Hold Your Fire (Updated)

Ok, this Megatron has me a bit keyed up. I was never really put off by the Classics color scheme, but it's nice to finally get the mold with a more G1 look domestically. Of course, since this is a Platinum set, it comes with an inexplicably poorly decoed Optimus and will probably cost $349.99. What can you do?

I did retrieve Classics Megatron from storage and have been having some fun with him. I love his transformation.

Update: out-of-package pics from Tforners:

Repaint Fuel

Ok. I picked up the new Optimus/Bludgeon set last weekend because it finally gives a a return, sort of, to the commander size class. Optimus is really only lacking in his truck mode, and even then the lack of paint is the main issue (surprise!). His robot mode is a real treat - easily better than the deluxe toy and obviously more size appropriate compared to Legion Bumblebee, Strongarm, et al than his own legion toy is. I'll most likely pick up Grimlock from wave 2 for the same reason (and skip Sideswipe and Bumblebee for that same reason). 

As you can see, Optimus's armor combines with his axe to make a giant Warhammer thing. We already got a Magnus repaint of the legion toy, but an Optimus toy that comes with both armor AND a hammer begs to be turned into Ultra Magnus. And I would really be happy with a straight repaint, following the deco cues from the legion toy and casting the Energon parts in blue. There is even precedent for Magnus having his own blue axe thanks to MP-0whatever that was a MP-01 repaint. If they really want to knock it out of the park they could give him the head from the legion toy's packaging art and a new mask piece accordingly. 

I'd also love to see a Megatronus in this size class to square off against Optimus and at least one other Decepticon, maybe Thunderhoof. 

Further Down the Rabbit Hole

No joke, we've got some official Liokaiser art here folks! Computron was also confirmed via artwork, but I'm much more enamored with Liokaiser here. Largely because I didn't think he'd ever get any kind of US release, and partly because it gives us some much needed additional CW Cons! On the plus side, Liokaiser uses the two jet molds that aren't Blast Off, so we will now have three unique Decepticon jets. Killbison is a straight repaint of Brawl (at least in tank mode), and Drillhorn uses the drill tooling from Nosecone. The torso is a remold of Sky Lynx that is allegedy going to be Deathsaurus, but there's no telling if he will have any new tooling other than the combiner head, and it's seems inevitable that Deathsaurus won't have his own robot mode, just "dragon" mode. Which is amusing, because I thought that the best Remold option for Sky Lynx would be RiD Megatron/Gigatron, and Botcon Deathsaurus is a remold of him.

No telling if Liokaiser comes with a legends partner (some suggest the Groove mold as the Jaguar guy) or the segmented staff shown in the art. I am happy that he has the normal foothandguns, and not specialty types that Victorion and Computron are coming with. In fact, it's still possible that Liokaiser could be a normal, parted out retail release rather than a box set.

WHERE ARE THE TREADS

Chugway

Loving these new (non-CGI) pics of CW Shockwave. Great card art too!

After a 3-year hiatus, Hasbro rocks NYCC again!

Well! Hasbro gave us a subtle tease of "Titan Wars" at Botcon this summer with blueprint images of Blaster, Fortress Maximus, and what we now know to be Sentinel Prime, but I had no idea that they'd be making a good showing of these sorts of items at NYCC this year! This really reminds me of their Beast Hunters revelation from 2012 except, well, better.

For instance:

Holy crap. Real Galvatron! Now, y'all know I'm a huge fan of Combiner Wars Galvatronus. In fact, he may still be tops in my mind over this new mold. Even so, this new Voyager Galvatron is hot shit. One of the great things about Galvatronus was that he was Galvatron, but processed through a very popular franchise gimmick - gestalt combination. Well, the train didn't stop there - Titans Return (yes, that is apparently the official name of "Titan Wars") Galvatron incorporates not just one, but two franchise gimmicks: he's a triple-changing headmaster! :D

While Galvatron is shown above in his animated movie-accurate cybertronian cannon mode above - in other words, nothing new - you can also see his headmaster standing on the aft portion of the cannon. That's cool enough, but we all know that this cannon isn't a vehicle in the truest sense of the word, so where's this headmaster gonna go?

In the cybertronian Starfighter mode's cockpit, that's where! Some already claim to not like this mode. They're idiots. But who, you wonder, is the pilot of this fantastic starfighter?

Yup. That's right! None other than Megatron himself. While he looks a bit too monochromatic here, it's hard to deny the sculpting, despite this headmaster's official name being "Nucleon." I mean, I'd already been forming a fan theory in my head the last few weeks that allows the Sunbow and IDW interpretations of Galvatron to both be correct, and this just helps seal the deal. While I'm still bummed that Galvatronus didn't get a comics appearance for Combiner Wars ( having him possess now-good guy Cyclonus and have Him and Tailgate fight for his soul could have been cool stuff), I love how these new toys that could have been simple updates a la Universe Inferno are taking things in interesting new directions while still accomplishing the objective of giving us great new toys of these classic characters. Also, I'll mention that, apparently, all the voyagers in this line have helmets that go over the headmaster in robot mode to make the head more appropriate for the size class (the headmasters are designed to work with deluxes too!). Oh, and all voyagers will be triple changers, not just Galvatron!

(As an aside, it should be noted that the actual hand-painted display copy has a pretty different helmet; the helmet on the CGI model is based on his IDW incarnation and looks really nice. The physical copy has a helmet that is a bit more evocative of the Sunbow appearance, if stylized. I think I prefer the IDW helmet, but I could live with the other one too)

This guy look familiar? Officially, he's named "Infinitus," but it's pretty clear that we finally have a G1 (specifically IDW-based) Sentinel Prime on our hands! Sentinel is actually set to play a big role in the Titans Return story, after being (presumed?) dead since the beginning of the war. No longer a truck, Sentinel's headmaster can pilot two different alt modes (as noted above, all voyagers are triple changers):

Space Train! Shades of Energon Omega Supreme here. This is a heavily armed and armored Cybertronian locomotive. Sentinel can be airborne now, as well:

Shuttle mode! Wait, I'm sensing a pattern...

...yep, Sentinel here is totally an Astrotrain premold. It's a bit too bad that our first G1 Sentinel you can't even really be his own guy, but at least this body appears in the comics and thus we'll (hopefully) get an in-fiction reason for it. Overall it looks good, and the design actually is really close to Don's Stormbringer sketch of Astrotrain, which is kind of neat. I also really dig the seat gun; it hearkens back to PM Optimus.

So, speaking of headmasters, they are what the Titans Return line is built around. Everyone, save the legends toys, is a headmaster. In fact, we are even getting "solo" headmaster releases! Dubbed "Titan Masters," these headmasters come packaged with an accessory that the headmaster can both use as a vehicle and combine with to form a more cohesive vehicle/animal. The headmaster can also, of course serve as a replacement head for one of the larger toys in the like while their vehicle can be wielded by the larger robots as a weapon! It's a pretty cool system and much more interesting than the current crop of small TFs, the neo-RiD minicons. It should be noted that all four of these Titan Masters are based on actual G1 Headmaster characters, including Squeezeplay who is depicted here (but named Crash Bash):

Here's the head mode, which is a bit more stylized than the original toy. Looks great, though - appropriately evil.

This is his partner's "vehicle" mode: yes, it's a dragon, but it is the mode Squeezeplay can ride like a vehicle. The wings are a bit iffy, but not to bad.

And here you can see the combined dinosaur mode - Squeezeplay himself forms the lower jaw, chest and forearms of the Dino. Pretty neat, and very well-integrated! I think he'd go pretty well with Galvatron, so he will most likely get purchased (though "Terri-bull," nee Horri-bull, looks pretty great - best of the vehicular Titan Masters).

This little guy may look familiar - it's Grax, headmaster of...

Skullcruncher! Damn right. This has got to be one of the truest G1 update toys in since Classics debuted in 2006. I should know; Skullcruncher is one of the few transformers I own that pretty successfully survived my childhood intact. Since this new one is a deluxe (notice the lack of a helmet), I'm sure he will be a bit smaller than the original, but I'm cool with that. Seriously, other than the tail weapon being less straightforward than the original, which was just a chainsaw-sword, this guy looks great. I like that the gator claws will be easily usable as robot weapons, Wolverine-style.

And here, my friends, is the jeans-short-wearing, shit-eating Florida Gator mode.

Wait, let me start over, sorry! Just upset about the lack of a bulldog TF to balance things out, that's all. Anyhow, if this doesn't scream G1 I don't know what does. Also, it's hard to tell here, but in some of the NYCC display photos, it's clear that Grax no longer has to ride in Skullcruncher's mouth - which was a neat but conceptually weak idea for a cockpit - rather, it looks like a panel on the gator's back (where the stats panel was on the original toy) lifts up to reveal an open-air cockpit. It would be hard for me not to pick this guy up!

And here's one more MTMTE character to check off the list. Actually, I think I was one of the few who was pretty happy with the data disc FoC Rewind and thought that TFCC Rewind really didn't work (neither did their Chromedome, which I expect will be rectified in this toyline). Still, this new legends-class Rewind does look great and certainly has an articulation advantage over the data disc. Oh, and he's also ready to assassinate not-Megatron (expect a lot of pics online with this toy next to CW Megatron with the latter's chestplate opened)! By the way, it should be noted that as nice as Rewind's bot mode is, Stripe's (a Ravage tiger premold) is terrible. No purchase on that one. Or Buzzsaw, who was actually revealed at SDCC. Looks like the humanoids will be the winners of this set of "cassettes."

All the new TR legends toys have a vehicle mode for the headmasters to pilot, and amusingly enough, Rewind's is a tank, just like the TFCC toy. Additionally amusing, his tank mode reminds me of nothing more than Titanium Megatron, one of the worst TFs in modern history. Not that I'm knocking this toy. This works fine within the constraints of the size class and triple changing gimmick.

For his normal altmode, Rewind gets a bit of an upgrade from simple flash drive in MTMTE to full-blown tablet/smartphone, with a cute (?) microcassette wallpaper. Not sure if the gun can store in this mode, though if Hasbro was smart, they would have given it a stylus-like slot to slide into (that might be what is going on with his nearer arm). We'll see. But what good is Rewind without his big boss?

Yep, sound stage/tactical base mode Blaster! He's one of the new leader class toys, sporting a very PMOP-like base mode. You can see his headmaster form on one of the platforms to the left.

And here is the big ol' bot mode. Looks pretty cool, though I'm happy enough with FoC Blaster (and going to spend enough on other TR toys) that I don't know that I need this guy, despite my plans to get Rewind. Still, no complaints!

Warlord

Ok, I know - crappy pic. So, yes, I caved on one of the leader Megatrons from Combiner Wars. The G1 version never quite looked right to me, thanks to its oversized head, but Armada Megatron was kind of always gnawing at the back of my mind. Y'all gotta know that I was always going to be tempted by such a high-profile UT update, even if the equally high price and somewhat lacking articulation didn't exactly sweeten the deal.

Even so, with my birthday coming up, I decided to spring for this guy. I'm glad I did because he's actually pretty good. Nothing revelatory in terms of transformation technique or anything (though he does have the first working treads in forever), but he's a much better Armada Megatron than I thought he'd be., especially considering that the mold was designed mostly with G1 Megatron in mind. The smaller head sculpt is rockin' and really helps sell him as this huge, towering warlord. I, for one, love that he has an arm cannon rather than shooting from the hip - how many of us kept Leader-1 attached to the original Armada Megatron's right arm in Targetmaster mode in a pale imitation of G1 Megatron's arm cannon? No need for something like that now. The back treads look cool and do a good job of emulating how they used to look on the original toy while also mimicking IDW Megatron's cybertronian mode (amusingly, the G1 version of this mold is intended NOT to transform this way...). The tank mode is pretty good, mostly resembling DOTM Guzzle though obviously channelling the old Armada toy very well (one interesting bit - this toy's tank mode is clearly intended to be an Earth mode, while the 2002 toy's tank mode could easily be seen as Cybertronian. Yet, the cartoon made it clear that the 2002 toy was how Megatron looked after ditching his cybertronian design and presumably scanning an earth mode. Weird stuff).

Again, I don't really feel like this was worth the $45. I'm eager to compare it to Cybertron Galvatron, as unfair of s comparison that may be. It really feels like an old Ultra class toy. Still, it's very good for what it is.