mikeszekely

My bad, I missed that post. I was out celebrating my birthday with my parents, wife, and daughter, and when I had a moment I checked MW on my phone to see if @Hikuro needed a Red Alert or not. For whatever reason I saw his post but not yours. I'm really ok with that. No so much in the sense that I want a G1-ish version of other RiD characters (because I really don't), but because Strongarm was one of the few things actually did like about RiD (with the caveat that I thought it was so bad that I only made it through half of the first season). I'll gladly buy figures of characters like Strongarm, Shadowstriker (from Cyberverse, btw), and other female Transformers (even if they don't have that classic '80s fembot shape), because I greatly prefer new female characters to gender-flipping existing ones like they did with Skywarp and Frenzy in Earthspark. Detritus is in the last wave, and I'm hoping that the leaked Earth-mode Hound that was supposed to be in Buzzworthy will be out around late spring (around the time the second wave of Evolution hits). Still waiting for confirmation, though... the problem with store-exclusives is just how much control over them the store gets. That said... while it may seem obvious to make Detritus a Hound repaint, since that's what the original was, Detritus is also canonically a Junkion. Just putting that out there in case he turns out to be remold/retool of Scraphook, Crashbar, or Axelgrease. Yeah, I wonder about that. Anecdotal, I know, but from what I've seen Legacy Arcee did NOT sell very well, and what I think people were more ok with the G1-ification of a character like Bulkhead without a proper G1 analog, but when it came to Arcee (and more recently, Prowl) there was a lot more complaining about just wanting the original characters with modern engineering and scaling. I have to admit, though, I'm in the minority that would probably skip any Animated, Prime, RiD 2015, Cyberverse, or Earthspark releases in the mainline if they didn't have the unified G1-ish aesthetic. I'm not into whatever dimension-hopping story the marketing guys came up with for Legacy. To me, Legacy Bulkhead is G1 Bulkhead. Legacy Arcee is a different-but-still-G1 character named Arcee (characters with the same name is nothing new in G1... Marvel UK printed a story back in 1987 where Swoop's original name was Divebomb until the Predacon stole it, and after Hasbro released Generations Tankor (the Beast Machines version) IDW remembered that Octane was released as Classics Tankor and put them both together in the comics, causing other characters to refer to them as "Tall Tankor" and "Fat Tankor.")

I'm still getting some clarification on the Studio Series releases for the year- there's some confusion with the Rise of the Beasts stuff being in both the Studio Series and its own separate line. And I haven't heard much on what sorts of store exclusives or Gen Selects or whatever might be coming (there's a Walmart event in March, though, so we'll see). But Evolution? Yeah, this is the entire rest of the line: *PR is "package refresh", that is, it's a figure from an earlier line in a new Legacy Evolution box. A few of the Cores, you'll note, are from previous Evolution waves, but since they're already Evolution figures they're not technically package refreshed.

Glad you were able to find them! Jetfire reissue TCP Jetfire reissue Entertainment Earth Sorry, you might be SOL there. Will you settle for the blue and gray Omega Guardian? It's been part of the rumor mill for awhile. Sky Lynx at TCP Sky Lynx at Entertainment Earth Sky Lynx at BBTS Dead End at Entertainment Earth

It's Hasbro, so I wouldn't hold my breath. 😒 I've checked three Walmarts and two Targets around here, no dice. Dragstrip, maybe? Based on what I've seen, Target has reset their toy section and Legacy is basically nonexistant now. You might have better luck with Walmarts. They still have Velocitron (although in the case of my local Walmart, not Crasher, just lots of Road Rockets and Burn Outs), and a peg or two of Legacy (the last one I checked had one Dragstrip, one Kickback, and a ton of Arcees). At least the Beast Wars repaints are gone, although I think they clogged up the pegs so long that my local Walmart never got any Legacy stuff after the first wave. If you want one, let me know. I'll swing by again sometime this weekend. Just cost and shipping. Anyway... because wherever I preordered would be the last place to get new Transformers I started preordering with both Pulse and Amazon, then keeping the one that arrived first and cancelling the other. Amazon was first with Breakdown, but my copy had an issue- the blue trim was missing from one leg. So I kept my Pulse preorder, too, and it arrived today. Having a spare made me feel comfortable experimenting a little. Based on @M'Kyuun's experience with Ironhide's hip skirt, I used a type-B X-acto handle with a number 2 blade (that is, a slightly thicker handle with a larger blade than the my usual type-A handle with the number 11 blade) to cut a spoiler in half. I started by lightly scoring the underside until I had a groove deep enough that the blade wouldn't slip, then I pressed the blade into the groove and rocked it while pressing firmly until it cut through. With the spoiler halved there's no need to remove it for transformation. If you want to be super technical, it does affect his articulation, but we're only reducing him from being able to bend his knees slightly over 90 degrees to just 90 degrees- I can live with that. And in car mode the ends line up so well you can barely tell it's two pieces (not that my camera bothered to keep the spoiler in focus). Bonus! Since the extra one Breakdown is basically for parts now, I can give his gun to the good one, and Breakdown is now no longer the only Stunticon with one gun. Although, he's still only got the ability to store one gun in alt mode, so... meh? The TL;DR is that if you get Breakdown I definitely recommend using a sharp hobby knife to cut his spoiler in half- it's how Hasbro should have made him in the first place. But I don't actually recommend buying two Breakdowns just to have two guns.

I really wish the Gobots got more respect. I know Bandai owns the Machine Robo brand and the original toys, but Hasbro has the Gobots IP. If we can have Animated, Prime, Diaclone, Armada, and Comic universes in Legacy I fail to see why we couldn't have a Gobots universe with more-accurate but "legally distinct" toys of at least the main cast. I mean, come on, a Formula-1 car has about as much in common with a Porsche 956 as the Nissan I drive to my local Target. Ironically, the one time in recent history Hasbro did make a toy with a very Crasher-esque alt mode it was Jazz, and they didn't bother to do a Crasher repaint (to be fair, I think it'd be hard to get Crasher's bot mode out of Jazz, but maybe not too much more difficult than to get Crasher out of Mirage). In other news, Evan (the Hasbro designer guy) put up some pictures of the Core-class Dinobots, one of which has a note indicating that Volcanicus knee hinge on Grimlock is off center, so Volcanicus will have clearance for both legs. This means that Grimlock isn't just a leg, he's specifically the LEFT leg. And which of Dinoking's legs is the T-Rex? Left, you say? You guys know where this is going... Swoop will turn out to be an arm, Snarl will turn out to be the other leg, and the new guy (who will apparently be named Skar) will be an ankylosaurus and the other arm. Mark my words, the Core-class Dinobots are a pretool for Dinoking.

I'm not referring to the wheels on his shoulders, which become the front tires for the alt mode. They're there by necessity, as you say, not an homage. I mean these ones. Sure, there are some military trucks that have spares on the back of the cab, and that's where they wind up. But the tires on the Animated toy aren't on the animation model- they just disappear. But, you can see in the image in my previous post, Bulkhead definitely had wheels on is back on the CGI model for Prime. No, like I said, the ones on his shoulders are his front tires. The ones on his back are the spares. And as you've noted, it's a detail that's found on some real military trucks, but one I think Hasbro could have nixed or simplified to save on parts, except that folding them together like that is a Prime homage. Yeah, I've conceded that the alt mode is closer to Animated, but with the sirens and armored rear I saw Animated Bulkhead as something more like a SWAT truck or something MPs would use. I'm not giving you the cab, though, as it's pretty much the same for Prime Bulkhead. His nose squishes up so it kind of covers his windshield (less so in RID), but the windshield is still on his chest and his grill's still on his abs.

This is a sentiment that I've heard rather frequently. Some are even not super thrilled with Twincast, calling him a "a $40 Rewind." Now, it could be that the circles I run with skew older... essentially, we're geewunners. And like I said before, I'm not opposed to fans of other series getting their time in the sun. As Evan said, every show was someone's first entry into the brand. But I am curious what the numbers are looking like at this point. War for Cybertron was exciting, finally giving G1 fans new, cartoon-accurate, articulated figures of most of the main cast, and collectors responded. I recall Hasbro announcing on year that it was like a record year for the brand. But I haven't heard much since Legacy, and I know that aside from the Stunticons the first wave lingered on store shelves, making shopping online for the second and third wave practically a necessity. If sales are down, I hope Hasbro gets the message. Like I said, I'm not opposed to other series getting their time in the sun, but no more OG characters like Scraphook and Crashbar, no more prioritizing the late G1 deep cuts like Pointblank and Needlenose while making more prominent characters like Breakdown minimal effort repaints and shelving cartoon mainstays like Gears. Anyway... just a PSA, if you missed Minerva, she's finally available to order directly from Walgreens.com. Also, if you missed getting earth mode Red Alert, maybe shoot me a PM. My local store still has a couple.

Almost forgot I wanted to address this, and the board software makes it a tad difficult to add another quote when you edit a post, so I'm stuck starting a new one. Anyway... Legacy Bulkhead is going to share a lot of elements with Animated Bulkhead, because Prime Bulkhead shares a lot of elements with Animated Bulkhead. During the early planning for the show, Bulkhead's character on Prime was going to be Ironhide (hence the jacked up truck alt mode), but a confluence of factors (Ironhide's death in Dark of the Moon, Bulkhead's popularity coming off Animated, etc) made them go with Bulkhead instead. Legacy Bulkhead does have some features in common with Animated Bulkhead that he doesn't with Prime, like silver thigh and green feet instead of green thighs and silver feet, and the military truck alt mode instead of beefed up pickup. That said, Legacy Bulkhead's head with the narrow crest and silver, un-toothed jaw is far more Prime Bulkhead, as are other details like the black bumper and silver crotch, the fact that he has actual fingers instead of pincers, and the fact that his mace is more like a punch than a wrecking ball on a chain. Honestly, though, the detail that would establish him firmly as Prime Bulkhead (if, in my head canon, he wasn't a retroactive G1 Bulkhead), is that he's got those two wheels on his back. They serve no purpose in alt mode, as the tires he actually rolls on are on his shoulders and legs, they simply fold back into the middle of his back. Now, if you're comparing with the toys, you might notice that Animated Bulkhead has some tires on his back, half-heartedly hidden behind some folded panels. Prime RID Bulkhead has tires on his back, but they're kind of flopping to the sides of his back and you might figure it's just unfortunate kibble that wound up there. But then you look at the animation models. Animated Bulkhead isn't drawn with wheels on his back. But Prime Bulkhead... Yeah, Legacy Bulkhead has two wheels on his back that serve no purpose in alt mode and exist only as a callback to Prime Bulkhead.

Wave 4, I think. There shouldn't be as big a gap between Shrapnel and Bombshell as there was with Kickback and Shrapnel. I get the fast part, but they are coming. Snarl is definitely this year, Swoop will be late this year or early next year. Seems they just don't want to talk about Studio Series that isn't Rise of the Beasts right now. Honestly, there's a lot of reasons, some of which they lightly touched on in the stream when they talked about any given TF show being someone's first exposure to the brand. It's the 35th anniversary of Masterforce, the 20th anniversary of Armada, and stuff like that is getting recognized with toys. Also, Evan seems to be a JG1 fan, and Mark is weirdly into Machine Wars. Honestly, I'll be surprised if Skyquake doesn't get a Gen Selects release as Machine Wars Starscream with a new head. I'm like 95% Ramjet is going to get a release, but I can't recall if Thrust is in the lineup. I think Wave 4. But he's 100% coming. I like her better than Prime, but Megatron's still my top gal. ...alas, I don't $150 like any of them. I bought two, and swapped the stock head on the second with the toy-style head from the Buzzworthy set that had Ransack.

Opening with SS Bumblebee, Battletrap, Arcee, Airazor, and Cheetor. Y'know, a bunch of stuff you've been able to preorder for at least a week on Pulse. Leaked yesterday, but technically a new official reveal, it's Leader-class Scourge. And it turns out the the previously-revealed Freezer is basically a Battlemaster. Sorry, they haven't give us a good look at Freezer's alt mode, just what you could see in the video. Evolution Core-class Grimlock. He's a chunky boy, but given how compromised Sludge was it could be worse. And oh, he's a leg... just like I predicted. Core-class Nemesis Prime. Surprised it took so long. Also surprised to see it at all right now. I knew it was coming, but I thought it was coming in a later wave. And Thundercracker, who I was expecting. I guess we're going from two to three a wave? Deluxe-class Crashbar. Another Junkion. I like that this one is a bike, he seems more traditionally Junkion-y. But I'm less thrilled that so many slots in this line are being given to OG characters at the expense of getting stuff like Breakdown right. Shrapnel. Looks pretty good. Like how his bug legs become weapons, so you've still got a clean cartoon look. Crosscut. Oof, those red wheels. Well, they gotta milk those repaints. It's not exactly a surprise. Animated Prowl. It's like Animated from the neck down, but with a G1-ified head. I don't hate it, but let's say that Legacy and Evolution are a lot less exciting to me than War for Cybertron. Voyager-class Metalhawk. Like I said, it's a heavy retool of Cyclonus, which I'm cook with. Cyclonus was a very good mold. Jet mode is a little sloppy, but the bot mode looks great. I'm glad that they went with the anime look instead of trying to work the Pretender shell in the way did with the Decepticons. Twincast with Rewind. Twincast has a new head. Leader-class Skyquake. As I said, a mix of TF Prime and G1 Skyquake. And so far, it's everything I told you about yesterday. I think the only surprise for me is Nemesis Prime (whom I knew about, but I thought it was coming later). Interesting, they're talking about future releases. I guess they're sort of acknowledging the leaks by confirming that they're coming. No product shots, but yeah. Looks like we can expect Beachcomber, Devcon, a Junkion called Axlegrease, Dirge (a reissue of the WFC version), Nemesis Leo, and Armada Megatron. Nice to see that G1 is still getting some love, but I need Gears, Brawn, Windcharger, Seaspray and Powerglide more than I need friggin' Beachcomber. I also have to think that there are more popular characters in G1, and definitely in other Transformers properties, than Devcon. Megatron will be cool, though, especially when we they reveal Commander-class Armada Optimus. Another reveal without a reveal, but they confirmed that we're getting a "classics" repaint of the Volvo Holiday Optimus. The way Evan said "Classics" and the overall G1-but-Santa look of Holiday Optimus makes me think it'll be that figure, but in your regular red-and-blue Optimus. Bummer for people like me that still want Hero Prime. Preorders go up at 1:00 for Scourge and the Evolution stuff, the other ROTB stuff has been available. Despite lack of enthusiasm for much of the reveals, I'm preordering everything but Nemesis Prime.

The new Skyquake toy will be labeled as "Prime Universe" and definitely has elements of the Prime design, but like Arcee, Bulkhead, and Knockout they're giving him that Legacy pseudo-G1-ification, and they're doing it by borrowing heavily from G1 Skyquake (which is what I assume you meant by G2 Skyquake... he wasn't really G2, he was one of those very late European G1 toys that we wouldn't get on this side of the pond until they recolored them all for Machine Wars). No word on a Machine Wars Starscream repaint, but Prime Dreadwing is coming in the last wave of Evolution.

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.