Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Human Alliance Bumblebee

I finally found Human Alliance Bumblebee yesterday afternoon.



This is one of the Transformer toys. It's amazing. This is how you celebrate the brand's 25th anniversary.

Can't wait for the other toys in this subline.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Stratosphere

Walmart has a sale on ROTF Voyagers and deluxes right now, so I decided to pick up Stratosphere. I will admit that a large part of the appeal to me for this guy is that he includes an Optimus Prime toy - a very tiny one, too, even smaller than Legends class. However, Stratosphere himself has turned out to be a pretty cool transformer on his own. Take a look:

Here he is in his aircraft mode. He's a cargo plane, although not of a particular real type. The general body shape is pretty close to a C-17 Globemaster III (the plane used in the film to airflift the autobots), but it has a tail unlike any in-service US cargo plane (more like the An-225's tail), adn the cockpit/nose is like a weird blend between the C-17 and a C-5 Galaxy. Unfortunately, unlike the C-5, the nose can't lift up, so this makes that aspect a bit more like the C-17.

As you can see, Stratosphere is quite a bit bigger than his accessory Optimus in vehicle mode:



When the hoizontal stabilizers are rotated downward, the cargo bay door opens and Optimus, in truck mode, comes rolling out. It's a pretty awesome gimmick. Also, you can move the stabilizers bake to their normal position after you've used them to trigger the door.

Here's Optimus in bot mode next to the plane:


Stratosphere is among an increasingly large number of TFs that turn into huge planes. He's a Voyager class figure, like Animated Lugnut here, who turns into a bomber:



And here he is with Cybertron Jetfire, who's another cargo plane (a heavily modified An-225). This Jetfire is also an Ultra class figure, so that's why he appears bigger. Because he is!



As for Optimus himself, he's a pretty neat little toy! Better than I expected, really. He's very tiny, as you can see in this pic with ROTF Leader class Optimus. He's pretty much the size of an actual person (maybe smaller?):



Here he is with the other two small Movie Optimus toys. ROTF Legends class Prime is on the left, and 2007 Movie 1 Legends Class Optimus is on the right. As you can see, mini-Optimus is much closer in color to the 2007 version (both the Legends class and the Leader class toys), his blue is quite dark.



And vehicle modes:


Ok, for Stratosphere's robot mode:



As you can see, he's a bit different than many of the movieverse toys in that he's doesn't have as much kibble or sharp edges. However, he's got some features that make him an unmistakable member of the "Bayformer" clan. Among these are his, as some would say, digitgrade legs (simply meaning that his birdlike "backward" knees are actually ankles, making the feet, in an anatomical sense, actually only be his toes/ball of his foot.