mikeszekely

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I came across a few sites selling the SDF-1, but I'm not familiar with them. They're a bit more, and they seem to promise faster shipping by taking the bricks out of the box, repackaging them into a bag-style mailer, and tossing the box. As far as Chow-Brick's shipping goes, usually you can pay to upgrade to express shipping. I didn't see the option to for the SDF-1, though. BTW, I didn't realize the bricks are being sold under the chowbrick domain, but chowbrick is actually ShowZ Store.

I have, many times. In fact, I have an order on the way right now. They're legit. Just be aware that they're shipping the SDF-1 by sea, which they do for larger items, so it can take awhile. I've had two orders that were sent by sea, and both took around three months to arrive.

Here's the link for Walmart preorders. It's apparently an exclusive.

When it comes to Gamer Edition, Hasbro's kept mostly to the War for Cybertron designs while Planet X has been more focused on Fall of Cybertron, which hasn't left a lot of room for overlap. Before now it's just been Starscream, who fared reasonably well and even had the better robot mode but was definitely not the better-looking robot. However, I think Planet X's Starscream was pretty good, and Gamer Edition has been pretty below average even by Hasbro's limited-budget standards. I didn't expect it to beat Planet X, I was just happy I liked it at all. Ratchet was a different story, though. Planet X's Vejovis had a pain-in-the-rear transformation, worse plastic quality than a lot of their previous releases, and a number of inaccuracies in both modes. When I reviewed him and their Ironhide I called them the worst releases Planet X had done to that point. Could Studio Series Gamer Edition Voyager-class Ratchet actually be better than a 3rd party figure? At first glance, you might not think so. Subjectively-speaking, Ratchet smaller, has less paint, and looks cheaper... which is to be fair, has a lot to do with the fact that he is cheaper. But then I managed to dig up some art from High Moon's office, and the liberties that Planet X took are a bit more apparent. Black biceps, hip joints, and feet on Vejovis are all white on Ratchet, gray hands on Vejovis are red on Ratchet, gray on Vejovis' pelvis and thighs are white on Ratchet, plus Ratchet has red knee joints, and in every one of those cases Ratchet is correct and Vejovis is wrong. Ratchet has visible wheels on his legs instead fenders, differently-shaped shoulder pads, and the red details on the tops of his shins are more trapezoidal and surround a white area, and again, in each case it's Ratchet that's more accurate. You can barely make out a cross shape on the side of Ratchet's shoulder pads. That too, is a game-accurate detail that Vejovis lacks, though it should have been painted red. Aesthetically, I think the only thing Vejovis really has going for him is a smaller backpack and calves that aren't a bunch of folded-up red panels. Ratchet comes with two accessories. One is an axe that I don't recall him using in the game, buy it looks like the one that came with Mars, Planet X's Ironhide. Pretool, I'm guessing. He also comes with a pronged blaster. I do believe that it's the Energon Repair Ray used by the scientist class in War For Cybertron's multiplayer mode, so think of it not as a gun for shooting Decepticons, but rather a gun that heals Ratchet's friends when he shoots them with it. Articulation on Vejovis was another sore spot for me, as he had very lateral movement in the shoulders and hips and knees that could only bend 45 degrees. Articulation has also been a sore spot for Gamer Edition, but happily Ratchet fares alright in this category. His head's on a ball joint that can't look down or tilt sideways much, but it swivels and he has decent upward tilt. His shoulder pads are on hinged ball joints, not actually the shoulders themselves, which allows them to get entirely out of the way so his shoulders can swivel and extend laterally over 90 degrees. His biceps swivel, his elbows bend 90 degrees, and his wrists swivel. His waist swivels, and his hips can go forward, backward, or laterally 90 degrees. His thighs swivel just above his knees, which bend 90 degrees. His toes can tilt up and down, and he's got about 75 degrees of ankle pivot. Ratchet's repair ray has a 5mm peg on it that allows it to plug into either of his fists. As for the axe, the handle detaches from the head, then you slide it up through the bottom of his fist and plug the head back on. There's a tab on Ratchet's backpack that allows you to attach either his repair ray or his ax to his back. Intentional or not, there are also tabs on the ray that come into play in alt mode that you can wedge into some of the hollow spots on the axe if you want to store both on his back. Hasbro hasn't actually abandoned the Gamer Edition gimmick, though. You can still remove his right forearm, leaving behind a 5mm peg that can plug into the back of the repair ray. It fits rotated 90 degrees from how he'd hold it in his hand, but the white part of the ray is on a mushroom peg and swivels so that you can maintain the orientation you like for the prongs. While Ratchet's wearing his weapon, you can open up his backpack and you'll find a slot on his back. His arm has a corresponding tab, and once his arm is attached you can close the backpack back up over the arm, stored safely but out-of-sight. Transforming Ratchet isn't hard, though the instructions are difficult to follow and it's not immediately obvious how you're supposed to move his shoulder pads. The gist is that his head scrunches down and the entire front of his torso (including his arms swing upward. His shoulder pads tuck behind his head so that as you flip his torso up the front of the shoulder pads winds up facing toward the red armature and wrapping around the black inner part of his torso. His shoulders tuck up under his chest, but transformation hinges fold most of his arms back down against his sides, and his backpack unfolds to finish the cockpit and front fenders and bumper. His waist spins 180 degrees, then his thighs spin back around 180 degrees. His shins flip up, unlocking his calves, which unfurl into the rear of his alt mode. Then his legs fold around to cover over his thighs and everything locks into place. My favorite part is that the Autobot insignia on his chest folds in so that only the large on from his backpack is showing. All-in-all, it's not my favorite figure to transform, but it's a whole lot better than Vejovis, and once everything's tabbed in the alt mode is rock solid. Again, Ratchet looks cheaper than Vejovis. Vejovis has slick use of translucent plastic and paint, while Ratchet looks like he's missing taillights because the "glow" paint he has is lost in the red plastic. Same goes for the lights on his roof. Once again, though, Ratchet is far more accurate than Vejovis. He doesn't have the random silver bits that Vejovis does, plus he's got black rims with red "glow" lines, red fenders, and more red on the the roof. A pair of tabs on Ratchet's roof, just behind the red details, fit into slots on the axe, allowing you to mount it on his roof. Meanwhile, there are two slots on his rear that correspond to a pair of tabs on the side of the Energon repair ray. Not the prettiest storage, I know, but largely in-line with the other Gamer Edition figures, and no worse than Planet X's method of simply plugging stuff into 5mm ports on the sides. I think, compared to the other figures I've looked at since SS86 Optimus hit, that Ratchet's just ok. He's not bad, but he doesn't really wow me, either. But, compared to strictly the other Gamer Edition figures, he's one of the best offerings so far, right up there with Prime and surpassing Starscream and Megatron. And frankly, he's a better in most ways than Planet X's version. Even if you've avoided the lackluster Gamer Edition figures so far, you might want to check out Ratchet in case Hasbro starts doing Fall of Cybertron in Gamer Edition, because he should work there, too.

https://chowbrick.com/jiestar-58144-sdf1-macross-w-lights_p5977.html Is this news? I did a search on the boards but didn't find anything. Also, I'm putting this here because the box has Robotech branding. I'm not familiar with Jie Star, but it looks to be a Chinese "not-Lego" brand of building bricks. They make all sorts of kits, including scenery, video game stuff, anime stuff, real-world cars, etc, but of particular interest around these parts would be this nearly 4700 piece, almost 700mm long SDF-1 Macross kit. Apparently the completed kit has working lights and can transform without disassembly.

It's kind of weird that the Leaders, Voyagers, and Cores for wave 4 of Legacy United hit two weeks ago, then Optimus showed up, but the other Deluxes are from this wave are still MIA. Instead I'm getting more Studio Series figures, so today we'll have a look at Deluxe-class Transformers One Megatron. The thing about Megatron is, IIRC, his appearance is the one that changes the most throughout the film, so it's going to be nearly impossible for a single figure to nail a particular look. Near as I can tell, the angled red vents on his chest, the more angular shoulder pads, and especially the helmet suggest it's his final look in the film, and from the front this figure does a rather good job capturing it, though he could use a symbol on his chest. I guess there's no way to do it in a movie-accurate fashion without spoilers, though. My biggest gripes with the figure are that his hands are pretty visibly treads, as well as the backs of his arms. Maybe with a Voyager budget they could have found a better way to hide the tread in bot mode? He's also super barren and light gray from behind. In the film his calves should be the same color as his shins and feet, but *spoilers* making his calves black would negatively impact his alt mode. Megatron comes with a few accessories. There's a backpack, a fusion cannon, two smaller guns, and another thing that, if you squint, is like a block with another small gun barrel. And here's where things are getting a little dicey. The fusion cannon is not the one that his final form uses, it's the one his second form uses. That form has more rounded shoulders, a flatter chest, and a helmet that's sort of an intermediate step between cogless D-16 and his final Megatron form. Also, based on his various character models in the film, the small guns and the block with the small barrel are serving the same purpose. Megatron's head is on a ball joint for swiveling, but he doesn't have much upward or sideways tilt. A transformation hinge allows him to look down, though, burying his face in the top of his chest. His shoulders are ball joints that swivel and are cut to give him 90 degrees of lateral movement... most of the time. His biceps swivel, and his elbows are double jointed and curl 180 degrees. His wrists swivel. His waist swivels. His hips go 90 degrees forward and backward, and nearly 90 degrees laterally if his waist isn't swiveled. If his waist is swiveled, though, it can overhang his hip and block most of it's lateral movement. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend slightly over 90 degrees. His feet can't really tilt up, but they can tilt downward for transformation, and he has limited but present ankle pivots. Megatron has 5mm ports on both forearms. You're almost certainly going to want to put the fusion cannon on his right forearm. You have options for his left, though. You can use the 5mm port with to plug in one of the smaller guns. The sculpt of those guns is accurate to a smaller gun he had mounted to his left arm in the film, except it should be about half the length of the fusion cannon whereas here it's closer to 80%. Alternatively, you can use a tab on the silver block to attach it to his forearm instead. The barrel is thicker and the silver block shouldn't be present, but it's a more accurate length. This is probably my preference, for a reason I'll get to in a minute. The small guns can also be held in Megatron's hands. As for the backpack, a peg on the hollow inside fits into a hinged peg hole on Megatron's back, and near as I can tell he's actually more movie-accurate with the backpack attached. The backpack has another role, though. It's storage for all of his accessories. The instructions will tell you that you can plug the small guns into the ports the sides, and the silver block can use a tab to fit into the inside of the backpack, with just the barrel poking out of the bottom. There's a tab on the inside that can hold the fusion cannon, though, and the silver slot for the silver block runs through to the outside of the backpack, allowing you to technically store all of his weapons at once. It's probably not apparent when I'm comparing Megatron with Orion Pax/Optimus Prime, but he's fairly tall for a Deluxe, no more than half a head shorter than Earthrise Starscream. Bigger Deluxes usually mean less-complicated engineering, and that's definitely the case here. First remove all his accessories except his backpack. Then does a split, then hinges in his thighs swivel most of his legs back down in a shorter, wider stance (like G1 Onslaught turning into Bruticus). His thighs rotate 180 degrees, and his calves double hinge up and out. This allows you to fold his feet down and spin them into his leg, which spins the front of his treads out to take their place. His chest double-hinges down over his crotch, and his head folds into his chest. His fists turn to align the treads on the back of his hands with the treads on the backs of his arms, then his forearms turn 180 degrees, which allows his elbows to curl up so his forearms can tab inot the backs of shoulders. His backpack untabs from his back and spins 180 degrees on its peg (assuming it stays on the peg). His backpack and the top of his torso, including the shoulders, kind of fold over so his backpack is on his front, covering his head inside his chest. Lock everything into place; calves over his toes, then into the sides of his chest, and shoulders swiveled so the treads are on the ground and tabs on the insides of the calves slot into his elbows to lock his arms in place. Finish it off by plugging the fusion cannon onto the tab on the inside of the backpack, then plugging the barrel on the silver block into the barrel of the fusion cannon. Megatron's tank mode is probably the best you're going to get on a Deluxe budget without compromising the robot mode more. The broad strokes are there... turret on top, black treads in the front and back with a gap between them, mostly silver/gray top of the tank with his chest making up the front. Proportions and details are a bit off, though. Like, his shins should be facing up, not down, and the gap between the front treads and rear should be a totally empty gap, not occupied by his thighs. The rear treads should stick back farther, making the turret more centered on top. The turret should be much longer, and the barrel trapezoidal the entire length, not just the wider segment at the end. The turret can still elevate and swivel (though doing so will reveal his head). And the tank's barrel is obviously the combination of the fusion cannon and silver block gun, which is why I prefer to use that one on his forearm; you can't lose it, you need it for alt mode. What you don't need are the long, thin guns. They're not on the tank in the film, and honestly I'll probably just toss them in a box with Pax's faux bumper with the extra guns on it. If you want to keep them around, though, you can either leave them on the backpack as extra turret guns, or (as the instructions suggest) you can plug them into 5mm ports on the sides of the tank. Pax Prime, our first of the TFOne figures in the Studio Series line, was a figure with some flaws. I think that, like Pax, Megatron might have benefitted from a higher parts count and a bit more engineering that might have come with a bump up to Voyager-class. However, even as he is he's a much better figure than Pax- better colors, better articulation, better transformation, better accessories. I dare say this is the best Megatron has ever been in the Deluxe scale. Whether you're a fan of the film or just like this Megatron design, this a figure worth checking out.

I never heard of Vifam, but it looks like someone repaired a GM with Zaku parts.

My wife and I watched it over the weekend. It was... fine. As others have noted it's nowhere near as good as the original, but it was better than a lot of the crap Hollywood's been shoveling out lately. Keaton and O'Hara were great, and I hope my wife looks as good at 52 as Wynona Rider does .💕

MPG-14 Godbomber is now available to preorder on Pulse.

OK, so that's not all that they did. See, Optimus Prime sells, so the bean counters more or less want him at every price point. But instead of shoveling out yet another cartoon-style G1 Optimus, they went in the other direction. So while Studio Series 86 Optimus goes about accurately capturing the cartoon that made us fans 40 years later, Legacy United Deluxe-class Optimus is an homage to the toy from 40 years ago. While it's fun to have both of this year's mainline G1 Primes together, for a lot of people the more obvious comparison is going to be the G1 toy that United Optimus homages, or more relevantly Missing Link Convoy, Takara's own 2024 40th anniversary G1-toy-but-articulated offering. But right away there are some obvious differences, the most immediate of which is size. The G1 toy is obviously from a time when size classes (or, technically, Transformers themselves) were a thing, but it's closer to a modern Voyager than our new little Deluxe friend, who's roughly the same height as Siege Prowl or Sideswipe. The lower budget also means giving up chrome on the smokestacks and thighs, which are just gray plastic, as well as the grill, bumper, and fuel tanks which got silver paint instead. United Optimus has the molded details on his forearms, knees, and toes to replicate the stickers of the G1 toy, but not the paint that Missing Link Convoy got on its own molded sticker details. Light-piped eyes and gray elbow joints further highlight that this is a cheaper Deluxe-class toy, nor a toy from 40 years ago or a premium collectible for the adults who were kids 40 years ago. But there are more subtle differences than simply "smaller and cheaper." United Optimus is actually more proportional. His shoulders, forearms, thighs, and shins are slightly wider relative to his torso, and aside from his shins, wider than the original/Missing Link toy's. His arms are proportionally shorter, too, with only a partial cutout for a wheel well on the back of his forearm. From the back, you can't stare straight through his torso. Instead of having a large portion of the back of the cab hanging off his shoulder he now has a backpack. Plus his calves have some additional molded details. United Optimus doesn't have quite the sheer volume of accessories that Missing Link C-01 did... there's no trailer here. But you do get an axe, a Matrix, and not one but two rifles. That's one rifle more than the animation-style C-02 version of Missing Link Convoy that still ran nearly triple United Optimus' price tag. The thicker rifle is modeled after the one that the earliest pre-rubsign, silver Roller versions of Optimus Prime came with, while the thinner one is based on the post-rubsign, blue Roller version of the G1 toy. How does United Optimus' articulation compare with Missing Link? Fairly well, actually. His head is on a ball joint, so it can swivel but it also has some up/down/sideways tilt Missing Link Convoy lacks. Shoulders rotate and can move 90 degrees laterally (same). His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees (same). No wrist swivels or articulated fingers, though, and no ab crunch. His front bumper is actually a single-piece hinged hip skirt, and the wheels on his hips are also on skirts that can hinge out of the way. This gives him a full 360 degree waist swivel (much better), plus 90 degrees forward (better), backward (same), and laterally (slightly better) at the hips. His thighs swivel (same) and his knees bend 90 degrees (slightly worse). His toes can tilt downward due to transformation (same), and his ankles can pivot 90 degrees (I'll call this one a win for United- the front of ML Convoy's feet can rotate 360 degrees to give him over 90 degrees of faux ankle tilt, but United Optimus actually has a dedicated hinge to move his entire foot). Finally, United Optimus has ankle swivels. The 5mm ports on either rifle can slide into either of Prime's fists. The axe works in basically the same way, with a hollow bubble that fits over Prime's hand that has a 5mm peg inside. The extra rifle can be stored in a 5mm port on Prime's back. The bubble around the peg on the axe, though, means that the peg can't reach the 5mm port on his back, nor the ones on his calves or under his toes. Oh, and I forgot to do it for the review, but yes, his smokestacks can swivel like '86 Prime's. As for the Matrix, Prime's chest opens up in exactly the same manner as the G1 toy. There's a little peg and clips inside that the Matrix can plug into. Although the size and sculpt are similar to the Matrix that comes with SS86 Prime/Earthrise Prime/Rodimus/Galvatron, etc, it might actually be a new sculpt. 86 Prime's Matrix was too loose to clip into United Prime's chest, and United Prime's Matrix is too tight/small to fit over the clips. If you've ever transformed the G1 toy, you should have a strong idea of what you're doing here. The head still folds back into the torso, but now you have to open his backpack up first and close it once the head is tucked in. Instead of removing his fists, you fold the back of his forearm down, then rotate the fist 180 degrees to spin it inside his forearm while turning the headlights out. The elbows bend, the shoulders fold back, and the arms tuck into the sides, but hold off on tucking them fully in until you've bent down his toes, tabbed his legs together, and folded them backward 90 degrees at the hips like the G1 toy. When you finally finish tucking the arms in tabs near the insides of his elbows will actually lock into slots on his thighs. The result is a small but pretty good truck. It's got the molded rivets, marker lights, door, ladder, intake, wipers, etc as the G1 toy. It's even got molded lines where the hinge was on the G1 toy at the shoulder. The tires are still rubber. They're "Cybertron Radial" instead of Desert Dog, and I think the rest of the text is the size (though my aging eyes can't quite make it out, even with the reading glasses my optometrist made me start wearing this year). The back of the cab isn't gappy like even the SS86 version, and as I mentioned there's even more molded detail than the smooth G1 toy. My only real complaints are that, while the front of the bumper got silver paint, the edges of the bumper did not. Also, the larger shoulder hinge and altered arm proportions break up the silver cab stripe and leave more of a cab behind the windows. Some of the extra molded detail are the 5mm ports on his calves, which can be used to store his rifles in this mode. He still has a bump for the trailer, and indeed, he can pull the G1 trailer. However, the bump has a 5mm port carved into the middle of it, which the axe can use to for storage. However, that port has another use. If you're retiring Earthrise Prime for the new SS86 version, hang on to your Earthrise trailer! Not only can United Prime pull it, but it's actually a lot more proportional with United's smaller size than it was on Earthrise Prime himself. I think the first question a lot of fans had, given that this is the same year that Takara released Missing Link Convoy, essentially retooling the original G1 toy with additional articulation, is why would Hasbro also release a toy based on the G1 toy but with more articulation? I think that's kind of missing the point, though. Missing Link Convoy was a $120 attempt to literally be the G1 toy, but with better articulation. United Optimus is a $25 Deluxe that wonders, "what if the G1 toys exist in a separate universe than the G1 cartoon when we mash them all together in Legacy?" Despite taking the form of a 40 year old kid's toy, Missing Link Convoy is a premium collectible, United Optimus is a toy that a modern kid (or adult) can play with, that fits in with your other Legacy figures. The simple transformation and articulation lend itself well to the kind of figure you want to keep at your desk because you keep messing with it. Of course, 86 Prime is still going to be the "main" Optimus for most Generations/Legacy/Studio Series displays, and as a one-off premium display piece Missing Link Convoy is going to look better on shelf or in a Detolf than United Optimus. But the reason the sole new mold in this wave of United gets a recommend from me still is because he's just a fun $25 Optimus toy.