David Hingtgen

Bought Ironhide. Instructions suffer heavily from Hasbro's patented "abbreviated" instructions. It shows before, and after, but makes no mention of how those 4 hinges fold to make it happen. This is especially bad with the roof---there's multiple z-fold hinges that can go either way---and the instructions don't even show what it's supposed to look like when you're done. I currently have it "the best-looking way I can figure out". Also, one of the missles was dirty. Almost as if it had dried black grease or mud caked in all the grooves. Saw Leader Prime. Colors suck IMHO. It's the same orangey almost-flourescent orange-red that the cheaper uglier DVD MP Prime has. It's not red, it's reddish-orange and cheap looking. Especially bad is the main chest parts (with the windows)----it's molded in clear blue for the windows, but has a thin layer of flourescent orange paint over it, which easily shows the blue plastic underneath. Am definitely going to wait for a repaint. (I'll take anything--G1 red, Magnus white, Nemesis black) Bumblebee looks pretty nice, but I plan to wait for the 2009 version. Jazz sucks color-wise, he's GREY, not silver. Same problem as Prime--we know Hasbro can do more silvery-looking plastic, but the movie toys are 99% grey with 1% silver sparkle.

It wouldn't help much---there's not really that much difference unless you go for very small, older planes. Here's a Su-37 and F-16 comparison---the largest and smallest modern fighters. If you truly want small, you could get an F-5. I added the F-5E real quick.

I hacked this together a little bit ago to show how friggin huge an F-22 is. These pics are to scale: An F-22 is about twice as long as a Peterbilt 379, but sheer size is several times greater.

In short, MP Prime is out of scale with himself. He's kind of like a caricature of a semi. It's very semi-esque, but 100% of the effort went into the robot mode, and the truck is shaped how it needs to be for robot mode. He's not any scale at all, since different parts are different scales to each other. Basically----he's permanently "anime magicked". Robot mode is how it should look, but truck mode has incorrectly-sized parts. MP Prime is so tall because sacrificing in truck mode just a little bit here, and a little bit there, goes to making robot mode just that much taller. Plus he has sliding-extending legs, which gives him a few inches right there.

Too tired to post more, here's a couple from today: Sundowners! It was very cloudy, this was the best-lit BA shot:

SS really needs a leader-class toy. From looking at pics, the dexluxe's undercarriage is partially explained by transformation---in the movie, the sides of the intakes are the sides of his chest/upper abs---but on the toy, they're his thighs! He's already got a complex transformation, but it's still compromised a lot more than any other I think. A leader-class (or even Ultimate) is really needed to do his transformation justice. So long as they get rid of the gatling-gimmick, and don't make it even worse with light-up missiles, etc. I'd pay more for a really accurately-complexly-transforming movie SS than I would for MP SS.

That reminds me---do you think future non-movie toys/series/cartoons etc will use the new movie versions of the logos from now on, or go back to the classic ones? I really don't see why they changed them in the first place--it's subtle enough most people don't notice. It's like they messed with it just to mess with it. The Autobot one is really subtle and I don't really care, but I definitely prefer the "classic" Decepticon logo.

Take a brand new pure white toy. Leave in a sunless cave for 5 years. Come back, and 40% of the pieces will be deep yellow, the other 60% will be pristine. Some plastic simply yellows no matter what, even seemingly identical pieces from the (presumably) same batch. UV certainly can cause yellowing, but stopping UV will not stop all yellowing. Anyone who's owned an SNES can probably tell you about the weird patterns in which it yellows. The real question is----do Yamatos yellow due to UV, or something else?

I'm going to airshows all this weekend, and the stores here adhered tightly to the Jun 2 release date, so I won't be able to buy anything until Monday or so. That said: What's the best toy besides Leader Prime? I am definitely getting a Leader Prime mold (plan to wait for a repaint) but want to get SOMETHING now. How's Ironhide? (I'm not getting the SS that's available--I'll wait for a bigger/better mold, or if that never comes, the Thundercracker repaint)

Since the setting would be "active war" probably, go with battlepods. Flags usually show up later, when there's time to get fancy and paint. But silhouettes can be spray-painted with a stencil in 10 secs.

Went to the Quad Cities Airshow today, trying out my new camera---quite pleased, these are way better pics than before. Highlights:

Here's an example from OIF, VF-2's CAG plane. It dropped a LOT of bombs:

Check Desert Storm kill marks! You'll find camels and bicycles. Now, for ground kills, only the plane used gets a kill mark, not the pilot/pilot's plane. Of course, in Macross, every pilot gets to fly his custom-painted plane all the time. (Unless you fly a CF) More often nowadays, they show the weapon used, not the object destroyed. Modern F-14/16 markings will usually show rows of JDAM's, a few Paveways, etc.

I loved Shrek 1, liked 2 a lot, but thought 3 was a complete waste of time and money. Skip it if you haven't seen it already, unless you are the world's biggest Shrek fan. Also, more so than any other movie I've seen--"you saw all the good parts in the trailer".

If you bought a PC, it probably tries to load 400 programs at startup, in the background, making EVERYTHING slow. It's 90% of the reason I'm building my own next time.

That all assumes the black paint is "weaker" than the rest of the paint. I don't want to remove the black paint, and have the red and blue come up along with it. Plus the sheer fact that it LOOKS LIKE A FIVE YEAR OLD USED A SPRAY CAN to apply it. There's a BIG difference between Prime's "battle damage" and SS's "flew though a coal mine while on fire" look. It just looks godawful, and makes no sense at all. It's like---what if someone modeled a car. And then "weathered" it. With huge black streaks from the sunroof vent but the engine and exhaust were spotless. Most people would go "WTF? Why is the sunroof filty but the actual sources of dirt are clean?" SS is the same. The weathering makes no sense at all. Might as well have fuel leaks from the canopy, and brake dust on the nosecone. Plus it's 100,000,000x too heavy. Yes, one-hundred-million. Hey, let's see how Hasbro would make MP Octane, because 747's tend to have 50-foot long black streaks emanating from the cargo doors and nosecone, and the leading edge of the tailfin just gets filty: Yeah, see now it's WEATHERED and DIRTY, and looks so much more REALISTIC now that it's covered with thick black blotches... Just like MP SS.

I'm being more polite at TFW, but am I the only that thinks the massive black streaks make it look like utter crap? Coal-fired locomotives don't get that filthy. WTF is the guy basing his "weathering" on? In addition to an apparent air-brake and engine-bay keel fire, SS has also seemed to fire several million rounds from the gun. And subsequently never cleaned, with "magic" smoke/soot/cordite that can leave black streaks in a LONG trail from the source. Plus the fact that the gun vents seem to be spotless... I'll wait for Thundercracker (hopefully he'll be deep metallic blue and CLEAN) But I wouldn't be surprised if we only ever get SS here.

Graham THRIVES on hints and misdirection. He probably couldn't sleep at night without teasing us at least once a day.

I thought "Cool! AT-ST!" Until I saw the ED-209.

I just noticed---if you remove the rudders from the v.stabs, you get a shape VERY similar to the toy. Check it out: (This pic not only highlights the outline of the rudder well, it is also the exact F-22 that portrays Starscream) http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0961521/L

I'm sure one or two flying scenes will have the real thing. I mean, half the F-14's you see in Top Gun are simply radio-controlled models. Very large, detailed ones---but fake nonetheless. But the Navy heavily promoted their active involvement in the film. But they'll probably still CG blue afterburners onto them...

They always say at least 30 days, but I have no real experience in the matter. (Newest car I've ever had was 2 months out from the factory, and its first detail was 2 months after that)

Random customization. If you want to sticker it up like a factory-fresh F-4 with 2,000 warning/caution markings, go ahead. FYI, F-15's leave the factory with EACH panel/hatch marked and labled. McDonnell does love to to put markings on their planes.

Could always be real F-22's with CG flames. Audiences expect afterburners 24/7, even though the F-22 is the one plane that doesn't need to use them very often... But I assume they're fake, USAF doesn't like to "risk" F-22's much. I'm surprised they use them for flyovers as often as they do. Those are drop tanks, don't know why---they're only used for ferrying AFAIK on the -22, or if everything's shot down already and it's related to bombing. Kind of negates the whole point of internal carriage (and kills any stealth aspects).

I prefer the Nora scheme, and I believe Graham does too. Honestly I like it due to sheer color--it's not grey/black/white like everything else.