mikeszekely

Bad pic with crappy lighting and in their temporary (crowded) home. Pro tip, that stand I used for Swoop is a Simple Stand from Good Smile. For a very reasonable $15 on Amazon you get a pack of three complete stands (three bases, three arms, each arm has three hinges), including a set of three tips with the 3mm pegs for Transformers and the like as well as a set of 3 of those pinchy claws that grab the waists of stuff like Marvel Legends or G.I. Joes. My only complaint is that the hinges aren't ratcheted (which you wouldn't expect at that price), and I had to tighten the screws to make the hinges tight enough to support Swoop's weight.

While SDCC is giving us glimpses as to what's coming, I still have one review left for what's current. Thought about waiting until after the weekend, but I know this is one of the more anticipated figures this year... it's Studio Series 86 Leader-class Swoop. Well, I definitely think Hasbro just about nailed the robot mode. It's got exactly the sort of the cartoon accuracy you'd want, from the shape of the missiles to the caveman brow on his face to the quartet of rectangles on his pelvis, combined with the extra greebles endemic to the post War for Cybertron soft relaunch of the brand. Many of those extra greebles, like the L-shaped cutouts on his lats, the cuffs around his wrists, and the segments in the alt mode legs on the front of his thighs. That's not to say that I don't have any nitpicks. I think the crest on top of his head is a bit too vertical, coming almost straight up at the back of his head. His feet seem a bit too tall. And it's kind of weird that they painted the red stripe on his leg, but only until the break for the ankles, and not the entire stripe. It's a bit disappointing that Hasbro hollowed out the rocket launchers on Swoops wings (though to be fair, if you don't remove them, you'd never notice). Those launchers are some of his accessories, and, and they feature removable missiles (with 5mm pegs that plug into the 5mm ports in the the barrels). He also comes with a pair of red swords that feature distinctly different sculpts. Swoop's head swivels on a ball joint with a little bit of sideways tilt, some upward tilt, and a little downward tilt. His head happens to be on a panel for transformation that you can use to fudge more downward tilt, should you desire. His wings are hinged at the base and can fold backward to give his shoulders the clearance they need to rotate a full 360 degrees, and move laterally just over 90. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. His wrists swivel. His beak hinders his waist swivel, but he can still get around 45 degrees to either the right or the left. His hips go 90 degrees forward, backward, or laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend up to 180 degrees. His feet can tilt down, but not up, and his ankles pivot 90 degrees. Swoop can, of course, hold his swords in either hand. His rocket launchers peg onto 5mm ports on the corners of his wings, and if you like he can use those pegs to hold his launchers in his hands. Additionally, Swoop has 5mm ports on the back corners of his wings, in the middle of his back, on the outsides of his shoulders, on the outsides of his ankles, under each foot, and under each heel. His swords happen to have 5mm pegs on one side of the hilt, so you can easily store them in one of those ports, especially his back or wings in bot mode. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that only one of those swords is really Swoop's. The other, if you look at it, is really Grimlock's. Which is great, except for two things- Swoop and Grimlock's swords don't match Snarl's, and it it still leaves Slag and Sludge in the lurch (unless you go 3P). Apparently, to get official swords for those two (also red, so Snarl's still doesn't match) you had to buy the Pulse-exclusive (and totally sold out) comic book edition of Grimlock. Sigh. Oh, and now that I have Swoop and Grimlock together, you can see that Swoop is actually a little shorter than the other Dinobots. I'm a tad lazy to look much further than the copy of The Ark I have laying around for a scale chart, but I think that might actually be correct. Swoop's transformation is, at times, both clever and puzzling. I think it's clever that there's a locking mechanism to keep his alt face attached to his robot head, and several hinges and flaps that'll be a factor in a minute. I think it's clever the way the tips of his wings sit one way in robot mode to maintain a cartoon-accurate silhouette but then flip around to a more accurate alt mode position. Then there's some expected stuff, like his feet folding in, his torso double-hinging inward to fill the gap left by his alt mode face, his fists folding in, and his legs wrapping around onto his back. The part I find puzzling is his arms. Rather than tuck in and lock against his sides, like you'd expect, the backs of his arms actually tab onto his wings. So, yeah, dino mode isn't as strong as his bot mode. While his wings might be clever, they seem a little short and too angular. His arms definitely should have tucked against his sides instead of his wings, and it probably would have been better if his biceps collapsed so they'd be a shorter. His lower jaw is too short, and the verticality of his head crest looks more off in this mode. And maybe I'm nitpicking, but he's a tad chunky in alt mode. If they could have made his torso, legs, and arms maybe a half a centimeter thinner he'd look so much better. He also lacks any kind of tail, which is odd because the G1 toy had a tail, and the animation model has a tail. In alt mode his robot arms prevent him from folding his wings downward at the base, and even if you untab them from his arms his legs kind of get in the way of bending them very far upward (though, if you do leave his arms tabbed to his wings, he's got special butterfly joints to get at least a little upward bend). Mid-wing he's got a double-hinge that can fold up or down until his wing starts banging into stuff. His stubby alt feet have hinges so they can bend upward and let him stand upright, or fold down for a flying pose (and he does have one of those little 3mm holes just above his crotch for a flight stand). His jaws open, and there is a blast effect peg inside. Ok, about those clever neck hinges and flaps... in alt mode, Swoop's head can bend far enough that he's looking upward even while in a flight pose, and down until his chin touches his chest. The clever part is that there's a flap that serves no other purpose except to hide the hinges and fill in his neck in through most of that range. While in alt mode, you can leave his rocket launchers pegged into the corners of what's now the underside of his wings, and that's cartoon accurate. The pegs that were on the backs of his wings are now also on the undersides a little farther out. You still have the ones on his robot shoulders, provided whatever you're plugging in there fits between his shoulders and the rocket launchers. The ones on his ankles, now the sides of his back, are probably your best bet for storing his sword(s). Between his robot feet/legs and his head, the one in the middle of his back lacks the clearance to be useful in dinosaur mode. With his relatively simple engineering and smaller size, Swoop is arguably the least impressive of the Studio Series Dinobots. His missteps, like the chunkier pterosaur mode, lack of tail, missing red paint on his ankles, shorter beak, and inability to shorten his arms and collapse them tighter against his sides tend to stand out a bit more, as you might expect the smaller size and simpler engineering would have left more budget to fix those issues. There's a temptation to look at what other third party companies like Gigapower, Fans Toys, or Newage did when they made a Swoop, see what they did right, and think, "why couldn't Hasbro do that?" I'll remind you, though, that even the cheapest of those 3P options is at least $10 more (and a fraction of the size). I'm not saying that Hasbro couldn't have done better. But I am saying that Swoop has an excellent robot mode, and a pretty good if flawed alt mode. After a little over three years, I'm honestly just happy to finally have a compete set of Dinobots. Swoop might not be the best figure Hasbro's released this year (or will release this year), but he's a solid B+ and worth picking up.

Might as well do Goliath and KARR while we're at it.

Actually, I'm on the West side of the state, just far enough East of Pittsburgh to be over the line into Westmoreland county. As you said, about two hours. I think Elk County is a bit more rural than I prefer, but I'm not exactly a city boy, either. Outside of hockey games I rarely venture into Pittsburgh proper. I'm into suburban life... less crowds and traffic, but I still have neighbors and a Target. Anyway... the reveals have turned into something of a crap show in other parts of the Internet, with Bayverse fans literally trying to wish G1 out of existence because Hasbro used the SS Commander slot on a popular character with a memorable scene from the 86 movie instead of a Cloverfield monster-looking robot that has less than 30 seconds of screen time in Dark of the Moon.

To be fair, XTB's doesn't have lights and sounds, cost double what KITT's gonna (and that's without adjusting for inflation), and kind of sucked to transform. But yeah, it's a definite eyesore.

What part of PA? You're kind of in my area now. It's true. Just like I promised you guys a Knight Rider collab.😉

I don't think so, Cosmos and the Wave 5 United stuff were pipeline reveals, and aren't due until later. I'd expect full reveals and preorders around Pulsecon in September. The preorders on Tuesday should be KITT, the Studio Series reveals (TFone Megatron, Core Frenzy & Starscream, GE Ratchet, and Reactivate Bumblebee), the ROTF anniversary pack, and the Bludgeon/Ruckus Mayhem pack. Maybe the Fractured Friendship (Gladiator Megatron & Supercop Pax) if they don't put that up sooner.

The only thing I'm not liking on "Agent Knight" is the chunk under the Trans Am's nose. But I assume it's for the electronics, and as much as I want a proper Trans Am, I think I want the red swooshy lights more. EDIT: My source says the 2025 SS Commander class is a package deal with Long Haul and Hook. He seemed to suggest that the SS news at Pulsecon is that SS86 Devastator will be entirely out by the end of the year, which make sense if you pair the Commander pack with Deluxe Bonecrusher, Deluxe Scavenger, Voyager Mixmaster, and Voyager Scrapper I told you guys about awhile ago. They haven't mentioned it, but I've heard elsewhere that the mainline Commander will be Silverbolt, so we'll be completing Devastator and Superion. EDIT 2: Preorders for KITT and the new Studio Series stuff announced at the SDCC stream will start July 30th at 1:00pm ET.

Nothing too exciting at the panel. Basically they announced most of the final waves of United and 2024 Studio Series. They say they're saving stuff for "the panel," I assume they mean Pulsecon (September 13th)? They specifically mention big news in the 2025 Studio Series, I'd have to assume they mean either Leader-class SS86 Megatron or the SS86 Constructicons.

Told ya. Includes lights and sounds. Can't friggin' wait.

Hey, he has feet this time. I dunno, I thought the Dinobots weren't super hot, and I have to be at tad frugal since some jerk ran a stop sign and plowed into my wife's car we had for barely 14 months. I'll probably save my pennies and try to get the Supercop Pax set instead. Speaking of Transformers, I have a minute between picking up my wife's new car and running back out to get my daughter from the sitter, so I'll give you the review I was planning on doing later today... Studio Series 86 Leader-class Springer. This one's a bit controversial, due to the reuse of parts and engineering from the Voyager-class Siege toy. I even went back and forth on whether to stick him with more Star Raiders or something in a Repaint Roundup instead of giving him his own review, but I think he's worth talking about, from "how did he get to be a Leader now?" to "just what, exactly is new here, and why should I upgrade or not?" I think the most immediate thing that's going to jump out at you is the changes in the deco. Every shade on the new figure is somewhat different than the original. But it's more than just color tweaks. There's paint around the rim of 86's feet, his hands are now the same color as his thighs, and his biceps are a different color than his forearms (forearms that now match his waist in color). The somewhat visible hinges in his torso that move his arms for transformation are now the same colors as his torso, instead of blue-gray. And yeah, some of those colors are because Hasbro used more paint on 86 than Siege (it's actually why his forearms look noticeably two-toned in my photos, whereas in hand the difference is extremely subtle... it's because most of his forearm actually is using the same color of plastic as his biceps, but they painted it darker). All of these deco differences might not seem like a big deal. Most people are probably looked as Siege Springer and thought, "yeah, that looks like Springer to me." But the deco is, for the most part, more cartoon accurate on the newer figure. But 86 Springer isn't merely a more-accurate deco and done. So much of this figure is using a new mold... probably more than you'd first realize! He's got a new head that's less generic and very spot-on to the cartoon. He's got new shoulders and biceps, with new wheels, and (save for the rear two flaps) new shoulder pads. These pads are on a hinge, so they can angle outward in a more cartoon-accurate fashion. His forearms mostly carried over, but he's got new hands. His entire upper torso accept for his back (with the cockpit) and the parts that connect his shoulders to the transformation armatures is brand new. His backpack is new. His crotch and hips carried over, but he's got new hip skirts and new thighs. Then, with the except of new wheels, 86 Springer reuses Siege Springer's legs from the knees down. At some point you have to wonder why they didn't just remold everything. He's got a lot of new accessories, too. He has the two guns that can combine to make one long gun that Siege Springer had, but he also has another painted rifle that is, if not more cartoon accurate (I don't really remember Springer's gun in the cartoon), is certainly very similar to the G1 toy's rifle. One of my peeves with the Siege toy is the pair of swords that needed that extra bit to form the rotor for his helicopter mode. It's been replaced with one green sword that transforms into the rotor, no extra parts required, but you can still have him dual-wielding swords with the inclusion of a second sword, sculpted and decoed to look like the one he used while fighting the Junkions in the movie. Speaking of stuff from the movie, you get the bomb/missile, which could have used some gold accents but it at least has a 5mm port on the back for effects parts. Lastly, just because they had some leftover budget, he comes with a basic sort of Wreckers hammer. Articulation shouldn't be too different, but I'll go over it again. His head seems to be on a ball joint. He can swivel it and look down, but he doesn't really have any upward or sideways tilt. His shoulders rotate, and can go about 90 degrees laterally if his arms are at his sides, or about 60 degrees if he raises his arms first. His shoulder pads, as mentioned, have a swivel so they can be angled like the cartoon or you can put them right over his shoulders like the Siege toy. His biceps swivel, his elbows bend a little over 90 degrees, his wrists swivel, and this time his fingers are a separate part, hinged at the base, so his hands can open. His waist swivels. His hips can go laterally 90 degrees, backward a little less than that, and forward even more than that. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend about 120 degrees. His feet can tilt up a little, down a little less, and pivot 90 degrees. Springer's fists can accommodate anything with a 5mm peg, so he can hold all of his accessories except the bomb, which just cradles in his hands. He also has 5mm ports on his forearms, on the outsides of his legs just below the knee, and one on his backpack that can be used for storage (plus one under each foot). His new rifle, swords, and bomb also have tabs. These tabs can fit into slots just above the 5mm port on his backpack, or on either thruster on his backpack. Springer has one more gimmick. To copy a scene in the movie, you can flip a tiny gun out of his right (and only his right) forearm. You may recall, though, that I said his forearms were pretty much the same as before, and that's where he runs into some problems. To deploy the gun, you have to first open and rotate a panel that's meant for helicopter mode. Then, the gun is built into the hollow underside of his forearm, which means you have to rotate his forearm 180 degrees, then rotate his wrist to pretend the back of his arm is the front. I mean, it's nice that they tried, but personally I'd have been cool if they'd used this bit of the budget for something else... like new lower legs. Which brings us to his transformation. Going to car mode is almost exactly the same as the Siege toy. The only differences are that his head folds into his chest a little differently, and that the shoulder pads have to swivel into place and slide between the tires and his biceps. For the most part, the car mode is fine. The biggest change is the backpack roof, which is again much more cartoon accurate. The changes to the chest and shoulder pads make for more subtle but still present differences; the hood isn't flush with the fenders, for example. And his more accurately-colored fists and thighs sort of work against him now, as they're visible on the sides of the car. I don't really have a problem with the new wheels, either, except to question why the front rims are a different color than the rear wheels. Like, yes, grim rims are accurate to the control art Toei produced for the film, but the rear wheels are actually covered in alt mode. Maybe they colored the rear rims to try to match the legs, as if they were covered? In car mode, Springer has the same 5mm ports on the just behind each of his four wheels that the Siege toy does. He looses the ports on top of his fender/shoulder pads and roof, though there are still the slots for the new accessories on his roof and thrusters. Going from bot to copter requires the bit of extra steps as bot to car, but going from car to copter is pretty much the same as the Siege figure. There's only two differences. First, the thrusters on his back are hinged, and you have to push them down so they're along the sides rather than angled or or top, to give the rotor enough clearance to spin. Second is the rotor itself. The blade of the green sword splits in half, and one side folds down against the handle. Then it uses a 5mm peg on one side to plug into the port on top of the copter. One thing I like that Hasbro did here is to paint the inside of the leg panels green, so only the tail boom is gray. And the green rotors are actually cartoon accurate as well. But he's got the same kind of dinky landing skids as the Siege figure, without any yellow paint even to make it look more accurate. There's also the visible wheels in the tail boom. If I'm being honest, rather than the arm gun from the movie, or the hammer, or even the bomb, I'd rather they spent that extra budget to retool the legs a bit more to be more movie-accurate. Again, you've got fewer 5mm ports for accessories, but you've got some extra tabs on the thrusters, so he can still carry most of his accessories. So, 86 Springer is a tough call. To be fair to Hasbro, they really did remold so much of him, focusing on making the sculpt and paint more cartoon accurate, that I think his new Leader price tag is justified. And he really does look better. If you don't have a Springer, this is definitely the one to get. Where things get murkier, though, is if you do have Siege Springer. Like, yeah, he's mostly new parts, and yeah, he's more accurate... but they still amount to relatively minor deco changes and almost no new engineering over the Siege toy. I think a lot of people that have Siege Springer might look at him and think, "yeah, good enough." That being said, the one thing that definitely makes me happy to have 86 Springer is the new rotor sword. I hated the partsforming one so much! So get 86 Springer if you don't have one, or if you just hate partsforming.

And here it is now, Studio Series Deluxe-class Transformers One Optimus Prime. Well, it's a bigger figure, which in my book is already giving it a leg up. There's a bit more detail in the molding, and based on my limited viewing of the trailers a couple of times is a bit more accurate for it, though it's still missing some details and paint apps. Given that both toys are depictions of the same characters it might sound a bit obvious to say that they are pretty similar, overall. But I mean, they have details like wheels on their biceps that are necessary for their alt modes but not screen accurate, and they have the same roof backpack. You get a sense that they weren't merely doing the same character, but actually working from the same design to the limits of their budget. One thing I will note is the weird gray they chose for a lot of Prime's parts. It's almost like a yellowed SNES, though not nearly as bad as my camera as making it out to be. Anyway, Prime comes with basically the same stuff as his Prime Changers counterpart. You get an axe, this time in translucent blue, you get a Matrix with the handles intact, and you get his smokestacks which, again, are just pegged into his arms. The only extra bit is a flat bit with two thin gun barrels poking out. Prime's head is on a ball joint that swivels and can look up 90 degrees. He has some sideways tilt this time, but still nothing downward. His shoulders swivel, and he can move them 90 degrees laterally, but again the lateral movement is on the wrong side of the rotation, so he can't raise his arms and move them laterally at the same time. Same issue I had with the Prime Changers one. SS Prime has butterfly joints, though, and a transformation hinge in each shoulder you can use to fudge a bit more articulation out of. His biceps swivel, his elbows bend 90 degrees, and his wrists swivel. He doesn't swivel at the waist exactly, but sort of under his his chest. His crotch and hip skirts are all one piece that can hinge upward, giving Prime's ball-jointed hips the clearance to go a little over 90 degrees forward, a little less than 90 degrees backward, and just about 90 degrees laterally. His thigs swivel, and his knees bend a little over 90 degrees. His toes bend downward, mostly for transformation, and he's got 90 degrees of ankle pivot. Prime's axe can fit over either hand by sticking the 5mm peg inside into one of his fist holes. Just like with the Prime Changers toy, if you want him shooting a gun you'll have to pull off one of his smokestacks. Prime's axe has tabs on the part that goes over his hand, and you can store the axe on his back by plugging one of those tabs into one of the slots on his backpack. As for the thing with the gun barrels, there are notches on one side that, in theory, grab onto tabs on the inside of his backpack, so the gun barrels sit against Prime's back. In practice, their grip on the tab is super tenuous. Prime's chest opens, and there's a shallow peg that the Matrix can plug into. If you want Prime to hold it, there are tabs on the sides of the handles that fit into grooves on Prime's knuckles. The first half of Prime's transformation is very similar to the Prime Changers toy. You stuff his head into his chest, spin the backpack 180 degrees, and it'll eventually cover over to form the roof. His chest opens up and the front bumper and grill fold out from behind it. His shoulders hinge downward, though on a much more complicated mechanism, to form the sides. But the legs don't flip over, instead his waist turns 180 degrees, he bends at the hips like he's going to sit down, and his torso folds back in toward his chest. The faux wheels swing from the insides of his legs around the back to the outside, and his toes fold down. Rather than fold his arms against the back of the cab, they just kind of stick to his thighs, hoping that the gray will camouflage with the gray and his blue fists will blend into the blue on his legs. At least no parts came off while handling him. Alt mode has that same phoned-in, not-quite-done look that the Prime Changers toy does. It's better in some ways; the details are a little sharper, the grill and bumper look more complete, and he's got taillights. In some ways, they have similar problems with robot parts that don't really make an effort to hide, and hollow spots at the rear (this time because Prime has hollow heels). In some ways I think SS Prime looks worse, visible shoulder hinges and more prominent gaps in the back of the cab and around the arms. Something to note, the Prime Changers toy makes rotating the smokestacks a step in the transformation. SS Prime does not. Because the 5mm peg is on a slightly different spot on the smokestack, even if you do rotate it the bottom sticks out too far, and it hardly makes a difference. Prime's axe stores on the back in a way that's visually pretty similar, but instead of plugging into his butt the tabs we used for bot mode sandwich into slots on the insides of Prime's knees. As for the flat bit with the gun barrels, you'll notice that the flat bit looks like Prime's bumper. And there are tabs on it that fit into slots on Prime's actual bumper. It just adds guns to the front of the cab, guns I think he does have at one point in the trailer. I'm not really a fan of how they partsform, though, and their loose robot storage. So, there's a debate in certain corners of the internet where one side is arguing that the Prime Changers toy is actually the better one. Too be fair, SS Prime has some issues here like the partsforming bumper guns, ugly alt mode with super visible robot arms, and issues with the shoulder articulation. They're issues that are disappointing to see on a Studio Series figure, even if only a Deluxe. To be clear, the Prime Changers toy also has kind of a crappy alt mode with visible robot arms, and limited shoulder articulation, though. Prime Changers Prime/Pax has demonstrably worse articulation all around, too, especially the total lack of feet. So, no, I don't think the Studio Series toy is actually worse than the Prime Changers one. What I think is that people had higher expectations for a Studio Series toy and felt let down, then got the Prime Changers toy and realized it was surprisingly similar to the SS figure despite being a cheaper figure and were therefore less disappointed, giving rise to a logical fallacy that the less disappointing figure must be the better one. No, if you want the best Optimus Prime from the Transformers One movie it's definitely the Studio Series, if only by a little bit. But the SS figure is a disappointment in its own right, and it might be a good time to be a G1er and pass on a TF One Prime entirely.

And courtesy of TFormers.com... Just waiting on the Knight Rider crossover now.

The Battroid's thighs are too chunky, and it makes the fighter look kind of dumb.

No idea, I'm not really up on the Knight Rider side of things. But after two years (three if what he's told me about 2025 pans out) of accurate Transformers leaks I trust my source.

Amazon isn't done with the Mayhem stuff. In addition to a revealed Bludgeon & Ruckus pack, they're planning on a Spinister vs Twintwist pack and an Ironfist vs Carnivac pack. If Spinister and Twintwist are more of the ones we already got, I'm out, but Ironfist and Carnivac you say...?🤔 Walmart's next capsule after the Star Raiders (which I might have mentioned before) will be based on Cybertron/Galaxy Force. Haslab Omega Prime will come with a Titan Master Cerbros as a nice little bonus. You can check out a lot of what's at Hasbros SDCC booth now, but not everything. A little birdie told me that the GI Joe X Transformers Kup and the Knight Rider collab will be revealed in the next 48 hours.

The last of the Transformers One Prime Changers (for now) is Orion Pax/Optimus Prime. Out of the gate, Pax might be fighting an uphill battle in that he's kind of small. I mean, sure, he's no shorter than Bee... but his head's a good 30% smaller and he's much thinner, because he's supposed to be taller than Bee. He's a reasonably facsimile for what you see in the movie, though; they even tried to paint some of the mechanical details in his shoulders, but not his forearms. His shin vents are kind of wrong, too, but that feels like something you'd have to work to notice. Aside from his butt, Pax is relatively solid and fairly clean. Aesthetically, my biggest gripe might be that the gray wheels in his shoulders kind of stand out. Pax's smokestacks are removable (at this point, I don't remember if they were attached in the package or if they came as accessories. He comes with a blue-painted energon axe. An interesting thing about the axe is that the unpainted part near the bottom looks like Pax's fingers. Finally, he comes with a Matrix, but the bottom of the handles are clipped off. That's how it's supposed to come, though; mine isn't defective. I do recall that the Matrix is not packed with the accessories. You'll find it inside Pax's chest. Here's where things start going downhill. Pax has some issues with articulation. His head is on a ball joint that can look 90 degrees straight up and swivel, but there's no downward or sideways tilt. His shoulders are also ball joints and swivel with no issue, but due to the the clutter around the joints they can only move a bit under 45 degrees laterally, and then only if his arms are at his sides. There is a hinge that comes into play for transformation that you can use to get his lateral range to just under 90 degrees, but again, it's on the wrong side of the swivel. Dude's got Hot Rod shoulders... and that's still assuming you don't accidentally pop his arm off the ball joint. I've only had his arms pop off posing him once or twice, but... well, more on that in a bit. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend a little over 90 degrees. His wrists fold in for transformation, but they don't swivel. His waist does. His hips are on ball joints that go 90 degrees forward, backward, and laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. What really sucks, though, is he doesn't have any ankles. Honestly, he doesn't have any feet. They're just molded lumps at the ends of his shins, not even separate parts like Bee. Pax's axe uses a 5mm peg inside the base to fit over one of his fists. If you look at the fingers on it, it properly goes on his right hand, though. It sort of creates the illusion that the axe is coming out of his palm. If you'd prefer Pax have a gun, well, all you can do is pull off one of his smokestacks and have him hold it by the 5mm port. The axe has a slot on the top that can fit over a tab on his back. As for the Matrix, the reason the bottoms are cut out are so that the handles, which are actually 5mm compatible, can slide into his fist holes. For storage, you have to first lift up his chest, then fold the rest of the truck's front end out from behind his chest. The Matrix snaps in behind the alt mode grill. While you're doing that, you might as well tilt his head back 90 degrees, then shove the entire panel his neck is on into his chest. Double hinge his arms out and down. Lift his backpack a little, spin it 180 degrees, then close it over the top of his cab. Bend him backward from the mid torso, and you'll have room to finish tucking his arms in, tabbing them into the bumper. Spin the forearms and the smokestacks, fold his hands in, then tab his arms into the back of his cab. Open his calves, then fold his lower legs over his thighs, close them back up, and tab his feet into his arms. It's simple enough, but also frustrating because that arm ball joint that doesn't really pop off when I'm posing him pops off literally ever time I transform him. Likewise, I've yet to get through a transformation without his roof popping off. It's frustrating! And for what? The truck mode looks kind of ok... minus the tabs on the grill and visible hinges for a bumper. Or the fact that his arms are just there, stuck to the back of his cab in a most non-accurate way. His fists are at least folded into his arms, but why did they bother? They're still facing outward as super obvious blue lumps. And the back of the truck is hollow. It feels very low effort, but I have to remind myself that this is a sub-Deluxe toy. I probably shouldn't expect too much from it. It rolls, at least, and you can swivel the smokestacks around to be forward-firing guns, I guess (assuming that's a thing that'll happen in the movie). And he can store his axe by splitting his legs a bit, plugging the 5mm peg into a port on his butt, then closing him back up so that the pegs that hold his legs together go through the hole in the axe's blade. I can't help but be a little disappointed in Pax. The limited shoulder articulation and lack of ankles (or rather, feet) feel like such a letdown when the other three Prime Changers were pretty good, and his alt mode feels a bit phoned in. Like, sure, Alpha Trion is a super simple figure, but at least he doesn't have articulation issues and his alt mode looks cohesive. And while the movie is likely to indicate that Trion and Sentinel Prime are also too small next to Bee, it's really noticeable with Pax. I'm inclined to tell you to wait for the Studio Series toy... which is conveniently also hitting shelves, so you won't have to wait long to find out if it's any better...

Repaints out of the way, we're going to finish up the week with more Transformers One toys since my Target actually decided to stock some. We'll pick up where we left off on the Prime Changers with Bumblebee/B-127. I threw the recent Gamer Edition Figure in there to give a broader sense of Bee's size, but I can definitely see a certain design lineage that goes from TFOne B-127 to Bumblebee B-127. I guess that's the idea, right, that Transformers One is a prequel to Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts, which may or may not be prequels themselves to the Bayverse, despite massive continuity issues? Anyway, aside from a few minor quibbles (like, I think Bee's crotch is supposed to be gold) he looks like what I remember from the trailer. Mostly where the sub-Deluxe budget hit's Bee is just how hollow he is. The backs of his arms and his butt are clearly visible as waffled out, but less visible from these angles is the insides of his legs. They're totally hollow from the inside edge, but there's also a gap between his shin and knee that gets bigger when he bends his knee. Knowing full well that this isn't a Studio Series and in a group below (and cheaper than) a Deluxe, I don't think it's necessarily a dealbreaker, but it's something to be aware of. Bee comes with two accessories. One is a pretty standard movieverse-style arm cannon. The other is his "knife hand" as seen in the trailer. Bee's head is on a ball joint that can swivel, look up, tilt sideways, but can't look down. His shoulders are on ball joints that swivel and move a little under 90 degrees laterally. His bicep swivels are also ball joints, due to how he transforms. His elbows bend 90 degrees. No wrist articulation. His waist swivels. His hips are ball joints that can go a little over 90 degrees forward, about 90 degrees backward, and a bit under 90 degrees laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. Due to his transformation, his feet can tilt up, but not down. He also lacks ankle pivots, which is super frustrating because his feet are actually attached to a mushroom peg that lets his feet pivot to line up properly for alt mode, but with his feet folded out the swivel doesn't have the clearance to provide a pivot in bot mode. Bee's blaster fits over his left fist via a 5mm peg into his fist hole. His knife has slots in the underside, one of which fits over a tab that exists on his right forearm. The blaster itself also has tabs that fit into the knife's slots, allowing you to attach them to each other. When combined, both can be stored on Bee's back using tabs on the blaster and slots on his backpack. Bee has one other gimmick, and that's that his chest can be removed. Actually, it's not attached in the box, and packed with his accessories. Under his chest plate you'll find a painted T-cog, which will likely be significant after I've seen the movie. Transformation's pretty simple. His backpack opens so you can fold in his head, then his chest lifts up. His shoulders double hinge into the cavity left by his chest, rotating the forearms so they meet at an angle and tab together. His waist rotates 180 degrees, then his legs double hinge out sideways and back up over his thighs and arms. His feet fold up, and the middle of the roof unfolds from his back. While not exactly the same, again, I can see the design lineage between this and his Bumblebee alt mode. And as near as I remember, it's accurate to what we see in the trailer, right down to the long, swooshy back end. Just like bot mode, Bee's weapons tab together first, then plug into his roof for alt mode storage. So, here's the thing... this is Bumblebee we're talking about here. A guy who's literally like out of every 5 or 6 Studio series releases. You have to figure that sooner or later Hasbro's going to do a better Studio Series version that addresses the complaints that I have, mainly the hollowness and the lack of proper ankles. On the other hand, my only real complaints here are hollowness and a lack of proper ankles, which should tell you that this is a pretty darn good figure for the price. Maybe not as good as Prime Changers Sentinel Prime, but also more of a main character than Sentinel Prime, I'd assume. He's worth checking out.

Couple more repaints. We're opening today with the Pulse (and friends, I guess?)-exclusive Gobots set. First up we have Small Foot. She's a repaint of Legacy United Gears, and she's actually got a new face with goggles and a chin strap that call back to her Hanna-Barbera design. Despite the new face, she is by and large the same figure, just with a new paint job. While there are a few minor deco differences, like the yellow on her chest or the slightly different placement of the Autobot insignias, by and large the biggest difference is just that the blue plastic on Gears has been replaced with a yellowy-orange plastic. But... in the cartoon, Small Foot was mostly red save for her silver face and thighs, and her blue torso. The thing is, I can't really fault Hasbro. All the figures in this set homage a 2004 eHobby set that reimagined a couple of G1 mini bots as Gobots- Hasbro is slavishly copying that eHobby set. I guess the real question is why Takara used such random decos, but it sounds like they were so worried about catching flak from Bandai, despite Bandai only owning the original Machine Robo designs and nothing related to the Gobots names or fiction, that they even dropped the character names from the final product. So... ...moving along, we have Pathfinder, who's a simple repaint of Velocitron Cosmos. Interesting, because Cosmos was so shortpacked in the US that Pathfinder might be some people's first experience with the mold. Anyway, nothing's been retooled here. The green plastic's been swapped with blue, the dark green paint as been replaced with dark blue, and the paint on the chest is a little different. As part of the Velocitron line, Cosmos' gun was molded such that he could hold the barrel and a checkered flag could be plugged into it. It wouldn't make sense to give Pathfinder a checkered flag, but it wouldn't make sense to toss the part, either. So Hasbro gave her a flag with the Guardians' symbol. That's right, Pathfinder's also a girl! It's interesting, looking back, how much more progressive Gobots was at the time. Transformers went over 50 episodes before briefly introducing some female characters, didn't have a female as part of the main cast until 1986, and didn't have girl toy until Beast Wars in the west (or Masterforce in Japan, I think). Meanwhile, Tonka dumps a pile of Gobots on someone's desk at Hanna-Barbera and says, "come up with a cartoon to sell these," and right from go that person randomly decides that some of them are girls. But I digress. Next up with have Treds, and Treds is all kinds of confusing. So, in the cartoon Treds is a Guardian, one of the good guys, right? But the original Treds toy back in the day was one of the very few Gobots that had anything like a faction symbol stickered on. And that inverted triangle with a lightning bolt indicated that he was a Renegade. When they did the eHobby set 20 years ago (holy crap am I old), Takara kind of ran with that and put a Decepticon sticker on him. And that sticker carried over to a tampoed Decepticon badge on this repaint of Kingdom Warpath, despite his instructions labeling him as an Autobot. I guess the official fiction is that when the Gobots came to the Transformers' dimension Treds joined up with the Decepticons because he figured the others were already gathering intel from the Autobots. Anyway, Treds is purely a repaint; any other physical differences between Treds and Warpath are due to the fact that I replaced Warpath's doofy shield with a Go Better kit. But a partsforming shield bothers me way less. As repaints go, Treds is really the only Gobot in the eHobby set that is actually colored like his Gobots toy. I have mixed feelings about the Gobots set. On the one hand, all three are made from pretty solid base molds. And, if you already picked up the Amazon-exclusive Golden Disc Road Ranger and Generations Selects Bugbite like I did this set is a nice complement that brings you that much closer to updated versions of the entire eHobby crew. On the other hand... we don't have the entire eHobby Gobots crew. We're still missing Bad Boy, who would be a repaint of Powerglide, which would likely necessitate a new updated Deluxe-class Powerglide in the first place (and while I'm at it, I wouldn't mind a newer Bugbite from the SS86 Bumblebee mold). And while I am strongly pro-Gobot, I'd kind of like to see more stuff like Crasher that directly reference the designs of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon rather than an obscure set of G1 repaints colored seemingly randomly. Ultimately I don't know if I should recommend it or not. It's an homage of an homage, and kind of niche, but like I said they're three pretty solid base molds. Not a Gobot, but I'm closing out today with Ferak, the first of Walmart's exclusive Star Raiders line. Ferak is actually a G1 character, but a super obscure one. In issue #17 of the Marvel G1 comic (the first appearance of Straxus, BTW), the first page features a trio of jets that look like this: One of those jets utters the line, "There's nowhwere you can hide from the power of Ferak!" Blaster shoots Ferak, who never transforms, Ferak crashes, and that's the last we hear of him for years... at least in the US. In the UK, issue #114 opened with a scene of Decepticon jets (none of which looked like Ferak) attacking the Autobots. One of them transformed into this unnamed robot: Are you following me so far? Now fast forward all the way to 2010. James Roberts is writing Last Stand of the Wreckers at IDW, and he decides that Ferak is part of Squadron X. Roberts also decided that the unnamed Decepticon from the Marvel UK story was also Ferak. Using that Decepticon as a template artist Nick Roche drew this panel: And although the horns are curved like the Marvel UK story and you can see the suggestion of a cockpit chest, someone else looked at that panel and though Ferak looked a bit like Cyclonus, and in 2014 Universe Cyclonus was repainted into Ferak for that year's Botcon set, the theme of which was Pirates vs Knights*. And Walmart's Star Raiders are supposed to be pirates, so... ...Star Raider Ferak is a retool of Kingdom Cyclonus. Interestingly, he does have a number of retooled parts, including his wings, face, shoulders, and chest, but rather than add details like the cockpit in Roche's Last Stand of the Wreckers art everything but the wings looks retooled to better resemble Cyclonus' G1 toy. Ferak comes with the same gun that Cyclonus did, but he also comes with two new accessories. These new guns can tab onto the ends of Ferak's wings, or they can be held in his hands. In alt mode, we can see that Ferak's nose is also retooled, to be shorter and to end in a rectangular nozzle. This nozzle is meant to be the nose gun Ferak is seen firing in his very first Marvel appearance. Likewise, the guns that plug into the ends of his wings and the little intakes or verniers on the leading edges of the wings are callbacks to that original Marvel art. I don't know about the rest of the Star Raiders line... Ferak is the only one that's shipped so far, though I have preorders for almost the entire line. Time will tell for the others, then, but Ferak seems like a safe recommend. I mean, Kingdom Cyclonus is just a really excellent mold, and it looks pretty striking in a mix of grays with bits of red to help it pop. Plus, even though he's a super obscure character, he is technically a G1 character. *Another Pirate in the 2014 Botcon Set was Cannonball, whom we'll eventually be seeing again.

Lots of repaints coming, what with the various store-exclusive lines and all. I think I'll start with the Target's exclusive 4-pack. So up first we have Voyager-class Cyberverse Tarn, who's a repaint of Legacy Evolution Tarn. Now, here's the thing... this mold was clearly molded after Roberts' and Milne's Tarn from the IDW More Than Meets the Eye, and while far from perfect I thought it came out pretty good for a mainline Hasbro Voyager. But the problem is, while they recolored Tarn, they didn't actually remold anything, so some colors like the purple on his feet and his red biceps look really out of place to me, despite being colored like that in the Cyberverse cartoon. But there's some weird deco choices here, too, like the fact that he's primarily a dark blue instead of gray, or that to recreate the glowing effect on the Cyberverse cartoon they cast a bunch of his parts in translucent orange when they should be pink. Round it all off with a thick painted line across his mask where there was no molding for it, in another attempt to recreate the glow of the cartoon model, and it looks like someone drew a Joker smile on him with lipstick. Everything I said about the bot mode applies to the tank mode, too- the blue is wrong, the orange is wrong, and the red and purple clash with the blue. The only nice thing I can think of to say is that he got an unpainted purple version of the sword they added when they remolded Tarn into Bludgeon. So what I'm saying is, don't buy this set for Tarn. If you really want Tarn in your collection and missed the Legacy Evolution release just wait a few months until he's included as a package refresh in Wave 5 of Legacy United. After Tarn we have Deluxe-class Tarantulas. Tarantulas is, at least, a slight remold, sporing the "normal" head from the original toy, though he's otherwise the same down to the accessories. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as the Tarantulas mold was pretty decent. Plus, with his name spelled "Tyrantulas" in the instructions, his new head, and his new deco (based on the colors of the original toy's prototype), you can kind of pretend that he's a new character. After all, pretty much every other Predacon (and Cheetor) got a couple of repaints, why not Tarantulas, too? I guess the reason I'm a little cooler on him is because, aside from a new head, he doesn't bring anything new to the table. I mean, that's true for a lot of repaints, but I guess because I've never been as into Beast Wars as I am G1 a Beast Wars redeco based on a prototype doesn't grab me the same way a G1 redeco based on Diaclone does. I'd rate Tarantulas as still not worth buying this entire pack over, but less likely to be sold off or given away than Tarn. With Deluxe-class Squeezeplay we starting to cook. I mean, for starters he's not only G1, but a G1 character where the only prior toy I had was the lone Titan Master. For two, he pairs well with fellow Decepticon Headmaster Junior Fangry. And three, in a definite nod to his Masterforce counterpart Cancer, he comes with a pistol that's clearly sculpted to be Browning. You can hardly tell by looking at him, but Squeezeplay is actually an extensive retool of Titans Return Mindwipe. He's got a new head, accessories, legs, kibble, forearms, and parts of his chest and pack. He shares Mindwipe's shoulders and biceps, the inner parts of his torso, his hands, his pelvis, and some hinges. That's about it. Articulation winds up being mostly the same as Mindwipe, but recall that Titans Return is before the soft reboot that came with War for Cybertron and ankles became standard. So it's a huge relief to see that Squeezeplay has ankles. That said, the mold is showing it's age a bit with thing legs and ball joints in the shoulders which are super loose on my copy. Well, Fangry as super loose knees, so I guess they match at least. It's interesting that while Mindwipe and Squeezeplay don't look like they'd be all that similar at first glance, the transformation is mostly the same- remove the Titan Master, rotate the biceps, and fold up the arms to make the beast mode legs, hinge some kibble around from the robot back to the beast back, and lift the beast head off the robot back and peg it into the crotch, then plug the gun into the shield and the shield into the beast's back to make a tail. The big difference is the robot legs. In both cases they do a split, sure, but where Mindwipe's unfold into wings Squeezeplay's legs just become beast arms, with his feet and heels closing up to make claws. Squeezeplay's Titan Master (named Lokos in this set, like the G1 toy) is not a redeco of the previous Titan Master based on Squeezeplay (named Crashbash). Despite the black torso, he's actually molded and colored similarly to Cancer's appearance in Masterforce, right down to the motorcycle helmet-style face shield. Squeezeplay's tummy opens up the way Mindwipe's does, revealing a seat for the Titan Master inside. Squeezeplay might be worth picking this set up for. He's got his problems, sure, and a lot of them kind of stem from retooling such an old mold. But it's really impressive that they managed to get Squeezeplay out of that mold at all, and Mark really put the love in with the Masterforce references. As I mentioned, he's a great pair with Fangry. Here's hoping Hasbro can find a way to deliver us a Horri-Bull to complete the trio of Decepticon Headmaster Juniors... or at least one with a body/Transtector (that's a Horri-Bull Titan Master with Brisko and Lokos in the above image). Finally, we have Deluxe-class Prime Universe Cliffjumper, who's a minor retool of Legacy Chase. On paper, that's not necessarily something you might get too excited over. Previous Prime characters brought over to Legacy like Arcee, Bulkhead, Knockout, and Breakdown have been pretty G1-ified and not really a replacement/upgrade for the original Transformers Prime toys. And Cliffjumper died in the like the first episode, anyway. And, sure enough, Cliffjumper's definitely a bit G1-ified here, losing a lot of his more rounded, organic shapes and trading his Prime red thighs for more G1-ish dark gray. But... the Chase mold looks really good in dark gray and red. Hasbro can call it Prime Universe, but I think he works as well as if G1 Cliffjumper got promoted from minibot to regular carbot (actually, if I can find a second one at a decent price, I have a spare Earthrise Cliffjumper who's head I can steal...). My only gripe is the accessories. They're the same ones that came with Chase. For Chase, that's fine- the two small bits are elements that are on the arms/doors of the Rescue Bots character model, and the claw is a tool used by most of the Rescue Bots Chase toys (and, presumably, in the cartoon). Now, the base of the claw (sans the actual claws) can, if you squint, kind of pass as a dual-barreled version of the triple barreled guns Cliffjumper used in the Prime cartoon, but what to do with the rest of the bits? They're just random elements that have nothing to do with Cliffjumper. Here's hoping DNA or Go Better or something makes some better blasters for him. When I first saw Chase's alt mode I sort of thought it'd make a decent mold for Barricade, but with the exhaust pipes peaking out from behind the doors I can see how it works for Cliffjumper, too, if Cliffjumper went from a '70s muscle car to a more modern one in the process of getting G1-ified. Actually, the exhaust pipes strongly suggest that Chase was planned as a pretool for Cliffjumper from the start, though some of the roof parts are remolded without the lightbar and the hood parts are remolded with Cliffjumper's signature horns. While the hardcore G1ers are probably more interested in Squeezeplay, Cliffjumper's honestly the start of this set for me. Aside from the accessories, the only complaints I have are the Hot Rod shoulders with limited lateral articulation and the fact that the panels with the exhaust pipes wind up as little kibble wings on his back that can kind of get in the way, both issues I had with Chase. The positives, though, like the interesting transformation, good-looking bot mode, and cool car also carry over from Chase, though, and again look even better in black and red. This set's worth picking up for Cliffjumper, especially if you slept on Chase and haven't experienced the mold yet.

Following up on yesterday's look at Transformers One Alpha Trion, here's the only other one I've found so far- Transformers One Prime Changers Sentinel Prime Is it a spoiler to say that Transformers One has Sentinel Prime in it? I mean, the early press and trailer do suggest that it's kind of an Orion Pax origin story, and most Transformers continuities have Sentinel Prime as the Prime before Optimus, so... Anyway, as another Prime Changer Sentinel is another Deluxe-sized figure that's just a bit below your average WFC/Legacy/Studio Series Deluxe in all things budget-related. Again, I don't know that we've had a clear look at Sentinel in the movie yet, but from what I can tell the sculpt is fine, and discrepancies in color are likely a mix of questionable lighting in his brief trailer scenes paired with the figure's limited budget. With objective notes out the way... subjectively, Sentinel's giving off Seeker vibes. Of course he's got the wings, but the gold outlines on his chest sort mark off where he might have intakes, the dark band down the middle is analogous to a cockpit, and he's even got tiny shoulder intakes. Sentinel Prime comes with a few more accessories than Alpha Trion did. We've got a shield. We've got a pair of smaller, double barreled guns. And we've got two longer... are those null rays? Sentinel's head is on a ball joint that can look up a little, but has no real sideways or downward tilt. His shoulders rotate and can move laterally 90 degrees. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. Like Alpha Trion, he lacks any hand articulation as they're simply painted bits molded into the ends of his forearms. His waist swivels, limited slightly by his backpack. His hips are ball joints that go over 90 degrees forward and backward, but only around 45 degrees laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. No up/down tilt on his feet, but his ankles pivot about 45 degrees. Sentinel's smaller guns have 5mm pegs that he can hold in his hands. His shield a 5mm peg, too, that's meant to go into a port on his left arm only; his right arm does not have a 5mm port. As for the longer, null ray-looking guns... well, they don't have pegs. They have ports, and they're meant to go onto the pegs on top of his shoulders. To be fair, this is where they go in alt mode, and placing them their means you don't really have to remove them for transformation. Still, I think the designers missed a beat by not including ports on both arms, by not putting ports instead of pegs on his shoulders, and by not putting pegs on the long guns. It'd really reinforce the Seeker imagery if he could wear the long guns on his forearms, sure, but I think even if he didn't they'd have made better hand weapons than the smaller guns. If you don't want Sentinel walking around carrying his guns, or with big guns on his shoulders, they can be stored on his wings. The small guns point upward by plugging them into peg holes, while the longer guns plug onto pegs near the bottom of his wings. Unfortunately, there's nowhere for Sentinel to carry his shield except on his arm. It'd have been nice to have a spot on his back or something, though I guess it'd get in the way of his wings. As a Prime Changer, Sentinel's transformation is pretty simple. His backpack hinges away so that you can tuck his head into his back, lifting part of his chest up as you do. His forearms turn 90 degrees and covers fold from the backs of his forearms over his hands, then his arms rotate at the shoulders and shift up over his head. His arms come together with that bit of chest. Covers on open on the backs of his legs, his feet fold in, then you turn his legs inward 90 degrees then fold them over his thighs. Then you just have to close up his backpack, lock the wings down, and fold out the tips. It's simple, sure, but honestly pretty effective. His arms form the front half of the fuselage and cockpit, which helps free him from the usual robot-hiding-under-a-jet thing. It might have been further improved if his legs could have collapsed in a bit more, or gave more of an impression of being intakes, or had something more than hexagonal cutouts on his thighs to suggest exhausts at the rear, but still, for a sub-Deluxe I think this is pretty darn good. What it may or may not be, though, is movie accurate. This is because I don't know what Sentinel's alt mode looks like in the actual film, yet. However, there's an image on the box the toy came in... The jet on the box is definitely not the same as what the toy turns into. Rather, the jet looks an awful lot like the Bumblebee Seekers. Is that a connection? Is Transformers One a Bumblebee prequel? Regardless, you can arm up Sentinel's jet mode with his accessories. As previously mentioned, the long guns can stay on the pegs on his shoulders through the transformation to wind up on the sides of his fuselage. The small guns plug into the same spot on his wings we used for bot mode storage, now under his wings with just the barrels peaking out. The covers on the backs of his legs made a 5mm port near the back of the jet, between the vertical stabilizers, where you can plug in his shield. Between the two Prime Changers so far, I actually prefer Sentinel Prime. It's a neat design with a little bit better engineering and a better alt mode with a transformation that feels more clever simply for using his arms as the bulk of the fuselage. Unlike Alpha Trion, though, I believe we do have a leaked listing for a Voyager-class TFOne Sentinel Prime in 2025, so unless you just want a neat little bot to fiddle with you're probably better off waiting for the Studio Series version.

I'd have thought that SS86 Prime would have been generating more buzz here. Maybe you'd rather talk about toys for the upcoming Transformers One movie? The street date for TFOne toys was apparently this past Tuesday. Although my local stores seem to think that there's a market for leftover Legacy Crosscuts, Optimus Primal masks, and a smattering of leftover Earthspark toys I was able to get my hands on the new Prime Changers Alpha Trion. "Prime Changer" might sound like a new thing, but it's more like Hasbro quietly admitting that the "Deluxes" from Cyberverse, Earthspark, and the main Rise of the Beasts line were never actually up to the same standard as the Deluxes in the WFC, Legacy, and Studio Series lines. While I think this was obvious in the past, when the only direct comparisons for Cyberverse and Earthspark were the Warrior class toys of the same characters, of which the Deluxes were superior, Hasbro could always argue that no, these really were Deluxe-class toys. It became harder for Hasbro to gaslight the fandom, though, when you could have a Rise of the Beasts Deluxe-class Bumblebee and a Rise of the Beasts Studio Series Deluxe-class Bumblebee side by side and see that one was clearly the inferior. So, yeah, for TFOne we're getting Prime Changers, which are Deluxe-sized figures that are better than a Warrior-class but not quite up to WFC/Legacy/SS Deluxe-class. As for the figure itself, outside of the trailer I don't think we've seen much of TFOne's Alpha Trion. Mostly just enough that I can say that the shape of this figure is largely on-point, but there's some discrepancies in color that are probably due to the choices of plastics and a lack of budget for paint. For instance, most of that whitish plastic should be purple, and he should have purple on his ankles. From what I can tell from the trailer, it also looks like Trion has a cloth cape. The Prime Changer toy does have a cape, but it's made from alt mode kibble and fixed in place. On the whole, I'm sure a Studio Series figure might look better, but I'm unaware of any Studio Series figure in the the works for Trion, and I think the Prime Changer toy works reasonably well enough. Alpha Trion comes with two accessories. They seem to be a beam saber and beam dagger, with the blue-painted blades meant to illustrate that they're made of energy. Trion's head is on a ball joint. His ability to turn his head is hampered a little by his long face and he can't look down at all, but he can tilt his head sideways a bit and he has a lot of upward tilt. His shoulders are also ball joints, and they can swivel and move laterally almost 90 degrees. His elbows bend 90 degrees. He doesn't actually have bicep swivels, rather, there's a swivel joint in the forearm below the elbow. I guess that works more like a wrist swivel? His actual hands are molded directly into his forearms and don't move. He has a waist swivel, though. His hips are ball joints that are capable of moving a little over 90 degrees forward and backward, and a little under it laterally, though his cape might limit how far you can practically move those joints. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. No up/down tilt at the feet, but he does have 90 degrees of ankle pivot. All-in-all, the extensive use of ball joints and the basic ranges of those joints is very much what you'd expect from the a Cyberverse/Earthspark/ROTB Deluxe- better than a Warrior class, not as good as a WFC/Legacy/Studio Series Deluxe. I'm happy enough that he has ankle pivots. Trion has storage for his weapons in bot mode. If you lift his cape, on one side you'll find a slot that fits at tab on the handle of his beam saber. On the opposite side in a similar location you'll find a tiny peg that fits into a hole on the beam dagger. The dagger is pretty inconspicuous tucked away there, but the beam saber looks like it'd be a tripping hazard. Transformation is pretty simple. You rotate the forarms and fold out the claws. His shins shift up over his thighs, allowing you to make use of a digitigrade ankle. His cape folds together and flips over his head. You just need to make sure you sandwich the beam dagger in there correctly to form his horn. Then you finish it up by folding up his heels and plugging his beam saber onto his butt to form his tail. G1 Alpha Trion never transformed. At some point the Official Transformers Collectors Club were planning to use either Beast Machines Snarl or possible Lio Convoy as a base to repaint/retool into Alpha Trion for one of their comics. Although that toy never got past the planning phase, the idea of Alpha Trion as a leonine creature has apparently stuck, as he was made a lion in Titans Returns, and now we have this beast mode for TFOne. I might suggest, though, that this is not, in fact, a lion. Rather, it strikes me as a xiezhi (獬豸, or kaichi in Japanese). Xiezhi is a creature from Chinese mythology that's kind of a mix of a lion, a unicorn, and a goat, and is said to possess an innate ability to discern right from wrong and guilt from innocence. According to legend, it used it's horn to ram guilty parties in disputes and it would eat corrupt officials. Xiezhi are seen as symbols of justice. All of that seems appropriate for a character like Alpha Trion. As far as movie accuracy goes, aside from a picture on his box (which matches this toy fairly well) I don't think we've really seen Trion's alt mode. Aside from the visible fists on his front legs, this seems ok to me. Alas, Trion doesn't do much in this mode. He's got no head articulation; he can't even open his jaws. In fact, his entire body minus his limbs is an immobile hunk of plastic. Worse, Hasbro has this weird insistence on tabbing beast mode legs in place, which would further limit his beast legs, but you can just untab them. That leaves him with forlimb articulation that's basically the same has his arms. His rear legs still have the hips and knees, but shifting shin over the thigh blocks the thigh swivels. As I mentioned, though, he gains a digitigrade ankle bend. Prime Changers Alpha Trion is a decent figure that seems like it's aimed more toward the kids who will want toys after seeing Transformers One in theaters than adult collectors (which is fine!). He's fairly small and simple, but looks decent enough and he's reasonably articulated in bot mode. And at $20, the price sits nicely between the old Warrior class and the WFC/Legacy/SS Deluxes, which seems fair. If he looks like something you'd be interested in he's worth checking out, but more serious collectors might want to wait for a hypothetical Studio Series version.

@Scyla, when you say "Record of Lodoss War game" do you mean Record of Lodoss War - Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth? I don't think it got a physical release here, but @renegadeleader1 might be interested to know that one's available in the US eShop, no importing required. FWIW, technical incompatibilities like NTSC vs PAL aren't as big a deal anymore since everything started going digital HD. AFAIK a docked Switch runs at 1080p 60hz (until you try to play Tears of the Kingdom and the framerate starts dropping). Region lock is now mostly a software based thing to keep people from importing Blu-rays for some reason. Excluding Chinese consoles and software, games cards can be bought in any region and played on any Switch. There is one catch, though. You can't buy DLC or eShop games without a Nintendo account linked to the region you want to buy from, and content bought with one Nintendo account can't be used on another. This is more or less also the case for the PS5 and Xbox Series S/X.

Sold out on Amazon. EDIT: But, if anyone else is coming late to the party, The Chosen Prime just put up their preorders.

SS86 is bigger than ER Prime. The trailer is tons bigger.