mikeszekely

I like all the movies I'm seeing this week, but Robocop is in my top 5 favorite movies of all time.

Eh, she just turned 9, and she's always been a bit on the timid side. Still scared of the dark, she won't admit it but I think being in a dark theater makes her anxious by itself. Stuff like Gremlins would probably give her nightmares. As for me, though, my friend I've been going to see these movies with had never seen Gremlins at all*, so I figured even if it's a bit of a PITA to get to the theater we're having fun and we can take turns driving, we went. We'll be back Friday for Ghostbusters and Sunday for Temple of Doom. *He's never seen Robocop, either. Unfortunately that one's not in theaters (as it wouldn't come out for another three years), but I think we're going to have to do a movie night at home one evening.

I definitely want to, I love Gremlins. But half the theaters around here closed, and the closest one playing these movies is still a PITA drive. Plus my wife andkid don't want to go, so I have to go myself or find friends that are available.

Dunno where else to mention this, but Cinemark is celebrating their 40th anniversary by playing movies all week from 40 years ago. I'm going to see Terminator tonight and Ghostbusters on Friday. If I can get some friends to go with I also want to see Temple of Doom on Sunday. Haven't decided if I want to go see Gremlins tomorrow or if that's too many evenings spent watching movies that are way better than the movies they make today...

My Fractured Friendship set arrived today. Let's take a look. On the one side, we have Gladiator Megatron. Folks on a certain other board are being pretty hard on this figure, because a) it's yet another reuse of the Siege Megatron mold, and b) it's a straight repaint of last year's Amazon-exclusive Miner Megatron, no new tooling (on the figure itself). So there's a sense of been there, done that, and with the darker grays and caution stripes some people feel that Miner Megatron was already the superior deco. While the base figure might not have any new tooling, he does come with two new accessories that are pulled straight from the IDW comic Transformers: Megatron Origin #2. You get a sword (that he used to stab the Cy-Kill stand-in, and again later in the issue) and a sort of Energon hammer (that was actually Cy-Kill's weapon, but Megatron uses to to finish him off). Megatron's instructions mention (and I don't know if i covered it or not last year) that the pickaxe and drill can be combined into a sort of spear. The pickaxe and drill can still be stored on Megatron's back, while the sword and hammer have tabs that allow them to plug into his shoulders. Transformation is, naturally, the same as Miner Megatron, into a sort of drill tank. So, I guess you'd better not loose his drill, and pickaxe, eh? With no changes to the mold, though, there's no place to store his sword and hammer. Coming with Megatron is Supercop... er, Security Officer Orion Pax. Similar to Megatron, we just got toy representing this IDW take on the character in an Amazon pack last year. Unlike Megatron, this isn't a repaint meant to represent a slightly different phase of the character's life, it's basically a do-over of the exact same Orion Pax as a cop before he became Optimus Prime using a heavily remolded Gamer Edition Optimus Prime instead of Siege Hound with a new head and chest. Pax has a new head, new shoulders, new forearms, a new chest, new alt mode kibble on his back, new legs from the knees down (minus the pipes), and new forearm guns/pipes. It's kind of impressive that more of Pax hasn't been retooled, because while not totally perfect the retooled bits go a very long way toward making Pax significantly more accurate. The new legs and feet boost Pax's height, reigning in the gorilla arms of the Gamer Edition figure and bringing him up closer to Earthrise Prime in height. The bigger size coupled with proper shin vents, blue hands, a non-blue crotch, pipes on the shoulders and legs, arm guns on his forearms, and a mask on his face really highlights what a poor choice it was to use Siege Hound for Pax in the first place. Pax comes with the same gun that the Gamer Edition figure comes with. However, as his arm didn't transform into a gun in the comics, a new part has been inserted into it to add a 5mm handle. Despite being Orion Pax and not Optimus Prime (although, if you read Stormbringer, you might notice that that only real differences between Pax and Prime prior to scanning an Earth mode are mostly color tweaks), Pax's chest still opens up to reveal a Matrix. And his right forearm can still be removed. If it pleases you, Pax can swap his right forearm with Gamer Edition Optimus... ...and his right stump is compatible with Gamer Edition Prime's gun. Or, you can remove a screw from the bottom, take out the new part, and Pax's gun is Prime's gun. Pax's severed forearm still has the 3mm peg on it that allows you to store it on his butt. Transformation is very like the Gamer Edition figure, with the backpack forming the cockpit and nose, his sides rotating around to form the sides and front wheels at the front, his shins and the sides of his legs folding up to fill in some gaps, his arms tucking under the vehicle, and his feet filling in the spaces vacated by his shins. His rifle pegs onto the back of the vehicle the same way, using a pair of tabs under the gun to grab into slots on his feet. His arm guns, unfortunately, need to be removed and partsformed onto the sides of the vehicle. Honestly, Pax's alt mode was barely seen in the comics, so I don't think it's the end of the world if it's not 100% accurate. And in many ways, it's fine- red at the front, blue at the back, arm guns and leg pipes on the sides, cockpit on top with a louvered nose and chest-windowed lights/fenders. I'd be remiss in my duties if I didn't point out, though, that in the comics Pax's rear was more obviously folded-over legs, that there was a vent of sorts that's missing here, and that the front tires were so large that the fenders didn't cover the tops of them. That said, the blockiness of the figure lends itself well to a Cybertronian truck, and again it's extremely impressive that they got something this different out of the Gamer Edition mold with a few remolded parts as they did. Pax even has a new trick that GE Prime doesn't; after folding up over his shin cavities, the feet actually split in half like slices of bread, with the lower slice folding back down over the rear that the GE figure simply left with exposed fists. Like I said earlier, Megatron's getting a lot of flack in this set, but I don't think it's totally justified. Like, yeah, they've reused the Siege mold a lot... but the Siege mold was pretty good in the first place! And this version, despite the lack of new tooling, has a deco that fits him neatly into the progression from a miner struggling under an oppressive caste system to gladiator beginning to rebel against that system to warlord fighting to overthrow that system to the tyrant invading other planets to fuel his ambitions. I like Gladiator Megatron just fine! That said, though, people aren't wrong when they suggest that Pax is the star of the show here. This is one of those cases where the remold might just be better than the original, as it addresses some of the flaws I had with the Gamer Edition Prime figure. He's a "sorry guys, we messed up" from Hasbro, because he demonstrates rather definitively that Hasbro never should have used Siege Hound for this character. I mean, I put Toyhax labels on him, and got aftermarket shoulder pipes, forearm guns, and a face mask for him, and the new version is still far more accurate and better-scaled. If you have that Pax, you can pretty much throw him away, he's trash now. This is the Pax that should have come with Senator Shockwave. All-in-all, a very solid set and well worth picking up.

Eh... don't get me wrong, I like NIN, but I'm not sure I like the fit for Tron.

Dunno. I just tried logging on from a Tokyo server and got an error about Disney+ not being available in all regions. Tried again from an Osaka server and was able to get in with the "looks like you're traveling" message, but the only Macross that's coming up is Frontier, Delta, 7, and Plus. No Zero, SDF, DYRL, or 2. Can confirm Delta has English subs, though

I wasn't able to find any Arcadia VF-4s under $244, but I can preorder the HMR reissue for $130. I'm rounding the Arcadia up to $250 and a pair of HMRs down to same, but close enough to double. Admittedly, it was a very quick search, not serious and patient hunting.

You wouldn't happen to have any Transformers to use as a size comparison? I ran out of shelf space years ago. Most of my Transformers collection is in boxes. Out of curiosity, what'd you pay? After a very quick search the only Arcadia VF-4s I could find were priced 2-3x the HMR (though prices for various VF-1s seem more reasonable). I'm most interested in having at least one VF-1 (probably Fokker's VF-1S), a VF-4, VF-17F, VF-22 (Diamond Force), YF-19, VF-19S, and VF-11 (I prefer C, but I'll take B). Maybe a VF-5000. Dunno which of those are even available (though I saw that the VF-2SS exists in HMR... I'd be tempted).

Using my VPN to pretend I'm watching from Japan isn't a huge hassle, but was there any word of any of this making it's way to US Disney+?

Let's see... a 1/100 MG Gundam is about yay tall... and the VF-1 is shorter than Gundam, so... a little bigger than an Earthrise Seeker? Maybe around the size of Top Gun x Transformers Maverick?

So... I was getting some guff about not having any Valkyries, what with this being a Macross board and all. Is the High Metal line a good place to start? What's the scale? I'm not a huge fan of the designs from Frontier on, but I think I'd love a good VF-4.

...yeah. I did it.

I didn't get into Macross until I was in college, and importing Macross toys back then was difficult and far too expensive for my meager budget, so I just never got into it. Every now and then and think about it as I still really love the older VF designs (post Frontier, not as much), but I don't even know where to start. Transformers hits different for me. It came out during my foundational years, and I only saw my dad on weekends so Optimus Prime was my make role model. They're also (mostly) cheaper. Like, I know the G1 Jetfire was a Valk, but I'm approaching GoF as an updated G1 toy rather than a new(ish?) Valkyrie toy that happens to be painted like G1 Jetfire. If it helps with the comparison, I'm seriously thinking about dropping $300 on a slightly yellowed but otherwise complete with box copy of the G1 toy...

I actually forgot about this until I got a notice from ShowZ to pay the balance on the one I preordered forever ago. I'll take pics and write a review here, but 1) that review will be in the Unlicensed Third Party Transformers thread in the Anime and Science Fiction section of the boards, because 2) I have no other Valks to compare it, but I'll probably compare it with the Siege Commander-class Jetfire.

I know that Takara doesn't like doing the bad guys, but Megatron could really use some help there... No MPs, but I got a few repaints/retools in. First up we have Studio Series Bumblebee Voyager-class Skywarp. And... I mean, he's ok. I think of Skywarp more as the "the black one," than "the purple one," but he's predominantly gray and purple. I believe that's accurate to the film, though. He's got the same gas mask face as Skywarp and Thrust, and while any of the Seekers can technically pose their wings either way (and their guns, too) I believe the way I have them is film-accurate. Because there's been no changes to the mold aside from the head (and the pointed hump on Thrust), transformation is the same, accessories are the same, alt mode is the same, except for colors. So on the one hand, it's nice to have all three of the "main" Seekers (sorry Thrust). On the other hand, I'm a geewunner and this isn't G1. There's a sense of "been there, done that" that isn't as overpowered by the "gotta have a complete set!" like the Earthrise and Siege molds. And to be frank, I don't care for the base mold as much as the Earthrise and Siege molds. So, recommended if you're collecting the movie toys and want to complete that Bumblebee Cybertron scene, otherwise I think one of this mold is enough. Going back to Walmart's exclusive Star Raiders line, I got two more of the Deluxes (still need Filch, who somehow sold out immediately, and Road Pig, who hasn't been released yet). So, we'll start with Lockdown, who's honestly been done a bit dirty. Since his introduction in Animated he's been a popular character, with a movie toy for Revenge of the Fallen (right), appearances in IDW comics (based largely on the movie toy), an actual movie version with Age of Extinction, and an appearance in Cyberverse. I think a lot of fans would love a new large Deluxe/Voyager Lockdown mold, but all he's managed to get is a new head on a repainted Axlegrease. Even the accessories are the same, which does kind of allow you to fake a hook hand. But with loose elbows and poor shoulder articulation this wasn't a great mold to begin with, and it feels small for a character like Lockdown. The front of the alt mode looks pretty great as Lockdown, which is why I think a lot of us saw this repaint coming. But the fact that Axlegrease was herself a retool of Scraphook, who turned into a truck, is doing Lockdown no favors. The Mad Max armor cage molded onto the windows, tall cabin, and rear that only isn't a truck by virtue of using accessories to make some kind of massive engine is a bit removed from Lockdown's traditional sleek muscle car. There's nowhere to store his hook that isn't just out there, and it's kind of weird that Hasbro only used gold paint on one of the engine/cannon bits. If you don't have a Lockdown in your collection and want one this might be your only choice, but it's kind of lame that a movie toy that's almost fifteen years old is kind of better than this one. The other Deluxe Star Raider I got would be Cannonball. Cannonball is another retool of the Skids/Crankcase mold, and bewteen five of this mold already in hand (Skids, Crankcase, Crosscut, Burnout, and Medix) and the more limited popularity of the character (a late repaint in the Cybertron line that didn't appear in the cartoon), you'd think Cannonball would be fighting an uphill battle. And yet, Cannonball, who began life as a repaint of Cybertron Red Alert, is fairly extensively retooled. He's got a new gun hand on his left, new shoulders with faux doors to better match the original toy, a new chest, new head, and at least a partly-new roof and backs of the legs. He's also got totally new accessories. There's some roof kibble with a light bar, a Cyber Key, a claw, and a hammer. The roof kibble plugs into a slot on Cannonball's back, and itself has a slot on one end for the Cyber Key. The hammer and claw both have 5mm pegs and can be held in his normal hand or plugged onto one of the 5mm ports on his arms or legs. But they also have 3mm ports on them, which allows them to be plugged onto the tip of his gun hand in a manner very reminiscent of the original Cybertron toy. Going a step further, there are spaces on the inside of his partially-remolded lower legs where the claw and hammer can be stored, again like the original Cybertron toy. So the only gimmick that Cannonball is missing is the shoulder guns that were activated by the Cyber Key. Transformation is basically the same as Crankcase, minus the need to turn his gun into a grill. You can see that the remolded chest, which wasn't super accurate to the original toy, becomes a more-accurate front of of the car, and the lightbar kibble even has a gold spot that mimics the head of the original toy poking through the roof. I'm not sure why, but the green skeletons on the doors of the original toy have been replaced by skulls meant to look a bit like the Vok from Beast Wars. Some of the silver paint on the original is gold here, and he's a little narrower and taller, but it's interesting how a little remolding turns Skids into something fairly close to Red Alert/Cannonball's alt mode. The claw and hammer can stay in his legs while he's in alt mode. Again, the only thing that's really missing is the guns that pop out of the sides when the Cyber Key is plugged in. Cannonball is probably the best use of this mold since Skids himself. The retooling they did was smart, the accessories manage to capture most of the gimmicks of the original toy. Might just be me personally, but the joint tolerances are also improved since my pretty-loose Crankcase. So far, I'd say that Cannonball puts the "star" in "Star Raiders," and is the one most worth checking out. I dare say I'm even hoping for a Cybertron Red Alert repaint.

I'll keep this short, but Ignis wasn't the only MMC figure I picked up recently. I also grabbed Shiftlane, their version of Robots In Disguise Rollbar. So, much as Rollbar was a repaint of G1 Swindle, Shiftlane is a retool of Fraudo, MMC's version of Swindle. He sports a new head, new crotch and hip skirts, new shoulders, and a new back. Except... ...I actually had him turned around the in the above picture! Swindle's Sunbow appearance has always been one of the weirder quirks of the animation in that, aside from being yellow and purple, he really didn't look look all that much like the toy. MMC worked to make their Combaticons Sunbow-accurate, so as the demands came in for them to be redone as the RID Commandos the question became how to take a G1 cartoon design and get it back to the toy-accurate RID one? Frankly, I think MMC could have swapped the yellow for green and the purple for orange and called it a day, and people would have been happy enough. But MMC went above and beyond, retooling Fraudo's back to make it look like a toy-accurate front, removing the faux wheels from the shoulders, etc. Now, it's still not perfectly cartoon-accurate- he's lacking the backpack with the front wheels, for example. I can only hope that Hasbro might do something this clever if the seemingly-likely 2026 Bruticus gets an RID makeover. As far as accessories go, Shiftlane has the same missile gun and spare tire as Fraudo. Now, without the wheel to plug into, Fraudo's arm cannon simply can't be an arm cannon. It can use the pair of tabs on the back part (which is the same part as Fraudo's) to clip into his shoulder, which in and of itself would be fine. But the removable barrel is a new tooling, with a fold out handle to be used as another hand gun. On that topic, the part that connects the cannon and missile for alt mode still stores on the back of one leg. But since Fraudo's back is Shiftlane's front, you don't have the storage on the back for the spare tire anymore. The instructions suggest plugging it onto the back of his other leg, which you absolutely can do, but it requires you to fold down the flaps on the backs of his legs and fold out the gestalt heels, making his feet a bit bigger than Fraudo's. In addition to his weapons and wheel, Shiftlane comes with two extra faces. So you have the stock stoic face (which I prefer as I think it bests suits Rollbar's personality), a smiling face, and a yelling face. Transformation is basically the same, save for the fact that you don't have to rotate the waist because it's already done. Unfortunately the kind of retooling MMC would have to do to get a toy/Rollbar accurate FMC HMCV would probably have necessitated doing an entirely new figure, so we're settling for the Sunbow Jeep in Rollbar's green. Well, at least he's got the white star and "GV" on the hood. Of course, Shiftlane still does the all-built-in leg mode thing, and aside from the colors the only difference is the retooled back... er, front. And that still works! Since Rollbar's chest was the front of Ruination's leg, having a toy-accurate chest on the front of the leg means that he's a reasonably-accurate Ruination leg. Well, except for the green toes. But, as nothing from the waist down was retooled, Shiftlane is compatible with the "slippers" from the add-on pack. In fact, I rather expect that down the line their Mega Octane will come with the add-on chest(s) pre-installed and the add-on feet in the box. But in the mean time, here's a look at MMC's Bruticus with Shiftlane in place of their Brawl. So... yeah, I liked Fraudo when he was released, but when figures are $100+ I'm not super keen to buy into repaints. I had no interest in G2, and I was not one of the people calling for Battle Gaia. But, even though Robots in Disguise wasn't a great show, it holds a place in my heart for a couple of reasons (bringing the franchise back to transforming vehicles, delivering one of my favorite Optimus designs, etc). Ruination is the one redeco I'm willing to double-dip on, and with his clever retooling Shiftlane doesn't disappoint. I can only hope the other Commandos get as much extra attention as Shiftlane.

Anyone else get the SDCC Fractured Friendship pack ordered today? Sorry I didn't post about it before hand, today's been rough for me. It's still available as of 2:25pm ET, though.

TFW2005 staff apparently got some face time with the Hasbro crew. You can check it out here, but here are some highlights... It takes roughly two years to go from planning to release, so while I know most of what's coming in 2025 the team actually has 2026 planned out and are starting to think about 2027. The various lines have an internal storyline, Legacy is about a multidimensional battle bringing Transformers from different universes together. The Legacy story is not a guarantee going forward, but the brand will still touch on multiple eras of Transformers. 2025 and 2026 are linked together (I'm calling it now, Commander-class Onslaught for Bruticus in 2026). When asked about completing "sets," Evan says he and Mark keep tallies on who's been done and who needs doing. No specific examples were given, but given how the question was asked, I'm taking it to mean something along the lines of Red Alert, Demolisher, and Cyclonus will come eventually to round out the main Armada cast, for example (AFAIK Red Alert is actually coming in 2025, but Demolisher and Cyclonus aren't in the lineup yet). John says later that their priority is less about doing whatever cool character he or another team member likes and more about fleshing out teams, and uses the RID Car Brothers and the G1 microcassettes as examples. Core-class isn't dead, but it's not getting fixed numbers in every wave anymore. The team is confident that they won't run out of Titans, either. SS86 Devastator won't be robots stuck to a nearly-complete frame the way Menasor was, but they talked a lot about how that approach allowed for greater stability and articulation than the Combiner Wars stuff, so we should expect that there will be some kind of kibble frame. SS86 Devastator will also be smaller than Combiner Wars Devastator, closer in size to Legacy Menasor. They talked about Yuki wanting to do a new Megatron/Gigatron to go with Haslab Omega Prime. They pointed out, though, that he should be nearly as tall as Omega Prime, and wonder if he'd be a Commander or Titan. When asked about a Jetfire to go with Armada Prime, John says he's aware fans have been asking about it and to stay tuned. Studio Series could continue to expand to other media, and John reiterated that they want to keep doing G1, to keep improving on older releases and pushing for better screen accuracy. John was asked about if a transforming cab version of Ultra Magnus that might be compatible with SS86 Magnus' trailer would be possible. His answer was pretty evasive, but suggests that Takara wants to do something like that and it could be possible. It's not necessarily in the plan, but John would like to do new versions of Whirl and Roadbuster, and a bigger Overlord. A new G1-accurate Titan Metroplex is a possibility, if the team gauges enough interest in it, but there are other Titans already in the queue. I'm not saying he confirmed it any time soon, but John namechecked Animated Omega Supreme. Time is less of a factor when determining what character to do an updated version of than scale and what slots for a given class are available. The line is extremely governed by price point. There are more concept designs coming to Studio Series, and the Bayverse was specifically mentioned. John says "fans who are close to that universe know what I'm talking about." Pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if they're finally going to give the Bayverse fans a Commander-class Devcon in 2026... Hasbro has to be able to reliably sell a certain number of units to justify putting a figure into production, and that's why we've seen so few redecos of Commanders and Titans. That said, they feel like SS86 Optimus has a lot of redeco potential. Not saying it's happening, because the queue is what it is, but John is very interested in doing more IDW-universe characters, especially the cast of More Than Meets the Eye/The Lost Light. He mentions the rest of the Decepticon Justice Division, Nautica, Rodimus, and Fortress Maximus specifically. He also suggests that comic-accurate designs might find a home in Studio Series, rather than the post-Legacy mainline. The team is looking into getting the Minicons out for the Armada characters that didn't come with them. The team has decided on what the next Transformers Haslab will be, but no time frame yet. It will apparently, "be amazing, and it's probably going to melt people's faces."

Seems plausible. Anyway, going from the big figures to the small figures, I got some new stuff from Dr. Wu. So first up we have brand new figure Iron Jack, aka Wheeljack. A number of people have been calling out the fact that Iron Jack is pretty out of scale with the doctor's Prime Commander... but it's kind of like, have those people been sleeping through releases like Seaspray, Beachcomber, and Powerglide? Or are they only able to process scale discrepencies between Prime and a carbot? I mean, we're talking about a Wheeljack figure that comes up to the knee on the Earthrise version, so I'm inclined to cut the little guys some slack. The comparisons to the Earthrise figure are deliberate. While Dr. Wu put a little more effort into not having hollow legs and making the cockpit on his chest more rounded, Iron Jack has a lot in common aesthetically with Earthrise Wheeljack. They both have the back of the car on the sides of the shoulders, the wheels on the backs of the forearms, and split the spoiler to form his wings. If I have to criticize one thing, it's going to be the sides of his legs. The sides of his alt mode just stick up so far along the sides of his thighs. Iron Jack comes with an accessory. Sorry the picture is blurry, but this thing is tiny and it was hard to get my camera to focus. But yeah, unlike Earthrise Wheeljack, Iron Jack comes with a cartoon-style shoulder launcher. Nice. Iron Jack's seems to be on a swivel. There's no sideways tilt, but his transformation does allow for his head to tilt up and down. His shoulders are ball joints and allow for rotation with no issue, but only about 45 degrees of lateral movement. You can get more lateral movement by using a transformation hinge, but it's on the wrong side of the rotation. Another ball joint serves as his bicep swivel, while a hinge bends his elbows 90 degrees. No wrist or waist articulation. Ball joints in the hips go over 90 degrees forward and backward, but only about 45 degrees laterally. The movement of his hip sockets around the balls is all the thigh swivel he gets, and it isn't much. His knees bend 90 degrees. His feet can tilt 90 degrees downward, but nothing upward, and the front of his feet are on a swivel so he's technically got 360 degrees of ankle pivot. Jack's shoulder launcher has a small hole under it. This hole fits into a post by Jack's shoulder. Once again, the comparison with Earthrise Wheeljack is unavoidable as they have essentially the exact same transformation. The wings fold in to become his spoiler, the legs collapse and the chest double-hinges over his shins, his head folds into the gap, his waist spins 180 degrees, then his shoulders hinge up to form the back of the car and his arms fold down to make the rear sides and tires. Literally the only differences are that Iron Jack's wrists don't spin, his legs are on sliders instead of doing a sideways Combiner Wars thing, and non of his cockpit window is in his legs. And the resulting car is a lot like the Earthrise toy as well, a little wider or flatter than the he ought to be, and a little flat on the sides. The livery is a bit more G1 toy than Sunbow, but that's fine. There's also no storage for his shoulder weapon, which is a little less fine, but I'm still not too mad. Again, this isn't a Masterpiece toy, we're talking about a car that's roughly as long as a AA battery. And for the same price as a regular Hasbro Deluxe, you don't just get Iron Jack... ...you also get Fire Ladder. Which, I'll remind you, is Inferno. Except this Inferno is obviously colored very differently; this is apparently Inferno's Shattered Glass colors. Aside from color, there are no differences from the standard version of Fire Ladder. If you want something a bit different, you'll have to pick up another set and get Hammer. Hammer is a retool of Dr Wu's Inferno/Grapple mold meant to be a G1-esque Bulkhead. From the neck down he's pretty much the same figure, but they've replaced the crane/ladder with a bulky backpack. They also replaced Inferno's gun hand with a Bulkhead-appropriate wrecking ball. Oh, and right out of the box he actually has a different head. It seems that the Dr. was working from some fan art of a hypothetical G1-style Bulkhead and copied the head that artist gave him before figuring out that fans would really prefer a head that actually looks like Bulkhead. In truck mode, you can see how the cab and the bottom of the truck are basically the same as Inferno/Grapple's. The difference again is in the backpack, which splays out and folds back around on itself to form the trailer of a military truck. There's even a small peg on the back of the trailer that you can use to plug the wrecking ball onto. It's not the prettiest, but it's alt mode accessory storage. Hammer also comes with a copy of Iron Jack, with no mold changes, just a new deco based on Slicer, aka Shattered Glass Wheeljack. And this is where I start to have issues with Dr. Wu. Why not put the two Shattered Glass decos into one box, and the G1 decoes in the other? Of course, the answer is actually quite obvious- because he's going to sell a lot more sets that way. He's essentially bundling one figure you really want with one niche repaint, forcing you to by two sets to get the figures you actually want and moving way more of the figures with more limited appeal. I can honestly say that I, for one, am only mildly interested in Slicer and have no desire to own an SG Inferno, but I'm stuck with them because I really wanted Wheeljack and Bulkhead. And there's actually a third set, too! You can get a back that has Wheeljack with a new head and shoulder guns as Exhaust, and a repaint of Inferno as Artfire. I'd have been more into that and might have bought a set, but I wasn't going to buy three sets. I don't really know what else to say. Iron Jack is a figure that'd be kind of mid if he were larger or more expensive, but if you're into Dr. Wu's Micromaster-scale Extreme Warfare figures then he's pretty much a must have (as in, "I must have the entire G1 Sunbow cast at this scale!"). And Hammer is a pretty solid use of his Inferno mold as Bulkhead. But you kind of have to want them enough to justify the $25 per set on just those two figures, because rather than bundle them together they're bundled with the least desirable repaints. It's a page out of NewAge's book, and it kind of sucks.

I think I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but I finally got my hands on MMC's Ignis, their MP-style Hot Spot. So... I got out Combiner Wars Hot Spot and TFC's aging 3P version to compare with. A more proper comparison might have been with Generation Toy's, but that thing was such a frustrating piece of trash that I managed to get it from combined mode back to a truck with several pieces coming off that weren't supposed to and wound up just tossing it into the closet. Anyway, yep, that's what Hot Spot looks like in the cartoon, all right. Cartoon colors, and the molded geometry like the rectangles on his shoulders, the trapezoids on his forearms, the lines in the red on his chest, the L's on his knees, and the striped rectangles on his shins are all spot on. Wheels in his chest, biceps, and shins? Check. I'd say the only real discrepencies, and this is really nitpicking, are the fact that his thighs only have one circle each instead of two, there are molded stripes on his shoulders and knees (where the red and silver striped stickers go on the G1 toy), and the black squares on his chest have some additional silver details that aren't part of the Sunbow model. Ignis has a little chunk from the sides and back, but realistically, what was MMC supposed to do? His upper arms are actually somewhat cartoon accurate, but they were simply drawn smaller. In the cartoon his ladder sort of just disappears, and MMC certainly tried to compress it all into a backpack. Ultimately, given the dual sources of the Sunbow model and the G1 toy, Hot Spot came out better than he has any business looking. He comes with a few accessories. You have a pair of fireball cannons, which have a small handle that folds out for Ignis and a larger one that folds out for the combined mode. You get an alternate open-mounted face for the combined mode head, and you get two hinged... doohickeys. I think that's the technical name. As part of the first batch, I also received a second combined mode head and an alternate open-mounted face for it, too, but I am unsure if MMC plans to include it in future runs of Ignis. When MMC did their Combaticons Onslaught was, by most counts, the most compromised figure of the five due to the all-built-in gimmick. You might expect that Ignis should be, too, and that if it's not his aesthetics that are compromised it must be his articulation. But his articulation is actually pretty good! His head is on a ball joint with pretty decent up, down, and sideways tilt in addition to swiveling. His shoulders rotate, and a ratcheted hinge outside the rotation gives him 90 degrees of lateral movement. His biceps swivel, though they can get caught on his kibble, and his double-jointed elbows bend 180 degrees. His wrists swivel and have a little downward tilt, and his fingers are all individually articulated with the thumb as a solid piece on a ball joint for bending and rotating, while each finger is hinged at the base and two additional knuckles. His waist swivels, and he has a ratcheted ab crunch that's almost 90 degrees. His hip skirts are hinged to give his ratcheted hips the clearance to go 90 degrees forward, backward, and laterally. His thighs swivel, and his ratcheted knees bend just about 90 degrees. His feet, thin as they are, have toes that tilt up, half of his foot can tilt down, and his entire feet pivot 90 degrees at the ankles. Ignis can hold his fireball cannons in both hands by slotting the tabs on the small handles into slots in his palms. Ignis' transformation from robot to truck (or truck to robot) is fairly straightforward, once you know what you're doing. I mean, there are some aspects like getting out the combined head, opening it, and storing Ignis' head inside before tucking the whole thing back into his torso, or figuring out the locks on his knees to bend his thighs up just right, that might trip you up the first time because you're not expecting it, but it all makes sense after you've done it once or twice. It really boils down to stowing his head inside the combined head before stuffing both back inside his torso, opening up his big ol' biceps so you can bend his forearms inside and the front of his cab out, locking his arms/cab together, collapsing his legs and storing his toes, locking them together, filling in the gap with some of his backpack, then working his ladder out. Ignis' truck mode isn't actually super cartoon accurate... but in MMC's defense, have you looked at his truck mode in the comics/cartoon? I swear it's like the animators were looking at an entirely different toy, one based on a different truck with one axel in the front and two in the back, a totally different cab, and weird pipes along the sides. I wonder if someone told the animators that Hot Spot is a Mitsubishi Fuso fire engine and they thought Fuso is a specific model rather than the name of a company within the Mitsubishi group dedicated to making large trucks and buses? Instead, Ignis borrows largely from the G1 toy, swapping in some cartoon details like the white hose instead of black and the stabilizers near the back, and filling in some details of the cab like the grill, lights, and chrysanthemum badge with details from an actual Fuso fire truck. Technically this does leave the door open for someone like X-Transbots to make a more cartoon-accurate truck, but given how little I can recall of his truck in the cartoon I think Ignis strikes a nice balance between cartoon, toy, and real life truck. Ignis rolls on rubber tires. His ladder can move up and down as well as swivel, and the stabilizers can be deployed. Unfortunately, to make his ladder as small and collapsed as possible for his bot mode, Ignis' ladder cannot extend any further. The handles on his fireball cannons can fold in, and tabs on the top plug into slots on either side of the ladder for storage. MMC didn't stop at bot and truck, mind you. With his arms folded up for cab mode you can swivel them so the cab is facing forward. Tuck in his feet and make him do a split, then a groove near the folded-in handles of his guns allow them to slide partly over the stabilizers near his ankles. Store his head as you would for truck mode, fold his chest down and out, and his ladder flips over where his head previously was. Lastly, plug those doohickeys we didn't use in robot or truck mode into holes on the insides of his cab. It's not exact, but the result is very close to the base mode of the G1 toy. And the discrepancies (mainly the fact that his chest doesn't fold down all the way over his crotch and the fact that there's no blue molded detail behind his chest) can be easily overlooked by the fact that I simply do not care about this mode. The doohickeys are going to wind up in a plastic bag inside a storage tote in the closet with all the other extra accessories figures come with that I don't use. A mode I (and, presumably, most people) will care about is his combined mode. The transformation to combined mode is fairly elaborate and less intuitive, with numerous locking mechanisms and a bit of origami that combines his arms with his torso to form the gestalt torso, gets his head and chest from inside his back, shifts his thighs into wider hips, turns his lower legs into gestalt thighs, and folds the entirety of his gestalt feet out from inside his legs on thin armatures. I'll do a more complete review of the combined mode when it's all the members are out and I can actually combine them, but for now I'll just say that there are hinged tabs on the ladder that are used to help lock his back together in this mode, and they kind of suck. It's a pain to get them in, and one of them even popped off the hinge a few times. And, because I'm going to put one head in storage with the doohickeys, here's a comparison of the two heads. The one on the right is the standard head that comes attached. As near as I can tell, while appearing more detailed than the one on the left, it's actually the Sunbow accurate head. The more squarish head on the left with the more simplified helmet seems to be based on his appearance in The Headmasters. We still have two more Protectobots to go until MMC finishes their Defensor, and time will tell how the fully combined gestalt will turn out. As Hot Spot alone, though, Ignis is an extremely good figure. The bot mode looks fantastic and has plenty of articulation, the transformation to truck is pretty easy when you get the hang of it, and the truck mode strikes a good balance between realism, cartoon, and G1 toy. I'd highly recommend Ignis, even if he weren't the only real option for an MP Hot Spot right now.

I ordered Ratchet, Megatron, the Bludgeon & Ruckus Pack, Agent Knight, and (against my better judgement) Frenzy (because I have Rumble, so why not?). Core Starscream doesn't interest me at all, the Joe collabs are too expensive and kind of crappy robots, and I already have the individual figures in the ROTF anniversary pack. Likewise, I didn't order Reactivate Bee because I already bought the back with him and Starscream when it was first released. That said, if you don't have him, $25 is a heck of a good price. In terms of parts/complexity and size he's closer to a Voyager than a Deluxe.

Amazon links Agent Knight Gamer Edition Ratchet TFOne Megatron Bumblebee Frenzy Bludgeon & Ruckus GI Joe Kup Triple T Reactivate Bumblebee Revenge of the Fallen Anniversary pack Core-class Bumblebee Starscream Pulse links are live now too, but you have to be a Pulse Premium to order before 2:00pm EST. Check out what's new here. Alas, the Supercop Pax/Gladiator Megatron pack isn't up for order.

I don't have a lot of experience with the Sega CD, but at one point I set out to play every 32X game released in North America that didn't also require the Sega CD (I think about 33 games in total). I actually didn't finish; I only got through A-S. But from what I remember, the best 32X games were probably Knuckles Chaotix, After Burner Complete, Metal Head, Space Harrier, and Blackthorne.

Pensburgh... as in Pittsburgh, home of the the Penguins (hockey team). If you want to find me on Google Maps, I'm actually in North Huntingdon. Yup. I actually have some sympathy for the Bayverse fans. Studio Series started as pretty much nothing but Bayverse figures, but for the last two or three years it's been kind of overrun by 86, Gamer Edition, the Cybertronian designs from Bumblebee, Rise of the Beasts, and now Transformers One. In 2021 only five of the eighteen Studio Series releases were from Bay films, 2022 was six out of twenty, and 2023 was zero out of seventeen (not counting core classes, package refreshes, and store exclusives). So far there's been zero this year, too. With Hook & Long Haul in 2025, every Commander-class release in Studio Series is 86. And with Revenge of the Fallen celebrating it's 15th anniversary this year, the reality is that there's a whole group of fans with no connection to G1, for whom the Bayverse is their G1, and it's gotta suck feeling like a line made for you is suddenly going to the G1 crowd. But I also think the number of Bayverse characters to put in Studio Series is dwindling (hence the expansion into 86 and Gamer Edition), and some of those characters are extremely obscure. Some people just don't seem to get that just because there are Bayverse characters big enough to need a Commander Class that Devastator, who appeared in a very memorable scene during the attack on Autobot City in the 86 movie, will move twenty times more units than a guy like Devcon, a guy who had about 17 seconds of screen time in Dark of the Moon, none of which were in alt mode, and whom all but the most ardent fans will have to look up on TFWiki. So, yeah, every time I hear, "aw, G1 again, screw that, they should Devcon!" I lose some of that sympathy. I will say, though (and not for the first time) that with the volume of characters that could benefit from the extra budget, Hasbro should really consider doing more Commanders a year. Heck, if Silverbolt and Long Haul/Hook turn out as good as Motormaster, then Onslaught, Hot Spot, Scattershot, Hun-Grrr, and Razorclaw alone could take the rest of the decade, and that's still only G1.