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mikeszekely

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  1. mikeszekely
    It's a KO of the SOC Voltron, but it's definitely got some changes. I don't know if they count as improvements, but the quality is still supposed to be quite good. Here's some quick pics I pulled from Rocket Punch Army's reviews. AFAIK, only the red, green, and blue are out. Don't know what the final cost will be, but it should be close to the $300 the SOC went for... but considering how difficult it is to find the SOC for under $800 these days, I guess that's a bargain.
  2. mikeszekely
    Show.Z is in China. He has a tendency to throw stuff up for preorder the moment it's mentioned, so maybe hold off until closer to release, but I've bought 3P TF stuff from him plenty of times. He's probably my top source not based in the US due low prices and good service.
  3. mikeszekely
    Studio Series Barricade is coming! Apparently also at the show (Canada's Fan Expo) were Sideswipe (with the convertible alt mode, so I guess Dark of the Moon?) and yet another Studio Series Bumblebee. This time it's the WWII armored car version from the flashback scene in The Last Knight. Which, cool, I guess. And Hasbro really knows how to milk a popular character, eh? But 70s Camaro Bee, Volkswagen Bee, and now armored car Bee, but not the modern Camaro Bee was in the first three films and that was probably his most recognizable version? Eh, I'm not complaining too hard, though. Barricade's been my biggest wish from the SS line, and it looks like my wish is granted.
  4. mikeszekely
    Apparently MPM-07 was leaked, and it's another Bumblebee. Specifically, it's the Volkswagen Bumblebee from the upcoming movie. I understand the urge to have movie tie-ins and all, but I guess I'd have rathered they finished the movie 1 cast.
  5. mikeszekely
    Day one purchase for me. Maybe if it sells well they'll do the rest of the series. Or, dare I hope it, a new one.
  6. mikeszekely
    Yes.
  7. mikeszekely
    No, they only do it that way for the Hasui cars. With Megatron and Shockwave the first release is cartoon, the + release is toy. I can pretty much promise you that's how Prime v3 is going to go.
  8. mikeszekely
    Yup. Based on Takara's MO of late, I'd bet the first release has white thighs, with a subsequent + release that has silver.
  9. mikeszekely
    Prime's got some epic bell bottoms.
  10. mikeszekely
    I'm definitely looking forward to it, but not insanely so. I rare play games that aren't on the Switch, 3DS, or PC. In fact, I'm pretty sure the only games I've finished all summer have had "Mega Man" in the title...
  11. mikeszekely
    The only other new figure in the second wave of Studio Series Deluxes is Lockdown. The thing with Lockdown is that, like a lot of the other smaller figures in the Studio Series line, he's still ultimately a Deluxe-class toy designed on a Deluxe-class budget. While the designers managed to get the missile things on his shoudlers and the outside of his biceps, most of his arms are car kibble. His back is covered in car kibble. His calves are car kibble. His heels are car kibble. His lower legs have an odd curve, so his ankles are actually behind his thighs. Despite the limitations of his size and budget, the designers were definitely trying. If you ignore the kibble most of his body has the correct proportions. His head is perfect. His collar, his torso, his hips, and his thighs are all covered in move-accurate molded detail. And despite being a pretty uniform dark gray plastic Hasrbo still stuck some nice painted detail including some gold on his thighs and abdomen, some silver and blue on his chest, silver on his face, and the piercing green of his optics. So, yeah, you're not going to get Peru Kill, but I don't think we can expect that from a toy that costs a sixth of the price. A more fair comparison, albeit one I don't have, is the original Age of Extinction Deluxe-class Lockdown, and aesthetically the Studio Series version is even more of an improvement than Studio Series Jazz was over the movie 1 Deluxe. Pro tip (something I didn't figure out until after I was done taking pictures): if you move his backpack out of the way enough to get a finger into his torso cavity, you can pop his chest out. Looks much better that way, and it's not mentioned in the instructions. For a Deluxe and a car, he's definitely taller than Stinger, Bee, or Jazz. Which is good, but... is it good enough? He's a head shorter than Studio Series Optimus, and I believe that version of Optimus was supposed to be shorter than his knight form. I don't know if there was an official scale chart for Age of Extinction, but I've seen some sources give 28' for pre-knight Optimus and 22' for Lockdown, so maybe this is still technically in (robot) scale. Lockdown sure looked to be as big as Prime in the movies, though. Although the art on the box shows Lockdown with a gun, Lockdown doesn't come with a gun. Instead he's got a knife/sword that I kind of don't remember, and his hook hand. His rifle and his masked head would have been nice, but no. Lockdown's head is on a ball joint with a hinge at the base. He can look up no problem, and tilt his head sideways an adequate amount. He can't really look down at all, though, and rotation is limited due to his collar. His shoulders are also ball joints with hinges at the base, but due to kibble you're limited to 90 degrees of lateral extension and perfectly adequate but not 360 degrees of rotation. He does have a bicep swivel, and his elbow is a ball joint so it can swivel there in addtion to bending 90 degrees. No wrist articulation. He does actually have a waist swivel, but it's limited to about a 45 degree turn in either direction. Hips are ball joints, and you get 90 degrees forward, 45 degrees backward, and 60-70 degrees laterally. His thighs can swivel, and his knees can bend 90 degrees. Due to transformation his feet can bend up but not down, and he lacks any ankle pivots. His sword can be held is either hand, as the handle is your basic 5mm peg. A tab on the side does allow you to attach it to the outside of his forearm, too. As for his hook, it has a 5mm peg, but the plastic around the handle means you can only put the peg int the top of his fist. In his right hand, the hook curls in toward his body. He can hold it in his left hand, but that means the hook curls away from his body. Like his knife, the hook has a tab and can be plugged into his forearm, allowing for a more movie-accurate upward curve from his right arm, but his fist will still be clearly visible. Also, I don't think it's intentional and there's no tabs or anything to secure it, but you can kind of store his sword on his back by wedging it between the part that's the rear of the car and the folded-in panels. The tab on the sword kind of lays over the edge, holding it in place. Again, though, it's not secure in any way; you're just relying on that one tab grabbing the lip of the backpack and the tension of the joints in his backpack to keep it from falling out. Just like Jazz, Lockdown's alt mode is goregeously on-point. At first he might seem a little dull, being a farily uniform gunmetal color with smoked translucent plstic over the headlights and for the windows. However, I think that gunmetal color might be a finish and not just simple plastic. It looks nice in hand. As far as size goes, he's bigger than Jazz, which I think is ok, but he's also a bit bigger than Bee. I'm not so sure that's correct, but the Studio Series is about robot scale, not alt mode scale. A closer look does have some gold paint over the Lambo emblem, and his tail lights are painted red. His weapons can plug onto the sides of the car. All-in-all, I think it's a pretty good alt mode, especially for the size. Between the two I definitely like Jazz more than Lockdown, but Lockdown's still a fine figure in his own right and the best of the Decepticon Deluxes. And unlike Crowbar and Stinger, Lockdown feels like a major character, one you'd want in your collection. I'll give him a recommend. Speaking of wanting figures in a collection... I'm definitely going to do my best to track down Studio Series Ironhide, and at that point I'll have collected and covered the first 14 releases in the Studio Series line. After that, despite my pining for a Studio Series Bonecrusher and Barricade, it looks like the Bumblebee movie is going to interrupt things a bit. Expect that I may skip SS 15-17, which are repaints of Bumblebee, Ratchet, and Lockdown. I will pick up 18, which is Bumblebee from the upcoming movie, but skip 19 and 20 which are gold repaints of both old Camaro and Beetle Bumblebee. I'm probaby going to pick up Dropkick, who's numbered 22, but 21 is a repaint of Starscream and 23 is a repaint of Stinger.
  12. mikeszekely
    Stopped at Target today. They have a ton of those new Cyberverse toys, which my daughter is a bit too young for and I'm a bit too old for. C'est la vie. On the plus side, they finally stocked the second wave of Studio Series Deluxes, which I eagerly snatched up. Here's Studio Series Jazz. Like a lot of movie figures this size Jazz has a lot of roof and trunk kibble on his back, but ignoring that he's got much, much better proportions than the original movie Deluxe. He's reasonably movie accurate, too. The most obvious differences are the shoulders, where his alt mode headlights don't actually belong and only vaguely mimic the actual indents on the CGI model's shoulders, and his feet, which despite having a lot of the CGI details are really just nubs on the base of his shins rather than proper feet. More paint to highlight the details would have been nice, but at least the details are present. Even his forearms have molded fake headlights at his wrists. He's less massive but similar in height to Studio Series Bumblebee, which I think checks out. I can't get over how much tinier he is than the movie 1 Deluxe, though. Looked at another way, he's roughly halfway between a Generations Scout-class and Deluxe class. For some that will make his $20 price tag a little hard to swallow, but I prefer to think that he traded some plastic budget for more paint. His sole accessory is this crescent gun thing. I think it's movie accurate. His articulation isn't bad for a Hasbro Deluxe. His head is on a ball joint that serves as a swivel with decent sideways tilt. There's some up and down tilt, too, but it's kind of limited due to the cut of the joint and his long, pointy chin. His shoulders have hinges that provide 130 degrees of lateral tilt, with a separate swivel for 360 of rotation. Transformation hinges even give him some butterfly motion. He doesn't have a proper bicep swivel, but a ball joint at the elbow allows for swivel as well as 90 degrees of bend. A transformation joint can be used increase his elbow bend to 160 degrees. His wrists don't swivel, but they do bend up and down. No waist swivel. His hips are ball joints that can do 90 degrees forward, laterally, and backward (once you move the back kibble out of the way). His thighs can swivel. His knees can bend 90 degrees. And in a real treat for a Deluxe, a hinge provides him with about 45 degrees of ankle pivot, although the shin armor goes along with the foot. You'll notice that his right hand is molded like the CGI model's weird 4-finger hand. His left hand does have the shape of two fingers on one side and two on the other, but they're molded into a 5mm port. His gun does have a 5mm peg on it, and you can attach it that way. There is a slot on the back of the gun, though, and flipping around either hand will reveal a matching tab, allowing him to use the gun with either wrist. I think Jazz's alt mode is pretty great. He's tiny. Smaller than Bee, way smaller than the movie 1 version or a modern Hasbro Deluxe, and not much bigger than a Scout. Despite his small size, pretty much every detail you see except the wheels and the translucent plastic for the windows and headlights is paint. The vents are black paint, the Pontiac emblem and the tail lights are red paint, the fog lights are metallic blue paint, and the body of the car is silver paint. Gives him a fairly premium look. Tiny though it is, it's pretty accurate. It's really just missing some paint for the round tail light/reverse lights, the rear Pontiac emblem, and the brake light. The crecent part of the gun can fold over to lie flat, and the whole thing clips onto his spoiler. Now, you're probably looking at those big gaps on the sides and thinking, "Mike, that looks terrible!" And you're not wrong. But... Turns out that's my bad. Strictly speaking, those seams are probably a bit gappier than I'd like, but not nearly as bad the other photos I took in vehicle mode. And I was set to really rip into Jazz because no matter how I fiddled with him I couldn't seem to keep everything tabbed together properly, but I decided to do some research first. Turns out, although the instructions aren't at all clear on this, that there's a translucent plastic peg on the inside of the roof. It takes some effort to line it up and push it in, but it's meant to sit in a hole on Jazz's butt that I thought was just a screw hole (despite the fact that, on closer inspection, there is no screw in the hole). If that peg isn't in the hole before you put the legs and arms in place things aren't going to line up right and they're going to pop back out and make your life miserable. But if you do have it in place you'll be able to at least get things looking like my final picture. (Also on the topic of instructions, they don't mention it but I'd recommend turning his head 180 degrees before folding it in. That'll let you get under his ears and use them for leverage when pulling his head back out.) And there you have it, folks. Jazz is a Deluxe so tiny you'd almost mistake him for a Scout. Despite that he's got a good sculpt, good articulation, and great paint, and the end result stands out as not just the best Deluxe-class figure in the Studio Series line but one of the highlights of the entire line, regardless of size class. If you're into movie toys I'd definitely recommend him, unless you're set on holding out for an MPM. Bonus: once Studio Series Ironhide hits (and he's due in the next wave of Voyagers) we'll have a complete cast of movie 1 Autobots. Crossing my fingers for Bonecrusher (rumored) and Barricade (mysteriously absent) to complete the movie 1 Decepticons, too (I'm content to count SS Megatron, even though it's the Revenge of the Fallen version).
  13. mikeszekely
    But they're so expensive. I thought Gabriel cost a pretty penny, but I saw the Arcadia VF-4 is going for around $400. I can't say I fancy spending even $250 for something Meteor-sized. Right now I guess the HMRs are looking the most attractive, but still kind of pricey for their size. Not at 2:00am. At least I didn't write "Breetai," eh?
  14. mikeszekely
    Bear with me, I haven't collected Macross or Robotech toys. Despite being a huge fan of Macross the anime, the only toys I've really been into as an adult are Transformers. Now, to the untrained eye it looks like Toynami has basically been re-releasing the same basic 1/100 VF-1 for years. Have they made any improvements over the past couple years? Reason I'm asking is because it came to my attention that MAAS toys, a company heretofore only known for their unlicensed third-party Transformer releases, got a license to do Robotech toys. There was some discussion about what toys we might like to see. Now I only ever cared for the Macross saga of Robotech (which naturally paved the way for me to become a Macross purist). I figured I might pick up a couple of VF-1s, if the price wasn't too bad. But that got me looking at the VF-1s that are out there now, namely some Japanese Macross figures that I think are a bit too pricey for my tastes, and the 1/100 Toynami line. And it looks like Roy's VF-1S and Hikaru/Max/Milia's VF-1Js either have had or will have relatively newer (re)releases. Long story short, they don't seem very expensive, and while I've got nothing against VF-1Js Max's VF-1A stands out in my mind more from the time they were caught on Vritlwhai's ship, so I found one in stock at Toy Dojo and picked it up. It arrived today, and while my expectations were pretty low I was still unprepared for how poor the quality actually was. Terrible plastic, thin parts, loose joints, limbs that are essentially pegged on, etc. I'd like some other VF-1s, but if this is as good as Toynami gets I'll either have to save and spend on the Japanese Macross toys or quit while I'm ahead.
  15. mikeszekely
    That's marginally better.
  16. mikeszekely
    That's insane. Maybe it's time to switch to AMD...
  17. mikeszekely
    Even the combining lions shelf-warmed. I almost bought a second black lion because it was only $12. Personally, I think there was way too many non-combining lions and way too many Voltrons that didn't uncombine, but also way too few figures that weren't lions or Voltron. What were all those lions and Voltrons supposed to fight?
  18. mikeszekely
    No worries. Ah, ok. So it's not a situation where the license was up and they chose not to renew it or anything, which is what I thought you meant. They still have the license, they're just sitting on it. Which sucks, I guess, but it does make sense from a business POV. I mean, I don't know about the paladin figures the article is talking about, but I know a lot of the other Voltron toys (except maybe the '84 lions) seemed to shelfwarm around here. Retailers are going to be hesitant to stock a brand that didn't sell before, and Playmates doesn't want to make a bunch of toys if they're going to languish in a warehouse because retailers don't want them.
  19. mikeszekely
    Where'd you guys hear about this? The only news about Playmates and the Voltron license I could find was a press release from February about how they had more Voltron stuff planned.
  20. mikeszekely
    Lemme think about this. IIRC, I had a Netgear wireless B router a long time ago, and I don't think it ever died, i just upgraded at some point to a Netgear N. That one worked ok for awhile, but I started having trouble with random disconnects. Wired would be ok, but everything wireless would lose it's connection and I'd have to power cycle the router. So I replaced it with a D-Link AC, and recently that one's started giving me the same random disconnects. Not enough that I'm ready to buy a new one yet, but probably next year. So, I guess no, in my experience they don't just up and fail, they gradually do it.
  21. mikeszekely
    The developers should make his name canonically something like "Fred Doomguy".
  22. mikeszekely
    Thanks for the heads up.
  23. mikeszekely
    Yeah, those transformation joints are what I'm talking about. Apparently the thing to do is touch the metal pins for 5-10 seconds with a soldering iron, then working the joint a little.
  24. mikeszekely
    You guys picking up the toy Gundog, be mindful of the shoulders, as they're a point of breakage on that version. I'll see if I can get a picture to show the joint I'm talking about later tonight.
  25. mikeszekely
    That's disappointing, but to be honest I stopped using it when I stopped using Windows 7. (Also, I think I'd be more worried about the fact that it is or was a major security liability.)
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