro's Omega Supreme I can't say for sure, but I think Ultima Guard is a little closer to MP in terms of materials and polish.

I mean, sure, I'd rather there be fewer hoops to jump through, and generally speaking I'd love it if store and con exclusives would go away and I could just buy everything for the regular retail price at Hasbro Pulse. But $30 on a credit card that I already have because it saves me 5% at a store I shop at regularly beats $50-60 importing the Asian release. And at least Red Wing isn't a major character. Meanwhile Skywarp can only be bought in a special pack with a bunch of Targetmasters, Ratchet is a Walgreens exclusive, Smokescreen seems to be exclusive to Hasbro Pulse, and Bluestreak is a Walmart exclusive. Speaking of Walmart, I found myself stopping on my way home from my kid's birthday. I saw a guy walking his pet alligator (he was actually a nice guy and he let me pet the gator). I also found that they put their Siege Micromasters and Battle Masters on clearance for half off, so I picked up the Micromaster Rescue Patrol and Battle Masters Aimless, Lionizer, and Pteraxadon. First, let's take a look at the Rescue Patrol, composed of Red Heat and Stakeout. Stakeout isn't necessarily a retool of Roadhandler, but he's pretty similar. Mechanically, the only real difference is that his knees are ball joints instead of pins, so his articulation is a little better. Other than the knees, he's got ball joints for shoulders, ball joints for hips, and a head swivel. Aesthetically I think he looks fine, although he'd be more G1-accurate with blue thighs and a silver pelvis. Red Heat is meant to be the G1 Micromaster Red Hot, and he's a bit more accurate than Stakeout. He's just a little thicker in the middle, and he's only got one tire on each arm instead of two. Like Stakeout he's got ball joints at the shoulders and hips (which were super loose on my copy). His knees are (tight) pinned hinges, and although it's difficult to get to his head does swivel. Surprisingly, he's also got a waist swivel. Stakeout turns into a Cybertronian police car. Nothing really to write home about, except that I wish he didn't have the tampoed Autobot emblem on his hood. In my head canon he's basically Barricade Junior. Red Heat turns into a fire truck, and he's kind of weird. He's got these long heel spurs that are molded like ladders and form his roof (which was all red on the original toy). You can also see that the extra rear wheels are actually molded in, but they're left unpainted red. Red Heat's ladder can swivel, hinge up and down, plus there's an extra segment that folds out from inside. Of note is that the tip of the ladder ends in one of those little pegs for blast effect parts. Like other Micromasters both figures have 5mm pegs so you can stick them on larger Siege figures, and there's even an official combination that makes use of Red Heat's waist swivel and a socket on the back of his ladder. However, the "gun" mode is as stupid as the Race Car Patrol's, if you ask me. My opinion of Siege Micromasters hasn't changed much. $10 is still too much for them, but $5 feels a little more fair. You're not really missing anything if you pass. I just like transforming police cars for some reason. Aimless is a slight remold of Blowpipe, with an unfortunately similar inverted color scheme. I guess he's supposed to be Misfire's Targetmaster, and I guess it's cool that we're getting them, if a little after the fact and for an extra $5 (retail). Like the other Battle Masters that turn into guns the barrel is removable and has a smaller 3mm peg. The peg allows the barrel to be attached to Aimless' arm and used as a weapon in robot mode. Articulation is super basic: ball joints for shoulders, ball joints for hips, and that's it. Aimless' gun mode is pretty much what you'd expect, Blowpipe with inverted colors and a different barrel. He comes with brand new blast effect parts that are pretty cool-looking. At the end of the day I'm always up for more guns, more Decepticons, and more blast effect parts, so he gets a recommend. Pteraxadon is a little Pteranadon. You can articulate his head up and down a bit, spread his wings out or tuck them in, and his feet are hinged so you can put him in either a standing pose or a flying pose, but that's about it. It looks like he's got a little gun running up his back, and you can put a shooting blast effect there, otherwise you fold it out, tuck in the wings, fold the head all the way down, and fold his feet in to turn him into an axe. A pteranodon that turns into an axe is always a good idea, and it's not a bad axe at that. Note that in addition to his ax handle he's got a 5mm peg on the other side. You can use this to store the axe, or I suppose you could flip him around and have a strange (but not combined Micromaster awful) gun mode. Pteraxadon comes with an smash-style effect part. I guess it's appropriate for him, but it's not as versatile as the gun shots. Either way, it's a pteranodon that turns into an axe! Of course I recommend it! And lastly we come to Lionizer. Lionizer is, presumably, a lion, and the sculpt is pretty decent, although I wish his that either his mane was painted silver or his face was the same black color as the rest of him. Although the sculpt is fine, his limbs are all just ball joints at the hip/shoulder. So while they can rotate and even spread a little, with no knee or ankle articulation there isn't a lot you can do to pose him. Even his head can only look up so far, and tilting it down starts to reveal a 5mm peg on the back of his head. His tail, like the barrels of the gun guys, is removable and has a 3mm peg at the base. There's really no place to put it besides the tail-spot, though. You'd think that another small figure could use it as a weapon, but the Micromasters and Pteraxadon don't have 3mm peg holes and all three of the guns have their 3mm holes on their forearms. If they had holes in their fists they could use it as a sword, but your best bet is to just leave it attached. Lionizer is supposed to turn into a sword, but again the blade is just his tail. So between the tail and the flipped-out 5mm peg you have a balled-up cat, and the result is more like a club with a knife sticking out of the top than a sword. I think the Micromaster Air Strike patrol made a more convincing sword (although that might be just because I'm more used to swords made of aircraft thanks to Transformers Armada). Lionizer's included effect part is a swoosh part that's good for swooshing his blade, but not much else. Lionizer's a pretty easy pass.

I'm sure some of you may have seen a Generations Selects repaint of Siege Starscream going around by the name of Red Wing. I know you could buy it for around $50 (shipping often not included) from some Asian stores. If you, like me, didn't feel like paying a large markup on a $30 toy but were still interested in getting it I have good news! Turns out it's a Target exclusive. The only catch is that you have to have a Target.com account, you have to have a Target REDcard (their store credit card), you have to have the REDcard saved in your Target.com wallet, and you have to use it as your payment method at checkout (although that's not really a big catch for me, since I already had a REDcard since it seems like I'm always shopping at Target).

I've heard good things. I think it was, on paper, supposed to compete with Gabriel and Terminus Giganticus, but enough liberties were taken that it's not really accurate enough in my opinion, but I don't think that matters as much with CHUG. Build quality is supposed to be fine. I like that it comes with blast effect parts and a stand to make the rocket look like it's flying. The tank is a little weird looking. Personally I've got Gabriel for my MP and I'm still in for Hasbro's, but I don't see any reason that this couldn't be a good alternative. I've thought about buying the blue and white Ultima Guard, though. Just never pulled the trigger.

*Me right now* (my bad)

Because I'm going to be on an airplane for 12-14 hours (after a shorter flight from Pittsburgh to Detroit), then in Beijing for two weeks, before doing a second 12-14 hour flight back to the States? Also because sometimes I have to poop. I know that's technically not away from home, but it's away from the TV(s) I usually dock with.

100% this. The animation is super inconsistent. I mean, either Devastator is so huge you'd need one that's 7-feet tall to scale with an MP Optimus... ...or one the size of MP Soundwave is big enough. I know that we tease people some people for taking them a little too seriously, but I do think the the scale charts Sunbow created for reference are a better place to start than the animation itself. But even then there's a bit of variance, and ultimately it comes down to what feels right to you. That's why, while Shockwave was shorter than Megatron according to most scenes in the cartoon and the Sunbow scale chart, as someone whose impression of him was shaped a lot by the old Marvel comics I feel like he should be the same size as Megatron. Regarding Dinobots, or Grimlock specifically, I'm of the opinion that the "correct" scale puts the top of Optimus' head right at the insignia on Grimlock's chest. But I think you can make a case for anywhere from Prime being a head or so shorter than that to the top of his head reaching the top of Grimlock's chest. And Mike, for what it's worth, I think there's an argument to be made that MP Star Saber is too small.

I think it depends on your impression of them. Like I said, I think both are in the range of correct, and which one is "more" correct is subjective. And it's not entirely about scale, either. FT's are definitely more cartoon-accurate in robot mode, as you said, down to Sludge's T-shaped torso and Snarl's red pelvis. If that's something that matters to you then they probably look better to you.

I actually had considered MP-08, and I was going to touch on him in another "article," but the short version is that I think he's roughly a head too tall. (Also, I have some 3P Grimlocks in-hand or on the way that I haven't reviewed )

Debatable. That's not to say that you're wrong, just that the animation is very inconsistent, and while I've seen scale charts that put Optimus close to Grimlock's chin (ala Fans Toys) I've seen others that put Optimus roughly mid-chest (ala Gigapower). There's room for interpretation, and I think that both sets fall within the range of "accurate." And I personally prefer them on the larger size; when Wheeljack unveils them to the Autobots for the first time they're in awe of how big they are (and that's an episode after they'd already met Skyfire).