mikeszekely

I've found DNA's stuff to be kind of a mixed bag. Some of their stuff has been trash, some of their stuff has been been almost essential. I'll roll the dice and preorder that Ark kit; their Scorponok kits were some of the last stuff I bought from them, and they fall squarely in that essential category.

Heads up, some new Bumblebee movie Studio Series figures went up for preorder on Pulse- Voyager Soundwave, and Deluxes Brawn, Wheeljack, and Ratchet.

Cancer is, officially, the worst. My aunt, who'd generally lived a very healthy lifestyle, started feeling a little sick after Halloween one year. At first her doctor told her she was just dehydrated, but after getting a second opinion they found she had liver cancer by Thanksgiving. She didn't even make it until Easter. Now, I've experienced deaths, but it was usually in someone older ("they lived a good life") or it felt, in some way, the result of their own choices (another aunt who was heavily into drugs and alcohol, a grandmother who died in her 60s that was a chain smoker, a cousin who committed suicide, etc). My aunt getting liver cancer was, I think, the first time I realized just how truly unfair life can be and how indifferent the universe is. My condolences to George and his family. I know what they're going through, and it sucks.

So... anyone else watch Gundam Build Real? I'm not sure what the format was outside of the US, but GundamInfo's official YouTube channel uploaded it last week. The premise is, more or less, a live-action story akin to Gundam Build Fighters. The cast consists of a group of high schoolers who used to be on a Gunpla Battle team when they were kids but they had a falling out when their Gunpla went missing. They reunite when one of them summons the others after receiving a package with the missing model, causing the team to get back together. As a live-action product it's slightly more grounded than the anime, but there's still plenty of tropes including the more organized and well-finances rival team, a girl that's popular with all the boys on the team becoming the hero's love interest, and a hero who trains hard and pilots the Gunpla yet does none of the actual work on the model. It's... ok. I mean, objectively I don't think it's all that great, but it managed to keep my interest enough that I binge watched the whole thing (right now, it's just six episodes but the story leaves room for a second "season"). And when it was over I went and busted out my copy of Gundam Breaker 3 (while lamenting that New Gundam Breaker sucked, that NGB seems to have killed the franchise, and that Bandai loves to complain that Gundam games do poorly in America but they only seem to bring over the worst ones).

Some stuff came in this week, so I've got a big Repaint Roundup for you guys. First up, we have Transformers Collaborative Dracula X Transformers Draculus. He's a retool of Titans Return Mindwipe, which, frankly, wasn't that great of a toy to begin with. He's got new forearms (and Studio Series Scourge/Sweep hands), a new front half of his torso, a new collar area, and a new head. The remolded parts actually look kind of good, and definitely convey a sort of "what if Dracula was a robot complete with a body shaped like a tuxedo?" vibe. Draculus comes with the same gun and claw/shield that Mindwipe came with, in black with some red paint. But, I can't say I really see even mecha-Dracula running around with a gun. New for Draculus is a cloth-goods cape. There's holes in it that fit over the wings on his back, and a small hole that wraps around a peg on the back of his collar. I think you can get some better Dracula-type poses if you ignore his weapons and just put the cape on him. Articulation is the same as Mindwipe, which means he's missing modern amenities like ankle pivots and wrist swivels. His joints, especially his feet, are pretty loose. To be fair, this is a problem that goes all the way back to TR Mindwipe. What you don't get is a Titan Master, which is a huge missed opportunity if you ask me. Why not have a little Dracula Titan Master that turns into Draculus' head? Worse, as you can see, it means that Draculus' collar flips around and his head stays attached in bat mode, just stuffing his face up his bat butthole. A peg hole under the collar replaces the one on Mindwipe's chest, so you can still attach his combined weapon like a sort of tail. And if I'm being honest, I think the black and red looks a bit nicer than the purple and browns on Mindwipe. In addition to the slits for his little robot wings, there's slits near the edges of the cape, too, for his bat-mode wing tips to poke through. So, Draculus can wear his cap in bat mode, too, and it does help cover up his robot head. But the bat chest still opens! It looks like they added some structural plastic inside, so a Titan Master wouldn't fit anymore, but still! Missed opportunity, I tell you. So, I don't know what they were thinking with this one. The other Collaboratives have made at least some sense; take an iconic vehicle from some '80s/'90s franchise and use that nostalgia to sell it as a Transformer. Tyrannocon gets a pass because she did come with a vehicle, and because Beast Wars Megatron was a pretty notable T-Rex to borrow a mold from. But are even the oldest TF fans among us really this nostalgic for the 1931 version of Dracula? And like I said, Mindwipe was one of the worse Titans Return figures and well below the modern WfC standards. Draculus retains too many problems with the mold like loose joints and limited articulation, and loses the Titan Master gimmick on the one Collaborative figure where I think I'd appreciate it. I'm going to suggest passing on it. Originally listed for March, I'm a bit surprised to see some of the Golden Disk collection hitting now (but, of course, not the one with Terrorsaur that we really want). First we have Jackpot, a retool of SS86 Jazz. So... on the one hand, if you're going to make a modern toy of Jackpot Jazz is probably the figure to start with. While G1 Jackpot was an Action Master, he was molded with elements that suggested a car for a vehicle mode including wheels on his shoulders and ankles and a prominent car front end for a chest. And GD Jackpot's certainly got the car chest, although it'd have been nice if they'd remolded his shoulders to have the wheels. GD's forearms, which are 100% Jazz's, are shaped a bit differently than G1 Jackpot's which were like a slimmer yellow arm with some black armor just on the outside. GD Jackpot also has big yellow fenders on the outsides of his legs where the G1 toy was simply black with molded wheels. I might have preferred they left the fenders black. Otherwise, Hasbro did a good job getting the yellows, blacks, and oranges in the right spots and they did provide a remolded head that accurately portrays the G1 version (if a little on the smallish side to fit through the space in Jazz's chest). The head is the only remolded part. So, G1 Jackpot came with a little blue gun and a bird buddy named Sights. The bird and gun could combine into something like a sniper rifle. GD Jackpot also comes with a little blue gun, although it's just the same one that came with SS86 Jazz, and a pterodactyl buddy named Sights. Sights is actually a recolor of the Siege Battlemaster Pteraxadon, but the colors do allow him to pass reasonably well for G1 Sights. You also get the blast effect that originally came with Pteraxadon. Being a retool of Pteraxadon, Sights turns into an axe, and you can use the blast effect with his axe mode. However, their is a peg on the underside of Sights' head, and his tail/handle is molded with a little nib on the end so that it's compatible with WfC blast effects, so you can turn Sights into his gun mode. It's just a shame they didn't give him a new gun or at least add a hole to the back of Jazz's so that you could combine Sights and the gun. Jackpot turns into the same Porsche as Jazz. Without the G1 toy having a proper alt mode to compare it too, I guess it's fine. I think I could have done without the yellow, but YMMV. Since the only remolded part on Sights is his head he just has the single 5mm port on his roof. That means you can plug in his gun, or you can plug in Sights, but not both. I wonder if someone at Hasbro is an Action Master fan? I mean, we had Krok in Titans Return, Lionizer (who was Rad's weapon buddy) in Siege, Mainframe not long ago with the Ark, and now Jackpot. And if I'm being totally fair, Jazz was a pretty good choice of molds to make Jackpot out of, and Pteraxadon makes a surprisingly good Sights. Still, if Hasbro wanted to sell a repaint of Jazz with a bundled Action Master, one can't help but wonder why they didn't go for the more obvious and, dare I say, more desirable Ricochet/Stepper? I mean, SS86 Jazz was already a good figure, and Pteraxadon was one of the better Battle Masters, so Jackpot and Sights aren't bad, just obscure. So I'd say get it if you're into Action Masters, but you're not missing much if you pass, whereas if they'd been Ricochet and his Target Master buddy I'd have probably recommended them outright. Arriving in the same shipment as Jackpot was the two-pack of Road Ranger and Puffer. Road Ranger's kind of an interesting character; he's actually meant to be the Gobot Road Ranger, who (like Bug Bite) crossed from the Gobot's universe into the Transformers universe. This fiction was created for a set of e-Hobby-exclusive repaints of some G1 minibots, where Road Ranger was an orange and black repaint of Huffer (despite the original Gobot being colored more like Optimus Prime, whom I indeed pretended he was since I was too poor to have a G1 Optimus back in the day), and that's basically what Golden Disk Road Ranger is, too. Aside from color, the only real difference is his head sculpt, which (like e-Hobby Road Ranger) is basically Huffer's G1 toy head. Puffer's a bit weirder. While most of the world got the regular Pipes toy in G1, some parts of Europe instead got a "Pipes" toy that was actually a blue-and-white repaint of Huffer instead. Collectors started calling the variant "Puffer", a combination of Pipes and Huffer. I think this is the first new toy based of that variant, and Hasbro is running with the notion of a Pipes/Huffer combination by giving him a biography that has "quantum surge" create a "time vortex" that fuses Huffer and Pipes together. Despite the Puffer variant being a repaint of Huffer, GD Puffer appears to be a repaint of Kingdom Pipes. I say "appears" because, ironically, Puffer seems to have beaten Pipes to retail. So, the lighter blue and white torso & head do indeed give him the colors of that old Puffer variant, but this time to the toy is based on the one it was supposed to be the first time. Fun fact, for those of you that didn't know, while G1 Pipes definitely shared some elements of G1 Huffer they were actually fairly different. Huffer's chest was the bottom of the truck, but Pipe's back was the bottom, Pipes had different arms, and the way the truck cab folded meant the front was pointing up on Huffer but backwards on Pipes. Puffer/Pipes seems to borrow a bit more from Kingdom Huffer, but there are some changes. The new head, chest, and pelvis are the most immediate differences between them, while the legs and back are mostly the same. Puffer/Pipes actually have new arms, without the molding around the wrists, on the outside of the biceps, or on top of the shoulders. The cab is the same cab, but there's an added swivel on the hinges to attach it to his back so you can spin it 180 degrees. For Pipes you'd probably want it jutting straight off his back, but I like to collapse it down like this for Puffer to give him a little identity of his own. Road Ranger comes with the same gun and shield that Huffer did. I think the difference here for me is that I didn't feel that the shield felt out of place on Huffer, but on Road Ranger it becomes something that helps him be more than just a Huffer repaint. Puffer comes with a pair of black pipes, pipes I believe Kingdom Pipes comes with. The instructions suggest putting the pipes onto his arms, something you'd do for actual Pipes to achieve cartoon accuracy, but you can certainly plug them into fists instead, which I prefer doing for again to give him a bit of his own identity. They both turn into trucks, and aside from rotating Puffer's cab around it's the same process as Huffer. While I strongly prefer to leave Huffer's shield in a box somewhere and just plug is rifle into the hitch or roof, I actually like using the shield and gun to make the dump truck-style bed for Road Ranger. It's variety. As for Puffer, the instructions suggest plugging his pipes onto his hitch. Fine for Puffer, I guess, but when they were remolding the arms for this mold it feels like they missed a trick by not relocating the 5mm ports on his shoulders so the pipes could still be smokestacks for the truck mode. Then again, I suppose that there are people out there that would have preferred they go the toy route when remolding Huffer and actually made the pipes his forearms. I liked Huffer, and I like the colors of these repaints, but as is the case with Jackpot they're kind of obscure, very non-essential characters. If you think you'd like them get them, you'll probably be happy with them, but you're not missing anything if you pass (although I'm kind of hoping for a Legacy-class Gears that they can repaint into Small Foot, and a Treds repaint of Warpath. It's probably too late for Bad Boy and Pathfinder repaints of the old Legends-class Powerglide and Cosmos, though.

I think DS-01 is probably the best-looking Starscream, and the one I'd get if I didn't have any (or was still rocking MP-03/11). Can't talk myself into replacing my Maketoys Seekers, though. BTW, I've heard that Deformation Space is actually Transform Element, same guys that made TE-01 Op Leader and Speed Star.

My only experience with NECA are the several Godzilla figures I bought. I think one of them came with a busted ball joint in the tail, but I got it replaced. The rest seem fine (knock on wood). The Robocop looks pretty cool, but yeah... maybe I'll wait for some reviews?

I feel you. Honestly, a lot of this stuff gets reviewed and then goes into storage. Right now all my Titans are under the bed in the guest room, and most of the WfC stuff is either in boxes in my closet or on my desk. Just a suggestion, if you're reading this, Hasbro- Transformers Collaborative x D&D. Take one of the recent cats, maybe Tigatron. Heavily retool the robot bits. Make a Drizzt Do'Urden that transforms into Guenhwyvar. Bonus- Hasbro already owns Wizards (and therefore D&D).

Been awhile since I hit the Cyberverse well, but I hear they're doing more Dinobots now? I'm not in for all the various classes so maybe I'll never have a complete set of Cyberverse Dinobots, but I'm in for any Deluxes. Unfortunately I haven't seen any, but I did find a Deluxe-class Cheetor. My gut reaction is that I dig Cyberverse Cheetor's beefier proportions. I also like how his wings are closer to the original Cheetor's than the Kingdom version. Not exactly loving the popped collar, though it seems to be Cyberverse-accurate. He's missing a lot of detail, like most Cyberverse figures, though. There's no blue on his hands, biceps, shoulders, or wings, and the black stripes on his forearms are molded but not painted. The blue on his shins should come all the way down to his ankle guards, with yellow spikes sticking up through the blue, and the blue on his pelvis should be the whole pelvis, not just a splash of blue on his crotch. You can see that they kind of molded a tail belt around his waist, but his actual tail is still hanging from his back. Speaking of backs, it's not the cleanest. His calves are super hollow, and there's really no engineering reason for it. He comes with a lot of accessories, though. I'm not sure how much of this is cartoon accurate, as I only ever watched the first season of Cyberverse, but you get a pair of scimitars in green translucent plastic with some yellow paint, a saber-tooth cat helmet, again green translucent plastic with yellow paint, and some translucent green claws with blue paint. Cheetor's head is on a ball joint with some up/down/sideways tilt in addition to swiveling, although the collar makes his head a little tricky to manipulate. His shoulders are ball joints for rotation and about 90 degrees of lateral motion. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. His wrists are actually ball joints, and they can swivel and bend inward. His waist swivels. His hips are ball joints that go over 90 degrees forward, a little less than 90 backward do to some kibble, and about 60 degrees of lateral spread. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. His feet have some up/down tilt, as well as 45 degrees of ankle pivot. He can hold his scimitars with no problems by sliding the handles into his 5mm fists. But all of his accessories can be used in bot mode; the cat head can tab into either forearm (facing toward his elbow) as a shield, and the claws can tab into his shoulders like armor. Note that having the claws on his shoulders does limit their range of articulation a bit, as the claws get caught up in his wings. The claws can't attach to his forearms, sadly. The tab they have is too small for the slots on his arm. When I first grabbed Cheetor I wondered if he might be a retool of Thunderhowl; they both go from robots with animal heads on their chests to animals, after all. But no. I mean, both their legs have a joint in the shin that helps their robot legs become their rear legs, but that's about it. Cheetor doesn't have any of the gimmicks where Thunderhowl's body folds in on itself. Instead, his robot arms fold up and go into the void left by his cat head on his chest, and his wings fold over and bring his cat legs with it. The resulting cat is... not the best. I mean, it's kind of messy. His jaws open, but he has no other head articulation. The cat shoulders are on ball joints for rotation but they have limited lateral movement. The cat elbows can bend, but there's no bicep swivel or any kind of paw articulation. His rear legs, at least, retain the articulation they had in robot mode, plus the extra bend mid-robo-shin. His tail has a hinge for up/down movement at the base, but that's it. As with robot mode, he can use all his accessories in cat mode. This time, the cat helmet is obvious as it clips just under his ears around his head, and the claws fit onto tabs that allow them to cover his front paws. The scimitars are a bit more interesting. They have little pegs on their hilts. These pegs fit into small peg holes on the inside of the robot shoulders, and the result is that they look like wings. Cheetor is kind of par for the Cyberverse course... needlessly hollow spots, a lack of paint decos that reduces the overall accuracy of the figure, and ball joints in a lot of places I'd rather have universals, and the end result is a figure that feels cheap compared to the Deluxes in the War for Cybertron line. There's no build-a-figure anymore, but if I had to guess a lot of the budget on this guy still went to accessories. I'm not sure how much of his accessories are from the show, but I'd have traded the claws and helmet for more paint, personally. That said, he's not the worst figure in the line, and as long as you know you're getting Cyberverse and not WfC he's a decently fun little toy that's worth picking up IF AND ONLY IF you're into Cyberverse.

To me, speaking solely of the K3, the large forehead crest is reminiscent of a number of mobile suits. I'm reminded of the Tallgeese III. The forearm weapons recall to me the Blitz Gundam, and the shape of the front of the foot is very Gundam-esque. Even the forearm pipes on the unarmored version is less Milne and more Full Armor Gundam with three narrower barrels instead of two. That said, Gundam was hugely influential on the real robot genre in Japan, to the point where saying something looks like Gundam is practically shorthand for "looks influenced by Japanese mechanical design." And, as you've noted, within the Gundam franchise different mobile suits can have wildly different designs, from the basic RX-78 to the mono-eyed Zeon suits to the dragon-esque Vagans to... well... As far as the originals go... I'm honestly not sure what Milne was going for. It's got shades of G1 Hot Rod with shades of Don Figueroa's. Figueroa seemed to be at least somewhat influenced by the Bayverse films, drawing far more seems and moving parts and giving the underlying robot more organic designs. I don't buy nearly as many Reprolabels as I used to, because yeah, they got expensive. And a lot of the price seems to be their pathological need to sticker every flat surface they can instead of just providing the handful of missing details you really wanted. I mean, I bought that Galvatron set, I used stickers from it on both the Kingdom AND the Gen Selects, and I still probably used less than a tenth of what they included. That said, I ordered the Galvatron stickers with their set for SS86 Jazz, and Jazz's set was totally worth it. But... isn't Photoshop a lot more than the occasional Reprolabel set? I consider myself to be fairly tech savvy, but I never got too much into image editing.

For the most part, I think I like the look of Takara's Skids. Just not enough (or think he's an important enough character) to bother replacing the XTB version.

Ages ago, I was just getting into MP collecting. MMC's Sphinx was coming soon, but I thought DX9's Invisible looked good enough and figured I could get him cheap from someone looking to upgrade, right? I was pretty happy with him, but I noted that I'd gotten him cheap but at retail prices you were probably better off spending a little more on Sphinx. Indeed, as time wore on and I had more disposable income and a more discerning eye I started to want to upgrade him myself. MMC was getting ready to release their "Sphinx Cell", a more cartoon-colored repaint, so again I set about trying to find someone selling the original release for a bit cheaper. And a little over two years later I reviewed Sphinx, telling you guys that it was quite good, probably worth upgrading from Invisible, and that despite a few flaws I probably wouldn't need another Mirage. Yeah... I got another Mirage. This time it's Transform Element's Speed Star. For better or for worse, depending on how you feel about such things, the most obvious and immediate difference is that Speed Star is a lot closer to the animation model than Invisible (whom I gave to a buddy, so please accept the Gobot repaint Cocomone as a stand-in) or Sphinx. The extra molded lines on the thighs, shoulders, and forearms of those two are gone, save for a cartoon-accurate band around the wrist and a line mid-thigh. His feet are, like the cartoon, actual feet complete with a molded square instead of the car's spoiler, and the engines on the knees are more simple silver squares, per the animation model. None of the car's white shows on the shins, and the proportions and shapes of almost any given element of his body are more in-keeping with the Sunbow model than the previous two. I'll also note that the gray MMC used for Sphinx's hands and shoulders are properly black on Speed Star. Viewed from the back and sides, you can see that he cleans up pretty well (you can actually fold the sides of the engines in a bit and tuck them more into his back). Speed Star comes with just a few accessories. You get his signature rifle, naturally, and the missile for his shoulder launcher. Unlike Invisible or Sphinx, the launcher itself is not an accessory; it's attached and stays on throughout his transformation. You also get a happy face, then, somewhat oddly, an entire second head with the same neutral expression as the head that's already attached. Upon closer inspection you'll notice that there are some subtle differences, most noticeably the larger eyes. Cool enough, I guess, although I kind of wonder why you'd do an alternative head that isn't based on the toy. Then again, I guess my preference is still the one that's already attached, so... Speed Star's a lot like their previous G1 release, Op Leader, in that he's a cartoony brick with so-so articulation. His head's on a hinged ball joint, so he can look up and down a good bit, but pushing it too far will break the sculpt. Slight sideways tilt. Shoulders rotate and extend a little over 90 degrees laterally. The panels on the outside of his arms can rotate and even fold out laterally independent of the rest of his arm. His biceps swivel, and his elbows are double-jointed for just about 180 degrees of bend. His wrists swivel. His fingers have a single hinge at the base, with the index finger being separate from the other three. His thumb swivels at the base. He has an ab crunch, but it's locked in place and you have to apply a bit of force to unlock it. You'll want to, though, because without it his backpack gets caught on his hips and greatly limits his waist swivel. His hip skirts move out the way so he can get about 90 degrees forward or laterally, but again his backpack kind of limits him to about 45 degrees backward. His thighs swivel around the hip joints. His knees can bend nearly 180 degrees on a double hinge. His toes have a slight up/down tilt, and his entire foot pivots 90 degrees at the ankle. The attached launcher can swivel horizontally and vertically. He holds his gun quite securely using the standard tabs on the handle and slots in the palms. The missile fits into the launcher by sliding the back, which has one flat slide, into the barrel. Pushing the back of the launcher won't fire the missile, but it will cause it to slide out a bit so you can pull it the rest of the way. After transforming these guys for pictures I'm reminded that Invisible had a pretty simple transformation that sort of reminded me of the old Classics Mirage. Sphinx wasn't too bad, but it had a few annoyances. And Speed Star... well, Speed Star's front half isn't bad at all. Aside from folding in the launcher, which has to be done in a certain order to have enough clearance, it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect. His legs are a bit of a headache, though, as they explode into several accordioned panels, flip around, then refold over his thighs (which are rotating as you do so). And the result is... well, at a glance it's fine. While it's missing some of the finer details I have on Sphinx (some of which may be Reprolabels), the bits of white, the vents, and the "26 Gitanes" on the sides is in-line with the G1 toy and animation model (aside from the fact that TE used the actual Gitanes name instead of the altered "Citanes" that appeared on the toy/cartoon). TE also put a little extra detail into the engine, which bears some printed "Ford" marks. There's definitely something off about the proportions, though. For one thing, his wheelbase is noticeably shorter than Invisible or Sphinx. But he's also slightly wider than those two, also, giving him kind a kind of squished look. While I'd probably argue that Speed Star has the best robot mode of the three, he's definitely taking a back seat to Sphinx in alt mode. Speed Star does have a painted seat, though, and there's a steering wheel in the cockpit. It's hard to see, but there's even painted gauges behind the wheel. He rolls on rubber tires. As I mentioned before, the launcher stays on throughout the transformation, bending around between the wheels and his shoulders to tuck up under the nose. For the hassle, honestly, I wish they'd have made the entire launcher removable and maybe just had it store under the nose, especially because the missile has to be removed and I don't really see any way to stow it. There is a little notch in the engine, though. The handle of his rifle can kind of wedge into it. I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but it works. One final note, there have been reports of a few factory errors with this figure. One is that the hips are misassembled (similarly to Kingdom Galvatron's shoulders), preventing him from getting properly into his alt mode. The other is that the flaps that his ankles are on are a weird pea green on some copies. All I can say is that my copy has a few very minor paint blemishes (that you can really only see in alt mode), but no hip issues and no ankle issues. I really didn't want to "upgrade" from Sphinx, not even for Fans Toys, but ShowZ started taking preorders for another round of this guy at a mere $50 and, as of writing, still has some in stock but it's gone up to $55. That's a steal! I mean, while there's still some things I like about Sphinx (mostly the alt mode) I'd argue that for most people displaying their collection in robot mode that Speed Star is the better Mirage, and he'd be the one I'd recommend if you didn't have an MP Mirage yet. At full price I'm not sure he's so much of an improvement that upgrading was essential, but at $50, $55, heck even $60 or $70? You should probably replace Sphinx with Speed Star. I think the only reason not to would be because you're waiting for Fans Toys, but honestly looking at how similar FT's renders look to Speed Star and thinking about how much of a pain a lot of their stuff is to transform I can't imagine a scenario where I think FT's is so much better than Speed Star that the FT price tag is warranted. Just get Speed Star now while he's cheap.

Kingdom Rodimus is just $57 as part of Amazon's Cyber Monday deals.

Ok, TFSource has v2 version of XTB's Locke on sale for $120, plus I've got $17.50 in Source Points or whatever. Now, I know that the first release was a crap show of bad QC and nightmare engineering, but FT's engineering didn't look much better and Kup's not the kind of character I'm willing to drop $200+ on. Anyone heard if the revised copies are any better? Thinking about rolling the dice so I can cross the '86 MPs off my list.

I'm not an expert, but I'd guess not great. I don't think any of the other Netflix packs were reissued; frankly, aside from Soundwave and Bee (and maybe Elita-1) I don't think they did super hot in the first place. That said, Walmart's distribution is the worst. I think a lot of people missed Netflix Soundwave, I think the demand for a Voyager-class Earth-mode Soundwave is still there (especially with Blaster coming out). And I know that Hasbro's aware of that demand; they were asked about it point blank. So while don't expect the Netflix 3 pack to get reissued, I definitely think another Soundwave is coming, either a new mold, a retool of Blaster, or a redeco of Netflix Soundwave sans tapes. Question is when, not if.

Still waiting for some Reprolabels for the G1 toy before I decide how much more I want to sticker up the Gen Selects, but... I painted the outer red rectangle on Galvatron's belt buckle, then used some of the red stickers that came with him and the yellow sticker that came with the Reprolabels for Kingdom Galvatron to do his belt. I painted his eyes yellow That all came out pretty well, but I had a bit less luck painting his crest. For one, the gray is actually a bit too light. For two, I suspect that purple plastic might be the unpaintable kind, as the paint I used (a Rustoleum paint + primer spray I picked up at my local hardware store, since there aren't any local hobby stores) didn't stick well. I wound up doing three coats, plus I sprayed a little puddle that I dipped a brush in to do some touch up, and there's still hints of purple peaking through at some of the edges and places where the paint pooled a bit too thick as it was drying. At a casual glance, though, I prefer it to the original purple. I used stickers that came with the figure to put the red over the top of his chest. Note that stickers are for the bottom of the indented area, around the indented area, and the two triangular edges, but not the walls of the indented area. I thought that looked kind of bad, so I cut the border out from the sheet and used it to fill in the walls. I thought about using alcohol or something to try to remove the tampoed insignia from his chest and then putting a Reprolabel badge on top of the red, but with the shape of his chest I decided that it wouldn't look right and left it alone. Lastly, I used mirror-esque Reprolables on his abs, on the purple collar, and over the pearlescent paint in cannon mode to better mimic the original toy's chrome. Oh, and I gave him a Nonnef rifle. Like I said, I'll probably do a bit more stickering once I have repros for the original toy to better compare with, but for now I'm a lot happier with how GS Galvatron looks.

Moon Studios Moon Shine vs Takara MPG Shouki From the front, Takara has stockier proportions, which is actually more in-line with his cartoon model in The Headmasters. Moon Studios is also going way overboard with the silver; I don't mind coloring something silver on a toy that was white in the cartoon because is really should have been silver, but this is a case where Shouki really was white and blue. Moon Shine also has blue forearms instead of gray, and the blue stripe with the windows that should be on Shouki's shins seems to be on the inside of Moon Shine's legs. The one advantage I'm going to give to Moon Shine is that his back is much cleaner. I'll leave it to David to pick apart the train details. Moon Shine doesn't look bad to me, but proportionally he's like half the length he ought to be. Gotta give it to Takara again. I'm not sure that I'm in for any version of Raiden, but after being initially disappointed by Shouki's kibble I'm a bit surprised to see how well he actually fares when it's a Shouki vs Shouki comparison. Size, price, and the combined mode are obviously still factors to consider, too.

Oh, I've played them. I don't want to be too harsh on them, because what they did was pretty groundbreaking in the context of the time, but QOL updates since Super Metroid have made them practically unplayable to me now. I've only played the first one, but I loved it. It's difficult to compare the Prime series to the main one, though. I keep hoping for a Switch Prime collection; maybe one day I'll play through all three and offer my thoughts on them.

Walmart's got some Transformers in their Black Friday sale. If you ask me, the Ark for $120 is the big draw, but if you're into G1 reissues they have Blaster for $19, Astrotrain for $30, and a trailer-less Optimus for $38. All the Beast Wars reissues are on sale, too. I'm occasionally tempted to pick up Primal and/or Megatron, but I really don't have any attachment to the original Beast Wars toys and they just look so bad compared to the modern ones... The rest of the sale is Cyberverse and RED stuff. And not even the good ones.

I'm going to look for paint for his crest tomorrow, and I ordered Rerpolabels to G1 Galvatron. Once I have G1 Galvatron stickered I'll see how much I want to sticker GS Galvatron. I'll try to remember to post another comparison later, but Toyhax is VERY slow getting stuff to me.

I know I usually wait until I have more than one repaint to do any kind of write up, but with SG Starscream delayed to February I'm not sure that I have any other repaints coming out any time soon. So... I got Gen Selects Galvatron in. There are no mold differences from the regular Kingdom release, just differences in color. I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure what exactly Hasbro was going for. From the description, it sounds like they're saying that this is supposed to be the toy-colored Galvatron... until they start talking about the Marvel comics. And sure, there's definitely elements of the toy here. The gray they used for most of his body is indeed quite similar to the gray used on the G1 toy's plastic. They painted a section of his pelvis black to mimic the toy's button, and they pylons on his shoulders are red like the G1 toy. His knees have silver paint where the G1 toy had chrome, and they used a darker gray for the armor around it and down his shin to point at his black feet which, again, matches the G1 toy. There's no red on GS Galvatron's chest, though, just a Decepticon emblem. His forearms are purple, like his biceps, instead of matching his hands. There's no gray on his purple thighs. And, sure enough, in all those ways he's colored more like the old Marvel Comics... which didn't have the red shoulder pylons, the silver kneecaps, the darker gray running down the shins, or the black feet. So, y'know, maybe they were trying to split the difference and try to appeal to both toy and Marvel Comics fans. But then there are the other just baffling decisions. GS Galvatron has a purple crest on his head, neither the toy nor the comics did. He's also got purple around his collar that should be silver or chrome. The G1 toy had a red belt with a yellow sticker, in the comics they just colored the whole thing red, but Hasbro couldn't even manage that. Both G1 toy and Marvel comics had yellow eyes, but GS Galvatron has red. Some of this, it seems, Hasbro meant for you to address yourself with a sticker sheet. My G1 Galvatron is missing a lot of its original stickers, but I can see that some of the stickers on the sheet match details that were supposed to be stickers on the G1 toy. I can also see some stickers that look like they're meant to go over parts of Galvatron's chest to add the red, and stickers that go on his forehead crest that I have to assume will do a terrible job of covering the purple. And after all that he'd still have red eyes instead of yellow. Anyway... Galvatron comes with the exact same accessories as the Kingdom release, just in different colors. The base of the cannon is purple now (side note, I really wish they'd used this shade of purple for the regular Kingdom version), and the translucent orange barrel lacks the paint of the Kingdom version but has more sparkles à la the G1 toy. The "chain" is the same, but the Matrix on it is painted a metallic lime color. Again, this is presumably a reference to the Marvel comics... The Revenge guns, which I didn't exactly care for the first time around, are a gunmetal color instead of gray. And that's it. Now, with the Kingdom release, I was more or less fine with that. After all, that's more than he actually had in the 86 movie, the third Sunbow season, or the Japanese Headmasters series. But this time, the inclusion of those stupid spaceship guns and the exclusion of a gun that looks like the G1 toy's really stings because this one is supposed to be based on that toy. Fortunately, Nonnef makes a Galvatron kit that includes his G1 rifle. Transformation is exactly the same as the Kingdom version. The result honestly isn't terrible. There's a bit extra purple on the back of the cannon (but the arm cannon's base actually blends in better, I think), and the red and gray is flipped on the shoulders, but I like that they put a rubsign in the same spot as the G1 toy. There is a coat of a light pearlescent paint near the front, where the G1 toy has chrome, but it's not super noticeable and I wish they'd used something a bit more obvious. Funny enough, I'd ordered the Reprolables for Kingdom Galvatron to add a little more black to his feet and to fill in the missing red on his belt and the tops of his shoulder pylons. As that's all I used on a $20 set with WAY too many stickers I didn't really need I wouldn't actually recommend it, but some of those stickers I didn't use are chrome-looking bits to go around that part of the cannon (and the robot collar). I didn't use them on Kingdom Galvatron, but I might just use them on GS Galvatron. And there we have it, folks. Some head-scratching decisions made here, but the base figure is still pretty good (and didn't have the misassembled shoulders that the Kingdom version did). If you wanted a gray Galvatron to look more like the G1 toy or the Marvel Comics (or both, I guess) then it's worth picking up, but it's probably a pass if you're good with Sunbow purple. EDIT: I was messing with Galvatron a bit more... the stickers for his belt aren't great. They're not even included in the instructions (that is, his instructions include directions for the stickers but the sheet shown doesn't have the belt), which makes me think that they're a last minute addition. They do the sides, but the central rectangle has a yellow sticker for the edges (which should be red) and nothing for the middle (where the yellow actually goes). Thank Primus for the Reprolabels, which included a yellow belt buckle option. I'll have to paint around it, though. Speaking of paint, I found that while many modern TFs glue the heads Galvatron's is actually held together with a screw. If you remove it, you pull the front half of his face off, and the crest comes off of that. That means it's really easy to paint the eyes (just waiting on them to dry). The crest should be easy to paint, too, but I don't have any light gray paint, just silver. While the stickers (which, I checked, definitely don't cover all the purple well, appearing more like chrome accents) are that mirror-chrome kind already I think I want to try to find something that matches the plastic a bit better. Oh, and yeah, while the Galvatron Reprolabels might not be wroth it for the maybe five I actually used on the Kingdom figure they're proving to be quite the boon for the GS figure; might be worth considering if and only if you're getting BOTH Kingdom and GS Galvatron.

When Hasbro announced Blaster they said it was going to retail with no preorders. While places like EE, Dorkside, BBTS, etc will offer them for their stock I don't think Pulse, Amazon, or the big box stores are going to take preorders.

Yeah... after seeing how their Streetwise turned out, I'm going with MMC.

Do you still have them? My parents gave most of mine away when I was a kid. And dang! I had Trypticon as a kid, and I remember him being big... but he's not much taller than Galvatron in your picture.

Slammer was the name of the tank drone that came with G1 Metroplex. Like G1 Brunt, the G1 toy was just a tank; it didn't transform. And like Siege Brunt, I do believe that Kingdom Slammer is a Weaponizer. In other words, his bot mode is pretty much an afterthought, but just like Sixgun, Cog, Brunt, Fasttrack, and Full-Tilt I'm stoked to have him (actually, it really makes me want a better Deluxe-sized Scamper... maybe packed in with a better Titan Metroplex?). My biggest complaint isn't the goofy robot or the visible face in the tank, it's all the black on the tank. Might have to repaint mine when I get him. Maybe I'll flip them all to alt mode and take another picture. ...actually, I'm planning on putting together a special 35 year pictorial where I'll be comparing the original 86 toys with their modern WfC/SS86 figures. But c'mon, Galvatron is actually a pretty cool figure. As a kid my biggest gripe was that he wasn't purple (and as an adult I've got the Gen Selects version coming and I can't wait!). Of course, he didn't have a ton of competition, as the 86 toys tend to have weird designs based on Dery's early designs before they cleaned them up for animation and poor articulation even when they didn't strictly have to. Of the lot, I'd say that Galvatron and Scourge are probably the highlights, Blurr, Wheelie, and Wreck-Gar being the worst.