Grahf

Interesting. I had no trouble getting either the first time around but I did eventually want more of the Battlemasters that Skywarp came with and by that point, the set was going for triple. I could use another G2 Sideswipe too I think. I have one, then a second I used for a custom Deep Cover that became obsolete but I want another to put the Batman Beyond stickers I have on it. When I went to put them on the custom after I got the real Deep cover, I didn't think it would've looked right anymore so I ended up not using the sticker set yet. But seriously though, that Skywarp set didn't sell out immediately. It was available for weeks if not months and even went on discount at some point. It's your own fault if you were collecting at the time while having access to Amazon to get it and didn't manage to get one. People out there ever since making it seem as though it was the most difficult thing to get ever in the US and it was far from difficult. It was up for a while before selling out and wasn't days like people claim. I mean, I didn't order mine for at least two weeks after it was released and almost got a second one a while later but decided against it for some reason. But it is very nice that these are coming back around. That Siege Seeker mold is far better than the Earthrise mold, not that it's difficult to be better than that mold and it takes effort to be worse like the SS BB voyager Tetrajet (meanwhile the core class is amazing), and I'd like to see more from it. We still need Bitstream and Sunstorm at the very least. The Elites would be nice too but I don't know how you'd get their cone shaped heads in that chest cavity without making the heads and faces look comically small like Funpub Protoform X/Rampage to make the head fit. I wouldn't mind another run of Hotlink but without the severe weathering that it has as it doesn't match the rest. And a cartoon deco Nacelle as he's supposed to be navy blue. Toy Nacelle is based on the Funpub figure that was based on the old Thrust "prototype" from a magazine which was just Thundercracker's body with bright red Thrust wings. To me, they're different characters since the colors are so wildly different. So I guess I'm saying is make a G1 cartoon four pack of the Welcoming Committee where they all have consistent weathering between them, like the Rainmakers, if any at all.

Really wish those leg bots sat further into the lower legs more so that only the jet parts are shown behind the legs. Since you have to fold the jet bits onto the tops of the jets and then that entire chunk gets plugged in, it make the lower legs look really stupid. Menasor doesn't have that problem since the cars not only have lower profiles to begin with, the front ends that do flip up end up filling in the look of the feet overall.

If we don't get a sticker set and some horns to turn this GS Trypticon into Gigastorm from Toyhax, it would be a bigger waste than Hasbro not just releasing this as Gigastorm with a sticker sheet and some horns so it could be either. Seriously though, just make some translucent orange horns to replace the translucent orange nose cannon cover. Then have some purple stickers for the central ramp with the silver Predacon sigil, some teal stickers for the spots and some silver and gold highlights for the hips, tail and arms. But really, how do you redeco/reissue Trypticon and NOT make it Gigastorm? Especially after the overwhelming positive reception for Magmatron. People want some more Japanese Beast Wars love. Gigastorm, Big Convoy, Galvatron, Stampy, Moon, Heinrad, Longrack, Mach Kick. More than just Lio Convoy exists. Skywarp was a fluke as they just didn't want to name it Silverbolt even if Skywarp is a name that's even more known and used than Silverbolt. We have multiple versions of Skywarp and others all the time, we can handle three different versions of Silverbolt a few years apart each.

Still would have been great to see them put the Astrotrain head in this release. But I just realized that with the death of Shapeways, does anyone know of another way to get the opposite side missile pod from anymore? I got one for Astrotrain and Galaxy Shuttle a few years back but never thought that Shapeways would close down. So all those designs are just gone seemingly. The opposite missile pod for this mold, a new three handle engine gun for Legacy Armada Hot Shot, all those Junkion heads for PotP Wreck Gar and so much more. I got them all but there was still stuff I wanted and stuff I need more of now. I just don't understand how not a single 3D print designer out on Taobao and Ebay didn't do the missile pod for Astrotrain and the engine for Hot Shot. Out of all the stupid useless weapons, hands and heads they continue to flood the market with, they still didn't do things that were necessary like these. Are they on Cults? I have no idea. I don't have a 3D printer so I don't bother with that site. I would imagine if they were then the designs would've been stolen and ended up on Ebay like everything else.

No rocket punch pictures? He showed the missile being "fired" though. It's just a wasted opportunity to show off a fist being "fired". I just hope those colors stay those shades. The colors are beautiful and if they yellow which white and sometimes even blue can do, it would suck big time.

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... but ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Transformers have always been fidget toys... Was mildly interested in these when they first leaked. However, now with all that talk about "twisting" them together to make the alt modes along with the price, I might not be interested in these at all now. I mean, what does that even work? The "twisting into" the alternate mode that is. Do you literally twist them together? So they're rubber/rubberized plastic and not standard plastic? Nothing screams "twisting" quite like a Transformer though. I guess I was expecting something along the lines of the Crash Combiners or something. You got your two packs and then that five pack. So the two packs would be like we've seen already between RiD 2015 and Cyberverse and then the five packs like the RiD 2015 combiners. Or maybe even something like the Power Core Combiners. The two packs being a larger with a smaller figure and the five pack having a larger figure with four drones for limbs. I'm down for more PCCs. Highly underrated toy line due to the drones. But most of the figures themselves weren't bad and when the drones were paired with two of the same arm and leg combos, the combined modes looked so much better. Shame about the fragile thighs on the Skyburst/Darkstream mold though. And if we're being honest, most of them made better torsos than the voyagers in Combiner Wars. Reading up on the PCC page on the wiki shouts out several of the other torsos breaking but not the Skyburst/Darkstream mold specifically. That's the only one I ever had problems with. Skyburst in particular. I think I've had six of him so far over the years for various reasons and all have broken. I just glued the legs together at the thighs and called it a day after that. Oh and the Minicon Beacon but not Backwind. Which is odd since Backwind is the one with translucent plastic but it's Beacon with the opaque plastic that broke. And one of Waterlog's wings but only small part of one of the hinges.

Wow the scale on those is way off for some of them. They look pretty good though. All depends on price.

Interesting. Very interesting. I was hoping for a smaller Optimus figure or at least maybe something for Roller. It seems Roller isn't even included as a separate piece. His treads are there on the trailer, but it seems as though he's no longer a separate unit anymore. It would've been cool had he been a Weaponizer and maybe combined with the Micro Trailer for a robot mode or something. But it is nice to see both the Micro Trailer and Hot Rod though. Or better yet, have the Micro Trailers and Roller combine into something. Assuming they make more for a potential upcoming Sky Garry in 2026. Those Micro Trailers look a lot like the yellow mech from Gokaioh. Also kind of like the limbs to Energon Optimus Prime. He looks to be about 14 inches as Superion should be about the same height as Menasor who was about 12 inches. Devastator is about 13 inches so this would put Star Convoy about the size I want a new Omega Supreme to be. To me, that's a tad too tall for just an Optimus. Had this been a super mode for a smaller Optimus then I'd be more okay with it. Although, this looks like it's a Gundam for Hot Rod to pilot as if he were Minimus Ambus and Star Convoy was Ultra Magnus or something. I get that this is about how tall he is but it's fucking with the scale of what's already produced. Unless they're making a new God Ginrai, Victory Saber and Dai Atlas to go along with this scale. Supe Ginrai should be the size of the Dinobots. God Ginrai should be a tiny bit taller than Jetfire. Star Saber should be a bit taller than that. Victory Saber and Dai Atlas are taller still and should both be combiner height but shorter than Galaxy Shuttle. Star Convoy should be taller than that at around the height of Galaxy Shuttle. However current combiner toys are too short as they're the same height as Jetfire. Which actually makes this Star Convoy too short. They should've just stuck to the one scale like they said they were going to instead of making a second scale that's only a smidge different.

If only the arms weren't so damn long on this mold. And if the shoulder pads worked better with the articulation. I ended up shaving some plastic off Ratchet's shoulder pads so that the flaps go outward. So now when I have the arms go out to the sides, it doesn't pop the shoulder pads up and off the shoulders stupidly. The shoulder pad flaps that go in for vehicle mode now swing outward a bit to make everything look a bit more natural when bringing the arms outward. I mean, it should've been that way from the start. The limit on those flaps is just dumb for how the arms and shoulder pads need to work together. I want to go back in and see if I can trim off a little more plastic so that the flaps swing outward even more but I haven't gotten around to it yet and it's good enough the way I have it currently. Shame though that the gun arm for this seems to be one of those skinny ones that don't' look good when replacing the arm. I always have Ratchet with that weapon arm yet none of the others with theirs. I don't even use most of the stock arm weapons anymore at all because they all look goofy as hell.

Oh wow, it's Cosmos. It looks like Cosmos. And yeah Decepticats, the lack of Generations Selects releases is puzzling. It should but all about lesser known characters and straight reissues so you can make smaller runs that don't need to be shopped to the big box stores. Instead, we get nothing. I just wish we'd all stop pretending as if certain characters NEED completely different molds from others. Like Prowl, Jazz, Hound and Skids for instance all transform exactly the same and have the same overall parts layouts. So why do they all NEED to have different molds? Just make a base skeleton that can easily be reshelled and can have certain joints work as needed for the slightly different parts layouts for robot mode. And in this case, make the door wings optional. You can have them out like the G1 toys (or Alternator toy for Hound) or just hide them away as you see fit. Or have the rear of the vehicle turn into the legs differently between Prowl (windshield forward), Jazz/Skids (windshield backward) and Hound (rear of vehicle as the bottom of the feet instead of the underside of the vehicle being the bottom of the feet). Warpath, Cosmos and Seaspray can all be the same base mold. Jazz, Prowl, Hound, Skids, Cybertron Crosswise, Cybertron Downshift and many, many Bumblebees. Sideswipe, Mirage and ALL the Spychangers. Tracks, Wheeljack, Sunstreaker, Downshift, Camshaft, the Throttlebots, the Battlechargers and Backstreet. Punch/Counterpunch, Pointblank, Armada Blurr, IDW Drift, Boss, Euro G1 Jetstorm, Windbreaker, Wildwheel, Hashtag, Strongarm, IDW Bumblebee, Sizzle, NIghtbeat, Bisk, Cybertron Hot Shot, Calcar and so so many more based on the front of the car becoming shoulders/shoulder pads and the placement of the windshield on the back/chest. Trailbreaker and Turbomaster. You can even mix things to get others like the front of the Prowl mold with the rear of the Sideswipe mold to get Overdrive for instance. And that's all without naming all the redecos and new head retools. It's just that throughout the years there's only been so many different ways to turn a rectangular shaped vehicle into a robot shaped form. There's tons of overlap. If you design the figures to be able to pull off the slight differences in transformation from the start then you can easily get a metric shit ton of characters from one base mold. Saving that much money can then open the budget to making sure that every time something in the transformation needed to be changed, it can be done (like door wings vs doors on shoulders for the Prowl vs Cybertron Downshift or doors hidden or doors on shoulder kibble like Punch/Counterpunch vs IDW Bumblebee/Goldfire). This would also free up budget for more characters than NEED to have their own mold. And while I'm here since it's oddly the same thread, it looks like DNA didn't change anything for the Dinoking set. The Grimlock/Goryu chest flaps will pop off the ball pegs. The combiner arms will be different lengths. The combiner arms will have elbows at different spots on the arms. The right elbow won't be tight enough to hold weight for very long and the ball joint just won't tighten no matter what I tried. The feet won't stay pegged in. And most likely the fingers will pop off just like the chest flaps but I'm not sure of this since the hand chunks themselves are new in not the fingers too. Oh and you'll STILL need to keep the stock combiner kibble parts with the figures (except for the right arm). It's great that they put the combiner feet pegs for dino mode storage on their new feet but they didn't included the robot mode pegs under the feet. So you can't use the feet as giant missile pod shields anymore. I mean they show them being used like BOOMboxes but it looks stupid and it barely works. But leaving out those new ankle connections is bad. And still bad are the individual weapons. They didn't even bother trying to change their colors to match the Dinoforce. It's bad enough the weapons are doubled, but it's even worse that the weapons are colored for the Dinobots. AND they didn't even include Swoops's missiles this time around. The new pelvis looks great though. As does the new combiner weapon. I also like that it can become two guns that can be back mounted. But those new heads are amazing. I just wish they all came with new dino heads now.

Okay they fixed the problems with the original Hero Mashers line. ALL the parts are interchangeable like the upper arms/legs. I can't remember which wasn't able to be swapped but it was really annoying for the few I had. It also looks like those are 5mm pegs and ports. The originals weren't. So being cross compatible with actual figures should help a bit. Especially when these go on sale. I can see people picking these up for the weapons then. I'm mildly interested in these. I like that Optimus has boots and gauntlets and it looks like Megatron has the matching jetpack. Maybe another figure at that same price point will have more matching armor parts. The tank tread legs are stupidly awesome. Not digging the Allspark Blue for the joints but that can easily be factored into the lore.

Thank Primus that Devastator doesn't look like the character model. But of course it's quite a bit taller than Menasor. They just can't keep to one scale. I don't like to hate on them but they made one scale and then haven't stuck to it. Either make a scale and stick to it or just make them any size like before. They make one scale, they also make them any size, and finally they make a new scale. Don't do all three things at the same damn time. And say hello to SS86 Megatron like I've been saying all along. Although I can't say for sure as I haven't seen Optimus next to The Fallen yet. I probably could have seen them together had those fucking assholes actually sent me the email link like they have every year previously. Not that it mattered in previous years as the videos were uploaded normally. So of course the one year I don't get the email with the link is the one year I can't just watch the stream normally somewhere. There's very few actual perks to having Pulse Premium other than the free shipping (which should be fucking standard) so it would be great if I could actually use one of the only other perks. This ruined my whole fucking day at work. I was looking forward to this.

SS86 Jazz reissue? Really? Really? Really? They can't be serious can they? Now I know why people got fired. I hope that slide of Jazz brought on boos from whoever was there. Seriously though, no SS figure needs a reissue less than SS86 Jazz. I'm certain he's still on shelves at Walmart from black Friday last year. I'd rather see some Bumblebee reissues over SS86 Jazz. Or you know, maybe just do standard SS Jazz. I don't have one yet and I wasn't buying the SS Autobot 5 pack just for Jazz. I did need Ironhide too at one point but ended up buying that one KO with the upgrade kit KO already installed. There are just so many other deluxe SS figures that could use a reissue more than SS86 Jazz. I'm sure Japan is thrilled as they'll be absolutely bombarded by Jazz between the Dramatic Capture set, the Takara release of the Autobot 5-pack and now a reissue of SS86 Jazz all within a few months time. And none of them are any fucking different other than the 5-pack having opaque plastic windows.

Yet another version of Unicron Trilogy Optimus from this company with an incorrect deco. Is it THAT difficult to get the deco right? At least with this one it's not difficult to fix. Change the silver to gold on the chests and pelvis and then change the legs of base Optimus to a lighter grey. The rest is mostly fine. Their Armada Nemesis had TWO different version to pull from and failed both.

Titan Class Star Optimus Prime? The obvious choice being Star Convoy as nothing else would make sense without really, really stretching it. I just think it would be hilarious if it were Energon Optimus Supreme just to throw everyone off lol. Omega Supreme and Optimus Prime with his trailer and drones. On a side note, I hate some of the names of Optimus super modes. Omega Prime should've been called Ultra Prime (ULTRA Magnus + Optimus PRIME). Optimus Supreme should've been Omega Prime (OMEGA Supreme + Optimus PRIME). And Ultra Prime could've been anything else as it's a standard five team Scramble City style combiner. Commander Silverbolt. No surprise there. G2 Dinobots. This makes far more sense them being the SS86 molds and not the core class molds. Although, the upcoming G2 Grimlock in the retail line kinda throws things off a bit. However one could be blue Grimlock and the other teal. Or they could just not have G2 Grimlock in the fan channel line since it would be released at retail. Walmart Seaspray and Brawn. I have a feeling that these are going to be more reissues. But then what about them being called "Dlx"? Don't Minibots cost about as much as deluxe figures now anyway? And wasn't there some sort of rumor about size classes or something? Like they're trying to consolidate them again. Meaning that things that wouldn't normally be called a deluxe will now be called a deluxe for shelf and price sorting issues for Walmart and Target due to being the same price. So a $35 reissue would be called a voyager and a $55 reissue a leader. This would also mean warrior class will go away and be upped to deluxe as well. Or am I completely misremembering something and talking out my ass. I just could've sworn that there was something recently said about size classes and shelf space. I mean otherwise that would put another "new mold" Minibot in the same shitty situation that Cosmos was in. Although, Warpath, Cosmos and Seaspray should all be retools of each other as they're pretty much the same toy when you think about it. Or rather, they mostly transform the same and have their parts do the same things and come from the same places. They could easily be reshells of each other. But that's neither here nor there and I'll digress. More "Bullseye" Target exclusives. SSGE WFC Optimus, Megatron along with SSGE Devastation? Sideswipe and Wheeljack. Not to keen on any of these molds honestly and assuming that Sideswipe and Wheeljack will be more of the molds we've had for years. While I love to have more of molds that I like and are "good", Siege Sideswipe wasn't the best it could've been especially with how many we've gotten so far. Wheeljack is slightly better but still pretty boring in all honesty. I've already gone on before about my disdain for SSGE WFC Optimus and would much rather have an upsized deluxe from years ago. And that goes double for Megatron. What a letdown that voyager version was. But what would these all be? Red and black redecos? White with black? Something else entirely? We've only gotten one figure so far and that was a black and red G2 Optimus. While I don't have it yet, that red looks to be a beautiful shade and looks great with the black. So at least the other figures would look good. Shame two of them are red normally with one of those two, red and black. People have been speculating again about the upcoming Alpha Trion for next year's main line. They're going back and forth again between Thundertron and Scourge. I swear this one is going to be a Vector Prime retool. Hasbro and/or Funpub seem to flip between the beast and vehicle modes for him. So with ONE Alpha Trion being a beast, Age of the Primes' Alpha Trion would need to be a vehicle. But since the most recent one before ONE was based on Scourge and we have an available Vector Prime mold, I think Age of the Primes Alpha Trion would then use Vector Prime as a base. OTFCC was going to be a beast, Botcon was a vehicle, Botcon again was a beast even though this is technically Cheetor, Million Publishing would've been a vehicle but wasn't released, Takara Legends was a vehicle but does he really count?, Titans Return was a beast...but also a vehicle, Cyberverse was a vehicle, Legacy was a vehicle, ONE was a beast. So okay, it's not every single other one is the opposite but it's close. And since it doesn't get brought up enough, I have a feeling that The Fallen will be a retool of SS86 Megatron. But this will be more clear once we finally see SS86 Megatron. It's just two leader class tank formers that look like Megatron not being partials is going to be weird and a waste of resources. It would be like a leader Straxus not being a retool of a leader Galvatron as they're both non-tank mobile canons. Straxus looks really good by the way. I like him more than Galvatron and Galvatron is one of my favorite overall designs. I can't wait to see what they improve for SS86 Galvatron.