Abroad

So! That last BHS Cyberverse wave that was pretty much cancelled for the US? The very helpful Nevermore (of both the Allspark and TFW) has been able to get me all of them in his nativ Germany for not too much more than retail! I've also had him grab an extra Ultra Magnus for one of my friends, as you can see above.

I've sold some TFs on eBay and am waiting for payments to come in, but it might still be a few weeks before I see these. Still, I'm pretty excited to be getting these finally, especially when I thought getting them wouldn't be an option at all.

Now THIS is nice...

This is from Guidi's deviant art page. How flippin' inspired, yet simple, is this?!

The Jet Vehicon always brought Tracks to mind for me because, let's face it, they turn into flying cars, not actual airplanes, but it never occurred to me that the Jet Vehicon's should be repainted into Tracks. However, doing the opposite, as Guidi shows, is just friggin' great. And while this picture didn't require creativity in the sense that it pretty much is just a picture of Tracks's toy, I love it because it's a rare instance where a character design transplanted from a more stylized continuity to G1 actually looks G1. As much as I love Milne's latter-day works, he did just the opposite of this when he transplanted the TFP Vehicon's into MTMTE with no visual changes whatsoever. Yes, yes, MTMTE has a much more stylized look compared to the Sunbow show, but still, I appreciate the effort shown here in Guidi's picture. 

We need a remold of RTS Tracks into G1-ized Vehicons NOW.

One more step closer...

Fixit Wheelie

So, I "finally" found RiD legion wave 3 last night - Fixit and Underbite! Why do I sound so excited? I dunno. There is just something about this wave that's, you know, truly fun. This wave isn't about legacy characters or anything; just two new characters that have unique, fun toys.

Now, don't get me wrong; I love legacy characters, and, in fact, part of Fixit's appeal for me is his fairly strong resemblance to Wheelie (G1, IDW, and ROTF altogether). But what really sells him is how great his bot mode is for a legion toy. Fixit is clearly meant to not be in scale with other legion toys, but rather the deluxe/warrior RiD toys - he's not a big guy, so his small stature works. Moreover, he's got to be one of the most expressive legion toys ever, having a particularly well-articulated torso and neck! His shoulders prevent his arms from sticking straight out, but that is about the only limitation I can see.

Corona Starscream

I'm liking it...!

This...this is our clearest pic yet of Optimus Maximus, the combiner made of a white repaint (who isn't Magnus...?) of Optikus Prime and the 84bots - remolds of the Stunticons designed to look like Ironhide, Prowl, Sunstreaker and Mirage (oh, and a Hot Rod remold of Blackjack, too). While it has been pretty easy for people to figure out that Sunstreaker would use the Breakdown mold and Mirage would use the Dragstrip mold (which is also evident in the top part of the art, which we first saw about two months ago), it wasn't clear until recently that Ironhide would for sure use the Off-Road mold, and we still haven't seen anything clear yet for Prowl, and honestly the art here doesn't really help ID him either. I'm sure that he's based on Streetwise/Dead End like a lot of other people are guessing,but this pic does not exactly close the case. Oh well - while I don't plan on getting Optimus Maximus (unless I think he makes a convincing Magnus), I'm really anticipating these limbs and I hope that I can still get them for $15 instead of $20 by their release date.

Chopper Squad

Really liking these three together! Kind of a different take on the Green Propeller Task Force.