mikeszekely

So... years ago I played Dragon Age with my wife, and I thought she might like to play Baldur's Gate 3 with me. I'm not dragging my gaming setup down to the living room. I figured I could hook my laptop up to the TV, but the Logitech GLK 915 TKL keyboard I use with my desktop has me spoiled. Can't simply use any old mushy membrane bluetooth keyboard, but I don't want to keep moving my keyboard from room to room, either. Nor do I want to buy a second GLK 915- the current Amazon price of $160 is better than I paid originally, but still expensive for a secondary device. For way, way less ($53) I found a keyboard from Redragon (K621 Horus TLK) that's similarly low-profile, has linear red mechanical switches, has similar overall dimensions, and even has the same volume roller. But then I figured I should try writing something to put it through it's paces to see if it's too good to be true... and I remembered that I had some repaints to cover... The one who's going to get most of the attention will be Studio Series 86 Voyager-class Scrapheap. Now, on the one hand I might be inclined to be a little sick of Junkions after Legacy Evolution, but at least with Scrapheap we're back to the ones that were actually in the movie. The other complaint I keep hearing is how the Bayverse has been getting fewer and fewer releases in the Studio Series and do we really need another retool of Wreck-Gar? But... I'm the guy who's bought the Siege Starscream mold something like 11 times now (12, if you count the extensively-retooled Senator Shockwave). I'm down for any Junkions that actually appeared in the movie, and the bright yellow one in a sea of orange and brown is probably one of the better options. And yeah, Scrapheap is another retool of Wreck-Gar, but he's honestly an even more extensive one than Junkyard/heap (yes, the name on the package was Junkheap, but I think trademarks have something to do with it, I'm pretty sure his name is properly Junkyard, and I don't like having two different -heaps anyway, so from here on out I'm sticking with Junkyard). He's got the same backs of the shoulders, biceps, hands, wrist spikes, pelvis, saddlebags, thighs, feet, and handlebars that Wreck-Gar and Junkyard used, as well as some of parts inside his torso. He has the wider back that Junkyard has, and his ears/horns are Junkyard/heap's turned upside down. But Scrapheap is packing a new head, new fronts of his shoulders, and new arms, much like Junkyard did over Wreck-Gar. The entire front of his torso is new, not just his chest. And unlike Junkyard, Scrapheap's got brand new lower legs. Scrapheap does have the same wheels as the previous two SS86 Junkions, but he trades the pinwheel axe thingy for an actual gun. I'm down for that. Scrapheap's articulation is the same as the other two. The only new things worth noting are that Wreck-Gar and Junkyard both have small holes in their backs that provided bot-mode storage for the pinwheel weapon. Since that part of Scrapheap is reused from Junkyard, he has the small hole but no pinwheel. And, since his legs work a little differently than the two, he doesn't have 5mm ports on the outsides of his lower legs, either. They're on the inside, which means that Scrapheap doesn't really have any effect bot-mode storage for his gun. So about his legs... yeah, one step involved in transforming Scrapheap that's a bit different is that you have to turn his legs 180 degrees at the thighs, so that the insides are now facing out. The only other real difference is that the front of his bike has an extra hinged piece that plugs into the top of his chest. As bike's go, it's fine. The insides of his legs have some extra engine and exhaust details, but the new front of his torso is just a yellow block instead of the could-be-part-of-a-bike round bits that Wreck-Gar and Junkyard used. You'll note that Scrapheap still has the stands that fold out of his legs, except now they're on his shins instead of his calves. And you may also note the hexagonal 5mm port just in front of his exhaust pipes. In addition to the handle, his gun has smaller 5mm pegs on either side, and that's how he carries his gun in bike mode. And, because it's an important part of Junkions' play pattern, here's how Junkyard looks riding on Scrapheap. Of course, the other thing you'd expect, and that they did with the Deluxe-class Junkions in Legacy Evolution, is limb swapping. And, I guess you could use the mushroom pegs in their thighs, their biceps, or their shoulders to yank their limbs off and swap them around, but it's curious that Hasbro didn't use the simpler 5mm ports they used on the Deluxe Junkions. I like Scrapheap. I think, based solely on having more visually-stimulating colors and a gun, that I like Scrapheap more than Junkyard, but really all three of them look good together- these three are the only three Junkions with totally unique character models. Is three Junkions enough, though? I don't think so. I'd say you'd ideally want an even number, so you can have half in bot mode riding the other half in alt mode. While I personally am open to buying as many Junkions as they can find in the films. While The Ark: A Complete Compendium of Character Designs has line art for seven more many of them are very similar. Realistically, I'd say at most they could do three more; Rubbish, Trashbin, and Re-Cycle. Of those three, Re-Cycle is basically Scrapheap with Wreck-Gar's colors and different shoulders, and Trashbin is Re-Cycle with gray instead of tan, Scrapheap's original shoulders, and pipes on his abs. If they're going to do any more, my vote goes to Rubbish, aka the one with a wheel in his chest. Yeah, Nonnef made a kit to covert Wreck-Gar into Rubbish, and I even painted my custom Rubbish to look more movie-accurate, but I'd still love it Hasbro took a stab at that one. As for my other repaint, he's far less exciting. It's Earthspark Deluxe-class Starscream, and in a move that's becoming too common for the Earthspark Deluxes he's simply Cyberverse Starscream with a new paint job. And sure, with more blue on his shins, blue on his forearms, black hands, black intakes, and a lack of stripes on his wings the colors are more like Earthspark than Cyberverse, although his feet should still have been blue with a red stripe. The problem is that Cyberverse Starscream doesn't have the right shapes for Earthspark. The wings have the wrong shape, they have angles that are kind of like the wings on the VF-11 from Macross Plus/Macross 7. His shoulder pads should have more angles, and his arms should have additional armor on the outside. The intakes on his chest should be narrower rectangles, his knees should be bigger, and the vents on his should should stick out more and point up. He's missing the intakes/pylons he should have on his shoulders. And that's not even counting that his head is totally wrong. Starscream comes with almost the exact same accessories as he did in Cyberverse. That is, the ones I'd say are the most important, his null rays, are the same, just cast in unpainted black plastic this time. There is one small difference, though. Earthspark Starscream ditches the missile spam effect parts Cyberverse Starscream came with and instead comes with an arm for the Mandroid build-a-figure. It's the same one that came with Shockwave, I think, so at the very least if you really wanted that arm you now have a choice of which Cyberverse repaint you have to buy to get it. Transformation is, naturally, the same, and while I can see how they tried to arrange the colors similarly to the show, the reality is that this is simply not the correct alt mode. It's about as close as if they took G1 Optimus' alt mode, painted some blue flames on it, and tried to pass it off as Bayverse Prime. Starscream's alt mode in Earthspark is more like a cross between his Reactivate alt mode and a Northrop YF-23. So, I get that as the line aimed more squarely at kids that Earthspark doesn't get the same budget, even in the same class, as Legacy or Studio Series. But after an initial wave of three unique figures, it's a little disappointing that the next five only included one more new mold and only two of five Terrans have been included. Prime and Grimlock were at least retooled. Like Shockwave, Starscream is simply a repaint, but at least with Shockwave his Earthspark design was pretty similar to his Cyberverse one (and therefore arguably the better choice if all you want is the yellow arm). It's an extra shame that they couldn't invest in some new tooling for Starscream, because it's not like they couldn't get more use out it; Nova Storm and Skywarp feature even more than Starscream in Earthspark and use the same body. Long story short, don't be like me. Don't reward Hasbro for this behavior, and don't buy Earthspark Starscream. As for the keyboard, I'm going to keep it. It definitely doesn't feel as nice as the Logitech, but at a third of the price I don't think it's fair to expect it to. And even though I prefer the Logitech, the Redragon is still a significant step up over even the best membrane keyboard, and one of only a few mechanicals that cater to my preference for low-profile keys and switches. In short, it's perfectly adequate for using with a laptop occasionally connected to the TV in my living room.

It looks like an OS KO of Magic Square's Light of Justice. Which, mild quibbles about the type of plastic MS used and the somewhat light feeling of the figure, I thought was a pretty awesome Optimus Prime toy. I wish instead of OS KO-ing Magic Square's one real MP-scale figure that someone would upscale their Legends stuff to fit with Hasbro's mainline stuff.

I wonder what will represent 40 years of Transformers better than the previously-leaked SS86 Commander-Class Optimus Prime? Does a HasLab allow Hasbro to use the adult collector angle to skirt the regulations that have prevented them from doing a gun Megatron? Off the top of my head, aside from somehow working up a gun Megatron, I'd be down for for a better Powermaster Optimus/God Ginrai, Star Convoy, RiD 2001 Optimus/Fire Convoy, Energon Optimus/Grand Convoy, and... well, that might be it. Can't really think of anything bigger than Commander that would require more than a Commander budget that I'd be interested. Maybe another combiner, but even then, I think Studio Series Bayverse Devastator and Legacy Menasor have shown that you can absolutely do them as individual bots at retail with a Gen Selects box set later. And I don't have the space for anything huge like Unicron.

Believe it or not, it's the only Wes Anderson movie I've seen, but yeah, that's exactly how I feel. I mean, at no point during the movie was I bored or anything. It held my attention, which is more than I can say for a lot of movies these days. But after watching it I'm not sure I understood it. I could tell you what happened, but I'm still not really sure what it's about, or what Anderson was trying to say with it.

Never did get a response. I figured it was because no one had seen it (or people were too busy with Rebel Moon. Now I'm not sure. My wife and kid were out today, and my gaming group cancelled, so I watched Asteroid City. And, frankly, I'm not sure what to say. I couldn't even tell you if I liked it or not.

I think it looks worse blown up on a 27" monitor than it actually is... Rumble's head is maybe 8mm tall, smaller than two 5mm pegs side-by-side, and smooth to the touch. Rumble's whole alt mode is similar in length to Studio Series Sludge's head. My guess is that it's not layering so much as it is swirls in the plastic, just on parts that are so small and such a tiny sample that they look straight. I guess what I'm saying is that there are definite reasons why you might not want to buy Rumble, but I wouldn't consider the plastic one of them.

Same here. Unless the deco is really improved, or he comes with Buzzsaw... Oh, BTW, Commander-class Sky Lynx is in stock again at Pulse, for anyone that still wants one. With that out of the way, I have one more new mold for this week, and it's Studio Series Core-class Rumble. From the Bumblebee movie, though, not 86. For years, Hasbro has insisted that the G1 toy names were correct, and Rumble is the black and red one and Frenzy is the blue one. Alternators Rumble was black and red. Titans Return Rumble was a black and red repaint of Titans Return Rewind. The black and red Siege Micromaster was Rumble. Both IDW continuities had Rumble as black and red and Frenzy as blue. But then SS86 gave us the movie-accurate Rumble (Blue), and suddenly we're supposed to ignore Hasbro's insistence on toy over toon for the last decade and a half. The packaging here definitely says Rumble, and this guys is definitely blue. And not blue like cartoon/'86 Rumble is mostly purple, either. Rumble's a dark blue, with some gunmetal and a few lighter blue accents. Movie-accurate? Who knows? Because Rumble wasn't actually in Bumblebee. To the chagrin of Bayverse fans clamoring for Skids, Mudflap, Devcon, Hound, Que, Evasion Optimus, AoE Optimus, TLK Megatron, Onslaught, and the other Dinobots... y'know, characters that actually were in movies... Hasbro would rather do toys based on concept art from Bumblebee. Sorry fam! Despite semi-recent releases for Crosshairs, Hot Rod, Galvatron, and Mohawk apparently Hasbro isn't super fond of the last two Bay films, and they consider Skids and Mudflap too problematic to include. Anyway, Rumble is ok-ish. He fits that Bumblebee "we haven't totally abandoned the Bayverse aesthetic but we made it way more G1" look. You look at Rumble and you can recognize who he's supposed to be. And he's got his piledrivers! Except... wait a minute... his arms are permanently pile drivers. That kind of sucks. He does have accessories. He's got these two asymmetric guns. What is it with designers thinking asymmetry is cooler/technologic/futuristic/realistic? Rumble's head is on a ball joint with the ball in his torso, not his head. He can look down a little and tilt his head sideways plenty. He can look up, but probably not as much as you'd actually like. His shoulders swivel and move almost 90 degrees laterally, but it's that special kind of joint where the swivel is on the outside of the lateral joint so he can't lift his arm them move it laterally. There are two hinges in his arms that are used for transformation, but I'm hesitant to refer to either has elbows. The upper hinge bends the arm outward, the lower bends inward; neither are useful for robot mode. He's got no hands, no waist swivel. Due to his transformation he has a slight ab crunch and a back bend. His hips go forward, backward, and laterally 90 degrees. His knees are ball joints that bend 90 degrees and do double as his thigh swivels. No ankle pivots, but his feet tilt upward for transformation. Rumble can't actually hold his guns in any way that looks like he's wielding them. They just plug onto his back like G1 Rumble... except both the G1 toy and the 86 toy actually can take their guns off their backs and wield them. Rumble's transformation is barely that. His arms bend at both the hinges, swivel, then fold at the shoulders so they're up by his head. His legs move backward 90 degrees at the hips and his feet fold up against his shins. Then he bends at the back so that his arms can plug into his calves. That's about it. And he turns into... a box. I guess? I suppose it's tricky trying to figure out why a small robot's alt mode should be something that fits into the chest of another robot without the Earth-centric tape and tape player thing. The old War for Cybertron game did the data disc thing. Maybe Rumble's like a cabinet with a server rack inside. Regardless, his guns don't stay on his back, but they can be stored on his alt mode by using holes on one and slots on the other to fit into corresponding pegs and tabs near his ankles, with the barrels pointing up and situating between his arms. Like Studio Series Core-class Ravage before him, Rumble's honestly a glorified accessory for SS Bumblebee Soundwave. So the most important question is whether Rumble's "alt mode" fits into Soundwave's chest. And the answer is definitely yes, so that's not a problem. Of course, it's Rumble or Ravage, not Rumble and Ravage, as there's not room for the both of them in there. Another thought occurred to me. Ravage came with his hip guns and a missile pack that plugged onto his back, but he also came with an accessory that he could carry under his tummy in an unfortunately suggestive way, but was really an extra bit for Soundwave, looking like the tip of his G1 gun and plugging into his shoulder cannon. I wondered if Rumble didn't have a similar play pattern. And sure enough, while it's not mentioned in the instructions, you'll notice that one of Rumble's guns has a hole on the back, and it fits onto the tip of the other gun's barrel. That other gun, while having the smaller peg to fit into Rumble's back, has that peg on a shallow 5mm post, so soundwave can hold the combined gun like a pistol. On his own, Rumble's kind of a trash figure that you can feel safe skipping. If you have Soundwave, though, Rumble gains a bit more utility as an accessory for him, either to enhance his play pattern by giving Soundwave a new gun and something to keep in his chest, or as a minion to pose with Soundwave on your Bumblebee shelf. When looked at that way he's not so bad. I even kind of want a Laserbeak to go with them (more than that the already-confirmed Frenzy repaint). But given how much of his utility comes down to you owning another figure and even caring if said figure has his minions, I wouldn't actually say I'm recommending him.

Yeah, while I liked the more cinematic feel and some of the stuff they added to part 1, in a lot of ways I felt like the pacing was just way off, like they were really trying too hard to stretch the handful of opening hours in the original into a 60 hour game. I also didn't really care for how they turned the turn-based party combat of the original into an RPG-lite button masher... but then again, I've always preferred the NES/SNES Final Fantasy games to the PSone/PS2 games, and I haven't even bothered to play one of the numbered FF games after X.

Here's hoping that Indy and Avowed are the kind of hit Xbox exclusives that Starfield wasn't.

I just heard from a reliable source that the following are planned for this year. In fan channel (that is, Pulse, BBTS, Entertainment Earth, etc, but not Amazon, Target, or Walmart), a three pack of Warpath, Cosmos, and (one assumes) Gears as Treads, Pathfinder, and Small Foot. In Walmart, Retro Optimus Prime and Retro Bombshell with Ramhorn. I think these are in that weird Walmart line where they're reissuing G1 toys but with 86 movie decoes. Unlike the last Walmart Optimus reissue this one will have a trailer. Walmart will also have their Starseekers sub line in Legacy, and I'm being told that Roadpig in that line will be a repaint of Junkion Crashbar. Target will have Optimus Prime with Bullseye (the Target dog). I'm being told that the cab is the Laser Optimus mold, the trailer is the Earthrise trailer, and Bullseye is a retool of Micromaster Ravage. Amazon's exclusive line for the year will be the "Mayhem Attack Squad," which kind of makes sense because that's the Decepticon counterpart to the Wreckers, and the Wreckers was Amazon's 2022 line. There will be a total seven figures spread across three packs. I don't know what the other five figures/two packs are, but the first one will be Voyager Bludgeon and Deluxe Ruckus. One assumes that's a repaint of Evolution Bludgeon and, if I had to guess, Beachcomber. Last but not least, I'm being told that Legacy United Leader Soundwave (wave 4, October) will in fact be a repaint of Netflix Soundwave.

Yes, I was definitely admiring her... assets.

And we're closing out on Reactivate with a look at Bumblebee's pack-in pal, Starscream. Bumblebee had a little battle damage, but this is clearly a Starscream who's been through some stuff. One wing is covered in black, one shoulder pad and one piece of hip armor are black, and his forearm and thigh on that side are streaked with black. What's more, above the intake on his chest on that side the molding is actually different, as if a chunk of armor were missing, and inside that "hole" they put more black. Perhaps when the game comes out, if ever, there'll be a story reason for all that damage, but in the meantime it's just kind of frustrating, because aside from the battle damage I think this is one of the best Starscream figures in recent memory. It's got all the hallmarks of Starscream's design; blue forearms, blue on the shins, blue feet. Red and white everywhere else. A cockpit down the middle of his torso, with intake fans for pecs. Pylons framing his head, and wings that slope down toward his butt. But comparing Reactivate Starscream to G1 Starscream is a bit like comparing one of Kawamori's more recent variable fighters to the VF-1- you can see the influences of the latter on the former, but the former is more rounded and "modern." Overall, it's a pretty clean design, too. There's some panels that are folded into the wings, but nothing else for a backpack. My only real complaint (aside from the battle damage) might be the bit of waffling and lack of paint on the back side of his wings. Oh, and did you notice that this Starscream has blue eyes? That's a rariety for Starscream; aside from Hasbro's Shattered Glass stuff the only other Starscream I can think of with blue eyes is Earthspark, where he formed a bit of a bond with the Terran Transformer Hashtag and later aided in the fight against Mandroid... basically a hero. As I understand it, the plot of the game involves and alien race known as the Legion that swiftly conquered Earth, and the survivors (human and Transformer) are building some kind of resistance. So maybe this Starscream is a good guy? I'm into the story potential there. And now we reference the game art, and... yeah, aside from the battle damage it looks like Hasbro pretty much nailed this one. I mean, I could nitpick little bits of gunmetal in the art that aren't painted on the toy, on both sides of the forearms, backs of his thighs, on the sides of his legs, or his ankles, but official toys are often missing small details like that, and the toy did actually paint the vents on the pylons, his knees, the pec intakes, and the silver panels under them. And even his back side is pretty accurate, being mostly black (although a bit squarish), the stabs behind his wings (though the lack of paint is killing me), and even the engines in his calves. Starcream comes with two arm-mounted guns. Null-rays? Stand-ins for them, anyway. They have some gunmetal paint on the barrel, which I enjoy, and the barrels are molded to be the same weapon, but the blue parts are totally different for some reason. Starscream's head is on a ball joint that can look up a little, nothing down, minimal sideways tilt. Shoulders rotate, no issue, but the shoulder pads limit him to about 75 degrees laterally. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend a little over 90 degrees. His wrists don't swivel, but in a rare win for Starscream designs he does actually have a waist swivel. His hips can go a little under 90 degrees backward and laterally due to his wings and hip armor, respectively, but they move forward far beyond 90 degrees, until his knee pads start banging into his chest. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. He a little upward foot tilt and a good amount down, and his ankles pivot about 45 degrees. Starscream's weapons use 5mm pegs to plug into ports on his forearms. To me, guns on his arms is just a part of Starscream's design, but if you really want to store them you can plug them into ports on his wings, on his back side. He doesn't have any other 5mm ports, not even under his feet. Aside from the fact that you have to remove the guns from his arms, Starscream's transformation is fairly tidy and not too complex, with a few neat parts. His backpack does unfold to make most of the top of the jet. His chest pulls out and opens up, folding his head inside and pulling the tip of the nose from inside his torso, to form the cockpit. His shoulders sag down, but then his chest intakes fold back to form the actual intakes on the jet, automorphing his canards out in the process. The front of his legs hinge up to his chest, Combiner-wars style, but the back of his leg stays in place, forming engine nacelles and his horizontal stabilizers. Then it's simply a matter of massing the top of the plane formed by the backpack down into place so that tabs on the backs of the shins and the nacelles lock in. The guns plug into the undersides of the wings. The only thing that's kind of disappointing is that all you do for his arms his fold his hands in and turn them so that the 5mm ports on them grab onto tabs under his wings. And yeah, I like this jet mode. As with the robot mode, it hearkens back to his G1 jet mode, but with design elements that make it both legally-distinct from an F-15 but also seem more modern, like the canards and the angled vertical stabilizers. I like how the back of the jet looks like the back of a jet, not robot feet playing as exhaust nozzles. It's not perfect, though. His robot shins just sit on the belly; he doesn't even have landing gear, he just rests on his ankle armor and knee pads. And then there's the arms just laying along side him. I could almost ignore them, just pretend that they're part of the fuselage, except his shoulder pads stick out beyond the leading edge of his wings. And hey, his jet mode is actually pretty accurate, too! All that black on the back of the fuselage? Accurate. Black around the cockpit? Accurate! That splash of blue on the spine? Accurate! The downward slope on the vents? Accurate! The game's art even has black on one wing, although it's the opposite wing of the toy. If you look closely, you'll see that the wings of the toy have slightly different molded details, and those details match with the art. Really he just needs a bit more black on the nose and a some blue spots, and a little more red on the horizontal stabilizers. Heck, the game art even has his guns under the wings... ...which is, as I noted, where they go in alt mode. It's funny, Hasbro tends to push Bumblebee as their big, kid-friendly moneymaker, but Starscream is unquestioningly the star of this set. The battle damage is a bit of a shame, but I'd honestly recommend picking up this set just for him anyway. He's right up there with Optimus, overall one of my favorite Starscream figures, while Bumblebee is probably the worst of the four. And that's not to say that Bumblebee is bad! What I'm really saying here is that all four Reactivate figures are pretty good, especially together. These are four game-based toys are what the Gamer Edition figures should have been, because the worst of these is arguably better than the best Gamer Edition toy. Maybe the game, which is basically starting over on a new engine after being in development for six years already, never actually comes out. These are still good figures, well worth owning, and I actually hope they consider doing some more. I mean, there's concept art for Megatron. Who wouldn't want a toy of that? And at some point in 2018 they had at least some concepts for Slipstream, Hot Rod, Sunstreaker, Ironhide, and Windblade, too, though you can see from Starscream and Soundwave that these were likely earlier designs. Still, I'd buy a pack with a Voyager-ish Megatron and a tall Deluxe Hot Rod or Ironhide.

It's my understanding that the Retro Shooters work sort of like Wiimotes. They come with IR sensors that you stick at the corners of your display. The nice thing is that you can buy them with a "custom console" (basically an Android box with some ports dedicated for the Retro Shooters), and they preloaded it with some ROMS like House of the Dead 2, Confidential Mission, Time Crisis, Point Blank, Duck Hunt, Battle Clash, Metal Combat, etc (but no Virtua Cop?), so it's pretty plug-n-play. I'll have to dig into it a little more. Sounds like they'd be less accurate than a Sinden, but it looks like you can get 2 guns with recoil, two foot pedals, 4 IR receivers, and the console for less than $250 right now (or with a pair of NES-style controllers and a pair of PlayStation-style controllers for $30 more), and a little over $30 extra to add a hub to connect to your PC. Meanwhile, a pair of Sinden guns with recoil are $300 and you gotta supply your own PC.

Like me, you might have been wondering what differences, if any, the guys that aren't Hound might have from their original Earthrise/SS86 releases. One leaker with a spotty track record was saying they'd have Siege-style battle damage. Another was saying that they wouldn't have clear plastic, they'd have painted windows and a cartoonier deco. I didn't mention either here because I wanted to hear from a more reliable source. But... this is apparently the Trailbreaker that's going in the set, and sure enough he's got painted blue windows and a more faded gray that's more like the MP than the Earthrise black. Based on that, I guess I'd expect blue painted windows on the other three, which is good for people whose Jazz cracked. I expect it'll also mean no red on Wheeljack's feet, better yellow matching on Sunstreaker, and more black on Sunstreaker's shoulders and shins. Speaking of Sunstreaker, remember when he was in the Bumblebee movie? Me neither, because he wasn't. That didn't stop Hasbro from making a Studio Series toy, though, due in the spring wave (along with 86 Swoop).

If there's one character besides Optimus Prime that Hasbro can bank on, it's Bumblebee. So today we'll look at the "star" of the second Reactivate pack. Bumblebee tends to run small, even when he's a Deluxe, but Reactivate Bee is one of the taller Bumblebees in my collection. He's basically the same height as Reactivate Soundwave, in that gray area between tall Deluxe and short Voyager. I'm not sure how I feel about his robot mode. While door wings have become a fairly common feature on Bumblebee in the post-Bayverse world, the hood chest definitely recalls the live-action movies and Prime more than his evergreen Cyberverse design. But there's a certain roundness to him that hearkens back to G1. There's something about his head, too, that's more than simply G1 with a chin strap. It's almost like if G1 Bumblebee "grew up." He's a bit taller and stronger, a bit more mature. I have to point out here that after the fairly normal, symmetric Optimus and Soundwave that Bumblebee is starting the trend of asymmetric black "battle damage." It's subtle on Bee. One of his door wings has black on it, one doesn't. One of his forearms has a little black around his wrist, the other has a line going up to his elbow. One of his shins is uniformly black, one has some yellow poking through at the knee. That's about it. Compared to a lot of recent figures Bee's not too gappy, what wit the wheels in his calves, but there are some gaps in his backpack. The undersides of his forearms are also pretty hollow, though there's actually a reason for it. My favorite feature, though, are his heel spurs. I'm not sure how clear it is from the photos, but they're molded in the shape of Animated Bumblebee's stingers. It's a cute little Easter egg. Compared to Prime and Soundwave, Bee's a bit further from the game model. His head's ok, though it could use a bit more black. I don't really have an issue with his thighs, abs, pelvis, and biceps. His shoulders are in the ballpark, but the tips of his shoulder pads stick out farther than on the game model, and the lights are buried in the pads instead of sticking up. Likewise, his forearms are close, but they have points near the elbow that the game model doesn't. His shins aren't quite as close, though if I squint I guess I can imagine the black paint on his shins as the gray recessed areas on the animation, and simply ignore that the wheels on the toy are visible where they seem to be enclosed in the game. The game model clearly has smaller, more "normal" feet, though, lacking the mechanical detail and stinger heels the toy has. But the biggest difference is in the chest. As noted, on the toy it's definitely the front of his alt mode, with the black across the bottom coming from his bumper. If you look at the game's model the colors seem right, but a closer look shows that the chest isn't his hood and the black band isn't his bumper. In the game, his chest is his roof, and the black band is the armor over his windshield. That makes the game's design closer to Bee's evergreen design than the toy. In any case, Bumblebee comes with these two machine pistols. They remind me of a Cybertronian stockless Skorpion machine pistol, with 5mm port handles at the back and magazines at the front. Bee's head is on a ball joint that swivels and can look up nearly 90 degrees, but has limited downward tilt and nothing to the side. His shoulders rotate and can move laterally 90 degrees. His elbows are ball joints that bend 90 degrees and make up for his lack of dedicated bicep swivels. Bee lacks wrist or waist swivels. His hips are ball joints, and while they can do 90 degrees laterally his limited by his pelvis and backpack to only about 60 degrees forward and backward. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. His ankles are more ball joints, with limited up/down tilt but 60-ish degrees of pivot plus the ability to swivel. Bee can hold his pistols in his hands, or the tabs on the bottom of the handles allow them to be plugged into slots next to his shoulders. The only other storage is the hollows on the backs of his forearms. You can plug the tabs on the handles into his forearms, with the barrels pointing up toward his elbows. Looks kind of awkward, if you ask me, but it's specifically called out in his instructions, and it'll have another use later. Bee's chest is his hood, Bee's rear windows and spoiler are his back, and his roof and side windows are kind of scrunched in between, so the first step in transforming Bee is to pull his chest away, then start stretching the car back out. His pelvis swings up and under and his legs scrunch up, with the wheels on the sides unfurling and wheels in his calves folding out to take their place as the rear wheels. With his legs in place you twist and shove his arms under the hood, shut the door wings, then bring the unfurled wheels up tot the front. When I first saw this design my thought was, "so Bumblebee's a dune buggy now?" Looking at him more closely, I don't think he actually is a dune buggy. There's a jacked engine and a new spoiler, big tires on a lifted suspension, a roll cage over the cabin, armor on the bumper and grill, and some extra lights, but underneath it all I can sort of see something like a non-licensed, legally-distinct Beetle under it all. It's likely in keeping with Prime's own armored-up truck mode and the game's theme of humans and Transformers teaming up to deal with an alien invasion of Earth. We can't see the back, though there doesn't seem to be a spoiler poking out back there, but from this angle I think Bee's looking fairly accurate in alt mode. The extra armor matches, along with the lights, tires, and suspension. The toy's got the hood scoop. The differences mostly seem to be exactly where and how the black paint is applied, but "pretty close" might simply be "close enough" for Hasbro. The only real difference I'm focusing on is the front of the hood, between the scoop and the bumper armor. It's smooth on the car in the game, but pitted with mechanical details and a raised Autobot insignia. Curiously, this detail is present on his chest in bot mode, but in hindsight his chest is smooth in the game, too, so it's a weird detail on the toy. Bee can use the tabs on his guns to plug into slots that are on his hood if you want to arm up his car mode. They're designed, though, to stay in the backs of his forearms when his arms are tucked in for transformation, storing out of sight under the car. Ultimately, I don't really have an issue with Bumblebee's design, or even how the toy differs from the game model. His articulation is a bit worse than Prime or Soundwave, but even that's not my real issue. My real issue is that something seems to have been lost between the engineers designing the figure and the actual manufacturing. I mean, it's no problem to get the top of the car transformed. His feet fold in and his legs scrunch up smoothly enough, with the rear wheels tabbing to the sides of the spoiler. But they don't lock into place in any other way, and you start to look at him and see one foot sitting just a bit angled while the other is flat, and one shin seems turned inward ever so slightly. You stuff his arms into place and they seem like they fit but they don't secure into place in any way, and you can't help but noticed that his shoulders aren't quite aligned the same way and one elbow is sticking up a bit compared to the other. You close the door wings, but both sides keep popping out. Maybe they'll stay in place when you tab in the front fenders. Nope! Not only are the doors not staying tabbed in, but the fenders don't want to, either. You kind of force them to stay put by closing the bumper on them, but it only helps a little. Then you noticed little tabs on his arms. Do they go in somewhere? The instructions don't indicate that, but you wiggle his arms and eventually manage to wedge the tabs into hollows that may or may not be for those tabs in the black armatures that the front fenders are connected to. Not only did it not help, it seems to have made it worse as the doors aren't just popping out, they're sticking out even further. I can't help but think that all it'd have taken to have fixed this is for there to have been definite slots and tabs for securing the legs and arms properly in place. I'm not sure what ultimately happened here. I don't think Bumblebee is a bad figure; certainly, he's better than his Gamer Edition counterpart, or several of the myriad live-action Studio Series figures. But he's lacking a little in articulation, and his engineering seems less polished than Prime or Soundwave, as if some bean counter at Hasbro was like, "it's good enough, who cares, it's Bumblebee so kids will buy it anyway." On his own, I think he's something Bumblebee fans might appreciate, or something that'd be cool to have representing some kind of media. But with no game due to developing more or less starting over on a different engine (which, in my experience, doesn't bode well for the game ever being released), I'm not sure Bumblebee can stand alone as a one-off figure.

Seems I was given the wrong info. There's no stream, and nothing being revealed today. The info that we thought was going to be for a Transformers Tuesday stream was really just a roundabout way of saying that Tidal Wave preorders went up at 1:00pm EST/10:00am Pacific. Sorry. But yeah... your can preorder Tidal Wave on Pulse now, if you want.

Might as well get this going before Hasbro does their thing. Time to look at Optimus' packed-in partner, Reactivate Soundwave. Soundwave is the smaller of the two, and there's temptation to simply say he's a Deluxe and Prime's a Voyager. But as I noted yesterday, Prime was a fairly large, fairly solid Voyager, perhaps not quite pushing into Leader territory but certainly impressing me more than say, Legacy United Animated Prime or Thundertron. I think that applies to Soundwave, too. Yes, he's shorter than some proper Voyager Soundwave's like Studio Series Bumblebee Soundwave or the retooled-Siege Netflix Soundwave, but not by as much as you might expect. He's a good head taller than your average Deluxe carbot, and without being overly-simplistic like previous large-Deluxes like Siege Ironhide or SS86 Perceptor. Reactivate Soundwave lacks the chonk of Bumblebee Soundwave or the boxiness of G1 Soundwave, but I'm happy to say that in-hand his leaner build still seems proportional. Early photos looked kind of stretched out, and I'm starting to think that they were literally stretched vertically. As with Prime, he's got his share of "we're not making an '80s cartoon on a budget so lets add some greebly details!", but also like Prime he's very recognizably Soundwave with a head shaped like the Decepticon badge, shoulder cannon, a flat chest rimmed in gold, and even some molded and painted details on his shoulders and pelvis that hearken back to his G1 design. Also like Prime, Soundwave feels pretty solid in hand, with wheels helping to fill in his calves, although there's some waffling on the insides of his arms and thighs if you know to look for it. Soundwave's rear is dominated by a fairly substantial backpack, but I don't hate it. Given Soundwave's traditional role I can imagine him carrying radio and communication gear in it, kind of like a WWII soldier with SRC-300 backpacks. Ultimately, I think my only real gripe with Soundwave is the use of black plastic on parts that aren't traditionally black, like his biceps, hands, thighs, and feet. So, how accurate is Soundwave to the game's concept art? Not too shabby. Turns out that some of the black, like his fingers, biceps, parts of his torso, and shins, are colored that way in the game, and Hasbro even took the time to paint some (but not all) of the red accents, and it looks like the wheels in the calves is also game-accurate. The game art does make me wish Hasbro had used a brighter blue plastic, though, as it'd help differentiate the black and blue parts. Not so much backpack here, though, and I can't help but notice that his thighs and feet are supposed to be silver. Of course Hasbro pinned those parts, so repainting them yourself won't be an easy fix. Soundwave's accessories are his shoulder cannon and his signature rifle. The rifle looks fine. The shoulder cannon has plenty of molded detail, but it's lacking the black and red accents seen in the game art. Soundwave's head is on a ball joint for swiveling and looking up a good bit, but he's got fairly limited downward and sideways tilts. His shoulders are ball joints, not my favorite thing in the word but they do swivel and move laterally slightly more than 90 degrees. His biceps swivel, his elbows bend a hair over 90 degrees, and his wrists swivel. The presence of his backpack in no way hampers his waist swivel, and if you untab his waist you can bend his back a bit. He can barely move his hips backward at all, and his lateral movement falls a little short of 90 degrees, but he makes up for it by being able to kick forward something like 140 degrees, enough that he can get his foot higher than his head. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend probably about 120 degrees. Like Prime, his feet lack any up/down tilt, but he's got about 45 degrees of ankle pivot. Soundwave's rifle can plug into either fist. His shoulder cannon plugs into a dedicated 5mm port near his head, and is hinged so you can aim it down or tilt it up a bit. The peg on the cannon is 5mm, so technically he can hold it in his fists, and technically his rifle can plug into his shoulder cannon port (though, lacking a hinge of it's own, would be permanently aimed 30 degrees down). While there is a 5mm port under each foot for effects parts (not included), the only other port on him is on the corner of his backpack. This does at least give him a place to store his rifle when he's not carrying it. Alas, his chest does NOT open. I think, given a bigger budget, it theoretically could have, but I can see how it'd have taken engineering that's probably outside the scope of this toy's budget. You could probably guess from the backpack, but Soundave's a bit of a shell former. His chest does form the hood of his alt mode, with the windshield double-hinging from behind it, but the backpack makes up the entire roof, rear, and a good chunk of the sides. His arms tuck under the backpack shell, and the flaps they're on fill in the doors. The front wheels and fenders fold out of his torso, and his legs by spin 180 and you tab them together before opening the flaps on the side of his legs, then folding the tires of his his calves. Then it's just a matter of using the hinges in his torso to smush his legs up and fiddling with the fenders and leg flaps so that everything lines up properly. Cyberverse fans should be pretty familiar with Soundwave's evergreen-inspired truck mode. He's even got the same chest-hood, flared fenders, and carries his shoulder cannon on the roof the same as Cyberverse Soundwave. Reactivate Soundwave is a bit less cartoony than the evergreen design, though. G1 purists like myself are always going to want a Soundwave that turns into a tape deck, but honestly I do think this mode works for a more modern take. And, yeah, it's looking pretty good against the concept art. The tow hitch on the toy could be more obvious, and I wish they'd painted that bit of blue on the rear fenders that came from the leg flap so that it matched the entire fender. Although you can't really see the rear in the concept art, I think paint on the bumper and taillights might have been nice, too. My only other note would be that the antenna is missing all the blue and silver seen in the concept art. Budgets, man. Soundwave rolls without issue, as long as his legs are packed in tight enough and the front fenders are aligned properly. The 5mm peg hole allows the cannon to swivel, and it's still go the hinges for aiming. His rifle can plug into the same 5mm port on his backpack that it did in bot mode, which is now on the rear behind the antenna. The instructions have it laying across the back, but again it's a 5mm port so you can swivel it. It's better aiming behind him, though, as the antenna gets in the way of it aiming forward. Soundwave was a pleasant surprise for me. Yeah, Optimus is the star of the pack, and he's good in a you-figured-he-would-be way. But my initial reaction to the reveals of these packs was that I'd be buying for Optimus and kind of stuck with Soundwave. In hand, though, he's much better than I expected and one of my favorite Soundwave figures so far, similar to the Cyberverse Deluxe but better IMHO across the board. If he were sold by himself as a Deluxe-class toy I'd recommend him on his own, and the fact that he comes with such a great Optimus toy makes buying a pack that costs as much as a Deluxe and Voyager combined an easy pill to swallow. Do yourself a favor and pick this pair up.

10:00am Pacific. So just after lunch for me.

Legacy United Gears. Considering that I have very few Transformers left on preorder, we already know what the wave 2 figures are going to be, and now images are starting to leak, I'm guessing wave 2 will be officially announced at tomorrow's Transformers Tuesday livestream.

Monday to Friday it is (although I hope to get it done earlier starting tomorrow). And we're opening with a brand new line, one based on the almost-certainly-not-releasing-this-year new video game, Transformers: Reactivate. And although they're being sold in two-packs, I want to give each figure a good look on its own, so one at a time, starting with Optimus Prime. The packaging lacks any of the usual "class" info, as the figures aren't being sold separately, but standing a little taller than Earthrise or any of the Studio Series options, Reactivate Prime is comfortably Voyager-sized. He's not simply half a head taller, either. There's a bulk to him. Aesthetically, you have all the hallmark G1-inspired detail (that got carried over into the Cyberverse evergreen design); primarily red on the top, blue on the bottom and head. Two antenna ears, forehead crest, and mouth plate. Truck windows for a chest, truck grill for abs. Smokestacks on the shoulders and vents on the shins. That said, you have to acknowledge the movie influences, too. Every surface, including his mask, has to have extra greebles. He's also got silver/gray hands instead of my preferred blue. Wheels and, happily, something that could be fuel tanks are visible on the sides of his legs. Actually hollow spaces are minimized; there's some if you know where to look, like the insides of his biceps, but flaps cover his calves and his thighs are totally filled in. He's got a bit of a backpack, with some neat little booster things. It'd be nice if those cages under them could have gone somewhere. I did dig for game art to compare with. The designers did a pretty good job! The details and colors are pretty accurate; the boosters on his back are even in the game. It'd be nice if his backpack was a little cleaner, with more red instead of unpaintable gray (on a part that actually could have been red plastic, no less), and maybe a few more details like this ankle guards could have some silver paint. He's also missing some panels that partially cover the wheels on the sides of his legs. These are Prime's accessories in the set; a rifle that is easily the best G1 cartoon-accurate rifle Hasbro has done for a Voyager-scale figure, but with a weirdly short handle, an energon axe, and the Matrix of Leadership. Prime's head is on a ball joint, and he can look up and down, tilt his head sideways, and turn his head. His shoulders rotate and move laterally 90 degrees. His biceps and wrists swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. His waist swivel gets caught up on those cages on his backpack, but you'll get a good 45 in either direction before you hit that point. His hips go 90 degrees sideways, a little more than that forward, and a little less than that backward. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend over 90 degrees. No up/down tilt on his feet, but his ankles pivot over 90 degrees. Prime's axe has a hollow base with a 5mm port; simply plug it into either fist, then orient that fist however you want the axe to go. Likewise, Prime holds his rifle by plugging the handle into his fists, but as I noted it's kind of short, and his grip is a bit more tenuous than I'd like. The Matrix is pretty much the old Earthrise mold we've seen time and again. Prime's chest windows open up, you plug the Matrix in place, and then close him back up. The boosters on Prime's backpack have 5mm ports that allow you to store his rifle and axe. Since he's not a mainline WfC/Legacy toy, he doesn't have a ton of other ports, but there is one on the side of each leg and one under each of his feet. Prime's transformation isn't complicated. It actually reminds me a little of an old friend, Classics Optimus Prime. Like that figure, you have to unfold panels from his forearms to make up a portion of the sides of the cab, and part of the backpack comes up and over to form the roof. Other elements, like lifting the chest and unfolding the truck's actual grill from inside is more like Earthrise Prime. All-in-all, it's not difficult and will make sense the first time you do it, but getting all the panels of the cab to line up just right can be mildly annoying. It's an interesting truck mode. The red cab over engine design with a pair of smokestacks on the back is instantly recognizable as Optimus Prime to the G1 crowd, but with a massive, scratched-up bumper, shuttered (but unpainted) side windows,, and extra armor tacked on. This is a Prime that's seen some things. The leg transformation is a bit different than you usually get, which results in his feet sitting like a bump behind the cab and his knees making the rear of the truck. There's no hitch, though, nor even a port, so he cannot pull any of the various trailers that have released with Primes over the last few years. The truck mode is pretty decently accurate, right down to the tops of his shins and knees being visible on the back of the truck. My biggest complaints about his alt mode is that there's details that are molded onto the figure, like the shutters on the side windows and the vents on the roof, that are correct but lost in the plastic due to not being painted. Prime's weapons are stored in alt mode by plugging them into the 5mm ports on the sides of his legs, now near the back of the truck. While Prime's was probably the best of them, the Gamer Edition figures have been some of the worst figures under the Studio Series banner. And while the Reactivate figures aren't part of the Studio Series brand, I can't help but think of the Gamer Edition figures as figures for a new game are coming out. A fear that's been on the back of my mind since the Reactivate packs were announced was that they might be as bad as the GE stuff. Fortunately, they're not. Reactivate Prime doesn't reinvent the wheel, but he's a very sold, adequately-articulated figure (that doesn't reuse Siege Prime's legs again). That might not necessarily make for the most exciting Optimus figure, but it does make for a very good one. One that, I wonder, might share some engineering with the supposed Studio Series 86 Optimus? Regardless, Prime is a toy I'd strongly recommend if they sold him on his own. But maybe you want to tune in tomorrow to see how the other half of his two-pack fares?

Quick question, how many of you guys read new posts here whenever they happen to be, vs how many of you guys read at school/work/whatever and don't really check-in on weekends? I have some content I'm working on, and I debating on whether to start tomorrow and run through the weekend or just post Monday-to-Friday next week.

I'm not super into Beast Wars; when it aired I was definitely in the "Trukk not Munky" crowd and refused to watch it, and when I finally watched it as an adult I thought the writing was pretty great but I still wasn't a fan of robots that turn into organic animals. That said, I'd gained enough appreciation for it that I didn't really mind when Beast Wars characters started popping up in Kingdom, and I figured I'd at the very least want the "core" cast. To me, that meant Optimus, Rattrap, Rhinox, Cheetor, and Dinobot for the Maximals (and Airazor and Tigatron being the runners up), and for the Predacons that meant Megatron, Terrorsaur, Tarantulas, Waspinator, Scorponok, and Blackarachnia (with Inferno being the runner up). And you know, between Kingdom and Legacy we'd pretty much gotten all of those, but with a big ol' asterisk on that word "all." And that's because every one of those characters had a mainline release you could buy anywhere except one... Terrorsaur was an Amazon exclusive. If you missed getting him on Amazon you could get the toy deco at Target, and much later you could try importing the Takara Beast Wars Vs pack with a slightly tweaked deco and an extra copy of Rattrap. Even if you did get a copy of Terrorsaur, it's kind of obvious he's a compromise. Despite his prominence in the show, he's the only one of the "main" cast not to get an original mold. Instead, he was heavily retooled from Airazor. I mean, kudos to Hasbro for how heavily that retool was; he was passably show-accurate at a glance, after all, but I think it did create two main problems. The first is that his wings point down, like Airazor's, when in the show they point up. The second is that he's just too small. I'm not aware of any official scale chart for Beast Wars, but some DVD extras suggested he was originally supposed to be nearly as tall as Megatron, roughly the same as Dinobot. An unofficial scale chart was put together by fans who seemed to research the matter fairly thoroughly. They pegged Terrorsaur as chest-high to Megatron, roughly the same size as Rhinox, a little taller than Primal, a little shorter than Inferno and Dinobot, and significantly taller than Tarantulas, Waspinator, or Scorponok. Well, would you rather have a Terrorsaur that's too small, or that's a little too big? That one on the top is the Golden Disk Terrorsaur with Legacy Tarantulas & Inferno and Kingdom Megatron. And the second one? The packaging isn't exactly clear, but I believe he's called Overwatch, a modified KO from a brand (or label) called The Beast Alliance. In terms of the sculpt of the figure not much has really changed, it's just be embiggened... mostly. One part of him actually shrunk, and that's his hands. They're actually smaller than the official figure's, despite the rest of the figure being larger. I think The Beast Alliance might have resculpted some of his abdomen, leaving less space for the fists in beast mode, but yeah, those baby hands are going to be the biggest aesthetic strike against the figure. Fortunately, The Beast Alliance has made up for it in other ways. While still not perfectly cartoon-accurate, using a dark metallic silver paint for his shoulders, biceps, and thighs, with a darker gunmetal inside the shoulders, on the outsides of his thighs, and on his fingers. I might have suggested that The Beast Alliance use a lighter silver to make the two-tone nature of those parts a bit more apparent, but it's still closer than the official figure. Some of the details on his feet, and even picking out a few details on his head, and for what it's worth some of his parts are made from diecast. Spinning the figure around, you can see see another major improvement. The Beast Alliance engineered an additional swivel into his wings, so you can flip them around into a more cartoon-accurate position. It's not as immediately apparent in my pictures here, but if you look at the swivels that let him stretch his wings you can see that The Beast Alliance modified or capped off the swivel, so his wings don't pop off as they do on the official. You can also just make out some filler in the beast-mode neck where the original was hollow. Overwatch comes with the same accessories as the official Terrosaur, but also embiggened. The arm blades and the gun lack the visible red plastic of the official's, and the pegs have been shrunk to fit Overwatch's baby hands. The embiggened golden disk is also more of a coppery color, but it hardly matters. I already have all the golden disks I could want, I just wanted a bigger, better Terrorsaur. The engineering of the figure hasn't changed, so Overwatch's articulation is the same as Terrorsaur's. To quote from that review: "Terrorsaur's head is on a swivel. That means he's got no downward or sideways tilt, but a transformation hinge can be used to get him to look up a little. Shoulders rotate and move laterally over 90 degrees. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. No wrist swivel. His waist does swivel, but you have to unlock it but untabbing his butt flap. His pelvis also has a hinged flap, but the purpose of it eludes me as it doesn't interfere with his hips, which go 90 degrees forward, backward, and laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend well beyond 90 degrees. His ankles are ball joints, so his feet can swivel, tilt up and down, and his ankles can pivot. That said, the ball joints on Terrorsaur are much looser than Airazor." Which, I suppose, is yet another thing The Beast Alliance fixed. All of his joints are toleranced pretty well, with just a few exceptions I'll talk about later. And, as noted the pegs on his gun and arm blades where shrunk to fit his little hands, so he can still hold them the same as the official figure does. The wing and hip storage for his gun also still applies. Transformation is 99% the same on Overwatch as it is on the official Terrorsaur... you're still stretching the torso, still tucking the head into his chest, still tucking his fists into his abdomen, still spinning the waist only to spin the thighs back to the front. The big difference is, of course, that you have an additional swivel to do with the wings to angle them back down. Unfortunately, Overwatch's beast mode isn't as clear an improvement as the robot mode. It's more like they fixed a little, but then broke other things. Mainly, they painted the yellow claws on his wings and toes, which is better. But, the part that the head flips on is that dark silver instead of red, which makes the "chest" a bit less cohesive. Also, I guess because they were already using yellow and didn't feel like getting out a different color paint, Overwatch's beast eyes are yellow, instead of the cartoon-accurate green the original toy used. He's still got the cartoon-style yellow beak and black spots on his back. I'd say the red thighs on the Gold Disk toy helped his robot legs blend in with the beast body a bit, where the silver and gunmetal The Beast Alliance used definitely stands out more. However, I've gone on record saying that sacrifices to the alt mode to get a better bot mode are preferable to the other way around, and I'll stand by that. If this is the price we pay for a more accurate robot mode, so be it. The beast mode works the same on Overwatch as it does on Terrorsaur. Same articulation, including the opening beak. Same need to pull the blades off of his arms and store them on the backs of his legs (and fortunately The Beast Alliance made those holes smaller to accommodate the smaller pegs). And you still store his gun by tabbing it into the side of his robot thigh. Now, while the Beast Alliance did make a lot of improvements, there are some flaws here. Most of them could just be my copy, but based on his rather low price I kind of doubt it. Well, for starters, there is size. As I noted at the beginning, yeah, Terrorsaur is too small, but at slightly taller than Inferno Terrorsaur is a little too big. That being said, for most of the first season Terrorsaur was basically Starscream- Megatron's second-in-command, scheming to replace him as top dog. I really prefer Terrorsaur to be bigger than most of the other Predacons, then, so as long as he's still smaller than Megatron (which he is) I can more easily forgive a Terrorsaur that's bigger than Inferno than one that's closer to Blackarachnia in size. The other issues are less subjective, but fixable. First, when transforming him I couldn't get his head to fold in. I wound up removing the rotating piece that his head is attached to and using a Dremel to carefully remove a bit of material from around the joints, putting a little silicon lube inside the joints, then making sure that the part was slid all the way back over the mushroom pegs when I reattached it. After doing all that he transformed fine. But while messing with him one of his feet popped off the ball joint. I popped it back on, but it was super loose afterward. I realized that The Beast Alliance had put a ton of paint on the joint, which was diecast, not plastic. The paint, which provided most of the friction, had rubbed off when the foot fell off. A little floor polish, though, and the foot's no looser than the official. Finally, the forward/backward on the hips seemed a little loose, but quickly became too loose for him to even stand. Seems the screw hole was at least partially stripped and his pelvis was coming apart, reducing the friction on the hips. I probably could have replaced the screw with a longer, slightly thicker one, but I was feeling lazy and simply glued his pelvis. As long as the glue holds his hips have enough friction that I can hold the figure face down or face up, parallel to the ground, and his hips won't move (and yes, I was careful not to get any glue in the hip or waist joints). Now normally I might suggest that a figure that needs that much work isn't one you want to buy... but here's the kicker. Overwatch ups Terrorsaur to a Voyager-size, and he runs around $30... a little less than Hasbro would charge for a figure this size, yeah? And with Terrorsaur being a store exclusive (twice) there's a good chance you missed picking him up. Overwatch doesn't just give you another chance to add a Terrorsaur to your Kingdom/Legacy Beast Wars shelf, he does it with a better deco, (mostly) better joints, a bigger size, and wings that point the right way in bot mode. If you did get Terrorsaur and you're happy with him, then cool. But if you didn't, or if like me you think Overwatch has enough improvements to justify the upgrade (even with the baby hands), then I would recommend checking Overwatch out. Just be prepared to give him a little extra TLC.

Man, I'd love to have more info on that Autobot multipack to share... but the discussion in certain parts of the internet has devolved into a 30 pages of heated debate over the term "partial" for some reason at the board that shan't be named. It's so bad that, even though I didn't contribute any posts to that nonsense, I'm still feeling like I need to get off the internet for awhile and touch grass. But before I venture out into the cold, how about a quick review? Because I've got Studio Series Core-class Mohawk sitting on my desk here. Mohawk's interesting in that someone somewhere put a lot of effort into creating a character with a certain look and personality that was basically a disposable throwaway with a whopping minute and a half of total screen time in The Last Knight. And... I'm not sure how well this figure captures that personality. I think a lot of that is coming down to the small budget that Core-class figures get. Like, the broad strokes are there. He's got the bug eyes, and wide mouth. He's even got some gold paint on his teeth. He's got tires near his shoulders, but not on them. There's splashes of green paint. It looks like they tried to mold some details, like the blades on his forearms and the knives on his legs, but much like his namesake mohawk they're molded as details on fin-shaped bits of plastic rather than having any individual separation, which causes that detail to be lost. The overall result is a little more fish-like than I remember him actually appearing. Meanwhile, other details like the chains he wore, the Decepticon badges in his teeth, the cans of spray paint taped to his chest, and the baby doll head on his right hip are simply absent. He's not looking great from behind. I don't think you get a very clear look at his back in the film, but he's missing the exhaust pipes, and he's filled with hollow gaps and large hinges. Mohawk's sole accessory is this knife. He doesn't really live long enough in the film to use a weapon, but given the knives he had strapped to his legs it seems appropriate. Mohawk's head swivels, and due to his transformation you can kind of tilt it up, but not down. His mouth opens. His shoulders are hinged ball joints for rotation, 90 degrees of lateral movement, and a bit of a shrug. Elbows are also hinged ball joints that can technically bend up to 180 degrees, but the ball is also his bicep swivel and the hinge is above it. No wrist or waist articulation. His hips are more ball joints, capable of swiveling and moving laterally 90 degrees. In what's probably my biggest issue with his articulation, he lacks any articulation at his actual knee joint. Instead, he only has a hinge at the lower digitigrade joint (which is technically an ankle!); it can bend a little forward (the direction that joint should bend on a living digitigrade animal), and back so far you'd think the designers thought it's actually a knee. Then he's got ball joints at the foot that can swivel and tilt down a little but nothing really upward. And, while they do have some pivot, they pivot the wrong way. Mohawk can hold his knife in either hand. Or, you can use the large notch in the blade to grab onto a peg on his butt, allowing him to store the knife on his back. Hasbro's been cranking out a few bikes lately in both the Core (Bouldercrash, Arcee) and Deluxe scale (Arcee, Prowl), and they tend to do the same thing. Arms stretch out to form the top and seat of the bike, body and legs sort of crumple up to form everything underneath. It's kind of refreshing, then, that Mohawk does the opposite. I mean, sure, his body stays underneath, but it's his arm doing the scrunching. Then you invert his hips and fold the legs up and over, with his feet pegging together to form the seat. My first thought was that Mohawk isn't the prettiest bike mode. And no, the toy isn't exactly screen-accurate; for one thing, the bike in the film only had one headlight. However, the bike used in the film, a Confederate Motorcycles P51 Combat Fighter, is a pretty unusual (and rare, only 60-ish were ever produced) motorcycle with a chassis carved from a single block of aluminum, and believe it or not Mohawk's honestly a bit closer than you might expect to pulling it off. It's nice to see some paint was thoughtfully applied to the alt mode, with the aforementioned headlights being picked out in white, red brakes, black shocks, painted handlebars, and a gold chain on the rear tire. Once side of thee bike has a tab near the bottom that lets you store the knife. If you have him balanced just right, you can turn the bike so that the knife side is on the back and lean the bike so that the knife holds it upright. Other than that, the wheels spin freely but the front doesn't turn or anything. Mohawk is a pretty basic figure that lacks a lot of details from the movie. However, as a pretty small guy in the films Core-class is about as big as Hasbro could make him and keep him relatively in scale (although, if you want to go smaller, Dr. Wu apparently made a Mohawk figure half this size). He's got a lot fewer issues than a lot of the other recent Core-class figures I've looked at, a novel transformation, and a bike mode that looks passably like the film. Honestly, I kind of like him. I mean, he could definitely be better, but what you get here seems fair for the $10 asking price. I think I'm going to give this guy a recommend.

In all seriousness, while I think SteamOS is better for console-style handheld PC gaming the ROG Ally has been my go-to for awhile. It was a little rough at launch, but Asus has improved it through BIOS and driver updates. Battery life isn't great, but the Z1 Extreme in the Ally beats the Steam Deck's custom APU, and while Windows is gonna Windows the simple fact is that not everything I want to play on the go is part of my Steam library, or Steam Deck compatible even if it is. Now MSI's getting into the game, and the more I read up on it the more the Intel chipset in the Claw seems like it's a better CPU than the Z1 Extreme, but I have serious doubts about that Arc graphics and XESS will make for a better GPU.

5-pack. And no, I asked for clarification and was told "fan channel." So Pulse, but also stuff like BBTS, Entertainment Earth, etc. It will NOT be sold at Target (or Walmart). My source also suggests that this will be the first of four of these multipacks. That source said not to expect major changes, that the impetus behind these sets is to give people a chance to get some figures that are harder to find now. But another source (not sure if as trustworthy, so take with a grain of salt) said that Trailbreaker at least will have a more cartoon-accurate deco. It's possible but unconfirmed that the translucent plastics will be replaced with colored plastic and painted windows. All pre-Buzzworthy. And Redwing... really? He was never stocked at stores, he was a Target.com exclusive, and was available for a very long time. The only real barrier to getting him was that you needed a Target Red Card. I know a lot of people were complaining that they didn't want to apply for a credit (or debit) card just to get him, but as a relatively frequent Target shopper myself it was a non-issue. Define "minimal". I think one four foot section is standard. Around here, that's several pegs that have to include all the Cores and Deluxes from Studio Series and Legacy, all the smaller Earthspark toys (Warrior, Deluxe, those stupid flipchangers) and all the smaller ROTB toys. Top shelf is Voyagers, (SS, Legacy) and larger Earthspark toys. Then there's a shelf for Leaders (SS, Legacy) and some ROTB stuff like the masks. Bottom shelf fluctuates, sometimes it's multipacks (like I think it's currently for the troop builder pack), sometimes it's for Commanders (I distinctly remember a spot for Motormaster that was never stocked), and other random bigger boxes like the RC Optimus and the Jada Metals. Occasionally the shelves will be invaded by whatever overstock they have of the toys on the next four foot section, but the pegs are usually safe. The problem here isn't really a lack of space, or that the shelves aren't being stocked. It's that the stock that was put out doesn't sell. I was at my local Target the other day and found a Shrapnel (which I'd wanted a second of for customization) behind a couple of Crosscuts... both of those figures were released in Evolution wave 2. Voyagers were almost entirely Nemesis Leo from wave 3, and Leaders were limited to Blitzwings (which could be leftovers from wave 2, but IIRC were package refreshed in another wave). One the Studio Series side, you have your choice of Arcees, SS86 or Bumblebee, Galvatron in the Voyagers, and Sludge. All of which were released in 2022. And for the record, I'm in a pretty small town area. We're one county east of Pittsburgh, population hovering just above 30,000 and declining according to the last census. My house is in a plan built behind a dairy farm. No pegs? Or are they just full of stuff like those stupid ROTB toys with the Deluxe-ish sized but super simple figures that come with an animal that turns into armor? Either way, that's weird. I remember my Target having a spot for Blackout, but hasn't actually stocked anything MP since Starscream, who shelfwarmed so hard they marked him down at least half off.