mikeszekely

Having bought most (all?) of the Cyberverse Deluxes, I can't say that I'm in for any of the Earthspark stuff. They definitely look to be a continuation of the Cyberverse designs- heck, Shockwave is a repaint of the Cyberverse Deluxe. While there were a few highlights among them, Prowl being one that really springs to mind, despite being labeled as "Deluxe" they were definitely a step down in engineering/parts count/paint from War for Cybertron or even Studio Series Deluxes. They seem like a bit of a cash grab, really. Speaking of Deluxes, we're done with the Legacy ones, so we can move on to the Voyagers. We'll start with Inferno. I mean, that's immediately recognizable as Inferno. Hasbro did a good job using some black and metallic blue paint apps on his legs and waist plus some purple and gray on his pelvis and arms to bring out cartoon details that weren't present on the original toy. His head also as a much more cartoon-accurate sculpt than the original toy. Most of the aesthetic changes come down to the necessities of engineering. His wrists and his whole hands are black instead of just the fingers, and he's got 5mm ports on his forearms instead of blue spots. The ant legs coming out of his wrists are much larger than the cartoon. What's more, the cartoon had a set of ant legs on his robot shins, and the third pair simply disappeared. The ant legs on Legacy Inferno's shins are faux legs, molded onto the shins and painted. Legacy Inferno is instead forced to carry a pair of legs on his biceps, and another pair on his back near his waist (and the original toy at least had a pair there). The antenna that were on the cartoon's back, behind his head, are on Legacy Inferno's abs because they aren't removable the way the original toy's were. The ant mandibles (also not removable) at least fold inside the ant head; it's a shame they couldn't have done that with the antenna too. Inferno comes with just the one accessory. Rather than attempt to look like the gun he used in the show, it is instead modeled after the booster in his ant abdomen, although the translucent reds and gunmetal paint are not particularly show-accurate. Inferno's head is on a ball joint. Not much downward tilt, but he can look up a fair amount and tilt his head sideways a little in addition to swiveling it. Plus, there's a hinge in his head so you can open his jaws. His shoulders rotate and can extend laterally a little over 90 degrees. His biceps swivel, and his elbows are double-jointed and capable of a combined 180 degrees of bend. His wrists swivel, as does his waist. His hips go forward slightly over 90 degrees, backward slightly under 90 degrees, and 90 degrees laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. If you untab the knee, you can use a second transformation hinge to get nearly 180 degrees of bend total. His feet tilt down plenty, but not up, and his ankles can pivot over 90 degrees. All-in-all, very decent in the articulation department. His clawed hands are perfectly capable of holding weapons with a 5mm post for a handle. Additionally, he's got the previously-mentioned 5mm ports on his forearms, one on the outside of each leg just below the knees, under each foot, and in the middle of his backpack. If you close the backpack up, you'll find another 5mm port. Speaking of his backpack, you can use a second post on the back of his weapon to plug it into his backpack, because his weapon is pulling double-duty as both the booster from the cartoon and his gun. I'm sure if you'd like to leave the booster there in bot mode that someone, likely with a 3D printer, will make cartoon-accurate guns for him. Personally, this is fine for me. The "propellor" formed by his split ant abdomen can even spin like the cartoon. You have to spin it manually, though- it's my understanding that the original toy had some kind of spring-loaded gimmick. Inferno turns into, surprise, a fire ant. The transformation isn't particularly complicated, either. The ant head opens up, the jaws flip out, then it flips up and closes over his robot head. His robot arms tuck into the void in his chest vacated by the ant head. The bottom blade of his propellor rotates around so it lies under the top one, leaving a gap for his robot legs to tuck into when you close the abdomen up. Then it's pretty much just a matter of arranging the ant legs. The ant mode is pretty ok. Maybe he sits a little high. The middle pair of legs are a tad too long, I think, and between that and the back-heavy nature of the ant mode it's a bit more difficult than I'd like to get him standing on all six legs; the front pair are usually lifted off the ground. The legs themselves are all dark gray/black, in contrast to the show where the femurs were red and only the tibia and tarsi were black (or the toy, where the middle legs were black but parts of his front and rear pair were made from his red robot arms and legs). He's also missing the abdomen marking seen on both the original toy and the cartoon. He's otherwise cartoon-accurate, right down to the little mandibles in between the larger ones. Inferno's mandibles can open and close, and his antenna have hinges. His mandibles cannot be removed and used as a robot weapon, though, nor can you use it as a missile launcher to fire one of his back legs. Speaking of his legs, the front pair have hinges so they can move in toward his chest or out farther away from his body. The middle pair don't really have any articulation. The back pair have two hinges close to the body that let you adjust their position a bit. The ant head itself, due to the transformation hinges and the ball joint on the encapsulated robot head, has a little up/down tilt. His accessory can plug into a 5mm port on his back- unfortunately, due to his legs occupying that space, it cannot be stored in his abdomen. Once again, I'm not a huge Beast Wars fan. I watched the show as a young adult, and the characters that made the biggest impression on me were the initial cast. Coming in around the second third, he just didn't make as big an impression, and despite being around until the end of the show I guess I never really thought of him as one of the "main" characters. Still, I think he's probably one of the more popular characters with a lot of bigger BW fans than I, and while Legacy Inferno lacks some of the more integrated weapon storage and gimmicks of the original toy, as well as a more cartoon-accurate weapon, I expect that those fans will enjoy Legacy Inferno's pleasant transformation, solid articulation, and greater cartoon accuracy. I'll give him a solid recommend, if Beast Wars is your jam.

Well that's just a damn shame. I won't pretend to know what he might have been going through, but I'll share that after my daughter was born I had a breakdown of sorts and wound up on medication for awhile. Thankfully I was able to get the help I needed, and it's heartbreaking that Jason wasn't so fortunate. When what you're feeling is both irrational and uncontrollable it can be so difficult to even believe that you can be helped. Friends, if you or someone you know is suffering from depression maybe take a minute to reach out. Sometimes just knowing that you're not actually alone can make all the difference.

I wonder what happened? He was only a couple years older than me. I was around 13 when Power Rangers first aired, and it was mostly a novelty that reminded me of Voltron at the time. It was really the Green Ranger story that really sucked me in, and even though I was growing out of it (I was 17 when Turbo aired), I kept watching until they replaced Tommy on Turbo. I'd say the original Mighty Morphin' cast were all pretty memorable to me, but it's fair to say that JDF was probably the only reason I kept watching when they started rotating in a cast of interchangable and forgettable teenagers, and his departure marked the end of my interest in the brand (until the surprisingly good Boom! Comics book). Rest in peace, Ranger.

I have lunch with my parents and a Thanksgiving party to go to in the evening, but I wanted to finish up reviewing the wave 3 Legacy Deluxes. Am I rushing for nothing? Show of hands, who reads MW on the weekend, and who saves it for work on Monday? Anyway, it's Skullgrin. The last Deluxe is Skullgrin. Well, the first and most immediate thing to get out of the way is scale. Prior to Skullgrin, Hasbro has released two Pretenders in Legacy, and they've both been Core-class. And with Hasbro reps stating outright that they're paying attention to scale now, they set a precedent (correct or not) that the Pretenders are small Transformers (even if it's less about the Pretenders actually being small and more about filling out a class with few obvious options with characters who may not be popular enough to warrant a larger figure). Now, despite G1 Pretender shells for Iguanus, Bomburst, and Skullgrin being roughly the same size, despite being depicted in the Marvel comics as the same size, and most notably Dauros (Skullgrin) and Blood (Bomburst) being the same size in Masterforce, Hasbro went and made Legacy Skullgrin a Deluxe and roughly double the size of the other two Legacy Pretenders. Regardless of the size issue, Skullgrin departs from the others in another way. The two Core-class Pretenders had bot modes that were modeled closely on their Pretender shells, and alt modes that worked those forms into something close to the inner robots' alt modes. Skullgrin has more of a blended approach. His head and shoulder pads, the spikes on his knees, and a pelvis that's meant to look like a belt all come from the Pretender shell. But the blockier arms and legs with the normal purple robot feet, are more like his inner robot in design if not color. And his torso, mostly purple with vents and a raised gray section running down the middle, that's the inner robot all the way. The tail? Yeah, that's from the Pretender shell, and I dig it. It's on a hinge connected to a part with two 5mm ports on his back. The whole thing is just pegged in and can be removed, if you prefer. Does that make his tail an accessory? I prefer to leave it permanently attached. Besides, he has enough accessories with a pair of rubbery rifles that are also swords, and a pair of larger cannons. Despite a huge head with jaws that spill over his chest, Skullgrin's got decent articulation. His head is on a ball joint that can look almost 90 degrees straight up, nothing really down. And although his jaw should hinder his ability to turn his head, lifting it a little will give you enough clearance to turn 45 degrees to either side, and if you don't mind him looking up while he turns his head he can actually turn his head a full 360 degrees. His shoulders rotate and extend laterally just a little short of 90 degrees. His biceps swivel and his elbows bend over 90 degrees. No wrist swivels, but due to transformation his wrists bend down, which can be great for sword poses. His waist swivels. His hips go forward and backward 90 degrees, but the spikes on the sides limit him to about 45 degrees of lateral spread. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. No up/down foot tilt, but he's got 90 degrees of ankle pivot. The instructions imply that the cannons belong on Skullgrin's back, as that's where they're needed for alt mode, and his actual weapons are the gun swords, which, y'know, can be held like guns. Or swords. Of course, the cannons are simply plugged into his tail backpack via 5mm ports, so if you prefer you can have him hold the cannons as guns. Also, there's 5mm ports on the backs of his forearms, on his shoulders, under his toes, at the top of his back above his backpack, two on the back of each leg, one under his tail, and even some on the cannons. So you have lots of options for arming Skullgrin up. Transforming Skullgrin is pretty simple... like, maybe with a few changes he really could have been a Core-class. He's basically tucking his head into his chest, folding his back up, tucking his arms behind his back, collapsing his legs, and lying down. The most complicated part is folding the treads out of his calves and extending them on an armature so that they can plug in to his arms. And, you know, it's a tank. It's got two barrels on the top, visible treads at the back, and a dearth of such treads on the sloped front, which is also true for the G1 toy, but the similarities are pretty abstract. The G1 toy tapered from back to front, with a larger gap between the sloped points on the nose. The cannons on the top should be longer and sit forward a bit more. Legacy Skullgrin takes the basic concept of G1 Skullgrin's alt mode, squishes it into a brick along the left/right axis, then stretches it out on the front/back axis until it's not totally recognizable. Well, at least the turret can spin, and the cannons can aim up/down independently. As for his gun swords, the instructions bid you plug them into one of the two ports on his treads. Again, in an abstract way this is sort of how the G1 toy worked, with rifles plugging into the sides of the tank, but again, in practice, the look is pretty different. The lack of taper means the rifles always hug the sides of the tank, and because the tank is so long they don't reach all the way to the front like the G1 toy. If you're looking for other options, you can plug them into the sides of the cannons, or even plug the sword handles into the barrels of the cannons, but you don't really have the clearance to use any of the other 5mm ports. Objectively, Skullgrin is probably one of the better figures in this wave, and if a Decepticon tank with a demonic skull for a head appeals to you then I can safely recommend this one, although with the same questions about why a guy like Skullgrin gets a new mold in the main line while Gears was canceled/Cosmos was a store exclusive/Breakdown has to share an alt mode with Wildrider. I also wish that Hasbro had sized the Pretenders more consistently (although, given that Skullgrin is pretty good and Bomburst was kind of lacking, maybe Hasbro should have made them all Deluxes instead of Cores).

Just under 2000 to go, and I'm sure Deathsaurus will get a boost when people start having Star Saber in hand. I mean, I know I'm waiting for Star Saber first, but I'm probably in for Deathsaurus.

This quote from my last review is turning out to be a running theme for this wave. Today, it's Deluxe-class Crankcase. Crankcase is a retool of Skids, which I'd say is fine because Skids was fine, but it does mean that Legacy Crankcase is significantly different than G1 Crankcase due to very different transformations. Basically, Crankcase has a new chest, head, and shoulders with new car parts forming his chest and backpack, but the innards are largely the same, he's got the same arms from the biceps down, and he's nearly the same as Skids from the waste down, they just molded some extra stuff on the outsides and backs of his legs. At a glance, that seems to work. Kind of. His chest has details similar to the G1 toy, and even has a large 5mm peg hole in the middle where the original toy had a screw, although they probably could have skipped the silver paint or at least put it on his hips where it actually belongs. Blue shins and forearms check out, but his biceps, hands, and feet should also be blue, and his blue thighs should be black. His backpack doesn't sit quite as high, and his back cannons are naught but little nubs, but his backpack is made from the same part of his alt mode as the G1 toy's, and the fact that he has back cannons at all is something. The backs and sides of his lower legs are made from black alt mode bits like the G1 toy, but here they're the back of his alt mode instead of the front. The original Crankcase got by on just his shoulder cannons, so any accessories are a bonus, I guess. He's got one of the two guns Skids came with in a smokey translucent plastic, and the entire grill of his alt mode. Despite being a retool of Skids, Crankcase has worse articulation. His head is a ball joint that swivels and has a little up/down/sideways tilt. His shoulders rotate, but the joints Skids used for lateral movement are encapsulated and immobilized by his new shoulders. As such, his only lateral movement comes from the transformation hinges in his chest, which means he has 90 degrees of lateral movement if his arms are down, but if you rotate the shoulder he's got none. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. In something of a rarity for this wave he does have wrist swivels. His waist swivels, his hips can go 90 degrees forward and backward and a bit under that laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. No up/down tilt on his feet, but his ankles can pivot 90 degrees. Crankcase has 5mm fists that hold his gun without issue. The side of the grill flips under to reveal two small pegs that fit the little holes on blast effect parts. There's some molded detail on the back side that make it look like its supposed to be a gun, even though the little nubs are hardly barrels and the front side still looks like a grill. There's also 5mm ports on the tires on his shoulders, on his forearms, on his chest, on the middle of his backpack, under his toes, and on his calves. If you don't like the grill as a weapon, you can leave it on his chest, although the look is hardly G1 accurate, or fit it neatly onto his backpack. Transforming Crankcase is almost exactly the same as Skids- the chest folds up, the arms tuck underneath, the shins open and the legs bend at the knees and hips so that the back of the alt mode lines up with the roof, and the rear tires fold out from the heels. On paper, the biggest difference is that the doors on Skids are connected to his chest and fold back, while on Crankcase they're part of the backpack, with the window fixed in place and a hinge under it for the bottom of the door to fold down. In practice, though, there's some weirder tolerances that made it feel like I was forcing the chest and backpack into place, and tight hips (possibly the only tight joints on the figure) made lining up his legs with the roof a bear. The grill does have to partsform into place. But aside from that the differences in the nose, doors, and the extra bits they put on the sides and rear do a decent job of converting a Honda City into something more like a Hummer. Blue stripes along the roof run where the flip out guns are on the G1 toy, which is a nice touch marred a bit by the over abundance of blue at the back. Likewise, the hood has a blue patch with a Decepticon emblem like the G1 toy, but stripes running out from it over the front fenders that the original didn't have because the shoulder joints were cast in blue plastic. The back of the car/truck has the spare tire and some paint to resemble the spare and sticker on the back of the G1 toy, but there's no such paint on side rear windows where the G1 toy also had stickers. The back window is blue when it should be black, and both the front and rear bumpers are black where they should be blue. The little nubs of Crankcase's shoulder cannons are fully encased under his roof, so they can't deploy in alt mode the way the G1 toy's can. But, you can use the peg hole on the roof to mount his gun. Crankcase was actually one of the Deluxes I was most looking forward to in this wave... put him with Siege Skytread/Flywheels and Spinister, plus Titans Return Krok and Misfire, and we're well on our way to having the Scavengers from IDW's More Than Meets the Eye and Lost Light books. We can even throw in SS86 Grimlock (even if his T-Rex mode is a bit less accurate), write off original character Nickel as a very late addition, and we're really just missing an original character by the name of Fulcrum. In hand, though, Crankcase is a disappointment, largely due to my copy having some of the worst QC I've had on a Hasbro figure in recent times. His knees are super loose. The transformation joints in his shoulders are so loose that he has trouble posing with his arms away from his body as even the tiny bit of weight in his arm is enough to cause the joint to sag back down. Both of his back wheels are loose and pop off during transformation. His doesn't lock securely into place in bot mode, and his right shin immediately pops off its tab. Then there's the question of why he even exists in the first place. I mean, Pointblank was getting into some G1 deep cuts, but at least he was in "The Rebirth" and/or the Headmasters, so you can argue he's necessary to complete a cartoon collection. Crankcase wasn't in any cartoon. Crankcase and the Triggercons were never even released in Japan. I'm not complaining about Armada and Beast Wars figures popping up because I accept that Transformers isn't just about us geewunners, but it's like Hasbro is actively trolling us when they are releasing G1 characters. Unless you either had the G1 toy as a kid or, like me, you're an IDW fan, you likely have zero connection to this character. And yet, here Crankcase is in the mainline while Gears was canceled and guys like Cosmos are shortpacked Walmart exclusives. You might be inclined to defend Crankcase as a retool, a way to get a little more out of Skids' mold (nevermind that I'm 99% sure Crosscut is coming and after the MP Reboost is certainly on the table). But even then, why does he get such an extensive retool with a new roof, sides, head, shoulders, and front end/chest while the Breakdown is still totally Wildrider in alt mode? For the vast majority of you, no, I don't recommend picking up Crankcase. And Hasbro, if some execs happen to read Transformers posts in this little corner of the internet, hire me to run the Transformers brand. I'll do it for (probably) a lot less than whoever's currently running it into the ground, and I'm sure I'll make much better decisions. Staring with a Gen Selects Paddles.

Since @Hikuro mentioned him, I guess we'll do Deluxe-class Pointblank next. Well... let's get the major aesthetic elephant in the room out of the way with a meme. Yeah, I hate the doofy Sunbow head. Did Floro Dery work on it? Was it a Marvel thing? I don't really know, but it's like somebody somewhere looked at the toy and thought, "nah, it looks too Japanese super robot-ish, we gotta make him look way less cool since he's going to be a minor background character." Pointblank was a much more important character in the Japanese Headmasters anime, and I think Hasbro missed a trick by not giving Pointblank that head instead. Aside from that, my quibbles are fairly minor. Again, I might have preferred the more heroic silhouette of the Headmasters version, but Legacy Pointblank's narrow torso and wide hips are fairly in line with both the G1 toy and the Sunbow model. He's got some silver on his knees and some red and silver paint on his crotch that hearkens to the G1 toy's stickers, but were present on neither cartoon. Likewise, his arms are a pretty uniform blue, like the toy, where both cartoons gave him darker forearms. When you look at it that way, it's that much more frustrating that they seemed to have used the toy for their primary inspiration from the neck down but they gave him the Sunbow head instead of the toy (which was the model for the Headmasters head). I'm not a fan of the car kibble on his forearms; it's due to his engineering, which I'll have more comments on in a bit. The backs of his calves are hollow, but as it's for transformation I'll let it slide. There's a tiny sliver of cockpit dangling from his back, and I'd have to ask if it was really necessary. But probably, after the head, I'd say the biggest issue is the color of his cockpit. Here it's mostly a dark translucent blue, with a bit of blue paint on the sides, and it looks kind of wrong because Point blank should have a roof. In both cartoons, the division of the roof and the windshield was like the division of his chest and abs. And that's before I even point out that the translucent blue is much darker than the paint, which is the opposite of the toy where the windows were off-white stickers, the Sunbow model where his chest was a solid off-white or light gray block, or the Headmasters where they were colored a cell-shaded reflective mix of white and gray. I'll point out that prototype that was shown off during the livestream unveiling for this wave had clear translucent plastic instead of blue, and I think that looked better. Moving right along... Pointblank's sole accessory is his Targetmaster buddy, Peacemaker. And, man, do I have mixed feelings here. On the one hand, he looks the part aesthetically, and even includes a few paint apps on his chest, shoulders, face, and eyes. And, hey, they're not tossing the Siege Battlemaster mold in again like they did with Artfire or Cyclonus. On the other hand, at least the Battlemasters had some basic articulation. The only articulation Peacemaker has is a hinge in his hips to fold his legs over, and a hinge in his feet to fold the barrel out from behind his legs for gun mode. One thing you'll notice Pointblank does not come with is his engine/shield/gun thing. Mark said they wanted to included it but Pointblank was over-budget. That also lead to getting hollowed-out spaces on the insides of his thighs and forcing the hands to be molded directly onto the forearms. And the wrist articulation is a good segue into his overall articulation! His head's on a ball joint with very limited up/down/sideways tilt. His shoulders rotate, and he's got two separate joints that can be used for lateral movement for well over 90 degrees of motion. Only one can be used in conjunction with shoulder rotation, though, and that one is limited to a bit less than 90. Still should be adequate. What isn't adequate, though, is the total lack of a bicep swivel. His elbows bend, but the car kibble on his forearm and the wheels on his shoulders prevent you from getting even 90 degrees. And, although he doesn't have a swivel directly at the wrist, he does have swivel at the top of his forearm, under his elbow, and that acts as a de-facto wrist swivel (it's sure not working as a bicep swivel). His waist swivels. His hips can go forward and backward 90 degrees, and over 90 laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 180 degrees due to transformation. His toes can bend down, nothing up, and his ankles have 90 degrees of pivot. Pointblank can hold Peacemaker in either hand using a 5mm handle. What's kind of weird is that Peacemaker also has a peg on the back of the gun mode, so Pointblank can hold him as if he were a knife with a gun barrel for a blade. I wonder if at some point Pointblank was going to be designed with his hands as a separate part that could fold into the forearm to reveal a 5mm port, ala Grapple/Inferno/Artfire/Hauler. That'd allow you to plug Peacemaker into that port for a Headmasters-style gun hand. Alas. In addition to his hands, Pointblank has ports under his feet, on the outsides of his legs just above his ankles, on the backs of his shoulders, and one in the middle of his back. His instructions helpfully tell you that you can move the tiny silver of cockpit out of the way, fold in Peacemaker's barrel, and then store him on Pointblank's back. OK, the engineering is kind of a paint on this one, and you get the feeling that they made it harder than they needed too. Like, they could have put the hood on his back with the sliver of windshield instead of sticking it on his arms, then they could have found a more elegant way of tucking his arms under the hood that could have included bicep swivels instead of creating clearance issues that force you to manipulate the arms in exactly the right way. The G1 toy had the sides filled in with fold-out panels. Here, they went with smaller fold-fold out bits on ball joints (that pop off constantly) for the bottom but his feet for the top, which again creates some clearance issues where everything has to be lined up just right. His alt mode looks pretty cool, at least. My nitpicks are pretty minor. I think his front fenders are too narrow, and the grill formed by the bits of kibble that were on his forearms leave some gaps between them and the fenders. Mostly I dislike the omission of the engine accessory. There are ports available on the sides of the car, just in front of the rear wheels, but no 5mm port on the roof like the G1 toy or even on the black section that is his butt. Instead, for vehicle mode storage you're supposed to use thin tabs on the backs of Peacemaker's arms and plug them into slots on Pointblank's knees, filling the some of the gap between his legs left by the absence of the engine/shield. Pointblank is... ok. I mean, if you're going to do an Autobot Targetmaster Pointblank's the cool one (although I guess we technically also have a Targetmaster-less Siege Crosshairs). He does have some issues, though, and the frustrating thing is that a lot of them could have been mitigated if they'd copied the G1 toy a little more closely. A bigger question, though, is why does a guy like Pointblank get the budget for an over-engineered new mold that went over-budget but a more popular G1 guy like Gears gets canned, and the last member of a popular combiner can't get an accurate mold and has to re-use another members? Decisions like that are hurting the brand. Long story short, I like Pointblank is a pretty disappointing release. He looks cool, but the articulation issues make him frustrating to pose and the over-engineering makes him not particularly fun to transform. You're not missing much if you pass on this one.

Sounds about right. Pulse is giving people until the 28th to verify their shipping information. Assuming they start actually going on on the 29th, I could have mine as early as the 1st or 2nd, but more likely sometime the following week. Speaking of stuff coming in, the wave 3 Legacy Deluxes are rolling in from Amazon, and Megatron should be here tomorrow. Amazon is dragging their feet on the Voyagers, but I got them on Pulse and the ship notice came today, so they should be here Friday or Saturday. Might as well start with the the one that's likely the most-anticipated... Deluxe-class Dead End. As a replacement for the lackluster Combiner Wars figure, Legacy Dead End is a definite improvement. The head sculpt is and chest are decidedly more Sunbow, his shoulders, pelvis, hips, and thighs are all properly black instead of silvery gray, and he's got the vents on his forearms and the octagons above his knees that the Sunbow model has. His shins have molded details similar to the Sunbow model, although the larger blocks have the vented design of the toy. He's got wheels on his shoulders, and although the other wheels are on the outside of his legs instead of the inside there are smooth, rounded bumps where the wheels should be. That being said, compared to the strong start that was Dragstrip, Wildrider, and Motormaster, Dead End starts to suffer from Hasbro's budget limitations- in this case, primarily for sharing engineering with Dragstrip (although, to be totally fair, they don't share any actual parts). It's why his chest is so broad, but it tapers to a narrow waist with the suggestion of molded geometry like the Sunbow model but not quite pulling it off. It's why his hands are red instead of black, and his biceps are black instead of red. It's why the wheels are on the outside of his legs instead of inside. But, in what is probably his biggest aesthetic flaw, it's what's up with his feet. From the back and sides, I think his lower calves look a bit thick, and he's got a backpack, but the backpack doesn't bother me. If it flipped over it'd be toy accurate. Like the other Deluxe Stunticons, Dead End comes with a pair of guns, with a little metallic purple paint on the scopes and barrels. In addition to the 5mm handles, there are pegs on either side. And... what's up with that? Like, Dragstrip had some hollow spots on the one side and something like tabs on the other, and Wildrider has a peg on one side and a hole on the other... but there's nothing with slots that Dragstrips gun's plug into, and there's no meaningful way to combine all six. Especially because Wildrider and Dragstrip's guns are identical instead of mirrored, so the pegs/tabs are on the same side and the holes/slots are on the same side on both guns. I digress... Dead End's head is on a swivel, so there's no tilt. His shoulders rotate and move 90 degrees laterally. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend just a bit short of 90 degrees. No wrist swivels, as his hands are molded onto the ends of his forearms. His waist swivels, though. His hips go a little under 90 degrees forward and backward, and 90 degrees laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees can kind of bend 90 degrees, but chances are his calves will collide with his... undercarriage... before actually getting the full 90. His feet tilt down for transformation, nothing up, but he does at least have nearly 90 degrees of ankle pivot. Dead End holds his guns in his hands with no problems, but other than that he doesn't have much in the way of storage. There are 5mm ports under his feet, but that'd have him stepping on them. There are ports on his shins and the backs of his arms near his elbows, but those are for combined mode. Then there are 5mm ports on the backs of his forearms, just above his hands. They don't seem to serve much purpose. As mentioned, Dead End's engineering is cribbed almost entirely from Dragstrip. From the waist down it's identical- open the shins, fold in the thighs, fold the feet back. You just don't have to spin the waist 180. On top, you still gotta spin the arm kibble and the shoulder wheels, you still yank out his arms with chunks of chest, and you still end them up so the chunks of chest tab in together above the rest of his chest. The only difference is that instead of shoulder kibble forming a front spoiler and the front of his torso spinning around to make a cockpit, his backpack folds backward so you can fold his head in, then you double-hinge the hood so that when you close his backpack back up the hood covers over his arms. All things considered, I think that's about as close to a Porsche 928 without paying for the license. The lights, the sunroof, the hood, even the lip under the front end are all pretty spot on. There's some weird notches cut into the front, but I imagine that's where the bracket for a front plate would go. Things do get a bit messier with the back end, but again, no license so it's pretty close enough. My biggest complaint is that the feet-not-totally-lining-up issue is also carried over from Dragstrip, so you'll likely either have gaps where the feet line up with the back of the car, or a gap between the feet themselves. Pick your poison. Sunbow purists may complain that he's got the toy-style stripe... I look at it this way, though. Hasbro already started doing G2 Stunticons with "Shadow"strip, and G2 Dead End is pretty much a slightly more saturated G1 Dead End, minus the stripe. So giving the stripe to regular Dead End will make him a bit more visually distinct. Sure, I'd rather they went full-on Sunbow for these guys and then later they released toy-style Stunticons with new heads, but it doesn't look like that's happening. The peg holes on the bottom of his feet wind up just in front of his rear spoiler, and they're a perfect place to plug in his guns while he's in alt mode. It doesn't seem to matter if you use the same peg he holds, or one of the pegs on the sides that don't seem to serve any purpose. As for combined mode, I mentioned that you couldn't really use Dragstrip for one arm and Shadowstrip for the other. There are some small differences in the connections on Dead End vs Dragstrip. For Dead End, there's two chonky tabs that fit into the armature above his chest, two L-shaped taps that fit into slots on the corners of his knees, four pegs that fit into holes near his waist and near his back tires. A tab on Menasor's arm slides into a slot in the black square on Dead End's abdomen, releasing his top from his bottom so you can fold out the arm the rest of the way. So, yeah, Dead End is pretty good, and I do give him a recommend. Just be aware that here's where Hasbro's penny-pinching is starting to turn up in this set, making Dead End the weakest of the admittedly very good Stunticons... so far.

One last Repaint Roundup before the new stuff, eh? We're finishing off the Shattered Glass stuff with Soundwave. Rather than use the Siege mold that's again current on the shelves with Legacy, Hasbro opted to use the Netflix mold for SG Soundwave. I'm not complaining, as it's my preference... I just find it curious that their arrangement with Walmart means that Hasbro can't sell regular Soundwave with this mold in the mainline, hence the Siege reissue, but it's ok to do a Pulse-exclusive SG repaint? If Pulse-exlcusive repaints are ok, why waste a Voyager slot in Legacy to reissue Siege Soundwave? Why not instead reissue a Generations Selects Soundave using the Netflix mold, but replacing all the gray plastic and silver paint with Sunbow white? And as long as I'm questioning Hasbro's decision-making skills, I'll note that they've remolded Soundwave's head to include his headband. You'd think they could have just made a rubbery plastic or soft goods headband accessory that fits over Soundwave's head, but no, they found the budget to remold it. And yet they couldn't find the budget to better remold Breakdown... Anyway... for all my complaints about Hasbro's inability to get their act together, I do really like SG Soundwave's design. As I understand, the white with blue accents comes from the Sonic White version of Music Label Soundwave. The headband, meanwhile, comes from the first official SG Soundwave, which was a Botcon repaint of Universe Ironhide with a new head and a soft goods headband. Having not read the Fun Publications Botcon stuff, I couldn't tell you what the story behind the headband is. In the IDW SG comics it's just there. One last thing to note... Siege Soundwave had translucent yellow, and Netflix Soundwave has translucent red eyes. For those two, the lightpiping seemed adequate. SG Soundwave has translucent green eyes, but the lightpiping just isn't doing its job here, so his face looks a bit dead. It's times like these I wish Hasbro screwed heads together instead of gluing them. I'd really have preferred the eyes were painted. Anyway, as a repaint of the Netflix Soundwave, he comes with the same accessories as Netflix Soundwave. Which is to say, the same rifle, shoulder cannon, and weird pistol that came with the Siege/Legacy toy (and eventually became the back barrel for my non-transforming Earth-mode Megatron), plus two Micromaster tapes that Siege/Legacy didn't. The tapes are the same characters as Netflix- Ravage and Laserbeak. One assumes that Ravage is there to appease David Willis. The color scheme is based on Kiss Players Glit, but Willis wrote the profile for Ravage in Fun Pub, figuring that the opposite of stealthy, silent Ravage would be an attention-seeking social media addict. He was so enamored with his idea that he started making a webcomic about SG Ravage, which in turn was picked up by Fun Pub, which combined with his work on TFWiki has given Willis and unfortunately outsized impact on the franchise. As for Laserbeak, although initially depicted as yellow and purple Fun Publications decided to repurpose the Botcon Knights of Unicron repaint of Animated Soundwave's guitar as SG Laserbeak, leading to the red and gray we see here. Curiously, rather than use the head they made for Netflix Laserbeak they went back and used the older Siege head (which was inspired by Laserbeak's appearance in the War for Cybertron videogame). As a repaint of Netflix Soundwave, SG Soundwave turns into a tape deck instead of a spaceship thing. The same bells and whistles are present... the tape deck opens up to store one of the tapes... you can stick the other to him by folding out a peg on the tape and plugging it into the hole where his shoulder launcher goes, or one of the arm holes on the back. Also on the back you'll find storage of sorts for all three of his guns. So what's left to say? I mentioned in a quote the @Scyla the other day that Hasbro's QC has been going downhill, and there's definitely a dip in quality between SG Soundwave and Netflix Soundwave. The hips are looser, and one of the hip pieces wasn't fit quite right when they shot the pin through it. I can't tell if that's the reason his alt mode doesn't seem to line up quite right or not. Plus, although nothing seems to be broken on him, there's something rattling around inside of him. Siege Ravage is by far the worst of the Micromaster tapes, so I'm not exactly thrilled to see it again (Laserbeak is fine, but someone want to tell me how we ended up with three Laserbeaks using this mold but zero Buzzsaws?). And there's the whole question of whether or not Shattered Glass repaints are even necessary outside of Hasbro's insistence that we buy every mold at least twice. For his flaws, though, I think Soundwave is a favorite among SG fans, and as I'd previously noted I do think the colors are really sharp, and as a companion piece to a similarly-sharp SG Blaster I'd say that Soundwave is one of the better SG releases and worth checking out, especially if you never got the Netflix mold.

OK, I gave it a fair shake. Pros: CGI animation is decent. A plot about post-war Transformers dealing with new threats from humans has potential. I can dig Megatron as a good guy, and I'm glad that they didn't default to a tank alt mode for him. I like that they're using Elita-1 instead of defaulting to Arcee for the token female Transformer. Prime has a fairly G1 bot mode, and I dig Bumblebee's evergreen design to the extent that I wish they'd do a nice Deluxe for the Evolution line. The dad is possibly the best human character in a Transformers show since Agent Fowler. It's set in my home state of Pennsylvania. Cons: Despite the Geewunny bot mode, Prime's alt mode is from Prime. Prime himself is portrayed as kind of dopey. The Autobots and/or the human Ghost team they allied with seem kind of incompetent in general. I loathe Twitch and Thrash- they remind me of the crappy minicons that buddied with the humans in Transformers Armada, and unless they come up with a good explanation for it later the whole "magic rock creates a new Cybertronian subspecies that's extra special because it happened on Earth" is terrible. It's clear that those two and the human kids are the main characters, and the actual Transformers showing up to do cool stuff is a tiny part of the show that happens to the main characters, not with them. When Megatron refers to the "battle of Burbank" and you realize that Megatron joining the Autobots happened before the end of the war, you'll also realize that there's an untold story about Megatron and the Autobots fighting Starscream or Shockwave and the Decepticons on Earth, and that's probably a much more interesting show than what we're actually getting. Mixed: I don't really like the kids. Robbie, especially, comes across as a brat, but at this point that seems to be more of a plot device to get the show going than his actual characterization, so I'm giving them more time to grow on me. Dietrich Bader is a fine VA and objectively I think he does a great job as Mandroid in this show, but subjectively it wasn't a great idea to watch this after binging the third season of Harley Quinn (where Bader plays Bruce Wayne) because I keep expecting Mandroid to mention having dead parents. It's aimed at kids in a way that reminds me of RiD 15 and Cyberverse, but Prime and Animated already demonstrated that you can make a Transformers show with broader appeal. Even if it is your "dream job" what kind of person forces their whole family to drop everything and move to the middle of nowhere to become a park ranger? And what kind of park pays its rangers enough that you can afford to relocate from Philly on a single income? Overall, I'm willing to watch a few more episodes and see how it goes, and so far I like it better than RiD 15. But Transfomers fans still deserve better. Whenever I'd preorder from just Pulse, it seems like Amazon customers got them first. When I'd preorder from Amazon, Pulse customers would get them first. So I started preordering from both, and over the weekend got emails from Pulse and Amazon that they were shipping soon. I can't afford to buy the entire wave twice, so I had to cancel my preorders at Pulse (except Megatron, which Amazon thinks still isn't coming until February). Amazon has the rest of the wave arriving tomorrow, but so far only two Deluxes have shipped (you'll have to wait for my reviews to see which ones). I kind of doubt that the others are showing up tomorrow now, but like I said I still think they'll be here by the end of the week. EDIT: of course, after cancelling those Pulse orders I get the shipping notice for Megatron from Pulse and a bunch of delay notifications from Amazon. Sounds like most of the stuff isn't coming until next week, now. FML. The misassembled parts has me a bit concerned. The paint, not so much. The scratches on Star Saber's mask are instantly noticeable, but I have similar scratches on a few other figures, including Earthrise Optimus. And in a couple of the pictures in that thread I had to stare for awhile to even figure out what they're complaining about before I realized that they probably are pointing out the overspray. And on that note, have they not bought a Hasbro figure in the last two or three years? While I think the designs of the figures themselves have improved a lot, QC at the factory has been getting a little worse every time they change the name of the line. If my set arrives with a scratched mask and a little overspray but tight joints and no missing or misassembled parts I'll consider that a win.

I haven't gotten anything from the third wave of Legacy yet. I've checked my local stores a few times, but all I've at Target a few stray Kickbacks, a nice mix of Bulkhead, Jhiaxus, and the occasional Soundwave, and a ton of Coronation Starscreams. Walmart isn't much better- they have the same Bulkhead/Jhiaxus/Soundwave/Cornoation Starscreams, but their pegs are decorated with a glut of Burnouts, Blurrs, Sandstorms, and Nightprowers, with a light smattering of Clampdowns. That said, between Amazon and Pulse I expect I'll have the entire wave by the end of the week.

I haven't watched it yet... I guess I should give it a fair shake. I mean, Megatron joining the Autobots can make for some great stories (like IDW's More Than Meets the Eye). And, despite it targeting younger kids, Cyberverse was honestly pretty good- I mean, it was no Prime, but a lot better than RiD 15. So I'm trying to keep an open mind. The trailers looked bad, though.

But no robot ankle articulation. I'm inclined to ignore it, unless they plan on sticking the ROTB toys directly in Studio Series like they did for Bumblebee.

My shipping address is correct. Can't wait!!

People debate all the time about which actor did the best Batman, and they only seem to talk about the live-action ones. Real fans didn't need to debate, though. We knew the best Batman was animated. Rest in peace, Kevin.

They're calling themselves Touch Toys, but it's the same designer that did the J-20 and the helicopter for TFC. I think it's meant to be part of the same line, just TFC isn't producing them anymore.

I know you guys dig transforming planes... especially ones that clean up in alt mode. Looking at you, @M'Kyuun. If I'm not mistaken, that's a Shenyang FC-31.

I wonder if there was some kind of stoppage in Hasbro's factory, or maybe a shipping backlog. Aside from the first wave of Velocitron things were pretty quiet after the second wave of Legacy (which itself was so low key that you're more likely to find leftover wave 1 figs like Dragstrip, Kickback, Skids, and Bulkhead than any wave 2 stuff if you're actually checking shelves at my local stores). Then Hasbro spent the back half of October slamming me with GI Joe crossovers, Shattered Glass repaints, Pulsecon sets, more Walmart and Walgreens store exclusives, and Studio Series figures. And it seems like they're not slowing down, as they've said they're trying to get Victory Leo into people's hands before the Haslab for Deathsaurus ends, and I woke up this morning to emails saying that stuff from one particular order is going to ship soon... that order being basically everything from the third wave of Legacy. Yay to new Transformers, but man is my wallet getting slammed. Of course, before the deluge that the third wave of Legacy will be, we still have some of the aforementioned Studio Series. Arriving with the Fallen yesterday, I also got Deluxe-class Crosshairs. I'm too lazy to look into it, but did the designers change between Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction? Because, while I remember the latter two Bayverse movies themselves as being generally even more bland and poorly written, I'll note that the Transformers ditched the alien chicken-legged, many-fingered designs encapsulated so well by the Fallen we looked at yesterday in favor of more humanoid designs. And in the case of the Autobots, more colorful designs at that, with simplistic but distinct personalities that, at the very least, made Prime's crew in the AoE and The Last Knight more memorable than the Autobots added to the cast in Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon. And in terms of sculpt, SS Crosshairs does a really good job of matching the movie designs. You can even move the car panels on the front of his body to see the ridged details on his thighs. My biggest gripe with the aesthetics of the figure is one that I've found myself repeating over and over with these Studio Series figures- lack of paint. His pelvis and abs are a wall of gunmetal, with none of the silver highlights. Pretty much every part of him that's green could use some black accents, with silver on his toes. His head has just the tiniest bit of green paint, omitting any green from the back of his head. Plus his mustache is lost in the silver of his face because it's not properly darker. All of that stuff could have been painted, because you don't really see any of it in alt mode. Indeed, almost the entire alt mode is hanging from his back like a kibble cape. To be fair, the VFX team somehow movie magicked all of that into a soft goods trench coat. Short of making most of the alt mode a rubbery plastic, I don't know how else you're supposed to mimic that. The design team for the toy tried, folding the roof, the entire rear, and some of the hood into most of the back of the coat, with the sides of the car acting like the flappy sides of the coat and some of the hood lying in front of his hips and thighs for the front of the coat. Crosshairs comes with a pair of TEC-9-ish pistols. They're not exactly movie-accurate, but Lana Kane would approve. You might expect that all that kibble would impede Crosshairs' articulation, and you'd be right, but probably not in the way you'd expect. His head is on a ball joint and can look up and down a bit, no real sideways tilt, and although he can swivel his head his collar limits how far he can turn. His shoulders are on ball joints that are angled slightly forward. Rotation isn't an issue, but he's got very little lateral shoulder movement, maybe 30 degrees at most. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. No wrist swivel or waist swivel. His coat kibble has a hinge that allow some of it to bend up, or the entire thing can hinge to the side, so it doesn't really interfere with his hips. Said hips are ball joints, and they can go over 90 degrees forward, just a little bit backward, and nearly 90 degrees laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees are double-jointed and capable of bending until his calves meet the backs of his thighs. His ankles are ball joints, so his feet can tilt up and down a little, swivel, and pivot 90 degrees. The flaps that came the sides of his coat are hinged so they can can flare out for more dramatic action poses. And if you find that the rest of the car kibble making the back of his coat is simply getting in your way, it's attached via a ball joint and was designed so it can be removed. The spoiler also likes to come off. I don't know if that's an intentional design or not. It's pretty annoying if it is, because I've had it just fall off every time I've transformed him and a couple of times just while posing him. Crosshair's can hold his guns in either hand. Or, for storage, there are tabs on the sides of his "coat" that fit into slots on the sides of the guns. Transforming Crosshairs can be a little annoying. That simply because transforming his robot parts is mostly about scrunching them up so they fit properly under the shell that is his alt mode, while the rest is about unfolding his coat and lining up all the kibble bit so they fit together properly. Crosshairs winds up a little bigger than Sideswipe, who's also a Corvette, but they're not so dissimilar in size that I can't write off the difference as part of five years of design changes. Honestly, Hasbro tends to shine when they do actual licensed cars and Crosshairs is no exception. My daughter (who simply wanted a shiny green car to play with at the time) actually has a slightly larger non-transforming diecast version of Crosshairs' Corvette mode, and Hasbro did a great job getting the molded details right, even a tiny black Autobot badge in place of the Corvette flags just in front of the driver's side door (accurate for The Last Knight, which this figure aims to be). My only complaints are the unpaintable gray hinges in the roof, which I could live with since that's probably a structural necessity, and the unpaintable gray spoiler, which is just ugly and not-at-all accurate. Crosshairs' guns do store in alt mode- you simply plug then into the sides, same as bot mode storage, during transformation. During, because if you forget you'll have to undue a lot of the rest of the car kibble to open up the sides if you forget. Some of Crosshairs' head is visible through the rear window, but I don't honestly mind it. The window covers the rear-mounted engine, and while not accurate it's not hard for me to imagine it blending into the engine. I know that the Bayverse is a hard sell for a lot of us older geewunners, and the two films with Marky Mark were probably the worst of the Bayverse, making those characters probably the ones that you guys would be the least interested in. I have to say, though, that Crosshairs is honestly pretty good. The limited shoulder articulation and lack of waist swivel aren't ideal, but the strong leg and ankle articulation combined with the dual guns and coat give him enough personality that you can work with. I'd have definitely liked more paint on the bot mode- I may even try to add some myself, but the sculpt is at least on the money and the alt mode looks pretty great. I'll go ahead and give him a recommend, and I'll say they put out a new Hound and Bumblebee to go with him and Drift.

Simon Furman contributed a lot of what's become the accepted standard for the various Transformers mythologies. Primus and Unicron as opposing godlike beings, Primus creating 13 original Transformers, one of those primordial Transformers turning against the others and becoming "The Fallen," the concepts started to emerge late in the Marvel G1 era and were eventually solidified in the Dreamwave comics and the DK book The Ultimate Guide to the Transformers, and have gone on to influence later IDW comics, Transformers: Cybertron, Robots in Disguise, and yes, even the Bayverse films. And that's why we're looking at Studio Series Leader-Class The Fallen. In his earliest comic book appearances, the Fallen's design cues fit with the psuedo-G1 Dreamwave aesthetic. He was big, he was boxy, and the only conceit to the idea that he was some kind of evil Transformers demigod was the fact that he was perpetually on fire. The artists who worked on the early Bayverse films seemed to treat the idea that cars and planes that turn into boxy robots with identifiable alt-mode parts as childish or silly, and leaned hard into a late aughts conceit that treated "alien" as a synonym for "impractical technorganic design." And, in many ways, the Fallen of the Bayverse is the apotheosis of this design mentality. He's a mix of organic curves and sharp edges, with a neck set in his torso instead of above it, eight-digited hands with an opposable thumb on each side, and digitigrade legs. His face is meant to designed from the Decepticon symbol to serve as an in-continuity explanation for it, but the design team couldn't resist stretching it, wrapping it, and adding weird fins to it, until it's kind of an incoherent mess. But the worst element of the Fallen's design as to be the second set of shoulders in the middle of his back with their own thin biceps that connect into the same forearms as his real arms. I mean, while you might think that creatures that grew and evolved in a totally alien environment would be very different from life on Earth, but convergent evolution is a thing because evolutionary pressures find efficient solutions to similar problems, and quite frankly I can't think of any evolutionary advantage to having two shoulders and two biceps that merge into one forearm... that just seems like it'd hinder mobility. While I might argue that Hasbro probably should have had a stronger say in the designs that went into the movie, there's not a lot of point in beating them up about it now. The question really is how well does this toy resemble what we see in the movie. And to that I think they did a fair job. The black plastic lacks the metallic sheen of the film, but the metallic blue and silver are nice touches. There's some orange paint in some places, too, but it looks more like he had some orange markings and less like the inner glow the CGI had. There are some parts made from an unpaintable dark gray plastic, though, most notably his hands, that clash with the rest of the figure. The Fallen comes with his staff, which is made of a bendier plastic and comes in two parts. Remember what I said about his arms having trouble with mobility? Yeah. His head is on a ball joint, and he can use it to look up and down a bit, swivel his head left and right a bit, and tilt his head sideways so much he can turn his head upside down. OK, now, his shoulder joints have the range to rotate and move laterally 90 degrees, his biceps swivel, and his elbows are double-jointed and can curl up 180 degrees. And his lower arm bits try to accommodate this as best they can, with a hinge on each side near his back, a ball jointed-shoulder, and another ball joint that plugs into his forearm just under his elbow. In practice, though, the weird arms are going to have limits, plus I found while posing him I'd often have them pop off his back, have the ball joints pop out at the elbow, and the shoulders would bend at a transformation hinge instead of the shoulder joint. It's easiest to disconnect the lower bits, pose his arm the way you want it, then try to connect the lower bits back. Anyway... his wrists do swivel, and there's a hinge that lets them bend inward. No waist articulation. His hips can go forward and backward over 90 degrees, and laterally a bit under. He's got a thigh swivel just above his knees, which can bend 90 degrees but can't straighten to more than a 45 degree bend. There's another swivel at his anatomical ankle, but no bend. Instead, where his toes connect to his foot is a ball joint that tilts his "foot" up and down and acts as an ankle pivot, plus for transformation on each foot his big forward toe is on one hinge, his outer toe is on one hinge, and his inner two toes are on one hinge so they can bend down. I found the easiest way to get his staff into his hands is to slide a half through one side, then link the middle sections. Once the halves are combined you can slide the staff in his hands to get the pose you want. And, in one nice, slightly spoilery nod to the movie, the Fallen's face can be removed, and you can see the movie-accurate "skull" behind it. There's even a hinge in his jaw so you can open his mouth. Hasbro faced the same dilemma with the Fallen that they did with the Quintesson judge... in a line of transforming toys, even the non-transforming characters have to have an alt mode. And, again like the Quintesson judge, the Fallen's transformation is less an actual transformation and more a weird yoga pose. Again, this was an issue that could have been solved by Hasbro execs going to the VFX team back in 2008/2009 and saying something like, "how the heck are we supposed to make toys out of this garbage? Go back and do it again!" But given that the garbage was already on screen and we're over a decade late to do anything about it, I guess they tried? I mean, his chest and belly hinge up over his head to reveal a little cockpit, and the back of his head has something like a thruster port. With his legs splayed to the sides like wings, I guess it's a jet, if you squint hard enough. But ultimately the alt mode is terrible, because the robot was designed to be "alien," not something that actually transformed. It's very likely that you'll transform him once just to see it, then you'll change him back to a robot and never transform him again. If you're like me, you want some kind of alt mode accessory storage, and the Fallen has it. You split the staff in half, then on each half you find a peg. These pegs fit into slots on his leg-wings. I find that they neither add nor detract to to the believability of his jet mode, so good enough, I guess. I'm not sure what the best way to look at the Studio Series The Fallen is. On the one hand, it's a fairly expensive figure with a feeble transformation into a "we had to make him turn into something" sort of alt mode, with some annoying articulation issues centered entirely on his weird arms. On the other hand, he's a screen-accurate robot depicting a major villain, with a gimmick that homages the film's "give me your face" bit, and you can get him into some decent poses if you're willing to work with him. I guess I'd have to say that as a Transformer he's one of the worst figures I've looked at this year, and if you can live without a Fallen in your collection you're better off skipping him. However, as a representation of the character for display, he's pretty adequate.

It's an unfortunate setup by a someone clearly not familiar with the figure (as evidenced by a mistransformed waist in one of the pictures). That storage is on the Earthrise trailer (of which Holiday Prime's trailer is repainted but not remolded in any way), and unless the modified the blaster it folds over on itself to better hide between the wheels.

I mentioned when I reviewed the Megatron H.I.S.S. tank that I'd hoped it might make for a better CHUG Megatron than Earthrise Megatron. And I elaborated on my issues with Earthrise Megatron earlier when I reviewed an unofficial Megatron that does turn into a gun but isn't particularly good... my second such figure, as it were. Why is it that we have a pretty great Optimus with Earthrise, but the best we can do with Megatron is a kibbly partsformer (Earthrise), a so-so also kibbly unofficial figure that actually turns into a gun (ToyWorld Hegemon/Zeta Mega-Tron), or 3P stuff that's great but not at all an aesthetic match (MMC Tyrantron, Maketoys Despotron)? I got so desperate that I started looking at the R.E.D. Megatron. I stopped caring if he transformers (especially if he's going to wind up a tank), as long as he was G1 cartoony and had adequate articulation. Oh, but it turns out the R.E.D. figure is like a head or so smaller, and while I can tolerate a Megatron that's slightly bigger than Optimus a Megatron that's slightly smaller is simply too small. But, you know who is the right size? Earthrise Megatron. And as an official WFC figure he's got the right mix of Sunbow and greebles. He's just got that backpack kibble and the crappy partsforming bits for his tank mode, but if I don't actually care anymore about a transforming Megatron could I "fix" ER Megatron? Turns out, yeah. Kind of. Here's what I did... (1) Since I don't need it to peg into his other arm, I grinded down the peg on top of the fusion cannon to more closely resemble the dial on the G1 toy. (2) I painted the red bits connecting his shoulders to his torso gray. (3) I tossed aside the tank barrel and rear filler entirely. No tank mode means we don't need it anymore. (Not numbered, because I nearly forgot I did it) I painted the silver square on Megatron's abs red, to better resemble the Sunbow model. (4) I painted his flanks red. (5) I pained the black part his arms are attached to, and the entire turret base, gray. It's not a perfect match, but a, when does Hasbro match their own paint and plastic, and b, a not-quite right gray is still closer to the gray plastic than black. (6) I used a rotary tool and cut off the panel with the tank treads entirely. (7) I painted the black backs of his arms gray. (8) Where Hasbro only painted the front of Megatron's biceps red, I painted the sides and back. (9) I painted the black heels gray. (10) The big flap on his back that forms the front of the tank? I picked a spot near the small of his back, just above an indented spot, and used a rotary tool to cut through it. The idea is to leave enough to cover the hollow areas on the back of his torso but to create more clearance for the waist swivel and to minimize what can be seen from the front. (11) The finishing touch... on what was left of the flap, I drilled a 5mm hole. Then I went on got one of those folding pistol things that came with Siege/Netflix/Legacy Soundwave or Siege Soundblaster. I unfolded it, then cut off the end below the 5mm peg. Technically, I even ground the peg a little shorter and sanded off some of the molded detail to fit the thing more flush in the hole I'd made on Megatron's back. It's a tad thinner than I'd really like, but it gives Megatron his back-mounted gun barrel. Speaking of gun barrels... like I said, this pretty much ruins his ability to transform. But, when Megatron transformed in the cartoon he didn't turn into a tank, he shrunk down into a gun that Starscream or Soundwave could hold. And while my post-op Megatron can't shrink down and transform into a gun, you can swap him out with a gun that other figures can hold when you need Megatron to have an alt mode. Two examples that I have at home are the Megatron gun that came with a reissue G1 Starscream, and a Megatron gun that came in a pack with the Generations Selects Centurion drone. You have to remove the stock and set it aside for the former, as your average WFC figure doesn't have the little tabs on the bottoms of their fists that the reissue Starscream does, but as you can see here Earthrise Starscream can hold the gun part just fine. Meanwhile, the Centurion Drone one simply has a 5mm handle and no stock at all, and it's designed specifically for WFC figures. If you don't have either of these, there are other options. Dr. Wu created something like this years ago, and while you're unlikely to find an original Dr. Wu Megatron gun these days I was able to find knock offs of the Dr Wu, the Centurion Drone, and the Starscream reissue Megatron guns on Ebay. So... yeah. I'd still love for a better 3P Megatron that checks all my boxes- scale, articulation, cartoon look, turns into a gun, doesn't suck. I keep thinking a WFC-scaled version of Magic Square's Megatron without that nylon plastic would be the bee's knees. Until then, though, I can live with my non-transforming fixed Earthrise Megatron and a separate non-transforming Megatron gun that Starscream can hold.

I'm not a huge of an Earthrise Megatron. I mean, I guess I like it better than the Siege version- it's a bit more cartoon-accurate, has head sculpt I prefer and a better fusion cannon, and based on my personal copies is a lot less floppy than Siege. But, while the barrel on Siege turned into a passable sword the Earthrise toy was the barrel and a chunk of the turret, plus a black filler piece, that are pretty much unusable for anything in robot mode. And I can't decide what's worse, that you have this pretty egregious partsforming at all, or that you have this partsforming but he still has to carry those big tank treads on his back. Maybe I'd have been happier if you had a more Sunbow Megatron with a turret along the lines of the one you could form with the G1 toy's stock and silencer that partsformed into like half the tank. I dunno. Regardless. My dissatisfaction with Earthrise Megatron has already caused me to pick up the Zeta Toys Mega-Tron, basically a reissue of ToyWorld's Hegemon. And it's OK, but it's hampered by an older design and hampered by a few issues with kibble, articulation, and a few transformation annoyances. Then someone told me about the Zhan Jiang MO1 Mechinic* Master. Could this be the War For Cybertron-style Megatron I've been looking for? *Yes, that's how it's spelled on the box. Well, out of the box we're already not off to a great start, as Mechinic Master is quite a bit taller than either Earthrise Megatron or Hegemon. I don't necessarily mind a Megatron that's a head taller than Prime- Hegemon makes the cut, I think- but Earthrise Prime's eye level is right at the bottom of Mechinic Master's chest. That makes him a bit too big, I think. The proportions aren't great, either. I think he looks great from the waist down, and his chest is pretty on-point, too. But his head is a little squished, his face a little too recessed. His midsection is too long, and his arms are way too big. Plus his hands look terrible, and the gun barrel on his back is too thick and too far to his left. There's quite a bit of kibble on his back, too, and weirdly hollowed-out forearms. My copy also came with some grunge on his left leg out of the box. I can't speak to the grunge, but I think some of his aesthetic issues, especially the hands, come down to the fact that his is a figure that was never meant to be this size. Rather, this is a pre-built, upscale KO of the Legends-sized "Mega Sorry" model kit mini-figure that Generation Toy designed back when they were releasing their Gravity Builder figures. In other words, this is a toy from an era where G1-style transforming Megatron figures were limited to MP-05, Hegemon, and Apollyon. I'd argue that a great G1 gun Megatron hadn't truly been done yet in the MP scale, let alone a tiny Legends figure. Mechinic Master comes with a few accessories. You get the barrel for his back, which tabs into the side of his back kibble (hence why it's out-of-place vs the usual right side). You've got a fusion cannon, which looks ok but I wish the convex purple lenses were either concave or set more deeply in. You get a silencer piece. You get an alternate back of the head in translucent purple, in case you'd rather Megatron have light-piped purple eyes than solid red ones. You get a mace; I'm not sure if this is a fresh design or a KO. And finally, you get a sword that looks to me like a KO of Dr Wu's Dark Star Saber. In addition to size, we're about to run into more problems, as the articulation on this guy isn't great. His head is a ball joint. It can swivel, tilt sideways a little, and tilt down, but nothing really up. His shoulders can rotate and extend laterally around 75 degrees. However, the way the joints are designed, he can't really rotate his shoulders and use the lateral movement at the same time. Plus, on my copy the rotation is pretty loose and has a hard time supporting the weight of his arms. His biceps swivel. His elbows bend a little under 90 degrees, but there's a little wiggle at the top of the bicep that you can use to fake a 90 degree bend. No wrist articulation. His waist doesn't swivel, either, but for some reason he's got a ball joint in his crotch that gives him a limited swivel and teapot joint. His hips are ball joints that get about 75 degrees forward and backward but only about 45 degrees laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend a little under 90 degrees. His feet have a hinged ball joint for transformation, but the shape of his leg armor around the foot pretty much limits him to a downward tilt, nothing up, and no ankle pivot. His huge, ugly hands are still basically 5mm ports. So the mace and the sword just slide into his hands. Or, you can give them to any other Megatron toy that has 5mm fists. Transforming Mechinic Master into a gun is similar too, but kind of simplified from, Hegemon. In both cases one arm has to move to the other side of the body, their forearms form the back of the gun instead of the shoulders, the legs collapse and connect to each other at the calves to form the grip, and the trigger is part of the back kibble. The biggest differences are that the hip kibble that helps fill in the top of the grip on Hegemon is also part of the back kibble, and where Hegemon just left Megatron's midsection showing Mechinic Master has flaps silver flaps that fold up over it. Oh, and Mechinic Master has one arm on top of the other, hence the long midsection, where Hegemon has one arm on either side like the G1 toy. While Hegemon's barrel and scope can remain attached for the entire transformation, both of those things have to be removed and partsformed into place on Mechinic Master. Another mild annoyance... Hegemon's silencer fits over his barrel, and although it's kind of weird he has the stock attachment. Mechinic Master doesn't have a stock, and if you want to use the silencer you have to pull the tip of the barrel off and replace it with the silencer. It's ultimately short and not worth the hassle, IMHO. All of the shortcomings I've mentioned so far are leaving out what's probably the biggest one, and that's the quality of the materials. Mechinic Master is made from a light, brittle-feeling plastic, and there's parts of the transformation where it feels like you're definitely going to break something the first time you run into a little resistance. For the low price (I got this for under $50 shipped), I don't really regret buying Mechinic Master. Despite his proportions being a little off, in some ways he does look pretty good. With slightly smaller arms and a shorter midsection I'd argue that he'd look better than Hegemon, and has an easier transformation to boot. He's ok as a one-off display piece. But the size, limited articulation, loose joints, and icky plastic unfortunately mean he's not quite the Megatron I'm looking for.

So, the guys over at Linus Tech Tips did some estimates based on their benchmarks with the 6950 XT and AMD's "up to 1.5/1.7/whatever" claims. Of course we should take these sorts of estimates with a big ol' grain of salt until real benchmarks start coming, but the gist is that in terms of raw rendered frames the 7900 XTX could actually be very close to the RTX 4090, and unlike Nvidia AMD is supporting Display Link 2.1. Plus, the reference cards are close in size to the 6950 XT and use the same pair of 8-pin connectors, so gamers looking to upgrade are less likely to need a new case and/or PSU, too. The catch seems to be that there's more to it than just drawing frames these days, and again based on AMD's own performance claims over the 6950 XT, the 7900 XTX will lag significantly behind the RTX 4090 with Ray Tracing (they expect around half the framerate you'd get with a 4090). It also sounds like they're not super enthusiastic about FSR 3 (although, to be fair, their concerns seem to be how FSR 3 will generate extra frames, and they have similar issues with DLSS 3). Finally, while the 7900 XTX looks like it's going to be great for gaming, a lot of non-gaming GPU-intensive stuff is designed specifically for CUDA, so for stuff like Blender the 7900 XTX might still underperform even compared to a RTX 3090. Still, unless you're a money-is-no-object type or a professional creative, it looks like the 7900 XTX is going to be a better bang-for-your-buck choice than Nvidia's RTX 4000-series, benchmarks pending. And this is coming from someone who's used Nvidia exclusively since the newest Windows was XP SP 3.

Was it though? Let's take a more in-depth look at the Transformers X G.I. Joe Bumblebee A.W.E. Striker. My initial impression is that Megatron looks better. Some extra details on his hips and some extra tread on his legs aren't a huge deal. For the most part, he looks like Megatron, just with some extra back guns and some new shoulder kibble. Bee, on the other hand, looks like Hound and Beachcomber had a baby. Little splashes of yellow and a Bumblebee head are all that really make him Bumblebee; they could have easily painted the chest blue gray, slapped a different head on him, and called him Kup. And no matter who he is, his proportions are terrible. I can't tell if his arms are weirdly long or not, but his torso is definitely like half the length it should be. Some of the bigger gripes with Megatron were the alt mode kibble hanging off his back and shoulders, and the hollowness of the figure. Bumblebee is, arguably, slightly less hollow- there's some hollow spots in his feet, forearms, biceps, and fists, but this thighs and legs are pretty filled in. Of course, his thighs are also super thin due to transformation, so there isn't much to hollow out. I'd argue, that the kibble, though, is worse than Megatron's. Sure, he's got big shoulder pads and a mahoosive backpack, but those things stay pretty much out of the way. Bee, meanwhile, has massive tires on his shoulders and knees that prevent him from even bringing his arms the whole way down. And while his backpack doesn't jut out nearly as far as Megatron's, the roll cage dangles down past his knees, and the ends constantly bump into or get caught up on those knee wheels. Just a few more hinges to collapse the roll cage would have made all the difference, but, SPOILERS, like Megatron Bee's more concerned with being replica of a 1985 G.I. Joe toy than a Transformer. Be comes with a bit fewer accessories than Megatron. There's just the one gun, where Megatron had three. Bee does come with a retro-style G.I. Joe, but even his human has fewer accessories as he's got a stand and a rifle but not a backpack like Barnoness. Side note... I wasn't a huge G.I. Joe fan. I was aware of some of the more popular ones- Duke, Snake Eyes, Shipwreck, Roadblock, Scarlet, Flint, and Lady Jaye on the good guys, Cobra Commander, Destro, Zartan, and the Baroness on the bad guys. This guy here is apparently Stalker, whom I'm totally unfamiliar with... but I love this guy! He doesn't have any gimmick. He's not a ninja or a member of the Village People. He's just a guy, in generic army fatigues, with the sort of mustache popular with black actors in the late '70s and early '80s. I mean, if you told me that this wasn't a G.I. Joe, it was actually George Dillon (played by Carl Weathers) from Predator, I'd totally believe it. Moving along. On paper, Bumblebee actually has better articulation than Megatron. His head swivels. His shoulders rotate and, in theory, can move laterally 90 degrees. In practice, the back kibble and big shoulder tires are going to get in the way. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. He actually has wrist and waist swivels. His hips can, again in theory, move 90 degrees forward, backward, and laterally, but again good luck working around the back kibble and big tires on his legs. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend slightly over 90 degrees. No foot or ankle articulation, which is kind of unacceptable on a $68 figure. Something else worth noting... Megatron may have fewer joints, but the joints he has are nice and tight. Bumblebee is really floppy. On my copy, the lateral shoulder joints can't hold up the weight of the arms, and a gentle shake will cause his hips to flail like a little kid pretending to do karate. The gun has a peg on it that can be used to plug it into his hands. There's also a peg on his backpack that lets you mount it like a shoulder cannon. A small protruding bit with a peg on it allows Stalker to ride on Bumblebee's back and man the cannon. Another complaint about Megatron is that a lot of the vehicle was formed from his backpack and shoulder pads, with most of the robot stuffed between the treads on the bottom. Bee does make up more of the vehicle here, with the legs and feet forming the front 2/3rds of the vehicle. His backpack, if you ignore the roll cage, is pretty much just the engine compartment and rear fenders. As was the case with Megatron, Bumblebee doesn't simply turn into a vehicle from G.I. Joe, he turns into a pretty convincing replica of a 1985 toy that 3.75" G.I. Joe figures could ride in. It's hard for me to tell, maybe the green is a little lighter than the original toy (but close to the reissue), and some details that were stickers on the original are tampoed on Bee. He's even got the steering wheel, camera, and antenna of the original. There is a bit of extra material sticking up behind the seats that's not on the original- that's the platform Stalker can stand on when Bee's in robot mode. And the engine cover isn't removable on Bee, since instead of an engine you'd just find Bee's head. Whether Bee was holding the gun or wearing it on his backpack, you'll have to pull it off and partsform it to the top of the roll cage. Then Bee's got plenty of space for Joes to ride- two seats in the roll cage, plus pegs on the floor outside the cage for joes to ride on the sides. Another peg on the engine compartment allows a fifth Joe to man the cannon. I guess a lot of what I have to say here is going to carry over from my Megatron review... a Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover makes a lot of sense, but it'd work better if the robots (whether original characters or repurposed existing ones) scaled with the mainline Transformers, the way the other crossovers have, and make them Transformers first, vehicles second, and skip compatibility with 3.75" figures. The way they did it, focusing on a toy replica that happens to transform, makes for a poor Transformers experience, while Joe fans could simply buy a reissue A.W.E. Striker for less than half the price and not have to put up with it turning into a sub-par Transformer. They could have saved a ton of money and made a much better Transformer if they'd simply repainted Maverick as the G.I. Joe Sky Striker. So, no, I don't think Bumblebee is better. His floppy joints, weird proportions, and more in-the-way kibble make me like him a lot less than Megatron. I can't honestly recommend this to anyone, be they Transformer or Joe fan, unless they're a super hardcore fan of both franchises who can remember playing with the A.W.E. Striker back in the '80s and thinking to themselves, " this is cool, but I wished it turned into a robot."

I liked Shin Godzilla, but I liked (almost) all the Godzilla films. That said, I could go for a Showa-style thing where different kaiju carry their own films, not just turn up as the heel in the latest Godzilla vs film.