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mikeszekely

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  1. mikeszekely
    Depends on which Tegra chip, I guess. I have a Shield Tablet and a Shield TV. Tablet is OK, but the TV unit is pretty zippy. In any case, Nintendo can't compete on raw power. Their best bet is to keep it under $200 and make sure it has some solid first-party games in the launch window.
  2. mikeszekely
    Voyager and Enterprise weren't abbreviated as STV or STE. For all the STD jokes it'll probably wind up DIS or DISC.
  3. mikeszekely
    Cut the tabs on Vulcan's bumpers. You don't cut the whole tab off; about halfway along the tab it gets thinner. Just cut the thin part. Apparently MT was going to do this at the factory, but there was a similar situation with Iron Will and people complained? I also shortened the tabs on the arm flaps that plug into his back in combined mode. Huge difference! Guardia's sides tab in much more securely. From there, I can line up Vulcan's arms but leave them rotated out. Then, I can fold the flap down, tab it on the joint, rotate the arm in, tab the flap into the back, then tab the forearm into the back. The result is that the entire torso feels MUCH more secure, and it's a lot less frustrating to transform him (the limbs are still a pain, though). There was some discussion about whether the thin portion of the bumper tabs served a purpose in robot mode. My verdict is no. The wheels bend around and rest against the tabs in robot mode, but whether you cut the thin part or not all they do is rest, not lock. So, cutting the tabs makes the wheels neither more or less secure. However, it does make them nestle in just a tad more, making it less likely they'll be bumped out of place while handling him.
  4. mikeszekely
    I think Newegg is going the Amazon route and allowing 3rd party sellers.
  5. mikeszekely
    Yeah, the design of the saucer looks pre-refit to me, too. Could be because it was a quick and dirty trailer, though.
  6. mikeszekely
    Beast Wars was a great show, but I'm not into rigors with organic any modes. Unless they make an MP BW character that can cook me breakfast they're all going to be huge passes for me. On the other hand, RiD/Car Robots was pretty bad, but I'd be all over an MP Fire Convoy. Or Rail Racer.
  7. mikeszekely
    I'm still waiting on Hypnos, but tonight we're going to take a look at Cerberus, TFC's Jallguar. Aesthetically, he's about what you'd expect by now from a TFC Hades member. He's got the mix of cartoon (black helmet, red visor) and toy (white crotch, red lines on his shoulders, gold on his knees) details. He's got detailing on his chest that mimics the look of the cartoon with the breast partner attached even though it's not attached. He's even got wheels on this thighs and little red missiles on his ankles. He's got some odd design choices, too, like translucent red hands instead of black or white, and translucent red toes. Since Aiakos and Hypnos are basically remolds of Thanatos and Minos, I'm going to say that Cerberus is the shortest Hades member. He's a little taller than Smart Robin and the other Function-X Headmasters, and about a head shorter than Generations Brainstorm. Despite his shorter stature, he's a wide, thick dude, which may not sit well with Masterforce fans. Although I find the overuse of translucent red to be a bit much, and I wish they'd used white plastic instead of gray for his elbows and biceps and used the black on his midriff lower on his hips and crotch, I actually dig the overall aesthetic. Black and white is a good combo, black with red accents is a good combo, and there's just enough little details to break up the colors. Plus, cat ears! When it comes to articulation, compared to the rest of the Hades set Cerberus is a step forward and a step back. His head is on a swivel, but it has no tilt whatsoever. His shoulders can move laterally about 90 degrees, but combined with a transformation joint you can actually keep going until his shoulder hits his head, and they can rotate all the way around. His biceps and wrists swivel, and his elbows are double-jointed. Bending the upper elbow joint will even reveal some hidden detail. His waists and thighs swivel. His hips are on ratchets for both forward/backward and lateral movement, a first for this set. He can kick all the way forward, almost all the way back, and he can almost do the splits. Technically his knees can bend 90 degrees, but a transformation joint essentially gives him double-jointed knees. Then his feet... well, he really doesn't have feet. What he's got are little boxes with with hinged toes. The boxes are on a ball joint. Tilting the box gives you faux ankle tilt, but it's not the best since chunks of leg he stands on will go below the corners of the box if you tilt it. You can also bend it down, or use the hinge to point the toes upward. The only accessory he comes with is his gun... ...which we know by now is his "screw G1-accuracy" breast plate. While other members of this set have ranged from "yuck!" to "meh" with a breast plate, I think Cerberus actually looks better with it. It's also the unnamed stand in for Jallguar's breast partner, Jaguarbreast. Now, Masterforce fans will likely be quick to point out that Cerberus' partner doesn't look a whole lot like Jaguarbreast. And you know what? I don't care. Because, you know who he totally does look like? Ravage. The hinges on his back legs are even slightly evocative of Ravage's hip missiles. I'm telling you guys, this remold of Rhadamanthus' partner is Ravage with red and white legs and a red tail. And that's awesome. Cerberus' alt mode is probably the biggest departure from Jallguar. They both turn into mostly-black buggy-type vehicles with missile launchers on the back... but that's about it. Cerberus is longer and possibly narrower, and he lacks the front wing. This is due to his arms becoming the front end instead of the sides of the buggy, and he lacks the backpack that makes the front end on the G1 version. He's totally lacking the gold stripes on the toy. Instead, he's got the red stripes from his shoulders and some molded and painted engine detail. His legs still transform into the missile launchers, but the different shape of his lower legs gives the launchers a different shape, and rather than using his ankle missiles for the buggy's missiles TFC opted to mold and paint smaller missiles under his toes (although the ankle missiles can rotate so they're still in a firing position). And his cockpit windows are red instead of gold. I'm not enthusiastic about these changes, not just because of the reduction in G1 accuracy but because they seem to cause some of the issues I have with the toy, like the tires on the backs of his forearms and the weird feet. You can, of course, attach his partner. He sits on the roof, and doesn't look too shabby there. If you take him off you can open the cockpit, which is a nice touch. A lot of people will tell you that Cerberus is the weakest of the set. I though that maybe they were unhappy with how broad he is, or how inaccurate his buggy mode is, or the overuse of translucent red plastic- things I could forgive. I mean, I thought he looks a lot cooler and has a more interesting alt mode than Thanatos. But now that I have him (and Thanatos, who was better than I expected) in hand I can see that they're right. Cerberus has problems. I'll give the tires on his thighs, which can get in the way, a pass, simply due to G1 accuracy. But the ones on his arms get no pass. His stubby feet get no pass. But going further, there's his knee pads- they don't lock in in bot or buggy mode, which leads you to trying to position them as best you can and hoping they don't move (but they will move). And there's the way that his missile-feet fail to cover the entire bottom of his mostly-hollow leg, leaving a rather unsightly gap. I haven't put any of these guys into their combined modes since I figure you need at least two legs to stand, but I strongly get the feeling that sacrifices were made to his bot and alt modes to make him a better combiner part. Now, while I do occasionally pull them apart and play with them I mostly keep my combiners in combined mode, so if the combined mode turns out great then the sacrifices are worth it. But after TFCon, we know that Hades won't be the only Liokaiser on the market. Mech Ideas is working on one, too. We don't have more than gray CGI images of Leozack mode and some half-shots of the individual heads yet, and when you're holding a good toy it's easy to shrug and keep going with what you have. But when you're holding a flawed toy, that gray CGI image is enough to have you wondering if the other guy is going to do it better. Anyway, I'm going to have to say that I don't recommend Cerberus, not on his own, anyway. I just don't see him being the Jallguar Masterforce fans are looking for. That said, Cerberus isn't bad so much as he is flawed. Given the relative quality of the other three (and knowing that the last two are basically remolds), if you're in it for the combined mode Cerberus isn't reason to quit now.
  8. mikeszekely
    They made the wedge more of a V, shortened the neck, ditched the pylons for the warp nacelles, and built the impulse engines into the hull instead of having them sticking off a structure below the shuttle bay. It's not 100%, but it's clearly a homage. And I know we're all old grumps at MW who hate change and want kids to get off our lawns, but to heck with the haters. I kind of dig it.
  9. mikeszekely
    I haven't done it yet, but yes, it needs to be done. The bumpers don't stay pegged in otherwise.
  10. mikeszekely
    I'll have to look for a link, but I'm pretty sure Nintendo said that the games it comes with are all you get, forever.
  11. mikeszekely
    I guess... if you're ok with Liokaiser replacing Liozack and Jallguar with Deathsaurus. And Deathsaurus being a repaint of Sky Lynx. Yeah, I think I'm glad I'm five in on Hades. Anyway, did you guys catch on the back of Voyager Megatron's box? Leader-class Six Shot!
  12. mikeszekely
    I'm probably going Hasbro for PM Prime; it just looks better than Super Ginrai. As for the rest, I'm officially interested in that Megatron, and possibly Gnaw... and that's about it.
  13. mikeszekely
    Well, images of Legends Super Ginrai are out, and... well, yep, it's very different than the Titans Return Powermaster Prime. I'm just not sure that different is actually better this time.
  14. mikeszekely
    xXx was one of those movies that I thought looked stupid as all get out, watched it once out of boredom, and was surprisingly entertained. I guess I could go for a sequel. And The Pacifier was a masterpiece of modern cinema.
  15. mikeszekely
    Well, neither for me... while I do think that FT-10 will turn out to be loads better than Kronos, and he does technically scale well with MP-10, he's too big for my tastes (honestly, most "MP-scale" figures are). As for FT-16, nothing I've seen makes me think I'll like it better than Tyrant. On that note (not that a person can't actually prefer FT-16), there are a lot of people that seem to go with the Fans Toys option just because it's Fans Toys. Like it's just assumed that FT makes a better product than everyone else. Personally, I try to evaluate each individual release on it's own, not the company's history (otherwise I'd have never bought another TFC product). I'm sure FT makes a good product to get the following that they have, but I still don't get the borderline religious devotion they seem to inspire.
  16. mikeszekely
    Sorry guys, I meant to have this up earlier but my computer decided that it wanted nothing to do with the internet. Honestly, I still haven't fixed the problem, just sidestepped it by installing a USB Wi-Fi adapter. Anyway, here's Guardia, the completed combiner meant to be Maketoys' Defensor. Ok, so that's not actually Guardia. It's really just Vulcan. But you can see how, like Diesel and M3, Vulcan supplies half the legs himself. Unlike M3, where the cars were just chilling out in car mode on his shins, Rover and Axle actually do some transforming, wrapping around the skeleton in the process. The result makes them look very integrated, especially Axle. Aesthetically, Guardia is very recognizable as Defensor. The limbs aren't just in their "correct" position, but they're oriented properly with Katana/Blades nose at the shoulder and tail bending up toward the elbow, Axle/Groove's bike front sitting on the knee, and Rover/Streetwise's front end bent outward. He's got the blue collar around his head, black hips, blue shins, (mostly) black feet and hands, mostly blue on the torso, and a very Defensor-esque chest. he's even got fake wheels on the sides of his thighs. What Maketoys has done is given it their usual stylized anime makeover by enlarging the chest plate, swapping the red dots on the toy for shapes that almost look like eyes, trimming his abs down to just the red part on the toy, making the fingers red, making the limbs look a little more "transformed." It takes away some of the blockiness of G1 Defensor and gives Guardia proportions that are both more natural and more heroic. I'll be very upfront here; I absolutely love what Maketoys has done aesthetically to get to Guardia from Defensor. There's no question in my mind that Guardia is the best-looking Defensor, period. He makes Combiner Wars Defensor look like crap. He's a little taller than CW Defensor, and that puts him at the same height as M3, Quantron, and (I assume) Giant. He makes a good opponent for M3 here, but Warbotron WB-01 (Bruticus) towers over him. When I decided to go in on Guardia my combiner shelf was Quantron, Ordin, and an armless Feral Rex, and Guardia seemed fine then. Today, though, Ordin, Rex, Warbotron Bruticus, and Uranos are all similarly-sized, with Hades and Poseidon as works-in-progress that should also shake out in that size. Then there's Constructor, who's just friggin' huge. I'm giving serious thought to checking out TransFormMission's Menasor, too, which would just leave Quantron and Guardia in that smaller size, and I wouldn't mind checking out Warbotron WB-03 (Computron). I honestly have half a mind to get Giant, consider MMC's Defensor (whenever that actually happens), and put M3, Quantron, Giant, and Guardia in a separate display. To make Guardia, you actually have to split the ladder into two parts. The part that's been plugging into Vulcan's back stays, and Guardia's head is on it. The rest clips onto Guardia's back, always off-center to the left or right, with the water canisters attached. I don't mind it, but if the ladder being off-center bothers you or if you just want a ladderless cartoon look you can just remove it and set it off to the side somewhere, which is what I intend to do. I have to say, though, that Maketoys missed an opportunity to make a weapon out of it. With the canisters it looks like a massive hammer. Everything connects solidly, giving Guardia a cohesive look and plenty of articulation. His head is on a stiff ball joint, so he can turn his head, look up, look down, or tilt it in confusion. His waist, hips, and thigh swivels are Vulcan's with the same ratchety range of motion (although the ab-crunch joint is stretched out to give Guardia some of his height, so no combiner ab crunch). The combiner pegs for the arms are ratcheted and can rotate, plus the combiner joints inside Katana and Himed are on ratchets, further aiding in his lateral movement. He's got dedicated elbow joints built into the waists of Katana and Himed, and these joints provide ratcheted bicep swivels and ratcheted elbows. His arms can also rotate at Katana and Himed's waists, below the elbow joint and also on ratchets. Guardia's wrists wrap around Katana and Himed then lock down on themselves, but the hands themselves seem to be on ball joints, so he can both rotate and waggle his wrists a bit. The combiner hands are similar to Quantron and M3's with a hinge and the base and one additional knuckle. The thumb is a little different, though. The red part of the thumb is on a ball joint at the base with a single hinged knuckle, but the red doesn't connect to the palm directly. Instead, it's seated in a black box which is itself attached to the palm on a double hinge, so Guardia can get some crazy thumb poses. His knees are ratcheted and can bend 90 degrees. It almost looks like they could be double-jointed, but the lower joint is a transformation joint and if you try to use it the skeleton will start to come undone. As with the arms, the legs have a second rotation point below the knee. Unfortunately, things fall apart a little at the feet, which are on ball joints. On paper, that gives him up/down tilt, lateral ankle tilt, and ankle rotation. In practice, the ankles feel loose and there are times when Guardia wants to lean and tip over. If you're careful, though, you can give Guardia plenty of really dynamic poses, with or without the twin rifles (made up of all the guns that came with the five individual bots). The loose ankles are the start of where I started to feel let down by Guardia. There's also the fact that it took me an hour and a half to get him combined. A lot of it boils down to Maketoys love of tabs and disregard for tolerances. To give you just one example, to fully tab in the back section you're supposed to line up a flat panel. The panel has a tab on one edge, and a slot on the bottom. The tab goes into his back, and the slot receives a tab on Vulcan's elbow. You're supposed to tab in both (actually, those plus a tab on Vulcan's forearm that goes into a slot on Guardia's back), despite the fact that the elbow tab forces the panel up a little to high for the edge tab to slot in, and the slot tab forces the panel a little far back for the elbow tab to reach the slot. You're going to be bending plastic and cursing, and this being Maketoys, there's going to be lots of tabs and lots of cursing. And it's not all Vulcan. I had a bear getting Himed's arms locked into place, and getting Rover into leg mode means forcing tabs on his hips to lock into different slots than he uses for car mode, but the slots always want to sink into the car mode tabs. I cut my finger when he popped apart while trying to force the car slot past the tab. Stuff kept popping off, too. And I don't mean stuff like a tab would pop out of its slot, or the chest plate would pop off. No, I mean one of Rover's doors, one of Himed's legs, one of Vulcan's arms, and Katana's nose/front windshield. Stuff that absolutely should NOT be falling off. And the icing on the cake for me is that Katana and Himed have friction joints under the combiner connector, and Himed's is loose enough that you can move Guardia's shoulder outward laterally but the friction joint will cause his elbow and forearm to sag back inward. Peaking around the internet, everyone else seems to really love Guardia (even Skullface, who is notoriously hard on toys). I don't know if my loose joints are unique to my copies. I don't know if I'm letting my frustrations with the tabs sour me more than they normally would because I had such high expectations for Guardia. I don't know if it's because this size is starting to be too small for my personal collection. There is definitely a lot to love here, like the way the combiner components lock together solidly and the really fantastic aesthetic design. The fact remains, though, that I am a little disappointed with Guardia. Since I do think he blows CW Defensor and TFC's Prometheus out of the water, I'll give him a recommend UNLESS you're feeling patient enough to see how MMC's Defensor shakes out, whenever that may be because I don't think anything's been shown except for line art for their Hot Spot from over a year ago.
  17. mikeszekely
    Fair enough.
  18. mikeszekely
    How do you you figure? The horizontal stabs add more purple.
  19. mikeszekely
    Right? I think putting Defensor's chest on the roof is how TFC did it.
  20. mikeszekely
    Alright, I've been wanting to do this forever, since I had ordered the rest of the team back in April and guys like Skullface were getting review samples what seems like ages ago. Here's Maketoys' Vulcan, their Hot Spot. In my earlier reviews, I'd shown how the limb bots were about the same size as their Combiner Wars counterparts. I've also seen pictures online of Guardia with Quantron, so I know that Guardia is about the same size as Combiner Wars Defensor. But, as you can see, Vulcan is NOT the same size as CW Hot Spot. He's a big dude! Aesthetically, this is a Maketoys release, so you know it's going to be more stylized and less straight up G1. He's got enough Hot Spot details, though; red chest, the wheels in his chest, mostly blue arms, blue lower legs, black thighs. He's got more red and black in his abs, and the blue that's usually in that spot has been moved to hip skirts, and his chest and abs have some heavily stylized gray and transparent red details. I believe the effect, combined with the hip skirts and the asymmetry of the details on his abs, is meant to evoke a fireman's coat. His head goes for the black of the toy, but with a silver face plate. It looks really nice, but I'm not going to lie, I'd have preferred the cartoon's blue head. The cab splitting and becoming his upper arms is, I think, toy accurate, just turned sideways. I'm not sure why, since the toy and 'toon had wheels on the outside of his legs, but Maketoys opted to put a molded fake wheel on the inside of each leg. For the most part, I really like how Maketoys captured enough of Hot Spot so that he's recognizable, but updated enough to give him a dynamic look. As far as accessories, Vulcan comes with a ton of stuff. There's his ladder assembly, the combiner chest, two combiner feet, two objects I'd assume are water canisters of some sort, a pair of guns, new blades for Katana, and new diecast handlebars for Axle. If you're wondering about hands, the combined mode hands store in the water canisters. In keeping with Maketoys' action-figure style, Vulcan is very articulate. His head is on a stiff ball joint. He can get a little up tilt and side-to-side tilt, a lot of downward tilt, and he can of course look side-to-side. His shoulders are on mushroom pegs for rotation, but it feels like there's a soft ratchet inside. He's got ratchets for lateral movement (and transformation) where the shoulder connects to the body, plus another hinge inside the shoulder that again feels like a soft ratchet. Together, you can get about 90 degrees of lateral movement. Due to transformation again, he's got a bicep swivel just under the cab part and another swivel between his elbow joints. And I say between because he's got double-jointed elbows that would almost let him touch is shoulder if the armor on his forearm didn't bang into the cab shoulders first. His wrists are ball joints, so he has swivels but also a little up/down/side-to-side waggle. He's got a ratcheted waist swivel, and a ratcheted ab crunch. Not just a crunch, really... his torso actually stretches to reveal the joint, and you can crunch two clicks forward but you can also arc his back two clicks in the other direction. His hips are universal joints with ratchets for both front/back and lateral movement. He can kick 90 degrees forward, almost 90 degrees back, and more than 90 degrees laterally. His front hip skirts are on ball joints so they can rotate out of the way when you bend his legs forward, but you can also splay them a little so they follow the line of his legs in an A-stance. He's got ratcheted thigh swivels and ratcheted knees that can bend 90 degrees. Now his feet, like I said, are a little weird. They're attached to the back of his leg, on a rotating ratcheted joint that provides his ankle tilt. There's a ratcheted hinge back there that will let him point his toes downward, and another ratcheted hinge in the middle of his foot that bends the toes back up. From most angles that works, but from the right angles you'll seen enough of a gap that it looks like he's actually floating just above his feet. YMMV, but my copy seems to hold his guns a little loose. Now you may have noticed that there's no ladder on him. This is a sort of cartoon look, IMHO, since his ladder always just disappeared in the cartoon. If you prefer less partsforming, you can plug it into his back and leave it there throughout his transformations. Personally, I like to leave it off to the side, where the combined-mode chest plate and water canisters can be attached to it. If you really hate partsforming, you can put the combiner chest and water canisters on the ladder, then jam the whole thing onto his back. While you're at it, you can clip the combiner feet onto the outsides of his legs, and combine his two guns into one larger gun for a "Full Armor mode", ala Metalstorm and Diesel. While I've never liked Metalstorm or Diesel's full armor modes, Vulcan's isn't too bad. I'm actually cool with everything but the combiner feet hanging off his legs. Now, while you could do Metalstorm's alt just fine without combiner parts and you could make a smaller "delivery truck" out of Diesel without combiner parts, you need at minimum the combiner feet and chest plate to put Vulcan into his alt mode, which is a fire truck. From the rear tires back the truck is made from combiner feet, the back of the truck is the chest plate, then if you want to store everything in truck mode the guns peg into the top of the back, where the base of the ladder sits, and the water canisters clip onto the sides of the truck near the mid point and rest on top. It's much closer to G1 Hot Spot than the Combiner Wars toy, but it's a little kibbly. The canisters go a long way toward hiding Vulcan's feet, but the truck's siren lights are lost in a see of gray joints, and nothing's hiding the robot hands just behind the cab. It looks unfinished. It'd be partsformy as all get out, but I'd have liked a roof with its own light bar that clipped over that mess. It could have tabs that fit those slots on the front and slots for the tabs on his wrists in the back. As a truck, his wheels spin, the ladder can rotate but that rotation is hampered by his guns. And the ladder can extend. It's about what you'd want in a fire truck. One final thing... when I talk about accessories, I never mention paperwork like instruction sheets (Vulcan has two) or collectors cards (none here). But I do want to mention that Vulcan comes with a card of a different kind. It's really just an add from their upcoming Cross Dimension line, with a big picture of Striker Manus (Optimus) with a smaller picture of Manus and silhouettes of what I assume are Rioter Despotron (Megatron) and an Powermaster-Prime styled armored version of Manus. On the back, though, is a black and white picture of Manus and some instructions that start by telling you to download the Maketoys app (available for Android or iPhone). Using the Augmented Reality feature of the app, you can make a picture of Striker Manus appear. If the AR picture is scaled properly, we can see that he'll be maybe a head shorter than Vulcan. Neat! Anyway, I'm going to give Vulcan what I'm calling the "Maketoys recommend." Because by now we know that Maketoys loves to use tabs everywhere, and likes to make their toys with a stylized, anime-influence look that isn't strictly G1, and by extension not for everyone. If you're not a fan of Maketoys Vulcan is unlikely to win you over, despite being probably the best toy to come out of their MT Combiner series. If you're cool with Maketoys' style, though, Vulcan is a solid toy with lots of articulation aided by strong joints and is, IMHO, a much better toy than Combiner Wars Hot Spot.
  21. mikeszekely
    No no, I get that part. And I'm all for having a couple of 3P options. But it seems like everyone is doing the Seekers now. I mean, even most of the new MP-sized Optimus Primes coming out have the sense to be Studio OX or Stormbringer or IDW and not just a straight up G1 Prime, and even then I think there are fewer people doing Prime than Seekers. I'm sure fans will latch onto some tiny detail that will make them insist that their choice is superior, but if I were the boss at a 3P company I'd be worried about how many MP Seeker molds the market can actually support profitably.
  22. mikeszekely
    Guess what? I'm not done doing reviews just because I finished Constructor. I've also got TFC's Thanatos, their version of Killbison. Not sure what you guys like to see for size comparisons... I grabbed two other tankish guys, so we see that Thanatos is pretty similar in size, if a hair shorter, than Heavy Noisy, and way shorter than Combiner Wars Leader Megatron. Aesthetically, TFC gets a lot right and a lot wrong. The most glaring thing seems to be that the rich orangey bronze of the G1 toy/'toon is a sandy tan. If we accept the equivalence, it's mostly used in the right spots... on the tank-tread shoulders, on his helmet, on his thighs, hips, and most of his chest. His hands and forearm coloring are inverted, but it seems to be because his forearm is part of the treads, so I'll allow it. The white on his forearms, abdomen, and shins is also correct, and TFC used a nice metallic gold paint for the yellow spots on his knees. The dark treads on his shoulders and legs are 'toon accurate, if not toy accurate. His feet and crotch really should have been white, and TFC continues their use of white in the middle of the chest, as if trying to replicate some of the details of the cartoon model with the breast partner attached even when it's not. The head is very spot-on, I feel, minus the chin. If you can accept sandy tan instead of orangey bronze, then he's a overall a pretty good Killbison. What's up with that name, though? Is he supposed to be a killer bison, or is killing bison his thing? In any case, Thanatos' articulation is par for the set. His head is on a ball joint with some up-down tilt, some sideways tilt, and rotation that's ultimately impeded by the armature behind his head. His shoulders can move laterally about 90 degrees before the tank bits get in the way, and he's got no problem rotating his shoulders, biceps, wrist, or waist. His elbows are single-jointed and get you 90 degrees of bend. While his joints have that articulation, using them all in tandem does mean that the tank kibble on his shoulders and forearms can hinder actually posing him. Moving downward, he's got universal hips that can do the splits, kick all the way forward, and sort of kick all the way backward, although practically his backpack is going to get in the way. He's got thigh rotation, but only about 45 degrees in either direction. His knees bend 90 degrees, and while most of his foot is the back of the tank he's got a little bit of downward tilt and faux-ankle tilt on toes. One thing I like that TFC did is that the guns on his back are on hinged arms, so they can be lifted up and fired over his shoulders. They're not detachable the way the G1 toy was. As is the case for everyone in this set, he's got an odd-looking gun... ...that turns into a breastplate that doesn't much match his animated appearance... ...or his breast partner, not-Bisonbreast. He's totally lacking the wings of Bisonbreast, and seems to split the difference between the cartoon's white with black hooves appearance and the toy's white body, red head, legs, and tail by giving us a mostly white cow with black hooves, red legs, red tail, and red horns. A boy cow, judging by the placement of the hand peg. Anyway, I dig him, despite not really matching Bisonbreast. As with the other two, animal mode is my preferred mode. You're likely to here Thanatos' alt mode described as a tank, although if we're being technical he's a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun (SPAAG). Specifically, a German Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer Gepard ("anti-aircraft tank Cheetah"). It's kind of neat how he was the smallest bot in my comparison, but in alt mode suddenly he dwarfs Heavy Noisy and gets closer to Megatron in size. Aesthetically, he definitely looks like a Gepard, and as long as you again accept sandy tan for orangey bronze he's very close to toy and 'toon in this mode. Really the only major departure is that there's a bunch of black on the turret, which I believe should be solidly white. He doesn't have working treads or even rolling wheels in this mode, which is a bit of a bummer. His turn can rotate fully around, though, and the guns can aim up or down independently of each other. The front tracking radar/laser rangefinder can turn side to side a little, but sadly the rear general radar dish is fixed. His breast partner can be plugged on top of the turret, and it doesn't look too bad up there. It even adds another gun. Something I do want to talk about, because I've seen it come up as a problem in Bobby Skullface and emgo's reviews of this guy, are his legs and how then transform. In theory, they work like Combiner Wars, or like the other two guys I've looked at in this set- open the lower leg, fold it around the thigh, and close it back up. However, in a nod to the original toys, the combiner feet are not partsforming bits. Unlike the original toy, though, they're not merely little flip out panels, either. Half of the foot resides inside each leg, and and transforming the leg requires you to open up the back, pull it out, adjust how it's arranged, and stuff it back in. This stuffing requires you to mind a screw post inside the leg and make sure tabs on the outside of Thanatos' legs line up with slots on the combined ankle joints. Both Skullface and emgo seemed to struggle with this. Personally, I didn't find it that difficult. There's one big thing, though. The parts for the combiner ankle are the same on either side, probably to save costs. Now, the thing is, there's a peg on the left side of the joint and a hole on the right. This allows his left leg to peg into his right leg for tank and leg mode. However, the peg serves no purpose on the right leg. Worse than that, it gets in the way when you're transforming his leg, forcing you to bend the plastic to get it around. Your life will be MUCH easier if you cut it off. Me, I used hobby nippers then filed down the stump. Anyway, I didn't really expect to like him. His colors struck me as boring, he seemed kibbly, tanks aren't as cool as jets, and his animal motif is a cow. But in hand, I actually like him more than I thought I would. If you're in the market for a Killbison figure, Thanatos is a pretty good choice, and I recommend him.
  23. mikeszekely
    Looks great! You built that from a Tallgeese, yeah?
  24. mikeszekely
    Tonight, the grand finale... the combined form of Constructor, ToyWorld's Devastator. But we're going to do things a little differently, by taking a look at both the parts and the whole. First we get Shovel and Concrete into leg mode. Oh, and yeah, I got the purple barrel on Concrete. Looks better that way, IMHO. On the subject of Concrete, may I just add that I LOVE the way Concrete's front wheels hide away, giving him a nice flat base for a foot. The bulk of Burden's contribution to the gestalt is actually the partsforming hips/thighs/crotch. Burden himself plugs down onto it, then his arms wrap around the plug so that pegs on the plug go into peg holes on the arms. While Combiner Wars Devastator's chest plate sort of held everything together, you actually want to attach the chest plate to Allocator before putting everyone together. You can put the head on now or later. Getting Bulldozer and Unearth ready is basically a case of attaching the forearms and hands to their vehicle mode, then folding out the combiner pegs. They use multiple points of connection, and Bulldozer's can take some effort to peg in. I've found that it's easier if you unpeg his feet from each other and do each one separately. Concrete and Shovel connect by sliding some notched bits on the thighs into grooves on the rears of the legbots. The side that Shovel connects to isn't toleranced right, and I do recommend filing and test fitting before you put Shovel on all the way. Once they're in place, springed panels on the sides of the knees can be rotated around onto pegs on the legbots, securely locking them in place. Connecting Allocater involves making sure you have four pegs flipped out under Allocater and lining them up into four holes on top of Burden... ...then lining up some pegs under Burden's truck bed with peg holes on Allocator's back so that it takes more than simply pulling up to pull them apart. Lastly, slide the Combiner Wars-style pegs on Bulldozer and Unearth into their slots on Allocater and close the tops. If the tops don't lock down and close all the way, check the pegs on the armbots. You'll notice that three sides have a ridge cut into them, and one side doesn't. Make sure that the smooth side is facing up. And there we have it, the combine Constructor. He's a mammoth fellow, standing taller than his Combiner Wars counterpart. If we compare him with Ordin, whom I consider to be a "standard" size for 3P combiners, Ordin still only comes up to about his chest plate. Aesthetically, he's clearly not a traditional Devastator. A lot of the departures, though, including the odd shape to the head, the way Unearth's shovel just dangles down, the silver thighs, the purple knees, and even the translucent "window" in the center of the chest piece all take their cues from Studio OX's artwork, though. The fact that we got purple and green treads instead of black and either a green or purple barrel on Concrete are actually concessions by ToyWorld to the G1 versions, concessions that put on the toys themselves but not even on their own box art. So, love it or hate it, I can't fault it for being inaccurate. That said, I do think the waist is too thin and the arms too long, and these problems would have been entirely avoidable if they'd just made Burden a little bigger. Well, here's the biggest pro Constructor has going for him: he's probably the most solid and articulated combiner I've played with. Everything locks tightly together. And, while a lot of people will complain about the partsforming aspect, a huge advantage is that there are pieces, pieces with joints in the elbows, waist, hips, and knees, that aren't trying to do double duty or be cleverly hidden. Don't get me wrong, he's got heavy parts and can tip over while you're messing with him, but it's almost always just a matter of finding the balancing points and not because you're using an individual robot's little waist joints hidden behind a larger faux-waist panel. In some ways, he's got better articulation than some non-combining robots. The head is on a hinged swivel that can look up and down a bit, and side to side with no problem. His shoulders are on tight ratchets for lateral movement. I want to say that he can get at least 45 degrees of lateral movement, but the ratchets are so tough that I almost want to pull the arm off and adjust the ratchet by holding onto the other side of the peg directly than by trying to pull on the armbot while it's attached. It seems like the shoulder rotation is also a ratchet, one that's so tight you'll think you're going to break it. Here's a little trick- pull the arm outward slightly so the teeth aren't touching, rotate the arm, then push it back. It locks the arm into place so that it won't droop under its own weight. There's bicep rotation just under where the forearms connect to the armbots, and a ratcheted elbow that gets just over 90 degrees of bend. The ratchets are strong enough that Constructor can hold his gun, or possibly even another figure (I had him holding Maketoys' Himed). He's got not just a waist swivel, but a ratcheted ab crunch joint. He's got universal hips with strong ratchets for both forward and lateral movement. He can kick all the way forward, all the way back, and he can do the splits... but only if you want him too! No floppy Uranos hips here! There's a thigh swivel in the hip, and ratcheted knees above the connection to the leg bots. And, like the Combiner Wars toys, ankle tilts have been built into Shovel and Concrete. Shovel's waist also allows you to rotate Constructor's right ankle, but the left is locked into place. Now the hands are their own beast, worth talking about on their own and probably the second biggest reason I went with Constructor. They are simple the most articulated combiner hands I've played with. He's got wrist rotation, sure, but the wrist also has a ratchet to flex the hand up or downward. The fingers are attached to the hand on a hinge to curl inward, but before the next knuckle there are joints that are solely so the fingers can be splayed, and they can splay ridiculously far apart. Going up from there, each finger has two knuckles and are different lengths, just like a real hand, but something I appreciate is that most combiner hands, even when the fingers are as straight as they'll get, still tend to curl inward a bit. The joints on Constructor's fingers actually allow them to bend backward a little for dynamic posing, and at least 90 degrees inward. The thumb's knuckles, both of them, have similar inward and outward range (the knuckle just up from the base has a little less inward and little more outward). The thumb gets a ton more articulation from the base, though, which is hinged for inward and outward movement and has a joint for rotation, so you can lie the thumb flat along the base of the palm or flat up the side of the hand. Seriously, if you can get your own actual flesh-and-blood hand into a position you can probably get Constructor's hands into the same position. Constructor has some other nice touches. For instance, a slider on his forehead allows you to switch between the visored and un-visored look, and a button on the back of the head makes his eyes light up. The batteries are even included. The only downside is that the visor is a little too see-through, so the eyes are visible even when the visor is down, and if the eyes are lit you practically can't tell the difference between visor up and visor down. If for some reason you don't like the awesome articulated hands, you can swap them out for drills like he had that one time in that one episode. Or like the G1 toy did, I guess. There's actually a spring in the forearm and a button you can use to fire the drill (or a fist). It'll fire with way more force than the US government would allow in a toy. The forearms also have a neat armor separation gimmick that reminds me of Real Grade Gundam models. If you don't like it on the forearms, you can just hold the sides together when you bend the elbow. You'll need to allow the separation, though, if you want the maximum bend. His thighs have similar armor separation. The skirts on his hips are all hinged so you can get them out of the way, but the whole hinge is on a rotating part as well, so instead of flipping it up you can move it to the side, exposing some cool molded details on the hip joint. You might also be able to a little bit of a gap where his hips connect the crotch. This is because the entire hip joint can slide forward or backward, allowing you to adjust how his center of gravity sits over the hips and legs. As impressive as he is, I'm not sure how I feel about recommending Constructor. I'm not entirely sure that he's the best Devastator you can buy. Aesthetically-speaking, there's a lot I still like about Maketoys' Green Giant, and the prototype pics for Generation Toys' Gravity Builder look pretty great as well. Chances are, if you have a collection of 3P combiners they'll probably scale better, too, with Giant being around the same size as Quantron, M3, and Guardia and Gravity Builder around the same size as Warbotron Bruticus or Ordin. If combined mode is your top priority, I might suggest looking at them instead. However, Constructor is still a very impressive Devastator, one that some have suggested fits the "MP scale" better. And while I might think Giant and Gravity Builder are better Devastators, I won't hesitate to tell you that Constructor is made of better Constructicons. In that sense, going with Constructor will give you great Constructicons that make a good Devastator, while Giant and Gravity Builder seem to be great Devastators made of so-so Constructions. I chose to take a small hit on Devastator to have great bots than to take the larger hit on the bots just to have a better Devy. If that makes sense to you, then this is probably the Devastator for you. Personally, I have a feeling that I'll be checking out Gravity Builder down the road, though.
  25. mikeszekely
    OK, real quick thoughts on what I've heard so far about 3P news... -Lot of people doing MP Seekers. Why? -Maketoys is doing Jazz. That's like the fourth one... so Takara must have one coming soon, eh? -The yellow Constructor head is a let down. TW reps were suggesting more traditional proportions, instead we got the OX head with a weird grimmace. -X-Transbots is a little late to the Inferno game. I see they're also doing a Galvatron. -There's another 3P Liokaiser coming... but I think most people who wanted a Liokaiser are five for six on Hades by now. -As an IDW fan, I'm happy to see MMC rolling out more DJD guys... but honestly, I'm pretty underwhelmed by them (MMC in general, not their DJD stuff, which is great). -I'm starting to get interested in Maketoys Cross Dimension line. Striker Manus seems like a good size Prime to mix with my combiners. If the Cross Dimension Megatron turns out to be good, I'll probably get both and replace Hegemon.
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