mikeszekely

With the Giant Legion all wrapped up I could be done with Constructicons for awhile. On the other hand, I could take a look at Dream Star Toys' Hook Warrior. While you may here "IDW" tossed around describing these guys, this is definitely NOT how Hook looked in the IDW comics. Honestly, Hook's traditionally my least-favorite Constructicon, but this guy's kind of gorgeous. No weird cartoon legs, no cabin foot, no "what do we do with the wheels on his arms?". As with Shovel Warrior, there's loads of mechanical details but with curves and angles that give him an almost organic shape, and they replaced his traditional overhanging shoulder shelves with big booster wings. It's a very slick design; I think my only real aesthetic complaint is that there's nothing about his chest that screams "Hook" to me. This lack of immediate "this is Hook" is exacerbated somewhat by the fact that his crane is not attached to his back out of the box. Rather, it's an accessory... one of several. In addition to the crane, he comes with a red translucent blade, some kind of short cannon, his gun, the combined mode chest armor, the combined mode head, plus an alternate face and forehead for that head. If you pull the forehead out, you can slide the visor out and remove the lower half of his face. Then you can mix and match to get the look you want... stoic vs angry face, eyes vs visor, and normal forehead vs crested forehead. That crested head is going to come up later. In something of a first for Devastators, it seems Dream Star's won't be made from six guys, it'll be made from seven. The chest armor can transform into what appears to be the upper half of Megatron. I don't have confirmation, but it looks like Devastator's forearms become Megatron's legs, and some part of Devastator's crotch and hip skirts might be his pelvis. I'll go into more details on him when the set is complete, for now all I'll say is that he does seem to have ports on his forearms, but they do NOT match any pegs on the cannon that comes with this set. Getting back to Hook Warrior, his head's on a ball joint. He can look up, down, and tilt his head to the side adequately. His shoulders rotate on ratchets but can get hung up on his backpack, and they move laterally 90 degrees but on the wrong side of the swivel so he has Hot Rod shoulders. His bicep swivel is weird. There's a flap at the top of his bicep, and if you fold it down he can swivel his biceps 360 degrees but it looks messy. But if you don't fold it down, his bicep looks neat but the swivel grinds against the wheels in his shoulders and forces them apart. His elbows are even weirder. It seems like a single joint that bends a little under 90 degrees... but also nearly 90 degrees backward. There's actually a second joint, but it's behind a flap. If you open it up you can use it to get a bit over 90 degrees of bend, but now he's got a big flap laying on the front of his bicep. Or, you can open it just a little, and settle for just 90. His wrists swivel. His thumbs have a ball joint at the base with two additional hinged knuckles, while his fingers are pinned at the base with two additional hinged knuckles. The index finger is separate, the other three are molded together. He's got a ratcheted waist swivel. His hip skirts can move so his hips can go 90 degrees forward or laterally on ratchets, but only about 45 degrees backward due to his butt armor. He has limited thigh swivels, and double-jointed knees. The upper joint is ratcheted, the lower just friction. Despite the double joint you're still looking at just a bit over 90 degrees of bend. His feet and toes have some downward bend due to how they transform, but no upward tilt. His ankles pivot about 45 degrees. The cannon and pistol both have handles that fold out with slots on them. They plug onto tabs in his palms, then you can wrap the fingers around them. As for his crane boom, the most obvious thing is to plug the large peg on the base into one of the two large peg holes on his back. There are ports under Hook Warrior's forearms as well. You can fold in the handle of the cannon and flip out a peg, then plug it into either arm. A similar peg can be used to attach the red blade. There are less obvious things you can do with the crane. There's a hinge on it, so you could rotate it and fold it over his head. The butt of his gun plugs into the end of the boom, above the hook. The peg you use to connect the crane to his back also fits into his forearms, if you want to give him a sort of underslung BFG. Alas, I can't find any meaningful way to attach the cannon. By far my favorite thing to do with the crane, though, is to extend it, bend out the ends, and attach the red blade to make a pretty wicked scythe. The only downside here is that he can't hold the scythe particularly well. There is a handle-like protrusion you can wrap one hand around, and the other around the dark plastic, but there are not slots for the tabs in his palms to lock into. It's purely relying on the friction in his fingers not giving out under the weight of the scythe. Kind of worth it, though. Like I said, I traditionally think of Hook as the boring one, but with a scythe he's kind of badass. Hook Warrior's transformation is a bit more involved than Mecha Invasion's Craner, but honestly I think it's a lot more straightforward than fellow DST Shovel Fighter. Like many other Hooks in my collection you can kind of break him into his upper and lower half, and focus on one half at a time. While it's fairly obvious what's supposed to move and where it's supposed to go, you will occasionally get tripped up by exactly how certain parts move, though, and the instructions are pretty terrible, sometimes ambiguous and occasionally omitting some steps. My first thought was that Hook Warrior almost looks more like a military truck than a crane. However, this style with three-wiper cab set in front of four front wheels, with four more rear wheels with a centered boom are common from Chinese manufacturers like Shanghai Evangel Industrial or Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group. The main thing that's a bit off is at the rear. Hook Warrior's booster wings wind up forming identical pods flanking the crane. There's some molded detail that almost suggests a window, and the control cab for the boom does usually sit on the left side. On a real truck like the XCMG XCT80 there is a pod on the other side, presumably housing some of the machinery to move the crane, but it's significantly smaller than the control cabin. There's some tolerance issues. You might have noticed that I can't quite get the front of the cab lined up right. The green plating under the crane that makes up his backpack doesn't like to stay plugged into his actual back all the way in truck mode, either. Hook Warrior can roll on his rubber tires, and the crane can elevate roughly 60 degrees with two extending segments. The hydraulic piston is another real-world feature you'd see on these sorts of Chinese crane trucks. Somewhat annoyingly where the crane attaches to the truck can rotate, but the pods flanking it are locked in place and prevent it from turning. On that note, the crane requires some partsforming. The big peg you use to plug in into his back gets folded in, and instead of using the big holes you use a pair of smaller pegs to plug them into those two smaller holes between the two big ones. If you did it right, the gray plastic on the crane will follow the angled slopes of the green plastic on the truck. Too bad, the connection of the smaller pegs is a little loose. I find the crane likes to pop off when you manipulate it. As for the rest of his accessories, Devastator's head sort of transforms. You can fold his neck back 90 degrees, and spin and flip some kibble on the back of his head over his face, so it wraps under the chin. The right side of Devy's head folds down and away and rotates 180 degrees. The right side folds up and uses a ball joint to lie semi-flat. The neck peg will plug into a peg hole in front of the pod on the left side of the truck, with the side of his head mostly covering and tabbing into the side of the pod. The other side of Devy's head just lies on the truck. It doesn't even tab into anything. With a red-painted "window" I guess we can pretend Devy's head is the control cabin for the crane. The barrel of Hook Warrior's pistol collapses and plugs into the barrel of the cannon, and you can plug the blade into a square hole on top of the cannon. You're supposed to plug into a peg hole in front of the pod on the other side, but this time it doesn't even remotely resemble any part of an actual truck. It's just kibble. Honestly, I think I'd have preferred if the entire pistol could have stored inside the cannon, or the cannon could have turned into a better gun in the first place, and that the cannon better resembled the control cabin. I'd have preferred to omit the Devastator head entirely; if the gestalt is going to need partsforming might as well go all in on it. While DST is going for a very stylized look, and making his partsforming bits into an extra Megatron figure is a bit out there, DST doesn't seem to be reinventing the combination the way MI did. Shovel Fighter was a right leg, and Hook Warrior is the upper torso. There is a little shifting of other parts, but the bulk of the transformation is simply starting in truck mode, undoing some clips on the insides of his thighs, splitting the front of the truck in half, and then using the unlocked mid-thigh joints to wrap the front of the truck around to the back and folding the arm connectors out as you do. You should wind up with something like the above picture. Once there, you can slot him into the chest armor plug using pegs inside to plug into the ports under the truck windows. The head plugs into one of the large pegs where the crane was. The crane can then shift to either side by plugging it into a tab in front of the combiner connector and a port behind it. If you like, the red blade can store on top of the crane, but there doesn't seem to be a place to store the cannon or the gun. Surprise! Hook Warrior has a fourth mode! Like Shovel Fighter, Hook Warrior can also transform into a right leg. Again, it's a bit easier to start from the truck mode. The section behind the cab with the combiner pegs will shift back, giving the cab room to fold up. The front of the cab shifts forward to give the foot more toes. Heel spurs fold out from under the cab, and the front pair of tires wraps under them to form a heel. The rest is basically rotating the pods 190 degrees and reposition Hook Warrior's arms, then opening up his chest to reveal the slot for the leg connection. The red blade can store in one of the large peg holes where the crane usually goes. The crane, meanwhile, folds up and plugs into the heel, with the other end just sort of resting against the calf. Again, there's no place for the cannon or the gun. Come to think of it, Shovel Fighter's gun had alt storage for vehicle mode, but not leg mode. I'm guessing, based on how the gun plugs into the cannon, and how there are other ports on the back and top of the cannon, that maybe the cannon and all their other guns will combine into a larger gun for Devastator. Anyway, you might be wondering what's up with Hook having a leg mode? This is a reference to the IDW comics, where Spike killed Scrapper. Later, Bombshell used a cerebro shell to take control of Prowl, and Megatron made Prowl the Devastator's upper torso while Hook moved to Scrapper's spot. And that alternate forehead with the crest that I said was going to come up again? That'd be the crested head that the fan-dubbed "Prowlestator" sported. There's no prototypes, or even a definite confirmation, but it's been strongly implied that (counting Megatron) this set will actually have eight total members, with a version of Prowl to release after the standard six Constructicons. Given that Scrapper is my favorite Constructicon and one I wouldn't mind displaying on his own, and given how many other Devastators I have, I appreciate that DST is giving us extra options for this set. But as for Hook Warrior himself... he's decidedly OK. I appreciate the more straightforward transformation, I think he looks pretty good in both modes, and the crane boom as a scythe grants him a cool factor Hook rarely seems to posses. However, some iffy tolerances and questionable design decisions like his elbows and flaps that lie in place but don't actually plug in or lock on hold him back a bit and make him seem like a step back from Shovel Fighter. You do get a bit more bang-for-your-buck than Shovel Fighter, though, as they cost the same but Hook Warrior comes with a lot more accessories and an entire fourth mode. Ultimately, I think the stylized designs are, as with MI's, a two-edged sword. There are people who don't really want or need another cartoon G1 Devastator who will appreciate that DST is doing something different, but likely just as many strictly cartoon collectors who simply don't have a place for this on their shelves. To the latter, nothing I say is likely to change their minds. To the former, I'd say that Hook Warrior has his flaws, and neither he nor Shovel Warrior are as fun or inexpensive as Mecha Invasion's guys, but if you like the design Hook Warrior seems to be free of any major QC issues and has a strong shelf presence. I'll give him a soft recommend.

Priced a build from Maingear. Came out to around $2500 for one with a Ryzen 7 9700X, 32 GB of RAM, a 1TB NVME SSD, and an RTX 5070ti. The GPU is definitely getting marked up by them, though. Swapping it out for an RTX 4060 lowers the price by $780.

It's been a dream of mine to own a Porsche ever since I was a kid and got a Hot Wheels of a mid-'80s Carrera. Can't really do a 911... I still need a mostly-practical daily driver and my kid's too little to ride shotgun yet, but the Taycan still seems like a great choice. A common refrain I keep hearing about it is, "genuinely good, not just good for an EV, it's a genuine Porsche experience." I'm also wondering if it might not be easier to get the GPU I want in a pre-built (I know, heresy). I think my plan will be to upgrade my laptop in late spring/early summer, then I'm GTG if we go somewhere on vacation this summer, then do the desktop around Black Friday like you were thinking.

Man, I saw "1/100" and got excited thinking Bandai was finally doing a 31 HMR. ... ...Imma still get it, though.

Fingers crossed. It's a 2022 Taycan with 13k miles, previous owner leased it and turned it back in when he/she was done. $61k, basically half what a new one goes for in my area. The catch is that the interest rates on used cars right now are terrible, so if I buy it I have to wait until some CDs we have mature in a month or two and borrow as little as possible. Possibly not borrow at all, after I sell my Maxima. Then instead of playing Forza Horizon 5 on max settings, I'll just drive around in it and try to remember that setting a high score on a speed trap isn't appropriate for real life.

It's not just you. From what I've heard, it's very common/everybody. Personally, while I've enjoyed the good Doctor's work, Decibel's obscure enough that I'm content taking a pass on this one.

My current approach has been the 3P thread, but your logic was basically my thinking on putting future reviews in the official thread instead. I dunno. I see a lot of the same faces in both threads, but it feels like engagement is higher in the official one. OK, enough with the suspense. Let's put these guys together. We didn't really talk about Craner and Tipper's combined modes yet. This is basically Tipper's. We're just missing the final step, which is folding his feet and the green parts of his ankles back. There's a lot of clever engineering going on here, as his arms and the lip of the bed are over his head, but the front of chest swivels 180 degrees to cover the gap between his arms and to lift the chest shield, which was always self-contained in his body. Tipper's own chest shifts down and spreads to make the gestalt pelvis, and the way his hips spin and flip to widen for combined mode works better than a lot of earlier approaches. Now here's where things get a little complicated. Rather than have the cab wrap around sit next to the rear half, Craner's hips detach and angle out (which the instructions forget to mention). The sides of his legs have to ultimately grab onto those hook tabs and slide back, and it's probably the least-fluid bit of the whole set. Part of Craner's legs may pop off, but don't be alarmed. While they're not really supposed to, they're actually just pegged on in the first place, so it's simple enough to plug them back in. Note the gray connectors on the underside... they're going to plug into the top of Tipper. And yes, the gestalt head lives inside Craner's torso. No partsforming. Once Craner is plugged into the top of Tipper and the Craner's legs are properly locked onto those hook tabs we can start to solidify things. Craner's shoulders lock into Tipper's forearms. The cab and engine bay on Craner open up so you can fold out the shoulder joints. When you close them back up, Craner's arms will fold down and his fists will grab onto pegs pegs behind them. A hook will latch onto what's actually Craner's butt to secure the chest shield. The result is mostly extremely solid; only the chest shield feels like it could be more secure. The arms, have connectors that will simply slide over the combiner joints we folded out of Craner. It's just a friction connection, nothing fancy. I wouldn't recommend picking the gestalt up by the arm or anything, but it's solid enough that it's not going to pop off while you manipulate him. Finally, we'll do the legs (though in the future, I think I'll attach them before I attach Craner to Tipper). Do you recall the I-shaped slots we plugged the weapons into for their alt modes? With Tipper's feet folded up properly you'll find identical pegs at the ends of his legs. That alone would be a pretty weak connection, but there's a ton more connections. First, the leg bots have a pair of pegs on each shoulder. One peg goes into Tipper, one goes into the spot where Tipper plugged into the weapon storage. Tabs on the leg bots' forearms both lock them in place in the gestalt calves, but there's also peg holes near their elbows that lock onto pegs on Tipper's feet. Now that's all pretty solid, but we're still not done! Flaps unfurl from the leg bots' shoulders. These flaps reach up to plug into slots just below the knee joint, ensuring that the leg bots completely envelop Tipper's lower legs and feet. And finally, we have our combined mode. Since the team is called "Giant Legion," I'm going to say he's called Giant. One the one hand, I think he looks pretty fantastic for a combiner with zero partsforming, though his arms seem a tad short and his elbows are definitely up too high. Sure, one shoulder's a truck and the other is a shovel, but the purple and silver details on the forearms lends them a certain symmetry, as does the very similar legs and feet. If I might have made one suggestion to the MI team, it might have been to make the back parts on the rear of Loader and the silver bucket on Excavator green to make for a bit more color symmetry, but it's hardly the worst thing I've seen. And, sure, he doesn't have a shovel for one foot and a truck for the other, but Giant is still very recognizably Devastator with solid, less wheely feet. Rather than jut off of his back, the crane boom folds down Giant's back. It's something Maketoys and GT sort of did with their cranes, and I've always thought it's a bit tidier that way. The butt cheek wheels work for me, too... I think it's a pretty solid design. The only thing that might be a turn off for some people is that the individual members are more MP-scaled (they're about the same size as ToyWorld and XTB's Constructicons, bigger than GT's, and smaller than Fans Toys and Dream Star Toys'), but the combined Giant is only a little taller than GT's Gravity Builder. MI gives you options for Giant's face. He's got normal eyes, and an LED that lights them up magnetically (just like the individual guys). But if you lift up his forehead, you'll find a visor folded up inside. You can flip it out and close it over his regular eyes if you prefer the visored look (as I do). Again, a goal of this set was no extra parts. You might have noticed that there really wasn't storage for the weapons in combined mode, and that's because the weapons combine. First, we'll take Craner's NSFW gun and extend the barrel. Note the slots near the tip? Grab either of the leg bots' guns and you'll find a tab under the barrel that plugs into those slots. Tipper's gun has tabs on the magazine that plugs into a slot near the magnet of the leg bot's gun, with the barrels pointing in the same direction as Craner's gun (or the opposite direction of the leg bot's). Then take the other leg bot's gun and use the same tabs/slots to plug into the opposite side, sandwiching the tip of Craner's gun and the handle and magazine of Tipper's between them. Now, get Loader's gun, and fold the barrels around like you do for storage. A tab on the back of Mixer's gun will plug into a slot under Loader's. You want the handle of Loader's gun to lay on top of Mixer's. Correctly assembled, two tabs on top of Mixer's gun plugs into slots on the leg bots' guns, while two tiny pegs on Loader's gun will plug into the barrels of Tipper's. Giant's head is on a ball joint. He can't really look down, but he's got plenty of upward and sideways tilt in addition to swiveling. His shoulders rotate on ratchets; the wheels on Mixer's truck can get caught up on his back or chest shield, and limits his right arm to only about 45 degrees of ratcheted lateral motion. Loader's shovel can more easily move out of the way, though, for unimpeded rotation and 90 degrees of lateral movement. His biceps swivel, and his ratcheted elbows bend 90 degrees. His wrists swivel. Each finger and thumb has a ball joint at the base and two additional hinged knuckles. His waist swivels; no ab crunch. His hips skirts can fold forward, giving him a bit over 90 degrees forward, a bit under 90 degrees backward, and 90 degrees laterally at the hips. They're ratcheted joints that seem to do well enough keeping Giant standing, even in an A-stance, but they're not actually strong enough to support the weight of the leg. His thighs swivel, but the tires on his butt are a limiting factor there. His ratcheted knees bend about 90 degrees. There's no up/down tilt on his feet, but they swivel and have a little under 45 degrees of pivot. All-in-all, there are combiners these days with more articulation than this, but they tend to use a lot of partsforming. For a gestalt with zero partsforming I think Giant's articulation is good enough, and I continue to be impressed by how solid he is. Not one tab came loose, and certainly no members detached, while I was manipulating him. Giant holds the combined gun in an MP-style, where tabs on the handle go into slots in his palms. The thing to note here is that the handle is the barrel of Mixer's gun, with the tabs being the fins on it. I supposed, in the long term, this could lead to paint wear on the gun barrel. Just like on Craner alone, the crane boom on Giant's back can swivel and flip over his shoulder. The little blue lens makes more sense, as it'll wind up directly in front of Giant's left eye. Giant's giving me serious Gundam X vibes! I just wish he had a bit more articulation in his arm so he could put his left hand on top of the boom/barrel. So, answering my original clickbait question, no. The combined mode definitely does NOT suck. I might wish tighter hip ratchets or a bit more articulation. I think he could have benefitted from slightly longer arms (or at least better elbow positioning) and a few color tweaks. The fact is, though, Giant is one of the most solid combiners I've handled. He's not G1, but so far he's the best Devastator in my collection (I have high hopes for MMC, though). It's really hard to believe that this company came out of nowhere and released an entire six-member combiner team in less than a year (or, looked at another way, FT's fourth and fifth Stunticons), and that the entire team cost less than $300 (a mere $70 for the whole set more than a single Fans Toys Constructicon). Everything about this set (except getting Craner's legs into combined mode) is smooth and solid, fun to transform, and fun to handle. The worse things I can say are the subjective scale issues and lack of G1 cartoon accuracy (though that last one could also be a point for the Giant Legion for some). If there is any way you can work the Giant Legion into your collection you should definitely do so. This has quickly become one of my absolute favorite 3P purchases, I highly recommend it.

I think they will be, pretty sure they did with the 4070s last year. Benchmarks put the G14 a bit behind bigger laptops with 4070s, but most reviewers seemed to think it was an acceptable trade off for the portable form factor (it's a big selling point for me, too). Pretty much any modern Ryzen will be better than my desktop, though. I think the one in my 2020 G14 beats it. The AI 9 in the 2025 G14 should absolutely murder it.

You guess correctly. Despite Microsoft's involvement, AFAIK there were really only two sold in the US, a Spectravideo model and a Yamaha one. The Spectravideo flopped hard, and the Yamaha wasn't even marketed as a computer, it was marketed as a MIDI synth.

To each their own, I've never been a fan. Yeah, maybe. I think the problem is that even a mobile 5070ti, thermally constrained by a G14's chassis, probably won't be an upgrade from a desktop 4070, but the CPU will eat my desktop's CPU for lunch. I don't seem to be very good at saving right now, either. I'm trying to talk my wife into letting me buy a Porsche this weekend.

It is... Assuming that you could get it close to Nvidia's announced pricing. I guess my folly is believing that would be possible.

Reviews coming in for the RTX 5070ti. Sounds like a moderate upgrade over the base 4070ti, but unless you're really into AI (or use Frame Gen) it's basically on par with the 4070ti Super and worse than a 4080. Which, you know, isn't great, but if you can find one at close to retail (🤣) it's a better value than the 5080. In native rendering it lands somewhere in the middle of AMD's 7900 series, but the minute you turn on ray tracing it leaves them in the dust. Frankly, while I don't really use Frame Gen, I'm cool with DLSS, which also outperforms FSR. I guess I'll wait and see if AMD's 9700 series makes improvements on ray tracing and FSR, but unless the 9700 series is like a 30% boost over the 7900-series or they come in cheaper than the rumors and leaks are suggesting, it still looks like the RTX 5070ti is the sweet spot for me. Team Green still has a strong edge in ray tracing and upscaling, and I'm coming from a non-ti, non-super base 4070, so I should see a decent boost in performance... at least, once I upgrade the rest of the PC. I've actually been noticing more CPU bottlenecks with my aging Core i7-9700k than anything else.

By process of elimination, you can easily figure that Bonecrusher is the only remaining Constructicon for Mecha Invasion to cover, so here's Bulldozer, the guy who comes packed with Excavator. Given that this set has been very stylized and one of my (very minor) criticisms of Excavator was that he played it too Geewunny, what I'm about to say might seem a bit hypocritical, but... what is it with 3Ps that put the shovel everywhere but Bonecrusher's chest? Maketoys made hip kibble out of it, and my biggest complaint about GT's was the shovel kibble that juts off his forearms and hovers over his shoulders. TFC only got part of the shovel onto their Bonecrusher's chest. Well, in Bulldozer's case it's because he's 70% Excavator again. And I don't mean in a "same engineering" way. I mean everything but the shovel kibble from the waist down is exactly the same, just with green plastic instead of purple. From the waist up, the lower part of his torso that upper part folds over is the same, minus some slight differences in the ab grill, parts of his back, and his entire arms are the same parts, just decoed a bit differently. It's not necessarily the worst thing ever. Bulldozer doesn't look bad, and Excavator was already pretty good (dare I say, better than Craner, even?). The new chest is molded with red-painted details that do evoke the shovel chest of G1 Bonecrusher. It just that the previous sets gave you two unique figures, and this one gives you two nearly identical ones. And between the two nearly identical figures you get, Bulldozer is arguably the weaker one. For one, there doesn't seem to be a good place to put the shovel kibble on his legs. Official, they kind of hang over his knees, as I have pictured here. I've seen people try flipping the kibble around to the back of the legs. Currently on my desk I have them angled upward like hip skirts. This is Bulldozer's gun, as per the instructions. As I said with Excavator, their guns look very similar. I guess it technically doesn't matter whose is whose. So, as Bulldozer is basically Excavator you could reasonably expect that their articulation is the same. And that's true... for everything but the thigh swivels. As you can see, the arms that connect the shovel kibble to his legs are connected very close to the cuts for the swivel. If you position the arms so that they're parallel to the cut, you can use the thigh swivel. But literally any other position, like their official place over his knees or my unofficial hip skirts, will cause some portion of those arms to overlap the cuts and block the thigh swivels almost totally. In other words, not only does the kibble make Bulldozer a bit less tidy, it actively gets in the way. Gun-peg-fist. Magnet in gun activates LED in eyes. You know the drill. 70% Excavator means that Bulldozer's transformation is basically the same. The only real differences are that there's no ironing board flap to cover the gap. Rather, he's got his alt mode cabin that hinges over the gap instead. Then, instead of a shovel in the non-rotating part of the waist, it's filled in with some mechanical details and a flip-up exhaust. Finally, the black W-shaped bit of nothing on Excavator is replaced with the middle section of the Bulldozer shovel, and the leg shovel kibble has to swivel around to tab into it. Bulldozer's gun attaches and stores in alt mode exactly the same way as it does for Excavator, which further leads me to believe that they're more or less interchangeable. Bayverse Bonecrusher was a tank, not a bulldozer. There were two Bayverse bulldozers, though. A yellow bulldozer we don't really get a good look at (but was possibly a Caterpillar D11) that ostensibly formed one of Devastator's legs that was eventually named Skipjack, and a red guy who fought with Bumblebee named Rampage that was created from the same concept art, and presumably shares the same alt mode since both characters got Studio Series toys and they were the same except one was red and one was yellow. On that note... Bulldozer has the shovel that's taller in the middle, and connected to to the treads, as well as the closed cockpit of the D11. There's molded details like shorter versions of the pistons that connect the shovel to the front of the bulldozer, though in this case they don't actually connect to the shovel. That's about where the similarities end, though. It's fine, though. It's decent enough bulldozer. The alt mode proportions suit a bulldozer better than an excavator, I think. And again, using basically the exact same transformation, Bulldozer turns into the other leg for the gestalt. In this case, I think the similarities between Excavator and Bulldozer are actually a strength. Sure, Excavator has his cabin off to the side and most of his shin is the shovel arm and bucket, while Bulldozer has a little shovel blade above his ankle and his cabin near the knee, but they're minor differences on what's basically the same leg. A little extra kibble to fuss with is all it took to make Bulldozer the weakest of the six in my eyes, but messing with the GT versions while I took these pictures really throws into contrast how the worst of Mecha Invasion's Constructicons is still so much better thought out, designed, and executed than any of GT's. I'm beating a dead horse, but these are simple, well-designed, well-executed, fun toys that deliver a lot of bang for the buck. I have no qualms about recommending this set, or any of these sets, or ALL of these sets, even if the combined mode sucked. Wait, does it suck? Tune in tomorrow to find out...

Appreciate you thinking of me, but 16GB of RAM is a deal-breaker. I'll either wait for another sale on the 32GB version with the 4070, or I'll get the 2025 model with 32GB and a 5070ti.

Big Powered is definitely more than I'd want to spend today, too. Maybe whoever did POP-01 will do a POP-02? I'd definitely go for the Power Greater upgrade for Battle Convoy or Big Powered. I'm mildly interested in Dia-Battles, Battle Buffalo, Grand Dion (with Guardian expansion), and a few of the TriVERS and Versaulters. Yeah, I think it's great that people are getting and doing what they're into, but I looked as some of those links and find people buying 45-packs of generic off-brand Dianauts, and all I'm thinking is that the Dianauts are the least interesting bit for me. I guess Diaclone isn't really my schtick... so I'll get back to my niche, since the third and final set of Mecha Invasion's Constructicons came. 05 is the creatively named Excavator. And, yeah, he's very obviously Scavenger. Maybe, because Bayverse Scavenger is a red repaint of the big wheel guy Prime murked at the beginning of Revenge of the Fallen (and part of Devastator's torso, apparently), there doesn't seem to be much in the way of Bayverse influences here. With tread legs and a shovel on his back, perhaps I could suggest that he's influenced by Scrapmetal, the other Bayverse excavator that makes up Devastator's left hand? But then again, that's kind of just G1 Scavenger, isn't it? And that's pretty much what MI's Excavator is... sure there are some stylized details, like grill abs, loads more mechanical details and greebles, silver feet, biceps, and hands, and the ironing board on his chest is inverted, but I think Excavator is competing (and winning) for least-reimagined Constructicon in this set. The treads that cover his legs are black instead of purple, sure, but the purple is still there under the treads, and yep, there's the shovel on his back. But if I sound like I'm being a bit hard on Excavator, it's because I think MI could have done more to reimagine Scavenger, not necessarily that I think they should have. After all, turning the shovel into the legs definitely made Loader evocative of Bayverse Scrapper as much as G1 Scrapper, but given that Scrapper is my favorite Constructicon I think I was a little disappointed that Loader was skinny and didn't have a shovel on his back. By contrast, sure, Excavator isn't doing anything too daring, but he's a smart-looking Scavenger with strong proportions and just enough mechanical details to be interesting. I dig! As was the case with the first four, Excavator does come with an LED & battery (already installed), but his only real accessory is this gun. Pay attention to the shape of the barrel; his pack-in-partner's gun is extremely similar. Excavator's head swivels, looks down a little, and tilts sideways a little on its ball joint, with a solid 45-ish degrees of upward tilt. His shoulders rotate. Unlike the first four members of this set, Excavator's shoulders can move 90 degrees laterally on the correct side of the swivel- no Hot Rod shoulders here! Actually, that's not quite true, as a transformation hinge on the other side of the swivel can also move his shoulders 90 degrees, but that means you actually get over 90 degrees of lateral shoulder movement. His biceps swivel, as do his wrists, and his elbows bend 130 degrees on a single hinge. His waist swivels. His hips are a little limited... you get 90 degrees backward and just a hair under that forward on ratchets, but only about 45 degrees laterally. If you use the transformation hinges, you can kind of stretch that to maybe 60 degrees. His thighs swivel, and his double-jointed knees bend a full 180 degrees, revealing a diecast joint with molded faux-tread details. His feet cannot tilt up, but they can tilt down and swivel, as well as pivot about 45 degrees. Excavator holds his gun by plugging the peg handle into the hole in either fist. You can see the magnet under the barrel that's used to turn the LED in his eyes on and off. Excavator's transformation is pretty simple, but a relatively interesting take on the character nevertheless. His waist and this thighs both rotate 180 degrees. Stick his arms straight out in a t-pose. Fold his hands in, and rotate his shoulders 180 degrees, then rotate his biceps another 90 degrees so his fingers are facing up, then bend his elbows 90 degrees. Undo the sides of his chest by untabbing and folding them down, then swinging them out the sides. Lift the front of his chest up about 180 degrees, which will also fold his head into his chest. The entire top of his torso will then fold forward 90 degree. The silver part of his chest will fold over the gap and cover his head, and then his shoulders can shift back so his forearms can meet and lock together. The chest bits we folded down and out of the way can swing around and tab back in to square off the front of the vehicle, and the top half is done. Now his hips shift up and away from his pelvis slightly, then rotate back 90 degrees. His feet fold down, so his heels tuck into the treads, but then the silver parts swing around to the inside. Bend his hips back so that the treads line up with the rest of the vehicle, then his feet tab together then into his forearms on the underside of the vehicle and you're done. The biggest complaint I've heard about Excavator is that he seems a bit long. Traditionally, the deck does overhang the back of the treads, but the front of the deck and cab are set back from the front of the treads. While technically correct, excavators come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I don't really mind it, though I think they maybe missed a beat by not making him one of those really large Terex excavators they used for Bayverse Scavenger. As you'd expect at this point, there's storage in Excavator's alt mode for his weapon. After you've got his chest and arms folded up for alt mode but before you fold his torso over you'll see this I-shaped indent on the inside of his chest, above his head. The butt of the gun plugs right into it, then the barrel can fold down over his head. Excavator's shovel arm is fairly articulated... there's a hinge where it connects to the deck, a hinge about halfway through, and a hinge at the bucket. There's also a swivel near the base. In excavator mode that makes for plenty of digging poses, and in bot mode you can swing the shove around and above his head or over his shoulder. I do wish there was maybe more more hinge, though, just above the swivel. It'd let the shovel fold up almost entirely into a neat little backpack in bot mode. However, that's about it for alt mode. There are no little wheels in the treads, so he doesn't roll, and the deck cannot turn. Finally, we come to his combined mode, and now we can really see why Mecha Invasion thought it was a good idea to flip the limbs around. I've often heard people praise TFC's Hercules for using the treads on Scavenger and Bonecrusher to form Devastator's forearms (a move IDW artists also pulled first for the All Hail Megatron series), but a forearm still needs a hand. While MI cleverly found places to store said hands in Loader and Mixer, and could probably have found a place for a hand on Excavator, what MI found is that treads make for an even better foot than forearm. The mechanical details on the outsides of his legs even combine with his own feet to give the leg mode toes. The transformation is, again, surprisingly simple and easier to do from bot mode than alt mode. His chest and head fold up like he's going to alt mode, and the sides of his chest shift to fill in his lats. His feet turn 180 degrees with the leg kibble, and his arms scrunch up, but the rest is basically just him kneeling. Excavator is another win from Mecha Invasion. It's a solid, good-looking robot with simple, clever engineering into an interesting leg and foot and a passable excavator mode. It's not a premium shelf queen, but it's a fun toy to actually mess around and play with. The biggest challenge most collectors will have is trying to decide where to CHUG-style but Masterpiece-sized bots in their collection, but again you get two bots for the same prices as a Hasbro Commander-class. It's worth making room somewhere.