mikeszekely

You're correct. I don't know why I thought I paid less... eh, I'm getting old. Must have had something else shipped around the same time that cost $80. I'll have to edit my review, but really the takeway is that the Air Defense team is now fully equal in price to Optimus' trailer, and I dunno about that. The math ain't mathing, as my daughter would say. I 100% agree. Just like animators in the '80s couldn't shade silver, and now we've got a whole mess of people insisting that Optimus' legs and thighs should be white when they're clearly supposed to be the same silver as the toy. And if I'm being honest, I'd have preferred that NYCC Nemesis Prime was black. It's how Takara did the original Armada toy. But, like I said in my review, they're not just copying how the animation was done, it seems that the Hasbro version of the original toy was also dark blue.

Nine Inch Nails has been pretty hit and miss with me, but YOLO. I just bought the Ares Soundtrack. I liked what I heard in the movie.

A few more repaints, then I think I'm just waiting on a few crossovers and, despite it still being warm enough to skip a jacket most days, I think I'm done for the year. Up first we have Seaspray's wavemate, Retro Brawn. And... he's kind of unimpressive. To be honest, I was going to skip him entirely but I got to thinking, "well, I have Retro Gears and Bumblebee, and Seaspray's Retro (especially if they do eventually release a toon version), and I started getting FOMO. So when I saw him on a peg at my local store I grabbed him. So he does have a new head that matches the G1 toy. They also altered the colors of the green to better match the toy, they painted the windows black instead of blue, and they put a spot of black under the badge on the hood. But that's where they stopped, and that's kind of disappointing. I mean, I get it's a Walmart line and they're not going to dump a ton of money into remolding figures for it, but the stocky cartoon body doesn't match the clawed jank that was the G1 toy. But forget about giving him claws and shoulder pads, they could have at least tampoed some sticker detail onto his waist and pelvis. The moral of the story is don't be me. You have SS86 Brawn? You've got all the Brawn you need then. Coming from Hasbro Pulse, we've got a two-pack of G2 Dinobots. One of which is Snarl. There's some minor paint differences. Most notably they painted the eyes red like the toys whereas SS86 Snarl went for cartoon blue. Other than that, they used a slightly darker shade of red for the parts that were already read, and a lighter shade of red for the parts that were gray, and that's it. The other Dinobot is Snarl, and it's pretty much the same story. The gray plastic has been swapped for a greenish blue, and he's got a silver lower jaw, red eyes, and red horns to mimic the original G2 toy. He's also got black thighs and a black head. But there's no changes to the actual mold. It'd have been cool if they'd has some remolding; keep the dino kibble on the outside like the toys, for instance, but broad strokes this is probably fine. A bunch of Leader-class repaints with no remolding is probably a tough pill for a lot of people to swallow. Still, especially with Grimlock still on shelves, it's kind of cool seeing the team together but sporting more individualistic colors. Again, maybe not for everyone, but I say bring on the expected orange Sludge and green Swoop. Finally, we have our NYCC-exclusive Nemesis Prime. Unlike more recent Nemesis Primes, this isn't simply a black repaint of regular Optimus. This version, one of the first to actually bear the name "Nemesis Prime" AFAIK, actually had screen time. And to mimic the cel-shaded colors of that episode (also the Hasbro version of the original toy), Nemesis Prime is more dark blue than black, with a messed up face also pulled from the episode. Aside from the new head and colors, he's the same figure as the Commander-class toy, with the same Matrix, gun, and forearm pipe-guns. He doesn't, however, come with a trailer. Instead, he comes with the Star Saber from Transformers Armada. Not the Vorpal Saber he wielded in the show, but I guess Hasbro figured that most fans would want the Star Saber more? The Star Saber is an awkward-looking sword, and that sword breaks into three smaller minicons. The Minicons are, of course, the Air Defense team- Runway, Jetstorm, and Sonar, from left to right. Note that I have Jetstorm mistransformed. His tail should slide back, then swing over his head to sit on his chest (a bit like Runway's). You might notice, however, the crack on one of the hinges. The tolerances don't seem to be right and the plastic is too thin for the stress, so I'm leaving it permanently where it's at. Aside from being the Star Saber, and aside from the fact that Armada fans seem to genuinely want more Minicons, I don't think they're much to write home about. They're a little larger than the Siege Micromasters, with slightly better articulation, but not by a lot. Moving back to Nemesis, he of course transforms into a truck. Although he doesn't come with a trailer, he can pull the one that came with Optimus. He can even combine with it; despite not technically needing them, he's got the head and fists for combined mode. Kind of makes you wish he came with a trailer of his own. What makes you wish it even more is the price tag. Optimus, as a Commander, was $90, right? Well Nemesis here is also $90. In other worse, he's giving up the trailer and extra play patterns that come along with it for a trio of honestly-not-that-great Minicons that turn into a sword. I dunno about you guys, but I'd have rather had the trailer. I mean, how does that even add up? Optimus' trailer has WAY more plastic and more parts than the Air Defense Team. I know, recent tariffs and price hikes would likely mean that Armada Optimus would actually cost even more, but still, a repaint of the core bot with some dinky and fragile minicons instead of the trailer is a really hard pill to swallow.

All I know is I did my part... I dragged two friends to see it one night, and yesterday I took my family. Tron: Uprising was awesome. I should re-watch it next.

I understand he wasn't always the easiest to work with, but when a lot of people were getting into Tekken I was a big time Dead or Alive fan. I only dipped out after Itagaki and Tecmo parted ways and DoA 5 was riddled with expensive microtransactions.

My wife's the kind of person who sees that it got bad reviews so assumes it must be bad but also unironically likes the live action Dragonball and Avatar (The Last Airbender one). If it's colorful and has a few action scenes she'll be fine. As for my daughter, she's always been kind of indifferent to movies until she actually watches them. Even when she was little she never really wanted to go see like the new Disney/Pixar/DreamWorks/etc movies. Pretty sure the only reason she watched K-pop Demon Hunters (which she’s obsessed with now) was because my wife saw it in her Netflix queue and asked her to watch it together. But usually after watching the movie she'll say she liked it and talk about scenes from it days later.

Well, that and the price.

I saw it with some friends, but I'm thinking about taking my wife and kid to see it (though they're not super enthusiastic about it). But the only XD 3D showtime is during my daughter's piano class...

This is a new thing from Takara, Transformers Overgear. No idea when or how much or what scale, but I can tell you 01 is Ironhide and 02 is Blackout. I know @M'Kyuun loves a good helicopter...

Yeah, I caught a few benchmarks, and the performance seems to be just enough of an improvement to interest me but not enough to to $1000 interest me. I think if I was using a Steam Deck or the OG Ally I'd definitely bite, but I'm pretty content with my Ally X. More curious to see some benchmarks for the Legion Go 2. On the Z1 Extreme the Go seemed a bit less optimized (not to mention way heavier), but the Go 2 has a bigger OLED screen. Now that I'm at the age where I'm starting to need readers "bigger screen" is a surprisingly compelling feature.😅

For those keeping score, I'm reasonably certain that Seaspray's release just leaves Windcharger, Powerglide, Outback, Swerve, and Tailgate remaining of the Autobot mini-vehicles. Windcharger and Outback are already available for preorder in SS86 and Walmart's retro line, respectively. And I'm fairly certain that Powerglide and Swerve are both schedule for release in AOTP in 2026, so that just leaves Tailgate. Since Tailgate's a retool of Windcharger, and he's not out yet, it makes sense that we haven't heard anything yet. But I'd also say he's an inevitability.

After watching Legacy get progressively worse and worse over its three year run, I'm feeling like 2025's been a pretty great year for the brand. Age of the Primes brought us Vortex and the Aerialbots, not to mention a number of the mythical Primes the line is named for, including a very excellent modern Star Convoy. On the Studio Series side we got a whole new Devastator, a cool Deluxe-sized Optimus to fight him, and an impressively cartoon-accurate Megatron despite turning into a tank. What more could we ask for? Well, a new Deluxe Seapsray, for starters. It's a little weird that third parties have dipped into the Seaspray well many times (iGear, Maketoys, ToyWorld, X-Transbots, Magic Square, NewAge, and Dr. Wu have all done a Seaspray, and Fans Toys has done him twice) but in the last 40 years we just had the original (and the G2 repaint) and Titans Returns (unless you count the Bayverse one). Hasbro's finally giving our boy a proper Deluxe-class glow up... in a Walmart-exclusive line of decos based on the G1 toys. *sigh* It's like Velocitron Cosmos all over again (though Cosmos did eventually get a re-release in Legacy, perhaps Seaspray will be more widely available later...). The "retro" deco fortunately isn't all that far off from the cartoon, though. I'd imagine a purely Sunbow deco would put an Autobot badge on his tummy while losing the painted "stickers" on the sides and the black windows. Maybe use a slightly darker blue plastic. And they'd likely do a different head without the vents and with blue eyes on gray instead of a blank black visor. Those are the sorts of details that are just changed enough to get me to re-buy without making me feel like the retro deco isn't good enough for now. Seaspray's sole accessory is a rather generic gun. It's very hollowed out, but painted silver and does the job. Seaspray's head is on a ball joint, though there's very little tilt available, and swiveling his head is awkward with the propellors in the way. His shoulders swivel and move almost 90 degrees laterally. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend over 90 degrees. His wrists can tilt up and down a little for some reason, but they don't swivel. His waist does have a swivel, however, if you bend his hips it'll get caught on the white armor on his hips. Speaking of hips, he can move them 90 degrees backward or laterally, but he's again limited to only about 45 degrees forward due to the collision of the white hip armor and his torso. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. Despite how you'd think he transforms, there's no up/down tilt on his feet, and his ankles only pivot about 30 degrees. Seaspray holds his gun just fine in either hand. He's also got 5mm ports on the outside of either forearm, on either bicep, under each foot, and on his back. While these ports might work well with old Weaponizers or Junkions or whatever, the "magazine" on Seaspray's gun is longer than the 5mm peg, so in bot mode his gun can't really go anywhere but his hands. Seaspray's transformation is weirdly complicated, sometimes unnecessarily so. Like, ok, his spine has to bend backward to tuck his pelvis and shorten his legs, and parts of the floaty bits fold out from under his feet so that they're not too big in bot mode. We're used to seeing stuff like that. But, why do his arms have to swivel 180 degrees? Why is all the yellow stuff around his head on multiple hinges that extend it out from his body before turning the propellors? Regardless, the alt mode is mostly good. His shins are properly visible on the top, and there's an Autobot badge where the G1 toy had a rubsign. Things do get a little messy toward the rear, where the extended yellow bits don't even tuck his head in as well as the G1 toy did, stretching everything a bit too far behind the blue and capping it with a random white flap that half-heartedly covers his face. Seaspray's propellors can spin. He lacks any kind of wheels to roll on. While Seaspray does have two 5mm ports on either side, again, the gun can't really plug into them. Hasbro's solution is to put a small peg on one side of the propellors. This mates with a port on the side of the gun. Which is fine, but... ...there's a TON of empty space under his feet. More than enough that his gun could have stored totally out of sight, if Hasbro had just has the presence of mind to design some way for it to have secured under there. As I prefer hidden weapons to weapons randomly stuck to their Earth mode "disguises," this is a huge missed opportunity. Seaspray is... well, if I'm being honest, a tad disappointing. Don't get me wrong, he's the best Seaspray Hasbro's done (in a Sunbow style), and short a hypothetical but likely toonier repaint probably the one you want on your shelf. But I can't shake the feeling that they tried to get a little too creative with the engineering while not leaving themselves enough time to polish it. If they would have simplified a few things, refined a few other things, and made a way to store the gun under the feet, they would have been flirting with greatness here. As it is, you'll have to make due with "pretty good."

I really don't know why people are so down on it. I liked it better than Fantastic Four or Superman when it comes to movies I've seen this year.

Just got back from seeing it. I liked it. The plot, while not amazing, was better than expected, the visuals were cool (see it in 3D if you can), and the soundtrack was cool.

Got some repaints for you. First up, we're actually finishing off the final 2025 wave of Age of the Primes with Flatline. Flatline's something of an interesting character... he was actually created for the IDW Bayverse tie-in comics. He was originally conceived as something of a mad scientist, the guy who created Devastator's gestalt from the Constructicons, but that scene never made it into the comics. He later turned up experimenting on Arcee, as an attempt to explain how she went from the Deluxe-class toy from the original movie line to the Arcee sisters that appeared in Revenge of the Fallen. I guess the IDW team liked their original character enough that he made it into the main G1-esque IDW line, where he was drawn as a potential repaint/retool of Thrilling 30 Trailcutter. His character was a bit more fleshed out; he joined the Decepticons because he believed in Megatron's vision, but as a medic he'd treat anyone regardless of their badge. Here, he's obviously not a retool of Trailbreaker, but rather Armada Red Alert. Broadly, I think it works. T30 Trailcutter had the front of his alt mode as his chest, rather than folded all the way down like the G1 or Earthrise version, and the Red Alert mold still has wheels on the sides of the lower legs. The only things they really had to change were the head (of course), and giving him an actual left hand. On that note, Flatline comes with the same trio of left hand attachments, and he new hand does pop off and you can use those accessories just like you could on Red Alert. They can still store in the fenders on his legs and under his backpack, like Red Alert. However, Hasbro wants you to use the little holes on them to plug them into tiny pegs on his roof, just above the windshield. This is so they can mimic the gun barrels seen on Flatline's back in IDW (which themselves mimicked the spikes on the Bayverse design). I was kind of surprised (but not also not) to find that this is a feature that was always built into the mold, and Red Alert can do it too. The instructions suggest that the weapons should stay on his roof for vehicle mode... perhaps a legacy of his design as a Trailcutter retool? After all, that toy had a pair of guns permanently affixed to his roof. But personally, I think I'm good tucking them away for a cleaner alt mode. Speaking of tucking things away, you had to remove Red Alerts gun-hand to transform him, but I'm happy to say that Flatline's hand can stay attached. So, yeah, I though Red Alert was a pretty decent toy originally. But if you skipped him because you're not into Armada a pseudo-G1 Decepticon medic is a good excuse to take another look at this mold. I also got the latest Target 4-pack in. The 4-pack opens with Ultra Magnus, who's a straight repaint of AotP Deluxe Optimus. Same accessories and everything. And, I get it, as white Optimus repaints go this one probably makes the most sense, since the Optimus use of the mold was mean to mimic his G1 toy, and the G1 Magnus toy had a white Optimus repaint at it's core. Frankly, if DNA does an upgrade trailer that can go with this figure to transform him into a full-on Ultra Magnus I'd consider using this guy on my main movie shelf instead of SS86 Magnus, but as it stands, he's just ok. See, as Optimus toys goes, this one was one of my least-favorite modern molds. Not that it's a bad toy, it's just that the G1 toy aesthetic doesn't really mesh so well with the rest of Siege/Earthrise/Kingdom/Legacy/Age of the Primes, and as a Deluxe he doesn't really scale all that well, either. What I really wanted was the guy on the far right, but to get that I had to go 3P. Speaking of least-favorite modern Optimus toys, they have Magnus fighting Nemesis Prime. Which is a good choice! Except it's Animated Nemesis Prime, and as I've said many times before, as much as I loved the cartoon I'm not a fan of the designs as three-dimensional toys. Objectively, it's a pretty neat mold for the Animated design, but subjectively, Animated clashes so hard with with other G1/Armada/IDW/Cybertron/etc stuff in the post-Siege mainline. Heck, even the Prime stuff fits better )though you could make the argument that's because those figures have been much more G1-ified than Prowl's chin reduction). Besides, Legacy already gave us an evil repaint of Animated Optimus... it was Animated Motormaster. So, yeah, I'm not opposed to Nemesis Prime appearing in this set, I just wish they'd have used a different Optimus toy. Heck, I'd have been happier if they included a second repaint of the Legacy Deluxe, though the SS Devastation version would have worked, too. I'll at least say that Hasbro put some love into this Nemesis, though. In addition to his new masked face, you'll note that Hasbro painted the little squares on his feet, and made his fingers a different color than the backs of his hands... things that should have been done on Animated Optimus in the first place. They also painted his rims and marker lights, which they couldn't be bothered to do for the original release. I guess, if you're down with the Animated aesthetic and you're into Nemesis Prime repaints, the figure's honestly a pretty decent toy. But I personally wouldn't have bought this set over him. I would, however, have considered buying the set for Bumper. It's about time he got an official toy! But Bumper is sort of a weird character... the G1 toy was released in super limited quantities on Cliffjumper cards in 1984. The yellow robot in Cliffjumper packaging led to the unofficial designation "Bumblejumper," despite the actual toy being neither the Porsche 944 or the Volkswagen Type-1. Rather, this was the Diaclone mini-car based on the Mazda Familia 1500 XG. "Bumblejumper" was eventually shortened to "Bumper," which become his canonical name when he was finally acknowledged as his own character in the Dreamwave comics. Retooling Bumper from Bumblebee makes sense, then, as all three used the same basic engineering as G1 toys. That said, he's a bit low effort, as he's really SS86 Bumblebee with slightly brighter yellows, slightly blacker blacks, and a new head. In an ideal world they'd have remolded his feet to be more blocky, like the Familia, instead of (sloppily) painting over the headlights. Likewise, for robot mode, I wish they replaced the yellow pelvis and forearms with black. Instead, all of the effort in this set really went into Horri-Bull. Horri-Bull, who finally completes the Decepticon Headmaster Juniors, is an extensive retool of Titans Return Skullcruncher. They share the same gray gun, biceps, elbows, thighs, and knees, but that's really it. He's sporting a new torso, new pelvis, new hips, new shoulders, new hands, new forearms, new beast claws on his forearms, new lower legs, a new blue gun, and new lower legs. The results work surprisingly well. Where Skullcruncher was a floppy mess that could barely stand, Horri-Bull's joints are sturdy, and he's even got heels with ankle pivots to keep his feet firmly planted. The Head/Titanmaster is a completely different mold than the one from Titans Return. The sort of helmeted look is, to my mind, more evocative of his Japanese Bullhorn counterpart. The body is the same as Skullcruncher's, but with a different head and a different face on his back. Transformation is basically the same as Skullcruncher, but with the added step of folding his feet out and tabbing them into the sides of the torso. And, like robot mode, it works pretty well. His rear legs are blue instead of gray, and his back is a little less humped, but he's got the same basic shape and oddly-spined design of the G1 toy, with a beast face that has more cow-like proportions than the G1 toy, but the same sort of sharp teeth. Because the beast head is actually just pegged on, it can swivel (which, in this position, works like a head tilt) and his jaws can open. Like the G1 toy, there's a hatch on his back for the Head/Titanmaster to ride in. And the blue gun still plugs into his butt to form the beast tail, but there's an additional 5mm port under the barrels that lets you stow the gray gun back there too. For me, Horri-Bull is the highlight of the set. As I said, he completes the Decepticon Headmaster Juniors which started trickling out with Fangry all the way back in 2021. The extensive retooling makes him (and Squeezeplay before him) much better figures than Fangry, though. Like I said, Horri-Bull is really the main reason to buy this set. It's hard to justify an entire set that retails for nearly $100 for just one Deluxe, though (which, you know, could have been a little cheaper if they'd used a Deluxe mold for Nemesis instead of the Voyager Animated one, just saying). For me, I'm always down for a white Optimus repaint, and Bumper provides some much-needed (if lazy) love to an often overlooked G1 character. Those three combined are enough to sell me on this set. Nemesis Prime, a objectively good toy that I subjectively don't like, will be on his way to a new home shortly.