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  2. anime52k8
    So you're saying I should get this one.
  3. Today
  4. mikeszekely
    Gonna do a little cleanup before the next waves start hitting (and Alchemist and Vortex have both be pre/reviewed in Asia, so maybe not too far off). Here's all the recent repaints. We're opening with Leader-class G2 Grimlock. There's not a ton of difference between him and the original Studio Series release. His eyes are red and he's got some painted sticker detail, but the biggest change is that the gray plastic was swapped for blue. To be fair, though, that's pretty accurate to how the original G1 toy worked... There's no changes to the mold, so we have to wait for an upgrade kit to give him articulated dino arms or his front teeth. He even comes with the same accessories- gun, crappy Wheelie slug (painted to look like the Marvel comics, but still just as un-articulated and worthless), still no sword. All-in-all, he's fine, if you've somehow missed this mold so far or are super attached to the blue one because that's the one you had as a kid. But frankly, the Walmart version of the unreleased G2 colors is the better G2 Grimlock, while the less visually interesting Studio Series one has the benefit of being cartoon accurate. Age of the Primes also gave us Deluxe-class Wasp, who's a essentially Legacy United Animated Bumblebee with a new head. One the one hand, I do like this mold. It's got its flaws, like the seriously wonky shoulders, but there's something I find interesting about the transformation. Plus, I know Waspinator had a toy in the Animated line, but I don't think Wasp did, despite spending more screen time as Wasp. So I think this is probably a win for Animated fans. Then again, while I did like the cartoon I've talked before about how I don't like the stylized 2D designs of Animated as 3D objects. So... I kind of think if you have one of this mold that's enough. Especially if you're more into G1. But like I said, I can see Animated fans being jazzed for Wasp. While we're still Generations-adjacent, here's Walmart's retro Gears. New head, lighter blue, silver gun instead of black, and some different paint apps to better represent the G1 toy's stickers. Shame he still has the unpaintable gray parts in his elbows and fists, though. The blue windows are black like the G1 toy, is is the strip on his hood and he's got his sunroof back. Since it's not molded onto the original hood, they tampoed a Microchange "M" onto the hood. All-in-all, a toy deco doesn't totally capture the wonkiness of the actual G1 toy, but if you like toy decos it's pretty good, especially with the new head. Bumblebee, sadly, didn't fare quite so well. Ditching the yellow pelvis and forearms and using black translucent plastic for the windows is nice and toy accurate, and the shade of yellow is better than the Kraft Singles color used on Neftlix Bee. But, even it it happens to match the Walmart-exclusive G1 reissue with the new cartoon head from a few years back, it does NOT match the battle mask of the G1 toy. Then there's the crappy Cliffjumper Bazooka thing, the lack of alt mode storage for it due to the licensed VW alt mode, and the fact that you have to partsform him to get to said alt mode. Long story short, I'd have strongly preferred this deco with a proper battle mask head on the Studio Series toy, not this one. Alright, moving into Studio Series we have Gamer Edition Ironhide. As the lone SS retool, I guess they had the budget to go hard on him. He's got a new head, new torso, new shoulder pads, and a new weapon based on the EMP Shotgun from the War for Cybertron game. He's also got the same axe as Ratchet. He has a surprising amount of retooled parts for alt mode, too. New front bumper, tweaked roof, and a new rear hatch. The slots on said hatch are a little closer together, so he couldn't carry Ratchet's weapon back there, but fortunately the tabs on the shotgun are closer together, so it works. Despite being slightly tweaked, the roof still has the tabs for the axe. Gamer Edition hasn't been a particularly impressive subgenre for Studio Series, and if you've been skipping them Ironhide is definitely not the one to start with. But if you have a couple, and you liked Ratchet, Ironhide's basically the same thing. Lastly, coming out of left field (well, actually, Japan) we've got Bingo Sports Optimus Prime, a Japan-only retool of Studio Series Crosshairs as Age of Extinction/The Last Knight Optimus. It's a fairly extensive retool, with a new torso, head, shoulders, and biceps. He does have a new gun... But if you'd rather, he comes with the same SMGs that Crosshairs did, and they store in his "coat" the same way they do on Crosshairs. Speaking off, while the new torso and head isn't bad for a Deluxe, Crosshairs had a lot of kibble that we kind of ignored just because it was supposed to be his trench coat. But Prime doesn't have a coat or a cape or anything like that, so on him it's straight up just kibble. As with his bot mode, Prime is a suprisingly heavy retool. The nose, the grill, the spoiler, and the sides are all new, really only leaving the roof, windows, wheels, and butt carried over from Crosshairs. And on that note, you'll see that they both have a pair of notches under the spot for the license plate... This notch allows you to (awkwardly) plug in his new gun. And it's kind of weird that on a figure with so many new parts, the one place the new gun plugs into was a place that isn't new and already had holes despite the fact that Crosshairs did NOT have anything to plug into them. I guess the question you might have is, "why even make Prime a Corvette in the first place?" And the answer is simple... because the Corvette is a real car! Bingo Sports, a Japanese company that helps buyers acquire high-end cars, sponsors a real racing team in Japan. And their CEO, Shinji Takei, drives this Callaway C7 GT3-R. Sadly, Prime is missing some of the sponsors, like the "Callaway" in the grill, "Pirelli" on the bumpers, "Japan Cup" across the windshield, etc. But I think it's cool that Takara re-engineered a different toy that had a C7 'Vette alt mode into a Prime that turns into a real car with an Optimus-style paint job and Transformers branding. That said, would I actually recommend buying it? Probably not. Like a lot of movie Deluxes, Crosshair's mold isn't that great. And this is still a Deluxe, no matter how remolded or how nicely-painted, carrying a price tag around double a "normal" Deluxe. I'd say most collectors don't really need this one. That said, if you're a more Optimus-focused collector (like me) or you're into cars (like me) it's a pretty interesting bit of Transformers history.
  5. jvmacross
    Well, it's a toy forum, so why would I bring up any other commodity....but It's not just "toys"...but you already know that unless, of course, you are an idiot?...
  6. jvmacross
    https://www.macrossworld.com/macross/models/arii/arii_15reissue.htm
  7. mechaninac
    ^^^ I'm gonna have to pay more for my frivolous plastic and diecast fix... the humanity!!!!111
  8. jvmacross

    HMR VF-19P

    jvmacross replied to BlueMax's topic in Toys

  9. jvmacross

    HMR VF-19P

    jvmacross replied to BlueMax's topic in Toys

  10. jvmacross
    After all these years, we finally may get a Regult Scout toy....but now thanks to the current Golden Age of Stupidity....it will may end up costing more than double the initial price...to think just a few months ago we were initially just concerned about the "exorbitant" KC shipping costs...those were the good ol' days!
  11. Big s
    Possibly not. The episode may just show things from the point of time where char steals the gundam and might be events after the colony drop. I guess we’ll find out soon though
  12. Yesterday
  13. mikeszekely

    HMR VF-19P

    mikeszekely replied to BlueMax's topic in Toys

    In the case of the 19P I think we're pretty close already. Just repaint all the red as black, replace the Zora Patrol emblems with the UN Spacy kite, and slap some Jolly Rodgers on the vertical stabs. Really hoping the speakers are just pegged in and can be removed easily. It's always bothered me that they're swept forward.
  14. Big s
    There were also keychain versions of the painted ones, but I think those were sold as a separate thing
  15. Seto Kaiba
    In the next episode? Probably... though it's a flashback so it's technically already happened several years ago by the time of GQuuuuuuX. Whether there will be a third one, or some other atrocity, will really depend on the direction the story goes. One thing about GQuuuuuuX's story that really worries me is the sneaking feeling that it's going to continue where Requiem for Vengeance left off in terms of trying to make Zeon characters sympathetic by avoiding the whole subject of their war crimes.
  16. Test_Pilot_2
    Snagged some new dice, these are Legend of Zelda themed - complete with janky sticker!
  17. sh9000
    Episode 1.
  18. sh9000
    Nice recreation.
  19. sh9000
    Recon Battlepod.
  20. sh9000
    DC Comics Multiverse Black Mask, Hush, and Arkham Knight.
  21. Major Tom
    You can go to anymoon.com and look up Arii model section: Arii Macross 15th Anniversary VF-1 Battroid and GERWALK Toys – Scorched Earth Toys unpainted figures come in model kits boxes and painted ones come in the toy packages:
  22. Dynaman
    Cheese only is great. It is those people, some in every crowd, that insist on buying at least one everything pizza for a pizza party and not enough of the kind that everyone actually eats...
  23. davidwhangchoi
    thanks for the recommendations. i'm going to gamestop to grab a misc game and will check if a few of these are around.
  24. davidwhangchoi
    i laughed so hard reading this so...
  25. Seto Kaiba
    The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl is... quite something. I'm not completely certain what, but it's definitely something! It's the story of a girl in a fantasy world who just wants a slow life and to be normal... only to find out at a coming-of-age sort of ceremony when teens receive a blessing from animal spirits/gods that confers special abilities that she's found the favor of the Gorilla god. So this petite little lass who wants nothing more than to fly under the radar finds herself all but drafted into the knighthood because her blessing confers MASSIVE (and unladylike) speed, strength, and resilience far beyond what the men around her have... catapulting her into a reverse harem sort of situation where she's got a few prettyboy knights all surrounding her. Once Upon a Witch's Death is also quite something. The story of a witch's apprentice in what appears to be an alternate Earth where magic is just a thing nobody really questions, who is told by her mentor on her 17th birthday that she's going to die in a year because of an inherited death curse. So this slightly bratty witch has to collect 1,000 tears of pure joy in order to concoct a magical solution that will prevent her from dying on her 18th birthday. Aside from its incredibly genki protagonist, it's pretty much just the protagonist going around causing Hallmark moments with magic. Nothing to write home about.
  26. Seto Kaiba
    So, two points here... both of which make it worse. The O'Neill cylinder-type space colonies used in Gundam's Universal Century (and other timelines) typically have a population of several million people, not thousands. Those people aren't usually alive by the time the colony is launched as an improvised ballistic projectile. One of the many, MANY war crimes perpetrated by the Principality of Zeon during the One Year War was the use of poison gas to indiscriminately massacre the populations of entire colonies in the Federation-aligned Sides. Island Iffish, the colony from Side 2 that was used in the original colony drop ("Operation British"), had its population gassed to death with GG gas as part of Zeon's preparations to convert the colony into a ballistic weapon. Just in case the audience needed to be reminded that the Principality of Zeon's forces are Complete Monsters, the previously backstory-only massacre was animated as part of Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin's fifth episode showing how unbothered those Principality forces planning and carrying out the massacre were. (Ironically Stardust Memory depicts the rest of the Zeon forces as being disgusted by this after the fact, to the extent of deliberately leaving the forces responsible for it behind during the retreat to Axis.) As for the goal of colony drops... well... it's usually a terror weapon, meant to cause mass death through both the impact and the environmental damage caused by such a huge object impacting Earth's surface. The Zabis were arguably the most reserved of the lot, aiming only to destroy Earth Federation Forces HQ in a massive nuke-proof underground complex in South America. Delaz's forces tried to cause mass starvation by dropping a colony on central North America to destroy farmland, the Titans were trying to destroy a factory-city (Von Braun) that was supporting the AEUG, and both Neo Zeon and Char's New Neo Zeon were trying to destroy the Federation capital (wiping out Dublin, Ireland and Lhasa, Tibet in the process.) Char's endgame was different, though... he wanted serial colony drops to render Earth completely uninhabitable rather than just win some war. Char wasn't a cyber-newtype. Mind you, this timeline's Char might be more insane than the one in the main UC timeline. Zeon didn't lose the war, but he sure as hell did. He wasn't able to carry out his plan to arrange the deaths of the entire Zabi family under the cover of the One Year War the way he did in the prime timeline. According to promotional materials...
  27. Valkyrie Hunter D
    Berserk Musou was a fun romp - highly recommended for fans of the manga. It doesn't get more retro than this, I ran into it at the Pinball Hall of Fame in Vegas - Computer Space, the first coin-op arcade video game: Unfortunately, it was out of order, so I couldn't play a piece of video game history.
  28. mikeszekely
    OK, I misunderstood you. I originally read "I'd prefer a figure that looked more like Fortress Maximus and less like a lazy Metroplex retool" as a critique of Big Mac, not a reference to the Has/Tak one. I definitely feel the same way. I part of me wants to replace my Takara Metroplex with the Siyang Vladivostok for a similar Geewunniness. Well, especially if I'm going to have to pay a 145% markup due to tariffs, price is definitely a concern. But after playing with a bunch of big combiners and Titan-class toys, no, bigger isn't always better. I mean, 50cm, 60cm, 70cm, it's all still too small to be in-scale with Has/Tak's mainline figures, let alone any MP-style stuff, so I'd rather they just cap out around 45cm. Big enough to convey that they're big, small enough to still work onto a shelf and handle without a team of assistants.
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