mikeszekely

Yes! The raptors in Jurassic Park were even roughly Deinonychus-sized, and real Velociraptors were maybe half as big.

It depends. What's appealing about it to you, the hardware or the games? If it's the games, yes, it's a pretty good collection of SNES games. As good as it is, thought, there's almost certainly games you wish it had but it doesn't, or games it has that you just don't care for. There's also the fact that you almost certainly own devices capable of emulating the SNES already with varying degrees of comfort and features. If you don't (or do but don't like the options you have), there are plenty of options ranging from cheap to expensive, including plenty of DIY Raspberry Pi builds capable of playing not only SNES games but practically any other console you can think of, with controller options ranging from decidedly modern to delightfully retro (personally I like the 8bitdo's stuff). I mentioned in the retro thread last year that I built a console with PC parts running the Lakka OS in an old gutted NES that plays everything from NES and SNES to PlayStation and PSP, and I don't even have it hooked up right now because it's more convenient to use Android emulators on the Nvidia Shield TV I have hooked up. But if you're like me, it's the hardware. I got my original SNES for Christmas during whatever year it was that you could get it bundled with Super Mario World but could also send away for a free copy of Super Mario All-Stars. In addition to Super Mario World I'd got Final Fantasy II and A Link to the Past, and we had a bad snow that pushed our Christmas break into mid-January. I spent the nearly three weeks we had off playing some Mario and some Final Fantasy, but mostly working my way through A Link to the Past. In my 38 years of living that Christmas was possibly my fondest (although my daughter is two now, so I'm looking forward to some fun ones ahead). The NES* and the SNES were the hardware my childhood ran on, and the SNES Classic is a tiny, nostalgic reminder of that, right down to the box it's packaged in. Yes, it plays some fun games, but I want it as a display piece as much as I want to play with it. *Really hope Nintendo keeps their promise to manufacture more NES Classics and make them more broadly available next year.

I've been seeing Switches in stock off and on. I know TRU had some last Friday when I stopped. I didn't pay attention to Switches today, but I stopped at Target for diapers and they happened to have SNES Classics in stock, so I went home with one.

Yeah, he's sold out at most places, but last I looked you can get him from Planet Steel Express. I know what you mean. Ultimately the official Laserbeak and Buzzsaw look right to me. I'd consider MMC's for the novelty, but they're not priced at a novelty price. I'm still in for both. I've heard people suggest they'd rather have them cheaper and skip the piledrivers... I'll meet them halfway. Rumble (the purple one) should come with them, since he was in the cartoon and used them often. I'll probably display him with them. Frenzy, though, could be cheaper and do without. Yes! As a kid I was collecting the Marvel comics around the time Fuel Auditor Ratbat took control of the Decepticons, so I'm all for a bigger, better Ratbat toy.

I guess I'm a little late to the party with this one, but tonight I'm going to take a look at MMC's OX REmix Jaguar, which is an alternative take on a Masterpiece Ravage. It's not often that you get a 3P willing to make a figure of a character Takara already did. And when you do, like Maketoys' Meteor, it's going to be pretty close in size because, hey, that's the official scale, right? So the first thing you're likely to notice here is that Jaguar is significantly bigger than the actual MP Ravage. As you're probably aware, MP Ravage transforms into a microcassette, same as the G1 toy. Jaguar transforms into a full-sized cassette, though. You might ask, if the official Ravage is also the official scale, why would anyone want a Ravage that big? Instead, I'd ask if the official Ravage is actually to scale, or if they just made the tapes microcassette-sized so they'd fit in Soundwave? To be honest, I don't know where Ravage officially fit on the scale chart. I do know that I've seen episodes where Ravage was roughly a little longer than the Spike is tall, based on how he looked pouncing on him. But I also saw episodes where he was roughly knee-high to Starscream or Soundwave, or big enough for Sideswipe to need both arms to hold him. If that's the case, then Ravage wouldn't be as long as a human is tall, he'd be as tall as a human is tall. If your mental image of Ravage is of him pouncing on Spike, then there's a good chance that you're OK with MP Ravage's size. But, if your mental image of Ravage is Soundwave giving a knee-high Ravage a pat on the head, guess what? Jaguar is knee-high to MP Soundwave. But enough about size, let's talk aesthetics. Aesthetically, Jaguar looks a lot more cat-like than the official MP. He's lacking the panels on the MP's legs, and his rear upper legs actually look like legs. His color is a bit more toy than cartoon, though, with silvery forelegs and black upper legs, although he does have cartoon red eyes. In fact, all those silver parts are diecast, while the black is plastic and the rockets on his hips are chromed plastic. Aside from a little silver on his shoulders, red eyes, red inside his mouth, and white fangs, he's fairly devoid of paint and color, but that's pretty much accurate to the character. Really, the only strike against Jaguar aesthetically is that, due to his engineering, his torso is split from waist to neck. The halves don't actually tab together, and that leaves a bit of a gap between them. This is the part of the review where I talk about accessories. I could tell you that Jaguar doesn't have any; like the official MP, his hip rockets are attached and built into his transformation. You also know that I'm not one of those reviewers who likes to talk about the box a toy comes in. This time, though, I'm going to say that the box is an accessory. MMC packages Jaguar in cassette mode, and his box is a cassette case. In fact, the cover isn't just the box art; the liner notes where the lyrics would be are where MMC printed the instructions. Now, if you were born after 1995 you might be scratching your head and shrugging, but if you're old enough to have watched the original Transformers cartoon when you were a kid then you're probably thinking this packaging is brilliant. Jaguar's articulation is kind of odd. Jaguar's head is on a ball-joint that can't really look up, but it can tilt down a little, tilt sideways a little, or look sideways a little. The back of his head is on two sliding parts, and sliding out just one side lets him look a little further to the side. His neck is on a pair of ball joints, one for each half. They can be used to give him a little more sideways and downward tilt. However, those ball joints are at the end of large shafts running through his torso to roughly where those two bumps on his back are. So, using the ball joints for articulation causes those shafts to move around each other, not unlike the two bones in your forearm do when you swivel your wrist. At the most extreme twisting part of his back will start to move up while the other half moves down, giving him something akin to a waist swivel. The resulting motion feels more limiting than the usual hinges and swivels you might find on a toy, but also rather natural or organic. Finishing off the articulation, his tail can move up just a little higher than level with his butt or down all the way, and his jaws can open and close. His front hip/shoulders are on ball joints so they can rotate, butterfly backward, or splay a little. His front elbow/knees are double hinges and range from straighter than a real cat to paws on top of his shoulders. Speaking of paws, the front paws are on hinges for up/down tilt and ball joints for 360 degrees of ankle tilt/wrist swivel. His rear hips are also on ball joints for rotation and splaying, although they lack the butterfly motion. The rockets can rotate on the hip, so no matter how you pose his hips they can still point parallel to the ground. His rear knees bend between having his lower legs roughly parallel with the upper leg to putting his toes on his hips. There's a hinge at the end of his lower leg that moves his digitgrade ankle up and down from parallel to the lower leg to perpendicular to the lower leg. The rear paws are on a ball joint that gives him plenty of up/down tilt, a little ankle tilt, and an ankle swivel. Finally, due to his transformation he's got double hinges in his torso that give him a back arch/ab crunch. All-in-all, it's a step up from the official toy. Jaguar can't use is accessory in cat mode. As I previously mentioned, Jaguar turns into a full-sized cassette. I think the engineering here is pretty incredible; MMC found a way to start with the shape of a cassette and turn it into a cat that's far more cat-like than any official attempt. What's more, jaguar has the same cassette shape on both sides; the official MP had the microcassette look down on one side but was a gappy mess on the other. The one aesthetic complaint I'd have is that Jaguar's a very bland rectangle. Fortunately, MMC partnered with Reprolabels to rectify that. I'm not always big on putting stickers on MP-style toys, aside from faction symbols (and emergency vehicle markings, but that's another story), but with Jaguar it's practically a necessity. Due to how he transforms most of the labels aren't even visible on the front half of Jaguar's body in cat mode. Being a full-sized cassette does mean that Jaguar doesn't fit inside Soundwave's chest, nor do I foresee a time when someone makes their own MP Soundwave that retains the robot mode size and cartoon proportions of the official and can somehow accommodate a full-sized cassette. On one level, this is perhaps the biggest strike against Jaguar; Soundwave's tapes go in his chest, right? I don't think it really bothers me, though. For one, even as a kid watching the cartoon I assumed the cassettes grew (or mass shifted) before transforming. For two, is anyone really interested in displaying Soundwave with tapes in him? On my Decepticon shelf I have Soundwave with all of his tapes out and in their non-tape modes, and in light of displaying them like that the discussion again moves away from "what fits in Soundwave's chest?" to "what looks more correct in non-tape mode with the other MP Decepticons?" By the way, his tape mode does interact with his accessories. You just stuff him inside, then close it. Jaguar is a tough recommend. If you bought MP Soundwave, especially if you bought the Hasbro one, you already have an MP Ravage. One that's more human-scale, and fits into Soundwave's chest, if those are things that matter to you. Plus, I really don't care for how his upper torso is formed with that gap, and some of the tolerances (especially his rear hips) are a little scary tight. I also think he's a little expensive for what you get; honestly, I'd have traded the diecast in his legs for plastic if it'd have knocked $20 off. However, what Jaguar delivers is a much more cat-like figure, with better articulation, at a size you might find more appealing if you think the official is too small. Ultimately, that's where I fit in. I think he's an improvement over the official toy on every level, and while I do wish he were a little cheaper I don't regret buying him, especially since MMC are doing the other Season 1 and 2 cassettes. While I personally think that the official Laserbeak and Buzzsaw look perfect and are just the right size, I do expect that I'll be picking up MMC's Rumble and Frenzy, and would like to see them tackle Ratbat, too.

Man, if only they could transform. I'm seriously running out of space here, and as I've shifted gears to a more Masterpiece-style collection I've been debating on putting my Function-X and Reformatted stuff up for sale. I love my DJD, but I'm afraid I'm going to wind up with them as the only figures at that scale.

Yeah. Like I said, everything Fox owned except Fox News and Fox Sports. Az's list has a lot of the big names, but I don't think it's comprehensive. For one, I'm pretty sure Fox had the distribution rights for The Transporter franchise. And yes, Dynaman is correct. Disney now owns 60% of Hulu.

That's what it says on the box. I'm not really into the Legends-class stuff, but I have to admit that IF's Bruticus looks really cool. Hey @Kuma Style, you wouldn't happen to know how it scales with DX9's Hulkie, would you?

Itemized, no. But I understand it to be everything except Fox News and Fox Sports- all their TV and film libraries, their networks, their studios, their stake in Hulu.

My gut reaction is to agree... Netflix's focus on original content is largely driven by the fact that they've lost a lot of their library as every network/studio under the sun decides not to do renewed deals with them so that they can try to launch their own subscription service. And if I subscribed to all of them I'd be paying more than I ever did for cable. In practice, though, I've kept my subscriptions down to just Netflix and Amazon (and Amazon pretty much just because I wanted Prime shipping). The reality is that most networks/studios, on their own, don't have enough appealing content to get be to pay a monthly fee over just cherry picking the stuff I want on Blu-ray. A combined Disney/Fox portfolio, though... not gonna lie, monopoly fears aside, that's a library that might just get me to open my wallet.

Ok, Kuma, that's a lot of Primes. You've got me beat there. But... how many Seasprays do you have?

Right? I remember being half excited to have an Optimus that looked way more like the cartoon than the original toy (which I didn't have, but sometimes pretended the Ultra Magnus cab I did have was Optimus, so...), but even then I thought it was lame that he had a fake truck on his front and the real truck on his back. Of course, now that I've seen Masterforce I write it off as cartoon-accurate Ginrai.

Yeah, Koot looks good to me, but the transformation doesn't look like one I'd enjoy. So I'll wait awhile, see if XTB is still doing theirs, and make a decision later. As for FansHobby, I don't know what to tell you except to handle one of their toys if you get a chance. I never got their monsterbots, and I think they tend toward a slightly stylized, puffy sort of Dreamwave aesthetic, but their Scourge and Laser Op are both very good.

The minute I get the in-stock notification I'm going to mash that ship button so hard...

It's interesting how different people's tastes can be (and why, as helpful as reviews can be, you should always remember that they're ultimately the reviewer's opinions). I was strongly considering picking up Koot, but the transformation kind of turned me off. Really hoping X-Transbot's haven't shelved their Kup. As for Apache, I gotta be honest, he was never really on my radar. I think his bot mode and helicopter mode looks ok, but his car mode just looked awful. It looks even worse to me in reviews, where it's not at that 3/4 angle. The shoulder articulation and that transformation really just cemented my decision to pass on him. I'm still curious to see how MMC and XTB's Springer's shake out, but for $60 I've got Big Spring sitting in my stash at The Chosen Prime, just waiting for Unique Toys' Onslaught to come out so I can save on shipping. Anyway, I finally got my replacement Galaxy Meteor, so we can wrap up Maketoys' RE:Master line with their take on a Masterpiece-style Cybertron/Galaxy Force Starscream. The thing with Cybertron/Galaxy Force is that the cartoon was already fairly accurate to the toys, unlike G1. So aside from Maketoys using the cartoon's dark blue instead of the toy's black for stuff like his forearms and thighs, cartoon and toy accuracy means pretty much the same thing. And on that note, Galaxy Meteor is very accurate to Cybertron/Galaxy Force Starscream. His fingers are a bit too light of a gray, and he's got a similarly-gray transformation joint in his forearm, but complaining about those minor color differences feels like nitpicking. The only other aesthetic beef I'd really have are the forearm guards. Shape-wise, they're upside down (although they're correctly-colored, wtih red closer to the elbow and gray closer to the hand). It's an odd decision on Maketoys' part, since as near as I can tell flipping them 180 degrees wouldn't have affected his transformation or alt mode. The only other thing Maketoys really did aesthetically was tweak the proportions, mostly in the torso and legs. I think these proportions are more dynamic and less squat, so I'm entirely cool with that. Galaxy Meteor doesn't come with a ton of accessories. We've got some extra faces, so you have three altogether: stoic, evil smile, and evil smirk. You have an unmarked Cyber Planet Key. And you have a rifle. The rifle is especially interesting to me, because I can't recall Starscream using a gun in Cybertron (even though I only got halfway through it), and I know the Supreme-class toy didn't have a gun. The Voyager-class toy had a gun, but it looked nothing like this one. Galaxy Meteor has excellent articulation. He's not just an improvement on the clunky Voyager-class toy (of which I have a Dirge repaint), he puts a lot of other MP-style figures to shame. His head is on a ball joint with some upward range and good downward and lateral tilt. His shoulders rotate on ratchets. Then a couple of things move laterally in his shoulder; the arm itself can ratchet outward. The shoulder armor can also ratchet outward, and the wing/guns are on a double hinge (ratcheted at both hinges) so it can further move out of the way. You have to bend the elbow a little so his forearm guard clears his shoulder armor, but the net result is 90 degrees of lateraly movement. His biceps swivel, and his elbows are a single hinge that probably gets around 150 degrees. In addition to the double-hinges on his wing/guns allowing them to move out and up from his arms, they're also on swivels that allow them to rotate. His wrists are probably his only bummer. They can swivel, but they get caught on the forearm guards so he can't really get much more than an 1/8th of a turn. His thumb is a straight piece on a ball joint. His fingers are a little odd. The index finger is separate from the other three, with a ball joint at the base and a hinge at the mid knuckle. The other three are molded together with a ball joint at the base and a pin at the mid knuckle. Believe it or not, he's got a waist swivel. His cockpit crotch can actually slide up and down to give his waist extra clearance to turn. He also has two clicks of ab crunch mid-torso. His hips can go 90 degrees forward or backward on soft ratchets. He's got 90 degrees of lateral hip movement as well, although I can't tell if it's ratcheted or not. I can sort of feel stopping points, but the joints are FansToys squeaky to hear what would be very soft clicks. He's got ratcheted thigh swivels, and ratcheted knees that can nearly get 180 degrees of bend. His feet have a ratcheted up/down tilt, good for one click up 90 degrees down. A hinge on the inside of his shin near the foot gives in 45 degrees of inward ankle tilt. He holds his gun fine, but the handle is different than the usual Maketoys's style. There's basically a square molded onto the back of the handle, and that fits a square-shaped cutout in his palm. In a nice little attention to detail, Maketoys built little pistons into Galaxy Meteor's back that move in and out as you use his ab crunch joint. It's not just his shoulder wing/guns that can swivel. The guns on his torso near the cockpit can also swivel up and down. And the Cyber Planet Key can fit into a slot for it on his back. The key is smaller than the Hasbro/Takara ones, though, so don't expect GM's key to work with Cybertron/Galaxy Force toys or vice versa. In any case, it's purely cosmetic. Inserting the key doesn't do anything. He does still have his swords, though, and they're still spring-loaded. Instead of the key deploying them each wing/gun has a blue button hiding among the details. Pushing the buttom will make the blade flip out. By the way, that's not the only spring-loaded gimmick on GM. Just like other Cybertron Starscream toys, his lower legs fold over his thighs. To hide what would otherwise be hollow lower legs, Maketoys built a spring-loaded accordion panel into the back of his leg. Pushing on the silver molded detail on his shin reveals it to be a button that releases the accordion panel, allowing it to stretch up and hide the gap. That's how he gets such great range in his knee, too; the thigh will push the panel inward, but it'll spring back into place when you straighten his leg out agian. And here's his Don Figueroa War Within-inspired alt mode. Again, it's pretty accurate, right down to the half exposed head. While his robot mode was pretty similar in size to G1 Meteor's he seems to have shrunk a bit for alt mode. The cockpit doesn't open, and it appearance to be silver paint behind translucent purple plastic. Transformation is fairly similar to the original toy, just with a few extra bits that help fill out his back in robot mode and hide his robot hands a bit better in alt mode. Although it's not hard to figure out, I found that getting everything to tab right in the back was a little frustrating. I've also noticed that the gap between what would be his robot shoulders and robot knees is a bit greater than on the Voyager toy. His swords can still be deployed in jet mode, and the wing/guns can still use their double hinges and swivel to extend outward and rotate. The smaller guns near the cockpit can still swivel up and down. And his rifle fits under the nose. Galaxy Meteor doesn't have landing gear per se, but four wheels on his underside do let him roll along. You'll notice that his gun has a little wheel in it as well, so he still rolls even with it pegged in. All-in-all, Galaxy Meteor looks spot-on in both modes and has a ton of articulation. Because of that, I've heard it suggested that he got all of Maketoys' love and attention while G1 Meteor, with his hollow wing backs, somewhat plain aesthetic, butt flap, and inability to look up was somehow a half-finished, "good enough" cash grab. Now that I have both figures in hand, I can't say that I agree with that. For one, Galaxy Meteor is even more hollow. Some of that, like his lower legs that are just hidden behind some pop-out flaps, are necessities due to transformation. But look at his wings in the above picture... they're hollow on the back/underside too. His forearm guards are hollow. His cockpit crotch is hollow. His heel spurs are hollow. That's all hollow to save plastic. And unlike G1 Meteor, there's no diecast on Galaxy Meteor. So, although I don't have a kitchen scale or postal scale to weigh them, I'd guess you'd probably need at least three Galaxy Meteors to get to G1 Meteor's weight. Aesthetically, MT achieved what they wanted with both Meteor's; it's not their fault the majority of fans seem to want that Sunbow look for their G1 Masterpiece figures. And while the articulation is a little better on Galaxy Meteor, I think making a toy that looks like Cybertron Starscream does in the cartoon is just easier; Hasbro/Takara already did it (twice). I often hear people say that they don't need updated Unicron Trilogy figures because the originals were already so good. MT just needed to figure out how to get better articulation out of it. Getting a toy that looks like G1 Starscream in the cartoon and still getting it to turn into a reasonable F-15 is a lot harder. Harder still when you're trying to keep the price at a point where you can entice enough people who already have an MP Starscream to buy another one. At the end of the day, even with some minor flaws, I think Maketoys put a ton of effort into G1 Meteor, and I actually think it's the better toy. That being said, Galaxy Meteor is still one of the best figures Maketoys' RE:Master line has to offer. I think the only reason to hold off, especially since Maketoys dropped the price from the original $140 to $100, is if your collection is strictly G1 characters. If you can find room on your shelves for a Unicron Trilogy character, though, I'd highly recommend you give Galaxy Meteor a look, as he's practically a case study for how a little extra articulation can really bring the Cybertron/Galaxy Force designs to life.

Seems like the end cap where I found the Power of the Primes toys isn't necessarily a Transformers end cap. I was back today and they had a bunch of random stuff on it. The Deluxes were all gone, but in their place were the Legends-class figures. I already have Shrapnel from the original release, and I passed on Beachcomber and Windcharger because if I wanted them I'd probably buy the X-Transbots versions. I did pick up Slash, though.

Be advised that the BFG doesn't come with Power Baser (that PM Prime). It comes with MB-09, which is the trailer for their Scourge/Laser Optimus Prime.

I have Tyrant, and I could have lived with him, but I have to admit Sovereign looks better, at least in robot mode, and by most accounts he's one of FansToys' better figures (I give FansToys a hard time, and people keep telling me I'm just buying their worst figures). I preordered one. Doesn't look like there's a ton of other stuff coming in March, and I have time to change my mind and cancel.

I think I like the idea of Barricade. I like the IDW idea that the Decepticons were a political movement and not inherently evil, and Barricade was a cop who sided with the 'Cons. More than I want MPM-5, I want a version of movie Barricade (black and white police car, maybe purple and silver accents), as opposed the Micromaster (who was used in IDW), that's done in a G1 style. Same goes for Blackout, but not as urgently.

After all that, this would be the last of the RE:Master line (not counting Hellfire since he's the same mold as Wrestle). And this would be Contact Shot, Maketoys' version of Pointblank. So, the trouble here is even remembering who the heck Pointblank is. I do recall the Headmasters being a big deal in "Rebirth," but the new Targetmaster characters were largely overshadowed by Hot Rod, Kup, and Blurr becoming Targetmasters. I have no recollection of the G1 toy, but Contact shot looks pretty accurate to it In fact, that bit or red on his crotch is a toy detail. He's just got better proportions. And I had to check a wiki to see if he was even in "Rebirth." Spoiler, he was, and yeah, that's kind of what the he looked like, just with a much more simplified torso and a totally different head. The kicker is that I did watch The Headmasters, and just last year, and I still had to check a wiki before I had that, "oh, yeah, I kind of remember him" moment. And he mostly looks like that, but for some reason Pointblank was kind of backward in The Headmasters. The blue spoilers on his knees were on the backs of his legs, and the wheels on his shoulders are just missing. Despite those small differences, Contact Shot is proportionally very much based on his Headmasters appearance. Pointblank comes with a chunk of the rear of his vehicle mode... yeah, he partsforms. I guess the G1 toy did, too. He also comes with three extra faces, a US cartoon-style helmet, his Targetmaster buddy, and a red barrel. Little not-Peacemaker appears to be fairly accurate. He could use a little more blank on his crotch, and in the animation his hands weren't so obviously gunbarrels, but for a guy this small I'm not complaining. Instead I'll admire the molded detail and the nicely-painted face and eyes. Despite turning into a gun instead of a head, not-Peacemaker is constructed basically the same and as nearly the same articulation as the Maketoys Headmasters. The only difference is that his head can actually rotate. Size-wise, he's the same size as the Maketoys Headmasters, which I think is appropriate, but if you have some other 3P Targetmasters I've been reliably told that not-Peacemaker is smaller. Contact Shot has pretty good articulation, as you'd expect from a Maketoys' figure. His head is on a ball joint that rotates and has pretty great range for up, down, and lateral tilt. His big shoulder pads have a pair of hinges and a swivel so they do a good job moving out of the way of his shoulders, which are set on a big ball joint for rotation and some minimal forward/backward butterfly motion. A dedicated hinge also allows for over 90 degrees of lateral movement. His wrists and biceps swivel, and his double-jointed elbow gets a little better than 90 degrees (although careful manipulation of the shoulder pad can create the illusion that he's curling his arm all the way to his shoulder. His hands are, sadly, the same as Cupola and Ironwill's, with all four fingers molded as one solid piece pinned at the base knuckle. His waist swivels, and he's got enough ab crunch for a proper pelvic-thrusting pose. His hips are ratcheted all the way around, and unlike the Headmasters his skirts move out of the way, giving him 90 forward and backward, and nearly 90 degrees laterally. His thigh swivels are ratcheted. His knees are ratcheted and good for 90 degrees. Then we come to his feet, which are a little weird. Theres one hinge that gives him some up and down foot tilt, but the foot is actually conencted to a double hinge that helps the foot slide up into its alt mode position. Thing is, depending on how you angle those hinges, you go all the way from about 30 degrees of outward ankle tilt to about 45 degrees of inward tilt (more, if you're willing to untab the inside of his leg). The red barrel can plug into the partsforming engine/spoiler/chunk, and the chunk can peg onto his arm. I don't recall seeing it like that in either "Rebirth" or The Headmasters but, barrel aside, that's how the G1 toy did it. Not Peacemaker has a transforming handle with the same grooves as most other RE:Master weapons, and Contact Shot holds it with the same tiny rails in the palms. Unfortunately, Maketoys didn't include the The Headmasters option of attaching him to the wrist. You have other options, though. You can take the barrel off of the chunk and slide it over not-Peacemaker's barrel, giving him a much less anemic-looking barrel. The chunk can be flipped around, and it still has a gun-like weapon molded onto it. Or, you can fold out a clip on the chunk that fits around the a tab on his back, which is the most Headmasters-accurate option. As for the faces, you get four expressions; a semi-netural, subtle smile, a shouting face, a frowning face, and a bared-teeth grimmace. The catch, though, is that the faces with teh eyes only work with the toy/Headmasters-style helmet. The visored faces only work with the "Rebirth"-style helmet. So if you want a visored frown but the Optimus ears and crest, or eyes and a smile with an antenna on a dunce cap, you're SOL. Contact Shot turns into a space-sportscar, and... it's ok, I guess. I remember even as a kid not caring for the "futuristic" or "Cybertronian" alt modes of the Season 3+ toys and wishing for a return to the real cars and jets of Season 1 and 2. But I digress. Size-wise, he's a little wider than Cupola, but similar in size on the whole. Contact Shot is pretty accurate to the G1 toy, including details like the little gray marks on the front fenders, headlight covers that are different shade of red, painted detail like the toy's stickers on the spoilers above the vents at the rear, and the tampoed flames in place of the toy's stickers. He's even got a little molded divot on the roof where the G1 toy's Targetmaster gun could plug in, although it's just for show here. Not-Peacemaker doesn't peg anywhere in gun mode while Contact Shot is in alt mode. Contact Shot seems a little lower and a little sleeker than the G1 toy. The other big differences are that the gunnish-think on the engine chunk is painted in gunmetal instead of left in blue, his arms aren't totally covered on the sides of the car, which causes him to loose the black triangles and some of the smoothness to the side. Oh, and he's got a large red... I dunno, exhaust? Oh, if you're looking for a comparison with his car mode in "Rebirth," the gun on the engine would be blue but the engine itself would be gunmetal, he'd lose the flames and wouldn't have the black triangle anyway, the blue roof was done in the same white as the windshield (perhaps implying that the windshield went the whole way to the hinge) and the tips of his front bumper would be black. Near as I can tell The Headmasters version is basically the G1 toy sans stickers. Contact Shot does have an opening cockpit, with a cool translucent orange dash, a molded steering wheel, and even molded pedals. The back of Contact Shot's head is showing a bit. Sadly, unlike Cupola, he's just a one-seater, but not-Peacemaker fits in snugly with the dash closing over his legs. Yes, not-Peacemaker can ride shotgun in Cupola's car. Not-Peacemaker may not be able to tab into the car in gun mode, but Contact Shot is still armed. In addition to the gun molded onto his engine he's got two panels that flip onen and reveal... some kind of guns? Launcher tubes? I don't know. I can't recall if Pointblank ever used anything like that in either "Rebirth" or The Headmasters, so it could be "that thing from that episode" or it could be just a gimmick. It's a nice little touch either way. If you want a more G1 look you can remove the barrel/exhaust, although there's nowhere else to store it and it exposes a seem where the legs connect. You can take the engine/gun/spoiler/chunk off, too, revealing some painted engine parts. So evaluating Contact Shot is tough. He's an accurate-enough space-sportscar, which is kind of cool. His robot mode is dynamic and poseable, toy-accurate, mostly Headmasters-accurate, and fairly "Rebirth"-accurate. He's a good figure. But he might be my least favorite of the entire RE:Master series, and that comes down entirely to my total lack of connectiong with Pointblank. Unless you're a big Headmasters fan, or you had the toy when you were a kid, you probably don't care about Pointblank either, and that right there is the dilemma. If you like cool transforming robot toys regardless of who they are or where they come from, you might like Contact Shot. If you're really into The Headmasters and you can recall Pointblank as the tough and cool leader of the Targetmasters who showed up three quarters of the series in and you're thinking "I definitely do need an MP Pointblank in my collection!" then by all means get Contact Shot, you'll love him. But if you're building up a collection of MP-style characters that have some nostalgic connection to your childhood, and your childhood is Seasons 1-3 plus the '86 movie, then I think it's hard to get excited for a figure like this the way you would for Optimus or Starscream or one of the other characters who figured more prominently into the US G1 cartoon, even if Contact shot is technically a better toy than MP-10 or MP-11.

Well, speaking of monopolies, I hear their other big suitor is Comcast, and buying Fox's assets will give them a majority 60% stake in Hulu.

I guess we won't know for sure until they come out, but the assumption would be yes since they're not just hands, they're "Prime Armor". The trouble with that line of thinking is that if you want a better 3P Grimlock, then next you start wanting better 3P versions of the other Dinobots. Next thing you know you bought ToyWorld's Dinos, or GCreations' Shuraking.

Not only is it not a done deal, Disney isn't the only one taking to Fox.

Although Maketoys slipped some season 1 characters into the Re:Master line with Gundog and Hellfire, Cupola wouldn't be Maketoys' last foray into The Headmasters. So far, it's this guy: Ironwill, their version of Hardhead. I'm trying to even recall what Hardhead might have looked like in the US G1 cartoon, and aside from the simplified head I can't really think of how he might have looked. Ironwill appears to make some concessions to the G1 toy, with yellow paint on his hips, translucent orange on his crotch, and gunmetal paint at the top of his thighs serving as callbacks to sticker details. His head and beefy, barrel-chested proportions are definitely Headmasters, and it works pretty well for him. While Chromedome was the capable-yet-eager prototpe for Hot Shots yet to come, Hardhead was portrayed as his stubborn and slower yet strong and dependable sidekick. And, aside from possibly making Ironwill too burly, Maketoys nailed the aesthetic here as well as they nailed Chromedome with Cupola. Like Cupola, Irownill comes with a pair of extremely G1-ish green rifles. At least this time the green is broken up with another shade of green. He also comes with an alternate lower half of a face based on the toy. If you happend to have a Hardhead toy this will undoubtedly please you, but I didn't. And since both the US cartoon and The Headmasters gave Hardhead a visor and a mouth I'm happier with the default face. Technically his shoulder cannon isn't installed in the box; it has a mushroom peg at the back that slides into a slot on Ironwill's backpack. I guess you could count that as an accessory, but to me that's just part of his body. Speaking of faces, here's little Ironwill. As with little Cupola, very spot-on. Nice use of paint, crisp molding, and even light-piped eyes. I like how, despite having a different transformation, Maketoys managed to work a lot of the leg detail from cartoon/toy Duros's shins onto little Ironwill. Again, the only small deviation is the extra brown-gray panels on his arms due to them having his ears on them, but at least this time the underlying arm is the correct green. Also like little Cupola, his forehead and part of the top of his head slides down over the face, leaving just a little yellow chin poking out. Maketoys again included an opening panel to reveal painted tech specs. And for those of you who are curious, yes, you can have Cupola and Irownill swap heads. This really makes me eager for Maketoys to do the other Headmasters; fortunately it looks like we can expect Highbrow from them relatively soon with Brainstorm and Apeface in the works. Oh, and on the topic of Apeface, I don't own FT's Lupus or either of KFC's Horrorcons, so I don't now if they can use the Maketoys' heads or if Ironwill and Cupola can use the FT or KFC heads. Ironwill's articulation is a bit improved over Cupola's. His head uses the same hinged port set into a disc that Cupola has, and that results in the same articulation. His shoulders can rotate, this time on a pinned swivel instead of a ball joint, with a hinge that'll give him over 90 degrees of lateral movement without any of the clearance issues Cupola had. His elbow is a single joint, so it can look a little messy from some angles, but it still gets nearly 180 degrees of bend. His biceps and wrists can swivel, and his hands are identical to Cupola's save for the color. His waist can swivel, and due to how the transformation locks his cockpit slightly extended off of his back his waist swivel is left unhindered. Backwards motion on his hips are limited due to a panel that's not as much a butt flap as it is his actual butt, and like Cupola his hip armor is fixed. You can ratchet his leg forward a little under 45 degrees with his legs straight, but if you move his hip out a bit you can get a little under 90. On the topic of moving his hips out, without Cupola's tires getting in the way Ironwill's hips ratchet out the full 90 degrees. He's got a thigh swivel by sliding the thigh pieces over the hip joint, but the thigh armor can catch on his pelvis a little. You've got maybe 45 degrees with his leg straight, 90 degrees if you move his hip out a click or two, and full rotation if you extend his hip further. Given that you usually want a more dynamic thigh swivel when you have the hips in a more dynamic pose anyway, this seems fine. His knees are single soft ratchets that get a little past 90 degrees. His feet can wiggle up and down just a taste, a dedicated hinge gets you about 45 degrees of ankle tilt, and due to transformation he has ankle swivels as well. The shoulder cannon has a hinge so it can move in a 90 degree arc from straight up to straight forward, plus it can swivel left and right on the mushroom peg. His rifles work have the same grooves that slide into the rails on his palms that other Maketoys figures are using. I've found found that you can store one of his rifles on his back by plugging it in where it'd go in alt mode. However, I couldn't find any way to store his other rifle. In robot mode Ironwill doesn't really feel any bigger than Cupola, which I think is how it should be. Yet where Cupola kind of collapses into himself Ironwill seems to find a way to expand in a transformation sequence that's slightly more intuitive but slightly less satisfying that Cupola. The resulting tank mode is satisfyingly big and hefty, dwarfing any other tank-bot in my collection (to be fair, I think the biggest tank I have is Combiner Wars Leader Megatron). Although not really any longer he manages to puff himself out wider enough to feel happily bigger than Cupola. His alt mode is also very G1 with sharper yet mostly-identical sculpting on the barrel, the same molded circles on the top and sides of the rear treads, some orange translucent parts for the stickered vents on the G1 toy and some green and gunmetal paint for more stickered detail, but toned down to better suit the cartoon crowd. Even the super narrow cockpit window is a G1 detail. As with the G1 toy, you can plug his rifles into the alt mode. One goes to the side of the cockpit window, and the other on top of the cockpit. The entire cockpit can swivel a little bit, giving you a three-barreled tank. The mushroom swivel lets the brown shoulder gun move up and down, and the hinge lets it aim outward. A hinge that lets the handle fold it allows the gun on top of the cockpit to aim upward, but the joint is a little loose for the weight of the barrel. The third gun is fixed. Maketoys split the forward treads into two, one in the upper arm and another in the forearm and all six treads are rubber and can roll over the wheels inside. There's a seat inside the cockpit for little Ironwill to drive. There are two little molded consoles at about hand level, but the cockpit lacks any of the painted detail that Cupola's has. Behind the seat is a little shelf. This shelf is for storing the spare face, which is kind of nice if you like the idea of storing all the accessories on the figure. However, I couldn't find any way to tab or lock it in place on that shelf, so playing with the figure will cause it to start rattling around loose or or fall out. It's easier for me to just put it back in the box. There's one more question that's probably burning in your minds right now, and that's "Can little Ironwill ride shotgun with little Cupola in Cupola's car?" The answer: yes! If anything, little Ironwill looks more comfortable. I know for some collectors MP figures are basically statues that get posed and put on a shelf, never to be touched again, but I for one definitely dig this play pattern. So there you have it guys. I don't know if it's because I found the transformation less satisfying or because I just don't like Hardhead as much as I like Chromedome, but between the two figures I definitely prefer Cupola. However, Ironwill is still a great figure, with improved articulation over his Headmaster buddy and that same attention to sculpt and detail that makes him look very good in both robot and alt modes. If you're a fan of Hardhead, Headmasters, or The Headmasters I'd easily recommend him.

I'm a huge MegaMan fan. I'm not 100% sure anymore because of mobile gaming, but I think I've played every MegaMan game except Super Adventure Rockman and Rockman Xover. Needless to say I'm pretty giddy, despite owning all those games in one format or another. I'll get the X collection and MegaMan 11 on PC, because I already have the Legacy Collections and PC games still work after consoles get shoved in closets to make room for new ones. But intend to buy them and the older Legacy Collections on Switch, too, for portability.