Fit For Natalie

Funny, I see people say they love Ratchet, because he's such a dick. Especially when he opens the ground bridge right after Jack decides to leave. Great timing.

Three Singapore Airlines A380s have been grounded. They also have RR engines.

Qantas A380s to remain grounded after more RR engine problems

Did the Qantas 747 that suffered engine trouble fitted with Rolls Royce engines as well?

I can't find my Energon combiners anymore, so I bit the bullet and got Superion and Bruticus off eBay. They've already shipped, so hopefully my Crossfire Bruticus things will arrive at roughly the same time.

I really wish I had bought the Aerialbots Crossfire set

Titanium Scourge sucks, though.

As for armour - Rodimus doesn't work like Ultra Magnus. It seems as though he just has a complex, convoluted transformation that's quite unlike the original toy or the movie's two different transformations for Hot Rod.

I think that's just for the vehicle and robot mode chests. The Rodimus Prime vehicle mode hood is shorter than the Hot Rod/Rodimus' Prime's chest.

Also, Kurtd the goat on TFW pointed this out:

I for one am very happy. I've always liked the look of Hot Rod/Rodimus in both vehicle modes and robot mode. It looks like Rodimus' gun comes in parts, with Hot Rod's gun forming the base of it.

Peg and BLeg play chess together in the IDW books too...at least I think that was chess.

It was Go, the Chinese board game popularised in the west through Japan.

It was never explained where Drift got the concept of the game from, as nobody on that ship had been to Earth yet.

I'll try to see this next week. Hopefully my eye will be better by then.

I guess you'll be waiting for Micheal Bay's SPLOSIONS!!1!!1 then.

I wouldn't condescend about people's hypothetical interest in Bay if I were you

You most likely enjoy Christopher Nolan's work because he is a genuienly good film maker who usually makes intelligent films with weight and depth to them, even when it comes to a mainstream project such as his Batman movies.

Well, according to his regular cinematographer Wally Pfister, Nolan loves Michael Bay movies:

But there are the movies out there that he loves and I hate. I'm not a big Michael Bay fan. Chris loves Michael Bay's movies. And so I'm always like come on, dude! But he sees something in it, and I don't see it.

I'm not saying that ergo you should now enjoy Michael Bay's work, or that Bay's work is now in a better light because a superior film maker is a fan of them. But if Chris Nolan - the internet's poster boy example of a good, intelligent film maker - can seemingly enjoy Michael Bay's brand of popcorn fluff, then so can anybody else, and these people are not any stupider or somehow lacking in taste for it, in my opinion.

High res official pics of Masterpiece Movie Starscream.

Nice paint job.

That's a very cool Jet Prime custom. Wish Takara had done a snap-on parts set like they did for that very-delayed Voyager Jet Prime set.

I believe Hasbro said at BotCon they threw in some easter eggs for Battle Ops Bee - something to do with pressing his wheel several times will play versus of the original Transformers theme song.

As it turns out, this flatbed was used for practical special effects.

The headache rack doesn't make any sense, but it looks "cool" as his truck bling. Hell, his trailer is pretty blinging being largely shiny silver with blue lights.

He's seen hauling two trailers, one proper prop trailer and this normal flatbed rigged for pyrotechnics.

The headache rack is still there. It was only ever used as bling for the prop truck.

(not sure what's with this trailer with the equipment here:)

So David, can you enlighten us about the new Optimus Prime movie truck images?

Something that's been lost in the hyperbole and rage of the MP Movie Starscream news is that the designer of Binaltech, Alternity and Masterpiece also designed Leader Movie Starscream.

So the mold does have the pedigree of the Masterpiece designer.

The new Battle Blade Bumblebee is pretty awesome. Generally, most people loved the Deluxe class Camaro Concept Bumblebee toy from 2007, but this one totally blows it away. They managed to fit in a converting cannon hand, something that none of the other Bumblebee toys could do (well, the new Battle Ops Bee tries, but fails).

As far as I can tell, this mold is almost totally new, using no almost parts from previous versions. I am interested in seeing Hasbro's retool of it for Transformers 3 to reflect the changes on the prop car.

iGear (well, somebody they commissioned), a chinese company somewhat infamous for blatantly thumbing their nose at Hasbro/Takara-Tomy's IP, are doing Masterpiece Not-Dirge.

Oh boy. They even used official art on their solicitation image.

Yeah, I remember him saying something along those lines. It's what he said referring to Armada Wheeljack which of course looked like Sideswipe.

The Sideswipe-looking headsculpt was a decision Takara made without consulting Hasbro. Archer said they were surprised when they got the prototype.

Yeah, it's Downshift. I have the figure, too. He combines rahter well with most of the Silver-Symboled Autobot figures.

Aron Archer's brains must be Spam stright out of the can. Douche-bag.

For a (according to you) douche bag with no brains, Aaron Archer seems to have done pretty well for himself steering Transformers to become one of Hasbro's crown jewels and become VP of intellectual property development, despite his then-weird hang up about Wheeljack.

I might be wrong but aside from Wheeljack being in Armada, and Energon being a sequel in the US to Armada(the Japanese versions did not tie into each other like the US versions did), IIRC the name wasn't used because of political correctness, the name being close to "Carjack" or something.

I think you're confusing series. In both the US/Everywhere else and Japan, Armada/Micron Densetsu and Energon/Superlink were directly connected. It was the Galaxy Force series (later dubbed as Cybertron) that that was separate.

But even this didn't last, as the now-TakaraTomy started to adopt Hasbro's direction and continuity model, retroactively placing Galaxy Force as part of the "Micron Trilogy", as Hasbro did and always intended.

Ooh, PCC drones have Mini-Con hardpoints. Hope they'll make more Mini-Cons to use them with.

There's nothing wrong with them asking if they can still transform. I never said anything was wrong, nor was I trying to point out any serious issues with them flying or having alt modes - I just said it was funny. I don't take Transformers seriously enough to claim anything is wrong or right or have any kind of debate about it. It's brainless entertainment and I view it as such. I meant no offense to those who choose to take it seriously.

Oh okay, sorry then.

Gallery of leader class Starscream. Not posed as well as I would like, though. He doesn't need to bend the legs down that far.

I liked the Thrust from Botcon better, but as someone who can't afford to spend crap-tons on a handful of Deluxes, I'll gladly take the Generations fig.

Meanwhile, I see Peg's got some Kawamori-esque hip kibble. I wonder if that's an intentional move to look like a Japanese mecha?

That Kawamori hip kibble is probably just supposed to evoke the look of samurai, aren't they?

Drift (a terrible new modern character) is supposed to be a sort of wannabe Japanese character, hence him being an honourable samurai who says little, has "Samurai" on his doors (it used to say Dorifuto on his comic character model) and for some reason plays Go (the chinese boardgame popularised in the west through Japan) despite having never been to Earth at that point. I would not be surprised to learn that he has decorated his quarters in the current Autobot base with anime wall scrolls.

Your logic is impeccable, sir. I'm with you, large robots are cool in and of themselves; however a non-transforming transformer is a contradiction and pointless.

Thrust is a must! I'm liking about half the The WOC designs, basically those that look like real vehicles. Much like Animated , Megs makes me ask, wtf is it? BumbleBee, the seekers, the unnamed decepticon jet in the lower left corner, Air Raid, plus most of the car mode bots look good. I know these are supposed to be their alien forms, but usually alien alt forms just look like ass when they're not tied in some way visually to a real vehicle. More to the point, the reason they transform is for disguise, so why would they need to transform on Cybertron if there are no human sized robots to drive them around and no generic vehicles with which to blend?

It's a fantastic concept for a toy or game, and made perfect sense the way it was presented in the original series, although they didn't really use the diguise motive very well. But a bunch of robots on a robot planet turning into vehicles their own size would be like humans turning into hairless human-sized monkeys...sure it'd be cool, but not much of a disguise...we'd all stand out to each other. We'd just be great tree climbers with a jones for bananas and ant fishing.

On Cybertron (the planet), vehicle modes are primarily for travel, transportation or firepower. They can usually drive or fly faster than they can run, see? As for disguise, on Cybertron they are occasionally seen using much non-sentient vehicles for transportation.

Yeah, I always thought it was funny that they needed alt modes at all on Cybertron. Doubly funny that Soundwave's Cybertron alt mode was apparently a street light! I would love a toy of street light soundwave.

These days when I watch G1, which isn't often (although I did get the complete Matrix set for Xmas so I've been watching it out of duty rather than desire), I watch it as a comedy. There is so much funny and nonsensical stuff happening that watching it as a comedy is the only way I can enjoy it. One of my favorite things is how every robot can fly in bot mode without transforming into a jet, using a jet pack, thrusters or anything. They just go up, up and away like Superman. Or how transforming is always a way to determine how badly hurt someone is. It's always the first question a fellow Autobot will ask when someone goes down, "Can you transform?" "I....I think..so.." Great stuff.

"Can you transform?" "I..I don't think so; I think my linkage is busted." Great stuff. I ate this poo up as a kid, though. Still brings a smile.

While the G1 cartoon isn't that great, I... don't see what's wrong with asking this. The transformation is a natural function of a transformer. If somebody got hurt, then something related to their primary functions (such as transforming) might be busted, so asking somebody if they can do such a thing is perfectly reasonable to do. If they can't transform, then their internal mechanisms are busted or something.

As for flying, these days they tend to restrict flight to characters who actually turn into flight-capable vehicles, or who have some sort of engines built into them somewhere. In Season 2 of The Treansformers, the Autobots stopped flying unless they were planes or had jetpacks.

Generations Thrust and Drift pics

PCC Rallybots and Destructicons combined pics

TFW2005 visits High Moon Studios for War For Cybertron Lots of concept art and character model images.

The appearance of a rational argument is usually destroyed by AOL-speak and "witty" catchphrases. Bit of friendly advice there("FYI" in AOL-ese).

My comment was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the occasionally hostile reception this forum has given to newer incarnations of Transformers. And please don't lecture to me.

I really think you guys are looking at Transformers from your comparatively niche Macross/"Japanese obscure robot costing hundreds of dollars" collector perspective, which is probably why you guys appear to be flabbergasted when Transformers fans of the rough same age groups as you are seem impressed or excited about some toy that seems too gimmicky, kiddy or otherwise uninteresting to you. Power Core Combiners will probably go down really well with kids.

Also, LOL, you basically said "Ruined FOREVER".

When you think about the fact that, almost 2 decades ago, Takara managed to produce Multiforce.... not to mention the Micromaster combiners....

Except they sucked, and Multiforce inspired the terrible Autobot combiner gimmick for Energon. The Micromaster combiner teams didn't combine - they were attached to a huge chunk of immobile robot torso shell.

So yes, almost 2 decades ago, Takara managed to produced not very good toys.

Doesn't Impossible Toys make mostly terrible (and overpriced) products, tho?

True, but their Arcee was the best-looking fan-made Arcee yet. Though I wonder if being so very, very very close to Hasbro's copyrighted character model (while Hasbro is still selling Arcee products, including a G1-looking Animated Arcee) is the reason why Impossible Toys suddenly went silent.