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  2. Not yet available to order. Most likely $54.99 at Hasbro Pulse.
  3. sh9000

    HMR VF-19P

    Yeah I wouldn't mind having at least 1 of every type of HMR Valkyrie in a Roy scheme. I love the VF-4G Roy. Someday I'll get to customizing a VF-2SS. I'll probably wait a little to order a 3rd VF-19P.
  4. How many do you get and how much is it
  5. I'm in for every G1 Missing Link release so far. Skipping Diaclone and alternate versions. For Ultra Magnus I can see them adding articulated hands and retooling the trailer for articulated waist, legs, and feet.
  6. Today
  7. Yeah. At the time Long Haul was released I was still fully expecting to be all-in on MMC's and that's it, but now that I've Ground Bite in hand I'm really sorry I slept on Big Load. Couple of mine have loose joints now. But there's other stuff that bugs me, like how Boncrusher's chest doesn't stay hooked on, the tolerances on all the panels jammed into Mixmaster's legs, Scrapper's lower legs being as thick as they are tall, Long Haul's difficulty standing up without the panels from the upgrade kit, etc. A little birdie told me that MMC's should have working treads.😉 Same, Vortex is looking very good (especially compared to the CW version). But be warned, they're definitely using a frame for him like Superion and Menasor.
  8. Agree; I'm not into the toon-slavish look, plus, as Mike pointed out, FT took some odd liberties that ended up with a messy looking Scrapper in loader mode. Additionally, although it matches the animation, I don't like the slanted add-on links to form the heels, as I prefer the toy's approach using Scrapper's arms. I think ToyWorld's Constructicons have held up fairly well. That said, had I had a crystal ball back when those toys released, I might have skipped them in lieu of XTB's current offerings. thus far, I've liked their approach, and while they're still leaning towards the toon look, it's not as severe as FT's. Moreover, their Long Haul is one of the best toys ever made of that character- his dumper actually dumps in truck mode and the shoulders are far better executed than TW's, which just flop about without any locking mechanism to prevent it. I'm curious to see what MMC does with their takes on the Constructicons. While FT seems to get the lion's share of love from TF fans, I've more MMC stuff in my collection and I tend to like a lot of what they do regardless of whether I buy it or not. I would've loved to have bought their Combaticons, my favorite combiner team, but I don't really have the room for another MP scaled combiner so I passed. But I sure am jelly of those who got it. I just went in on Magic Square's legends scaled Bruticus; I'd have loved to get their MP scaled figs, too, but again, no room for MP stuff anymore. Like the aforementioned floppy shoulders on Long Haul. I still love how the treads are fully functional on Bonecrusher and Scavenger, one of the major selling points for me when I bought them. I also loved how Long Haul's bed formed the legs just like the G1 toy- if they'd only made the rear wheels separate from the bed so it could dump properly, and locked in those shoulder flaps, it would still be one of the best versions of that character. Too bad they fell short. On the whole, though, it's still a pretty solid set of figs. I haven't had mine combined since I bought them; all six are crammed in the lowest level of my Detolf, and I simply have nowhere to display them as Devastator. I'm probably one of the few TF fans who displays his combiners as their constituent bots instead of combined, with two exceptions: CW Bruticus and Legacy Menasor. Both have remained combined since I got all the figs to do so, and I even went in on an upgrade kit for Bruticus. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to this next wave of Has/Tak's Combaticons, too, as well the new Constructicons, which will be my first full mainline team of those characters.
  9. Finally got shipping confirmation on those light novels today... I can hardly wait to dig in. I know I probably can't hope for much from some of those - like the Macross 7 fleet VF-25s - but I'll take what I can get. Given that it appears in Master File, I wonder if it was something Kodachi came up with and Master File ran with or vice versa? Vol.2 of the movie novelization was published only a few months before the Master File was...
  10. Yup, printed test versions already. Going through iterations, adjustments and the such. Should have another update by the end of the week hopefully.
  11. It's the tv hikaru super vf1s, which was supposed to be full white
  12. The Phamplet that will be issued during the concert in May. Concert costume on that day! Collab with Animate on promotional material! Also recently her younger sister got married (no picture of her unfortunately) https://www.animate.co.jp/gratte/21966/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJtQhdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHvENWl9qynd9HZ8bkhMxia_p4BeKp5eLw2vvouwvMgy9q86jNXkgy3uBf1Q5_aem_4IPjJ3FMXvhjl7RfgHFmrg
  13. I think he's been fine as Devastator for a long time, but taking them apart for some of these recent reviews made the flaws in the individual bots stand out. And it's not like you can ever have too many Devastators.
  14. Looking good. Where did you source the CDR Woody Owens?
  15. Great looking group of ships @megatron-uk! Have to say the Thuverl-Salan is my fav, though if they had gotten the bow right on the flagship, that would have been! As for the enormous 'rivets,' I'm just going to call them apertures for recessed turrets.
  16. Until MMC starts releasing their Constructicons, the main competition to X-Transbots is going to be Fans Toys. So, this would be their Scrapper, Gehry. If Fans Toys had released Gehry when the only "MP" competition was ToyWorld I think we'd all be pretty satisfied. He's a big boy, made of the sort of quality materials people have come to expect from Fans Toys with just about every surface painted. He's super cartoon accurate, too, with the green lumps instead of wheels on his shoulders and the shins that are smooth boxes unblemished save for the simple round bits just below the knees. Gehry's problem, though, is that he's not coming out alone against the decade-old ToyWorld set, he's come at very nearly the same time as X-Transbot's Ground Bite. Traditionally I think these sorts of matchups have favored Fans Toys... compare their Cyconlus, their Seaspray (2.0 for FT), their Blaster, their Perceptor (2.0 for FT), their Cliffjumper, their Trailbreaker, etc, and FT has come out ahead (although not always ahead enough to justify their prices). This time, though, I'm inclined to argue that Ground Bite looks a bit better. Objectively, I think the purple FT chose is a tad too red, and he's a bit too wide. Subjectively, the plain sculpt is maybe a bit too Sunbow for me, leaving Gehry a bit lifeless. Oh, and there's also the backpack. FT seems to have over-engineered the shovel to shrink it down in the name of... what, cartoon accuracy? I went back through a couple of clips of Scrapper in the cartoon, and his shovel wasn't so narrowed. And so much of that condensed mass is just random dangly kibble flaps. Then there's the fact that his front wheels are stuffed into his butt. I'm not necessarily holding it against him, but Gehry comes with fewer accessories, too. You get a big green chunk of... thing. You get his trumpet, and you get his gun. On his own, Gehry's articulation is a bit sub-standard, which is even worse when you compare it to Ground Bite's above-average articulation. Gehry's head is on a hinged swivel with almost no downward range and about 45 degrees of upward tilt. HIs shoulders rotate and move 90 degrees laterally. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend about 60 degrees. His wrists swivel, but no bend. His thumbs have a ball joint at the base and a single hinged knuckle. Each of his fingers are individually articulated with a hinge at the base and a hinge at the middle knuckle. He technically does have a waist swivel, but what you see in the above image is the maximum range you're going to get out of it because the wheels in his butt completely obstruct it. No ab crunch, either. His hips ratchet forward a little over 90 degrees, but backward only about 30 degrees. Lateral movement is a friction joint, and it's also limited to about 75 degrees. He has a limited thigh swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. His feet tilt down and slightly up, with about 45 degrees of ankle pivot before you have to fold down his heel to clear the edge of his leg. He can hold his gun and trumpet much the same way most MP-style figure do, with tabs on the accessories that fit into slots on his palms. I'll note that the tab on the trumpet is such that you curl his fingers through the loop under the keys. That's actually movie-accurate. While there's no storage for his weapons in robot mode, if you're worried about it there is storage on his back for the big green thing. Transforming Gehry's legs is pretty straightforward, perhaps even more so than Ground Bite. Enjoy that part, though, because the rest of the transformation is decidedly less enjoyable. A frankly unnecessary amount of the transformation is spent expanding his shovel and arranging the shovel's arms. Then there's his own arms, which spin apart so that you can kind of wedge his shoulders into the front of the alt mode but stick his forearms along the sides. The wheels move from his butt to the space his shoulders vacated. If you just look at the part of the loader made from Gehry's legs it's fine. The detail is pretty simplified, but that's kind of how the cartoon was even if it's not my preference. Likewise, the roof over the open cab is more cartoon/toy accurate than Ground Bite. But that's all the nice things I can say, because everything else is a mess of random parts smashed together in a way that's neither cartoon accurate, toy accurate, or realistic. Lumps of arm kibble lay along the sides, lumps of shoulder kibble cover the front, there's no details in the "cockpit" for a driver, the arms connecting the shovel are just kind of there, and the shovel itself is covered in seams and gaps to facilitate the again largely unnecessary robot mode shrinkage. It does, at least, roll. And the shovel can be raised to about this height. Alt mode weapon storage is as simple as plugging a tab on the underside of the loader's rear into a slot on the side of the gun. The green hunk of kibble can plug onto the top of the rear, with a shovel-looking piece reaching down into the void that's supposed to be the driver's cabin. I'm not sure why you'd actually want to store it in either his robot or his alt modes, though, aside from the fact that you really don't want to lose it. Yesterday, I said that Ground Bite makes for an excellent Scrapper due to his robot and loader modes, but I expressed some concern over the leg mode. Suffice to say, Fans Toys took the opposite approach. All the complaints I had about Gehry's robot and especially his alt mode seem to be sacrifices in the name of his leg mode. Because, yeah, XTB went the usual route of standing the loader up on it's front with the shovel as the toes and his robot arms as his heels, but FT used Gehry's thicker robot arms to connect to the shovel. This in turn lifts the loader higher, which makes his robot legs form the Devastator thigh. The cabin flattens across the top, giving the cartoon-accurate square on the knee and semi-hiding his front wheels, while the back wheels fold inside his robot legs. Meanwhile, some flaps change position on shovel blade to give him the two-toed look. That green chunk we've been just sort of dealing with in his other modes becomes a vital part of the leg mode, as the bulk of it forms a cartoon-accurate angled heel, with the shovel-esque part reaching to sit between his robot shoulders to form a uniform bit on the front of the leg. The result is a leg mode that fairly accurately captures the wonky Sunbow animation model, for better or worse. In leg mode, it looks like Gehry has a just under 45 degrees of ankle pivot, no up or down tilt, and just under 90 degrees of knee bend, and he feels solid as a brick (save for a flap in the shovel where a tab broke off). I don't have any real concerns about the combined mode here, and somewhat interestingly, it's actually easier to flip between robot and leg mode than robot and loader or loader and leg. In the battle for your shelf, I think Ground Bite is pretty definitely the better Scrapper. However, I did say yesterday that I think a lot of people care more about a Masterpiece Devastator than a Masterpiece Scrapper, and on that note Ground Bite's greatest weakness is Gehry's greatest strength. So if you want a Masterpiece Scrapper, skip Gehry and get Ground Bite. But if you don't care to transform your figures and you want the best Devastator, well, the tables have turned and you might want to pass on Ground Bite and grab Gehry and the other Fans Toys Constructicons. If you're curious what I personally plan to do, I think I may continue to pick up X-Transbots' Constructicons (assuming their Long Haul get's a reissue) based on how good they look in their robot and alt modes and how (surprisingly) solid the QC and engineering is. Based on my experience with Gehry (and from what I've seen of their next release, their Scavenger) I think Fans Toys' bots are just too expensive to have such compromised robot and alt modes, so even if their Devastator turns out great I'm out. I'm looking forward to MMC's Constructicons. Based on their track record with Bruticus and Defensor I'm expectingly delightfully clever yet fun transformations. I think they probably won't have better robot or alt modes than XTB, or a better Devastator mode than Fans Toys, but are the most likely to average out the best across all three modes.
  17. Very nice! The detailing looks so good, especially the sections of slightly different shades of green. I fell in love with these kits when I learned about them. I have one of each assembled with base colors but awaiting details. Funnily enough I also used some Vallejo Mecha color on mine. I might take some inspiration with how you handled the detailing if you don’t mind! The nupetiet has a really flat nose in this rendition, but it is what it is. Old kits are gonna be old… I’m just glad these kits exist in the first place.
  18. I skipped the MGS E-Wing. I'm enjoying all of the TIE variants and I hope a TIE Avenger gets released.
  19. Yesterday
  20. Rumors say the Switch 2 goes up for pre-order in the US either the 21st or the 30th. 30th makes more sense as there's also a rumor the peripherals go up on the 30th as well. 23rd in Canada.
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