mikeszekely

For anyone who's still in, I sincerely hope they get a good one and they love it. But yeah, I'm pretty content with my SoC.

Side note, pretty much the entire first wave of Legacy has been previewed, and apparently there are sightings of Bulkhead and Blaster with Legacy packaging in Europe. Hopefully the original July release date had some built-in padding for manufacturing issues from COVID, and they'll actually start getting into people's hands a bit sooner. I really want that Laser Optimus.

I mean, if I could get my hands on a decently-priced G1 Slag in good condition I probably would. But for the money the Studio Series one is the way to go. Either that or spend on Gigapower's Grassor.

No, not the Revelations cartoon. Netflix and Mattel are collaborating on a new live action MotU movie, with the Nee Brothers directing and co-writing with David Callaham. Details are sparse, but apparently Kyle Allen (American Horror Story) is being tapped to play Prince Adam.

To be fair, I think a lot of my lesser opinion has to do with a complete lack of attachment to the character and a more ambivalent attitude toward beastformers than the Transformers that turn into cars and jets and stuff. But I still got her and Skywarp (aka the Eagle repaint), and I actually have Terrorsaur POed at both Amazon and Pulse. Unless someone else needs it, I planned on cancelling whichever one doesn't ship first. Unless you're looking for SS86 Blurr or Kingdom Tracks and Wingfinger neither my local Targets nor Walmarts have much. That said, I was a bit surprised to see a less-local Walmart had a pretty big stock of Cyberverse Deluxes, though. Now, after Cheetor I was kind of feeling like I might be over Cyberverse. I really only watched the first season of the show, the Decepticons are hugely underrepresented, my Starscream actually busted on me, and despite being "Deluxes" they're inferior in quality to the Generations stuff. I was all set to keep walking, except I noticed that Walmart has them marked down to $13. OK, at that price I could have a look. Mostly it was stuff from the original BAF wave, just in the newer all-cardboard packaging. But then I noticed this guy, and well, I'm a sucker for Dinobots. It's Cyberverse Deluxe-class Slug. Like the best of Cyberverse, Slug is essentially the G1 character reworked the the Cyberverse aesthetic. It works great for the cartoon, from what I can tell... the problem is that, perhaps more than most of the other Cyberverse Deluxes I've looked at (save maybe Thunderhowl), Slug is not particularly cartoon-accurate. His torso has blue squares that aren't in the cartoon, with far less silver on his chest. The silver (or light gray) he does have comes down over his abs, which they shouldn't, and have a weird stony texture that he doesn't have in the cartoon. The black on his lats is missing, and his thighs are gray instead of black. He's missing some red on his hands and elbows, and some gold on his wrists. Meanwhile, his shoulder and biceps are gold, when they should be silver and black (respectively with just little gold accents on the outside of his shoulders. He's got no red on his knees, and his shins are mostly gold when they should be silver with just a bit of gold, mostly around his ankles. He's also pretty small, like half the size of the Studio Series toy and smaller even than the PotP Deluxe. That said, he doesn't look too terribly out-of-place next to Cyberverse Grimlock. I'd prefer them both bigger- to me, the Dinobots are just supposed to be bigger than the rank-and-file guys. Then again, I haven't watched a ton of Cyberverse, and from what I did watch I guess everyone was sort of a similar size, so maybe it's fine. As with some of the more recent Cyberverse Deluxes, Slug benefits from not having to spend some of his budget on a BAF. This means that, unlike Grimlock (who just came with a blast effect you could kind of pass off as a flaming sword), Slug's got some proper accessories. Namely, he's got a double-barreled gun and a black axe with some translucent red bits. And he still gets a blast effect! Slug's articulation is kind of par for the Cyberverse course, which is to say it's better than the Warrior-class figures in the line but a disappointment to anyone who's picked up a WfC Trilogy Deluxe. His head is on a ball joint with a little up/down tilt, miniscule sideways tilt, and a difficult swivel with his dino head in the way. His shoulders are on ball joints for rotating and moving a bit under 90 degrees laterally. His elbows bend 90 degrees, but he lacks a bicep swivel (which is a big no-no for me). At least he kind of has a wrist swivel... I say kind of because it's not really his wrist that swivels, it's his whole forearm (it's for transformation). But it's below the elbow, so it's more akin to a wrist swivel than a bicep swivel. Speaking of swivels, his waist swivels. His hips are on ball joints that can go forward 90 degrees, laterally almost 90 degrees, but not a lot backward due to the shape of his pelvis. He's got cut thigh swivels, and knees that bend almost 180 degrees. His feet tilt up but kibble blocks them from tilting down. His ankles can technically pivot 180 degrees (it's a transformation step), but practically they're limited to about 45 degrees. Going beyond that will expose a hinge and prevent him from standing with his feet flat. Slug holds both of his accessories just fine using his 5mm fist holes. There's also a pair of 5mm ports on his back that can be used for weapon storage. The blast effect fits over the tiny pegs on the gun's barrel; there's nowhere else to store it. Half of Slug's transformation is pretty much what you'd expect; turn the arms into his forelegs, fold his lower legs over his thighs while folding the tail out to make his rear half, etc. Half of it seems kind of unnecessary. One of the steps has you pull out and drop his shoulders, pull his head away from his body, then rotate the outside of his torso 180 degrees... which has the effect putting his shoulders right back where they were in the first place. And I'm not totally sold on the results. The angles of his big horns and face shape plus the miniscule nose horn kind of make him look like a bull with a hat more than a triceratops. And as with the robot mode the colors are just way off. No black on the biceps and thighs, no black on the spikes above his hips, no gold toes, no red on his knees and elbows, shoulders should be silver, and his back should be silver. That weird stony pattern on his torso shows up on his crest, and it's just as incorrect here. Plus his crest is missing the spikes. As with the robot mode, he's pretty small in dino mode. But, again, the size seems work better when paired with Cyberverse Grimlock. There's not a ton of articulation to speak of in dino mode. He does have a jaw flap. Technically you can rotate his shoulders and hips, and bend his elbows and knees. However, the shape of the parts lends themselves best to one particular position, and that position is actually reinforced by tabs that act as stopping points. There's a peg on the back of the axe that allows it to plug into a port on the top of his gun. Then the whole thing can plug into a port on Slug's back. So... what do you want me to say here? Objectively, this isn't a great figure (although I do prefer it to the PotP version). It's not very accurate to the cartoon, and the quality is just well below what you'd get in a Deluxe from the Generations or Studio Series lines. Although I think Slug's a better figure than Cyberverse Grimlock, I can't really recommend him. But, maybe you're like me, and you'll buy it anyway because Dinobots. And on that note, even as this purchase kind of reinforces my earlier notion that I should stop buying the Cyberverse figures, I also really hope they'll do Snarl, Sludge, and Swoop in the Deluxes classes.

I played it on the Switch, and I rather enjoyed it. I remember it got some pretty mixed reviews at the time, but I couldn't recall what specifically people were complaining about.

I mean, so do I. But I'm kind of addicted to getting the Diaclone variants, so I preordered Guard and I already ordered some black Nonnef feet for him. And yeah, I really want Blue Bluestreak, but I'm less interested in the Beast Wars repaints.

I really liked the first one, at least until the aliens started showing up. It was kind of like Far Cry, except you had super powers from your suit. It was super fun to use the stealth power, walk into an enemy camp, grab a guy, switch the strength power, then toss the guy so hard he'd land outside the camp. The sequels were alright. I mean, mechanically they were fine, but they swapped the Far Cry-style open world island for a series of more linear levels.

My interest in the game is tempered by the fact that, like the remasters, it'll wind up being an Epic exclusive on PC and I won't touch it.

Pulse is taking orders for Deluxe-class Guard. It's Earthrise Ironhide in Diaclone colors. No word yet on some of the other repaints that have been leaking, like Nightprowler (white Cheetor), Sandstorm (Deluxe Scorponok in a dusty brown color), Blue Bluestreak, or Buzzsaw (yellow Waspinator with a new head).

It seems to be a downscale of MMC's Assaultus. Wonder how that's going to work out... while not particularly difficult at MP scale, I imagine some of the smaller flaps and clearances, on Vortex especially, being a royal pain at Legends scale.

I feel like, based on the handful of figures I've picked up from DX9, IF, NA, and MS, that Iron Factory built up their reputation for putting out a really solid product by being better than DX9 in the early days of 3P Legends, but they haven't really evolved. Now that NewAge and Magic Square a kind of pushing the boundaries of what can be done in a Legends-sized figure IF's stuff feels kind of clunky and dated.

Well, I preordered with Amazon as soon as preorders went up (technically before, as I did the ol' add to a wishlist then use the wishlist to cart it trick), but Amazon canceled my preorder. And by the time they did, Pulse had already sold out. But after weeks of checking various online and physical stores I was finally able to get one- and from Amazon, no less. It's Kingdom Voyager-class Tigatron! I wasn't into Beast Wars back when it was on, and I'm not super familiar with the original toys, but I think Tigatron was originally a repaint of Cheetor, just with a remolded beast head. Needless to say, Tigatron's Kingdom toy was always going to be similar to Cheetor's, and while it's not quite as simple as they took Cheetor and made him bigger, a lot of the good and bad of that mold carriers over here. On the one hand, it's a figure good proportion and an immediate, definite likeness to the cartoon, but at the same time I think his legs, especially around his ankles and knees, need more of that minty blue-green. Speaking of, I'm also a bit disappointed to note that the blue-green on his shins and face has a nice metallic sheen to it because it's painted, but the blue-green plastic used in his pelvis, elbow joint are lacking that sheen because they're unpainted. On the whole, though, I'm not one to complain. While I don't consider Tigatron one of the "main" Maximal cast (that'd be Primal, Rattrap, Cheetor, Rhinox, and Dinobot) he's one of my favorites. I mean, tigers are cool, and white tigers are the coolest tigers. And minty blue-green goes great with white, giving Tigatron just an awesome color scheme. Like Cheetor, Tigatron's tail is an accessory that partsforms, but it lacks the bladed tip that made it a deliberate weapon. I know that he doesn't really use it in the show, but I wish they'd put the effort into making his tail a gun like the original toy. While the whip gets a pass on Cheetor, since Deluxes have a lower budget and the tail is kind of an homage to his Transmetal form, it just seems like a lazy move here. Unlike Cheetor, Tigatron comes with the gut gun, at least. Tigatron's head might be on a ball joint, but it's hard to say. There's the faintest of wiggles, but really his only articulation is the swivel. His shoulders rotate and can extend beyond 90 degrees laterally. HIs biceps swivel. His elbows are double jointed and can curl basically 180 degrees. His wrists and waist swivel. His hips can go about 90 degrees forward, backward, or laterally. There's a flap on his butt that's tabbed down, but you can pull it out and hinge it up so that it doesn't hinder the backwards hip range. His thighs swivel. His knees bend 90 degrees. His feet have a lot of up/down tilt, due to the way they move for transformation, plus a little over 90 degrees of ankle pivot. Tigatron can hold either of his accessories in his 5mm fists. And while the Beast Wars characters that have come out in Kingdom haven't had the sheer number of ports that their G1 counterparts have had in the War for Cybertron Trilogy, he does have 5mm ports on his heels and under his forearms. Transformation is where we're going to start noticing differences between Tigatron and Cheetor. The panels on his sides have to be forced around the larger shoulder wings. Instead of hiding behind the cat's neck, the back of Tigatron's head forms part of the neck. And it turns out that his larger shoulder wings and side flaps are shaped the way they are because his robot arms don't stretch out under him, rather they curl up and give him a thicker torso. The leg transformation is much more similar, except Tigatron has flaps inside his legs that fold forward to fill in the front of his cat thighs. And, I mean, it's fine, for the most part. Tigatron definitely has more of a tiger shape than the slimmer Cheetor, which is good, and he's bigger, which tigers should be. Thing is, he doesn't do much in tiger mode. Making his robot thighs part of the tiger's body limits the forward articulation of his rear legs. Likewise, while his knees can bend forward due how they transform a real tiger bending that way would have a broken leg. There's almost no backward bend, though. His front legs have better articulation, able to swivel and move over 90 degrees laterally at the shoulder, elbows that bend almost 90 degrees, and hinged ball joints at the wrists, you're kind of limited in posing him by the need to keep him balanced with the nearly-static rear legs. His jaws can open, but he's got no other articulation in his head/neck. And there's no tail articulation. It just hangs limply from his butt. Since Tigatron's engineering is based so heavily on Cheetor's which didn't have a gut gun, the gut gun Tigatron comes with doesn't integrate into his tiger body. Rather, the 5mm ports that were under his forearms are on the tiger's chest/tummy, and the instructions suggest you plug it into one of those. Tigatron is... ok. If you liked Cheetor, you'll be fine with Tigatron, and if you hated Cheetor nothing the changes to that mold are unlikely to sway you. I don't consider him to be as essential as the main Axalon crew, but I'd say he and Airazor are at least more desirable than some later characters like Depth Charge. Plus, if you already got Airazor their relationship practically makes Tigatron a necessity. So I'll say if you've been collecting the WfC and SS86 stuff for solely the G1 characters then Tigatron's probably not on your radar and wouldn't be the Beast Wars character to start with. But if you have been collecting the Beast Wars characters in Kingdom then I'd recommend picking up Tigatron, too. Doubly so if you have Airazor.

I was never a big fan of Meat Loaf's music. But I loved him in Fight Club.

When Deformation Space's first release, Crimson Wings, came out I suggested that it looked like a great take on an MP Starscream, but that I didn't plan on reviewing it because it didn't look like enough of an upgrade for me to replace my Maketoys Meteor. Well, shoutout to @mantisfists who was kind enough to send me his own copy so I could compare them for you guys! And yeah, my first impressions of this guy out of the box are pretty good. He's mostly solid, he's got some diecast, and I believe he's mostly painted albeit in flat, matte colors to better copy the Sunbow art. He's got a cleaner, more cartoon-accurate appearance than Meteor with a more-proportional head, cleaner legs, color-matched elbow joints, and no forearm gaps. He doesn't go too hard into the cartoon, though, as he's missing some of the elements of MP-52's design that kind of bugged me like the thin legs, diaper pelvis, and bulbous canopy. I'll note that both Crimson Wings and Meteor have pretty similar colors, save the faces, and I think the color both companies used for the off-white, light gray color is better than the the color Takara used for MP-52. That said, Starscream's face should be darker than Crimson Wings'. Not as dark as Meteor's but just a tad darker would be nice. Deformation Space even did a remarkable job keeping Crimson Wings' back clean. He's not carrying half his tail sandwiched between his wings in a thick backpack, there's no jet kibble on his legs, and no nose cones hanging off his back. From a purely aesthetic point of view, I have no complaints (I thought I had one, but the barrels on those null rays do extend a bit). Opinions are subjective, sure, and feel free to disagree, but Crimson Wings looks better than MP-03, MP-11, MP-52, or Meteor, at least in robot mode. Note that he is a little tall, though. The difference between Crimson Wings and the MP-11-sized Meteor is pretty small, but for whatever reason MP-52 is a bit shorter still than Meteor. Those differences combine so that MP-52 winds up eye-to-collar with Crimson Wings. Personally, I don't think the size difference is so huge that either will really look out of place on its own with figures like MP Megatron or Soundwave, although I prefer Starscream to be a little taller. However, if you were thinking about mixing and matching Seekers to avoid having to buy three of the exact same toy in different colors you should know you'll wind up with three Seekers of varying heights. He doesn't come with a ton of accessories, but he doesn't really need to. He comes with a pair of null rays, and they have an interesting gimmick where the barrel collapses, the rear section splits open, and then the barrel spins around so that they can transform into the smaller missiles seen on the animation model in jet mode. You also get two alternate faces, one with a suitably Starscreamy smirk and the other with a dopey grin. That's perfect; assuming that the Thundercracker and Skywarp come with the same faces you can use a different face on each one, which helps them seem less samey. I'm thinking maybe the stoic face for Thundercracker, the grin for Skywarp, and of course the smirk goes with Starscream. Let me swap that for you, @mantisfists... There we go! Crimson Wings' head will lift that smirk up a good 45 degrees on a double-hinged swivel. The double-hinge is cool, because by default it seems like he doesn't have the clearance to look down, but if you have him look up using the upper joint then tilt his whole neck forward at the lower joint and he can actually get a decent downward bend, too. His shoulders rotate on soft ratchets, extend laterally a little over 90 degrees, and he's even got butterfly hinges to help fold his arms across his torso. His biceps swivel, and his double-jointed elbows bend a combined 180 degrees. His wrists swivel, and a hinge allows them to bend upward (I'd have preferred downward, though). His fingers are all separate, individually-articulated pieces with hinges at the base and middle knuckles while his thumbs have two hinges but a ball joint at the base as well. His waist swivels, and there's some transformation hinges you can use to give him a little back bend or ab crunch. His hips skirts have pinned flaps to move out of the way, but they're kind of tight and I didn't want to push them too far. I'll say he's got ratcheted front/back joints, maybe 75 degrees forward and 45 degrees backward, with a friction hinge good for over 90 degree laterally. His thighs swivel around his hip joints, but weirdly there's another hinge where the hip meets the thigh. It lets you shift his hips outward, giving the thigh a little more room outside the hip skirts. It doesn't seem to be involved in the transformation, and it looks kind of weird, but it's there. Wrapping it up, he's got ratcheted double-jointed needs that'll get you 120-130 degrees of bend, no real up/down foot tilt, but 90 degrees of ankle pivot. All-in-all, the articulation is quite good and you should have no trouble getting the poses you want, as long as the poses you want don't involve Starscream axe-kicking a dude. Better still, the joints are all toleranced well, and there's none of the floppiness between ratchets that MP-52 seemed to suffer from. The null-rays plug into ports on the outside of biceps. I'm not sure if they didn't take the paint into account or what, but the fit is very snug. I'll leave the critiquing of the finer details to someone like David, but from the top at least Crimson Wings looks fine to me. The lines and proportions are pretty consistent with Meteor, and there's plenty of molded panel lines that add some realism. From a purely Sunbow POV, though, he's lacking those two gray squares where the animators colored the G1 toy's hinges, but that doesn't bother me at all. As we check out some other angles, though, you'll notice that Crimson Wings is a bit thicker than Meteor, with Meteor's nose flowing better into the fuselage. I don't think that's necessarily the end of the world; I've said before that while I think it's possible to make transforming robots with smooth, clean jet modes Starscream is always going to suffer from the limitations of trying to get that plane mode out of the G1 animation model. Meteor isn't as chunky, but both boxy on the underside. For what it's worth, despite the unpainted hinge in the middle, Meteor's vertical stabs have red markings more like the animation, and I like that the red is on both sides. Crimson Wings only has markings on the outside of the stabs. Really, though, more than the aesthetics what makes Crimson Wings' fall to Meteor in alt mode is the process of getting there. For this review I was transforming Meteor and thinking, "I haven't done this in forever, I'm probably going to have to watch a video or something." But no, aside from the nose falling off of that c-clip everything was logical and smooth, and in no time I had a jet. That's just not the case for Crimson Wings. Don't get me wrong, I'll give them credit for trying something different. His arms wind up tucked into his lower legs, and rather than have said legs cover over this thighs his torso actually collapses downward to do it. I'd almost like it, except that there's a lot of pieces trying to move at once, some of them pretty thin or on twisting armatures, and there's not a ton of clearance. While far from the worst transformation I've done, it's decidedly not fun. As I previously mentioned, Crimson Wings' null rays fold in to smaller alt-mode missiles, and I do really enjoy that. I also like that the stabs unfold, but they have definite stopping points unlike Meteor's. The canopy can open, and you can see the little seat inside. There's landing gear the folds out from under the cockpit and his robo-knees, and the ones on Crimson Wings actually roll. Actually, that reminds me of another minor issue. While most of the moving parts on this figure are toleranced excellently, the door covering the front landing gear is just a floppy mess. There's also two tiny filler bits that sit just fore of pins in the wing hinges. For robot mode you kind of lift them up and out, then turn them 90 degrees. In jet mode, tucked into the fuselage, they're fine. In bot mode, on the front of his wings just behind his shoulders, they dangle loosely. Ultimately, I think you have to ask yourself what you want on your shelf. Do you want a display piece, something that needs to look and pose great in robot mode but you're not going to transform it often, if at all? Then I absolutely recommend Crimson Wings, as I think he's the best-looking Starscream you can buy. If you're trying to decide between this and MP-52, well, I'd prefer to actually handle MP-52 before I say this definitively but I think Crimson Wings looks better and is better built. If you're still rocking MP-3 or MP-11 you should definitely consider upgrading; you could always use the older MP for your alt mode. All that said, I'm sticking with my earlier decision to keep on with my Maketoys Seekers. They're far more pleasant to transform, and while I do think Maketoys' robots are a bit inferior to Crimson Wings I'm not convinced that Crimson Wings is enough of an upgrade that I want to commit to replacing all three. If Deformation Space wants to do repaints in colors that I don't have in the Maketoys, though, like Sunstorm, Acid Storm, or G2 Starscream, and I'd probably pick one up.

I didn't get the Lady Gaga pack, but I got the Skrillex one. I know dubstep became sort of a joke, with Skrillex often the face of that joke, but I don't think there's a better match between music and boxes than "Bangarang".

There's a lot of people that seem really mad about it. Some of it I get; AB's been a really toxic company, and while MS is paying lip service to fixing the culture at AB it sounds like Bobby Kotick isn't going anywhere. Others are complaining about how it's anticompetitive and bad for gamers. And while they're not wrong, Sony's bought up their share of studios to shore up their stable of 1st party exclusives. Microsoft's biggest weakness has been a lack of exclusive software, it stands to reason they'd want to make some gains on that front. I'm guessing a lot of the anger, then, is because AB is a much bigger acquisition than Insomniac or Bluepoint, and because Sony's larger user base isn't bothered when Sony scores more exclusives, but same crowd will be mad if they have to get an Xbox for the next Call of Duty.

Repaint roundup, COVID quarantine* edition! Today we're going to finish off the Pulse-exclusive Shattered Glass collection. First up we have Voyager-class Starscream. The heroic Decepticon sports a color scheme based on the G1 Jetfire toy, and white with a little red and black never doesn't look cool. I've got a ton of this mold (I think this is my 10th), but this is handily one of the best versions, aestehtically-speaking. Aside from colors, there's no changes in the mold for the bot himself, or for his null rays. What is new, though, is his sword. It's pretty cool! You'll note that it has one long handle, with a shorter handle in front of it. It can be held as one big broad sword using the long handle, or split in half to make two thinner swords. Additionally, there's a pair of 5mm pegs on the cross piece. This allows you to mount the swords onto his forearms. The original Timelines SG Starscream used the Cybertron Voyager Starscream mold, and putting the swords on his arms simulates the blades that popped out when you put the cyber planet key into his back. Alt mode. You can store the swords on the alt mode by leaving them on his arms. Again, nothing new, exactly, but the mostly-white with red and black accents still really works for me. Plus the Siege Seeker mold is trying to emulate the tetrajet design from the G1 cartoon, and Cybertron Starscream was also an homage to the tetrajet. So of all the SG figures, including the Prime and Ratchet that came out before the Pulse miniseries, Starscream comes across as the most well-executed and the least "let's take one of the SG characters that appeared in Timelines back in the day, take one of the current figures we've been selling, and redeco it to look like the SG one!" It helps, too, that I honestly do like this mold a lot. You can probably still pass if SG's not your thing, but if you're going to get any SG figure Starscream is the one to get. Last but not least, we have Commander-class Jetfire. Given the relationship between Starscream and Jet/Skyfire, in both the G1 cartoon and the SG comics that came with these figures, and given that SG Starscream's running around in G1 Jetfire colors, you'd think that SG Jetfire would use G1 Starscream colors. And man, would I have preferred that. Where Starscream's SG deco is sharp and inspired, Jetfire's is the epitome of lazy. For one, this deco didn't originate with Shattered Glass. Instead, Takara had a line called "Gentei! Gentei!" that was a collection of limited-edition repaints of the normal "Henkei! Henkei" stuff. Most of the line was remolds of the regular Henkei releases of Starscream and Ramjet to complete the Seeker teams, and there was the odd but interested choice to repaint Henkei Hot Rod into Wildrider. And then there was "Dark Jetfire," an uninspired deco based on the uninspired idea that if Nemesis Prime sells, Nemesis Your Other Favorite Autobots might, too. And I swear the colors came down to them asking "what's the evil opposites of white and red?" and getting black and purple for an answer. Then when Hasbro was figuring to maximize their money off the Siege Jetfire mold by stuffing Jetfire into their Shattered Glass miniseries, instead of really thinking about what Shattered Glass Jetfire might be and look like they said, "oh, Takara already did an evil Jetfire? Just use that." There's nothing new about SG Jetfire. He's still got the faction-swapping gimmick. And all the accessories they crammed in with Siege Jetfire. While I didn't really care for it on Siege Jetfire (I get the toy homage, but it really seemed more like them trying to justify the price tag that necessary bits), I don't mind them so much on SG Jetfire. Why wouldn't the evil version be more heavily-armed than the G1 scientist? Plus it adds some visual distinctiveness. Alt mode. Pretty much what you'd expect. I assume, given the red hinges and red backpack on Siege Jetfire, that the wing hinges are molded onto the same sprues. On Siege Jetfire this works, because he has a red stripe over his wing for it to blend into. No so much with SG Jetfire, who ends up with a purple hinge in the middle of a silver stripe. As with the Siege version, the armor and weapons can all combine into a little drone that can be carried on Jetfire's back. Don't really care for it, but I don't care so much for the armor anyway. With a little creativity you can find other, better places for his weapons without the armor. Oh, and he also comes with the same blast effects as Siege Jetfire, just in a cooler translucent blue. Shattered Glass began as a well to sell convention-exclusive repaints at Botcon back in the day. It's always been an unoriginal, unnecessary idea. However, it's a part of the fandom and fiction now, and unoriginal and unnecessary doesn't have to uninteresting. As Starscream has shown, you can get some really cool repaints out of it. I believe there's interesting stories in exploring, for example, how a few seemingly small changes can lead to Prime becoming a scared tyrant instead of a compassionate leader, or how Megatron's desire for a change in the way Cybetron is governed makes him a true freedom fighter instead of a despotic conqueror. And, maybe that's enough to check out some of these SG repaints when your dropping $20-$30 for a Deluxe or a Voyager. Unfortunately, Jetfire brings none of that. It's a lazy, boring design and the comics he's shoved into are equally uninspired. And that's a lot harder to forgive in a $90 Commander-class. Unless you're really committed to the line, I wouldn't recommend Jetfire. He's not the worst of the line, but it's simply too much for such an unnecessary figure in an unnecessary line. If Hasbro continues to go back to the SG well, which I'm not necessarily suggesting, I hope they stick to smaller figures with better designs. And maybe more Decepticons. I wouldn't say no to an SG Soundwave...

Nice, I'm still waiting for the third set to come in at TCP. And even then I probably won't ship right away, I'll wait for MMC's First Aid to save on shipping.

I skipped seeing this in theaters. Was planning on picking up the Blu-ray, but I see it's available now on digital and I'm stuck in COVID quarantine for a few more days. Might just get the digital and watch it today.

Yeah, actually. The suit they're using in the movie looks like it's got a bit more padding in the jacket and dark gloves instead of yellow, but it's fairly accurate on the whole. I have no idea who Leslie Grace is. Doesn't seem like she's been in much of anything before Batgirl. I'd be real hesitant to see this in the theater, but I'm already paying for HBO Max so I've got nothing to lose but time.

Well, here's one I wanted to get done right after Blaster, but the one I got from Pulse was misassembled and I had to buy another one because Pulse never replied to the request for service. It's Kingdom Deluxe-class Slammer. It's hard to say what Slammer is supposed to look like, since the G1 toy didn't have a robot mode, like Brunt. Slammer was a little tank that came packaged with Metroplex, and by removing his turret, folding an antenna from the underside, and pegging his back onto one of Metroplex's fist holes in city mode he became the top of a tower. Unlike Brunt, who's robot mode was inspired by the Centurion drone in the IDW comics (that would later get a toy that was a repaint of Siege Brunt), I'm not sure what the inspiration of Slammer's robot mode is. All I can say for sure is that he's like 90% a new mold, but weirdly he uses the same hips and thighs as Ironworks. Regardless, I think he looks pretty decent. I mean, I like him better than his fellow Metroplex-pack-in-turned-Weaponizer Sixgun. But having both of them in decently-articulated Deluxes really makes me want a new and better Scamper. As I just alluded to, Slammer is a Weaponizer, meaning he doesn't come with accessories so much as he comes apart into a pile of accessories. This is all the parts I can break him down into. Back in his robot mode, his head is on a ball joint with a very slight up/down/sideways tilt. You can get him to look up a bit more by using the transformation hinge. His shoulders rotate and move laterally over 90 degrees. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. No wrist articulation. His waist swivels, and he's actually got a few joints in his torso than can be used as a back bend or an ab crunch. His hips can move forward, backward, and laterally 90 degrees (although his backpack can get in the way a bit). His thighs swivel, and his knees bend nearly 180 degrees (they actually can bend 180 degrees when they're not attached to his hips, as tucking his thighs into his calves is part of his transformation). No foot tilt, but he's got 90 degrees of ankle pivot. For weapons, you can pop the cannon off his back and plug it onto the peg in front of either fist. You can also pop the part the cannon was connected to off the backpack, pop the treads off, then use the little connector part to turn the treads into a chainsaw that you can mount into the 5mm port on the outside of his forearm. Transformation involves mostly disassembling and reassembling him. The biggest frustration comes from the fact that his forearms form the turret, but they don't lock into each other in any way. Instead, the little part the cannon connects to has two holes on the other side, one for each fist peg. It's just that one part that's supposed to hold the turret together then, but it's so loose that there's basically no friction at all keeping it on. It will fall off, and it will fall off constantly. I thought maybe it was just a bad copy, but the second one I got is just as bad. That really puts a damper on him. Aesthetically, Hasbro more or less nailed the shape of the G1 toy. My gripe is the colors. The white turret and the light gray used for the bulk of the main body is fine, but the black on the barrel and near the back of the tank is totally out of place. I'll almost certainly repaint, at the very least, the barrel of the tank to be a nice, proper white. Slammer doesn't do a ton in tank mode. His elbow hinges allow you to elevate the cannon barrel by elevating the entire turret. The turret does not swivel, though. And as a Weaponizer, part of the play pattern is turning him to weapons that can combine with other figures. You're really limited only by your imagination and the spots where you can find holes to plug them into, but above you can see the "official" suggestion that comes in his instructions, modeled here on Kingdom Sideswipe. As a transforming robot, Slammer is mostly ok, although a issue that made my first one unable to transform and the super loose connector part soured me a bit. He's a decent enough robot, with an accurately shaped, inaccurately colored tank mode that you have to partsform to get to. He is beyond unessential; although Slammer did appear in the cartoon he's more or less been a simple tank drone until now (in fact, official Takara materials suggested that the fold out arm cannon in Legends/Generations Metroplex was supposed to be Slammer). On his own, as a standalone toy, I'd probably give him a pass. That said, I've been saying that my love for the Weaponizers is entirely because they're modern versions of the super basic figures that came with the G1 citybots. And, as far as I know, with Scamper, Full Tilt, and Cerebros coming with their respective Titans and Cog, Sixgun, Brunt, and Fasttrack as previous Weaponizers, Slammer was the last such bot we needed (excluding Japan-only repaints like the Grand Maximus version of Cog, or the drones that came with Metrotitan). To top it off, Scamper came with Metroplex almost nine years ago, with Sixgun turning up in the second wave of Siege three years ago, and fans of Metroplex have been waiting those three years for that one last drone to truly complete him. Hasbro knew it, too, which is why (although it's not in the instructions) Slammer has a semi official tower mode. They have you put it where Sixgun would go on the G1 toy (or where one of the shoulder guns is supposed to go if you have the Takara version, like I do), but if you're creative you can find places to put Slammer as well as all of Sixgun's bits. Note that no indication was given for where to put Slammer's turret/arms. I have them dangling from a 5mm peg on the back. Regardless, while I may desire a better, more G1-accurate Metroplex with a better, Deluxe-class Scamper, Slammer completes this set for me. If you, like me, have Titan Metroplex, and you already picked up Sixgun, and you've had a Slammer-sized hole in your heart ever since, then and only then will I recommend picking up Slammer.

I watched today. As a 8-10 episode Disney+ series it could have been really good, but as a movie it was somehow both rushed and dull. The writers bring up some interesting philosophical questions, but they don't really take the time to explore them or how the characters' struggle with them. They don't really develop the characters at all beyond one or two key traits (ex: Sprite struggles with being eternally a child, Kingo is a Bollywood star). This is especially true for Kro, a character with two abilities that seemingly set him up as a major villain for the Eternals only to be quickly tossed aside in favor of the "twist" everyone will see coming. As a result I wound up not really caring about anyone or anything happening at any point.

Agreed, but it makes me think they also should have included a toy-style head to go with.

A few years ago I picked up Fans Toys' Tesla and crossed Perceptor off the ol' MP list. I did that even though Tesla wasn't very good- for a Fans Toys he had very little paint or diecast, and he was made with a horribly brittle plastic that, to my knowledge, FT hadn't used before or since. Tesla was bad enough that Fans Toys is taking another crack at it. However, while I'm sure the paint and diecast and the cartoon accuracy on Tesla 2.0 will be far superior, FT's MO lately has been transformations that make me want to pull my hair out, limited articulation, and prices that make me want to wrap up my MP collection and quit collecting. Then along comes X-Transbots with Janssen, their version of Perceptor. It looked good, and at $80-$100 less than Tesla 2.0. But, XTB's had their own issues lately. Dare I roll the dice on this one. Well, first impressions are pretty good! Indeed, if you didn't read the box and didn't know any better you might think that this is the new version of Tesla as you pull this wonderfully cartoon-accurate, meticulously-painted, hefty chunk of robot out of the Styrofoam brick he's packed in- it's a very Fans Toys experience. Yep, everything here is painted- the black on his helmet, pelvis, and toes, the metallic blue forearms and thighs, all the red, the silver accents, the yellow on his forehead, his pearlescent white face. The sculpted details in his thighs, the trapezoids on his shins, even the hinges on his tummy and the red bit that cuts into his pelvis are all cartoon-accurate details, and his blockier shape is definitely more in keeping with the animation model than the original Tesla. Aesthetically, my only real complaint is that I don't really like his face. But... ...Janssen comes with five other alternate faces. Four of them have the same wide face and large eyes as the default, just with various expressions; grinning, slightly open-mouthed concerned face, big opened-mouth yelling face, and weird half open puckered face. The other is another stoic face, but one with smaller eyes and narrower, more angular shape. That last one's my go-to face, and swapping is pretty easy. Basically, there's a tab on the back of the face that fits into a slot on the head. But that's not all! Janssen comes with a boatload of accessories, including two IDW-style heads (with and without the eye scope, swap heads by sliding the neck off the mushroom peg), a test tube and a pair of beakers, a mini Perceptor alt mode, mini robots of Brawn, Bumblebee, and Perceptor, three guns (a small cartoon one, a large red toy rifle, and a black-and-red toy-style missile launcher), one missile, one blast effect, two big storage parts, and one small storage part. The two larger storage parts are for holding the guns. The missile launcher and cartoon gun go in one, and the barrel comes off the toy rifle and both pieces store on the other. The small one is a stand for the blast effect. All of that's nice, I guess... but wouldn't it be better to have storage for the other accessories, too? As for the minifigures, they're undoubtedly an homage to the episode "Microbots," where Brawn, Bumblebee, and Perceptor shrink down to get inside of Megatron's body. They're not too bad on their own! Their heads are all on ball joints, and they have ball joints at the shoulders and hips, plus hinges ad the elbows and knees and even dedicated ankle pivots. Their faces, especially Perceptor's are the greatest, but for their tiny size they're actually fairly well-painted. Janssen's head is on a hinged swivel that can look up a good bit and down just a little in addition to swiveling. His shoulders rotate on ratchets and can extend a little over 90 degrees laterally, plus they can butterfly forward a bit. His biceps swivel, and his double-jointed elbows bend nearly 180 degrees. His wrists swivel, and there's even a hinge that allows them to bend up. His hands are the usual crappy ball jointed fingers. Instead, his fingers are pinned at the base and the middle knuckle, with the index finger being separate from the others. The thumb has a hinge at the base for folding it over the palm, and a pair of hinges for bending. His waist swivels. His hips can ratchet forward 90 degrees and backward a little short of that, and they friction out the sides 90 degrees. What's neat is that the bottom panels of his pelvis slide up into the pelvis as he bends his hip forward. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend around 120 degrees or so on ratcheted double joints. His feet can tilt up slightly, and the toes can tilt up or down on their own as needed. He's got over 90 degrees of ankle pivot. Note that the instructions say that he has an ab crunch, and they seem to indicate that there's a button on the small of his back to engage it. All I can say is that I've tried pressing in all over his back, but nothing actually depresses on my copy and I have been unable to engage any ab crunch. And maybe that's the first signs of XTB's QC issues creeping in. While we're at it, I couldn't get him to hold the cartoon gun in his right hand at all. The tab on the handle simply does not fit into his palm. Fits fine in his left hand, though, and the blast effect can fit into the tip of the barrel. Weirdly, that blast effect only works with that pistol. I couldn't get Janssen to hold the rifle in his right hand, either. Well, I wasn't really planning on displaying him with it anyway, especially since the barrel is not secure at all- another QC tolerance issue. He would hold the missile launcher, which is spring-loaded and does fire the missile, but only after I cut some material around the slot in his palm. Weirdly, I didn't have much issues getting him to hold his beakers, so he can do his science. Just be aware that the one that looks like a cup has the peg angled so that he can only hold it with his right hand. Before we get into alt mode, here's another example of things that just aren't toleranced right. No matter what I do, I can't get Janssen's chest door to sit flush against his body. Janssen's transformation is probably a little more involved than it actually needed to be. There's a few parts with clasps, and his torso is fully of thin panels that you have to open to move stuff around before either closing back up or moving into a new position. While doing so can be a bit finnicky, it's usually clear what it is you're supposed to be doing, so it's ultimately not the worst transformation, though. Just be cautious; while I haven't had any issues, some users have reported breaking the arm off of a hinge that helps it collapse into his torso. The microscope mode is, again, far more cartoon accurate than Tesla. Janssen's torso collapses into a nice rectangular block, and his arms tuck away such that only the blue forearms stick above. His legs don't stick out too far from his sides, and even the mount for the scope has the weird blue Y-shaped base that the G1 toy didn't. The dial on the scope turns and extends the tube. I didn't find anywhere to store any of his accessories in this mode. Maybe that's why you get the storage bits. As good as it looks, microscope mode also has a few problems, and again they're mostly due to things not being toleranced properly. Panels fold out from his sides with long tabs on them. They're supposed to lock his hips in place, but they're fairly loose. Worse, as part of the transformation his thighs split in the middle, with the lower half rotating 90 degrees then bending 90 degrees. Once again, there's a tab in the upper part of the thigh that supposed to go into a slot on the lower thigh to prevent it from rotating anymore. These tabs are completely useless. So, when you get the microscope set up just right it looks great, but touching it even a little is going to cause the lower legs to start bowing out and everything between his legs to start tilting. Janssen does have the tank mode. In some ways, the tank mode holds together better than the microscope, but for the life of me I couldn't get the scope to stay plugged into Janssen's body. Also, this mode relies on fake treads that fold out of his legs, with a thin panel that folds in to cover the gap exposed when you fold out the treads. There's a hinge in that flap, and manipulating it is just a pain. I'd say this is a mode that you do once for the novelty, but payoff isn't really there. At the end of the day, Janssen is unmistakably still an XTB product, which is to say it's going for that same premium market as Fans Toys but misses that last bit of refinement that keeps it from hitting that mark. That said, while Janssen has those little QC quibbles that I have to cover he is, on the whole, a really strong effort and one of XTB's better offerings. Tolerances aside, the materials feel good, it's well-painted, well-articulated, with a good cartoon design in both robot and microscope mode, and a ton of accessories. It's not the most playable figure, but it's extremely displayable. It's far and away a better figure than the original Tesla. Will Tesla 2.0 be better than Janssen? I'd venture that it probably will, but not so much better that the 70% increase in price over Janssen will feel warranted to any but the most devoted FT fans. So barring some kind of miracle where Tesla 2.0 is the best transforming robot toy in the history of mankind, my recommendation is that you go ahead and go with Janssen.