POST YOUR NEWEST ACQUISITIONS!

[Denyer]

Neat. When cured, is the paint resistant to friction? If so, what brand? I could do with touching up Emirate Xaaron a bit. Although he is meant to look a bit decrepit.

Don't really tend to touch the figures I've painted much (unflocked Moss Man out of Beast Man is more of a placeholder statue, for instance, I think the flocked once will probably stay in the packaging when it turns up. If it turns up, because there's been no sign of the Thunderpunch He-Mans from several waves ago the store ordered.)

[Warcry]

The silver is has held up really well on the Powerdasher overall, through fairly light handling. There's been a bit of light scuffing at the joints, though I don't think I'd notice it if the figure wasn't meant to be disassembled. The paint is Krylon "premium original chrome". It's difficult enough to work with that I'd honestly recommend you go with something else, though! Aside from the long curing times, it's also tough to get matching lustre because the "shiny" in the paint doesn't seem to always go on evenly.

On the other hand, the black is probably the best paint I've ever had the pleasure of working with! Just a basic Rustoleum "painter's touch matte black" can from Walmart, but it goes on smoothly, rarely needs more than two coats, dries and cures quickly and it's nice and durable. I've used it on a few small projects before this one...Grapple's head and Smokescreen's guns for sure. Always been happy with the results.

[Unicron]

Had the Studio Series 86 Ultra Magnus come in yesterday. After doing some fiddling today, have to say I like it. Transformation has a good bit of influence from the Masterpiece version, which I reckon is a good thing. Didn't notice any real flaws in the transformation or posability so far.
Only thing I'd consider an issue is the size. He's pretty big (tall and wide), to the point of being out of scale with the other Studio Series figures. Seems to be a result of them prioritizing the vehicle mode scale so he can carry 3 deluxes.

Still, a very good rendition of G1 cartoon Magnus, especially if you want something smaller than the Masterpiece version.

[Denyer]

Metallic paint is always trickier (for small areas those liquid chrome pens can be a nice workaround, for spear heads etc). Cheers for the info.

Kapow are clearing out some stuff, so I got a Legacy Skullgrin to do something I'd been thinking of. Got the swords off a couple of G2 Cybertronian Troopers (the Skullgrin swords have gone to ROTF deluxe Bludgeon) and sawed the head and shoulders off an original. Couldn't find the pretender shell I thought I had, but I might have given it away previously and these two still look nice together don't they? Didn't like the monster head on such an inner robot style body. Might find a use for it elsewhere.


https://i.imgur.com/HHfqV5J.jpeg

[Tantrum]

You could sandpaper down the bomb shafts, or if they're much thicker cut off the conical tips then drill into the back slightly and replace the shafts with superglued-in short sections of something else such as rigid wire or cut off nails.

(Wouldn't feel right just gluing the tips to original launchers, personally).

I thought about sandpapering the missile tip shafts. I'm just worried about screwing up and going too far, or making them off center, and then I can't use them in either. Though, I could snip the ends off the overly long missile shafts, try sanding the rest, and glue the tips onto the snipped off ends if I screw something up. It just sounds like more effort than I'm willing to put in at the moment.

I opened Legacy Bludgeon. He's OK, basically a bigger version of Skullgrin. The bot mode looks cool, especially the skull head. The little backpack bit with the dual cannons, along with the sword(s) give decent options for arming him. But, the tank doesn't roll, and the transformation to get there isn't pleasant, so he'll stay in bot mode. The only difference is that Skullrin's transformation is fiddly, while Bludgeon's has tolerance issues. B's head points do not fit in the chest cavity, and I'm worried I'll break them.

I don't regret getting him. It's just that, after deciding the tank mode isn't worth the risk, and coming up with what I feel is the best look for his weapons, I'm kinda done with him. Like Skullgrin, he's pretty much ready to go on the shelf and look cool forever. On the other hand, I still fiddle with, say Dragstrip or Magnificus from time to time.

[HeavyArms]

Rise Of The Beasts Converting Optimus Primal Mask - Bought on clearance from Big W.

Studio Series Rise Of The Beasts Rhinox.

[Denyer]

I thought about sandpapering the missile tip shafts. I'm just worried about screwing up and going too far, or making them off center, and then I can't use them in either. Though, I could snip the ends off the overly long missile shafts, try sanding the rest, and glue the tips onto the snipped off ends if I screw something up. It just sounds like more effort than I'm willing to put in at the moment.

Unless it's very light sandpapering I'd use metal rod if possible, making sure it's the right diameter or close enough that you can wrap a bit of tape around to bulk up if needs be. That way the only bit you've got to focus on is getting it drilled into the back of the missile cone dead centre.

[Warcry]

Legacy Snarl

A massive step down from the Legends-class Pretenders I got from last year's assortment. It's visibly and unattractively hollow from every viewing angle, the highlight of which is probably the giant hole in his crotch. The figure looks silly holding its sword, since they gave it a 3mm-to-5mm "double post" to allow bigger figures to use the same weapon (it looks like a letter opener in the hands of a Deluxe though). The transformation is lazy, the beast mode is even more hollow than the robot, and it has no articulation at all. The robot's hands are hanging out in plain sight in dino mode even though the forearms are 100% hollow. The most objectionable part is that they molded deep groves into the robot's legs to make it look like the figure has hip swivels, and gaps around the dinosaur's forelegs to make it look like they swung back and forth. Needless to say these parts don't actually move at all, and this was purely to make the toy look more poseable in stock photos.

It's somehow still the best of the Legends Dinobots I've seen in person, and by a wide margin at that. What an absolute turd these guys turned out to be.

[Denyer]

Sneaky f*ckers. The empty thighs and that split tail at head height look awful, too. Plus are the hips moulded red? If so there's no excuse for not doing the sword in red too.

[HeavyArms]

Legacy Evolution Rise of Tyranny 2-Pack (Miner Megatron and Senator Ratbat),

Humble Origins 2-Pack (Data Clerk Orion Pax and Senator Shockwave).

[Skyquake87]

ROTF Back Road Brawl 2 - pack Mixmaster vs Hoist
Geewunly repaints of ROTF Mixmaster and LAM Longarm (what a rubbish name that is). Mixmaster remains as fiendishly fun to transform as ever; the dark purple and black used for the torso / robot head render most of his robot mode and indecipherable scribble, which pretty much sums up the movie designs. Vehicle mode looks nice, with gold rims and the usual apple green. I think that the regular retail release has this beat overall though. Hoist feels like the intended version of the Longarm mould, as it looks like a LAM take on the old engineer. It's a slightly gangly robot mode with some very clumsy clompers and a gun that gets in the way all the time. Vehcile mode looks awesome. The only thing I don't like is that this is quite a flat and wide looking vehicle mode and looks bugger all like the truck Michaela erm hoisted Bumblebee up on at the end of the first film. All in all though; cool set!

HFTD Night Ops Ratchet
I bought this as it's something I couldn't recall seeing before and I really like the colours. Vehicle mode looks awesome; really beefy and chunky and looking way better in black and neon green compared to the horrible radioactive piss colour regular versions of this guy have. Very much a product of the first movie line's attempt to nail the Movie designs, this is nevertheless one of the more successful attempts. It's a bit of a chunky lad in robot mode, but I approve. Just a shame about the quite frankly crap looking weapons; a grabby roof rack and something that looks more like a fan than an axe.

Buzzworthy Bumblebee Scorponok and Sandspear
Another confusing Rise Of The Beasts toy release. I find the marketing and overall strategy for mainline stuff continues to be as baffling and confusing as ever. I picked up the frankly excellent mainline Deluxe Cheetor and Airazor figures, but haven't found much else of interest that matches up with these figures. Optimus Primal and (the admittedly awful looking) Rhinox haven't shown up around my parts outside of the horrible array of 'play feature' gimmick figures and I;ve not found any of the Studio Series figures particularly appealing. Enter Scorponok and Sandspear, who from pictures online I expected to be a decent Core Class figure with one of those animal battlemasters, or whatever they are. Oh no. This is like one of the tail-end-of-Beast Hunters or Alpha figures. It's a figure that would have looked amazing in a small size class blown up out of all proportion with so much hollowness it feels like half a chocolate Easter egg. It's got a lot of paint to cover this up, so looks way better than it actually is. It's a shame as these are good designs with a good concept, but just look absolute garbage in execution.

Generations Selects Antagony
Sigh. Black repaints. I like Black repaints when they have something else going on other than black. This has some excellent metallic pink/purple going on in insect mode and a couple of interchangeable purple heads, but that's it. The black is a bit much. I would have liked another secondary colour in there. As a reproduction of the BotCon exclusive it's fine, just lacking much in the way of it's own identity. The toy head is so indelibly linked to Inferno that it just cannot pass off being any other character, and the Scavenger head is likewise associated to a superior Ant-based toy that this comes off looking a bit ...wrong. Still, looks good havign a ruckus with Nemesis Primal and Nemesis Leo Prime.

Legacy Evolution Bludgeon
I really liked the RID15 version of Bludgeon and this seems to take much of its overall looks from that toy, despite being a 'that'll do' retool of Tarn. So I am happy with the figure. The robot mode is dynamic and I like all the colours going on and the big sword. Less impressive is the tank mode. It's not bad and looks quite good, for a Cybertronian whatever, but you can't play with it very well. I really wish it didn't now cost the earth to put in cheater wheels into moulded treads as pretty much every tank based whatever Hasbro have put out for Transformers has lacked them and they're just no fun to play with without them. They really do feel like those boring collector model cars that are bolted onto a display plate with wheels that can't move. Also has hands waving about at the back in vehicle mode which is a personal dislike of mine in all modern Transformers. Robots In Disguise my arse - what kind of vehicle has hands and feet flapping about all over the shop?

[Tantrum]

That's too bad about Core Snarl. I liked the look of him enough that I was considering getting him, even though I'm passing on the other 5. I'll likely skip the whole set. Thanks for saving me $10.

RotB Weaponizer Arcee/Cheetor - The SS Arcee didn't look good, and the one that wears an animal on her head looked terrible, so I decided to just get this one. I stand by that choice, as the bot mode is great. Nice headsculpt, much better than SS for this movie or Bumblebee. Stiff ball joints for the shoulders, elbows, and hips (knees are hinged). No waist joint, but there are wrist and neck swivels.

But, the bike mode is pretty bad. I have to use a knife to split the rear wheel in two, and it doesn't roll. Neither half spins freely when separated. The bot hand just hang out at the rear of the vehicle, with no attempt made to hide them. I'd say she's like Legacy Bludgeon, but he didn't have faux vehicle parts sitting on top of the actual vehicle like that Legends Bayverse Jazz. They just made Warrior Thrash, so I know they can do bikeformers well. Why not Arcee? Either of her.

Knife Cheetor is OK, but far less good than the gun Rhinox and Primal. I wish this was the chainsaw one. I really don't like the Optimus the chainsaw one comes with, and am disappointed that the chainsaw one isn't sold separately like some of the others.

Buzzworthy Army Builder 4-pack - I've opened this to make sure the right figures were inside, but haven't taken them out, yet.

[Warcry]

Sneaky f*ckers. The empty thighs and that split tail at head height look awful, too. Plus are the hips moulded red? If so there's no excuse for not doing the sword in red too.

No, most of the toy is molded in the wrong colour and then painted over. There actually isn't a single molecule of red plastic in play -- the dino back is gold-painted-red and the robot chest and hips are grey-painted-red. Though let's be honest, if the sword had come molded in red they would have painted it silver to match the cartoon model anyway.

I messed with the toy a bit alongside Bomb-Burst and Iguanus after my original post and what's really shocking is that most of the gulf in quality between Snarl and them comes down to one choice. The Pretenders' ball-jointed elbows and knees make them fun. Snarl has basic hinges at those joints, and the robot is no fun at all to fiddle with or pose. If he had the same joint scheme I'd probably overlook the hollowness like I overlook Iggy's hilarious bike mode.

That's too bad about Core Snarl. I liked the look of him enough that I was considering getting him, even though I'm passing on the other 5. I'll likely skip the whole set. Thanks for saving me $10.

Guess it was my turn to take one for the team!

Buzzworthy Bumblebee Scorponok and Sandspear

Oof, that's disappointing. I'd been looking for this one as well, so now it's my turn to say "thanks for saving me money"!

The Studio Series one that they just announced looks like absolute ass too. Though probably a significantly more screen-accurate ass.

[Denyer]

Possibly different strokes... IMNSHO, ball joints can be okay at that scale, but making them part of the transformation (plus all of the limbs having lizard scales on etc so they're really obvious in the alt mode) makes Iggy feel cheaper and more KO-ish. I particularly dislike ball joints on things like the MicroMasters when it leads to things popping off or looking asymmetrical unless you very carefully align them. Below a certain size it can just be a liability -- the original MMs are better toys. And whilst I'm shouting at clouds, it's commonly ignored with all size classes now that a lot of the fun of TFs is it only taking a few seconds to transform them, without over-complicating things with auto-transform mechanisms that often throw away articulation completely rather than find a balance.

The dinos seem to be another example of the way that building in combiner modes that have to support weight and move pieces in other ways compromises the rest of the playability of figures. Plus simply poor design, engineering and manufacturing decisions of course. Kids don't typically have the opportunity to collect sets, and robot dinosaurs are cool enough without compromising gimmicks.

Can't imagine many being thrilled if they did get a set:
https://news.tfw2005.com/2023/06/16/leg ... ook-487366

[Warcry]

I'd agree with most of that, but I think Cores/Basics/whatever you call them are the sweet spot where ball joints are usually the best solution. On anything bigger, swivel-hange combos usually work better. On anything smaller, like you say, less is usually more. But ball joints on these guys just seem right. Maybe that's nostalgia for Cyberjets and BW Basics talking?

Iggy's alt-mode is definitely a miss, but I'd argue that it was bad from the concept stage and that's a problem that you see with a lot of small motorbike Transformers. And this is just personal taste, but I don't mind a perfunctory alt-mode at this scale if the robot is good fun. Bomb-Burst is probably the best recent example of a good, simple "pocket toy" at this price point, but most of the Cores seem to be compromising on some important points to get another just right. And for Snarl and the other Dinos...yeah, the combined mode is 100% what the focus was. It's really too bad that characters like the Dinobots got so heavily compromised in the service of a future Dinoking or Monstructor retool.

[Denyer]

Dinoking is fairly logical, slap some vaguely appropriate colours on the shapeless Rock Lords -esque mass and call it a day. Might even be tempted at a clearance price. Monstructor I think you'd need something like the POTP Terrorcons to use as a base unless we're talking retool in the sense of a similar but substantially different CAD model to get some sort of monsters out of it rather than some sort of dinosaurs. In which case it'd be a fitting homage to a crap MicroMaster sized combiner.

It does feel like ball joints were a point in evolution, and now (apart from necks) you'd expect to see them when designers are being lazy and need something on stalks (e.g. Generations Scoop, IIRC) or just don't care that they're going to wear badly if played with and some will come from the factory already very loose. I think it's partly that with rising prices corner-cutting is more obvious and annoying.

[Tantrum]

I like the Scorponok/Sandspear set. I got it on sale for US$11, so that probably helps. I thought the Scorpnok would make a decent Deluxe with a few changes: make the scorpion head piece rotate 180 to form a proper back for the bot, make the bot toes fold down to cover the hinge in scorpion mode, make the scorpion legs fold up for bot mode, some better fist/claws. Instead, we're getting the SS, which is better engineering of a worse design.

SS 86 Ratchet from Gamestop, not yet opened. I like the dead Ironhide version of this mold, and now I have a non-exploded version.

[HeavyArms]

Legacy Evolution Armada Universe Megatron - Bought from Amazon AU, 20% off.

[Denyer]

Not exactly new, more newly out of box. I was thinking about using Transformers Generations Legacy Selects Lift-Ticket (breathe...) as a stocking filler after getting it from Hasbro's clearance eBay sale earlier in the year, but then I looked at some reviews, and I think I'm going to need to find simpler things.

http://www.16bit.com/fotd/220106-tra-se ... cket.shtml

And it's hard to disagree, except I'm probably more negative than Adam is there. As a homage to either Diaclone or generic 80s toy trucks, in alt-mode he looks, well, the ticket. When I say generic 80s toy trucks I'm mostly thinking of the ESSO Robot Racers, it's a simple colour scheme and not likely intended but the similarities are striking and I like the way the alt-mode turned out visually. I say not intended, but the Esso figures do have a 'WRECKER' sticker on them, there's possibly a shared connection?

https://www.the-liberator.net/site-file ... r-esso.htm

https://tfsquareone.blogspot.com/2014/0 ... ickie.html

The review labels it a Voyager, but I'm pretty sure it's a Deluxe. Maybe it was originally planned and listed as a Voyager but downsized? That'd explain some of the issues, actually.

This really can't be called a good toy. The hands when folded in as far as they can be and twisted optimally are still at roughly the same height as the tyres (I suppose you could remove them and store them on the gun handle, if you don't mind the accessories being separate to be easily lost like in the bad old days -- or maybe those parts could wedge under the front... or you can sort of clip them onto the grey head thing so that the gun is on the roof -- don't do any of this, the hands are difficult to get back on).

The front wheels don't spin freely anyway, having the male connector and being a plastic-on-plastic mess (the back wheels reverse this connection and do spin). At the back side panels don't want to stay tabbed in. The jointed kibble on the back of the truck flops around, although most of it can be removed and doing so differentiates the figure from Hoist. The plastic feels so light and thin it's doubtful this would survive more than a few minutes with the supposed target audience -- it actually feels quite authentically 80s that way, in the sense of Jazz's roof and the whole toy needing to be larger to have any durability. All it's missing in that respect is die-cast parts.

It's annoying there's no proper centralised peg holes for the gun to use, so asymmetric display options or workarounds only. Oh, and the entire vehicle front is spray painted transparent plastic.

Plus, as hinted earlier, from the front there's a huge gap on the underside. I suspect that an earlier iteration of the CAD files had the hands folding into the hollow forearms but that this was dropped to add 5mm peg holes. Whilst that would have solved one problem, the obvious solution to the hollow underside would have been to have the arms folded under there in a simpler form of how most Alternators work. As it is, this screams "we designed it on-screen and didn't handle a prototype" -- and then it probably got cost-cut to compromise things some more.

I think I'm going to settle for just taking off the wings/gun/light. It's the least destructive mod for desk toy playability. Maybe a head repaint to match the ESSO Liftor.

edit: I think I've got the crane as well, but spotted this one in a storage tub.


https://i.imgur.com/OGhOkv8.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/DyVav8m.jpeg

[HeavyArms]

Studio Series 86-19 Dinobot Snarl (The Transformers: The Movie) - Bought from Amazon, discounted.