mikeszekely

Don't forget, there's a Hasbro Pulse Transformers livestream tomorrow at 11:00am ET. I don't know everything that's going to be shown, but I do expect the next wave of Evolution will be revealed, specifically Voyager-classes Twincast (a repaint of Blaster, with Eject repainted as Rewind), and Metalhawk (a heavy retool of Kingdom Cyclonus). Then, I'm guessing, but Core-class Grimlock and Thundercracker, Deluxes should be Animated Prowl, Crosscut, another Junkion, and I think either Bombshell or Shrapnel, and then our first new Evo Leader will be Skyquake. There will probably be some Rise of the Beast reveals... they've been trickling out (Arcee, Freezer, Cheetor, Battletrap, Airazor, and Bumblebee have already been up for preorder, and I believe Scourge goes up tomorrow, all in the Studio Series line, but there are apparently non Studio-series versions coming too), maybe one or two SS86 figures (I'm hoping for Brawn and Snarl). Outside chance there might be some Velocitron or Generations Selects stuff (whatever happened to toy-colors Hot Rod?).

It's a snowy-rainy winter mix here, but I'm starting my week off feeling good. Pulse emailed me to say Scraphook is shipping soon and Legacy Evolution Voyager-class Tarn is here now. Given the budget constraints that I know Hasbro's designers have to deal with, I have to say that the design team really did a good job with this guy. When you compare him to Alex Milne's concept art and actual art in More Than Meets the Eye you'll find that Hasbro's design team did a great job capturing a lot of Tarn's little details like the extra armor on the outsides of his forearms, the silver and gold on his feet, the little chevrons on his crotch (sometimes colored int he comics, sometimes not. Heck, there are details that Evolution Tarn gets right that neither MMC nor Iron Factory did, like the direction of the grooves on his treads and the exact shapes and lines of the light purple on his abs. He also has clawed fingertips, but to be fair to MMC that detail was not present in the concept art or earliest appearances in the comics. Likewise, you'll note that there are more pink lines on the chests of the Iron Factory and MMC versions, but they're also details that appeared inconsistently. I wouldn't say Tarn is perfect, though. The light gray plastic on his arms and thighs is that ugly unpaintable gray kind. Milne's concept art does use a grayish color of that, but it's definitely a white or possibly silver in all his comic appearances. Also, while I think the color oh his feet and pelvis looks dark gray and almost matches his treads under normal lighting, if you examine it closely my camera isn't lying here, it's really a dark purple. I'd have preferred dark gray or black. Finally, there are tiny missing details like the silver bands near the tips of the guns on his back. There's a question of scale, I suppose. Evolution Tarn is very slightly shorter than Earthrise Megatron. I don't know why, but Tarn sort of struck me as a bigger guy, but comparing their limited appearances together I think this is actually fairly accurate. Maybe Tarn could be slightly taller, more even with Megatron. That's how MMC did theirs. As great a job did as Hasbro did with Tarn himself, they got a little lazy with his cannons. I mean, I do like that they cast them in translucent plastic and painted the barrels, which gives them the glowing pink lines seen in the comics. The paint used on them is kind of grayish, though, when again I'd have preferred black. The one cannon (on the right of the above image) is mostly fine otherwise, it's just missing a dot of gold on that raised bit on the back and some silver for that gear-shaped ring between the back and the barrel. The other one is a bit more messed up. The barrel is the right shape, but it should be rotated 90 degrees so that the pink lines are on top and the raised bit of armor plating (which should be painted silver) should go underneath. The real problem is that the back of the cannon should be round, not a box shape. I suspect that it's boxy with a raised bit, though, because that's how Milne's drawings of Tarn's alt mode are. The middle part that they connect too is too wide and lacks the fin, but I do have to give credit where it's due- sometimes Tarn's drawn so that his cannons are even, sometimes he's drawn so that one sticks out further than the other. Hasbro placed two ports on either side, so you can have it either way. Tarn's head is on a hinged ball joint, so he's got excellent upward tilt and passable downward and sideways tilt in addition to the usual swivel. His shoulders rotate and can move laterally 90 degrees, but Hasbro made the mistake they've been doing entirely too often where the lateral hinge is to the inside of the swivel, which means you can't swivel his shoulders and move them laterally at the same time. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend slightly over 90 degrees. His wrists swivel, and his fingers are pinned at the base so he can even open his hands. His waist swivels. His hips can move 90 degrees backward, slightly more than that forward, and slightly less than that backward. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend slightly over 90 degrees on a single joint, but if you pop his lower leg loose you can use a transformation joint to get nearly 180 degrees of knee bend. His feet have tons of up and down tilt, and his ankles pivot a little under 45 degrees. The thing about his cannons is that the central part they connect to doesn't just have two ports on the sides for the cannons. The whole thing rotates around the center of its base, while the peg it uses to attach to his forearm is set behind the rotation point and plugs into the port on his forearm closer to his elbow, otherwise the base doesn't have the clearance to sit under his shoulder treads. But, you can use this rotation in conjunction with the placement of the cannons, and the fact that the 5mm pegs on both the cannons and the base swivel in 5mm ports, to plug the whole setup into his back and have his cannons be over his shoulders. Alternatively, you can remove the cannons from the base, and you'll find Tarn has several 5mm ports they can plug into- one on the outside of either shoulder, two on the outside of his right forearm, one on the outside of his left, one on the outside of either leg just below the knee, one on his back, and one under each foot. Also, the 5mm pegs on the cannons can be held in his hands, plus the barrels themselves are 5mm ports. When used with the 5mm peg on the back of either cannon you can combine them into one really long cannon/rifle. If I'm being honest, Tarn's Transformation is something like a cross between MMC's and Iron Factory's. Tarn's shoulder's shift from being near the top of the treads in his chest to the bottom, like Iron Factory's, although they do this by rotating the entire chest tread instead of opening to let an armature spin around. His arms bend in toward his waist more like MMC's, though, and his legs fold up and over his back like MMC's without the extra odd bends of Iron Factory's. I do wish that the knee pads folded down the way MMC's do. The result is honestly a more accurate tank than MMC's, with the larger treads at the wider back and his chest treads being at the narrower front. The cannons sit back further by default, too, which is accurate. The official Tarn is also the only one that doesn't use the round bits from his chest on the nose of the tank, which is comic-accurate, too. On the flip side, due to the way his backpack rotates his head is nearly visible- you can see most of the gray hinges it moves on plainly, and his hands are visible. That's in addition to the color issues I've already gone over. Although they actually have slots that fit over tabs to keep them in place, you can swivel the smaller guns outward. Because the base of the cannon mount rotates he winds up with a rotating turret, although the cannons themselves don't have a ton of clearance for up/down elevation. You can get a little more and move the barrels forward a bit if you ignore the default and set them in the more forward ports, or move the barrels more forward still by leaving them in the default ports but rotating the base 180 degrees and flipping the cannons over. Or, combine them into one big cannon and plug it into the top of the mount; you'll lose any elevation, but you'll have a barrel longer than the entire tank. The mount itself doesn't attach to any 5mm ports, it instead uses a pair of tabs that plug into slots on his shins, with the 5mm peg under it just fitting into a gap where his shins get a little narrower. If you want to get more creative with the cannon placement, or just plug other weapons onto him, he's got two ports on the sides of the rear treads, on port near the back above his left treads, two ports above his right treads, on port on either side of the rear of the tank, and one port on top of the tank near the two small guns. I've said multiple times that More Than Meets the Eye is one of, if not the, best pieces of Transformers fiction available, and since his introduction Tarn has been a fan-favorite villain, and I'm excited to have one that fits the scale and aesthetic of the War for Cybertron/Legacy figures. Even if you're not really sure who he is, this is a really solid figure with only a few minor quibbles, and I'd definitely recommend checking him out as he's easily the highlight of Evolution so far for me.

I don't hate it, but I don't like it better then Phoenix.

I bought the collector's edition of Star Trek Online around the time it came out, played until the included time ran out, picked it up again when it went free to play, played through all the story content, then lost interest (broadly speaking, I'm a big Star Trek fan but I'm not really into MMOs or social gaming). Anyway, fast forward to the present, I just finished watching Strange New Worlds, and I was in the mood to play a Star Trek game. With nothing newer/better I reinstalled STO, and boy howdy did they change a bunch of stuff in the years since I quit. Anyone else here playing? BTW, if you're not, it's free to play, like I said, and readily available on Steam. If you're really into multiplayer PVE or PVP sorts of things you might not like it- see, at each rank you only have access to certain ships, and you get one freebie every time you get promoted (every 10 levels), but then they went and added another tier or two of even better ships that you normally only get paying real money, leaving the best free stuff totally outclassed. On the other hand, if you just want to play for the story, there's a ton more content than when the game first launched with appearances by lots of characters voiced by their original actors. In fact, there's enough story content now that you should be able to hit the level cap without doing anything but the story content, and you can play through the story content as a single-player game.

Just in case you were curious...

OK, this one is kind of dumb, but until Tarn and Scraphook get here I don't have much else to talk about. This the now Target-exclusive Buzzworthy Bumblee* Bumbleswoop set. *This set was previously released in the regular Cyberverse line, which is no longer really available, but this particular set is back on shelves in Buzzworthy, almost as if they knew people like me with four out of five Cyberverse Dinobots would throw in the towel and buy this just to complete the team. This is a set that comes with two figures, and the first up is Bumblebee. And, yeesh. This guy is looking more like a Rescue Bots toy than Cyberverse. The head's a little soft, btu fairly recognizable, and he's got molded detail that looks like the details you'd expect on hi chest, waist, pelvis, thighs, knees, shins, and feet, but aside from a splash of silver on the fronts of his thighs and some blue on his faux windshield he's largely devoid of color. Of course, from the sides and back we see he's more or less wearing his entire alt mode on his back like a turtle shell. And just like real turtles, Bumblebee's got seriously poor articulation. His shoulders are hinged so they can move laterally, but they do not swivel. His hips technically have some lateral movement, but it's less articulation and more closed for car, open for robot, and there's no forward/backward movement. He doesn't have any joints in his neck, biceps, shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, thighs, or knees. His feet tilt downward for transformation, but nothing up and no ankle pivots. And he has no accessories. Transformation is super basic- open his chest to tuck his head in, then squeeze his arms and legs together before folding his feet down. That's it. The car mode isn't great. It's got harder edges that remind me more of RiD 2015 or Earthspark than the rounder Cyberverse. There's some molded lines on the front to indicate the car's lights, but no paint to give it color. That goes for the black stripes, too, they're just not there. Near the back there are little raised hexagons, as if the car had scales. Much of the rear is made of Bumblebee's feet, and that's what it looks like, the bottom of robot feet. Silver painted claws peak over the roof like some kind of weird lightbar. And there's a large chunk of black stuff jutting from the front of the car... it's a shame it couldn't have folded away with his head. All-in-all, Bee is very not-good. Thing is, he comes packed with Swoop. And unlike Bee, where you had a plethora of options, this is the only Swoop in the Cyberverse line. Swoop isn't very cartoon-accurate. Like the other Dinobot toys in the Cyberverse line this toy seems to be based on Eric Siebenaler's concept art, which featured a mostly G1 Swoop with a bit of the Cyberverse aesthetic, and not the final cartoon model where they gender-flipped Swoop into the team's sole female. Now, I'm all for more female characters in Transformers, and creators over the last 10-15 years have given us plenty of new ones to enjoy like Windblade, Slipstream, Shadowstriker, Strongarm, Nautica, Flamewar, Nickel, Anode, Airachnid, Twitch, Slash, etc. I'm not a fan of gender-flipping existing characters, though. And frankly, given that three of the other four are also more Siebenaler's art than final cartoon anyway, I think I prefer this more G1-esque Swoop than the goofy Cyberverse design that looks like she's wearing a WWI-era flight helmet and googles. Swoop's sporting more colors than Bumblebee, with cartoon-accurate reds on her arms. Her legs should actually be gray, though, with red stripes, and ironically the red paint they did put on his knees is the one spot that should have been blue. He doesn't need the black on his head (either head), and he could use a little more color on his wings His articulation, or lack thereof, is nearly as bad as Bumblebee's. His shoulders are the same as Bee's, moving laterally but that's it, with no additional arm or waist articulation. His legs are a little better. He doesn't have the lateral movement that Bee does, and he's still lacking thigh swivels, but his hips can go 90 degrees forward and 45 degrees backward, plus he's got 90 degrees of knee bend. Swoop does come with a sort of whip weapon that can plug into either of his fists. Transformation is, again, super simple. Lift the dinosaur head up over his face, then fold his head back so he's facing forward. His arms tab into his sides, then fold his feet down. Flip his butt plate over so you can bend his hips and his knees 90 degrees, so his legs are on his back, and you're done nearly done. The last step is to take his whip and plug in into his butt, forming his dino feet and tail. Swoop doesn't do a lot in this mode. There's really no articulation. His robot hands are visible. He could use a more accurate paint job. But... it's kind of not that bad. I mean, that's mostly what Swoop looks like. So, Swoop could be a lot better, sure, and I'd have loved for him/her to have gotten a Deluxe or at least a Warrior-class figure. But Swoop at least fared better in this set than Bumblebee. Of course, there's one final gimmick here. Remove Swoop's tail, then plug that big black chunk on the front of Bumblebee into Swoop's butt. A spring-loaded gimmick will cause Swoop's sides to lift up and away from his body, and a second head will pop out of his back. Unfold Swoop's legs, and with little fists molded into his heels they'll become arms. Fold down Bee's feet and spread his legs, but leave his arms folded in, and voilà, Bumbleswoop. Well, now the claws on Bee's heels and the weird scaly look makes more sense. Bumbleswoop looks ok-ish from the front (like, where are his knees?), but the visible arms and on his shoulders and more or less Bumblebee's entire robot mode make him look goofy from behind. Articulation is still poor, with hinges at the top of the bicep and the elbow and that's about it. At least he can still hold Swoop's weapon. Let's be honest, Cyberverse was meant to be a kid's cartoon. It was good enough that adult fans like me could enjoy watching it, but we're not the target audience. Now as simple as this set is, in a vacuum, I don't have a problem with it. It's two simple figures with a neat combining gimmick perfect for younger kids to play with. The reality, though, is that adult collectors can and do watch these shows, they can and do like the characters and want them in their collection, and they can and will buy the toys. The trouble here is that Hasbro had released four of the five Dinobots. Collectors would definitely want to complete the team. So, while this set is totally fine for kids, it's inadequate for collectors, but it's the only way to complete the team. That shouldn't have happened. Now, I'm not saying Hasbro was obligated to cater to the collectors, but Swoop should have at least had a Warrior-class release on his own. As it stands, I can't really recommend this set. The combining gimmick isn't worth it, and Bee is such a crappy toy that I let my 7yo daughter take it- she's happy just to have a simple Bumblebee to play with. I think the most positive thing I can say about this set is that Swoop is at least better than Bee, and he at least looks ok in static poses with his teammates.

Yeah, and too be clear, my issues with her alt mode aren't that she's a fictional drone, it's that even though the drone is fictional they still couldn't manage to get her toy accurate to the cartoon. Speaking of accuracy... She looks pretty good under normal lighting, but under the harsher glare from the LED lamps in my workspace you can tell the GM22 Gun Metallic Gundam Marker I used is a bit darker than the gunmetal paint Hasbro used. But I used it anyway on her knees, wrists, waist, ears, and antenna, plus some silver on her fingers. As for Ironhide... I tried the yellow Gundam marker and didn't like how it looked. So I tried a yellow oil-based Sharpie paint pen, and I don't like how it looks. Ironically, the red Sharpie from the same set as the yellow looks pretty good. Then I cut the hip skirt, didn't really like how jagged the cut looked, and the knife slipped and I gouged his chest. I think I'm just going to order a new Ironhide and the Reprolabels...😩 EDIT: Tarn's on the way, and also, because I have issues, I was putting the three Bumblebee toys that featured in my Earthspark Bumblebee review into a box for storage simply labeled "Bumblebee." There's around 20 different Bees in there, but I realized there isn't one for RiD 2015, so I tracked down a copy of him and Optimus in the Warrior class, and they're on the way. It gets worse, though. While researching which RiD 2015 was the best for my personal tastes, I was reminded of a very short Japanese series that was, ostensibly, a sequel to Transformers Prime before RiD 2015 was a thing, called Transformers Go! Long story short, I have the Go! version of Optimus coming, too. Thank Primus there wasn't a new Go! version of Bumblebee, just the Takara version of Beast Hunters Bumblebee.

I saw a few sources say Roiland was fired because of the domestic violence charges, and if that was it I'd agree that it's not fair to fire him until/unless he was found guilty. However, other sources are saying those stories are mixing up the fact that he's facing domestic violence charges and the fact that he was fired and wrongly assuming that's the reason. The actual reason he was fired was a series of Twitter DMs with an underage girl that went public after the charges were announced. And yeah, after having read over those DMs I can see why Adult Swim would want to distance themselves from Roiland.

Ok, last of the Earthspark Deluxes (for now). Number 3 is Terran Twitch. Out of the gate, I know Cyberverse sort of went and made all the Transformers basically the same size, and I think that and the fact that they don't share a lot of scenes together is why I accepted that Earthspark Megatron and Bumblebee are the same size (even though, in the cartoon, Megatron is actually a lot bigger). But Twitch is in plenty of scenes with Bee, enough that I'm acutely aware that she and Thrash are significantly smaller than him. So now I'm kind of bummed that the Earthspark line isn't in scale the way Legacy is. I think it would have been cool if Bee were exactly the size he already is, but maybe Twitch could have been a Core-class that only came up to just under his Autobot insignia, and Megatron could have been a (better-engineered) Voyager, coming up to around even with the blue cockpit on his torso. I digress. Twitch's proportions seemed a tad off to me, with a short torso and long legs, but that actually checks out with the cartoon. Still, I wonder how early in production her toy was designed, because it's probably the least-accurate of the three. She's missing the gunmetal color on her ears, and she only has a stripe of it on her knees instead of covering the whole knee. The gunmetal around the yellow circle on her chest should match the silver on her legs and face, I think, and it should cover her fingers, too. The "silver" blue plastic on her waist should be black, and the vents on her chest shouldn't be present at all. I'm also not loving how the silver on her thighs doesn't go the whole way around. Nor do I like those bits dangling on the backs of her forearms. But, I suspect the kibble (and the chest vents) are concessions to her alt mode. Twitch comes with the most accessories so far... a cartoon-accurate blaster, a human head, and some gear that looks like it belongs to Doctor Octopus. Only the blaster is for Twitch, though- the rest of that stuff is part of the build-a-figure. Twitch's articulation feels like a step up from what we've been getting so far... her head is on a ball joint with a little bit of downward and sideways tilt, but tons of upward tilt. Her shoulders are also ball joints, but this time they're cut right so she can get 90 degrees of lateral motion in addition to swiveling. She has dedicated bicep swivels and elbows that bend 90 degrees. No wrist articulation, but in a first for the line she actually has a waist swivel. Ball-jointed hips go 90 degrees forward, backward, and laterally. Her thighs swivel, and her knees bend over 90 degrees. Her feet are on hinged ball joints, so they can tilt up and her ankles can pivot around 45 degrees. Additionally, her wings and rotors are on ball joints, so you have some leeway over how you position them. Despite having the better articulation, I still found Twitch to be a bit frustrating, because the joints on my copy are so loose she can barely stand. We'll see how she does after some floor polish. Less of a problem, but still annoying, is that her chest does not stay plugged it at all. Like Bumblebee, Twitch's blaster fits over her hand so it looks like her arm transformed into the blaster. There's also storage on her back. Of all the Earthspark Deluxes so far, Twitch has the most finnicky transformation. It's not that it's hard- it's actually pretty simple to figure out what's supposed to go where. Thing is, her legs are what holds everything together. Slots under her feet tab onto her hips, slots on the edges of her feet lock her chest into the alt mode position, and tabs near her ankles lock into her arms. That's tricky enough to line up with all the ball joints involved, but if the fanless rotors in her shins aren't fully deployed her leg can't fold over her thigh enough. And again, not all the connections are super solid and you may find that just as you've got her foot tabbed into her hip that trying to get her arm tabbed in will pop her foot back off. I'm not even sure the frustration is worth it, as her alt mode isn't even all that accurate. The nose, formed by her chest, is fine, as is the the light wing running down the middle and the four rotors. But the drone's smooth sides in the cartoon are gappy legs and feet, and her arms are entirely visible underneath. She does have the little antenna array on her underside that she does in the cartoon, but it's totally lost sandwiched between her arms. Then there's those landing skids, which I complained about in bot mode. You do see them on the drones when Optimus launches them from his trailer, and they're on Twitch's control art, but I don't think you actually see them on her in the cartoon. So mostly they just get in the way without any real payoff. Well, at least they give her something to rest on in alt mode. And, as in bot mode, you can use the ball joints to move her larger rotors. It's a bit of a tight fit, but you can also attach her gun to the nose of her alt mode by plugging a small tab on the top into a notch on the underside. For me, Twitch is one of my favorite parts of the new Earthspark cartoon, but her toy is stuck in a middle ground between the good (if a little basic) Bumblebee and the not-so-good (and entirely too basic) Megatron. It's a shame, because the potential is there. I mean, she is only a Deluxe, so I can forgive some things like her messy alt mode with the visible arms, but Hasbro really should have ironed out the tolerances to make her less finnicky, to keep her chest tabbed in for robot mode, and to have spent just a little more on the paint required to make her more screen accurate, at least in robot mode. Unless you're actually watching the show and fond of the character, she's probably a pass for most of you. EDIT: BTW, the boxes tell you every figure you need to finish the BAF. Figures 4 and 5 we've seen prototypes of, they're Optimus Prime and Shockwave (with Shockwave appearing to be a repaint of the Cyberverse toy). So far, so good, right. Two more will complete the BAF: Grimlock and Nightshade. And, um... yeah. Now, I like Shockwave and Grimlock. And although it's just a headshot, the art for Grimlock is a new design, so probably not a repaint of Cyberverse. So... are Shockwave and Grimlock make appearances in season 2? Will Nightshade have a bigger role than "that one non-binary Transformer that showed up for like a minute in the season 1 finale"? Because it seems to me like there are already characters in season 1 we're missing, like Elita-1, Arcee, Wheeljack, Skywarp, Novastorm, Swindle, Soundwave, and... oh yeah, THRASH!

What are you talking about? He doesn't look anything... like... ...nope. I see it now. Hmm. Megatron does play the role of the grumpy veteran in Earthspark, too... Anyway, I have no idea how the distribution for Evolution is supposed to work. Seems weird that Amazon sent me two Cores, three Deluxes, and a Voyager one at a time over the course of a week, then just stopped with two to go. But then I get a payment notification at Pulse for Tarn, and only Tarn. And knowing Pulse, he won't arrive until maybe the weekend anyway.

It's got an owlbear. Of course I'm in. While early D&D ran like a simulator for killing PCs, the game (and, arguably, the entire fantasy genre) has changed a lot over the last half-century. Today it's going to depend a lot on the campaign you're playing and who's running it. There's definitely more serious stuff to play, like Curse of Strahd or the newly-released Shadow of the Dragon Queen, but then there's also stuff like Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos that's basically D&D Harry Potter. Or the campaign I'm running, where a player cast grease to break up a bar fight and one of the NPCs (who had the potential to be a mini boss later) rolled a 1 on his dex save, so I ruled that not only did he slip and fall on the grease but he broke his neck on a chair in the process. Kinda set the tone for everything that's happened since, which is probably why my players got sidetracked from the main quest right before entering a dungeon to play with a bag of magic beans they found.

Ah, see, I'm kind of lazy, so I thought to maybe just make the stripe with a yellow Gundam Marker. But that's easy, since there isn't any existing yellow to match. Red might be trickier. See, I was thinking about trying a rotary tool with a thin saw blade. But I'm thinking that the cut might still end up too thick. Anyway... still no sign of Tarn and Scraphook, so we're moving on to number 2 of the Earthspark Deluxes, and that's Megatron. SPOILERS if you haven't watched Earthspark for the next paragraph or so! So, yeah, in Earthspark Megatron is on the same Ghost team as the Autobots. Megatron as a good guy isn't entirely new- during IDW's "Dark Cybertron" storyline Megatron found himself allied with Bumblebee against Shockwave, and after Bumblebee's death at Shockwave's hands he formally switched sides and would remain an Autobot for the rest of the original IDW run. There's a lot of fertile ground there for stories... what was it that made Megatron want to start a revolution in the first place, how continual violence and the pursuit of power as a means to an end desensitized him to his own growing tyranny, and how he struggles to reconcile what he's become with what he wanted to be, etc. So far, Earthspark has only barely touched on that, kind of glossing over the idea that he war ended because he realized he was in the wrong, with a growing sense that Megatron distrusts Ghost and is concerned that the Decepticons are being treated unfairly by them. Of course, we're not hear to talk about the show, we're here to talk about the toy, and... I dunno. In broad strokes he looks like he does on the show, but something seems off. Like, maybe his eyes are too big and his face too small, and the lines on his face kind of blur together so he looks like he's got a wide, straight mouth and a vacant expression. His shoulder armor lacks the layered, sharp edges of the cartoon. There's splashes of red on his forearms that should properly be on his biceps instead, and there are small protrusions on his knees that belong on the sides of his legs. Most egregious are the wings and rotors on the sides of his arms. Like, I get that they need to go somewhere, and this is just a Deluxe, but I feel like they didn't even really try. Honestly, I wish they were at least partsforming and could be removed. Or, failing that, that they actually locked into place instead of spinning all-too-freely on the outside of his arms. And your mileage may vary, but I'd have loved it if they weren't so sloppy with that gunmetal paint. Like Bee, Megatron comes with just two accessories- his fusion cannon, and an arm. Because build-a-figures. Megatron's head is on a ball joint. He can look up, but not really down, and has the slightest of sideways tilts. His shoulders rotate on ball joints and can move laterally around 30 degrees. There is a transformation hinge that'll let him get nearly 90 laterally, but it's on the wrong side of the ball joint. No dedicated bicep swivel, but his elbows are ball joints that act as swivels and 90 degrees of bend. No wrist or waist articulation (again). Hips are on ball joints that go 90 degrees forward, backward, and laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend nearly 180 degrees. His toes can tilt downward due to his transformation, but nothing up, and his feet have a too-slight ankle pivot. Megatron's cannon attaches to a 5mm port on the kibble on the outside of either forearm, but again it's not symmetrically designed and intended to go on his right arm. Megatron's transformation is barely that. His torso shifts upward, covering his head, then his shoulders come together to form the nose while his arms curl back to his sides and the wings spin 180 degrees to put the propellors on the outside. His hip skirts splay out to the sides, then his legs turn and fold over the thighs, and that's pretty much it. The most interesting thing about Megatron's transformation is how his fusion cannon splits in half with half plugging onto each wing behind the propellor to form the engines. Megatron's chest, arms, hands, and pelvis are all very visible on the underside. I do want to applaud the Earthspark team for a minute, though. Once it was accepted that Megatron just can't be a gun anymore, it seems like a tank just became the default for him (when he isn't some kind of alien spaceship). I love that Earthspark went in a different direction, and his VTOL alt mode seems like a nod to Transformers Animated Megatron, intentional or not. And as near as I can tell, it is fairly cartoon accurate... I just wish they'd put a little more effort into it, actually using the cockpit on the front of his torso instead of having a second one on the backs of his shoulders. and having his wings come from somewhere besides hanging off of his forearms Megatron has little molded wheels on his underside, near the back, and rests on them and bumps on the front of his shoulders, under the VTOL's nose. The propellors spin. And, if you were curious, here's how he looks without the fusion cannon attached. Yesterday I expressed some disappointment with Hasbro for calling these figures Deluxes and charging the same Deluxe price while failing to deliver a product on-par with a Legacy or Studio Series Deluxe. With Bumblebee, that argument was more of an academic one- like, maybe I am getting more bang for my buck with something like Evolution Needlenose, and maybe there wasn't really any reason they couldn't have given him a waist swivel, but I still liked Bumblebee so I wasn't exactly mad about it. I am mad now, though. Megatron is like 80% screen accurate, and that missing 20% is because this figure is a lot closer to being a Warrior-class* or an over-sized Core-class than a Deluxe, and the lazy engineering just drags this figure down. Put another way, this is the single cheapest Deluxe-class figure I've reviewed since before Siege, and winds up being one of the worst "Deluxe-class" Hasbro figures I've bought in years. Don't waste your money, and demand that Hasbro be better. *Hasbro actually does have a Warrior-class Megatron coming... the transformation seems only slightly less complex than this, and although the alt mode is definitely less accurate than this one I think the robot actually looks slightly better.

I hope it's the next wave of Evolution, with an SS86 Snarl for good measure.

Well, I've had the photos for these guys shot for awhile and I've just been sitting on them, hoping that Scraphook and Tarn would come in and we could finish the first wave of Evolution first. Unfortunately, Targets around me have been stocking up on Earthspark stuff while there's still no sign of Legacy Evolution, and neither Amazon nor Pulse seem in a hurry to send out those last two. Just like Cyberverse, I'll probably ignore most of the line unless a particular Warrior-class catches my eye, but I think we will take a look at Deluxes. And, going in the order they're listed on the back, first up is Bumblebee. At a glance, Earthspark Bumblebee seems similar enough to Cyberverse Bumblebee that you'd almost think Earthspark is a sequel. I'm not really complaining, though- I liked Bee's Cyberverse design. That said, there's definite differences, though. Earthspark uses more black for his biceps and thighs- Hasbro used gray plastic to represent what was really more of a gunmetal color on Cyberverse Bee. And one of my main complaints about the Cyberverse Deluxes was that they often lacked enough painted details to be cartoon-accurate, but that's fortunately no the case with Earthspark Bee. Really, the only missing deco I can find is that there should be a little more black on his toes, and those vents on his forearms should be painted silver. There are other, mechanical differences between Earthspark and Cyberverse as well. Cyberverse Bee's wings are on a hinge that keeps them on his back, while Earthspark's are connected to his shoulders like the old Thrilling 30 Bumblebee. And Earthspark's got a much messier backpack. Earthspark Bee comes with a bit fewer accessories- just his blaster and an arm for a build-a-figure. I'm not complaining in the sense that I actually want more, but I feel compelled to mention that Cyberverse Bee also came with a stinger and blast effect for his price tag. See, what you get for your money is going to be a theme here. Bee's head is on a ball joint that swivels but has minimal up/down/sideways tilt. His shoulders are on ball joints for swiveling. They also give him minimal lateral movement- transformation hinges give him nearly 90 degrees of lateral movement, but only when his arms are down at his sides. No dedicated bicep swivels, but his elbows are ball joints that act as swivels and bend a little over 90 degrees. So far, that puts his articulation almost exactly on par with the Cyberverse Deluxe, but Earthspark Bee lacks wrist swivels and a waist swivel, something Cyberverse Bee does have. Below the waist things are pretty even again... hips are on ball joints that go forward 90 degrees, backward 45 degrees, and laterally a little under 90. His thighs swivel and his knees bend a little over 90 degrees. His feet can tilt up and down somewhat, and his ankles pivot about 30 degrees. If you're keeping score, Earthspark can't move his hips backward as far but has slightly deeper knee bends, and he has more up/down tilt on his feet but much shallower ankle pivots. He's otherwise tied with Cyberverse below the waist. Bee's blaster is hollow on the underside, and it has a 5mm peg under there, so the peg fits into either either fist and covers over his forearm such that it looks like his arm transformed into the blaster. The slightly asymmetric design is mostly cartoon-accurate, and meant to go on his right arm, though. It's mostly fine, but it should have a lot more gunmetal paint on it. When he's not using it, you can use a pair of tabs on the bottom to plug it onto Bee's backpack. Cyberverse Bumblebee didn't necessarily have the most complicated of transformations, but it's certainly a bit more complex than Earthspark's. Both used their shoulder pads to make up much of their front ends, and their wings to make their doors. But the rest of Cyberverse Bee's front end was folded neatly inside his torso, along with his head. His legs folded over to make the entire rear and part of the roof, leaving just a small section of roof and windshield as a backpack for bot mode. Earthspark Bee's lower legs simply bend out to the sides 180 degrees to make those big intakes. This means that the middled section of his nose and grill, where the stripes are, his entire roof and windshield, and the back between the intakes is all unfurled from his backpack, and on the underside of the car you can plainly see Bumblebee's robot body from his knees to his head, including his arms tucked above his head. I'll say this though... while he could use a bit of that paint that's on his grill over the intake vents on his rear, as well as some gunmetal paint on his rims, he's really very cartoon-accurate. Love 'em or hate 'em, those big intakes are a part of the design. Heck, even that gap on his rear between the taillights, as ugly as it might look, is present in the cartoon. Those raised pentagonal shapes are supposed to be his exhaust. You have a lot of options for storing his blaster on the car, as there are slots for the tabs on his hood, on his roof, and on his rear. For reasons I may never know for certain (but, given the timing, the answer is most likely the box office success of Revenge of the Fallen) in 2009 IDW soft-rebooted their Transfomers comics after All Hail Megatron, and artist Guido Guidi gave the Transformers some pretty extreme makeovers that borrowed heavily on the faceted, almost organic faces and overlapping panels designs of the Bayformers. While at first Guidi kept Bumblebee a VW, by issue 5 he'd given Bee a muscle car for an alt mode. Guidi would eventually tone down the mechnorganic aspect, going for a more traditional G1 style, but Bee would retain his new alt mode through the rest until after the Chaos event that split The Transformers into the separate Robots in Disguise (and later simply The Transformers after the RID 15 cartoon launched) and More Than Meets the Eye, and Hasbro made the not-so-great toy of it in 2013. Guidi's design proved influential; while you could certainly make the case that it and later Bumblebees were directly influenced by the Bayverse Bumblebee, it's worth noting that Guidi's Bumblebee appeared in the comics a few months before Transformers Prime. And while pretty much every Bumblebee since has had door wings and a sports car for an alt mode, both Cyberverse and Earthspark seem to draw more directly from Guidi's design with things like parts of the front of the car for shoulder pads and taillights on their knees. Why do I bring up this little history lesson? Well, the thing is, I do like Earthspark Bumblebee, and if you're enjoying the new show you might want to pick this one up. However, even as Hasbro raises the prices on Deluxe-class figures, it seems like you're getting less bang-for-your-buck than you did with Cyberverse Bee. And I'm sure I've pointed out in several Cyberverse reviews that, despite being called "Deluxe-class" and sporting the same price tag, War for Cybertron (and now Legacy) Deluxes sport more advanced engineering, fewer ball joints, and a higher parts count, and I don't think that should be the case. If I buy a Deluxe-class from Earthspark, and it costs the same as a Deluxe from Legacy, then I think it's reasonable to expect the same level of quality, which objectively isn't the case here no matter how much I subjectively like this toy. And ultimately, no matter how much I like this or Cyberverse Bee, they both make me want a Legacy Bumblebee that uses the evergreen design that Cyberverse Bee is based on, but with engineering and aesthetics on par with Legacy.

What paints did you use? And how did you cut Ironhide's skirt? I was thinking about buying the Toyhax labels, but if I can get Ironhide looking that good with just paint...

I've gone on record more than once for saying that while I liked the show, I don't like Wyatt's exaggerated cartoon designs as three-dimensional objects, so I can honestly say that if a third party did any kind of Animated toys, be they designed to augment and replace the originals like APC is doing with Prime or even a more ambitious attempt at Masterpiece Animated designs, they'd be a hard pass for me. That said, I'd kill for Blackout to get a G1-ified Legacy-style update in the mainline.

If you follow APC and their love the best show on Hasbro's short-lived Hub channel, then you might have seen this coming after Soundwave and Bulkhead (unless you thought I decided to get their FE Arcee or their Vehicons... not entirely out of the question, BTW). No, tonight I'm taking a look at APC's first* totally new figure- Night Countess, aka Airachnid. *That I know of... you know how these third parties are. For all we know APC is a brand TFC created just for knocking off TF Prime figures. When it comes to Transformers, I think one of the least controversial things I can say is "Hasbro's Deluxe-class Airachnid sucked." Huge backpack, limited head articulation because she had a seat on the back of it, awkward arms, and practically no deco as she's almost entirely black. Ironically, one of the few places she had purple paint is her pelvis, and that's probably the one place she didn't need it. Needless to say, it'd take more than a fresh coat of paint to save that figure, so APC didn't. Instead, they brought us an all-new design that, from what I understand, was actually something a fan worked up years ago. I'm told APC bought the design and put it into production, and here she is. Mor purple on her legs, arms, abdomen, and feet. Gold on her knees, shoulders, and wrists. Actual arms, not just the panels. She has a backpack, sure, but it's not particularly large or egregious. All-in-all, I could probably find little things to nitpick on like the screws on her forearms or her thicc hips, but when you look at what she's replacing Night Countess is clearly a huge upgrade. Emphasis on huge! I'm pretty sure that the official scale has Arcee and Airachnid as being among the smallest of the Transformers in the Prime continuity. Night Countess dwarfs RiD Arcee, and stands roughly equal to First Edition Starscream and APC's own Soundwave. But... I recall a scene where Airachnid was trying to convince the Decepticons that Megatron was gone and she was in charge, then Soundwave kicks the crap out of her. Now, if I rewatch that scene, I can plainly see that Soundwave is bigger than her, but that's not what stuck out in my mind. What stuck out was that she must be high-ranking... and higher-ranking characters in G1 tended to be bigger, my brain applied that logic to Prime, and lo and behold I wound up remembering Airachnid being bigger than she was. Even though I rationally understand that Night Countess is too big, this scale feels right to me. Night Countess' head is on a ball joint with some sideways tilt, but really good downward tilt and the excellent upward tilt until she's look straight up. Her shoulders are ball joints and they swivel fine, but she only gets about 45 degrees of lateral motion and only if her arm is down. If you raise her arm first you get nothing, and it's due to the kibble on her biceps. Speaking of she has a ball joint at the elbow that doubles as her thigh swivel, but a hinge below it means her elbows are double-jointed and can bend 180 degrees. She doesn't swivel at the waist, but she does have one under her chest. There's also a hinge there that gives her a slight back bend/ab crunch. Her hips are ball joints that'll go 90 degrees backward, a little short of that forward, and about 45 degrees laterally. Her thighs swivel, and her knees bend about 90 degrees. No foot or ankle articulation, although her heels are hinged for transformation and can tilt up or down as needed to keep her feet flat. The three limbs on her backpack have ball joints at the base that let them swivel and hinge, plus a second hinge mid-limb. Did she have a weapon in the cartoon? It's been awhile, I don't remember. I do remember that the Hasbro Deluxe had those weird-looking web guns. In any case, Night Countess doesn't come with any guns. That's not to say that she doesn't have any accessories, though! Her rotor comes off, and you can replace it with the six spider limbs she often deployed in the cartoon. They come in two set of three, and instead of plugging in where the rotor goes they plug into the sides of her backpack. They have the added benefit of letting her do her half-spider mode. In fact, a good portion of her lower leg actually detaches from her shins and hinges backward, and her legs tab together. Her hip skirts then kind of cover over the sides of her leg. They don't seem to lock in place that I can find, but since the backs of her legs don't detach for alt mode this was clearly an intentional design, not a fan transformation. This is also likely why she can look straight up and arch her back. Much has been made of how the spider legs can't support her weight, and indeed, when I first started messing with her I thought it was a pain just to keep them attached. If you run into problems, you're probably doing it wrong. I eventually figured out that the sides of her backpack need to fold out so that they're pointing away from her body. Then the spider legs don't attach to the outside of those flaps, they attach to the inside- quite securely. From there, you'll find that you can swivel a trio of legs at a time, then each leg has a hinge that moves it forward/backward and a pair of hinges for bending in/out. Properly attached, you should have no trouble posing her in spider mode with the legs more than capable of keeping her body off the ground. Night Countess' transformation is interesting, because while it is definitely a bit more complex that the simplistic Deluxe Airachnid, it's not at all complex by 3P standards. Her backpack unfurls, revealing the cockpit and nose, then her upper body spins 180 degrees so the cockpit is in the right spot and she's kind of sticking her face between her legs. The outermost section of her backpack spins around to cover over her head, then arms curl up and combine with the hip skirts to make much of the sides of her alt mode while her legs clip together so they form her tail boom. That's it. In a way, it doesn't feel like a 3P sort of design, it very much feels like something Hasbro could have come up with on their own if they'd made Airachnid a Voyager in the first place and she had a bit more budget to work with. Which is good, because even as I replace certain figures with the APC versions APC's stuff is still mostly tweaked KOs of Hasbro toys in the first place. Feeling like she could have been a Hasbro toy means she doesn't feel out-of-place with them. All that being said... if we're being totally fair I do have to point out that aside from the rotor blades Hasbro's Deluxe is actually more accurate in helicopter mode. She's thinner and less bulbous in the front, with sharper angles that flow more smoothly into her tail boom. The mechanical detail around the rotor isn't present on the Deluxe or the animation, and her cockpit can open up. Night Countess doesn't have anything on her underside to rest on the way the Deluxe does... in fact, if you look at her underside you can plainly see her whole robot mode from the bottom of her ribs down to her toes, with her face peaking between her thighs. But you gotta pick your poison... do you want a great helicopter but a robot mode as bad as the Deluxe? Or do you want a great robot that makes kind of a fat helicopter? I mean, most of my stuff is displayed in bot mode, so I know what I pick. Not a lot you can do with the helicopter, though. Her rotor does spin, but it doesn't spin freely to make posing her in bot mode easier. Her cockpit doesn't open, and she doesn't carry any weapons. I suppose you can pull out the rotor and pop on the spider-legs for a spider-chopper. Night Countess is an impressive figure that looks fantastic in robot mode with a fairly intuitive, not overly-complicated transformation that manages to fit in with your official Transformers Prime toys. My only real complaint is that I wish her shoulder and ankle articulation was a bit better, but it's not like the decade-old toys she's meant to be with were setting a new standard for articulation, although her larger size may also bother some. Honestly, though, at a very reasonable $40-$50 I'd still recommend her, she's a figure Prime fans won't want to miss.

And Skynet is really ChatGPT.

Oh, ok, I gotcha. I didn't realize that Ptereleons Nemeios came with replacement parts for Kadmos.

We can't help it that the '80s and early '90s were filled with forgotten cartoons way cooler than BMFM. To be fair, this is the first time I've ever heard of Roar Comics. If I never heard of Roar, how could I know they were making Dinosaucers comics?

Isn't that close to what Kadmos cost in the first place? And I thought I was bad for thinking about dropping $16 on cartoon-accurate missiles for TF Prime First Edition Starscream...

While APC's first product was a KO of Transformers Prime First Edition Optimus Prime, their first announced product was a KO of First Edition Bulkhead. And yet, a few releases and several repaints later APC's Bulkhead is nowhere to be found. Or is he? Because I just received this- Now, I don't normally cover packaging in my reviews, because I'm generally a "toss the box" sort of collector. But... what is this? I mean, we can reasonably assume AC-01R is the model, but is Arms Iron the name of the company or the name of the figure? Is "Model-Level Deformation Toys" the company, or a description of what they do? Confusing things more, while a rep from APC has denied their involvement, other sources involved have claimed that this is, in fact, from APC. I don't know what's true... all I can say is that the box is not at all APC's style, but the instructions (a single paper with robot-to-alt one one side and alt-to-robot on the other) is exactly like APC's. Curiouser and curiouser... And out of the box, wouldn't you know it, it's a KO of First Edition Bulkhead... like APC announced and never released. Specifically, this one is colored like the Takara release. There's apparently an AC-01 without the R that's colored like the Hasbro release. I grabbed this one because it was more readily available when I decided to try it instead of holding out for an official APC release, but I kind of think I might prefer the darker green anyway. As near as I can tell, it's a 1:1 KO. I think that's fine for the size, but here's hoping that if this isn't from APC and APC does eventually release one that they change up the deco to make it more cartoon-accurate. I mean, while this Takara-colored one uses a darker green, I think both versions used the same color for the hands, biceps, and crotch, which is sort of a warm taupe instead of cooler silver or gunmetal. Actually, if they'd matched the color of the plastic on his knees that'd have been fine. His feet are painted to match that taupe color, and I'd argue that his feet and hands should be a very dark gunmetal or even black. He lacks the darker green stripes on his arms, too, which is something that the later Robots In Disguise version had. On that note... which version did you guys like better? There's definitely some things that the newer Robots In Disguise mold tried to get right from the cartoon, like the black shoulder pads, the more refrigerator-shaped body, and the shape of the outside of his leg and foot right down to the faux wheels in this heels. On the other hand, the FE design has a rounder shape that I associate more with Bulkhead, a grill on his tummy, and the headlights are properly on his chest behind the doors instead of under the doors near his waist. I think his wheel-wings are also more accurate, with less kibble on top peeking over his shoulders. Oh, a note about his shoulder pads... since they're actually part of the alt mode instead of random floating bits, I don't mind that they're not totally black even though that'd be cartoon accurate. That said, there's a splash of silver on them that doesn't show in alt mode, and that silver could have been black to at least be a bit closer to accurate. APC, I hope you're taking notes. As far as I know, the only accessory First Edition Bulkhead came with back in the day was his wrecking ball. In a most APC-like manner, this figure comes with some extra accessories that appear to be knocked-off from a 3P upgrade kit from a company called Dreamworks... you get a pair of blasters, a black bumper part*, two parts that form a long handle, a claw, and a... I dunno... thingy. The blasters, handle, claw, and thingy can be combined to form a large hammer. *The bumper part reads DP-12-001 Dreamworks... they didn't even bother to remove the name of the kit-maker they KO'ed. Bulkhead's head is on a ball joint, but it has no up/down/sideways tilt and you can only swivel it a bit under 90 degrees to the right or left or it will pop off. His shoulders rotate and extend laterally about 90 degrees... the rotation joint is a tad loose on both shoulders on my copy (the other joints seem fine though). He's also got a little backward butterfly. Elbows are a single hinge, but they bend a bit over 90 degrees. His wrists don't swivel, but due to how they transform they can bend inward. No waist swivel. His hips go forward and backward about 45 degrees, and 90 degrees laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend on soft ratchets 90 degrees. No ankle pivots, but his toes have a slight upward and plenty of downward tilt. The wrecking ball works the same as the original Hasbro/Takara toy- fold his hand into his forearm to reveal a peg hole, and a peg on the wrecking ball will plug into it. To use the hammer, pull the bottom of the handle off, slide the upper portion through his fist, and then plug the bottom back on. Like I said, the shoulder swivels are a tad loose, though, and they don't support the weight of the hammer all that well. That said, they're just mushroom swivels, so a little floor polish should fix that right up. BTW, notice the bicep on the arm holding the hammer? Now, I own neither the Hasbro First Edition or the Takara (if I did, I wouldn't have to resort to KOs, would I?), but AFAIK that bicep filler was NOT part of the original Hasbro toy and therefore not on AC-01, but it was on the Takara version hence its inclusion on AC-01R. To use the arm blasters, there are clips that allow the sides of the blasters to pull apart, and they're just pegged to the thing on top of the handle. With the sides of the blasters open there's enough room to stuff Bulkhead's arm inside- just make sure his hands are still folded in so they can peg in like his wrecking ball. Speaking of pegging stuff in, if you take the thingy off the handle, then take the spikey part off, it can also plug into his wrist port, giving him a kind of claw. And, I have to say, I can do without the hammer, but I love the new blasters. Which just leaves the bumper piece. You can store it on his robot mode by turning him around, where you'll notice two slots on the sides of his pelvis. Little tabs on the bumper fit into those slots, holding it in place over his butt. It's not the prettiest, but at least it's storage. So this is probably super subjective, but I strongly prefer the transformation for FE Bulkhead over RID Bulkhead. Like, both of their arms have to tuck under the rear of the car, but his forearms don't have to be twisted to fit. They both have their collar and back make up their roofs, but the rear of FE is made from his shoulder pads, giving him less back kibble and not requiring you to move the shoulder panels on their own separate armature to form the rear side windows. Both have their rear wheels and fenders on their backs like wings, but FE doesn't have the additional side panel. Both have the legs tucked under the food, but FE doesn't require spinning his legs around, and it tucks his crotch more neatly underneath. Both are pretty accurate in truck mode, shape-wise. I like RID Bulkhead's larger front bumper, and he's got the darker green stripe on the doors. I like the bigger silver sections around the headlights and wider body on FE Bulkhead. I like the FE Bulkhead has translucent front side windows, no dark green around the windows, and no translucent plastic on the roof, plus he's got the dark stripes on his bed cover. I also think FE Bulkhead manages his undercarriage kibble just a bit better, and as a bonus his wrist ports are facing out the back like exhausts... that you can totally plug Siege blast effects into. Both have paint on the grill, headlights, taillights, and side skirts, and both are missing painted details on their bumpers. Both also could have used painted rims. More stuff for APC to improve on later, eh? As was the case on the original toy, you can use the peg on Bulkhead's wrecking ball to plug it into his bed cover in alt mode. And this is where the Dreamworks bumper really comes in- you just wrap it over his actual bumper. I'm not sure it's entirely necessary, though- the bumper he already has is cartoon-accurate, so he doesn't really need a bigger one. That said, I suppose his shoulder pads to tend to pull apart a bit, and the bumper acts as a clip that holds them together, eliminating any unsightly gaps. I probably won't use it, but it's an option, at least. If you want to store his blasters on the truck it's a little bit trickier. You'll notice that two of the panels that make up each blaster has a pair of slots, one the third pair has some ridges. The ridges look like they should fit around the rails on his roof, but the tolerances are far too loose. The slots, though, can fit onto the spikes on his wrecking ball. If you don't mind the blasters pointed out at a 45 degree angle you can simply plug the blasters onto the ball, then plug the ball into the bed like normal- no part of the blasters will be directly over the bed. If you want them facing forward, though, you'll find that the blasters are slightly lower than the bottom of the ball, preventing the peg from reaching the bed. To get around this, get the claw, plug it into the bed first, then plug the ball into the claw. That'll raise it up enough that the blasters can sit over the bed. I suppose, in some ways, this is more review of First Edition Bulkhead and a comparison with the Robots In Disguise mold, and I ultimately conclude that the First Edition version is the better version. And, given that you can buy a new copy of FE Bulkhead from Hasbro Pulse or one of their retail partners, and used copies on eBay hover around $100, I don't really have any qualms about suggesting the KO instead- aside from slightly loose shoulders (which is fixable) the quality seems on par with my legit RiD version, plus you get some extra accessories. However, APC's releases are rarely 1:1 KOs. Prime got a more show-accurate, premium deco. Megatron was an improved upscale of the superior Deluxe-class mold. Arcee got a more premium paint job. Soundwave got a more accurate deco and was embiggened a bit to scale better. These improvements don't always equate to modern articulation like ankle pivots that an original 3P release might have had, but they still help your Transformers Prime shelf look a bit better. So, while I might recommend picking up this KO over buying an actual FE Bulkhead on the secondary market, I'm not sure that FE Bulkhead is so much better than RID Bulkhead that replacing RID Bulkhead with this KO is necessary, especially with the specter of a more-accurate deco with possible mold improvements from actual APC Toys still hanging over us. And if you already have a legit FE Bulkhead there's zero reason to replace it with this KO (although, buying this KO for the extra accessories might be cheaper than tracking down the original Dreamworks upgrade kit, so...), whereas an APC release with silver on his biceps and crotch instead of taupe and black on his feet, shoulders, and hands, painted lights on the bumpers, and the stripes on the doors and forearms might have been worth an upgrade. Alas, AFAIK APC's next planned release is a KO of First Edition Cliffjumper, so the wait for an APC Bulkhead goes on.

I really liked Tron, I really liked Tron: Legacy, and I absolutely LOVED Tron: Uprising. But... not sure I like Jared Leto.

I forget about ArtDink's Vita games (Delta Scramble and Gundam Seed Battle Destiny) because, despite running on better hardware, they seemed so much worse than the PSP games.

Some time ago I reviewed APC Toys Attack Prime (and the superior repainted version), which was basically a KO of Transformers Prime First Edition Optimus Prime with extra accessories from a Dr. Wu kit. The later I checked out their Dark Master, which was also still technically a KO of a HasTak Prime Megatron with some extra accessories from a Dru Wu kit (I think), but a slightly more ambitious project- unlike Attack Prime, who was a 1:1 KO (with better paint on the second version), Dark Master took the superior Deluxe-class toy the improved and upscaled it until it was bigger than the Voyager. I skipped APC's third major release, a KO of First Edition Arcee called Angel Engine, because even though she had a much better paint job than the original toy there were apparently some QC issues, and I happen to prefer the Robots in Disguise version over the First Edition. But I'm back on the APC train tonight with Demonic Whisper, their version of Prime Soundwave. A word, before I get too far into this... Demonic Whisper is actually APC's second crack at Soundwave. You may also see listings for Soundwave under Evil Voice. As near as I can tell, they're the same figure but Demonic Whisper has a slightly more subdued but more cartoon-accurate deco. Deco is also the first way that Demonic Whisper differs from the original Hasbro toy. Some joints in the shoulders, biceps, and hips that were black on the original are the same color as his body. He's got more purple energy lines, in place more correctly. Then he's got some additional gunmteal paint on his knees, feet, cheeks, crest, and upper torso. While the deco is better, there actually isn't much that's actually changed with the mold itself. There's no improvements to give him wrist articulation or ankle pivots, for example. The only real difference I could find is that his head isn't permanently thrust forward in a bit of a slouch. I don't think they modified any joints for that, though, they merely did away with a spring mechanism that shot his head out when you opened the backpack up. Of course, I may be burying the lede. The biggest, most obvious change isn't a missing spring or a new paint job. Demonic Whisper is a little bigger than the Hasbro version. Now, I don't have a scale chart for Prime, but the gist seems to be that Soundwave should be as tall (or even slightly taller) than Starscream, and the original definitely was not. But Demonic Whisper seems about right with First Edition Starscream and APC's own Dark Master. As a somewhat-enlarged, better-decoed, but otherwise mostly the same version of Hasbro's Soundwave he retains the chest that detaches and turns into Laserbeak. Like the Hasbro release, Lasberbeak is missing a few details, largely due to the mold not being changed aside from size. Laserbeak can use the same peg that attaches him to Demonic Whisper's chest to also attach to a hole on his wrist to make it look like he's perched there. We're not done, though. APC continues the trend of giving you a bit more than a simple KO of Hasbro, this time with what I believe are some totally original accessories. These accessories are a pair of cables, a pair of claws, four wire parts, and a plate with some peg holes. The plate with the peg holes works by simply plugging into a screw hole on Demonic Whisper's butt. The two peg holes now on his back are where we can plug in the cables. The cables themselves have bendy wire inside, so they'll hold a pose. Then you can pop the claws on the other end. The claws have another hole that you can use to attach two of the wire parts, if you like, to give Demonic Whisper the tentacles that Soundwave used in the show. Unfortunately, while the claws use some of that gunmetal paint (which is close enough to the silver of the cartoon, I guess), the cables are wires are simply black with none of the purple seen in the show. Demonic Whisper's articulation, by the way, is pretty much identical to the Hasbro release. But since I never covered the Hasbro release here, real quick, head's on a hinged ball joint that can look up slightly, nothing really down, decent sideways tilt, slight left-right swivel. Shoulders swivel and can move laterally a bit under 90 degrees, but the lateral hinge is outside the swivel. But then there's a ball joint that gives him some inward bend, and is maybe supposed to be part of his shoulder as it allows you move most of his arm below the hinge forward or backward and it sits about his bicep swivels. Below the bicep swive is another hinge that I'd say is 90 degrees of elbow bend. No wrist or hand articulation. His waist is tight, but it does swivel, and there's a slight ab crunch to give him a slightly hunched posture. His hips are ball joints that allow for over 90 degrees of forward motion but very little backward or laterally. His thighs swivel, but are limited by the kibble on the backs of his thighs colliding with his butt. His knees are also fairly limited. His actual knee is bent back as far as it goes already, and the digitigrade joint below it can't go too far backward due to kibble. His feet have a slight downward tilt and a ton of upward tilt, but no ankle pivots. All-in-all, I do wish they could have made a few more mold changes to improve his articulation below the waist. Transformation is identical to the Hasbro toy. Again, the changes are mostly minor deco ones- a grayer blue plastic, gunmetal on the engine, different purple lines. I'll note, though, that APC used a harder plastic for the vertical stabilizers. Not as safe for kids, but as an adult collector I'm happy Demonic Whisper doesn't have the droopy warped stab my Hasbro version does. Also, not pictured, but you can still attach the plate and tentacles while he's in drone mode. Doesn't interfere with anything. In some ways, Demonic Whisper (or Evil Voice) is a harder sell than Attack Prime and Dark Master. Attack Prime was based on a fairly limited release figure, and Dark Master replaces the Hasbro Voyager release with a better-scaled version of the superior Deluxe-class toy. Demonic Whisper has a better deco and is a bit bigger so he's more in-scale, but aside from some new tentacle accessories doesn't really do anything to fix my other complaints with the Prime Soundwave toy. If you already have that Soundwave and you're not too bothered by scale then you might not need to upgrade. However, if you're years late to the party Demonic Whisper goes for roughly half the $80-ish you might expect to pay for Prime Soundwave on the secondary market and you get a better toy to boot.