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mikeszekely

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  1. mikeszekely
    I don't have an MP Starscream, so I might have been willing... But no, he sold it to me for what he paid at the show plus a flat rate Priority Mail box big enough to cram it in. About $136 total. I paid this evening, and he says he'll send it tomorrow around lunch time. With luck, should be here Thursday.
  2. mikeszekely
    Funny you should mention it... Apparently a limited production run were available for sale at TFCon this past weekend. I wasn't able to go, but someone who did is going to sell me one he picked up. If all goes well I should get it later this week and have a review up before I leave for Shenzhen next week.
  3. mikeszekely
    I'm probably not going to get that Skywarp (or Thundercracker), but I'm down for their Galaxy Force Optimus and Megatron. Actually, after Starscream, Op, and Megs I don't really see myself buying any more Galaxy Force/Cybertron characters. On the G1 side, aside from Howling Meteor (whom I already have preordered), I'm all in for their Brainstorm, too. And now that we know they're doing Highbrow, too, I might even go back and grab Cupola and Ironwill to complete the gang. Then there's their Cross Dimension stuff. I've been moving away from the smaller stuff lately, giving into the inevitability of building a G1 MP collection. I saw their CD Jetfire, thought it looked neat, but was ready to pass. I passed on both versions of their Thunder mold. Then I saw the art for their CD Galvatron, and I think I might be back in on the entire line. Anyway you slice it, though, for a company that people thought was dead they're killing it at TFCon. MMC is the only other company that seems to be showing off a lot of new stuff. I have no idea what's going on with that Ocular Max Bruticus. The art looks simplified, and the hands and feet are integrated into the arm and leg bots. I wonder if it'll be Legends-scale? There's a ReMaster Warpath, and people are already wondering who the repaint is. None of that is really grabbing my attention, but then they go and show me an Ocular Max Cliffjumper, and it looks so good. I think some people are complaining that his alt mode is a bit chibi-style, but my main complaint with MP Bee is that he isn't. And I know that a lot of people have been saying MMC's been going downhill, but if I have to roll the dice on QC I figure I've got better odds with MMC than XTB, so I'm thrilled to have an alternative to Toro.
  4. mikeszekely
    My kid slept late, and I didn't want to wake her because my wife worked super late and I let her stay up until Mama got home. By the time we got out this morning the SNES Classics were long gone. Kid's happy she got a little bus and brunch, though.
  5. mikeszekely
    That sucks. Well, hopefully Nintendo's not lying about making a lot more of them and you'll be able to find one anyway. I briefly thought about driving over to my local Walmart to scope out their situation, but I don't know. Don't really feel like dealing with a lot of hassle. Some stock tracking website said my local store has 24 units, maybe I'll head over close to midnight, maybe swing by Target in the morning, but I'm not waiting in any lines. EDIT: I live five minutes from Walmart, and my wife's car needed gas anyway, so I figured that I had nothing better to do (I rarely sleep before 2 or 3 am). Saw what I'd guess is 30-40 people, got gas, went home. Targets are supposedly getting a ton. Whenever my daughter wakes me we'll go in the morning. If they happen to have any at whatever time that winds up being, super. If not I'll take her out to breakfast and call it a win anyway.
  6. mikeszekely
    And finally wrapping up TFC's Poseidon, this is Thousandkills, their version of Tentakil. Aesthetically, I don't think there's any real surprises here. He's full of the same stylization as the other five TFC Seacons, with lots of translucent plastic accents and sweeping lines coming to points. Aside from the accents, the color is basically G1 with pink lower legs, maroon torso with a line of blue, and blue arms. You could make a case that his feet should be pink, and I'd probably agree, but I don't mind it. What I do wish is that they'd ditched the blue accents on his shins and either cast his thighs in blue or painted them (although, given how prone the paint on this set has been to coming off, maybe not paint...). Size-wise I've shown off the other limbs with so many official and unofficial characters that you should have a good idea by now of how big Thousandkills is, but he he is with Unique Toys Brawl and BadCube's Huffer. Thousandkills' tentacles are perhaps best thought of as accessories. The first two segments of each are on the figure out of the box, but the bulk of the tentacles are packaged separately. The unattached tentacle has four more segments (five if you count the tip), but two segments can be removed. The tentacles are not ball jointed, but each segment can rotate and bend 180 degrees. You get two red tentacles, four regular pink tentacles, and two tentacles with the extra big spike. Having removable segments means you can decide how you want them. The instructions seem to suggest that you go long for beast mode and short for all the rest, but I don't want to have to keep popping out and putting in the removable parts, so I compromised by going long on the reds and short on the pinks. That's how they are in every picture in this review. The instructions suggest that the big spike tentacles should go between the normal pink ones, and that for robot mode the red tentacles just drape over his back like a cape. However, as articulated as the tentacles are you can of course pose them however you like. One of the cooler ideas I saw as to extend the shoulder joint out a bit, then wrap the tentacle around it. As for the rest of his accessories, he comes with some of the usual stuff: a combined-mode connector, a gun-mode handle, and two guns of the same basic style as the others where you can open it up and flip out a longer barrel. The translucent tentacles on the guns is a nice touch. He also comes with a large maroon chunk that isn't really useful outside of combined mode, so we'll come back to it in a bit. His head is on a ball joint that, in theory, has pretty good downward range and fantastic upward and sideways tilt. In practice, if the combiner port is flipped up all the way you can't move his head much sideways or up without it getting in the way, and a panel that covers the gap in his torso limits how far down he can look. His shoulders are on ratchets for rotation and a hinge to get a little over 90 degrees laterally. A second hinge for transformation can get you a bit more lateral movement, or you can make his arms droopy for some reason. His elbows are double-jointed, and you can get maybe 120 degrees without pushing the shoulder spikes into holes on his forearms. His wrists can swivel, but he doesn't have any finger articulation. His waist and thighs swivel. His hips are ratcheted and go about 90 degrees forward or backward, and a little over that laterally. His knees (make sure you're using his actual knees and not the transformation joint) are ratcheted as well and can bend 90 degrees. His whole foot isn't articulated, but his toes and heels are on hinged ball joints. The toes can bend up and down a bit, and give 45 degrees of faux ankle tilt. The heels can also bend up, down, or tilt inward, but not as far as the toes. He holds is guns adequately, as they're just 5mm pegs and his hands are molded into 5mm curls. I'm a little disappointed that TFC didn't put slots on any of the tentacles that could have worked with the tabs on the guns. His beast mode, minus the pink toes, works, doesn't it? You've got the goofy black face, teeth, and yellow eyes. You've got blue under that, and he's standing on blue legs. His squid top is pink. The reds are at the bottom, and I like to position them like extra legs for him to stand with. What more do you want? TFC even put the black parts of his monster face on sliders. Slide down for a mostly closed mouth, or slide up to open his mouth. When you slide up, some of his red robo-crotch shows like a tounge. And, like the other TFC Seacons, you can put his guns on his beast back. Now, as for the the chunk of accessory, the easiest thing to do with it is to slide on the Thousandkills' gun-mode handle and make it a gun for the combined mode. I think it looks like a gun aesthetically keeping with this set, so that'd be fine except the joints in the arm bots aren't really up to the task. When taking this picture, my problem wasn't the elbow (although the elbow isn't really up to holding any of the Seacons in gun mode), it's actually the bicep swivel. The next thing we can do is to pull the sides off and transform it a bit to make a gun stand. This is pretty useful, since the other stands are Poseidon's feet, if you wanted to keep the leftover member in gun mode. The downside is that, in stand mode, you're left with extra parts. Speaking of gun modes, here's Thousandkills... I think. I followed the instructions as best I can, but it doesn't really look like it does in the instructions and I can't figure out why. In any case, the tentacles kind of get in the way, and this is probably my least-favorite of the five gun modes. The final thing you can do with the extra bits is to split them into four parts. The smaller ones clip into Posideon's thigh, like kneepads. I'm not really a fan of this; if you bend Poseidon's knees it becomes super obvious that they're stuck to the thighs, not his actual knees. And while they work ok with the fish, sitting over the flat part of their tails, they stick out to far on the other three legs. The larger parts sit in between Posideon's feet and his leg bots. In addition to giving him a little more height they add ratcheting ankle tilts. They're probably the best use of these extra parts, but they stick out pretty far in the back and bots with more kibble on the back of their leg mode may have trouble fitting with them. Getting back to Thousandkills, here's his arm mode (minus a hand I didnt' feel like removing). I mean, it seems ok, but Tentakil's not really an arm to me, so... Leg mode. With the pink tentacles interlacing behind the leg and the red ones casually curling around the front this is the mode where his tentacles are the least obtrusive and probably the best choice for him if you're planning to use him in the combined mode in some way. I kind of figured I'd leave him in beast mode for while to play with, since Poseidon's been combined on my shelf since Deathclaw/Nautilator/Lobclaw arrived. However, as he's a better color match with Cyberjaw/Skalor/Gulf, I really do like how Posideon looks with Thousandkills and Cyberjaw as legs (per the usual Masterforce arrangement). At the end of the day, I kind of have mixed feelings about Thousandkills. On the one hand, he's probably my favorite individual member of the set, as his robot mode is on par with the others and his beast mode is probably the most fun. On the other hand, he's coming long after the other five and, for a lot of people who went in on this set, long after Poseidon was combined and placed on a shelf, which dampened my enthusiasm (he came in the same shipment as Huff, Overturn, and MPM-4, all of which I wrote about right away, but I put messing around with him off for nearly a week). And, during that time, I got the bulk of TFM's Havoc and the first two Unique Toys Stunticons. Playing with those toys has made me realize that even though this set is far and away the best thing TFC's ever done, the engineering and aesthetics feel dated. Now, I don't mean the size of the gestalt; I'm not one of those people who insist combiners have to be as big as Constructor to be "MP" enough. I mean stuff like the goofy feet on most of the members, I mean the articulation, the hands, the transformations. It feels like, for all the progress that TFC made with this set, that they're still doing combiners to go with their earlier stuff, or with Feral Rex, or with Ordin, and not more modern efforts like Gravity Builder, Constructor, Ragnaros, or Havoc. None of TFC's Seacons will make it into my top five figures this year. Despite that, yeah, I do still recommend him. Even though he's the only one you can get away with not buying and still have a complete combiner, I'd say he's still my favorite out of the six in the set, so he's the one that I think is the most fun on his own.
  7. mikeszekely
    I'm not aware of any problems with any non-KO versions of Soundwave or Convoy. But, AFAIK, the MP-11 mold was ALWAYS a bit floppy, and the Yes Model/BB7 KOs are supposed to be better. I don't know how you feel about the unlicensed third parties, but me personally I'm waiting for Maketoys to release Howling Meteor. Looks to have less kibble and more articulation than the MP-11 mold.
  8. mikeszekely
    I didn't even really notice it until you mentioned it, now I can't unsee.
  9. mikeszekely
    Thanks, BV. I'll check it out in Steam.
  10. mikeszekely
    I sat through the video and it didn't even tell me what system...
  11. mikeszekely
    So, if you asked me which minibots were part of the main Autobot cast in the G1 cartoon it'd be a pretty short list despite the fact that there were a bunch of them. Most of them, even Season 1 characters like Gears and Windcharger, seemed to feature prominently in an episode or two but were otherwise background characters. Heck, some of them, like Tailgate, Outback, and Pipes, I didn't recall being in the cartoon at all. No, I'd say my list would basically boil down to Bumblebee, Cliffjumper, and Brawn, who were in nearly every episode of the first season, and Wheelie for the third season. And Huffer. See, when I think back to the cartoon, it's not really that I remember Huffer being in it as much as Cliff, Bee, and Brawn. He turned into a tractor trailer cab, like a smaller Optimus, and even pulled Optimus' trailer. To my 5-6 year old self, that meant that Huffer must be extremely important. Alas, by the time I decided I wanted MP-style versions of at least the important characters from the cartoon, X-Transbot's Krank was long sold out despite being, shall we say, mediocre. And the more desireable Cubex Huff was commanding insane prices on the aftermarket despite numerous reports of paint issues and other QC problems. Needless to say, I was pretty happy to hear that BadCube decided they were going to re-release Brawny and Huff. But while Brawny turned out to be basically a straight-up re-release with minor tweaks, it turns out that BadCube's Huff is basically a whole new figure. Well, that's Huffer all right. Basically most of the deviation from his animation model comes down to his forearms not being smaller than his biceps, which is honestly an improvement if you ask me. But otherwise, his colors, shape, and detail are pretty much spot on down to the diamond-shaped recesses around his eyes and the little pointed bumps on his shoulders. I've heard some people suggest that he's too bland, that he looks like a Happy Meal toy, or that he needs more paint. To the first point, I'd have to say that's just how Huffer looks in the cartoon, and to the other points he's actually got a lot of paint. All the silver is painted. His face seems to be painted gray. The light blue on his chest, abs, and thighs is paint. The darker blue seems to be plastic on his hips, back, and shoulders but paint on his head and the front of his torso. The orange on his legs is plastic, but his feet are painted diecast. No, my only complaints about his robot mode aesthetics are that the paint on his feet could have used a second coat, and that it's not quite a match for the orange plastic. Different enough that you notice it if you're looking at it, but close enough that it probably won't bug you on a shelf. If you're wondering what's different between BC Huff and Cubex Huff, the hips and legs are a bit more cartoon-accurate, and he lost some of the extra details on his chest and abdomen. Size-wise, he's a head taller than Bumblebee, and crotch-high to MP-10, which seems about right. If you have him, he's about the same size as Brawny. Now, Huff's arms are connected to his torso via a ball joint, and you've got a little play there. One of the things you can do, if you desire even greater cartoon accuracy, is to get his shoulders sitting as low as they can. This mimics the doofy way his arms seemed to connect mid-torso in some episodes. Also, while we all kind of accepted that Huffer's cab was just chilling on his back, the cartoon always made it seem like just a bit of a hood, not a huge backpack. BadCube tries to mimic that by having the top half of the cab collapse into the bottom. I'd say it works fairly well. Huff doesn't come with a lot of accessories, and I'm not really sure how they're different from the Cubex version. He's got an extra yelling face. He's got one pistol, done up with nice silver paint that matches his arms. He's got a second rifle, with a dissapointingly bland mold and no paint. According to the manual that comes with Huff, the pistol is based on one he had in the very first episode, and the rifle is based on one he had "when Huff and the others found out that their leader was a knock off created by the evil Mega." I assume they mean the episode "A Prime Problem," where Megatron builds an evil Optimus clone. I'm not breaking out my DVDs to go check, though. Huff's head is on a ball joint. He's got some downward range and some sideways tilt. He's actually got a lot of upward tilt; I suspect he could probably look straight up, but the cab actually gets in the way. His shoulders have the aforementioned ball joints for rotation, a bit of a shrug, and a bit of forward/backward butterfly. A hinge in the shoulder gives him his lateral movement. The pointy bumps can actually move out to the sides a bit, giving him enough clearance to get his arms out 90 degrees. He's got a bicep swivel and wrist swivels. Both are a tad too tight, like BadCube didn't account for the paint. His elbows are double-jointed and get you maybe 105-110 degrees of bend. His thumb is fixed, and his fingers are a single piece molded into a curl and pinned at the base knuckle. His waist swivels. His hips are friction universals, capable of a little over 90 degrees foward, a little less than 90 backward, and about 90 degrees laterally. Like a few other figures we've seen recently, his hip skirts actually rotate with his hips forwand and backward. His thighs swivel just below the hip joints. His knees are a single hinge that falls a little short of 90 degrees. His ankles are on ball joints, so he can swivel his feet, bend then slightly up and down, and enjoy about 45 degrees of ankle tilt. His toes are on a hinge for transformation, but the upshot is that they can bend up and down as well. Both of his guns use the ol' BadCube-style tabs on the bottom of the gun handle that fit into matching slots on the palm. In both cases, the fit's a little tight, making me slightly worried about breaking his thumb getting the guns in and out of his hands. On the other hand, the connection is very secure. You can get his free hand around the second grip on the larger rifle, but it's more like I'm barely tucking his thumb around it and curling his fingers. I think if you try to push it past his thumb into his palm it might be a tad big. BC's Huff's alt mode is a bit of a sore spot for some. Compared to the Cubex version, he's lost some of the detail on his doors, roof, and front bumper, plus the side mirrors have been changed and he lost the black outline aroudn the windows. Personally, I think it's fine. The reduced detail seems to in the all-too-common spirit of making him more cartoon-accurate. The change to the mirrors was somewhat necessary due to how the cab collapses. And speaking of, as near as I can tell from the windows up the cab is actually translucent plastic painted orange. In person, if you're really looking, it also doesn't quite match the orange plastic, but it's very close and unlikely to bother you. The transformation is probably the biggest difference from Cubex Huff, and it's simple, intuitive, and enjoyable. He comes packaged in alt mode, and I was basically able to get him into robot mode without reading the instructions (all I missed was folding down the small flaps behind his knees). It's fun enough that I've already flipped him back and forth several times as off this writing. The rear of the truck loses the silver bumper of the Cubex version, but for the most part I think it presents as flatter and more truck-like than the folded up legs of the Cubex version. The BadCube one also seems to take more care to hide the blue and simply present as an orange truck. However, his robot fingers are a little more visible here than on the Cubex version. Note that the tires are plastic, not rubber. I've grown to expect rubber on larger figures, but I can't say I honestly care that Huff's are plastic. Also, note that the pistol folds up and integrates with the alt mode, pinning in and filling the space between his thighs. There doesn't seem to be any place to store or even peg in his larger rifle, so for me that's going back in the box with his alternate face. I'm sure you noticed the slotted trailer hitch back there. Yes, just like Cubex's Huff, BadCube's Huff can work with MP-10's trailer. Hooray for recreating scenes from episodes! Now if I could just find a way to cram one of the various 3P Hoists on the market into the cab... Actually, it's worth pointing out that on the original Huff you had to take some extra transformational steps, taking him out of his actual alt mode, to get the hitch up high enough to use with MP-10's trailer. This isn't needed on the BadCube version; once you're in alt mode you're already read to connect him to the trailer. Alright, I'm going to be very blunt... I think this is an excellent Huffer. Aesthetic tastes are always subjective, and there's always those people who put Takara or FansToys up on a pedastal, but I honestly don't see much that could be improved here. If you don't have a Huffer, you should buy this Huffer. If you have the 2007 Scout-class Cybertron Armorhide repaint or the 2015 Legends-class Optimus repaint, you should immediately upgrade. If you have iGear Rager or X-Transbot's Krank, you should upgrade. If you have the original Cubex Huff, well, things get a bit murkier there due to the more sublte differences. Many people seem to prefer the Cubex one in alt mode, but even overlooking the QC issues of the original the consensus does seem to be that BadCube's Huff is better. Of course, better doesn't always mean "better enough to shell out money for another one," (after all, it's still Invisible sitting on my shelf, not Sphinx). I haven't had much personal experience with the older Cubex version, so I can't say for sure if you should definitely upgrade. What I can say is that I've handled about half the molds that BadCube has made (and based on what I'm hearing about their Gears/Swerve, their Sunstreaker, and their Trailbreaker/Hoist, I've handled their good stuff), and Huff is easily my favorite figure they've done.
  12. mikeszekely
    Oh, I'm so getting that.
  13. mikeszekely
    I'm going to do things a bit differently today and write about an official toy for a change. I picked up the Hasbro version of MPM-4 Masterpiece Movie Optimus Prime. Size-wise, I put Fans Hobby's Gunfighter II in there, but to the head Gunfighter is about the same size as MP-10, and MPM-4 is of similar height or slightly taller, depending on how you play with his hips. The comparison a lot of people are interested in, though, is with the Revenge of the Fallen Leader mold. This could be due to the fact that many consider that mold to be one of the best toys from all the movie lines, or it could be because the engineering that went into MPM-4 is similar in the way that MP-10's engineering is similar to MP-01's. I have to say, though, there's really no contest. As you'd expect from a toy with the Masterpiece branding, MPM-4 has far more paint than probably any version of the ROTF Leader outside of Buster Optimus, and a ton of mostly-accurate molding. Even if you have Buster Optimus, MPM-4 has better proportions, better articulation, extensive use of diecast, and he doesn't have the huge forearm panels hiding the annoying hair-trigger blades/hooks found on the ROTF mold. It is quite possibly the best-looking movie Optimus Prime toy that still transforms... which makes the spots Hasbro left unpainted stand out all the more. Some spots, like his biceps or around his collar, don't really bother me because the dark gray plastic Hasbro used do make for a nice contrast with the silver. But in other spots, like the bottom half of his thighs, the inside half of the fuel cans on his back, or the front-facing part of the cylinders on his shoulders, it looks extremely unfinished. From what I've seen, though, the Takara version has more paint and also uses a lighter gray for the unpainted parts that blends better (but still leaves the underside of the forearms unpainted... grrr...). MPM-4 doesn't come with a lot of accessories. He's got a pair of arm swords, in translucent orange plastic with silver paint, and a gun. Tabs on the blades fit into slots on the sides of the gun, then a tab on the bottom of the gun's handle can plug into his back for storage. That part of his back happens to be his trailer hitch, and although I forgot to take a picture in truck mode, you can store it on the hitch in truck mode as well. With previous movie Optimus toys, designers had to choose whether they wanted to give him his more-screen-time-mouth face or his more-recognizably-Optimus masked face. With MPM-4, the choice is yours! The top of his head can fold upward, and you can spin Prime's face around to go between masked and unmasked. I think, by law, you can't have a Masterpiece (or MP-style, if you're 3P) Optimus without a Matrix, and MPM-4 is certainly no different. You can open up his belly to find a small diecast movie-style Matrix inside. It's got the general shape, but most of the detail is simply the two peg holes that allow you to secure it in its compartment. So on to articulation. His head is on a hinged swivel. He can look down a bit before his chin and neck collide. Due to the face-swapping gimmick, though, he can look straight up but you'll have a huge gap in his neck. If you try to make sure the gap is covered for aesthetic reasons, he really can't look up at all. His shoulders rotate on ratchets, and can move laterally over 90 degrees. The armor on his shoulder has a swivel inside his shoulder and a hinge at the top so you can manipulate it and keep it out of the way. His biceps swivel, and his elbow is a single hinge but it'll get you over 90 degrees. His wrists swivel, and to accomodate his blades they can also bend inward. His thumb is fixed. His index fingers are individually articulated with a pin at the base knuckle and a second knuckle mid-finger. The remaining fingers are molded as one piece in a curl, pinned at the base knuckle. The sunvisor on top of his chest and the headlights on his torso can be manipulated. His waist can swivel on a soft-ratchet, but the bumper on the small of his back tends to get caught up on his hips. Speaking of hips, they can go about 90 degrees forward and 45 degrees backward on ratchets. His thighs slide over the hip joints so you can stretch them out a bit, and if you stretch it so his hip is as long as you can get it he can get a little over 45 degrees laterally on friction joints. He has thigh swivels. The wheels on his thighs don't move, but the ones on his hips can be angled upward. His knees are double-jointed. The upper joint is ratcheted and gets 90 degrees by itself, but a friction joint below it gives him closer to 120 degrees of bend. His knee armor is hinged. His feet have an up/down hinge that'll let him bend his foot up little but natural amount, and 90 degrees downward. Another hinge provides him with about 45 degrees of inward ankle tilt. It looks like the joint could theoretically do more, but the red armor on the side of his leg prevents it. His gun is a pretty standard MP affair. There are tabs on the sides of the handle that fit into slots on his palm, and it's just a matter of getting his fingers curled into the hand guard while you do it. As for the blades, there's a tab at the base of each one. When you bend his wrist down out of the way, you'll find slots above each wrist that the blades plug into. Transforming MPM-4 into a truck is similar to the ROTF mold. He sits down, his legs unfold and stretch to make the bottom, his feet make the grill, his arms drop and reach in front of him, his head tucks in, the cab parts of his torso stretch out with his arms, and the truck parts on his back tidy up the rear. Although it's similar, it's more complex and, at times, finnicky. I think it's a wonder of toy engineering that they were able to get such a good-looking, well proportions Optimus bot into a truck at all, but the downside of that is that it's not the most intuitive transformation in the world either, even if you're familiar with the ROTF mold. For all the similarities with the ROTF Leader-class, the resulting truck mode is actually a bit smaller. The silver paint looks good here, as do the silver-pinstriped painted red and blue flames. Flames aside, I think some of the blue and red on the truck is plastic but some of it, espeically around the windshield, is paint. The front grill has a molded Autobot symbol, which is a nice touch. I feel like some of the gold sunburst on the fenders should have been on the hood, too, but I'd still say it's a very sharp truck mode. Now, you may be hearing stories about a gap between the windshield and the cab. I've seen it in pics, I've seen it in reviews, and if you follow the instructions as they're printed you're probably going to wind up with them, too. However, it is definitely possible to transform him without the gap and without modding him. The trick is to have his legs tranformed and ready, get his arms transformed and pegged together but not to the legs and leave the shoulder panels with the air cleaner cylinders uppegged and "open". Extend the cab parts from his torso, tabbing the windshield together but leaving the doors open. Line it up with the arms, but don't push them together yet. Instead, line up the doors with the shoulder panels, then push them in place while holding them together. If you do it right, you should be able to firmly push the arms into the front of the cab without a gap (if you have the gap, pull the arms loose again and try lining up the door and shoulder panels again. If it's good, carefully connect the cab to the legs, then finish cleaning up the rear. The hitch on MPM-4 doesn't just have a slot for the tab on his gun. There are two other slots that are meant to work with MP-10's trailer. This is fine, I guess, but MP-10's cartoon-accurate trailer isn't Dark of the Moon/Bayverse-accurate. And, to be frank, I've already got Op Ex competing with MP-10 for MP-10's trailer. I'd really rather Has/Tak or a 3P make a movie-accurate trailer just for MPM-4. I really loathe most of the Bayverse designs, and while I maintain that I'd rather the movie had more of an updated G1 look like the IDW comics the fact is that the Bayverse films are 10 years old now. For a lot of fans, this is Optimus Prime. MP-10 isn't going anywhere on my shelves, but this Optimus has kind of grown on me over the course of a decade. While I'm in no rush for MPs of every wretched ball of twisted metal the movies CGI-magicked into a car, I'm actually kind of glad to have this Optimus in a Masterpiece form. I think he's about as screen-accurate as a transforming movie Optimus toy is going to get. He's well-articualted, well-built, and (mostly) well-painted. Yes, the transformation is still a bit complicated, and yes, the Hasbro version had to leave out just enough paint for the Takara fans to gloat, but I'm finding that I really enjoy this figure. My only complaint is that while they cleaned up his back a lot compared to other movie Prime toys they still kind of don't know what to do with the rear fenders. If an MP of movie Optimus Prime is something you think you want in your life, then by all means, I do recommend him. If you're sitting back and saying, "Well, I have ROTF Leader/Buster/Jetwing Optimus, that's close enough," you're kidding yourself. MPM-4 is so much better than I'm not even going to try to sell my ROTF Prime, I'm just going to give him away.
  14. mikeszekely
    With all of TFM's Stunticons in hand, we can now build Havoc, their version of a specific IDW Menasor by Don Figueroa. He really very close to Don's artwork, down to colors and minute details like the red on his abs and crotch and the fold-out purple toes and heels. Most of where he departs from the comic is down to real-world vehicle choices TFM made for their Breakdown and Wildrider (and Dead End, to a lesser degree). It's even neat how, going off of Don's artwork, Dead End would be half the size of Breakdown or Wildrider but they engineered a way for him to scrunch up in arm mode. Ultimately, how you feel about this version of Menasor aesthetically probably comes down more to how you feel about Don's design than what TFM did with it. It's kind of fun to see how well Fansproject's M3 holds up after all these years, isn't it? Combiner Wars Menasor, not so much. Aside from an alternate screaming face that I already mentioned when I reviewed Powertrain (Motormaster), Havoc's accessories would be his sword and his gun. You get his sword by taking Powertrain's sword and bending the hilt down to form a larger handle while spliting and extending the blade. The gun you get by folding a larger handle out of Powertrain's gun, then attaching the guns from the other four Stunticons. With a few exceptions, notably Revolt's (Dragstrip) gun, TFM did a pretty good job making individual guns that don't look like part of a larger gun or a larger gun that looks like it's made out of five smaller guns, which is usually what seems to happen when 3Ps try to make a gestalt gun out of the guns of the individual members. Revolt connects to the forearm part by swinging down a pair of h-shaped bits that fit into h-shaped holes above the elbow. They're very prone to coming back out, which is why TFM included the clip with Overturn. And it works pretty much how you'd expect, by snapping over and preventing the bits from coming out. A nice thing about it is that it's designed to plug into the chest shield, just behind his abs, when they're not combined. That way you can still store all the combiner parts with Powertrain. As for the other replacement parts that came with Overturn... well, you can see how much Havoc leans forward if his legs are straight. This is due to the leg parts formed from Powertrain's trailer supporting the weight of the gestalt while the leg cars just hang on the front. The leg part is especially thin around the ankle. As you can see, TFM's solution is to have you remove part of the leg part and replace it with another part, bereft of the the molded details of the original but now including a sliding bar. In theory, the sliding bar is supposed to reach down to the ankle screw and brace the leg part where it's the thinnest. Reports from others seem to debate how much this actually helps. To my eye, a lot of the lean isn't from the spot that the new parts reinforce (indicated by the green line), but in the middle of the ankle (indicated in red). Posing Havoc is a bit of a chore. Aside from the forward lean throwing off his center of gravity, his arms don't stick out very far from his body even with the combiner pegs fully extended. Basically, big arms close to the body with very tall shoulders, plus the missile pods next to Havoc's head, mean that his lateral shoulder movement is extremely limited. It is ratcheted, but we're talking one, maybe two clicks. The shoulders can also rotate on ratchets, no problems there. His head is on a hinged swivel with a fair amount of downward movement and the ability to look straight up. You can fake more downward look if you want by untabbing his neck panel. He has bicep swivels just above his elbows, and the elbows themselves are very strong ratchets good for 90 degrees of bend. The hands are extremely articulated, rotating at the wrists with each finger being individually articulated. All four fingers and the thumb are on ball joints at the base, with two hinged knuckles each. This gives you basically all the range a normal hand has, including the ability to splay the fingers a bit. He retains a waist swivel. His hips seem to be friction (or very weak ratchets) for the forward/backward motion, and you should get 90 degrees either way. Due to how Powertrain's hips transform his outward hip motion is a bit more limited. You can still get him in some wide A-stances, and they are ratcheted, but he's not going to be doing the splits or anything. Also, be aware that the flaps that are supposed to lock his hips in combined mode like to pop out, giving him an added (and unwanted) point of friction articulation (although, in hindsight, I guess you could use it if you really wanted your Menasor to do the splits). He does have thigh swivels, ratcheted knees good for 90 degrees, and ratcheted inward ankle tilts but no up/down tilt. Both of his weapons essentially use larger versions of the MP-style tabs on the handles into slots on the palm that the invidual weapons do. The sword fits into his hand very well. His gun seemed a little loose, or a a little prone to popping out. Also, the pin hinge to unfold the handle is a little weak for the weight of the gun, so it kind of droops in his hand. I really do like not only how neatly Havoc's back cleans up, but how TFM also integrated storage for his weapons. A fold out hexagonal peg fits through a similarly hexagonal hole in the blade. The fact that it's hexagonal means that you can store it straight up and down, or you can angle it so the handle comes up over one shoulder or the other. As for the gun, tabs on the side fit neatly into grooves on his back. As was the case with GT's Don Figueroa/IDW Optimus, Havoc's got light up eyes. And I'll say the same thing I said about that Optimus: I wish they'd have just painted the eyes instead. You're not going to leave them on all the time, and they look dead when they're off. One final look, a comparision with Gravity Builder, their Devastator (before anyone says "I thought GB was GT, not TFM," they're the same company; if you look you can even find "Copyright Generation Toy" on Powertrain). Size-wise and aesthetically, I think they look pretty good together, but anyone hoping for a partsforming behemoth like ToyWorld's Contructor, well, this isn't. So unlike basically every other combiner I've reviewed (and by now I think I've reviewed everything but Saurus and Ares), Havoc might not really be more than the sum of his parts. I mean, usually you have the focus on the combined mode, and if anything suffers for it it's the other modes. Havoc, on the other hand, feels like TFM really made some nice, almost Masterpiece robots that turn into pretty fantastic cars and a tractor trailer. If there's an individual Stunticon you like and you dig Don's take on the character then you can buy that Stunticon and be happy. You can buy all five and you've got five good individual toys. It's combined mode where the flaws start to come out, and that's a shame. I do like him better that either Fansproject's or the Combiner Wars Menasor, but he's not nearly as good as Gravity Builder. I'm not sure how much of that is due to things that TFM could have engineered better or how much of it is due to being constrained by following Don's artwork, but ultimately it is what it is. I'd definitely recommend this set if you want a display of Stunticons, but if you want a display of Menasor you might want to see how X-Transbot's or DX9's turn out, especially if you're wanting less IDW and more G1.
  15. mikeszekely
    I got what's probably my last box of goodies before I'm leaving for a month-long business trip. It looks like I'm going to have a couple days of reviews (sorry Serial Downvoter), but then that'll be it until mid-November. We're starting tonight with Overturn, TFM's version of Dead End. I don't recall Dead End making an apperance in robot mode during Don Figueroa's arc outside of the cover Transformers #5, and he was the Stunticon with the least amount showing. So I suppose TFM had to make some of it up as they went along. They definitely took some liberties; it could just be the way the colorist decided to handle that cover, but he was more of a uniformly dark gray and red, with yellow eyes. TFM kept a lot of the detail; the split blue chest, the square where the Decepticon symbol goes, the round bit above the vented sternum, the tires in his shoulders, the vents on his forearms, etc. The coloring, though, is sort of G1 with black hands, thighs, and ab details but a mostly silver torso. His head has the (G1-ish) shape of the IDW head, but he's got the purple visor and gold mask of the cartoon. The lower legs are where TFM had to wing it the most, and while I don't love it it's definitely in keeping with the other Stunticon cars TFM released. Visually, I think it works pretty well. In fact, I daresay Overturn is more immediately Dead End-ish than Combiner Wars Dead End. My only small complaint is that there's sort of too much space between his shoulder and the wheels in his shoulders, which gives his biceps a funny line. Overturn doesn't have as much stuff as Powertrain, but he does come with more than the other three Stunticons. There's his gun, which isn't the worst one I've seen in this set but does sort of look like a hair dryer, and a handful of parts. The clip above the gun is to help secure the connection between Revolt and the gestalt's forearm. The remaining pieces are replacements for parts in the gestalt's lower legs, where the cars attach. The premise is that they'll provide a thicker, sturdier legs near the ankles where the weight of the gestalt was causting the old parts to flex, giving him a forward lean. I'm not sure how much of a difference they'll actually make, but they're clearly lacking a lot of the molded and painted detail found on the orignal parts. Overturn's head is on a ball joint, and he's got a fair amount of up/down range as well as lateral tilt. His shoulders rotate, but be cautious of the mirrors on his elbows getting caught on his backpack, and a hinge in the shoulder gets you a little short of 90 degrees laterally. There's an additional hinge for transformation, though, and if you use them both together you can get a little over 90 degrees before his shoulder starts to hit his head. He's got bicep and wrist swivels, and single-hinged elbows good for 90 degrees. His hands are like the rest of the set, with a fixed thumb and all his fingers molded as one piece hinged at the base knuckle. His waist and thighs swivel. His hips are friction universal joints that can go 90 degrees forward or laterally, and just shy of 90 degrees backward. His hip skirts are on tight pins that let them swivel out of the way. His knees are where things get kind of funky. What you have are ratcheted hinges that get you a little short of 90 degrees due to the stuff on the backs of his legs. However, due to how he transforms, the knees can also bend a little sideways; there's no way to lock them in place. His entire foot is on a swivel at the base of his leg, giving you about 45 degrees of inward or outward ankle tilt. The foot has a hinge so it can bend up and down a little, and the toe has another hinge that's mostly for transformation but it does allow him to bend his toes up and down a bit. Tabs on his gun's handle fit slots on his palms, and he holds his gun quite securely. Just like TFM's versions of Breakdown and Wildrider, Overturn is a modern car from the company that made his G1 alt mode. In this case, that'd be a Porsche 918. He retains the two-tone stripe of the G1 toy, but it's two shades of yellow and they're centered now. Some extra silver on the sides are oddly evocative of the Combiner Wars figure, although TFM's is much, much nicer in alt mode (in my opinion). Lots of painted and molded detail here, including the painted engine peaking through the rear window, gold paint on the brake calipers, silver rims, silver fuel caps, tail lights, and of course the burgundy body of the car itself. He's also sporting rubber tires and rubber side view mirrors. Some parts of the car don't tab in super great, though. He's probably the least fun of the five to transform because the clearances are very tight, especially around the roof and the front of the windshield, and the unintuitive way the rear of the car has to get around his thighs to sit on his knees. As has been the case, his hair dryer gun stores out-of-sight under the car in alt mode. So here's the deal... I think Overturn, like the rest of the Stunticons in this set, looks stunning in alt mode and very good in robot mode (assuming you're into Don's designs). On looks alone, I think he'd be my favorite of the set. He's got adequate articulation, too. Of all five TFM Stunticons, though, he's got the worst transformation, and that's why I'm kind of glad that he was released last. I can mess with him a little, take the pics I needed to for this review, then turn him into an arm and leave him that way for probably years to come. So do I recommend him? If you bought the other four, yes. If you want a good-looking Dead End or a good-looking Porsche for display but you're not going to mess with him much, yes. If you're looking for a G1 Dead End, or a Dead End you can easily flip between modes, then no. If you're just interested in combined mode... well, tune in tomorrow.
  16. mikeszekely
    It's been years since I played either ZOE, so I don't have a ton of memories of ZOE2 aside from the kid from the first one piloting Vic Viper as a boss battle. I do remember the first one took me about 4 or 4.5 hours, and that was basically average for most people. I remember Kojima said in an interview that ZOE 2 would be twice as long, and I remembr thinking that 8 hours wasn't great but was fair enough. I finished ZOE 2 in under three hours. The entire playthrough was in one sitting, without even bothering to save. And I was livid.
  17. mikeszekely
    Will like be any longer? You can finish both of the originals into one game and still complain it's too short.
  18. mikeszekely
    Yep. And goodbye to them street dating figures for months after they're available online, goodbye to their regular markups, and goodbye to the extra markups they all when they think they've got something hot. Good riddance. Plus, if you happen to be at Walmart or Target for something else and happen to find something you want it's probably cheaper than TRU. I swear, the only time I buy stuff at TRU any more is if it's sold out online and not something Target or Walmart carry, or if it's on clearance. Also, since when is there a Target around Meadville? I feel like last time I was up there there was Walmart and then the handful of stores in the plaza with Staples, and that was basically it.
  19. mikeszekely
    Oh, ok. I liked Deadly Premonition.
  20. mikeszekely
    Who's Swery?
  21. mikeszekely
    I'm definitely going to grab one. I have 8bitdo's NES Pro 30 controller and I like it a lot.
  22. mikeszekely
    Why not? I have a two year old; portable gaming is most of the gaming I can fit in right now. Besides, it's not like those sprites are going to look any better for being bigger. I don't plan on getting a SNES Classic. I definitely don't plan on tracking down an actual SNES, a copy of the cartridge, and a CRT to hook it all up to. I have the Castlevania DS games. What I want are GBA games on the 3DS Virtual Console since I haven't owned a GBA in years.
  23. mikeszekely
    Maybe a dumb question, but considering that Macross has been fairly popular in the west despite HG's meddling, and given the success that Gundam has had, is there any reason why Big West doesn't just license Macross themselves, or even buy the rights back outright?
  24. mikeszekely
    I guess. I just thought that, this being a smaller community without a lot of members under 30, that we've been relatively troll-free (minus the odd "Macross sucks, Robotech is SOOOOO much better" that pops up from time to time).
  25. mikeszekely
    OK, a lot of my posts here have been getting downvoted. And I've been like, "OK, whatever, someone's a critic." But I see Kuma getting downvoted. And someone gave Scyla a downvote for replying to VHD. So I'm curious now, what's up? Is someone confused by the like/upvote/downvote thing? Is someone just anti-3P (because I'm not seeing the downvoting in other threads)? Mysterious Mr (or Ms.) Downvoter, would you care to talk about it?
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