mikeszekely

In all the time I was using 7, no. I got by with CCleaner and Revo Uninstaller. If you're really worried that some lingering bits of stuff from your old video card are holding you back, you can try a tool like Display Driver Uninstaller, then reinstalling the GeForce drivers. Without knowing (remembering?) what it is that you're doing it's also possible that the bottleneck isn't the GPU.

Cloud was in a Smash game (I haven't played since the GameCube one)? That's pretty ridiculous. I dunno, maybe I'm off track, or maybe Smash has evolved into something else while I wasn't playing it, but I always saw Smash as a Nintendo brawler. Sure, that wasn't always Nintendo-owned characters, but stuff like classic Mega Man or the original Castlevania games are and were so closely associated with the NES that Mega Man and Simon were main characters on Captain N. Dumping other characters into the game, especially if they weren't even in a game on a Nintendo console, reduces the Nintendo theme to silly fanservice. They might as well add Master Chief, Godzilla, Batman, and Chuck Norris and call it "Super Smash Bros Reddit."

And Richter, which I kind of like because I'm a fan of Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. But despite Dracula X appearing on the SNES he doesn't strike me as a particularly Nintendo-ish Belmont, as most of my time with him was on Sony consoles. Maybe they could have gone with Trevor, Juste, or Julius instead?

Yes, really. They're cheesy as heck, but they're actiony-fun. Like a summer popcorn movie in book form set in the Star Trek universe (just none of the canon ones). That's actually part of the reason I like Peter David's Star Trek books, too.

I like Shatner's Star Trek novels. Own them both on Blu-ray. They are by no means brilliant works of fiction, but on the whole I think they're ok. Better than anything Voyager.

Alex Kurtzman is in charge, and Akiva Goldsman, and Kirsten Beyer are all said to be part of the creative team, and AFAIK that's three people from Discovery right there. Doesn't sound like he's doing it for the money. In his own words, he's "excited and invigorated" to return to the Picard character. I don't think there's a script yet, but it sounds like it's going to be in the original Star Trek timeline, about 20 years after Nemesis. I'm down for it. I mean, Patrick Stewart is playing Picard... how bad can it be?

I'd picked up the first three releases in Maketoys' Cross Dimension line, and while I found Striker Manus and Rioter Despotron both to be excellent toys with interesting designs and plenty of articulation I made the switch that a lot of TF fans do and switched to a more Masterpiece-style collection. As such, I passed on the next two releases in the line, but I was still kind of curious. While I still don't think they really fit with my collection anymore, I worked out a trade that sent my Striker Manus away for this guy, Thunder Manus, the Cross Dimension version of Powermaster Optimus. Or Ginrai, if you prefer. (Note that the other release, Thunder Erebus, is very nearly the same figure, with bit less in the way of accessories and a Nucleon Quest black color scheme, so most of this review applies there as well.) Well... that's a little Optimus (or Ginrai). Maybe too little? At this particular juncture the other figures in the line are tallish Voyagers. The previous Optimus, Striker Manus, sizes perfectly with Rioter Despotron here, but Thunder Manus only comes up to Rioter Despotron's knee. Curiously, while he's perhaps too small to fit with the other Cross Dimension figures, he's not a bad fit at all if you're building a Legends collection. He's just a little taller than an official Legends like Seaspray or 3P stuff like Iron Factory's Brawl. The aesthetics are another curious choice. While Striker Manus and Rioter Despotron were recognizably Optimus and Megatron, they were very original, stylized designs. If you ignore the large backpack and the smokestacks on the outside of his shoulders instead of his shoulder blades Thunder Manus is pretty Masterforce-accurate. He's got the same lithe proportions, blue stripes on the thighs, and even the bumps on his waist where the Masterforce animators drew the hinge from the original toy's hip skirt. The only other real difference is the silver under his windshield, but even that detail is accurate to the G1 toy. Just like the size, this only seems to make Thunder Manus a more natural fit in a Legends collection than Cross Dimension. Thunder Manus comes with a few accessories. For starters, can't have a Powermaster Prime without a Powermaster. Then we've got two rifles, two double-barreled cannons, and two trailers. The cab-robot can't hold the big rifles, but the back of the rifle comes off to make a smaller rifle for the smaller robot. Like Thunder Manus himself, his Powermaster is tiny. To the head, he's a little shorter than a Titanmaster. I'm inclined to ignore the giant flap behind his head, but I'm wonderin why they cast his torso in gray plastic instead of white. As far as articulation, he doesn't have much. No neck, no waist, no elbows, no wrists. His shoulders are pinned for rotation and hinges for about 60 degrees of lateral movement. His hips are ball joints tha can go 90 degrees forward or laterally, but only a little backward. His knees are hinged and can bend 90 degrees. No articulation in the feet or ankles. The articulation is a bit better on the cab robot, but there are still some issues. His head is on a ball joint that can swivel and look up a bit, but he can't really look down. You can kind of tilt his head sideways, but for whatever reason it wants to pop back into a straight position. The boxy part of his shoulder is on a swivel for rotation, a ball joint at the base let shim move his arm almost 90 degrees laterally. The entire arm is connected to the torso at the shoulder blade, which can also swivel a little, getting his total lateral arm movement beyond 90 degrees. The ball joint also works as a bicep swivel swivel. His elbows are hinged and can bend 180 degrees, but as a single hinge it's not the prettiest. Likewise, his wrists do technically swivel. However, there are red flaps attached on a hinge to the bottom of his hand. Swiveling his fist rotates the flap around his arm. He has a waist swivel, but his backpack almost totally negates it. His hips can kick 120 degrees foward, maybe 75 degrees laterally, but very little backward motion. His thighs can swivel. His knees can bend about 120 degrees. His feet can tilt up 90 degrees and down a little. He doesn't have an actual ankle pivot. Instead, the front of his foot swivels on a mushroom peg that's set at a 45 degree angle. Turning the foot there can fake a pivot ot a point, but turning it also turns it upward, so it's difficult to get everything flat if you use it too much. As I already said, the bigger guns don't fit in the cab robot's hands. The smaller guns have squarish handles that fit into his squarish hands with no issue. And course (not pictured) the Powermaster folds up and pegs onto the grill with no issue. Of course, a little Optimus turns into a little truck cab.The mechanical detail behind the windshield is evocative of Striker Manus', and the cab is a little boxier than you might otherwise expect, but it's definitely more G1 Optimus than Striker Manus as trucks go. I do find it somewhat odd that he only has four wheels, though. In any case, he still fits fine with Legends. As for the other accessories, one of the trailers turns into a bigger body, just as you'd expect. Unlike the G1 toy or Fans Hobby's Power Baser, though, there is no base mode that I could find. The Super Ginrai mode is probably where Maketoys spent the bulk of their design effort. For one, it's a lot closer in size to the other Cross Dimension figures, standing a little over a head taller than Rioter Despotron. And you'd expect super mode Powermaster Op/Super Ginrai to be bigger than Megatron, right? Except... well I might expect him to be more than slightly over a head taller. This mode is also a bit more stylized, although I'd say that Maketoys is still playing it pretty safe here. Once again, the proportions are very anime-esque, with long limbs and a small head and torso. Again, he's much more svelte than Power Baser. While I'm still not sure he's a good fit for Cross Dimension he's about the same size as the Titans Return Leader-class Prime, so perhaps he's an alternative to that (especially if you're going to add in the cost of upgrades like Perfect Effect's transformable replacement cab). One minor complaint I do have, though, is that his hands are solid blue. You can wave it off as "it's Cross Dimension, not G1," and you wouldn't be wrong, but I'd have preferred the red fingers like Super Ginrai had in the Masterforce anime (like Power Baser's). Right or wrong, in my head a regular-sized Optimus would be as big as a combiner in super mode. I think Super Ginrai fighting King Poseidon in Masterforce might back me up on that. Either way, I still don't hate this scale for Legends. Another way you can tell that this mode was Maketoys' focus is because the articulation for this mode is quite good. The head is on a ball joint that swivels, tilts up and sideways a bit, and tilts down quite a bit. The shoulders can rotate, and they can extend laterally nearly 180 degrees. His biceps swivel, and his double-jointed elbows (the upper joint being ratcheted) can bend nearly 180 degrees. His wrists can swivel. His thumb is fixed, but his fingers are pinned at the base with the index finger being separate from the other three. His waist is a ratcheted swivel, and he's got a ratcheted ab crunch of about 60 degrees. The skirts on the sides of his hips are hinged, adn the ones in the front are on ball joints, so they can get out of the way of his hips. Those hips can go forward a little over 90 degrees and backward about 45 degrees on ratchets, and laterally just under 90 degrees on a softer ratchet. His thighs can swivel. His ratcheted knees bend about 145 degrees. And his feet... well, they're a ltitle weird, due to how his heel transforms. Still, you can get some downward tilt on the front half of his foot, some upward tilt on the entire foot, and and nearly 90 degrees of ratching ankle pivots. Combined with signficantly less backpack than Power Baser and his anime proportions it's not too difficult to get him into some pretty dymanic poses. The silver double-barreled cannons can plug into his shoulders, as is typical with Powermaster Primes, or on the sides of his lower legs. He holds is guns using the same sort of sliding rails as the other Cross Dimension figures, some of Maketoys' Re:Master figures, and Fans Hobby's figures. I checked to see if he could old other Cross Dimension weapons like the ones that came in the pack with Striker Noir and he can, but a little loosely. If you don't want him to carry any weaon the rifles can also use slots on the sides to fit onto tabs on the sides of his backpack. In trailer mode, there are first seems to be less size disparity between Thunder Manus and Power Baser. Unfortunately, I think this is because Power Baser's trailer is proportionately too small compared to his cab, and Thunder Manus seems to have the opposite problem. His cab is tiny compared to his trailer. Maybe that's why he has four sets of tires on the back of the trailer instead of the more usual two. The folding panels don't gets as flat on the sides as Power Baser's trailer, but the missiles are a nice little touch. I suppose that you could almost imagine that, instead of a more traditional trailer that Power Baser and the G1 toy are going for, it's some kind of oversized military-use trailer. The trailer pegs into the cab with a little red peg that simply sits in a corresponding hole on the cab. The connection isn't super tight, so if you pick up the trailer the cab's not coming with it. The silver cannons sit at the front of the trailer, traditional Powermaster Optimus style (although Ginrai didn't really have them on his truck mode in Masterforce). His rifles again use the slots on the sides, this time to fit onto tabs along the side of the trailer, near the rear. If you're interested in the black Thunder Erebus version of this mold you can stop here. But if you're going for Manus, you'll remember that there was one more trailer. And, frankly, it looks less like a trailer than the Takara Legends Godbomber, which looked less like a trailer than the G1 Godbomber, which itself looked like a trailer with a cockpit on the front, a cannon and some fins on the roof, and large red vertical wings on the back. It does still have the cockpit and cannon, though. The cannon swivels, and it can move up and down on a strong ratchet. On the front is a sort of bumper with a hitch on it. The hitch fits in between the feet at the back of the regular trailer, in little slots. Despite looking less like a trailer than ever, I don't really think this setup overall is any worse. Godbomber was always kind of ridiculous as a trailer. The cab can rotate where it's pegged in, and the hitch on the Godbomber trailer has a pin so it can turn as well, so you can get him in some driving poses like this. The Godbomber trailer does come apart, as you'd expect. In this case, into several pieces. The rub here is that the pieces do not fit together into any sort of robot on their own. We're making armor for Prime (Divine Armor, as Maketoys calls it), but Godbomber this isn't. Combining the armor with Thunder Manus does give you a fairly convincing God Ginrai. The guns on his shoulders move to the sides of his legs rather than his feet, and he's got little gray wings under his red ones, but that's about the biggest departures (that weren't already covered in super mode). All armored up he seems even more out-of-scale with the other Cross Dimension figures, but still seems like a fit for Legends. The additional armor does hinder his articulation a bit in spots. His head, shoulders, and biceps are all the same. His elbow is the same, but with slightly reduced range due to the extra armor hitting his shoulder sooner than his unarmored forearm. His wrists and hands are new, but articulated the same as the regular ones. His waist still rotates, but he loses a little range on his ab crunch. His hips suffer the worst. His new thigh armor limits him to about 60 degrees laterally, and his new pelvis armor doesn't have articulated hip skirts. Combined with the thigh armor he only gets about 30 degrees forward. His knees are the same. His feet still have some upward tilt and they still have the ratcheted ankle pivots, but you loose most of the downward tilt. His shoulder cannon still swivels and moves up and down. His wings can fold back, and they can ankle upward a bit. The new hands hold the rifle the same as his super mode hands. His wings interfere with backpack storage for the rifles, but there are tabs on the tips of his wings you can mount the rifles on. He gets one more weapon in this mode. The back of the cannon slides out to reveal a sword. You have to remove part of the handle, then slide into Manus' fist, then replace the handle, but he holds it fine. I find the sword a curious addition, because it's something Takara included with Legends Godbomber as well, but not something that came with the G1 toy and not something I remember him using in the anime. Having it doesn't hurt anything, so I really don't have any issues with it. This is the part of the review where I'd normally say if I recommend the toy or not, but I don't feel like it's quite so straightfoward. For starters, the big challenge is how you fit him into your collection. He just doesn't scale right with the rest of the Cross Dimension line. The cab robot is on the smaller side for CHUG, although he at least has one, and the super mode is close to the Leader-class Powermaster Op from Titans Return, so an argument could be made for CHUG. But I honestly think he works best as a Legends-class figure. Regardless of where you think he belongs, if you were considering Thunder Erebus I'd give it a recommend. If Maketoys had sold Thunder Manus without the Divine Armor at the same price as Erebus I'd have recommended that, too. The armor is really the wrench in the system, though. For starters, I think he's a better toy in super mode than God Ginrai mode. The biggest issue I have with super mode is that the folding part with the super head likes to come untabbed from the cab. In the armored up mode, though, you've got parts on the back of his leg that pop off too easily, constrasted with the shoulder parts that stick a little too tightly. The armor kills his hip articulation. Still, a lot of people are going to want God Ginrai over Super Ginrai. And there's a case to be made that paying $30 more than Thunder Erebus is better than buying a whole separate Godbomber figure if you don't plan on displaying them uncombined. However, fans of Powermaster Op who don't care for a combined mode at all are stuck paying $30 for parts they don't want. Maketoys is futher compounding the issue by releasing Divine Shooter, a full-fledged Cross Dimension Godbomber that combines with Thunder Manus and makes the Divine Armor totally redudant. So now people who didn't want the armored mode and half the people who did are paying a $30 premium for parts they don't want or need. And it seems like this was always Maketoys' plan. See, the shoulder cannon fits onto the armor via a mushroom peg. On the other shoulder there's a plug. If you remove the plug, you have a slot for another cannon... which you'd get if you buy Divine Shooter. Not convinced? The sword has a pair of tabs on the pommel. If you have a second one, which you will if you buy Divine Shooter, you could interlock those tabs and make a double-bladed sword. For now, if just want a Powermaster Optimus in your collection and don't care about size, get Power Baser instead. Pass unless you really want one this size and don't mind paying an extra $30 for parts you might not use. If you're thinking you want a God Ginrai but don't care for an actual Godbomber this may be a cheaper alternative, but I'd suggest waiting until Divine Shooter comes out anyway. Perhaps the combined mode with Divine Shooter will have better articulation than with the Divine Armor, and that might be worth paying more for. And if you want a Powermaster Op this size, and you want your Godbomber to be a fully-capable robot, definitely wait. Maybe Maketoys will sell Thunder Manus and Divine shooter as a giftset sans Divine Armor.

Agree on all counts. When they took the symbiote away from Eddie I hated it, but I hated it more when they gave it back to him.

Don't know why I'm putting so much effort into it, since I've also got Warbotron, Iron Factory's War Giant, Unique Toys Ragnaros, and I'm just waiting on Zeta's Onslaught to complete their version, but I took Combiner Wars Onslaught apart. I masked off the eyes and painted the whole head silver. What's nice there is that paint is thin enough that the silver over the dark helmet came out slightly darker than the silver over the already silver mouth plate. But I thought a silver head would look out of place with silvery-gray plastic everywhere else, so I took the chest and hip assembly, masked off Bruticus' collar and the back part where the guns attach as best I could, and I painted all that silver as well, before finishing it off with a purple-on-silver Reprolabel Decepticon emblem to replace the tampoed one I painted over. Still need to paint the combiner hand/foot/guns that came with Vortex, Swindle, and Brawl, and maybe the guns on his back, too. Alternatively, I guess I could look for an upgrade kit with new hands, feet, and back guns.

Sorry to interrupt the discussion of whether or not the new Takara MPs are actually worth it or not, but Prime Wars Trilogy Blast Off is available at Amazon. Bruticus is my favorite combiner, so I was extremely disappointed when it turned out that Hasbro was going to repaint Combiner Wars Quickslinger (Slingshot) brown, package it as Blast Off, and call it a day. I hated it so much I even bought a second Vortex and repainted the head so at least he'd have a mouth plate; you'd think that if they were going to reuse the Firefly mold they'd have at least stuck with the mouth-plated head, but no. Meanwhile, in Japan, when Hasbro tried to replace Slingshot with Alpha Bravo Takara repainted Fireflight and gave him a new head so they could stick with Slingshot. When Hasbro tried to replace Wildrider with Off Road, Takara repainted Dead End, gave him a new head, and stuck with Wildrider. And Hasbro eventually brought them over as online exlcusives. Later, Hasbro tried to make Groove a Legends-class figure and tried to give his role as a Defensor limb to Rook, and Takara came up with a whole new Deluxe-class mold for Groove. That Hasbro eventually brought over as an online exlcusive. And when Hasbro lazily repainted Quickslinger poop-brown, Takara cooked up another new mold for Blast Off. Then Combiner Wars gave way to Titans Return, and Titans Return gave way to Power of the Primes, and now that Power of the Primes and the entire Generations line is winding down, and I was starting to think I'd be stuck with Poopslinger. But finally, Hasbro came through and brought the Takara Blast Off to the West... ...kinda. This is actually the same mold. It might not look like it at first glance. Not only is it painted in the G1 toy colors instead of the cartoon-deco used by Takara, but you might notice that the nose of the shuttle isn't on his chest. It's on his back. But, if you want that shuttle-chested Takara look, all you really have to do is rotate the head 180 degrees, rotate the waist 180 degrees, they pop the arms off their ball joints and swap the left and right. Eagle-eyed readers might notice that's what Takara did in the first place when they repainted this mold into Shuttler (Movor) for their Baldigus (Ruination) box set. Anyway, due to Takara's propensity to go for cartoon-accuracy, Blast Off has the cartoon booster feet, and no shuttle nose bits on his arms, but he's got some slick tampoed details on his chest and waist to mimic the G1 toy's stickers. And his head a proper Blast Off head. He looks 100% more like Blast Off than Combiner Wars Blast Off does, so I've got no real complaints. Since he's basically a Combiner Wars/Unite Warriors figure, he naturally comes with a gun and a hand/foot/gun. Both of the molds are the same as the Takara versions, and refreshingly not a repaint of other guns or other hand/foot/guns. Curiously, the hand foot gun has a peg hole on the under side, something I don't recall on any of the other Combiner Wars hand/foot/guns. He also comes with the Prime Master Megatronus. I'm going to level with you guys here, I was fine with Titan Masters when they were really Headmasters, even on characters that weren't traditionally Headmasters, but Hasbro lost me when they used the same engineering, but replaced the faces with odd symbols, packaged them with Pretender shells, named them after the 13 Primes, and called them Prime Masters. I just didn't have a use for Headmasters that don't turn into heads. So I don't know if Megatronus is exclusive to Blast Off, or if there was some other way to get him. I'm probably just going to use him, along with the "enigma" that came with Hun-Grrr, to fill in Power of the Primes Abominus' feet. Articulation's not too bad, for a Hasbro Deluxe. His head is on a ball joint that can look down a little, tilt sideways a little, and swivel. Shoulders are, as previously mentioned, ball joints. They can rotate, and they can extend laterally 90 degrees. His biceps can swivel. His elbow is a single hinge, but it can bend 180 degrees. No wrist or hand articulation. His waist can swivel. His hips are ball joints that can go 90 degrees forward or backward, and about 75 degrees laterally. His thighs can swivel. His knees bend 90 degrees. His booster toes, due to transformation, have two hinges. You can use them to get a little up/down toe tilt, but too much brings his toes too far out of alignment with the rest of his foot. Speaking of the rest of his foot, there are hinges that give him a little ankle pivot, about 30 degrees. You don't often see that on Deluxes. He can hold his gun or his hand/foot/gun in either hand just fine. But... Blast Off is actally covered in peg holes. There are some under his arms. The front of his fists are molded to look like boosters, which happen to be 5mm, so you can give him Hulk-hands like Rook. He's got a pair of peg holes on his chest, one on either side of the combiner peg. There's one on each wing, folded against his lower legs. And even his booster feet have 5mm peg holes inside. Thus you can make Blast Off the single most heavily-armed Combaticon of the bunch. Blast Off's shuttle mode is... ok. Like a lot of the Combiner Wars figures that didn't turn into cars he's got super visible arms only half-heartedly disguised, in this case as more boosters. Speaking of boosters, the soles of his feet hang out far past the wings and tail and kind of cover up the fact that his feet are boosters. It kind of looks like the shuttle should have stopped at the tail but kept going. On the flip side, at least he is a shuttle. I mean, jets don't blast off, they take off. I'm going to start calling the other guy Take Off, a Decepticon stalker so obsessed with Blast Off he kidnapped him, started dressing like him, changed his name, and tried to take his place with the Combaticons. But Blast Off got loose. But I digress. The underside of Blast Off's nose is a bit hollow, but you can fill it by storing his gun there. The end of it is even kind of molded like a wheel, like it's his landing gear. I dig that, but unfortunately you have to take it out for arm or leg mode. As wtih robot mode, there are plenty of other places to store weapons. You've got a peg hole behind the Decepticon emblem on top of the shuttle. You've got the peg holes on the backs of his arms showing. You've got the peg holes on his chest, now the underside of the shuttle, and the peg holes on the undersides of the wings. Plus, technically, the four boosters (two on the hands, two on the feet). Blast Off's leg mode is, like most legs, fine. Nothing special. You'll note that Blast Off's hand/foot/gun has silver paint, so of course it doesn't match the other Hasbro Combaticons. Time for me to break out the spray paint, I guess. Oh well. I've been meaning to paint the black Bruticus head anyway. I'm not sold on the official transformation for Blast Off's arm mode. They want you to leave the tail in shuttle mode, they want you to hinge the shoulders down like in shuttle mode, they want you curl the bicep up (which does lock together), but they want you to rotate the bicep 180 degrees where bumps on his shoulders will start to push his forearms back out and unlock them if you rotate the biceps much beyond 90 degrees. I like to put the tail in the robot mode position which leaves space for a gun (like Legends-class Shockwave). I also think you have more clearance around his waist/hips/combiner elbow if you leave the arms up, and not rotating the biceps helps keep them closer to the body. Maybe just rotate them at the shoulders so you have enough clearance at the combienr shoulder. At one point, I was seriously considering shelling out money for the Unite Warriors set just to get this mold (well, that and to have a cartoon-colored Vortex). Ultimately I passed, because I figured I could get an all-around better Bruticus by going 3P (which I did... three times). When Blast Off turned up as a solo figure in Hasbro packaging at Robot Kingdom I almost bought him then, but the shipping costs to the States would have pushed him into the $50 range which I just couldn't justify on a Deluxe to replace an arm on the worst of my four Bruticuses (Brutici?). Amazon's price is $25. $25 is still kind of high for a Deluxe, but honestly only $5 more than the Studio Series, the Age of Extinction Deluxes, the upcoming Siege Deluxes, and I believe the Bumblebee movie Deluxes (unless all the Bumblebee movie Deluxes and Voyagers are going in the Studio Series, then just refer back to Studio Series pricing). It helps a lot that Blast Off is pretty good for a Deluxe-class figure. If you only have the Hasbro Combiner Wars Bruticus and you're as unhappy with their previous treatment of Blast Off as I was then yes, I'd recommend picking up the new one.

Bonus: Ger-train? Loco-walk?

That's weird, when I visit the site it's in the banner on the main page. But if anyone else isn't seeing it, it's one of those sales where the discount isn't applied automatically. Just use the code MT20off at checkout.

@M'Kyuun were you looking for a toy color or cartoon color? I'll tag @Kuma Style, too, because I seem to recall him expressing a desire for the toy color one, and it's showing in stock at Maketoys' online store. $99.99 + shipping, and they're having a sale until Thursday that should get you 20% off.

I'll try to do so tonight. EDIT: 1.5"

I'm not clear on whether or not it's just artwork or if at some point there will be toys, but it's something Takara is doing to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration. Prime is supposed to be Sakamoto Ryōma. Not sure about Megatron. Anyway regarding all the Prime v3 vs MP-10 vs various 3Ps and Hound vs Willis (and Gundog, who hasn't been mentioned here yet but gets my vote for the best Hound), I'll just say it's nice to have options. It'd be boring if we all had identical collections, yeah?

You guys are probaby getting tired of Bruticus, so I have something completely different for you. This is Mech Planet's Centurion, their take on Bumblebee from IDW's Hearts of Steel miniseries (which wound up becoming canonical in the IDW-verse, and turned out not to be Bumblebee at all but a Eukarian named Centurion who was maniupulated with his fellow crew by Shockwave into thinking that they were Bumblebee and friends, so, yeah...) It's been awhile since I read Hearts of Steel, but from leafing through my collection I'd say that Centurion is very accurate... to the concept art on the alternate cover on the second issue. The colorist for all the interior art gave him entirely yellow legs, but I digress. He's got the bolt ears, the v on his crotch, silver abs, the hand rails on his collar, etc. He's even got the little panels on his shins that, in the concept art, had little gears in them. The biggest deviaton from the art is that his torso is more bulbous, without the blue rectangles, plus he's got gold hatches on either side of his chest, but all of that seems to be a concession to how he transforms, so I'm not really inclined to take points off for accuracy. I do want to take some points off a lack of paint, though. Now, I'm not like some Youtube personalities who really love paint, and I'm not saying that he's got no paint. But, the gears in his forearms should be the same dark gray as his hands, and some black on the cow catcher feet would have really helped them to pop. Some panel lining would also probably help immensely. Size-wise, well, I don't have any of MMC's Hearts of Steel figures, but Centurion is roughly a Deluxe-class figure, a little taller than MP Bee. I seem to recall that MMC's Knights of Steel Prime was about the same size as Classics Prime, so I'd say that Centurion would probably work with that. Centurion's lone accessory is this hammer, which has a little paint on it and looks pretty nice... on this side. The other side is Hasbro hollow. I don't recall if Bee actually had a hammer in the comics, but he was friends with John Henry, so it's thematically appropriate. Centurion's head is on a swivel, so it can rotate (a little loosely) but that's about it. His shoulders are on ball joints. His shoulder pad kind of limit the shoudler roation, to about 90 degrees forward and over 90 backward. The pads are hinged so they can move up, and he can still move his shoulders 90 degrees laterally as well. His biceps can swivel, and he can bend his elbows 90 degrees. He doesn't have any wrist swivels, which is a pretty big strike for a 3P figure, but due to transformation his wrists can bend down. His waist can swivel, and due to his transformation he can actually arch his back and he has a slight ab crunch forward. His hips are ball joints, and he can get 90 degrees forward, 90 degrees backward, or 90 degrees laterally. His thighs swivel. His knees are soft ratchets that bend 90 degrees. His ankles are on hinges that can bend up and down (you get more range down if you move the wheels on his legs back a bit so they're out of the way). Plus, his heel is on a swivel for transformation, and the cow catcher is on a ball joint. You can use them in tandem to give him an ankle pivot, plus the ball joint is also an up/down toe tilt. His hammer just slides into his fists, which are molded into 5mm pegs. The wrist bend is pretty useful for giving him some dynamic hammer poses. Centurion turns into a little locomotive engine, as Hearts of Steel characters often do. For he size, here he is with MP Bumblebee. I have no idea how well that sizes with something like Knight Morpher Commander. Getting him transformed is a mild pain, because there are a few clearance issues. The directions aren't much help, either, because following their instructions in the order presented is guaranteed to make those clearance issues worse, when you can follow the instructions at all. It can be a little tricky when some steps are omitted. Fortunately there's nothing particularly difficult going out once you know what you're doing. My complaints are similar to his robot mode complaints, mainly that a little more paint might have helped the molded details on the train to pop. That said, it's still quite accurate to the concept art, and as a bonus the alt mode deviated less from the concept art than the robot mode. His wheels rotate, but the piston rod and coupling rods don't move. The headlights are on hinges. His robot hands are visible at the back. You may also notice that the hatch on his left side doesn't sit flush like the other one. I don't know if this is specific to my copy or not, but it looks like that part is just mirrored from the other side. The problem, though, is that it fits on via two tabs. Those tabs are longer at one corner, so that they're lying flat on that edge the hatch is angled. So, it fits as it should on the right side, but on the left the tabs are upside down, with the longer part at the top instead of the bottom. The tab can't got in far enough for the hatch to lie flush. I was able to get it a bit more flush by cutting parts of the tab and gluing the parts I left. You can store the hammer under the locomotive. His heels rotate 180 degrees (not that the instructions tell you that), leaving a roughly 5mm gap for the handle to pass through. Little bumps in the gap fit into notches on the hammer's handle to help hold it in place, but another attachment point closer to the head of the hammer would have helped. Centurion's got a few other minor issues that drag him down a little further, and it's mainly in the arms. Due to how he transforms, the peg his shoudler connects to is on a flap that can flip 180 degrees. The flap doesn't lock in place against his torso, though. By itself I'd write it off as a backwards butterfly joint, but that whole side of his torso (his arm, the flap it's on, his lats, and his shoulder pad) rotates for transformation, and it doens't lock in place either. So, there's an annoying tendency when manipulating his arms to have them fold back away from his torso, or to have his whole side start rotating down so his shoulders start moving to his hips. And the most frustrating thing is that both cases would have been very simple fixes. For the shoulders, they could have put a small tab or peg on one side and the corresponding slot or hole on the other. In fact, there is a small peg-like raised circle on his torso, so literally all they'd have to have done was put a corresponding shallow hole on the inside of the flap. As for the other issue, there are two small flaps on his back that are hinged and can fold behind him. If they'd had slots on them, and if they were designed to fold the other way, they'd have folded up under and against the rotating part. A little tab on the rotating part could have locked them together, and locked them in place. Quality's a little bit of an issue, too. There's nothing wrong with the plastic or the joints, but the limited paint, lack of wrist swivels, and overuse of ball joints, plus the hollowness in his hammer, have him feeling like a step down from a lot of other 3P figures this size and more like something Hasbro might cook up. The flip side of that, though, is that he's priced like something Hasbro might cook up, as you should be able to pick him up for around $35. I'm having a hard time recommending him otherwise, though, since I'm not sure what kind of market there is for Hearts of Steel figures anymore or how you might fit this guy into your collection. But Centurion isn't a bad figure, and for the price it's probably worth taking a gamble on him if you like Bumblebee or Hearts of Steel.

I agree. Proportions look slightly better, and the torso looks cleaner. I also think the head sculpt is a lot better. That said, I've played games like Transformers: Devastation and been reading various Transformers comics much more recently than watching the old cartoon, so I kind of like a chunkier Optimus, even it that's not totally cartoon accurate. So I'm still keeping my eye on Magic Square's Optimus. It almost looks like a compromise between MP-10 and MP Op V3.

And yet, that's the dealbreaker for me. Well, that and the alt mode. I mean, you can say that the realistic alt modes of the earlier MP carbots means that a realistic Porsche alt mode works better for Cliffjumper, and I'm not saying you're wrong, but to me you could tell that Jazz was a Porsche, Sideswipe a Countach, Wheeljack a Lancia, etc, even in the cartoon, so while the earlier carbots have more realistic details than the cartoon I wouldn't say that they're not cartoon accurate. But I couldn't figure out that Cliffy was a Porsche until I was in my 30s. I'd always assumed he was some kind of '80s Japanese Kei car. Toro's alt mode just isn't Cliffjumper to me. Hellion's is better, but still not perfect. But, as you've noted, Hellion's definitely got issues, too, and I don't blame anyone for deciding that Hellion's issues are are dealbreakers and Toro's are stuff you can live with. Anyways... recall when I reviewed Cannon Chariot I said: Well, it's later. And the rest is actually another figure. This is a special repaint of Iron Factory's Pink Assassin, Iron Factory's Arcee. Let's clear one thing up before we get started. Pink Assassin is a regular Iron Factory release in the usual Arcee pink and white that you can buy for around $20. This repaint is based on the Generations Arcee repaint in the SDCC-exclusive Combiner Hunters set, and as far as I know is only available by buying Cannon Chariot. A lot of what I'll say applies to either version of Pink Assassin, and I'll try to point out the differences as we go along. For starters, I think this is an amazing deco for Arcee. I would love to see more official versions of Arcee from whatever new cartoon, movie, and comic continuities they come up with use this deco. But I can't really give IF credit for it, since they're just copying Hasbro. What I can pin on IF though is the head. The little nose and smiling mouth and the huge blue eyes are decidedly anime cute bordering on chibi, a style that I'm fine with in general, but one that I don't feel really meshes with the otherwise largely IDW-style Iron Factory went with. That minor quibble aside, I feel like IF otherwise did some great sculpt work on her body, especially for a figure as small as she is. Three accessories are packed in the box that are meant for Pink Assassin. Two of them are smaller swords molded in pink translucent plastic with some gunmetal-painted accents. Aside from being pink and gunmetal instead of blue and silver, they're identical to the swords that come with the regular release. This set does not include the translucent blue pistol that the regular Pink Assassin comes with, though. Instead, you get a much lager sword made from gunmetal plastic with a translucent pink blade. This sword is based on the sword that's packed for Arcee in the Combiner Hunters set, which in turn was a repainted copy of the sword that came with Ultimate-class Beast Hunters Optimus Prime. Pink Assassin's head is on a ball joint that's rather stiff. She can swivel her head, though, give a little sideways tilt, and has pretty good up/down tilt. Her shoulders are also ball joints, which of course can rotate, but they can only extend about 60 degrees laterally. He doesn't have a real bicep swivel, but her elbows are ball joints. So you can swivel there, as well as bend her elbow 90 degrees. She does technically have wrist swivels, but on my copy they're so tight you really have twist them to a "this is definitely going to break" level to get them to budge. He doesn't have a real waist swivel, but her torso from the ribs up is a separate piece that's connected to the rest of her torso via a ball joint. You can swivel just below her chest, plus you can get a little sideways tilt and backward lean out of it. Her hips are ball joints, and they can rotate 90 degrees forward, backward, or laterally. It may not be obvious, but she does have dedicated thigh swivels. Her knees are double-hinged and can bend until her calves start banging into the backs of her thighs. Finally, her ankles are, you guessed it, more ball joints. They can swivel, and she can tilt her ankle down about 90 degrees. Upward tilt is much more limited, and she can only get about 30 degrees of ankle pivot. Interestingly, while IF stuck with 5mm fists on most of the other Legends figures (which, to be fair, is what Hasbro does as well), Pink Assassin's hands are bit more dainty. Her weapons slide into her fists with 3mm handles, and she holdes them just fine. Or, if you'd rather store her smaller swords you can do so by plugging the small holes on the hilt onto pegs on her backpack. Since Cannon Chariot came with Pink Assassin but no instructions for her, I'm not sure what IF intended, but I'd say you can either have them hanging down like they're on a scabbard, or tucked up against her backpack. As for the larger sword, the bottom of the handle comes off, allowing you to slide the sword into one hand, the bottom of the sword into her other hand, then to peg the handle back together to give her a two-handed grip. The problem again is that her wrist swivels are so insanely tight that they feel like they're going to break, and you really need to swivel at least one wrist to get everything to line up. I couldn't find a place to store this sword on her person. There is a peg on the back of the hilt, and she does have a peg hole on her butt, but this is really for alt mode. Her backpack gets in the way of storing the sworld there in robot mode. I think I'm going to put back in the box with War Giant's butt armor. Actually, since I'm not really a Legends collector, I might put Pink Assassin back in the box entirely. So this alt mode... I get that this is a tiny toy, but is IF really eaven trying? Her backpack does hinge up a little higher and closer to her body, and flaps on it do fold around over her shoulder and biceps, but the rest of the transformation is basically just laying her down on her face and bending her legs around so she can touch her butt with her toes. Her visible biceps get a pass because they look like they could be part of the alt mode. I'll even let her visible fists slide because this is just a Legends-class toy. But her legs are super obvious legs, no matter how you bend them they're always going to stick up a bit and never look like they're even prentending to a coherent part of her alt mode, and by themselves they don't even secure in place. She's got no wheels or anything, so she just sits there, where the weight of her legs actually makes her want to lean back so she's sitting on her thighs and her front end is pointing upward. It just seems super unfinished, like they started to design a transforming Arcee toy and quit halfway through. The balance issues are begging for a stand, and the regular release comes with the same stand Spin Vulture and Booster Spear come with. You might think you can use them, then, if you bought the whole War Giant set, but you're still missing the piece that regular Pink Assassin comes with that goes on top of the stand and clips to her waist. On the regular Pink Assassin the gun has holes on both sides that her ankles peg into, then the handle of the gun pegs into the hole on her butt, locking everything in place. I guess that's fine if you're using the gun, since the gun iteself is kind of lost between her legs. But remember, this version doesn't have the gun, just a really big sword. The sword does have peg holes and a peg on it, and you can still peg her ankles to it and then lock everything together by plugging the sword into her butt. In this case, though, I think it's doing more harm than good. Things only line up properly if the blade is hanging way off the rear of the vehicle. Aside from the sword just being far more obtrusive than a little gun, the weight from the blade means that you can forget about even trying to get her not to lean backward. The only saving grace is that the spikes on the sword hit the ground before she tilts back as far as she'd like to go. The smaller swords attach the same way they do on the regular version of Pink Assassin, by pluggin onto pegs on the other sides of her ankles. Again, they don't look great, but they're at least workable. Pink Assasin works best when thought of as an accessory for War Giant. She's in the Combiner Hunter deco, so it makes sense she'd try to fight a combiner like Bruticus. And, sticking her with him helps create an impression of scale. Purely as a toss in with Cannon Chariot she's an interesting little figure to mess with. But, lets say you're a Legends collector in general, and you were just thinking about picking Pink Assassin up so you'd have an Arcee in your collection. In that case, the flaws start to become a little more glaring. Her backpack doesn't secure in robot mode, and it really seems like it should come down lower. Super subjective, but her face is too cute. Her articulation isn't really the best. Plus she's backheavy and has pretty small feet, so balancing her can be an issue. Balance issues and articulation issues combine to make posing her a little more difficult than I'd perfer. Her transformation barely qualifies as such, and her alt mode is extremely unfinished. So no, even at just $20, even if Legends figures are your jam, I would not recommend buying Pink Assassin.

I seriously had to double check that this wasn't just Willis with a cartoon-style paint job. Eh... I mean, if you're into, more power to you, but the proportions are just awful to me. Midsection's too short, pelvis is too huge, and I can't quite tell if the legs are too long, too skinny, or both. There's cartoon accuracy like "I'm going to make this toy look like it did in the cartoon because the original toy sure as heck didn't" and "I'm going to make this toy look exactly like an arbitrary screen grab from cheapest outsourced animation Sunbow/Marvel could buy." Next they'll be tossing in a spare head for him with a nose and no mouth or mouth plate.

You dig him? I'm leaning toward picking up Hellion myself. I think both look pretty good, but but also have some flaws, and it's kind of "which flaws can I live with" deal.

We've covered all five of Iron Factory's not-Combaticons (CombatiNons?), now it's time to put together War Giant, Iron Factory's Legends-scale Bruticus. Cannon Chariot just kind of scrunches up a little, nothing major. But it looks like he only makes up as much of War Giant as Long Haul makes up of Bruticus. Everything from the top of the abs up is all from the combiner kibble. The legs are pretty easy, as they're mostly just the vehicle mode. Bazooka Cannon does have to open his hood and flip up a combiner port. According to the official instructions, which I will observe, Armor Boar's turret is facing backward with the peg positioned so that the turret is as far forward as it can be, then the barrel is flipped up over top of the turret. Nothing's stopping you from using just about any other turret configuration though, up to and including just leaving him in tank mode. Then it's just a matter of plugging the rear of the vehciles into the foot, with an fold out pannel providing some support at the back of the ankle. The arms are where we run into a little trouble. The connection for the hands is adequate, but it could be more secure. Spin Vulture requires you to somewhat awkwardly repsotion the canopy gun, minus the barrel, and Booster Spear has you take his two smaller guns, stick them together, then unfurl them. Part gets jammed into a cavity in his torso, and the rest just kind of lies against the underside of the shuttle without locking into place. But the worst part is extending the combined mode elbow, which takes a lot more force than I'd like. Plus the bulk of the joint is an extremely tight ratchet. It's very easy to stress the mushroom peg that connects the lower half of their bodies to the joint. You take Bazooka Hound's guns, fold the handle of the bazooka up, and stick the pistol underneath. You fold up Booster Spear's gun, then plug it into the back of the bazooka. Then you take Cannon Chariot's rifle, fold it up, and stick it in the back of Booster Spear's. You use one of Armor Boar's guns on either side to lock them all together. Then you kind of fill things out by putting the barrel from Spin Vulture's canopy gun on top and his two arm guns on either side. Voila, you've got a combined-mode rifle. Finally, we have War Giant. I'm very impressed! For starters, he's arguably the best proportions I've seen on a combiner at any size. He's beefy, but not too beefy. His torso isn't too small, and his legs aren't too short. He doesn't have giant gorilla arms. He's got actual elbows instead of using the arm-bots' hips and thighs, someting 3P was still doing on combiners twice this size as recently as 2016. Most of the silver on his feet, hands, head, and torso is silver paint. He's a very good-looking Bruticus that, like the ToyWorld/Zeta combiners, uses some partsforming to bulk up. He's got a nice height advantage on a Hasbro Legends-class figure like Seaspray here, and I think that still scales pretty well if you're using something like DX9's Dutch for a Legends-class Optimus or with Iron Factory's own Seekers. However, the only other Legends-scale combiner so far is Hulkie, and Hulkie only comes up to War Giant's chest. I can't really fault Iron Factory for not really sticking with DX9's scale, but it's still kind of a bummer. Although, maybe it's for the best if we just wait and see if Iron Factory does their own Bruticus, because Hulkie feels pretty shoddy next to War Giant. But to give you another idea of just how big War Giant actually is, he's significantly taller than a Combiner Wars Voyager, and about as tall as the Leader-class Studio Series Grimlock. MP-10, who's chilling in the back, isn't quite a full head taller. He's just a head or so shorter than Combiner Wars Bruticus, and so much better. He's much shorter than Warbotron, but again I think War Giant is still the better Bruticus. For now, I'll still give the Bruticus crown to Ragnaros, though. For a combiner, War Giant's articulation is pretty good. His head is on a stiff ball joint, so it can swivel and look up/down a bit. Swivels at the combiner pegs allow his shoulders to rotate, and there are ratchets in the combiner pegs on he torso, but also hinges at the slots they tab into on the arms. That gives him about 60 degrees of lateral movement on his left shoulder, but the hinge on Booster Spears shuttle nose and some vehicle kibble on War Giant's shoulder conspire to limit that arm to only 45 degrees. As I mentioned before, both elbows have tight ratchets (so be careful) for a little under 90 degrees of bend, but there's also friction hinges on Booster Spear's pelvis and Spin Vulture's butt that gives you a second elbow joint that can also do 90 degrees. He has bicep swivels just above the elbow ratchet, another swivel below the ratchet should you desire. His wrists can swivel, and his fingers are individually articluated with ball joints at the base, one pinned knuckle in each finger, and a pin both at the base of the ball joint and mid-knuckle on the thumb. His waist can swivel. His hips can go 45 degrees forward on soft ratchets before the hip skirts get in the way (the skirts are hinged, but the hinge is a little low). With his butt armor in place he doesn't have much range backward, but if you take it off he can get 90 degrees. He can also get 90 degrees laterally on soft ratchets. His thighs can swivel. The combiner pegs on Cannon Chariot can bend backward a little on friction hinges, but most of the knee range comes from ratchets in the combiner ports on the leg-bots. Both legs can get over 90 degrees of bend, but straightening his right leg out has a tendency to cause the front end of Bazooka Hound's vehicle to come untabbed from his torso. War Giant doesn't have any up/down ankle tilt or ankle swivel, but he's got over 90 degrees of ankle pivot. Long tabs on the handle of the combined rifle or of the mini non-transformable Shockwave/Bridgewatcher do a great job of securing the weapons into War Giant's right hand. Unfortunately Spin Vulture's canopy causes a bulge at his left wrist that keeps him from holding weapons in his left hand very well. Still, between relatively good articulation for a combiner, light weight for a combiner, and great proportions for a combiner, you get some really dynamic poses out of War Giant that give him a shelf presence that exceeds his smaller size. He even cleans up pretty great from behind. In fact, I think the only thing that looks kind of messy is his butt armor. But you don't really need it; in fact, you get more backward range out of his hips if you don't use it. It makes me kind of wonder if they were meant to store and hide the combined-mode hands with the kibble in statue or trailer mode, and sticking them onto War Giant's butt was just a last ditch effort to find a place for them in combined mode. Well, I know my place for them... back in the box. Well, I really like this guy a lot. So much, in fact, that I preordered the recently-announced Baldigus/Ruination repaint Maybe because 14-20" combiners start to get unweildy and often have balance issues, but I really find myself having a lot more fun posing and messing with War Giant than I ever did with Warbotron or Ragnaros. I still don't see myself rushing out to buy Legends-class versions of every character on my MP shelves, in either a replacement or a suplemental fashion. Not even main characters like Prime, Megatron, or the Seekers. However, I do find myself thinking that I'd be really curious to see what Iron Factory cooks up if they did some other combiners (Predaking please!). So, if you're into Legends, then War Giant gets a strong recommend. If you're into Bruticus and you want a cool one you can put on your desk, strong recommend. If Legends really aren't your thing and there's no way War Giant is going to fit into your collection then I guess you should pass, but if you can think of any reason at all to justify having him War Giant is a recommend from me, even if you're never going to un-combine him.

And rounding out Iron Factory's Combaticons we have Cannon Chariot, their awesomely-named Legends Onslaught. Cannon Chariot is a pretty toy-ish Onslaught, with lots of olive in the shoulders, biceps, and torso, as well as a nicely-painted chest window evocative of the G1 toy's sticker. There are some cartoon details present, though. He's got a silver mouth plate, which the cartoon had but the toy didn't. And his pelvis, with the raised vertical stripes and the silver dots, is also very cartoony (although to be fair the silver dots on Onslaught's cartoon model were actually screw holes on the toy, so maybe still toy-accurate?). The biggest departures from either are the cannon barrels peaking up from his back, which are kind of squarish instead of round, and the extra kibble flaps on his arms, which are just easier to forgive on a Legends-class figure. While I prefer less olive and more blue on my Onslaughts*, I've got no major complaints, as this still manages to be one of the best takes on Onslaught to date, and it's impressive that Iron Factory did it in a figure that isn't really signficantly bigger than the rest of the team. *Is it weird that I really want cartoon-accurate Combaticons, but once they're combined I want a toy-accurate Bruticus with blue thighs, a silver chest, and silver feet? Onslaught has a ton of accessories... mostly for combined mode. We've got a the head and chest for the gestalt, we've got a pelvis for the gestalt, we've got back cannons for the gestalt. We've got a blue part whose purpose isn't immediately obvious, but it's the shoulders for the gestalt. We've got some silver bits that are mostly hollow but have one face molded to look like the business end of a missile pod that will be the gestalt's butt. We do have a rifle for Cannon Chariot. Oh, and we've also got a replacement rifle for Booster Spear, and a replacement barrel for Spin Vulture's canopy gun. And technically that's not all that comes in Cannon Chariot's box. The rest, however, isn't really needed for any of the Combaticons and can only passingly be considered an accessory for the gestalt, and yet it probably merits a separate review, so we'll save that for later. Cannon Chariot's head is on a ball joint with swivel, a moderate amount of up/down tilt, and a touch of sideways tilt. His shoulders are ball joints hinged at the torso, so they can rotate and extend a hair over 90 degress on the ball joint, and over 90 if you use the hinge. The ball joints also allow a little forward and backward butterfly on the shoulders. His biceps can swivel, and his elbows are double-hinged and can curl all the way up to 180 degrees. His wrists can swivel, and so can his waist despite the amount of stuff that seems to be on his back. His hips are surprisingly not ball joints. Instead, they're ratchets that move back just one click due to some butt kibble, and foward three clicks to nearly 90 degrees. Lateral movement is just a friction hinge, but it's good for over 90 degrees. He doesn't have a true thigh swivel, but he does have a swivel just above the knee. Using the swivel can limit how much knee bend you can use, but these are concessions for the combined mode, so I'll forgive them. If the thighs are straight and everything's aligned you can bend his knees a little under 90 degrees. His heels are hinged and can move up and down, and his toes are on hinged ball joints, although the middle part of his foot his fixed. The toes can tilt up a lot, down a little and simulate 35-45 degrees of ankle pivot. The best thing to do with Cannon Chariot's rifle is to just let him hold it, although there are peg holes on the backs of his forearms if you want to mount the rifle there. Also, I have the back cannons the way I do in every one of my pictures because that's how he comes out of the box, that's how he looks on the box, and the other side has that Hasbro-esque "I want to save a few bucks on plastic so I made this side kind of hollow" thing going on (and it's not a super endearing quality on a Legends-class figure that costs $70, I don't care how much extra crap he comes with). It bugged me that there's a little tab on that side that pushes it out slight from his back. If you flip the cannon over and spin it 180 degrees it'll sit more flush with his back, and as a bonus a transformation hinge will allow the barrels to even be aimed a little forward, but of course I didn't do that until after taking pictures. So all that combiner kibble we didn't really talk about that came with the other guys? We're going to talk about it now. Basically, you can take the feet, the hands, Bazooka Hound's roof rack, the translucent purple flight stand adapters that came with the arm-bots, and the rest of the combined mode junk that came with Cannon Chariot and built what the instructions refer to as statue mode. I don't think the Combaticons leaving a bust of Bruticus around while they do stuff is much better than imagining that they just sprouted out of the Combaticons when they combined or they were chilling in subspace, but it does give you something to keep all the parts together until you need them. Oh, for what it's worth, I don't think the translucent purple flight stand parts are really necessary, I think they just provide a little extra support. Bazooka Hound's roof rack is necessary for statue mode, but I'm not convinced it's necessary for any of Bazooka Hound's modes, so he's not going to miss it. Cannon Chariot's alt mode is probably the biggest departure from the G1 norm. It's not bad, though. Interestingly, it kind of reminds me not of CW Onslaught's, but of his remold buddy Hot Spot. It's not the usual truck hauling a trailer with big guns we're used to with Onslaught, but it reminds me of some more European cab-over-engine artillery trucks. In any case, it's a lot better than the Combiner Wars version. The plastic wheels all roll, and better than Bazooka Hound does. The cannon can rotate around, although tabs do prevent the cannon from rotating if it's aimed too low, and it can aim anywhere from straight ahead to almost straight behind . My only real complaints are the visible robot hands, which again I'm more inclined to forgive on a Legends-class toy, and the fact that his cannon barrels look so dinky. Iron Factory's got you covered there, though. Officially, you're supposed to plug the larger gestalt back cannons onto this mode. These cannons replace the traditional barrels with some pretty impressive sci-fi cannons with purple accents. The cannons can be aimed up and down independently of each other, but they don't rotate. They do have an additional peg hole on them, though, so you can even pop Onslaught's rifle up there for a fifth gun. Alternatively, if you don't mind a little partsforming and just want a cleaner alt mode with a more traditional two guns, but you want the big laser cannons and not the dinky ones, that's an option too. Like a lot of these parts, Cannon Chariot's back cannons are just attached with a 5mm peg and can be removed entirely. I think this is actually my preferred look for Cannon Chariot's alt mode. On the flip side, if leftover bits from partsforming are the bane of your existence Iron Factory's got you covered there, too. And not just with a statue mode, either. Instead, you can take all that combined mode junk (the parts that came with Cannon Chariot, the hands, and the feet, but no translucent arm-bot parts and not Bazooka Hound's roof rack) and make a trailer. I really don't mind the idea of a truck that's part of a combiner carrying a bunch of extra combinde-mode parts around in a trailer (or as a trailer), so I dig this. Sure, the trailer's a little wider than the truck, and the connection between the trailer and the truck is a little awkward, but I think it's a lot better than leaving the leftovers lying around. Or hanging out as a statue. There's even enough flat(ish) space for another Combaticon to go along for the ride. While I'm still not sold on the whole Legends craze, I think Cannon Chariot gets me the closest to going all-in on the scale. Ignoring the combiner bit for a tick, Cannon Chariot has a solid alt mode, the quickest and easiest transformation out of the five, and I think the best and most cohesive alt mode. In short, I think he's the most fun, and I'm going to give him a recommend, with the caveat that he's a little pricier due to coming with a lot of combined mode-parts. If you're not in it for combined mode his price might be a little too steep... ...but you're probably in it for combined mode. Should you be? Tune in tomorrow to find out.

No one buys just two Combaticons, right? So this next set is Booster Spear and Spin Vulture, Iron Factory's Legends-class Blast Off and Vortex. Booster Spear reminds me a little of Warbotron's Blast Off, what with the shoulder flaps and the very purple torso. Spin Vulture is using a darker purple for his torso and a blue that's a little less turquoise than the G1 toy (or Zeta, for that matter), with none of the sticker colors that Combiner Wars Vortex is emulating. He's lacking the gray of the G1 cartoon, though, or really any gray. Even the nominally toy gray parts are more of a light cornflower (the Crayola one, anyway). Aside from Booster Spear's lighter brown color being a little too light, I don't really have an complaints here. As I said yesterday, Iron Factory's aestehtic isn't slavish G1 toy or 'toon, but a modernized G1-esque like IDW or Generations. Booster Spear is still recognizably Blast Off, and dare I say that Spin Vulture is pratically a happy middle ground between Vortex's toy and cartoon colors. This set comes with a fair amount of accessories. You of course get the hands, which we'll discuss later. You get a very Shockwavey gun. It's actually modeled after Iron Factory's Bridgewatcher, their Legends Shockwave, but it's not transformable. We'll look at it again when we do combined mode. For Booster Spear you get one rifle and two smaller guns. For Spin Vulture you get one handheld gun and two with smaller pegs. And yes, that's some of his canopy on his gun. You also get a second tray with the parts to make two flight stands. The stands have two joints and extra peg holes for... stuff? They're identical except for the translucent purple bits, as those parts are meant to fit only one of the pair. Booster Spear's head is on a ball joint, but really just for swiveling. Tilt in any direction is minimal. His shoulders are ball joints on hinges in the torso. They can rotate, and even without using the hinge he can get well beyond 90 degrees laterally. His biceps can swivel, and his elbows can bend a little over 90 degrees. His wrists and waist can swivel. There's a hinge in his waist that's really for comined mode but it can give him a nice ab crunch. His ball-jointed hips can kick backward 90 degrees, forward a little under 90, and laterally a little over 90. His thighs can swivel. His knees bend a little under 90 degrees. His heel is fixed, but the front of his foot is on a hinged ball joint so it can swivel, tilt up quite a bit, and pivot about 45 degrees. He holds is rifle fine. The instructions suggest pegging the other guns into his legs- like the G1 toy, I suppose. I don't think they look particularly good there. He can hold them in his fists, if you prefer. There's also a peg hole on his back for storage. Spin Vulture's head is on a ball joint, but unlike his partner he's got a decent amount of tilt, especially upward, in addition to rotation. Shoulders are also hinged ball joints, but just using the ball joint will only get you 90 degrees laterally here; you'll need the hinge to get more. His biceps swivel, and his elbows are actually double-jointed and can bend the full 180 degrees. His wrists and waist can swivel. His pelvis is basically backwards compared to Booster Spear's, though, so no ab crunch. Technically he can bend backwards, then, but the joint is low enough that you might as well just use his ball-jointed hips instead, hips that can go 90 degrees foward or laterally and just a little less backward. His thighs swivel. His knees are double-jointed and can get a little over 90 degrees. Like his partner his heel is fixed and just the front of his foot is on a ball joint, but the base of the ball peg isn't hinged. Still, he can get a little swivel, a taste of downward tilt, plenty of upward tilt, and 45 degrees or so of pivot. He holds his canopy gun just fine. Both the handle and the barrel are hinged so you can get everything to lay just how you like it, but unfortunately I could find any way to store it in robot mode. As for the other guns, my preferred position is on his forearms, ala G1 cartoon Vortex. However, he has hinged panels on the backs of his shoulders with peg holes. You can put them there, sticking up from behind, and the hinge allows then to flip down into an over-the-shoulder firing position. Meanwhile, his rotor can detatch from his back and plug into his forearm, sort of like Blackout. Alt modes. Again, both kind of remind me of the Warbotron versions, especially Spin Vulture with the way his gun partsforms into his canopy. Booster Spear is looking a little long, or his wings are a little small, take your pick. For Legends-class figures I don't think either is particularly bad; although Spin Vulture is my least favorite in alt mode and the furthest from his G1 counterpart, I think he's actually still more cohesive than the Warbotron or Combiner Wars versions. For some reason he kind of reminds me of a Halo Pelican, just with rotors instead of wings. Oh, and because I forgot to include them with Armor Boar and Bazooka Hound, here these two are with Legends Seaspray and DX9's Scrapper. Booster Spear has flip out non-rolling landing gear under his nose, but none in the rear where he's propped up on his feet. Or, you can peg some guns into his wings, and he'll rest of those. The larger rifle can either be plugged into the a port on the top (a bit loosely), or on the underside if you use the part from his flight stand. The rifle even has another port on it so you can still plug him onto the flight stand. As for Spin Vulture, the canopy gun plugs onto the front. Once again, there's a hinge in the barrel so you can aim it how you please. The barrel is also removable. The other guns are best plugged into the sides of the helicopter. If you plug them into the top his rotors don't really have the clearance to spin over them. If you pull off the canopy cun you could moutn them onto his chin, but they don't fit while the canopy gun is plugged in. It's kind of a shame that Iron Factory didn't paint a window onto the front of the copter without the canopy, because it looks like it'd still be a passable helicopter without it. And using the translucent purple parts, which fit snuggly around their robot-mode waists, you can mount them to the flight stands. Since they're small figures without all the diecast and weight common in a lot of MP-style figures it's actually pretty refreshing to toss them onto their stands and have them just chill without any wobbling or balance issues. It's not all sunshine and roses, mind you. I noticed a little with the previous set, but I'm noticing much more with these guys that Iron Factory has some issues with tolerances. I'm not saying that the plastic these guys are made of is junk or anything, but because they're made with smaller parts those parts tend to be a little less robust than they might be on a larger figure. Some tabs and joints just feel too tight, and I noticed a few stress marks, especially on Booster Spear, that make me inclined to get these guys combined and them leave them that way. That's a bit of a bummer, since one of the advantages to Legends-class toys I cited yesterday was a playability that their smaller size and simpler transformations give them over more MP-scaled toys. On that note, I don't know that I'd recommend them on their own, if you just wanted a Legends-class Vortex and Blast Off. Of course, I'd imagine most of the people buying these guys are doing it for the combined mode, so stay tuned to see how that shakes out.

So, Bruticus is my favorite combiner. Despite having Warbotron I had no qualms about going in on UT's, and when I thought maybe UT's might not be big enough I didn't hesistate to start buying up the Zeta ones. And there's a good chance I'll pick up MMC's while I'm at it. I actually dig Bruticus so much that I wouldn't mind having some repaints. I could take or leave the G2 colors, but I'd love a Ruination, and if the price were right I could be talked into Battle Gaia and the urban camo Ruination repaint. Well, aside from Takara, the first 3P to announce a Ruination repaint was a company whose Bruticus I didn't buy- Iron Factory. Legends-class Transformers just aren't my thing, but I do love me some Bruticus and I keep hearing people gush over Iron Factory's stuff, so I figured what the heck, let's give these guys a try. Now, these guys don't come as individuals. Instead the team was released in three sets, so tonight we'll be looking at the first set. This is Bazooka Hound and Armor Boar, Iron Factory's Swindle and Brawl. We'll get something out of the way right away, and that's that Iron Factory doesn't really do straight up G1, so these guys aren't really toy or toon. From what I can tell they do something like an IDW/Generation Toy/early Hasbro Classics/Universe thing of taking a G1 character and updating it so that it's unmistakably a G1 character but kind of modernized. On that note, though, they seem to be leaning in a more toy-inspired direction. Bazooka Hound's got the purple torso with the black center, Armor Boar's got the chest that's noticably the front end of a tank. Truthfully, with his chunky lower legs and the front of his alt mode hanigng off of his back Bazooka Hound really reminds me of Zeta's Swindle. Meanwhile, the tall shoulders and purple highlights on Armor Boar make me think of Warbotron. Neither's necessarily a bad thing, and frankly I think they both look better than their Combiner Wars counterparts. I'm especially digging Bazooka Hound's face, which is one of the best Swindle smirks I've seen despite it's tiny size. Probably my only aesthtetic complaint are their hands. It seems Iron Factory wanted to keep them 5mm compatible instead of dropping to a 3mm peg (like DX9 used on their Constructicons). The result is that their hands are as big as their heads. Size-wise, they're obviously smaller than a Deluxe. They're fairly similar in size to an official Legends-class figure like Seaspray here. That actually confuses me, though, because the bulk of Hasbro's Legends-class stuff for the last few years have been smaller characters like mini-bots, tapes, Insecticons, etc, while the majority have been Deluxes and larger characters have been Voyagers. They don't fit with the scale chart perfectly, but you could kind of get them in the ballpark, yeah? But it seems like buying guys like these in this size would necessitate buying more guys this size, and the Legends you already got from Hasbro would need to be even smaller (I saw a company called NewAge released a Bumblebee that's just a little over half the size of a Hasbro Legends-class). Well, I digress. It's kind of neat how both of these guys turn into legs, but they managed to make Bazooka Hound significantly shorter than Armor Boar. Accessory-wise, we've got two feet for the combined mode. We'll just wait and talk about them later. Then we've got a bazooka and a pistol for Bazooka Hound, and a pair of guns that look like SMGs for Armor Boar. There's also a black part that seems to be just a roof rack for Bazooka Hound. For such little guys these two have fantastic articulation. No, you're not going to get ratchets and double-hinges and other things you might expect from an MP (or 3P equivalent), but they handily meet or exceed anything you're going to find in a Habsro Voyager or Leader, let alone a Legends-class. Bazooka Hound's head is on a ball joint that's hinged at the bottom for transformation. It can swivel and look up a good bit, but there's not enough room for him to look down or tilt sideways. His shoulders are on ball joints that can rotate and allow for maybe 70-ish degrees of lateral movement, but the addition of a hinge at the base of the ball peg will well past 90. He doesn't have a true bicep swivel, but his elbow is ball-jointed so it can swivel on that as well as bend 90 degrees (and technically there's a hinge at the base of that ball peg, too, but shoulder kibble still keeps you at about 90). His wrists and waist can swivel, something Hasbro can't seem to pull off reliably in even their Voyager and Leader-class figures. His hips are ball joints that can kick forward, backward, or laterally 90 degrees. He's got thigh swivels, and his knees can bend over 90 degrees. His ankles have a pair of hinges, one that gives him some up/down tilt and another that gives him a crazy ankle pivot that exceeds 90 degress. Armor Boar's head is a ball joint with an adequate up/down tilt, a small lateral tilt, and it can swivel. However, it's recessed into his collar so you can only get him to turn his head maybe 45 degrees in either direction. His shoulders can rotate on ball joints, but due to their height he can only get about 45 degrees laterally. Unlike his teammate, he does have dedicated bicep swivels and hinged elbows that get you around 140 degrees. His wrists and waist can also swivel. His hips are ball joints that can bend 90 degrees forward, backward, or laterally. He's got thigh swivels. His knees can bend just over 90 degrees. And his ankles are ball joints that swivel, tilt up slightly, tilt down a good bit, and pivot a little. Both figures can hold their weapons fine. Because of the extra hinged pegs on Armor Boar's guns he could conceivably store his guns on the sides of his lower legs or on his back. Bazooka Hound does have peg holes on his legs, but his weapons don't really look right there, and there's nowhere to put the roof rack in robot mode. My only other gripe would be that he has to hold the bazooka as a bazooka; there's no way to make it an arm cannon like the cartoon. Alt modes. Bazooka Hound went the way of Fansproject/Warbotron/Zeta with his Humvee alt mode, which is fine since Humvees are the modern replacement for jeeps . Not as detailed as Warbotron or Zeta, with some gappy spots, but I think it's fine for the size. And Armor Boar's definitely a tank, with a kind of sci-fi angular barrel. Again, nothing mind-blowing, but perfectly fine for the size. The instructions have you plug the roof rack onto Bazooka Hound, then plug his guns into it. But, nothing's stopping you from plugging the guns into the same peg holes you plugged the roof rack into, so I'm not convinced it's necessary. Maybe it helps hold him together for combined mode? I guess we'll find out, but maybe it's the kind of part you can leave in the box. Bazooka Hound's tires are plastic, and they do roll, but not very well. If plugging weapons onto the roof isn't your thing you can use peg holes on the sides as well. Armor Boar has neither wheels nor working treads, so he doesn't roll. For the size I guess I'm not mad. The instructions suggest using the hinged pegs to plug his guns into the sides of the tank, but nothing's stopping you from using ports to plug them on top of the turret, G1-style. Speaking of turrets, Armor Boar's does rotate a full 360 degrees, and the barrel can aim down just a hair and up until it's shooting straight up into the sky (technically, it can fold over to shoot backwards). Eat your heart out, Studio Series Brawl! Technically, for reasons, it's actually on a 5mm peg and can be removed. In robot mode you can even plug the turret onto his arm or into his hand. Playing with these two doesn't have me drinking the Legends-class Kool-Aid yet, but I definitely see the appeal. While the quality isn't what you get from MP-style figures it beats Hasbro's Deluxes, with articulation that even beats Voyagers and Leaders. The retail for this set is $70, which puts them at roughly $35 a piece. My initial reaction is that that's a lot of money for such a tiny figure, but really it's not that much more than an inferior $20 Hasbro Deluxe. Put another way, it's roughly triple what an official Legends-class toy costs, and when I look at Voyager-sized 3P figures like MMC's Reformatted or Maketoys' Cross Dimension stuff they're roughly triple a Hasbro Voyager. It's actually less than some of the similarly-engineered, only slightly bigger Machine Robo toys from Action Toys. They're also dangerously close to impulse buy territory. I mean, I have to think hard about whether I want to buy Maketoys' MP Coneheads at $120 each, but if I were collecting Legends I probably wouldn't think twice about paying the $80 retail price for a set with all three Iron Factory Coneheads. There are other perks to doing the Legends route, too. The transformations are much simpler than an MP, which combined with their smaller size makes them generally easier to mess around with. With so many companies doing Legends-class toys you have a lot more choices for popular characters and even some characters that haven't been done in MP scale, CHUG scale, or anything but Legends. Plus you can fit a lot more of these guys in a finite space than you can larger figures. With that in mind, if you have or are considering going down the Legends rabbit hole, or you're just into the Combaticons, then I can't see any reason not to recommend these guys. Aside from some instances of overly tight tolerances they're reasonably detailed, posable, fun little versions of Swindle and Brawl. Just don't expect to have some sort of Legends-class epiphany that's going to make you want to dump your MPs.

The other wave 2 Voyager in the Studio Series is this guy, Brawl. I never picked up the Leader-class Brawl, but I do have the original Deluxe-class from the first movie. Is the Studio Series version more screen-accurate? I mean, I guess so. He does have more sculpted detail on his thighs and shins, his chest doesn't look like the front of a tank, he's got the two tank barrels poking up from his back, the launchers and the arms they're sitting on look better, and even the goofy way his shoulders look like they're falling off is technically accurate. And the movie model didn't have a big tank turret hanging out like a backpack, either. Of course, the movie's CGI model also didnt' have large chunks fo that turret all over his forearms, either, nor did it have the other cannon barrel hanging from his back like a tail. Likewise much of the rear of the tank is hanging off his calves. Instead of folding neatly against his chest the mine plows stick out absurdly far from his body. So while he does technically appear to be more screen-accurate than the Deluxe-class toy from 2007, I'm not sure if he actually looks better. Here's the other thing... I get that the Decepticons were all pretty big. But does Brawl seem kind of short to anyone else? Remember, the Studio Series is supposed to be keeping these figures roughly in-scale in robot mode with each other, and he's shorter than Starscream, Blackout, and Megatron. To the head he's roughly the same height as Studio Series Optimus. And... well, I guess that's actually correct. I guess I just remembered Brawl as being bigger. Brawl comes with two accessories. One's a kind of rocket launcher thing, the other is some extra armor with a gatling gun and some claws. The claws are hinged and cam move up and down. Aside from a lack of paint both accessories are fairly screen-accurate, although the launcher is a little off-centered. Brawl's head is (I think) on a ball joint, with minimal downward tilt, no upward tilt, minimal lateral tilt, and 90 degrees of swivel to either the left or right. His shoulders can rotate, and extend laterally almost 90 degrees, although you can cheat and get more if you use a transformation under the shoulder. His biceps swivel. His elbow can bend 90 degrees. No articulation in the wrists, hands, or waist. His hips can bend 90 degrees forward, backward, or laterally. He has swivels just above the knees, and his knees are actually soft-ratchets good for a little under 90 degrees. If you have the kibble on his calves pegged in properly he doesn't have any ankle articulation. If you untab the kibble, though, you can get some up and down ankle tilt. No pivot, though. The shoulder launchers are on ball joints so they can swivel left and right, but the cuts don't allow for much up/down tilt. If you're so inclined you can plug either weapon into either hand. It's more screen-accurate to plug the weapons onto his forearms, though; launcher on his right arm, claw on his left. The claw plugs in tightly. The launcher is a little loose until you push it down to the silver paint. Brawl's tank mode didn't get a lot of screen time in the film. I guess this toy is pretty accurate? I think he did have a camo pattern in the movie, but the differentiation between greens on the toy is much greater than the movie. It also really bugs me that no matter what you can't get the launchers to point foward. Due to how the ball joints are arranged, they're always at an angle. Fun fact, Brawl is often cited as an Abrams tank, but there aren't any actual Abrams tanks with the second turret like Brawl's. Brawl's alt mode is actually a recycled movie prop from xXx: State of the Union. Brawl's got wheels, so he can roll, and he looks ok from most abgles. You can see his robot hands and a pretty big gap from behind, though. The top of the tank has peg holes you can plug his weapons into, but I think it just makes him look busy. Dissapointingly, only the top turret can rotate, and none of the cannons can tilt up or down. Brawl's not the worst Studio Series figure to be released, but I'd say that he's probably the worst Voyager-class figure in the line. In fact, there's stuff I like about the old Deluxe-class better. The mine plows sticking so far off of his body is just the worst (and could have been easily fixed if they'd just put them on hinges so they could have folded flatter against his torso). If you're just casually collecting from this line and just want the "good" ones I'd recommend skipping Brawl. On the other hand, with Jazz in the Deluxes for this wave, Ironhide (and Prime again) as the third wave Voyagers, and a heavily-rumored Voyager Bonecrusher on the way we're a Barricade away from having all the movie 1 characters in the Studio Series line, and the completionist in me can't pass that up.