mikeszekely

Action Robo has a physical store in Kowloon, but they have strange hours.

I'm actually glad for the Wii U ports. I gave up on the Wii U pretty early on, so I'm happy to have a second chance on a lot of these. I just need them to do Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE and I'll be good.

Yeah, Pooh's voice sounds good because it is Pooh, Jim Cummings. Dunno about Walker, but Peter Cullen was Eeyore. Well, the plot sort of reminds me of that Hook movie with Robin Williams, which I'm not ashamed to say I enjoyed. And my mom is a huge Winnie the Pooh fan. Maybe I'll take her.

Dunno about FT or Wei Jiang, but Gabriel is supposed to be around 22" from toes to head, and around 24" to the top of his wings.

Yeah, Gigapower announced that they're doing a Sky Lynx, but who knows when since they still have to release their Swoop and Slag. I'm not big on Sky Lynx, but I've liked Giga's stuff so far, so we'll see. As for Omega Supreme, you can buy FansToys' version right now. DX9's should be out soon, and my goal is to get it and review it in the 3P thread if I can work it in around the fact that I'm in the middle of a move. Wei Jiang, a company better known for taking other toys and making improved KOs, is also doing a surprisingly original version, but that's about all I know.

Every other '80s outlet more or less consisted of the comic book, which was poorly colored anyway. (We're not going to count Japan; I've got Optimus, Sideswipe, and Jazz, not Convoy, Lambor, and Meister.) Now I agree that the intent was clear, but if I tell the police I intended to pay for the TV I walked out of Best Buy they're still going to unhappy that I already left the store, right? Well, they may have intended for Rumble to be black and red, but they did nothing to correct their production error. After a jillion episodes and three years that production error becomes canon.

Sunday Twofer! Today we're going to look at the latest from Ocular Max's Remix series, Furor (the blue one) and Riot (the red one).* *FIRRIB, you guys. If Rumble had been blue in a few episodes then they fixed the "mistake" and started calling him Frenzy or started recoloring him red and black, then sure, it's an animation error. When the blue tape keeps appearing, and they keep calling him Rumble in all 98 episodes plus a movie it's not longer an animation error, it's a misprint on the toy's packaging. Anyway... yep, that sure does look like Rumble and Frenzy to me. Furor's colors are a little more vibrant than the official MP, they have the extra band of color around their wrists, and both have patterns on the pelvis and shins that are more cartoon accurate than the officials. Actually, for super cartoon accuracy, MMC even went with white paint for their toes and faces, although their weapons and the markings are Furor's chest and pelvis are still silver. Oh, and speaking of toes, it's impressive that MMC even managed to nail the cartoon shape of the feet. They also went with a softer sort of shape for their heads. That also increases their cartooniness, but the softness also has the side effect of making the face sculpt a little indistinct. Finally, while the officials had the same holes in their chests that the G1 toys had for the tape spools, Furor and Riot's chests are solid, like the cartoon. As good as they look, I do have some aesthetic complaints. Their torsos are too long, the forearms are way too long, and their biceps are basically down to an elbow hinge with the swivel at the top. There's also a hugely noticable seem on their shins. Both issues can be chalked up to the difficulties of getting a robot out of a tape cassette, I suppose. One issue I'm not as sure they couldn't have avoided, though, are the tabs on their wrists. It's not the tabs themselves that bother me, it's the fact that the color on their wrists is painted on. On both Riot and Furor the paint is wearing off of those tabs. Another pic, this time with Soundwave and Bumblebee, to help show off the scale. Now, I've looked at some episodes, and I've looked at the scale chart, and officially Rumble and Frenzy should be roughly human-sized, smaller than Bumblebee. In other words, the officials are actually correct. However, the scale chart isn't exactly gospel; it was a guide for the animators to use, and one that was frequently disregarded. You're memories may vary, but I remember him being taller, and in many episodes he was. He was, especially in the first season, one of the main Decepticon cast; to me, he was probably the fourth "main" Decepticon after Megatron, Starscream, and Soundwave. Accurate or not, the officials were always too small and not "MP" enough. Riot and Furor are probably a head taller than I'd like, but I'd say this is closer to what I want than the officials. Both Riot and Furor come with the same accessories, just in different colors. For starters, you've got my favorite part of the Remix experience, the packaging. Just like they did with Jaguar, Riot and Furor come in a casette case, and the instructions are printed on the cover liner notes. Now, with Jaguar, I'd considered this packaging that was like an accessory. This time, it's definitely an accessory. Although the figures come in tape mode and in their cases, the cases themselves are placed in a larger box with more accessories. Those accessories are a stand, painted to look like the dry earth of the Oregon desert where they always seemed to be fighting, piledrivers, their gun/wings, and an alternate head. Again, the sculpt is very soft and I don't think you can see the difference from my photos (it doesn't help that I'm shooting with an old Nikon point-and-shoot with focus issues), but the difference between the heads is that the installed heads have kind of a smirky smile, and the extra heads are stoic. I'm leaving the smirky face installed on Furor, but swapped Riot to the stoic face. Not pictured, each tape also comes with stickers that you can apply to give them cassette labels. They seem kind of cheap, though, and don't offer faction symbols for the indented space on their tummies, so I'll probably wait and see what Reprolabels comes up with. Their heads are on ball joints, and although they don't have much lateral tilt they have really good range both up and down. Their shoulders are ball-jointed, too, and rotate freely. Their shoulder armor is close to the body, though, so it resists being moved laterally. At the ball joint, it'll either snap back down or snap to 90 degrees. However, joint inside the torso moves the whole assembly up to 90 degrees, so you can still get the poses you want. Their biceps swivel, and they've got double-jointed elbows good for maybe 120 degrees or so. Their hands do have a pin at the base knuckle, so you can open and close their hands, but they don't have wrist swivels. Then again, neither do the officials. The officials also don't have an ab crunch or a waist swivel, but these guys have both, although the swivel is a little awkward due to how much wider these guys are right to left versus front to back. The ab crunch is good for about 90 degrees forward. Their hip skirts are on swivels, and the hips themselves can go 90 degrees laterally, just under that backward, and just over that forward. They have thigh swivels, and single-hinged knees good for 90 degrees. Their ankles are ball joints so they can tilt up slightly, down a fair amount, and pivot a little less than 45 degrees. Technically they can swivel, too, but they have to be at the just the right angle to clear the back of their calves. The guns can be held in their hands, or pegged onto their backs, same as the G1 toys and the official MPs. The connection to their backs or in their hands is quite secure. They're not a solid piece, though. There are hinges at the base of the wing and the barrel. I've found that the hinges are strong enough that they'll stay in the position that you put them in, but loose enough that the slightest tap will move them. It's frustrating, but I think stronger hinges would increase the changes of breaking such small, thin parts, especially the barrels. The stands have depressions with pegs in them for the feet, and the feet have peg holes that allow them to snap securely onto the base. The piledrivers work very much like the officials. You bend the arm so the bicep is horizontal, the forearm is pointing up, and the fist is tucked away, then slide the piledriver around the forearm. They do have a fold-out panel on the top to cover up the gap where the forearm goes in, which is nice. They also have working electrionics. Pop two LR44 batteries into each piledriver, hit the switch, and the piledriver will start pumping. It's been suggested that MMC could have left the electronics out and sold these guys at a lower price to entice more buyers, and I think they're probably right, but it's still kind of a fun gimmick. Just head the warning on the packaging! MMC says that you should try to hit the switch and stop the piledrivers in the closed position. If you stop them in the open position and try to push them back in yourself you could damage them. If you don't want them using their piledrivers, but still want them to carry them, MMC has you covered. The filler panel folds underneath the cap at the top, and you can slide a gun down inside. Then you plug the gun into their back, and presto, piledriver backpack. Riot and Furor both transform into cassettes. Not microcassettes, like the G1 toy or the official MP, but a 1:1 audio cassette. I happened to find one I had in a closet from a local band I listened to when I was in high school for comparison's sake (I doubt enough people would know Dawson High that the band would show my age... but the fact that I listened to casssettes in high school probably does). I'm sure they'll look even more cassette-like with labels. Going with a 1:1 cassette alt-mode is undoubtedly why they're bigger than Bumblebee in robot mode, but I think the alternatives would be to try to cram this engineering into a microcassette-size (which would still leave those yearning for a bigger Rumble and Frenzy unsatisfied), or to go with a totally arbitrary size, so I think MMC probably made the right call. What I think is really impressive, though, is that the spool-holes that they didn't have visible on their chests in robot mode are totally still present in cassette mode. Another impressive feat, something that the officials couldn't manage, is that their wing guns are tucked inside the cassettes. I though it was cool that the official MP Laserbeak/Buzzsaw and Ravage worked their engines/rockets into their microcassette modes, because it made for an all-in-one tranformation. Unlike the G1 toys, you didn't have to worry about where to put their stuff when they were in tape mode and stuffed into Soundwave's chest. Takara gave you places to store Rumble and Frenzy's guns, either in the piledrivers or in Soundwave's feet, but they seemed like less of an update over their G1 toys since you still had to pull the guns off their backs or out of their hands and put them someplace else. It makes me really happy that Riot and Furor don't have that problem. You can pop them out of their cases and transform them into complete, armed little guys. Speaking of caes, they and their liner notes are the only other accessories that work with this mode. You do still have to find a place to stash their piledrivers and their stands, but I'm cool with that. In fact, I think Furor looks much better with his piledrivers than the official toy did, and my plan is to display him with piledrivers while Riot dual-wields his guns, to give them a little extra visual distinction beyond color. Basically, how I put them in their articulation picture is how they're going on my shelf. In any case, unless the size really bothers you, I definitely recommend them. The bigger size, the greater cartoon accuracy, the improved articulation, and the diecast all work to make them feel like worth "MP" versions of Rumble and Frenzy, and they're a huge improvement over the official toys. They're more solid, and their transformation is also more straightforward and less fiddly than Jaguar, and I'd have to say that Riot and Furor strike me as an improvement over Jaguar for those reasons. They're so good that I'm seriously starting to think about picking up their condors, and unlike Rumble, Frenzy, and Ravage I definitely feel like MMC's are too big and the official versions were actually really good so that's really saying something. I seriously hope MMC gives us a Remix version of Ratbat. Well, I'll take all of Soundwave's remaning tapes, and all of Blaster's too, but I was into the old Marvel comics when Ratbat took over the Decepticons ("Carwash of Doom," anyone?), so I really want a bigger Ratbat as good as these Remix guys have been.

You mean GT's Op Ex? It's not Cybertronian, it's Don Figueroa's design from the beginning of the Transformers ongoing, right after All Hail Megatron. He just kept it for a long time, including during Dark Cybertron when you jumped in. And it's not exactly current anymore. While some artists, like Alex Milne and Andrew Griffith, tried to stay true to Don's design when they were drawing Optimus, Livio Ramondelli started drawing him a bit differently during his run on Robots in Disguise. I don't know if Ramondelli's changes were intentional or not, but Griffith started copying them when Robots in Disguise switched to just "The Transformers" to avoid confusion with the cartoon. Fast forward to today, in the Optimus Prime ongoing, and he's got his smokestacks back, the gap is gone between his window pecs, and he sort of looks like they kept some of Don's elements but toned them down to be more G1-ish. Like this: I guess, depending on the artist or the story, characters can change their appearance a lot in IDW, and that can make doing an "IDW" version of a character tricky. Megatron's a really good example: he's had six different bodies in the IDW comics, and while Don Figueroa's "bomber" Megatron pops into a lot of people's heads when they hear "IDW Megatron" due to having a distinct look and a Hasbro toy, a lot of people are going to say that Alex Milne's Megatron from More Than Meets The Eye was their favorite.

I mean, it's still the same Prowl, but assuming some variation is just due to different artists and not actually different bodies... four, maybe five. Pre-war Cybertronian, a Nissan Z-car (350Z at first, 370Z later, but still basically the same, so you decide if it's the same body or not), post-Chaos Cybertronian (the version that Rebel is based on), and then this form when he goes back to Earth. His last comic book appearance (that I recall) was in the Titans Return story, and he seemed to be drawn as a car, but his robot mode is still identical to this one so it might just be an art thing. Anyway, I dig it because it's very visually Prowl in robot mode but a tougher (yet still realistic) police alt mode. As for the alt mode, I don't know if it's supposed to be anything specific, but it reminds me of the kind of armored SUVs that were popular with the police when I was in China. Something like a Rhino or an INKAS. Speaking of cops, I got my hands on Sarge, Generation Toy's new take on Streetwise. As is usually the case with GT, Sarge is a Classic-esque "updated" G1-ish design. It's not straight up G1 and uses (as we'll see in a bit) a newer model car for his alt mode, but a lot of the visual cues are still extremely G1, even more than his IDW appearance. We've still got a chest dominated by the front windshield, still has panels on his arms with tires, red thighs, and his shins are still made from the rear window. His feet aren't made from the light bar, but they're still red in color. The rear bumper on his knees adds the same dark stripe his spoiler provided on the original toy. Some silver near his wrists, biceps, abs, are similar to G1's white (ok, very light gray) but helps break up all the other white on him. Good proportions and sculpt help him look dynamic even when he's just standing there. My one and only complaint is that I wish GT had put some red paint on his forehead and ears, although there's some discussion as to whether or not his head could be a connection point for combined mode and was left white to prevent scratching (my guess is that it's white because the G1 toy was white from the front). I could always paint it myself later; what I want you guys to take away from this is that I absolutely love this design. Curiously, while GT/TFM's Stunticons were basically the same size as the official MP cars, Sarge is a head taller. That does make me wonder how that will affect the gestalt; one of the things I like is that the GT/TFM combiners have been the same size as the two Warbotrons, the ToyWorld Throttlebot and Dinobot combiners, Ordin, Hades, and Poseidon (with the lifts) and only a little taller than Feral Rex, Uranos, Prometheus, and Poseidon (without the lifts), allowing one to have a collection of 3P combiners that cover nearly all of G1 that are roughly the same size. That's something the ToyWorld/Zeta/DX9/XTB/FansToys "MP-sized" combiners haven't delivered yet. Sarge just comes with one accessory, his gun. If you've seen the guns GT gave to their Constructicons you basically know what to expect; black plastic, silver-painted barrel. Assuming the combined-mode stuff like hands and feet come with their Hotspot (or their First Aid), I don't think Sarge really needs anything else. Sarge's articulation is good in some areas, but not-so-good in other areas. His head is on a hinged swivel with an actual neck (which I love), so he can rotate his head, look up about 45 degrees, look down a shade before his chin hits his chest, no sideways tilt. His shoulders move laterally 90 degrees on hinges, and can rotate 360 degrees. Two issues here, though; the hinge for lateral movement is in the torso, before the rotational joint. So in shades of the old Warbotron guys (or FansToys' Apache) you can raise his arms forward on the rotational joint or laterally on the hinge, but not both at the same time (unless you raise the hinge all the way). This kind of design is dated, and there's no excuse for not building a hinge inside the shoulder. The other issue is that the hinge is far too loose. If you raise his arm the full 90 degrees and then position the arm so the weight is more foward then you might be ok, but if you raise his arm anything less than 90 degrees laterally his arms immediately droop back to his sides. Continuing on, he's got bicep swivels, double-jointed elbows that get slightly over 90 degrees, wrist swivels, a joint that lets you bend his wrists in towards his body, and a pin through the base knuckle of his fingers that lets him open and close his hands. The index finger is a separate part from the other three. His waist can swivel. His hips can move only about 45 degrees forward or backward due to the lack of moveable hip skirts, and about 90 degrees laterally. His thighs can swivel, and his double-jointed knees can get maybe 110-120 degrees of bend. His feet have a pair of hinges so they can tilt down a little, up about 30 degrees, and pivot to a ridiculous degree (nearly 180 degrees). A thin ridge on the back of his gun's handle fits into a groove in his palm, and by itself it's not a secure connection. However, his fingers have plenty of tension to hold the ridge in the groove, so overall he holds his gun very well. Sarge's alt mode is a Nissan 370Z police car. It's been suggested that it's a better alt-mode for Prowl than Streetwise (in the IDW series, when Prowl was a 370Z Streetwise was a Nissan GT-R), but G1 Streetwise was a Nissan 300ZX (Z31), the successor to G1 Prowl's 280ZX, so a 370Z is as much an updated version of Streetwise's alt mode as Prowl's. Based on a quick Google search on the length of both cars Sarge is slightly too large (a 280ZX is around 9 inches longer than a 370Z, but Sarge and MP Prowl are basically the same size) but I don't think they look too out-of-place together. Certainly closer than TFC's tiny Mustang. Even if you allow that a 370Z is as logical a choice for Streetwise as it is for Prowl, the other complaint you're likely to hear is that the white-on-top, black-on bottom paint job with the shield and "POLICE" printed on the sides is definitely more Prowl than GT Streetwise's all white (very light gray) paint and sheriff star. I'm of two minds on this; most countries don't have sheriffs, and this white-on-black color scheme is how almost every police car in Japan is painted. G1 Streetwise has a pretty boring paint job anyway. On the other hand, there are plenty of other police paint schemes used throughout the world that are still similar, like China's white with a blue swoosh, that would have still been mostly white but visually more interesting than G1 Streetwise and more visually distinct than Prowl's Japanese scheme. Regardless of the deco, like GT's Jazz or TFM's Stunticons the alt mode has plenty of realistic, painted details and makes for a great-looking car. A quick peak at the underside does reveal a visible back of the head, but for the most part hides his robot bits very well. His gun clips to the underside, and we've got rubber tires here that roll just fine. What the pictures don't illustrate well is the transformation. It's one of the better ones GT/TFM have come up with. There's enough twisting and rotating to be fun, but nothing frustrating the way some of the Stunticons were. Everything locks together great in both modes. A lot of the engineering is quite clever, with panels that hide robot parts in car mode filling in gaps in is torso in robot mode where his arms were collapsed. There's so much good in this figure that it really makes the issues with his shoulders that much more disappointing. Hinges inside the shoulders with better tolerances than the torso hinges he does have, and I think this really would have been the best figure that GT/TFM have made, besting even their Optimus, Motormaster, and Megatron. I'd have recommended him in a heartbeat. As it is, while I don't think his shoulder issues are necessarily a dealbreaker I would suggest waiting a bit and seeing how some of GT's other Protectobots turn out before deciding whether or not to jump in on this set.

I'm in sort of the same boat as @M'Kyuun. I grew up in the '80s, and as a kid the only thing better than a toy car or a toy robot was a toy car that turned into a robot. That's not to say that I can't enjoy a Cybertronian mode, but I'm always going to prefer a realistic earth mode. I mean, I remember even as a six year old thinking that it was kind of lame that the movie/Season 3 cast had futuristic alt modes instead of actual Porsches, Lamborghinis, and Datsuns. Besides, I don't think Prowl kept that mode for long, anyway. (I'm also a bit put off of Rebel just because I've been fairly dissatisfied with every GCreations toy I have bought, but that's another story.) So, while I'm glad that @Kuma Style is enjoying his copy, Rebel's a pass for me. Now, if you get a company like Generation Toy to give me this IDW Prowl: Then I'll probably bite.

That's because The Force Awakens was a two-hour "what if we did all the stuff you liked in Episode IV again?" fanfiction, and The Last Jedi was two hours of "screw fan expectations, I'm dumping everything and and making a whole movie about the good guys running from the bad guys." I liked Rogue One, though. As cool as a live-action Star Wars would be, it'd also be super expensive to make, I'd bet.

I said the same thing about Op 1.0 when 2.0 was announced. If 3.0 is as big as improvement over 2.0 as 2.0 wound up being over 1.0 I'll gladly upgrade. That being said, given Takara's penchant for super cartoon accuracy I'm not holding my breath.

Ooooooh. Well, if you picked up any of the May Mayhem releases you might have some leftover limbs. My Cyclonus currently has Alpha Bravo, Rook, and Offroad after picking up the May Mayhem Wildrider, Slingshot, and Deluxe Groove. This year we're even supposed to get the Unite Warriors version of Blast Off, so I'll have an extra brown jet if I pick him up. If you're limited to PotP, though, looks like your choices are limited to Dinobots, Terrorcons, Fembots, or Jazz, since I'm hearing that Wave 3 will be a Moonracer repaint and the rest of the Terrorcons and PotP is ending early after that. If you're not getting Elita-1 you could go with the Fembots. Or you could go with Swoop and Cutthroat for a team of flyers.

I'm still waiting on the wave 2 Deluxes to show up around here. I'll load on Moonracer and the jet, but I want the Dinobots and Rippersnapper.

All the PotP limbs come with a hand, though, leaving you with two extra hands. While it looks like the extras fill out the torso on Volcanicus, the PotP feet have holes in the back. I've seen people plug the hands with the fingers folded in and the dual thumbs bent around so they're pointing in the same direction as the wrist peg, then plugged into the PotP feet to make them larger/give them heels. Anyway, Perfect Effect makes lots of combiner hand/foot upgrades, but I think they're a little pricey for what they are. EDIT: Oh, yeah, I was so busy replying to Scyla that I almost forgot I had a question. Now, I've seen reviews starting to pop up for MPM-05 Barricade, at Emgo's at the very least was a Hasbro version with the Toys 'R' Us exclusive badge. Have any of you guys seen him in any of your stores? I've checked my local store twice and haven't seen him, but I can't even find him online. It's been my experience that even when TRU blows out of their online inventory it'll still have a page for the toy I can show to an employee to have them check if they have any in the back.

Yeah, I'm mostly Hungarian and German, my wife is Chinese. Emma's got her mom's nose and eyes, but my, "I know I'm making trouble but I'm too cute for you to be mad" smile.

I played the original on the Xbox 360. I was interested in the sequel, but lost interest in the Wii U before it came out. Luckily the Switch is getting ports of some of the better Wii U games. I just got both Bayonetta games for it

Wait for Gabriel.

I personally think every windshield should be clear or smoked translucent in vehicle mode. There are some characters where blue feels more correct to me in bot mode (Optimus and Ratchet, mostly), but I think a clever engineer could come up with a solution like blue panels that move into place behind the clear plastic. Just look at Sunsurge; blue faux windows in robot mode, smoked translucent in car mode.

Picked up PotP Hun-Gurrr. I had the original G1 toy as a kid, and it was one of my favorites, so I really wanted the new one even though I wasn't impressed with the pictures. Basically, I'm in agreement with @M'Kyuun but I'll but putting up a more in-depth opinion with pictures later. I have no idea what became of my old Transformers; I think my parents gave them to a younger cousin when they thought I was too old for them. But I think I'm going to try to track down another G1 Hun-Gurrr.

I checked my local Target and Walmart, but they didn't have any wave 2 stuff. I just want the Dinobots and Terrorcons. They did have TR Blitzwing in the clearance, though. If you still want him for cost + shipping I'll grab one for you, @M'Kyuun

OK, last figure from my last shipment (although the next one is on the way), and this one is a doozy. It's FansToys' Sovereign, their MP Galvatron. I'll say upfront that due to their overwhelmingly positive reputation vs my actual experience with them I tend to give FansToys a hard time, accusing them using excessive paint and diecast to create an illusion of quality that sometimes has people sweeping flaws under the rug. And to start off, we definitely have an excess of diescast and paint here. Pretty much the only unpainted plastic you're seeing is the light gray on his ships, hip armor, elbow joints, treads, the tops of his shoulder pads, and the rear of his cannon, plus the translucent red pieces on his abs, belt, and knees (I can't tell if the black on his knees/shins is painted or not). And while I'm not sure what all is diecast and what isn't, Sovereign is defintely a heavy figure. I recently got a new kitchen scale so I figured I'd weigh him along with some of the other heavier figures in my collection. I clocked him at 860 grams, with only Graviter (1388 grams), Grassor (1182 grams), and Power Baser in his combined mode and fully armed (1174 grams) being heavier. He's nearly twice as heavy as DX9's Tyrant (448 grams). In the interest of being objective, though, even if I imagine he was all purple plastic Sovereign is unquestionably a good-looking Galvatron. Compared to Tyrant, his closest competition, he's got thicker arms, thicker thighs, and especially better boots and feet. While Tyrant's hooves didn't actually bother me Sovereign's feet look ready to smash Starscream's crown. His torso is broader, more cohesive, and less barrel-shaped, with a chest that doesn't jut out as far. I was a big fan of Tyrant's scowling head sculpt, but Sovereign's looks exactly like the '86 movie. And while I personally kind of liked Tyrant leaving the treads on his back Sovereign wearing them on the backs of his arms is unquestionably more cartoon-accurate. With that out of the way, we can stop ignoring the paint. This is the part where I talk about aesthetics, afterall, and that purple is aesthetically gorgeous, with a stunning metal flake finish. The barrel of his cannon also has a metal flake finish and looks better in person than I expected, but we'll talk more about his accessories in a minute. And the one place that DX9 painted that FansToys didn't still comes out in Sovereign's favor. Often translucent plastic comes across looking cheap, but FansToys used it perfectly on Sovereign's abs, belt, and knees, giving them a brilliant, jeweled appearance. Arguably, some of that perfection comes at the expensive of having a little bit of kibble on the back. It's not terrible, but unlike Tyrant and the G1 toy Sovereign doesn't use the purple spike on his back as the rear strut in alt mode; instead, it's folded up below it as a backpack. (Kudos to Mania King for having the cleanest back, by the way). In any case, it's not like you're going to display Sovereign with his back facing outward. Accessory-wise, Sovereign's got a good bit. We've got a flight stand that looks an awful lot like the one that comes with Soar, an extra grimmacing face, a segmented purple rubbery blast effect part, and two cannons. One cannon is painted with a metallic orange, the other is translucent orange plastic. He also comes with a Matrix attached to a chain. The Matrix is diecast with blue translucent plastic inside, and unlike Tyrant's is roughly the same dimensions as MP-10's. The chain doesn't seem to be removable. Comparing the cannons to Tyrant's directly, this perhaps Tyrant's first clear win over Sovereign. The solid barrel is, perhaps, a more cartoony orange but I definitely prefer the metallic copper DX9 used. As for the translucent orange, the color is way off. The only reason to even have it is as a homage to the G1 toy, and the G1 toy was a lighter orange with silver sparkles. Almost exactly like the DX9 version. It's not just the colors, though. FansToys designed the cannon's transformation so that the rear goes inside the barrel, and the result is a barrel with less tapering at the ends and a tinier rear portion. All-in-all, I find myself wishing that Tyrant's cannons fit on Sovereign's arms. Sculpt and paint will only get you so far when it comes to looks. Fortuantely, Sovereign's articulation is excellent. His head is on a hinged swivel that can look up a fair bit and down just a hint. His shoulders are ratcheted for rotation with another ratchet giving him 90 degrees of lateral movement. He's actually got two bicep swivels, one just below the shoulder and one just above the elbow, so no matter how you pose him the treads stay on the back/underside of the arm. The elbow is double-jointed and gives you basically 180 degrees of range. His wrist can swivel, but due to transformation it can also bend downward which should be standard for all Galvantron and Megatron toys because it looks great in a firing pose. I'm not sure if it's intentional, since it throws off the sculpt of his forearm, but there's actually a third swivel on his forearm. By using that swivel, you can make his wrist bend up instead of down. Attached to his wrists are his hands, with individually articualted fingers. The thumb is on a ball joint for rotation and folding over his palm, with one pinned hinge above the stem. The other fingers are pinned at the base, pinned that the mid-knuckle, and pinned at the end, plus the middle finger is a little longer and the pinky a little shorter than the index and ring fingers. His hands are possibly a little large for him, but if you're going to do individually articulated fingers like this I'd rather the hands are robust enough to handle it and the use of ball joints avoided. Moving along, his waist swivel is actually ratcheted. It's a little limited because his back kibble can't clear his hip armor, but if he could swivel farther his view would be blocked by his shoulder pads. His hip armor and hip front hip skirts are hinged so they can lift out of the way, and he can 90 degrees forward and 45 degrees backward on a ratchet, and nearly 90 degrees laterally on friction joints. His thighs can swivel, and the cut for the swivel is hidden in the ridges on his thighs. His knees are ratcheted and double-jointed for about 180 degrees of bend, and the purple thigh armor is on its own hinge on the diecast knee joint itself so you can position it however you think looks best when you're posing him. His feet are hinged to allow over 45 degrees of downward bend, plust his toes have their own hinge for transformation that can bend down even farther. Another hinge provides nearly 90 degrees of ankle pivot. If utilizing the pivot breaks the sculpt too much for you, his toes have a swivel for tranformation that can double as a faux anklt pivot. The chain on Sovereign's Matrix is big enough that it can slip over his head, but I'd have liked it to sit a little lower on his chest. Plus, because the chain is so short, it's hard to work it back off of his head. His cannon, as you'd expect, plugs into his forearm. I've noticed that the translucent cannon fits a little more securely and doesn't pop out as easy as the painted one; my guess is that FT didn't account for the paint and it's actually pushing itself back out of the socket. The stand works by plugging into both Sovereign's anus and perineum. There's one joint near the top of the stand. The two peg system means that how you tilt the joint moves Sovereign from upright to nearly vertical. Due to his weight tilting him too far will caust the stand to topple. The blast effect parts are kind of neat, but because they're rubbery and multi-segmented they have a tendecy to droop no matter how you arrange them. Worse, the ratchets in his right shoulder feel like soft ratchets and are totally incapable of supporting the weight of the effect part. Plugging it in will cause his arm to drop faster than Bitcoin's value. Fortunately, he has a socket on his left arm for a cannon, and his left arm supports the blast effect without any issue. Plus, dual-wielding cannons! Sovereign's transformation is interesting, at least to me, because the basic idea is folding up the legs on the back of the cannon and turning the torso inside-out so that it's more gray than purple for the front of the cannon before transforming and plugging in the barrel, same as Tyrant. They end up with the same basic shape. But the actual how of folding up the legs and turning the torso inside out is so totally different. I'd say that Sovereign's legs are easier to transform and get into place, but Tyrant's torso is easier. Honestly, though, if Sovereign has one real flaw it's his alt mode. His front struts are clearly his robot arms. The treads molded and painted on the gray plastic, with molded and unpainted wheels inside the treads and actual wheels underneath. They look kind of cheap next to the working tracks on Tyrant. From the front, the area around the barrel is unpainted gray plastic that could have used some of the silver FansToys put around Sovereign's collar. From behind we've got hollow bits and folded-up feet. The whole thing feels less cohesive than Tyrant does. There's very little question that Tyrant makes ofr the better space artillery. Possibly the only advantage Sovereign does have in alt mode is that you can use the joints in his rear struts and shoulders to raise or lower the cannon's angle, while Tyrant was more or less fixed. You can also use the blast effect in cannon mode, although again it's pretty droopy. As I mentioned there are wheels in the molded treads, and another wheel on his rear strut, so he can roll. I suppose you could hang the Matrix from the barrel, but the stand serves no purpose in this mode. I've gone with Maketoys for Reflector, Maketoys for Hound, Gigapower for my Dinobots, and Open and Play for my Springer. If someone does a better Perceptor Tesla is gone. I'm waiting for X-Transbots Neptune and hoping it'll make for a better Seaspray than Spindrift. Only FansToys' Bombshell feels definitively better than BadCube's Insections. I'm passing on FansToy's Kup and hoping that X-Transbots releases theirs and that it doesn't suck. It almost seems like, when given a choice between FansToys and another company for the same character, I pick the other company. Plus, when people are always talking about "FansToys' quality" I wonder if they're thinking of the same stuff I am. Tesla is cheap plastic trash. Inconsistent joint tolerances have plagued them pretty much from day one. A few figures have had a reputation for breaking. Heck, my FT Kickback broke on the second tranformation, and not even in the usual spot other people where having issues with. And if I'm being upfront, Sovereign's got little issues too. I already talked about how his solid cannon pops off more easily than his translucent, and about how the ratchet in his right shoulder is much weaker than his left and can't support the blast effect parts. There's also the fact that one of those little white bits at the end of the cannon is loose and spins freely. Or the fact that the tab that plugs his shoulder pad into his torso is looser on the left arm than the right arm. None of those things are deal breakers, but they're little annoyances that combine with aesthetic issues surrounding his cannon and his alt mode that hold Sovereign back from being truly perfect. That being said, unless we're talking Dinobots where I might prefer to display a character in alt mode, I'd rather concessions be made to the alt mode for a better robot than concessions to the robot for a better alt mode. And Sovereign capture's Galvatron's robot mode exceptionally well, in a figure with the articulation to get some really dynamic poses. If you already have Tyrant and you're happy with him I don't know that you have to drop $160 to replace him the way I did, but if Galvatron is a hole in your Masterpiece collection then this is definitely the version you want. In fact, had I bought him earlier I probably would have named him my top figure of 2017 (I guess Grassor was the tail end of 2016, eh?). Strong recommend from me.

Still not in stock at any US retailers, I'm afraid. I think Gobots. I only managed to get through one episode of Revenge of Cronos and I didn't see any familiar characters, but the ones who were in it had weapons.

Well, I didn't just get Zeta's Air Strike. I went in for both of their Aerialbots, so this is Flyfire, their version of Fireflight. Once again we find that Flyfire is a bit more toy-inspired than cartoon, but if I'm being honest I kind of don't mind. The Aerialbots on their own weren't exactly the most memorable of characters to me, but Silverbolt had the whole scared of heights thing, Slingshot was a jerk, Skydive was the black one, and Air Raid was the same jet as the Decepticon Seekers. Fireflight wound up being the most forgettable of the Aerialbots, and the super generic head the animation gave him didn't help. In this one case, I think I actually prefer the toy-style head. That isn't to say that he isn't suffering in other ways, though. We still have silver on the chest, thighs, and feet that should still be white (or red on the thighs, if you want to go toy-style). We still have smoked translucent plastic in place of sticker details. Ultimately, I think the translucent bits are the worst thing about this set. They lack the color of the actual stickers, and using the same smoked translucent plastic for both toys ignores color differences that would have helped them stand apart. Seriously, when you look at them side-by-side, you really have to stare for a bit to even tell them apart. Both have white and silver heads, white arms and lower legs, silver thighs and feet, and red torsos with silver in the middle flanked by translucent pieces on the chest with additional translucent pieces on the knees and hips. Now imagine instead that Air Strike's silver went the whole way to his belt, and his translucent pieces on his chest and hips were red, while Flyfire's translucent bits where white on his chest (possibly with toy-style blue and yellow stripes) and blue on his hips. Suddenly they'd look a lot more distinct, wouldn't they? In any case, Flyfire's accessories are basically the same as Air Strike's. You've got a black gun, still missing a hole in the barrel, still with a little blue paint, and four unandorned black missiles on a pair of clips destined to go back in the box. The missiles at least stay clipped on better than Air Strike's. His head is on a ball joint, and he can look up a little, down just a fraction, and tilt his head sideways a decent amount. His entire shoulder rotates, and it moves laterally inside the shoulder armor 90 degrees. It's actually on a double-hinge for transformation, so he can shrug a bit, too. He has bicep swivels and although his elbows are double-hinged, they can really only bend 90 degrees. His wrists cans swivel, and he's got the same crappy hands as Air Strike. If anything, they're actually worse. The thumb on his one hand has fallen off repeatedly. Continuing on, his waist swivels. His hips are basically identical to Air Strike's in function and range, although the ratchets for the lateral movement are a bit looser. His thighs and knees are the same as Air Strike's. His feet can bend down, but not up, and he's got about 30 degrees of ankle pivot. No ankle swivel. He holds his gun the same way as Air Strike, with a slot on the handle fitting over a tab on his palm. On Flyfire, though, it actually clicks into place and feels quite secure. Also like Air Strike the missiles seem to be meant to clip onto the wings on his legs. However, while the missiles themselves stay on their clips better, the peg doesn't seem to fit into the holes on the wings that well. As with Air Strike, the wings themselves are removable if you want a cleaner look. In addition the the hole the wings plug into there's another hole below it. The missile clips don't fit into these holes any better than the ones on the wings. Flyfire is a far more accurate F-4 than the cartoon, which was drawn more like an F-94 than a F-4. It also eschews the white sides from the G1 toy, but it does use the toy's blue, white, and yellow markings for the wings and (mostly) the vertical stabilizer. The unpaintable gray plastic used for the joints on the wings and the armatures for the cockpit and tail is a bit more of an eyesore here than against Air Strike's black, but on the whole I feel like Flyfire pulls off the jet mode better. Part of that, I'd recon, is that taller, narrower fuselage compared to an F-15 simply lends itself better to a transforming robot. It makes him look less like a jet with a brick on the bottom. But the attention to detail is honestly pretty impressive. Those flaps between the intakes and the cockpit? F-4 accruate. The dogtooth on the leading edge of the wings right where they angle upward? F4-accurate. The lip on the leading edge of the horizontal stabilizers? F-4 accurate. And we have the landing gear, which fold out of the wings in an F-4 accurate manner and do roll. The cockpit opens to reveal a single molded seat. And taking a peak at the underside we can see that the wings have two points for mounting weapons. As with Air Strike, the gun has shallower pegs on the sides for plugging into the wings. We have some unfortunate gaps where some hip skirts might have helped, and a bit of a visible head thing going on, but on the whole not too shabby. And we have a spring-loaded square on his crotch for mounting him on a flight stand. In some ways, Flyfire is a little more frustrating than Air Strike. Air Strike's transormation was pretty smooth, but Flyfire has some clearance issues folding in his hands, folding the panels on his collar into his torso, and collapsing his arms under his chest flap. On top of that, we still have innaccurate colors and smoked translucent plastic that detracts more than it enhances, plus weaker ratchets to boot. That said, for whatever reason Flyfire looks more passably like Fireflight than Air Strike looks like Air Raid, at least to me. His jet mode is superior to Air Strike's. Now, the problem with these combiner teams is that for most people they're an all-or-nothing sort of deal, we already know FansToys is doing what appears to be a more cartoon-accurate version of the Aerialbots, and I've already suggested that if it weren't for the fact that he was so cheap that Air Strike would have been a definite pass. But I kind of like Flyfire, despite having a lot of the same engineering and issues. Maybe FansToys' will turn out to be better in the end, but for now there are worse ways to spend $60.

Yeah, I heard around 30fps on Ultra for Overwatch without a dedicated GPU. I kind of want to be impressed, except I know that my next build will (like my current aging PC) have a dedicated GPU, almost certainly from Nvidia, and the new Ryzen APUs probably aren't marketed at someone like me. On the other hand, I'd love to see them in a Surface-esque 2-in-1.