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mark-1s

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    The Transformers Thread (licensed) Next

    in Anime or Science Fiction

    Posted

    On 7/17/2019 at 9:40 AM, M'Kyuun said:

    Yeah, I think the planet part is around 19" diameter, with the energy rings taking it to 30".  It's a pretty impressive piece.  

    I hope it gets made, but they're just shy of 1200 backers on the third day of the campaign.  I'm thinking folks are put off by the price tag- not many people have $600 laying around to buy a toy, even if it is a 'dream toy'.  

    I still think they should promote it better. Do a video detailing transformation, or at least stages of the transformation, and show off any other features to get fans excited. It looks cool, and they're doing a pretty good job with coloration, but if you want to move a transforming robot, the transformation is a big part of the selling point. Also, if there are electronics with Orson Welles doing some of his more notable lines, show that off too. Personally, I'd like to see a nice stop motion transformation, but I'd be content to see a Takara designer doing it.

    Thinking about it, Hasbro should have debuted this thing at SDCC, and maybe put it on the Transformers convention circuit to try and drum up support. It's one thing to see it on a screen, but if fans could see it in front of them, being demoed, or in a big glass case they can walk around , it'd make a stronger impact.  

    https://news.tfw2005.com/2019/07/17/san-diego-comic-con-2019-preview-night-hasbro-booth-unicron-391551#images

    The Transformers Thread (licensed) Next

    in Anime or Science Fiction

    Posted

    8 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

    Finding the new Leader-class Optimus was kind of a happy accident, but I guess it means that the new wave of Siege figures is starting to trickle out.  I have Brunt and Springer on order and in stock but still waiting to ship from Hasbro Pulse, Red Alert and Thundercracker preordered with an arrival date of August 5th,, and a trio of Refraktors preordered at BBTS with a more nebulous date of "July".  And then there's this guy, who arrived today: Commander-class Jetfire.

    IMG_20190702_230106.jpg.c7d89e695020be227627f22871c0db17.jpg

    If I'm being honest, with all of the Siege Leaders being much smaller than previous Leader-class toys (essentially Voyagers with some add-on bits), I was feeling a little cynical about the whole Commander class.  I kind of expected Jetfire would essentially be the old Leader size (plus some add-on bits).  I'm happy to report that's not the case.  Leader Megatron, who I believe is slightly taller than the Combiner Wars Leader-class Jetfire (whom I never bothered with), only comes up to about the badge on Jetfire's chest.  And he absolutely dwarfs the old Classics Voyager-class Jetfire.

    Point of fact, you could make a case that he's actually too big, and perhaps should have been closer in size to the older Leader-class.  Voyager-class Siege Optimus comes up to this Jetfire's hip joints.  MP-10/MS-01-TE-01 come up above the waist of Fans Toys' Phoenix, which was supposedly scaled with MP-10 according to Sunbow's chart (and IIRC, Daca Toys' Kronos was a little smaller than Phoenix).  For Siege Jetfire and Siege Optimus to have the same relative scale as MP-10 and Phoenix then Jetfire would either have to be a head shorter (based on his head), or Prime would have to be two (of his own) heads taller.

    IMG_20190702_225928.jpg.7030c3c7d1a5be9dd2a09929080f82b6.jpg

    Given his size, the scarcity (and perhaps price tag) of Phoenix, and the dearth of other alternatives, I've heard some people considering using the inaugural Commander-class as an MP stand-in.  And... maybe that'll work, if you squint.  I mean he is bigger than MP-10 and the various flavors of 3P MP-style Primes, and while Skyfire was always bigger than Prime I think you can find enough examples from episodes to say that he doesn't need to tower over Prime the way Phoenix does.

    Jetfire is also pretty much free of the dirt paint that's been used on much of the Siege line, and he's definitely leaning hard into the cartoon aesthetically.  The sides of his chest are longer than Phoenix, which is actually more cartoon accurate.  He's got the red accents on his chest and hip armor, plus the red panels on the outsides of his legs.  His shoulders have the appropriate band-around-an-orb shape, and he's even got the bump outs just below his elbow on the front and back of his forearm.  The main thing working against him is that, like the rest of the Siege line, he's covered in molded greebles.  This makes him a fine aesthetic match with other Siege figures, but compared to the extremely smooth, flat look Takara's been going with I think Siege Jetfire is going to stand out on an MP shelf.

    IMG_20190702_230355.jpg.8851f398e6697f34c53606b77449e61b.jpg

    Jetfire does have some neat tricks, though.  Although the instructions don't mention it, the Autobot insignia is molded and painted onto a panel that can flip around to reveal a similarly molded and painted Decepticon symbol, which is the kind of "like that one time in that one episode" think you usually don't see outside of MP figures.  And his hands, while decidedly not very MP-ish, are pinned at the base of the fingers so they can open and close.  The neat thing here, though, is that closing his fingers causes a 5mm ring to slide out from inside his palm.  Opening the fingers causes it to retract.  While I'd prefer fully articulated fingers and the ol' handle-tab-into-palm-slot on an actual MP figure this size, the sliding ring preserves compatibility with other Siege weapons, including Battle Masters, Micromasters, and parts of Weaponizers.

    IMG_20190702_224551.jpg.123720dafedde5666e6e7638bdeab683.jpg

    Speaking of weapons, Jetfire comes with quite a few accessories.  You've got a pair of blast effect parts, each one capable of separating into three smaller segments.  You've got a chestplate called the "Skyshield Aerial Armor," which opens to allow storage for the Skyshield Battle Mask.  Then, from left to right, a pair of HP Jetboost Particle Beam Cannons, a pair of HS Photon Missiles, a pair of HS Photon Missile Sky Launchers, and a pair of double-barreled Radiograph Boosters.  Like all the extra parts that came with Shockwave, Jetfire's accessories can be combined into some kind of drone thing.  The handles on the Sky Launchers fold up, which folds out an offset handle on one of them, and they can combine together to make something more like the double-barreled rifle Skyfire had in the cartoon, also.

    IMG_20190702_230553.jpg.dee406faeaf5f75dc0c79f3b8c8e2914.jpg

    Jetfire's head is on a hinged swivel that can rotate and look up a fair amount, but nothing really down.  Interestingly, the panel that this neck is on also can tilt backward a bit, increasing Jetfire's ability to look up.  His shoulders rotate on ratchets, and can extend a little over 90 degrees on another set of ratchets.  His biceps swivel just above his elbows, which are also ratcheted.  They're double-jointed, but the second joint is really more for transformation, and he's still limited to a little over 90 degrees of bend.  His wrists swivel, and I've already talked about his hands.  He has a little waist swivel, but due to the shape of his torso, his hip armor, and his backpack he's limited to basically what you see in the above picture.  His hips can go forward or backward a little under 90 degrees on ratchets.  They can also extend laterally 90, but surprisingly that joint is just a friction joint.  His thighs rotate around the hip joints.  His knees are a single joint with a softer ratchet, capable of 90 degrees.  Although they're tabbed into place when you first take him out of the box, he does have up to 90 degrees of ankle pivot.

    As I touched upon earlier, his weapons use 5mm pegs (or holes), and the rings in his palms allow Jetfire to hold them or any other weapon with a 5mm peg handle.  Additionally, he's got 5mm peg holes on the outside of each bicep, the outside of each forearm, on the red panels on his lower legs, in the middle of his back back, one on the back of each wing, and one in each heel, plus he's got fold out 5mm pegs on the front of his pelvis and at the hinges in his wings, and a pair of 5mm-long tabs on the sides of his backpack that a weapon with a 5mm peg hole can grip onto.

    IMG_20190702_232024.jpg.5e8071095a17788d14946f937a0c9415.jpg

    While Jetfire can hold the combined drone you made out of his accessories, you can split them up and place them on his body using the various holes, pegs, and tabs.  The official placement has the particle beam cannons tabbed onto the backpack, the photon missiles stuck to the faux wing tips using the fold out pegs, and the boosters on his forearms.  The mask, of course, covers his face, and tabs that unfold from his chest allow the armor to latch into place.  I guess the armor and mask are a neat little homage to the G1 toy, but they're really not doing anything for me, especially since the mask doesn't give him the VF-1S's head lasers.  Nor does the chest armor have the same symbol flip gimmick that Jetfire's own chest does.  I could take or leave the particle beam cannons and the missiles (although the missiles need to find a new home).  I dig the boosters, though.  They remind me of the FA-78-1 Full Armor Gundam.

    IMG_20190702_223957.jpg.2738bca7b373c71f319ee8db275adddb.jpg

    Jetfire's alt mode is a lot like his robot mode.  In some ways, it's very cartoon accurate.  The thrusters are on the backpack, and his folded-up feat are thruster-less.  Like Fans Toys, HasTak elongated the thrusters in jet mode, albeit in a very different way with the rear half of the thrusters folding out of his calves.  He's got the little vertical stabilizers and the secondary cockpit on the backpack.  The actual cockpit is just behind the nose, with intakes on the sides, and, again like Fans Toys, HasTak worked the sides of Jetfire's chest around to the sides of the fuselage.  But once again the cartoon accuracy is marred somewhat by the abundance of Siege greebles.

    IMG_20190702_224217.jpg.ac14242003dcd8d868071d1ef210076c.jpg

    He's also a little gappy from some angles, fortunately mostly from the bottom.  There is fold-out landing gear with rolling wheels.  Weirdly, there's also the pegs that slide out of his pelvis, and another set that come out of his wrists when you tuck in the hands.  The instructions tell you how they should fold out and be positioned for alt mode, but I'm really not sure why.  They serve no purpose that I can discern, nor do the instructions give one.

    The main canopy does have a hinge and can open to reveal some details inside, although you have to fold down the nose to open the canopy.  The one on the backpack doesn't open.  For accessory storage in alt mode, the instructions basically have you build the drone and plug it on top of Jetfire's backpack.  Again, I'm not really loving it.

    IMG_20190702_224753.jpg.cf10b8c788fe89408d2de780a4443118.jpg

    Fortunately, you have access to the backpack tabs, the peg hole on the backpack, the holes on the sides of his legs, the ones under the wings, plus the fold out pegs (which are now under the wings), and that gives you plenty of alternatives.  The pegs and holes under the wings in particular are a pretty natural place to stick weapons that look like missiles.  Unfortunately, the only way the chest armor stores in the jet mode is, at minimum, on the combined rifle and stuck on the backpack.  Oh well, looks like the chest and mask are going back into the box.

    Oh, and a friendly reminder... those blast effect parts don't just make for cool muzzle flashes and less cool weapon hits.  In Jetfire's case, you can (and should) make sure the blast effects are fully assembled, then stick then into his thrusters for maximum "swooshing".

    Jetfire's definitely a really cool figure with a lot to like, but he's got a few quirks.  And I do think he's a little too large for proper scaling with the other Siege figures, which is extra disappointing, because my other beef with this figure is the price.  Although not usually as big, $80 can buy you figures (usually MP-style) with higher quality, better materials, and stronger joints.  I like Jetfire, but I'm struggling to say that he's worth $80.  If HasTak would have made him closer to the previous Leader-class version in size and ditched most of the extra accessories then offered him for $50-$60 I'd say he's a must-buy toy.  If you can get past the sticker shock, though, Jetfire's a really fun toy that does a great job of actually looking like Skyfire in the cartoon.

    Those little red pegs are for "playability" if I'm not mistaken. There was a video (which I can no longer find) that shows them being used. Basically you can swoosh around Jetfire in plane mode with a couple of Autobots holding onto the pegs like they are about to attack some Decepticons from above.    

    Bumblebee (Transformers... 6?)

    in Anime or Science Fiction

    Posted

    3 hours ago, Mazinger said:

    Watched this.  Thought it was pretty good.  Wish it had more Cybertron of course.

    The Cybertron scenes are worth the price of admission. The rest of the movie - while better than any of the previous - is just meh IMO. Once again too much focus on the humans.

    I really hope Travis Knight breaks free form Bays' grip as he himself has said he'd like to do a movie primarily on Cybertron. I can't stress how good those scenes were. And all the characters were recognizable! Even Soudwave had his trademark voice, 

    Hi-Metal R

    in Toys

    Posted

    On 10/11/2018 at 1:54 PM, Saburo said:

    Condition Red! Prepare for attack!

    All pilots man your Destroids! 

    31376622868_db6c2d3e97_h.jpg

    I dont reply very often, but when I do its because Saburo posted one hell of a pic!

    Bandai DX Chogokin 1/48 VF-1

    in Toys

    Posted

    5 hours ago, spacemanoeuvres said:

    I hope Bandai cranks out as many 1/48 variants as Yamato did. Would be excited for CF schemes like the low viz limited

    5C07E145-0C16-4F00-8DF9-145764B8FE34.jpeg

    I know the old Yamato 1/48's had those ugly chicken hands, but next to Bandai's they look almost skeletal. 

    Bandai DX Chogokin 1/48 VF-1

    in Toys

    Posted

    15 minutes ago, davidwhangchoi said:

    looking at the photo again, the turrets seem like they can articulate like 10-30 degrees.

    (fingers crossed that it can)

    In that underbelly shot it appears that one antenna is angled out more than the other, so I think its safe to assume there is some degree of articulation and a bit of mis-transformation.  

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