Toyfair

Yes, it's that time again - every year close to Valentine's day, New York City hosts its annual Toy Fair, wherein Hasbro shows off its latest wares.


While their presentation isn't until later today (I think), pictures have emerged of a Hasbro-published Beast Hunters "guidebook" of sorts. And it's pretty awesome - a combination of pack-in catalog and faux-intercepted lab journal by TFP Shockwave, all about each of the Predacons and how he made them.

What grabbed me firstly about this was that it gives us our first look at the TFP Voyager Shockwave toy! You know me, I love my Shockwaves. I was happy to see that, like Beast Hunters Smokescreen, Shockwave's actual design is unaltered from his appearances in TFP Season 2, but he includes some removable (orange) armor pieces to get him ready to take on Predacons in both robot and tank mode. Yes, that's right, he appears to turn into a tank once again (it is cybertronian, as per usual). The cannon mounted on the left arm (not sure if it is removable, a la DotM and Animated Shockwaves) is the same main cannon for the tank mode, and also houses the main gimmick - the barrel splits open to reveal a missile launcher, and something in this assembly spins. It's kind of like a smaller version of Cybertron Defense Red Alert's missile, I guess. I also like how the shoulder armor attaches to the tank to look like claws; that's fun.

Anyhow, the fictional contents of the guidebook are great too. It's pretty humorous, with Shockwave honestly noting his mistakes (after making Hun-Grrr, he notes: "Nor more 2-headed dragons") and we get an idea of the individual Predacons' personalities, which is good when Hasbro decides to make an ENTIRE FACTION all have the same alt mode. And while all the Predacons are dragons, I've been impressed with how Hasbro has been able to stretch that idea and make most of them pretty unique. In fact, the only evidence we have so far even of repainting/remolding is that we know, at least in the Rage of the Dinobots comic, Ser-Ket has the same body type as Ripclaw, and the Scourge revealed in the guidebook is a retool of Lazerback with a new dragon head (not sure about the bot mode head). Anyway, here's the list of Predacons in the guidebook:

1. Predaking
2. Lazerback
3. Ripclaw
4. Grimwing
5. Skystalker
6. Scourge
7. Hun-Grrr
8. Windrazor (Cutthroat)
9. Rippersnapper
10. Blight (Blot)
11. Twinstrike (Sinnertwin)
12. Abominus (combined mode of #s 7 - 11, of course)

So that's 12, right there. Of course, we know that the neo-Terrorcons that make Abominus are legion toys, and I'd bet that they won't get larger ones, but that still leaves six Predacons that will most likely get deluxe or larger toys. The only known ones are Predaking (Ultimate, Voyager, and CV Commander), Lazerback (deluxe), and Ripclaw (deluxe). Grimwing also is the build-kit partner for Kre-O Trailbreaker, but it doesn't have a bot mode or anything; Ripclaw gets her own "transforming" build kit and Kreon, but the colors (and maybe gender) are off.

Back to the "Terrorcons" for a moment - we've known about Twinstrike/Sinnertwin for a while (since NYCC), but we just found out this week that we're getting all five, and as a combiner, to boot. In G1, not all of them are dragons; only Hun-Grrr and Sinnertwin are distincly reptilian, and for whatever reason are both 2-headed dragons. Cutthroat was most probably a pterasaur, but Rippersnapper was a shark with legs and arms, and Blot was...well, something. No one really knows. Now, they're all dragons, in keeping with the theme. Rippersnapper has been pretty effectively translated into an aquatic dragon, and Windrazor/Cutthroat is more a wyvern that pterasaur now. Blot has become the more clearly reptilian Blight (same basic body design), and obviously the two double-headed guys haven't lost their draconian features. Abominus himself, while not seen in color yet, looks pretty good for a small combiner that lack real hands and feet. He does have his own head, concealed within Hun-Grr, but the more monstrous look of the lack of hands really works for the character.

Anyhow, I'm sure Toyfair will yield more Predacon/BH info later on, so I'll try to come back and chime in.

Decade

The one that started it all.

About this time in February 2003 I began collecting Transformers. 

Don't get me wrong - my childhood was inundated with the converting plastic robots, having been born just a year before the toyline appeared on American shelves. G1 was a big part of my early childhood, and G2 a great thing for a 10 year old to have around. My last Transformer I got, as a child, was Beast Wars Waspinator. After that, I moved away from toys in general and began to get more interested in video games and the outdoors, both of which are expensive interests. I still had a lingering interests in Transformers, and still played with my cousins' growing Beast Wars collection, but it wasn't something I was personally invested in. 

That changed in 2003. Having watched the 1986 Animated Movie in the summer of 2002 for the first time in, basically, forever, my fondness for the toys was rekindled. My dorm buddies and I watched the film again very early in 2003, leading me to look up, online, the current state of the Transformers franchise. I discovered that the toyline of the day was called Transformers: Armada, and it had a lot of familiar faces, some unfamiliar faces with familiar names, and some altogether unknown. One in particular caught my eye - Starscream.

I don't know when I my affinity for Stracream began, but those images of Armada Starscream somehow rekindled it. He was just so, I don't know, dynamic. It's a robot that turns into a fighter jet. How can you not like that? At any rate, a few weeks pass, and, suddenly, I get the desire to initiate my first Hunt. My good buddy Doug (you can read more about him in my very first post here) humored and joined me. My college town, at that time, had 2 Walmarts, 1 Target, 1 Toys R Us, and 2 Kmarts as the major Transformer retailers. Not bad, but as Starscream was a wave 1 Armada Maxcon (good lord, I miss those size class names), and it was now two months into 2003, he had started to get scarce. I remember us, mid-Hunt, walking into one of the Kmarts, which was in the midst of closing - it was awful, with stuff strewn everywhere. It was no luck, just like all the other stores. It was only the last place on our route, the 2nd Walmart (the one farthest from the dorm) that finally yielded an Armada Starscream to my open wallet. 

Being an Armada toy, Starscream not only included a fun mini-con (Swindle, the red F-1 racer, who makes a good arm-mounted blade), but also electronics at the $20 price point! He also  came with a mini-comic/catalog (that actually featured him & Swindle) and, yes, somewhat limited articulation. But he was great. 

Of course, in short order my collection grew. I believe Blurr (with Incinerator) was next; I think I got him at Target. Jetfire and Commettor, my largest to date (an Ultracon!), was third, bought on a date night in with a tolerating and patient girlfriend. He particularly was cool, though even then I was beginning to get dissatisfied with the limited articulation. That was partially allayed with my fourth purchase, Supercon Optimus Prime (with Over-Run), which I bought at Toys R Us on my way out of town for vacation. It was the 2nd variant, I think, as I gave it one of Reissue Tracks' extra Autobot symbols later that year. 

Basically, it was all downhill from there. I bought a large number of Armada toys, though I was still pretty selective and anti-repaint at that point, so I passed on a lot of things like Sideways (still need to get him!), the original versions of Cyclonus and Demolishor, Thundercracker (got him off ebay in 2009) and others. Unicron was a big deal, though. And once Energon hit shelves near the end of the year, I was all in. I bought all of wave 1 - save Optimus and Treadbolt - in one fell swoop once they hit the local Walmart (not the same one I got Starscream at, if you care). That was a fun night, as was that Christmas, when I got Alternators Smokescreen, Energon Scorponok, and ordered MP-01 Optimus Prime (well, Convoy) for myself shortly thereafter. I had also, earlier in the year, begun to catch up on Robots in Disguise releases, which didn't take too long. 

So, since then, I've been an avid Transformer collector. Energon gave way to the still-incredible Cybertron, while Universe and Alternators (not to mention the TRU G1 reissues) filled in gaps on the side. Classics (and, to an extent, the Titanium Series) was a great thing to shoehorn in between Cybertron and the 2007 Movie line. Animated was also fantastic, if more limited in scope than Cybertron, and had the sequel to Classics, Universe (2.0) to increase the G1ness of my collection. Revenge of the Fallen gave us a bunch of stuff we never thought we'd see, and was follwed up by the great Hunt for the Decepticons/Reveal the Shield and Generations lines, the latter of which introduced War for Cybertron video game toys to us. Dark of the Moon was, in some ways, an inferior toyline to RotF, but it had some great individual items. Alongside it, the Kre-O line was unveiled, which has been fantastic. Transformers: Prime finally got off the ground in late 2011 with First Edition toys, which infamously not completely released in the US. I'm thankful that I didn't fully buy into the "FE rush," as most got released later in 2012. TFPrime came into its own early in 2012, which has been pretty good and looks to get only more interesting with the transition into Beast Hunters. Oh, and the video game world of Fall of Cybertron has been given full rein of the second iteration of the Generations toyline, producing a few great gems. 

While I've been meaning to cut back on collecting for a while now, and have done so in some minor ways, it's hard not to get excited about the new Transformers as we learn about them, either officially through Hasbro or through online leaks. I can say this - I'm stoked for Toyfair this weekend. Expect my response to be posted here.

Operation: gimmickry

My mom found FoC Soundwave and Soundblaster at the TRU near her work, and was kind enough to pick up Soundwave for me. I'm passing on Soundblaster, as cool as he looks, mostly because I don't care for Buzzsaw and I think the purple "dark energon" on Soundwave makes more sense. Plus, the upcoming Blaster toy is a remold of this mold, and I don't think I need all three version. (She was actually dispatched to the TRU to hopefully find a replacement FE Bulkhead -mine has a sort of defective right chest panel - but no luck)

Anyway, Soundwave/blaster is the first voyager class toy from the WfC/FoC toylines, and he's a doozy. After getting used to increasingly smaller voyager toys over the past few years, Soundwave is a beast. And while the deluxe version from 2010 is still pretty good, this one captures the proportions and overall look of the game design much better.

The key difference, of course, is the gimmick that voyager Soundwave is literally built around. While the deluxe could store his guns in his chest cavity, the voyager has space for his minions. I've already gone over how the datacons work, but I am very pleased to say that the actual deployment/ejection gimmick works pretty well. I say this because a lot of others online have reported their Soundwaves having datacons stuck in the cavity and other problems. So far, Laserbeak has had no issues with his boss and transforms upon ejection - it's pretty awesome. My 5-year-old loves it; he'll probably get Soundblaster for his birthday. Basically, this is one of most successful voyager toys and Soundwaves, well, in the history of the franchise. Good on Hasbro for having the gumption to go for it.

Hammer Time

Kicking and Screaming

Just wanted to share that the local Walmart actually got in FoC/Generations wave 3 deluxes, so now I'm the proud owner of the new Kickback and Starscream toys!

That's it. Mini-reviews will follow in a few days, I'm sure.

Hunting Party

So, over the past week, we've had the entire 2nd wave of Beast Hunters deluxes revealed, either purposely or not, online. They're pretty cool!

First, Ripclaw - pretty different from the Kre-O version, this Predacon has the same body as the other female Predacon, Ser-Ket, from the Rage of the Dinobots comic. Different colors, though. Pretty traditional European dragon mode, with a tri-clawed gun-tail. Bot mode is...interesting, with weird shoulders and head, but the tail claw become a hand-held weapon. Pretty cool, maybe more so than Laserback.

Second - Bulkhead! Yep, a deluxe Bulkhead. Which, honestly, is something some of us wondered would happen back when the only TFPrime toys we knew up were deluxes (FE wave 1, basically). This is a totally new mold, obviously, and is based on the already-known remold/repaint of the Commander class toy, which has the typical BH spikes and a Roadbuster color scheme. This toy keeps the Roadbuster look, but the BH armor "modifications" are not the same, and the robot mode looks pretty different as a result. New transformation means that the hood reveals a robot-armor chest, which a Animated Bulkhead's thin windshield lines (neat!). He also has a pretty cool "dragon grinder" buzzsaw weapon to mount on his forearm(s). Unfortunately, it looks like his has "Scourge-bows" (although I suppose it's appropriate that someone in a dragon-themed line would!). Pretty tempting, but I may just go for the Commander remold.

Third - Smokescreen - finally, confirmation of a new-mold deluxe. There was fear that we would get a Knock Out remold, like Takara made, which not many were interested in. Instead, we get an interesting toy - the base figure is a typical, show-model Smokescreen, but has add-on BH-style armor/weapon. Smart. However, his robot chest is also very blatantly not the car's actual hood, so I'm not happy about that. Honestly, I've got this philosophy for TF engineering that states, basically, that a toy for any given character should have a more accurate/less cheaty transformation scheme than any toy for that character that's in a lower size class. Translation? The upcoming legion class Smokescreen has a real hood-chest; this one should too.

Fourth - Starscream! TFP Screamer gets his second deluxe mold (after the awesome FE). Looks a bit weird, but it's a deluxe Starscream, so I'm pretty certain that I'll cave. Plus, it's not really a bad weird anyway. I'm looking forward to larger, clearer pics.

Holy crap, it's 2013

Happy New Year!

If you're reading, I hope you had a great Christmas. It's January 1st, already 2013. Just crazy, isn't it?

Anyhow, my Christmas wrap-up is pretty brief this year:

- TFP Voyager Ultra Magnus (yes!!) from my parents
- TFP Weaponizer Bumblebee (...ok, sure) from my in-laws

....and, that's it. However, a ton of new stuff is hitting stores (of course only post-Christmas), so I have managed to pick up a few things.

First, Walgreens stores have been putting out the new (offically wave 1) Kre-O Microchangers! And even mine had a seemingly full box last night. Using packaging codes posted online, I was able to thwart the blind-packed mass to pick out Bludgeon, Dirge, Airachnid, and the Insecticon. One neat thing about this new set is that they all come with an embossed stand brick (2x4). It adds a touch of class, if something like that is possible with Kre-Os. Also, it makes it possible to stand - something hard to do with them thanks to their ball jointed hips. Anyhow, of the four, I think I like Airachnid the best. Her bot mode is great, and the spider mode is passably good. Since I've skipped the deluxe (hoping for a decent Beast Hunters remold), this is my only toy of her thus far. Dirge has the best alt mode, though he really doesn't do any transforming to achieve it. Bludgeon is fun for his goofiness, and the Insecticon has a pretty good beetle mode, though the bot mode isn't that notable.

Secondly, TRUs seem to be getting most of the other new stuff, including wave 1 Beast Hunters deluxes. I was able to get out to a TRU today, and while they didn't have any Beast Hunters (and refused to check for me; thanks guys!), they did have some stuff. For the first time, I found a TFP First Edition Voyager Optimus Prime. This guy was supposed to be in stores over a year ago, but then the remainder of the line got cancelled  and his aftermarket price went through the roof. I have to say, this is one of the worst examples of a toy being built up by hype. I can get into some problems in a mini-review, but I'll just say if not for the bot mode looking great and having the show-accurate weapons, I might actually be taking this one back to the store.

However, the store also had the new Fall of Cybertron Cassetticons/Recordicons/Datacons/Whatever that are designed to go with the new voyager Soundwave toy (no, they didn't have him). I chose the 2-pac with Ratbat and Frenzy. Well, the packaging says Frenzy, but I'm firmly in the FIBRIR camp, so it's Rumble to me. While initially underwhelmed by the pair, the more that I have fiddled with them over the past hour or two, the more impressed I am with them. While officially legends class toys (a term which is itself outdated thanks to the cyberverse "legion" moniker), they are of course utterly unlike any other legends toys. Dominated by their disc-shaped alt mode and automorph/autotransformation gimmick, they have obvious limitations, but they are quite fun. The robot modes are more fun than I expected, as well, and the little cases are a neat way to add value to the set while also giving you a practical way to independently store the toys without them having their buttons accidentally triggered. I may get to go to the other "local" TRU tomorrow, and if so, it'll be hard to pass up the other set (blue Rumble and Ravage) or Soundwave if they are present.

So, that's my end to 2012 and beginning of 2013 in terms of TFs.


Update: just added my mini-review of Ratbat over on the G1 review page.