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mikeszekely

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  1. mikeszekely
    It's too bad Civ VI won't be out before we go visit my wife's family in Beijing. I played a ton of Civ V on my laptop on my last trip there while everyone else was watching TV in the evenings.
  2. mikeszekely
    Looks like, in addition to Inferno, you're also going to have an MP Cheetor to look forward to. If you're into both MPs and Beast Wars toys, of which I'm neither, so...
  3. mikeszekely
    I saw Skullface's review of not-Scrapper, then I went back and watched his review of the GT one. That alone has pretty much sold me on the ToyWorld one, although GT's funky not-Bonecrusher didn't do them any favors. The only thing keeping me on the fence is that GT's combined Devastator is more in-scale with my other 3P combiners, and looks better than ToyWorld's, but ToyWorld has definitely nailed the individual bots.
  4. mikeszekely
    Alright, getting back to combiners I've already bought, tonight we're looking at Celeritas, Maketoys' answer to Lightspeed. He's shorter than Sonic Drill and you can see here that he's about the same size as T-Bone. Aesthetically, I think he hits the right notes for Lightspeed. He's got the cockpit torso, a nice head sculpt that says "I'm Lightspeed" without being a box, and he's dominated by red. Maketoys smartly used a brighter red for all the car parts and Celery Toes' head, and pelvis, but a darker red for his forearms and thighs to break up the color, with a little gray on his feet, biceps, and hips. While his feet aren't formed from the front of the car his shins are, and as with Fansproject's Diesel I think that's close enough. Closer inspection is where trouble starts creeping up. Like the fact that his back is pretty much hollow, that chunks of spoiler are attached to the backs of his hands, that the front of the cockpit is hanging off his butt, or that he's got the middle section of the car's front end running from the sides of his knees all the way to his hips. While the sculpt of his guns is fine, I'm not a fan of the translucent orange plastic, nor the fact that chunks of the tires on his legs come off and peg onto the guns. As far as articulation goes, he's got the same ball-jointed head, same hinged ball-jointed shoulders, and same ball-jointed elbows doing double duty as bicep swivels as Sonic Drill. His wrists are ball joints, but the aforementioned chunks of spoiler on his hands interferes with them. Due to his transformation, the wrist is cut to have plenty of inward wrist bend. He's got a waist swivel that's blocked if the cockpit is pegged in, but if it's just hanging off his butt it's fine. He's got ball joints for his hips and ankles, thigh swivels just below his hips, and soft ratchets for his knees. Amazingly, the car kibble coming up off the sides of his knees don't seem to be a problem for posing. Generally speaking, his articulation is good and he's got more of that Fansproject/Maketoys action figure feel than Sonic Drill. Celeritas turns into a futuristic/Cybertronian race car. Again, he hits the right notes with the silver cockpit surrounded by red car, but the front end is very different from G1 Lightspeed. Again, I'm ok with it... compared to the other Technobots, G1 Lightspeed's car mode was pretty mundane. Looking at Celeritas from above, he's definitely got a more exotic look to him. From the side, though, I think he sits too high off the ground, more like a dune buggy than a race car. I do like the G1-esque splash of gray on the sides, though. I have mixed feelings about his leg mode. One one hand, it's actually pretty G1 the way the car nose is at the ankle and (most of) the spoiler at his knee. And I do kind of like the way the front of the car is folded in to give him a sweet curve. I wish the cockpit were on the front of the leg, though. I also like that he's got storage for his guns in leg mode, I just wish they were less visible. I also wish that remove the parts of his tires and locking the tires together wasn't necessary. I also don't like that, again, c-clips are involved in attaching the foot, as that seems like something that could wear over time. Anyway, do I recommend Celeritas? I'm going to say no. Don't get me wrong, he's not a bad figure, and he's certainly better than Sonic Drill (IMHO, sorry, Scyla). He's just not good enough, either.
  5. mikeszekely
    Ooh, and a Revive HGUC Hyaku Shiki! Now we're talking!
  6. mikeszekely
    Well, I own four Guardia members already, and I've got Vulcan on preorder. I guess it's lucky that I don't limit the number of combiners I buy in a year (Guardia will already be 7), or collect expensive Macross toys. *sigh* After ToyWorld revealed their last two Constructicons I was pretty set to work on Devastator* next, at a less-insane on figure a month, then start thinking about Liokaiser, Piranacon, the ToyWorld Throttlebot combiner, etc next year. Now I'm kind of super-tempted to preorder not-Skalor and work on both him and a Devastator for the rest of the year. *I am still waiting to see how GT's Constructicons turn out, although the fact they seem to be Warbotron has me a little leery and I hate their not-Bonecrusher. He's a more appropriate size for my collection than the ToyWorld one, though, and the combined mode is looking a shade better than ToyWorld's super-skinny Devastator. Then again, I'm digging the super articulate hands on ToyWorld, and pretty much every individual bot looks better than GTs.
  7. mikeszekely
    Should. Same scale.
  8. mikeszekely
    Pics going around of TFC's not-Skalor in bot, beast, arm, leg, and gun modes. Scramble City and Targetmaster confirmed.
  9. mikeszekely
    I'll be in for the RG Sinanju and the P-Bandai Stein, but I'm a little bummed since the HG was one of the nicest models I've built. Luckily I still have the the metallic red paint I used on the HG.
  10. mikeszekely
    I get what you mean, about a feel that you won't get from a retail toy. It's one of the things I really love about Mania King, that feeling that there's no way in a million years Hasbro would have come up with that transformation. I think when a design is really clever you end up with something like Smart Robin, where the transformation alone can sell you on a figure. I guess I just don't feel like Sonic Drill is clever so much as over-engineered for the same of being different.
  11. mikeszekely
    I didn't say his transformation was difficult, I said it was awkward. I had him figured out after two transformations. But the whole split cockpit and all the extra back kibble it creates could have been avoided if the cockpit was always on his back, and if he weren't upside down in leg mode. Between that and the little arms stored in his shoulders instead of some rolling wheels I just really think the designer went way overboard on the engineering. So, we're going to have to agree to disagree here; I think he's the worst part of this set by a wide margin. Yep, I got the replacement parts and installed them. Sonic Drill and Celeritas were easy, but it was a pain keeping Metalstorm's spring in place while putting him back together.
  12. mikeszekely
    Ok.. I've done Bruticus, Abominus, Predaking, Superion, and Menasor. I'm going to keep the 3P combiner train going today with a look at Sonic Drill, Maketoy's version of Nosecone. Ok, so the designer that did M3 supposedly designed this set too. I can see that; Sonic Drill's a little fellow, just a shade taller than T-Bone from the M3 set. Now, I thought that the not-Stunticons were great modern takes on the characters, but I'm not really sure where they were going with this one. He's not really cartoon colored (white torso, reddish-brown arms, brownish-orange legs). But, he's not toy-colored, either (gray arms and thighs, white torso, yellow shins). There are hints, sure... the yellow head and the yellow detailing on his shins, the yellow in the middle of his chest. And I have to admit, I kind of like the DBZ scouter on his right eye. As with M3, the designer really seems to like using ball joints here. His shoulders are on ball joints for rotation and hinges for lateral movement, his head is on a ball joint, and his wrists are on ball joints. His upper elbow is a hinge, but his lower elbow is a ball joint that doubles as his bicep swivel. His feet and hips are on ball joints. His waist is a swivel, and he's got thigh swivels that are actually below his soft-ratcheting knees. Due to his transformation, he can even do a little ab crunching. On the whole, I'd say his articulation is pretty good, but I'll note that on my copy the thigh swivels are pretty loose. I'm not sure you'd call them accessories, but the lights on his shoulders are on c-clips. He doesn't have a weapon; the guns on his arms do peg into his hands, but they're attached. The drill can be removed and put on his fist. Can't really say I'm a fan, though. One other gimmick that Sonic Drill has is that the treads on the back of his shoulders can open up to reveal these little helper arms. Combined with the scouter on his eye, I guess it gives him a sort of scientist vibe, but they don't really do anything. And the thing is, in alt-mode Sonic Drill doesn't have any wheels. I kind of wonder if these little arms aren't part of the reason. Speaking of alt modes, Sonic Drill still turns into a drill tank. As with bot mode, there's not a ton of similarity between him and G1 Nosecone, but they do at least both have red cockpits. You can see that the lights that were on his shoulders have to be unclipped, then pegged behind the cockpit to fill in some empty space. These lights are essential for combined mode; they use the same c-clips to lock onto the combiner foot and becomes part of the ankle. Although they seem fine, they grip tight and I'd be worried about stressing the clips in the long run. For that reason, I'm just going to leave them attached to the ankle. I do like that the combiner hands hide away in doors on the toe of the combiner feet. And there's Sonic Drill in leg mode. It works. The drill is pointing up instead of down, but I actually kind of dig that, since it'd make getting kneed by Computron all kinds of painful. I'm just going to come out and say it. I do not recommend Sonic Drill. I'm willing to give him a pass on his lack of G1-accuracy, since that's kind of Maketoys thing, but Sonic Drill is a case of being over-engineered to the detriment of the figure. He'd have less kibble on his back, wouldn't need c-clipped lights moving around, wouldn't have guns permanently attached to the bottoms of his arms, and wouldn't have an awkward cockpit transformation if they'd have kept it simple and hewed closer to the G1 transformation, if not the G1 style.
  13. mikeszekely
    I'm going for the ToyWorld Dinobots, but I seem to be a member of an extremely tiny group who want a Dinobot combiner and think GCreations' is too big.
  14. mikeszekely
    Might was well wrap this up with a quick look at the combined Feral Rex, MMC's Predaking. Feral Rex is a big mamma jamma! Although he's a tad shorter than Ordin his chunkier proportions make him seem bigger. Aesthetically, there's no use comparing him to the cartoon, which had some odd color shifts and a truly heinous head, although Leo Dux's folded-up feet do give Rex some red on his thighs. When compared to the G1 toy, though, Feral Rex unmistakably comes together as Predaking. Like the original Predaking, legs can't be arms and arms can't be legs, but an arm can be either arm and a leg can be either leg. I (and probably half the internet) tend to go with this configuration, which has Tantrum and Headstrong in their 'toon placement but Rampage and Divebomb in their toy box art configuration. All of the guns from the individual Feral Cons combine to form Rex's arm cannon. For a weapon made up of a bunch of other weapons, it's surprisingly close to the G1 cannon. What's even more impressive, only Fortis really suffers for this, as Bovis and Tigris have cool pistols, Talon has a cool sniper rifle, and while I'm not a fan of Leo Dux's weapon it's really not that different than the G1 toy's. The cannon can clip onto either Tigris, or Talon (or Felisaber, more on him in a bit), but for G1 toy and 'toon accuracy I put him on Talon. All of the Feral Con's melee weapons combine, too, along with Leo Dux's lion tail and chest parts. The result is a huge, wicked-looking sword. There's no question it looks amazing and that Rex looks menacing holding it, I just wish it weren't at the expense of the individual weapons. None of the assorted daggers or cleavers really do it for me, and again Fortis gets shafted with weird upside-down handles. You have to pay attention to how you're positioning it in Rex's hand vs. how you're posing Rex, though, as the handle can bend at the tail joints. It's also not particularly G1-accurate, although there's a fourth-party G1-style sword available for Rex if you prefer it. Me, I'm cool with this one. In fact, I'm thinking about buying the CombToys replica so I can have one that I just leave in combined mode. If you've got Felisaber, his instructions come with an alternate configuration that yields two smaller swords instead of the big one. They can clip together, even to make a double-bladed weapon. It's a nice touch, although the weapons don't seem to peg together in this configuration as well. To this day, Feral Rex is often held up as the gold standard for 3P combiners, and it's easy to see why. There are plenty of tabs and slots to make sure that everything is locked into place on all the limbs- no folded-up beast arms hanging awkwardly to the sides here. MMC also put a lot of thoughtful touches in Rex's design. I already mentioned how Talon's tail feather rotates around his body independently, so you can ensure that it's always on the back of Rex's arm and out of the way. The shoulder cannons are on hinges and can be aimed up or down as if he's firing over his shoulder. Then there's his hips. Some people like to leave Leo Dux's legs fully extended to give him height. Other people collapse Dux's legs, because... well, I don't know why you'd do that. The ideal position is actually a sweet-spot in between fully extended and fully collapsed, where Leo Dux has a joint that acts like a backwards knee. What it's actually meant to be is a joint to give Rex's hips their forward bend. I've also seen 4th party hip armor add-ons, but if you set Leo Dux's legs correctly his own hip armor folds down in line with his pelvis armor. Plus, with the right kind of battery, Rex's eyes light up. As far as articulation goes, all combined Rex has better articulation than some Hasbro toys that aren't combiners. His head is on a ball joint and has good range for up-down and sideways tilt, and can turn all the way around. His arms rotate on ratchets at the combiner peg. He can get a little lateral movement upward from the peg, and more from the ratcheting combiner ports on Talon and Tigris' backs. He's got Leo Dux's waist swivel and Dux's universal ratcheting hips, plus the extra ratcheting joint I mentioned in the previous paragraph. He's got a two thigh swivels, one at Dux's thigh swivel and one at the combiner joint. The combiner ports on Bovis and Fortis provide ratcheting knees. His feet are actually on big ball joints that give his feet forward and backward tilt, ankle tilt, and ankle rotation, plus the cannon toes can tit upward. Talon and Tigris' waists double as Rex's bicep swivels. He's got dedicated ratcheting elbows built into their torsos, but on their own they don't get much bend. If you orient them so that their robot feet are the back of the forearm, though, you can get a little extra bend from their hips, giving Rex about 90 degrees of bend altogether. His wrists swivel, and each finger is individually articulated. The thumb is on a ball joint at the hand and has one knuckle, and the fingers are hinged on a pin at the hand and have one knuckle (the other knuckle is molded slightly bent). Just because Rex can pose, though, doesn't mean it's easy. As I said, he's a big boy, and even though most of his joints have some pretty good ratchets the sheer mass he's carrying will make him want to tip, or force him to do the splits if you're not patient. Rex has one more trick, and that's his "ultimate mode". Basically, if you have Felisaber (MMC's not-Catilla and a Tigris remold), you can use him as an arm instead of Talon. Felisaber's gun can even clip into the bottom of the barrel on Rex's arm cannon. Then, instead of putting just Talon's wings on Rex's back, you use the peg in Talon's chest to plug him entirely onto Rex's back. It's a neat idea on paper to help encourage people to buy Felisaber, but here's the thing; it just adds more mass to a figure that can already be difficult to pose, making him both back heavy and even more likely to do the splits on you. Talon looks pretty stupid just hanging out on Rex's back. And, I'm guessing that a lot of people are going to buy Rex because they want Predaking, of whom Catilla (an Autobot!) isn't part of. Felisaber is a great toy in his own right, better than any of the other Feral Cons except Tigris. Buy him for that reason, but don't buy him for Rex because he subtracts more than he adds. Now, if I'm being totally honest, I'll say that Ordin is my favorite 3P combiner. And if you don't play with your toys, you just want a Predaking to put on display, I still think that Unique Toys' Warlord has a better combined aesthetic than Rex. Unlike Warlord, Rex isn't just good combined, though. Each member is a solid-to-great toy on its own. So, yep, I'm absolutely going to go ahead and recommend Feral Rex, especially if you get some 4th party add-ons like either Dr. Killenger or Professor Heisenberg's claws (I've got the Heisenberg ones on him in the pictures here). Just make sure that if you're buying Felisaber, you're buying him as an individual character and not using him as a part of Feral Rex.
  15. mikeszekely
    And now, something like four months after I started, we finally get to review the last of MMC's Feral Cons. Here's Tigris, they're homage to Rampage. Tigris falls neatly into the Voyager class size, a little shorter than Combiner Wars Hotspot and a little taller than Alberich if you stop measuring at Alberich's bot head and not the shark head. How G1-accurate he is depends on whether you're going for toy or 'toon (or Marvel comic, where he was almost entirely red). Generally speaking, Tigris nails the orange torso, the red tiger head, and the head sculpt. He has a toy-accurate red face plate. I'm told the first release of Tigris had a cartoon-accurate yellow one, and that MMC sent out red replacements. It's kind of a shame that MMC didn't just give you the option, but honestly I prefer the red. It gives him a kind of ninja-esque appearance. Anyway, he continues with the red shoulders and forearms of the toy, but adds black biceps, black on the back of his forearm, and black hands instead of orange. He's got silver-painted faux plating on the sides of his chest, which mimic sticker detail from the toy (but not the cartoon's lightening bolts). He also has the red pelvis, orange shins, and black feet of the toy, with gold-painted detail again mimicking the sticker details. His thighs are red instead of black (or, more accurately, black on the front and red on the sides and back, but whatever). One the whole, I really dig the look. It simultaneously says "Rampage" while the more slender build compared to the other Feral Cons reinforces the ninja vibe. Tigris' articulation is the same as Talon's, as they're actually extremely similar molds, plus one extra hinge at the shoulder for his arm-mode transformation. Which is to say, Tigris' articulation is great, and you can get some awesome poses out of him. Some ninja poses, I daresay. It's too bad he comes with more stupid daggers instead of katana, eh? The pistols are perfect for him, though. One thing you can do that you might not be aware of his that the shoulders are on sliders, so you can position them higher or lower based on your preferences. In addition to his own accessories, Tigris comes with a large cannon-esque weapon that is intended for Leo Dux, but there's no reason that Tigris can't hold it himself. I'm not a fan of it in general, though, but I bought Professor Heisenburg's G1-style guns for the Feral Cons. Speaking of accessories, Tigris also comes with the "Feral Rex Completion Kit." It's got a little gold-painted piece that fits onto Feral Rex's diaper, although I'm not really sure why it wasn't attached in the first place. It also comes with three sets of forearm fillers for Talon, Bovis, and Fortis, addressing one of my initial complaints. The missiles and mini guns are kind of cool, but I'm not a fan of the big blades. The completion kit also comes with six hexagonal pieces with holes in them. Neither the instruction book for Tigris nor the instruction card in the bag with the completion kit mentions them, and I have no idea what they're for. I mentioned that Tigris shares a lot of the engineering (mold?) of Talon. If you look at the pack-in comics, you can see pictures of Tigris with the same peg in his abdomen that Talon has for pegging onto Rex's back. At some point the peg was abandoned, which leaves a hollow space that MMC totally could have just ignored. Instead, they still put the little door on him, and they toss in one final accessory as something of an easter egg- a little explosive device that he used on one page in just one of the pack-in comics. As you'd expect from the name Tigris, if not the fact that he's a homage to Rampage, Tigris turns into a tiger. It's a good-looking tiger mode. By giving Tigris black biceps and making the back of his forearm black they've even managed to retail the black-legged look of the G1 toy. Of the five main Feral Cons, Tigris has probably the most articulate alt-mode. The tiger head is on a ball joint and can even get a little side-to-side movement, as well as open and close his mouth. His front legs are his bot-arms, so articulation is basically the same down to the paws, which are on swivels with a mushroom peg, so he can title the paw up and down, rotate it at the wrist, and use the wrist rotation for ankle tilt. His rear legs aren't as articulate, but still have hips that can rotate all the way around and get a tiny fraction of lateral movement, a pair of hinges in the leg, and another hinge at the paw. Where he really shines is the joint that's used for Rex's elbow. Because it rotates independently of his upper or lower body you can position it so he can bend his spine up, down, or even a little to the side, so you can get some great prowling tiger poses out of him. You can store his weapons on ports on his shoulders (the ones on his tiger hips are too small), or you can use the four holes around his combiner port. If you want, you can rotate the legs at the biceps, flip them around along with his head, then rotate his body so that the combiner port is on the top. So, yeah, I definitely recommend Tigris. His worst flaws are the fact that his daggers aren't katanas, and that his bot head doesn't hide well in tiger or arm modes. If you can get past that, though, he's my favorite of the Feral Cons and one of my favorite 3P toys- period. He's incredibly articulate, the pistols are perfect for him, his alt-mode is as good as his bot mode, and his transformation isn't the pain that Bovis and Fortis' were.
  16. mikeszekely
    Wha? As a kid, I never liked the third season because Rodimus < Optimus, and like the rest of the seasons it had its share of bad episodes. But as an adult, a lot of the third season had darker, more mature themes and was more sci-fi. Even what they did with Galvatron had reasoning behind it (brain damage that lead to insanity), they devoted a whole episode to it where Cyclonus tries to get Galvatron cured (Webworld), and Galvatron's madness does a lot more to explain the Decepticons constant failures than Megatron's schemes constantly backfiring.
  17. mikeszekely
    I want to like Carnifex, as I dig anything that skews IDW, but he looks too big for my in-head scale.
  18. mikeszekely
    Add Kultur to the growing list of 3P toys I need to get. Once I finish those pesky combiners.
  19. mikeszekely
    I have the Shout Factory box sets for the G1 cartoon. There are a TON of really heinous episodes, but I still find plenty of episodes pretty entertaining.
  20. mikeszekely
    Well, Warbotron doesn't get much of a reaction around here; maybe I'll have better luck with MMC? Here's Talon, MMC's Divebomb. Talon, seen here with Combiner Wars Hotspot and fellow arm-bot Alberich, is comfortably Voyager-sized. Aesthetically, he's probably the MMC not-Predacon that diverges the least from his inspiration, really only trading the original toy's gold feet and yellow hands for black ones. He's even got the gold deco on his shins and the molded vents on his chest. Somewhere along the way, he did sprout a pair of twin-barreled guns on his forearms. I'm not entirely sure where the inspiration for them came, but they can be rotated or even removed if you're not a fan. His bird-head hat can be worn up, as pictured, or looking forward G1-style. Unlike Bovis and Fortis, though, Talon's head isn't inside the bird's mouth. As you'd expect from an MMC toy, articulation is quite good. His head is on a ball joint connected to a hinged plate. The combination gives him a swivel but also an outstanding up-down range and even a ton of tilt. His shoulders are universal joints with soft ratches for rotation and nice clicky ratchets for lateral movement. His biceps swivel, and his elbows are double-jointed and can touch his shoulders, which is actually part of his transformation. Like Felisaber, he's actually got two waist swivels. Sandwiched between them in his abdomen is a joint meant to be his arm-mode elbow. Depending on how you orient it, Talon either has an ab crunch or can arch his back. His tail feather is on a double hinge, and the hinge is on an independently-rotating part. If you wanted to, you could have him wear it in front of him like an apron, although it's meant to keep the tail on the back of Rex's arm regardless of how the arm is oriented. His hips are ratcheted universals, he's got a thigh swivel just above his knee, which gets you a ratcheted bend of 90 degrees. His feet are on ball joints at the end of a hinged armature with another hinge in the middle of the foot for toe tilt, so you can get all sorts of crazy poses. For accessories, he comes with more daggers (meh) and an honestly pretty cool sniper rifle. I actually dig the idea of Talon/Divebomb flying around above a battlefield, sniping targets while the rest of the team gets in close. Like the other Rex limb bots, he's got rotating parts with peg holes on this thighs to store weapons. Due to the way his legs transform vs. the original toys there's more black and gold than orange on his bird legs. This seems to have prompted MMC to make the curious decision to break up the black by molding his bird feet in gray plastic instead of black, which is kind of a bummer because it's so out of place. His bird head is lacking some of the hooked-beak and crest of the G1 version. But otherwise, again, he's very close to the source material. Articulation is a bit limited in this mode, the bird's neck is his bot head, so it's still got that ball joint plus a hinge for the bird head to look up and down, plus the bird's mouth opens and closes. The hip swivels and ab crunch is intact, and his hips still provide some forward-backward and lateral movement, but not nearly as much before things start popping apart. He loses the thigh swivel. The bird feet are hinged, and each toe can move independantly, but there's no ankle tilt in this mode. His wings are very articulate, too. They're made of a black part that connects to the yellow backpack on a pin that allows them to move up and down. The black part connects at the other end to on orange part on a ratcheted hinge for back and forth mvoement. The orange parts connect with a pin to another black part for further up-down movement, then each gold feather (except the top one) is pinned independantly so they can be splayed out. Talon's weapons can be stored on his backpack in bird mode. His forearm guns can be be plugged into peg holes on the orange parts of his wings, too. The entire backpack can be removed; it's how they move to Rex's back when Talon is an arm. It actually plugs into Talon's combiner port, which has me thinking that it could also be used to give wings to Leo Dux, Felisaber, or Tigris. Speaking of Dux, in a feature I didn't show here, the black chunks that make up Dux's lion chest in beast mode, part of Rex's sword in combined mode, but have no place to go on Dux's bot mode can plug onto Talon's wings. Hooray for storage options, amirite? One final feature of Talon is that he's got a combiner peg in his belly. While you can (and probably will) make your Feral Rex with the five figures representing the G1 Predacons and have Talon as an arm, you can use Felisaber as an arm instead. Then, instead of pegging Talon's wings onto Rex's back, you use this peg to peg Talon in his entiretly onto Rex's back. Do I recommend Talon? I do indeed! Talon, like Felisaber, has the quality build you expect from an MMC toy but is simpler and less of a pain than Leo Dux, Bovis, or Fortis. My gripes with him are minor: gaps in his forearms where his hands flip out, the wings make him a tad back-heavy, and the daggers are kind of crappy melee weapons (a complaint I have across the whole Feral Rex line). I love the sniper rifle, though, and he's a great representation of Divebomb. All-in-all, he's a fun toy all on his own.
  21. mikeszekely
    We're going to wrap up the WuKong Warbotron fun today with a look at Warbotron WB-01, who I think WuKong just calls Bruticus, who is indeed Warbotron's version of Bruticus. We'll start with Fierce Attack/Onslaught, who transforms into just this much of Bruticus. The trailer that didn't make up any part of Onslaught's bot mode folds up into the rest of the torso. Then it's just a matter of connecting the chest plate and limbs. Up to this point, I'd say things were going mostly good. The back guns tabbed on a little loosely, and it takes care to position Bruticus's head without revealing Onslaught's, but everything else seemed tight. In fact, There's extra panels and pegs just for holding Onslaught's shoulders in place and connecting him to the trailer, although Onslaught's arms just sort of hang out behind Bruticus. Then I attached the limbs and got him to hold the gun. On paper, Bruticus's head can turn left and right and swivel up and down. The back guns have hinges so they can tilt forward, like Bruticus is firing them over his shoulders. The combiner ports swing out from the body to give Bruticus's arms their lateral movement, and they rotate on soft ratchets inside the combiner pegs on Vortex and Blast Off. Vortex and Blast Off's waists become bicep swivels, and their hips become elbows. Unlike other combiners that tend to use this configuration, you can't really orient them to use their knees as doube-joints for the elbows. The hands have wrist swivels and what look like joints for wrist tilt, but I couldn't get them to bend with what I'd consider reasonable force. Each finger is individually articulated, and with a ball joint and a single knuckle in the thumb and fingers that are hinged at the hand and have two more knuckles. One nice thing here is that the fingers are actually different lengths. Bruticus has a waist swivel, universal hips, and the combiner pegs in the knees ratchet for knee bend. The ankles can rotate and the feet have built in ratchets for ankle tilt, and the toes can bend upward. In practice, he's back-heavy and his ankles, which don't have forward/backward tilt, have just enough play that he wants to lean a little forward or tip over backward. And it turns out the ankle connectors are just pegged into the foot, and the right foot's a little loose and tends to fall off. And, as I mentioned, the connection for the back cannons are kind of loose. That's on Warbotron. The left hand didn't fit well on the pegs for them on Vortex, and I had to shave some of the pegs off. I'll say that's on WuKong, but given the other issues I had with Fierce Attack I'll concede that it could be on Warbotron. The ratchet in both Vortex and Blast Off's combiner peg isn't strong enough; Vortex can extend but droops under the weight of the massive gun. Blast Off's peg can't even support his own weight and will droop back down no matter what. That's definitely on WuKong. Lastly, those hinges in back cannons? One was misassembled and I had to take it apart and repair it. That's back on Warbotron. That's a lot of shoddy QC, and while you might expect and forgive it a little from a KO like WuKong the majority of it is on Warbotron, and that simply shouldn't be. And in any case, it makes posing him a little challenging, which is disappointing when I've heard other people talk about how solid their WB-01 is. Posing issues aside, there's no denying that WB-01 makes for a large, imposing, and good-looking Bruticus. The lighter gray that was on the original toy's head, chest, waist, and pelvis are a darker gray, which is fine (better than the CW gunmetal head), with painted purple accents and a black abdomen. The head is a little stylized but hits all the right notes with the painted red eyes, mouth plate, little antenna, and forehead crest. His thighs are toy-blue with green accents to mimic sticker detail, his hands silver with purple details, and even his feet are the same basic shape as the toy's, if you ignore the cannons on his heels and the brown accents. The biggest departure from G1 Bruticus is actually how the limbs are arranged; Blast Off is connected at his belly instead of his back, Vortex's tail becomes a wrist instead of his cockpit, and the top of Swindle's alt-mode is on the front side instead of the back. They're minor changes that don't detract from a Bruticus aesthetic; in fact CW Bruticus does the same with Blast Off and Swindle. So, while Bruticus is my absolute favorite of the five-man Combiner Wars gestalts, WB-01 obliterates it. To give you a better idea of size, here he is with Ordin.. From foot to the top of their heads, they're very close in height, although Bruticus gains some mass from from Blast Off and Vortex's cockipts and the cannons on his back rising well above his head. Speaking of Ordin, Ordin took a lot of flak because Hagen and Alberich's arms folded up and didn't tab in when they're in arm mode. Bruticus is worse. The extremely vague instructions aren't so much telling you how to transform Blast Off and Vortex's arms to get them into arm mode as they are suggestions for how to get them out of the way as best you can... suggestions I ignored for Vortex, since the Warbotron way hinders the hip-elbow articulation and my way doesn't. Now that I have him combined, do I recommend Warbotron's Bruticus? I really want to say yes... Bruticus is my favorite combiner, and WB-01 nails it for looks and size. But a lot of the nagging QC issues hang like storm clouds over the whole experience. I'd have to say, at Warbotron's prices, WB-01 isn't worth it for the combined mode experience; just get them if you want an individual Swindle, Brawl, or maybe Blast Off for your collection. His flaws are easier to overlook if you're going for the cheaper WuKong KOs, especially if the impending WuKong Onslaught fixes some of the Warbotron problems. Plus, I have the Machine Boy/Mengbadi Swindle coming. I'll let you know how he is when he gets here, but if they're good you could get a somewhat off-colored Bruticus for something like $150, which really makes some of his issues easy to ignore.
  22. mikeszekely
    Fierce Attack arrived a day early, so I'm going to wrap up the WuKong/Warbotron reviews. So here he is, Warbotron's take on Onslaught, and this time it's not a WuKong KO, with Universe Ultra Class Onslaught on the left and Combiner Wars Voyager Onslaught on the right. Aesthetically, I'm not sure how I feel about him. I think his head is a good sculpt for Onslaught, and sort of splits the difference between toy and 'toon with his head being mostly black, but with a silver face plate and a bit of blue detailing. Likewise, he's predominantly a dark blue and goes for the 'toon's olive-colored hips and leg details, but he ditches the tan of the toy entirely, and adds some black to his waist and biceps. Perhaps the most jarring thing about Fierce Attack, though, is his Optimus Prime-ish truck window chest instead of either the 'toon's relatively featureless chest or the toy's sticker details, which the CW Onslaught rendered via paneling. I want to say that my first impression wasn't one that screamed "Onslaught," but the more I mess with him the more he grows on me. Articulation is exactly what you'd expect from Warbotron at this point; head looks side to side with a little up-down, shoulders can rotate 360 and extend to the sides, biceps swivel, elbows bend 90 degrees, wrist swivels and fingers can open, waist swivels, universal hips with soft ratchets for the forward-backward motion, knees bend 90 degrees, ankles can tilt and have a little up-down movement due to the transformation. As far as accessories go, it seems that, like CW Onslaught, he's meant to use his back cannons as handheld weapons, which he does well but they're heavy enough that he can be tricky to pose. If, like me, you prefer to keep his cannons on his back, those extra Gundam guns that came with WuKong Brawl and Swindle are looking a lot more useful. Fierce Attack also comes with the parts for combined mode: two feet, two hands, a chest plate, and a big gun. The feet are kind of neat because they have twin-barreled cannons and molded treads, so they look like little tank drones. There really isn't anything you can do with the chest plate and hands, though. The big gun is an odd duck. The stock has two parts that can move. The handle is on a peg and can be removed, and the peg can flip into the gun. There's a similar peg on the other side of the gun. The main barrel can also fold over, giving the gun a more compact look. My first thought was that it's a mode for Fierce Attack to hold himself, but if you move the stockall the way out of the way of the barrel it prevents him from holding the peg, which is kind of too small for him anyway. He just looks awkward holding it. Fierce Attack's alt mode is spot-on Onslaught. While CW Onslaught puts forth a valiant effort at "long and skinny with guns on top", only Fierce Attack got the truck right. And he is long! Long enough to tow Heavy Noisy/Brawl. But he's not without some partsforming. Aside from having to remove the guns from Fierce Attack's back to peg them onto the vehicle, the missiles on the sides of the truck split and half go on the outside of his thighs and half go on his hips. But, biggest of all, his trailer detatches and has nothing to do with his robot mode. Honestly, that doesn't bother me too much. I mean, if Optimus can do it, why not Onslaught? And what's neat is that you can use one of the tank drone-feet to tow the trailer. I've got other gripes with Fierce Attack, though, and they all boil down to QC. For me, one of his side mirrors was so tight that I bent it trying it move it, one of the missile sets that go on his hips was deformed, one of the barrels on one of the feet was slightly bent and has stress marks right out of the box, and some stuff that's supposed to peg into different places, like his back guns, tend to do so a little loosely. Oh, and the fold out instructions are borderline useless. It's stuff like this that makes me understand why people were saying the WuKong KOs were better than the originals. So, do I recommend Fierce Attack? Maybe... if the WuKong version, which won't be out until late July now, has better QC, since I do think he's a pretty good Onslaught. But the actual Warbotron one isn't worth the price he commands.
  23. mikeszekely
    If I finish my combiners and get the Function X guys I want, the Reformatted guys are are on my list
  24. mikeszekely
    I think Mike was commenting more on the quality of the artwork in the animation than the character. And remember, kids, this is what Takara is going for in MPs now.
  25. mikeszekely
    The thing about some of the recent MPs is that Takara is getting kind of slavish to the animation models, which IMHO isn't always a good thing. The animation models were extremely simplified, hence the very plain-looking legs and arms on Inferno and the legs on Ratchet and Ironhide. It's hard to explain, but I think older MPs did a better job of looking less like 3D models of the cartoon and more like dynamic, detailed robots whose appearance was simplified for animation. So, long story short, if I were in the market for an MP Inferno, I'd be in the Backdraft camp. In addition to having more detail, I feel like MMC is the only one that nailed the fact that Inferno was a little thinner in the cartoon. TT's has similar proportions to the MakeToys one, and I think that chunkier look makes for a better Grapple. Which, again due to lack of detail, means I'd probably go with the MakeToys Grapple.
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