mikeszekely

Yeah, while I liked the more cinematic feel and some of the stuff they added to part 1, in a lot of ways I felt like the pacing was just way off, like they were really trying too hard to stretch the handful of opening hours in the original into a 60 hour game. I also didn't really care for how they turned the turn-based party combat of the original into an RPG-lite button masher... but then again, I've always preferred the NES/SNES Final Fantasy games to the PSone/PS2 games, and I haven't even bothered to play one of the numbered FF games after X.

Here's hoping that Indy and Avowed are the kind of hit Xbox exclusives that Starfield wasn't.

I just heard from a reliable source that the following are planned for this year. In fan channel (that is, Pulse, BBTS, Entertainment Earth, etc, but not Amazon, Target, or Walmart), a three pack of Warpath, Cosmos, and (one assumes) Gears as Treads, Pathfinder, and Small Foot. In Walmart, Retro Optimus Prime and Retro Bombshell with Ramhorn. I think these are in that weird Walmart line where they're reissuing G1 toys but with 86 movie decoes. Unlike the last Walmart Optimus reissue this one will have a trailer. Walmart will also have their Starseekers sub line in Legacy, and I'm being told that Roadpig in that line will be a repaint of Junkion Crashbar. Target will have Optimus Prime with Bullseye (the Target dog). I'm being told that the cab is the Laser Optimus mold, the trailer is the Earthrise trailer, and Bullseye is a retool of Micromaster Ravage. Amazon's exclusive line for the year will be the "Mayhem Attack Squad," which kind of makes sense because that's the Decepticon counterpart to the Wreckers, and the Wreckers was Amazon's 2022 line. There will be a total seven figures spread across three packs. I don't know what the other five figures/two packs are, but the first one will be Voyager Bludgeon and Deluxe Ruckus. One assumes that's a repaint of Evolution Bludgeon and, if I had to guess, Beachcomber. Last but not least, I'm being told that Legacy United Leader Soundwave (wave 4, October) will in fact be a repaint of Netflix Soundwave.

Yes, I was definitely admiring her... assets.

And we're closing out on Reactivate with a look at Bumblebee's pack-in pal, Starscream. Bumblebee had a little battle damage, but this is clearly a Starscream who's been through some stuff. One wing is covered in black, one shoulder pad and one piece of hip armor are black, and his forearm and thigh on that side are streaked with black. What's more, above the intake on his chest on that side the molding is actually different, as if a chunk of armor were missing, and inside that "hole" they put more black. Perhaps when the game comes out, if ever, there'll be a story reason for all that damage, but in the meantime it's just kind of frustrating, because aside from the battle damage I think this is one of the best Starscream figures in recent memory. It's got all the hallmarks of Starscream's design; blue forearms, blue on the shins, blue feet. Red and white everywhere else. A cockpit down the middle of his torso, with intake fans for pecs. Pylons framing his head, and wings that slope down toward his butt. But comparing Reactivate Starscream to G1 Starscream is a bit like comparing one of Kawamori's more recent variable fighters to the VF-1- you can see the influences of the latter on the former, but the former is more rounded and "modern." Overall, it's a pretty clean design, too. There's some panels that are folded into the wings, but nothing else for a backpack. My only real complaint (aside from the battle damage) might be the bit of waffling and lack of paint on the back side of his wings. Oh, and did you notice that this Starscream has blue eyes? That's a rariety for Starscream; aside from Hasbro's Shattered Glass stuff the only other Starscream I can think of with blue eyes is Earthspark, where he formed a bit of a bond with the Terran Transformer Hashtag and later aided in the fight against Mandroid... basically a hero. As I understand it, the plot of the game involves and alien race known as the Legion that swiftly conquered Earth, and the survivors (human and Transformer) are building some kind of resistance. So maybe this Starscream is a good guy? I'm into the story potential there. And now we reference the game art, and... yeah, aside from the battle damage it looks like Hasbro pretty much nailed this one. I mean, I could nitpick little bits of gunmetal in the art that aren't painted on the toy, on both sides of the forearms, backs of his thighs, on the sides of his legs, or his ankles, but official toys are often missing small details like that, and the toy did actually paint the vents on the pylons, his knees, the pec intakes, and the silver panels under them. And even his back side is pretty accurate, being mostly black (although a bit squarish), the stabs behind his wings (though the lack of paint is killing me), and even the engines in his calves. Starcream comes with two arm-mounted guns. Null-rays? Stand-ins for them, anyway. They have some gunmetal paint on the barrel, which I enjoy, and the barrels are molded to be the same weapon, but the blue parts are totally different for some reason. Starscream's head is on a ball joint that can look up a little, nothing down, minimal sideways tilt. Shoulders rotate, no issue, but the shoulder pads limit him to about 75 degrees laterally. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend a little over 90 degrees. His wrists don't swivel, but in a rare win for Starscream designs he does actually have a waist swivel. His hips can go a little under 90 degrees backward and laterally due to his wings and hip armor, respectively, but they move forward far beyond 90 degrees, until his knee pads start banging into his chest. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. He a little upward foot tilt and a good amount down, and his ankles pivot about 45 degrees. Starscream's weapons use 5mm pegs to plug into ports on his forearms. To me, guns on his arms is just a part of Starscream's design, but if you really want to store them you can plug them into ports on his wings, on his back side. He doesn't have any other 5mm ports, not even under his feet. Aside from the fact that you have to remove the guns from his arms, Starscream's transformation is fairly tidy and not too complex, with a few neat parts. His backpack does unfold to make most of the top of the jet. His chest pulls out and opens up, folding his head inside and pulling the tip of the nose from inside his torso, to form the cockpit. His shoulders sag down, but then his chest intakes fold back to form the actual intakes on the jet, automorphing his canards out in the process. The front of his legs hinge up to his chest, Combiner-wars style, but the back of his leg stays in place, forming engine nacelles and his horizontal stabilizers. Then it's simply a matter of massing the top of the plane formed by the backpack down into place so that tabs on the backs of the shins and the nacelles lock in. The guns plug into the undersides of the wings. The only thing that's kind of disappointing is that all you do for his arms his fold his hands in and turn them so that the 5mm ports on them grab onto tabs under his wings. And yeah, I like this jet mode. As with the robot mode, it hearkens back to his G1 jet mode, but with design elements that make it both legally-distinct from an F-15 but also seem more modern, like the canards and the angled vertical stabilizers. I like how the back of the jet looks like the back of a jet, not robot feet playing as exhaust nozzles. It's not perfect, though. His robot shins just sit on the belly; he doesn't even have landing gear, he just rests on his ankle armor and knee pads. And then there's the arms just laying along side him. I could almost ignore them, just pretend that they're part of the fuselage, except his shoulder pads stick out beyond the leading edge of his wings. And hey, his jet mode is actually pretty accurate, too! All that black on the back of the fuselage? Accurate. Black around the cockpit? Accurate! That splash of blue on the spine? Accurate! The downward slope on the vents? Accurate! The game's art even has black on one wing, although it's the opposite wing of the toy. If you look closely, you'll see that the wings of the toy have slightly different molded details, and those details match with the art. Really he just needs a bit more black on the nose and a some blue spots, and a little more red on the horizontal stabilizers. Heck, the game art even has his guns under the wings... ...which is, as I noted, where they go in alt mode. It's funny, Hasbro tends to push Bumblebee as their big, kid-friendly moneymaker, but Starscream is unquestioningly the star of this set. The battle damage is a bit of a shame, but I'd honestly recommend picking up this set just for him anyway. He's right up there with Optimus, overall one of my favorite Starscream figures, while Bumblebee is probably the worst of the four. And that's not to say that Bumblebee is bad! What I'm really saying here is that all four Reactivate figures are pretty good, especially together. These are four game-based toys are what the Gamer Edition figures should have been, because the worst of these is arguably better than the best Gamer Edition toy. Maybe the game, which is basically starting over on a new engine after being in development for six years already, never actually comes out. These are still good figures, well worth owning, and I actually hope they consider doing some more. I mean, there's concept art for Megatron. Who wouldn't want a toy of that? And at some point in 2018 they had at least some concepts for Slipstream, Hot Rod, Sunstreaker, Ironhide, and Windblade, too, though you can see from Starscream and Soundwave that these were likely earlier designs. Still, I'd buy a pack with a Voyager-ish Megatron and a tall Deluxe Hot Rod or Ironhide.

It's my understanding that the Retro Shooters work sort of like Wiimotes. They come with IR sensors that you stick at the corners of your display. The nice thing is that you can buy them with a "custom console" (basically an Android box with some ports dedicated for the Retro Shooters), and they preloaded it with some ROMS like House of the Dead 2, Confidential Mission, Time Crisis, Point Blank, Duck Hunt, Battle Clash, Metal Combat, etc (but no Virtua Cop?), so it's pretty plug-n-play. I'll have to dig into it a little more. Sounds like they'd be less accurate than a Sinden, but it looks like you can get 2 guns with recoil, two foot pedals, 4 IR receivers, and the console for less than $250 right now (or with a pair of NES-style controllers and a pair of PlayStation-style controllers for $30 more), and a little over $30 extra to add a hub to connect to your PC. Meanwhile, a pair of Sinden guns with recoil are $300 and you gotta supply your own PC.

Like me, you might have been wondering what differences, if any, the guys that aren't Hound might have from their original Earthrise/SS86 releases. One leaker with a spotty track record was saying they'd have Siege-style battle damage. Another was saying that they wouldn't have clear plastic, they'd have painted windows and a cartoonier deco. I didn't mention either here because I wanted to hear from a more reliable source. But... this is apparently the Trailbreaker that's going in the set, and sure enough he's got painted blue windows and a more faded gray that's more like the MP than the Earthrise black. Based on that, I guess I'd expect blue painted windows on the other three, which is good for people whose Jazz cracked. I expect it'll also mean no red on Wheeljack's feet, better yellow matching on Sunstreaker, and more black on Sunstreaker's shoulders and shins. Speaking of Sunstreaker, remember when he was in the Bumblebee movie? Me neither, because he wasn't. That didn't stop Hasbro from making a Studio Series toy, though, due in the spring wave (along with 86 Swoop).

If there's one character besides Optimus Prime that Hasbro can bank on, it's Bumblebee. So today we'll look at the "star" of the second Reactivate pack. Bumblebee tends to run small, even when he's a Deluxe, but Reactivate Bee is one of the taller Bumblebees in my collection. He's basically the same height as Reactivate Soundwave, in that gray area between tall Deluxe and short Voyager. I'm not sure how I feel about his robot mode. While door wings have become a fairly common feature on Bumblebee in the post-Bayverse world, the hood chest definitely recalls the live-action movies and Prime more than his evergreen Cyberverse design. But there's a certain roundness to him that hearkens back to G1. There's something about his head, too, that's more than simply G1 with a chin strap. It's almost like if G1 Bumblebee "grew up." He's a bit taller and stronger, a bit more mature. I have to point out here that after the fairly normal, symmetric Optimus and Soundwave that Bumblebee is starting the trend of asymmetric black "battle damage." It's subtle on Bee. One of his door wings has black on it, one doesn't. One of his forearms has a little black around his wrist, the other has a line going up to his elbow. One of his shins is uniformly black, one has some yellow poking through at the knee. That's about it. Compared to a lot of recent figures Bee's not too gappy, what wit the wheels in his calves, but there are some gaps in his backpack. The undersides of his forearms are also pretty hollow, though there's actually a reason for it. My favorite feature, though, are his heel spurs. I'm not sure how clear it is from the photos, but they're molded in the shape of Animated Bumblebee's stingers. It's a cute little Easter egg. Compared to Prime and Soundwave, Bee's a bit further from the game model. His head's ok, though it could use a bit more black. I don't really have an issue with his thighs, abs, pelvis, and biceps. His shoulders are in the ballpark, but the tips of his shoulder pads stick out farther than on the game model, and the lights are buried in the pads instead of sticking up. Likewise, his forearms are close, but they have points near the elbow that the game model doesn't. His shins aren't quite as close, though if I squint I guess I can imagine the black paint on his shins as the gray recessed areas on the animation, and simply ignore that the wheels on the toy are visible where they seem to be enclosed in the game. The game model clearly has smaller, more "normal" feet, though, lacking the mechanical detail and stinger heels the toy has. But the biggest difference is in the chest. As noted, on the toy it's definitely the front of his alt mode, with the black across the bottom coming from his bumper. If you look at the game's model the colors seem right, but a closer look shows that the chest isn't his hood and the black band isn't his bumper. In the game, his chest is his roof, and the black band is the armor over his windshield. That makes the game's design closer to Bee's evergreen design than the toy. In any case, Bumblebee comes with these two machine pistols. They remind me of a Cybertronian stockless Skorpion machine pistol, with 5mm port handles at the back and magazines at the front. Bee's head is on a ball joint that swivels and can look up nearly 90 degrees, but has limited downward tilt and nothing to the side. His shoulders rotate and can move laterally 90 degrees. His elbows are ball joints that bend 90 degrees and make up for his lack of dedicated bicep swivels. Bee lacks wrist or waist swivels. His hips are ball joints, and while they can do 90 degrees laterally his limited by his pelvis and backpack to only about 60 degrees forward and backward. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. His ankles are more ball joints, with limited up/down tilt but 60-ish degrees of pivot plus the ability to swivel. Bee can hold his pistols in his hands, or the tabs on the bottom of the handles allow them to be plugged into slots next to his shoulders. The only other storage is the hollows on the backs of his forearms. You can plug the tabs on the handles into his forearms, with the barrels pointing up toward his elbows. Looks kind of awkward, if you ask me, but it's specifically called out in his instructions, and it'll have another use later. Bee's chest is his hood, Bee's rear windows and spoiler are his back, and his roof and side windows are kind of scrunched in between, so the first step in transforming Bee is to pull his chest away, then start stretching the car back out. His pelvis swings up and under and his legs scrunch up, with the wheels on the sides unfurling and wheels in his calves folding out to take their place as the rear wheels. With his legs in place you twist and shove his arms under the hood, shut the door wings, then bring the unfurled wheels up tot the front. When I first saw this design my thought was, "so Bumblebee's a dune buggy now?" Looking at him more closely, I don't think he actually is a dune buggy. There's a jacked engine and a new spoiler, big tires on a lifted suspension, a roll cage over the cabin, armor on the bumper and grill, and some extra lights, but underneath it all I can sort of see something like a non-licensed, legally-distinct Beetle under it all. It's likely in keeping with Prime's own armored-up truck mode and the game's theme of humans and Transformers teaming up to deal with an alien invasion of Earth. We can't see the back, though there doesn't seem to be a spoiler poking out back there, but from this angle I think Bee's looking fairly accurate in alt mode. The extra armor matches, along with the lights, tires, and suspension. The toy's got the hood scoop. The differences mostly seem to be exactly where and how the black paint is applied, but "pretty close" might simply be "close enough" for Hasbro. The only real difference I'm focusing on is the front of the hood, between the scoop and the bumper armor. It's smooth on the car in the game, but pitted with mechanical details and a raised Autobot insignia. Curiously, this detail is present on his chest in bot mode, but in hindsight his chest is smooth in the game, too, so it's a weird detail on the toy. Bee can use the tabs on his guns to plug into slots that are on his hood if you want to arm up his car mode. They're designed, though, to stay in the backs of his forearms when his arms are tucked in for transformation, storing out of sight under the car. Ultimately, I don't really have an issue with Bumblebee's design, or even how the toy differs from the game model. His articulation is a bit worse than Prime or Soundwave, but even that's not my real issue. My real issue is that something seems to have been lost between the engineers designing the figure and the actual manufacturing. I mean, it's no problem to get the top of the car transformed. His feet fold in and his legs scrunch up smoothly enough, with the rear wheels tabbing to the sides of the spoiler. But they don't lock into place in any other way, and you start to look at him and see one foot sitting just a bit angled while the other is flat, and one shin seems turned inward ever so slightly. You stuff his arms into place and they seem like they fit but they don't secure into place in any way, and you can't help but noticed that his shoulders aren't quite aligned the same way and one elbow is sticking up a bit compared to the other. You close the door wings, but both sides keep popping out. Maybe they'll stay in place when you tab in the front fenders. Nope! Not only are the doors not staying tabbed in, but the fenders don't want to, either. You kind of force them to stay put by closing the bumper on them, but it only helps a little. Then you noticed little tabs on his arms. Do they go in somewhere? The instructions don't indicate that, but you wiggle his arms and eventually manage to wedge the tabs into hollows that may or may not be for those tabs in the black armatures that the front fenders are connected to. Not only did it not help, it seems to have made it worse as the doors aren't just popping out, they're sticking out even further. I can't help but think that all it'd have taken to have fixed this is for there to have been definite slots and tabs for securing the legs and arms properly in place. I'm not sure what ultimately happened here. I don't think Bumblebee is a bad figure; certainly, he's better than his Gamer Edition counterpart, or several of the myriad live-action Studio Series figures. But he's lacking a little in articulation, and his engineering seems less polished than Prime or Soundwave, as if some bean counter at Hasbro was like, "it's good enough, who cares, it's Bumblebee so kids will buy it anyway." On his own, I think he's something Bumblebee fans might appreciate, or something that'd be cool to have representing some kind of media. But with no game due to developing more or less starting over on a different engine (which, in my experience, doesn't bode well for the game ever being released), I'm not sure Bumblebee can stand alone as a one-off figure.

Seems I was given the wrong info. There's no stream, and nothing being revealed today. The info that we thought was going to be for a Transformers Tuesday stream was really just a roundabout way of saying that Tidal Wave preorders went up at 1:00pm EST/10:00am Pacific. Sorry. But yeah... your can preorder Tidal Wave on Pulse now, if you want.

Might as well get this going before Hasbro does their thing. Time to look at Optimus' packed-in partner, Reactivate Soundwave. Soundwave is the smaller of the two, and there's temptation to simply say he's a Deluxe and Prime's a Voyager. But as I noted yesterday, Prime was a fairly large, fairly solid Voyager, perhaps not quite pushing into Leader territory but certainly impressing me more than say, Legacy United Animated Prime or Thundertron. I think that applies to Soundwave, too. Yes, he's shorter than some proper Voyager Soundwave's like Studio Series Bumblebee Soundwave or the retooled-Siege Netflix Soundwave, but not by as much as you might expect. He's a good head taller than your average Deluxe carbot, and without being overly-simplistic like previous large-Deluxes like Siege Ironhide or SS86 Perceptor. Reactivate Soundwave lacks the chonk of Bumblebee Soundwave or the boxiness of G1 Soundwave, but I'm happy to say that in-hand his leaner build still seems proportional. Early photos looked kind of stretched out, and I'm starting to think that they were literally stretched vertically. As with Prime, he's got his share of "we're not making an '80s cartoon on a budget so lets add some greebly details!", but also like Prime he's very recognizably Soundwave with a head shaped like the Decepticon badge, shoulder cannon, a flat chest rimmed in gold, and even some molded and painted details on his shoulders and pelvis that hearken back to his G1 design. Also like Prime, Soundwave feels pretty solid in hand, with wheels helping to fill in his calves, although there's some waffling on the insides of his arms and thighs if you know to look for it. Soundwave's rear is dominated by a fairly substantial backpack, but I don't hate it. Given Soundwave's traditional role I can imagine him carrying radio and communication gear in it, kind of like a WWII soldier with SRC-300 backpacks. Ultimately, I think my only real gripe with Soundwave is the use of black plastic on parts that aren't traditionally black, like his biceps, hands, thighs, and feet. So, how accurate is Soundwave to the game's concept art? Not too shabby. Turns out that some of the black, like his fingers, biceps, parts of his torso, and shins, are colored that way in the game, and Hasbro even took the time to paint some (but not all) of the red accents, and it looks like the wheels in the calves is also game-accurate. The game art does make me wish Hasbro had used a brighter blue plastic, though, as it'd help differentiate the black and blue parts. Not so much backpack here, though, and I can't help but notice that his thighs and feet are supposed to be silver. Of course Hasbro pinned those parts, so repainting them yourself won't be an easy fix. Soundwave's accessories are his shoulder cannon and his signature rifle. The rifle looks fine. The shoulder cannon has plenty of molded detail, but it's lacking the black and red accents seen in the game art. Soundwave's head is on a ball joint for swiveling and looking up a good bit, but he's got fairly limited downward and sideways tilts. His shoulders are ball joints, not my favorite thing in the word but they do swivel and move laterally slightly more than 90 degrees. His biceps swivel, his elbows bend a hair over 90 degrees, and his wrists swivel. The presence of his backpack in no way hampers his waist swivel, and if you untab his waist you can bend his back a bit. He can barely move his hips backward at all, and his lateral movement falls a little short of 90 degrees, but he makes up for it by being able to kick forward something like 140 degrees, enough that he can get his foot higher than his head. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend probably about 120 degrees. Like Prime, his feet lack any up/down tilt, but he's got about 45 degrees of ankle pivot. Soundwave's rifle can plug into either fist. His shoulder cannon plugs into a dedicated 5mm port near his head, and is hinged so you can aim it down or tilt it up a bit. The peg on the cannon is 5mm, so technically he can hold it in his fists, and technically his rifle can plug into his shoulder cannon port (though, lacking a hinge of it's own, would be permanently aimed 30 degrees down). While there is a 5mm port under each foot for effects parts (not included), the only other port on him is on the corner of his backpack. This does at least give him a place to store his rifle when he's not carrying it. Alas, his chest does NOT open. I think, given a bigger budget, it theoretically could have, but I can see how it'd have taken engineering that's probably outside the scope of this toy's budget. You could probably guess from the backpack, but Soundave's a bit of a shell former. His chest does form the hood of his alt mode, with the windshield double-hinging from behind it, but the backpack makes up the entire roof, rear, and a good chunk of the sides. His arms tuck under the backpack shell, and the flaps they're on fill in the doors. The front wheels and fenders fold out of his torso, and his legs by spin 180 and you tab them together before opening the flaps on the side of his legs, then folding the tires of his his calves. Then it's just a matter of using the hinges in his torso to smush his legs up and fiddling with the fenders and leg flaps so that everything lines up properly. Cyberverse fans should be pretty familiar with Soundwave's evergreen-inspired truck mode. He's even got the same chest-hood, flared fenders, and carries his shoulder cannon on the roof the same as Cyberverse Soundwave. Reactivate Soundwave is a bit less cartoony than the evergreen design, though. G1 purists like myself are always going to want a Soundwave that turns into a tape deck, but honestly I do think this mode works for a more modern take. And, yeah, it's looking pretty good against the concept art. The tow hitch on the toy could be more obvious, and I wish they'd painted that bit of blue on the rear fenders that came from the leg flap so that it matched the entire fender. Although you can't really see the rear in the concept art, I think paint on the bumper and taillights might have been nice, too. My only other note would be that the antenna is missing all the blue and silver seen in the concept art. Budgets, man. Soundwave rolls without issue, as long as his legs are packed in tight enough and the front fenders are aligned properly. The 5mm peg hole allows the cannon to swivel, and it's still go the hinges for aiming. His rifle can plug into the same 5mm port on his backpack that it did in bot mode, which is now on the rear behind the antenna. The instructions have it laying across the back, but again it's a 5mm port so you can swivel it. It's better aiming behind him, though, as the antenna gets in the way of it aiming forward. Soundwave was a pleasant surprise for me. Yeah, Optimus is the star of the pack, and he's good in a you-figured-he-would-be way. But my initial reaction to the reveals of these packs was that I'd be buying for Optimus and kind of stuck with Soundwave. In hand, though, he's much better than I expected and one of my favorite Soundwave figures so far, similar to the Cyberverse Deluxe but better IMHO across the board. If he were sold by himself as a Deluxe-class toy I'd recommend him on his own, and the fact that he comes with such a great Optimus toy makes buying a pack that costs as much as a Deluxe and Voyager combined an easy pill to swallow. Do yourself a favor and pick this pair up.

10:00am Pacific. So just after lunch for me.

Legacy United Gears. Considering that I have very few Transformers left on preorder, we already know what the wave 2 figures are going to be, and now images are starting to leak, I'm guessing wave 2 will be officially announced at tomorrow's Transformers Tuesday livestream.

Monday to Friday it is (although I hope to get it done earlier starting tomorrow). And we're opening with a brand new line, one based on the almost-certainly-not-releasing-this-year new video game, Transformers: Reactivate. And although they're being sold in two-packs, I want to give each figure a good look on its own, so one at a time, starting with Optimus Prime. The packaging lacks any of the usual "class" info, as the figures aren't being sold separately, but standing a little taller than Earthrise or any of the Studio Series options, Reactivate Prime is comfortably Voyager-sized. He's not simply half a head taller, either. There's a bulk to him. Aesthetically, you have all the hallmark G1-inspired detail (that got carried over into the Cyberverse evergreen design); primarily red on the top, blue on the bottom and head. Two antenna ears, forehead crest, and mouth plate. Truck windows for a chest, truck grill for abs. Smokestacks on the shoulders and vents on the shins. That said, you have to acknowledge the movie influences, too. Every surface, including his mask, has to have extra greebles. He's also got silver/gray hands instead of my preferred blue. Wheels and, happily, something that could be fuel tanks are visible on the sides of his legs. Actually hollow spaces are minimized; there's some if you know where to look, like the insides of his biceps, but flaps cover his calves and his thighs are totally filled in. He's got a bit of a backpack, with some neat little booster things. It'd be nice if those cages under them could have gone somewhere. I did dig for game art to compare with. The designers did a pretty good job! The details and colors are pretty accurate; the boosters on his back are even in the game. It'd be nice if his backpack was a little cleaner, with more red instead of unpaintable gray (on a part that actually could have been red plastic, no less), and maybe a few more details like this ankle guards could have some silver paint. He's also missing some panels that partially cover the wheels on the sides of his legs. These are Prime's accessories in the set; a rifle that is easily the best G1 cartoon-accurate rifle Hasbro has done for a Voyager-scale figure, but with a weirdly short handle, an energon axe, and the Matrix of Leadership. Prime's head is on a ball joint, and he can look up and down, tilt his head sideways, and turn his head. His shoulders rotate and move laterally 90 degrees. His biceps and wrists swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. His waist swivel gets caught up on those cages on his backpack, but you'll get a good 45 in either direction before you hit that point. His hips go 90 degrees sideways, a little more than that forward, and a little less than that backward. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend over 90 degrees. No up/down tilt on his feet, but his ankles pivot over 90 degrees. Prime's axe has a hollow base with a 5mm port; simply plug it into either fist, then orient that fist however you want the axe to go. Likewise, Prime holds his rifle by plugging the handle into his fists, but as I noted it's kind of short, and his grip is a bit more tenuous than I'd like. The Matrix is pretty much the old Earthrise mold we've seen time and again. Prime's chest windows open up, you plug the Matrix in place, and then close him back up. The boosters on Prime's backpack have 5mm ports that allow you to store his rifle and axe. Since he's not a mainline WfC/Legacy toy, he doesn't have a ton of other ports, but there is one on the side of each leg and one under each of his feet. Prime's transformation isn't complicated. It actually reminds me a little of an old friend, Classics Optimus Prime. Like that figure, you have to unfold panels from his forearms to make up a portion of the sides of the cab, and part of the backpack comes up and over to form the roof. Other elements, like lifting the chest and unfolding the truck's actual grill from inside is more like Earthrise Prime. All-in-all, it's not difficult and will make sense the first time you do it, but getting all the panels of the cab to line up just right can be mildly annoying. It's an interesting truck mode. The red cab over engine design with a pair of smokestacks on the back is instantly recognizable as Optimus Prime to the G1 crowd, but with a massive, scratched-up bumper, shuttered (but unpainted) side windows,, and extra armor tacked on. This is a Prime that's seen some things. The leg transformation is a bit different than you usually get, which results in his feet sitting like a bump behind the cab and his knees making the rear of the truck. There's no hitch, though, nor even a port, so he cannot pull any of the various trailers that have released with Primes over the last few years. The truck mode is pretty decently accurate, right down to the tops of his shins and knees being visible on the back of the truck. My biggest complaints about his alt mode is that there's details that are molded onto the figure, like the shutters on the side windows and the vents on the roof, that are correct but lost in the plastic due to not being painted. Prime's weapons are stored in alt mode by plugging them into the 5mm ports on the sides of his legs, now near the back of the truck. While Prime's was probably the best of them, the Gamer Edition figures have been some of the worst figures under the Studio Series banner. And while the Reactivate figures aren't part of the Studio Series brand, I can't help but think of the Gamer Edition figures as figures for a new game are coming out. A fear that's been on the back of my mind since the Reactivate packs were announced was that they might be as bad as the GE stuff. Fortunately, they're not. Reactivate Prime doesn't reinvent the wheel, but he's a very sold, adequately-articulated figure (that doesn't reuse Siege Prime's legs again). That might not necessarily make for the most exciting Optimus figure, but it does make for a very good one. One that, I wonder, might share some engineering with the supposed Studio Series 86 Optimus? Regardless, Prime is a toy I'd strongly recommend if they sold him on his own. But maybe you want to tune in tomorrow to see how the other half of his two-pack fares?

Quick question, how many of you guys read new posts here whenever they happen to be, vs how many of you guys read at school/work/whatever and don't really check-in on weekends? I have some content I'm working on, and I debating on whether to start tomorrow and run through the weekend or just post Monday-to-Friday next week.

I'm not super into Beast Wars; when it aired I was definitely in the "Trukk not Munky" crowd and refused to watch it, and when I finally watched it as an adult I thought the writing was pretty great but I still wasn't a fan of robots that turn into organic animals. That said, I'd gained enough appreciation for it that I didn't really mind when Beast Wars characters started popping up in Kingdom, and I figured I'd at the very least want the "core" cast. To me, that meant Optimus, Rattrap, Rhinox, Cheetor, and Dinobot for the Maximals (and Airazor and Tigatron being the runners up), and for the Predacons that meant Megatron, Terrorsaur, Tarantulas, Waspinator, Scorponok, and Blackarachnia (with Inferno being the runner up). And you know, between Kingdom and Legacy we'd pretty much gotten all of those, but with a big ol' asterisk on that word "all." And that's because every one of those characters had a mainline release you could buy anywhere except one... Terrorsaur was an Amazon exclusive. If you missed getting him on Amazon you could get the toy deco at Target, and much later you could try importing the Takara Beast Wars Vs pack with a slightly tweaked deco and an extra copy of Rattrap. Even if you did get a copy of Terrorsaur, it's kind of obvious he's a compromise. Despite his prominence in the show, he's the only one of the "main" cast not to get an original mold. Instead, he was heavily retooled from Airazor. I mean, kudos to Hasbro for how heavily that retool was; he was passably show-accurate at a glance, after all, but I think it did create two main problems. The first is that his wings point down, like Airazor's, when in the show they point up. The second is that he's just too small. I'm not aware of any official scale chart for Beast Wars, but some DVD extras suggested he was originally supposed to be nearly as tall as Megatron, roughly the same as Dinobot. An unofficial scale chart was put together by fans who seemed to research the matter fairly thoroughly. They pegged Terrorsaur as chest-high to Megatron, roughly the same size as Rhinox, a little taller than Primal, a little shorter than Inferno and Dinobot, and significantly taller than Tarantulas, Waspinator, or Scorponok. Well, would you rather have a Terrorsaur that's too small, or that's a little too big? That one on the top is the Golden Disk Terrorsaur with Legacy Tarantulas & Inferno and Kingdom Megatron. And the second one? The packaging isn't exactly clear, but I believe he's called Overwatch, a modified KO from a brand (or label) called The Beast Alliance. In terms of the sculpt of the figure not much has really changed, it's just be embiggened... mostly. One part of him actually shrunk, and that's his hands. They're actually smaller than the official figure's, despite the rest of the figure being larger. I think The Beast Alliance might have resculpted some of his abdomen, leaving less space for the fists in beast mode, but yeah, those baby hands are going to be the biggest aesthetic strike against the figure. Fortunately, The Beast Alliance has made up for it in other ways. While still not perfectly cartoon-accurate, using a dark metallic silver paint for his shoulders, biceps, and thighs, with a darker gunmetal inside the shoulders, on the outsides of his thighs, and on his fingers. I might have suggested that The Beast Alliance use a lighter silver to make the two-tone nature of those parts a bit more apparent, but it's still closer than the official figure. Some of the details on his feet, and even picking out a few details on his head, and for what it's worth some of his parts are made from diecast. Spinning the figure around, you can see see another major improvement. The Beast Alliance engineered an additional swivel into his wings, so you can flip them around into a more cartoon-accurate position. It's not as immediately apparent in my pictures here, but if you look at the swivels that let him stretch his wings you can see that The Beast Alliance modified or capped off the swivel, so his wings don't pop off as they do on the official. You can also just make out some filler in the beast-mode neck where the original was hollow. Overwatch comes with the same accessories as the official Terrosaur, but also embiggened. The arm blades and the gun lack the visible red plastic of the official's, and the pegs have been shrunk to fit Overwatch's baby hands. The embiggened golden disk is also more of a coppery color, but it hardly matters. I already have all the golden disks I could want, I just wanted a bigger, better Terrorsaur. The engineering of the figure hasn't changed, so Overwatch's articulation is the same as Terrorsaur's. To quote from that review: "Terrorsaur's head is on a swivel. That means he's got no downward or sideways tilt, but a transformation hinge can be used to get him to look up a little. Shoulders rotate and move laterally over 90 degrees. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. No wrist swivel. His waist does swivel, but you have to unlock it but untabbing his butt flap. His pelvis also has a hinged flap, but the purpose of it eludes me as it doesn't interfere with his hips, which go 90 degrees forward, backward, and laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend well beyond 90 degrees. His ankles are ball joints, so his feet can swivel, tilt up and down, and his ankles can pivot. That said, the ball joints on Terrorsaur are much looser than Airazor." Which, I suppose, is yet another thing The Beast Alliance fixed. All of his joints are toleranced pretty well, with just a few exceptions I'll talk about later. And, as noted the pegs on his gun and arm blades where shrunk to fit his little hands, so he can still hold them the same as the official figure does. The wing and hip storage for his gun also still applies. Transformation is 99% the same on Overwatch as it is on the official Terrorsaur... you're still stretching the torso, still tucking the head into his chest, still tucking his fists into his abdomen, still spinning the waist only to spin the thighs back to the front. The big difference is, of course, that you have an additional swivel to do with the wings to angle them back down. Unfortunately, Overwatch's beast mode isn't as clear an improvement as the robot mode. It's more like they fixed a little, but then broke other things. Mainly, they painted the yellow claws on his wings and toes, which is better. But, the part that the head flips on is that dark silver instead of red, which makes the "chest" a bit less cohesive. Also, I guess because they were already using yellow and didn't feel like getting out a different color paint, Overwatch's beast eyes are yellow, instead of the cartoon-accurate green the original toy used. He's still got the cartoon-style yellow beak and black spots on his back. I'd say the red thighs on the Gold Disk toy helped his robot legs blend in with the beast body a bit, where the silver and gunmetal The Beast Alliance used definitely stands out more. However, I've gone on record saying that sacrifices to the alt mode to get a better bot mode are preferable to the other way around, and I'll stand by that. If this is the price we pay for a more accurate robot mode, so be it. The beast mode works the same on Overwatch as it does on Terrorsaur. Same articulation, including the opening beak. Same need to pull the blades off of his arms and store them on the backs of his legs (and fortunately The Beast Alliance made those holes smaller to accommodate the smaller pegs). And you still store his gun by tabbing it into the side of his robot thigh. Now, while the Beast Alliance did make a lot of improvements, there are some flaws here. Most of them could just be my copy, but based on his rather low price I kind of doubt it. Well, for starters, there is size. As I noted at the beginning, yeah, Terrorsaur is too small, but at slightly taller than Inferno Terrorsaur is a little too big. That being said, for most of the first season Terrorsaur was basically Starscream- Megatron's second-in-command, scheming to replace him as top dog. I really prefer Terrorsaur to be bigger than most of the other Predacons, then, so as long as he's still smaller than Megatron (which he is) I can more easily forgive a Terrorsaur that's bigger than Inferno than one that's closer to Blackarachnia in size. The other issues are less subjective, but fixable. First, when transforming him I couldn't get his head to fold in. I wound up removing the rotating piece that his head is attached to and using a Dremel to carefully remove a bit of material from around the joints, putting a little silicon lube inside the joints, then making sure that the part was slid all the way back over the mushroom pegs when I reattached it. After doing all that he transformed fine. But while messing with him one of his feet popped off the ball joint. I popped it back on, but it was super loose afterward. I realized that The Beast Alliance had put a ton of paint on the joint, which was diecast, not plastic. The paint, which provided most of the friction, had rubbed off when the foot fell off. A little floor polish, though, and the foot's no looser than the official. Finally, the forward/backward on the hips seemed a little loose, but quickly became too loose for him to even stand. Seems the screw hole was at least partially stripped and his pelvis was coming apart, reducing the friction on the hips. I probably could have replaced the screw with a longer, slightly thicker one, but I was feeling lazy and simply glued his pelvis. As long as the glue holds his hips have enough friction that I can hold the figure face down or face up, parallel to the ground, and his hips won't move (and yes, I was careful not to get any glue in the hip or waist joints). Now normally I might suggest that a figure that needs that much work isn't one you want to buy... but here's the kicker. Overwatch ups Terrorsaur to a Voyager-size, and he runs around $30... a little less than Hasbro would charge for a figure this size, yeah? And with Terrorsaur being a store exclusive (twice) there's a good chance you missed picking him up. Overwatch doesn't just give you another chance to add a Terrorsaur to your Kingdom/Legacy Beast Wars shelf, he does it with a better deco, (mostly) better joints, a bigger size, and wings that point the right way in bot mode. If you did get Terrorsaur and you're happy with him, then cool. But if you didn't, or if like me you think Overwatch has enough improvements to justify the upgrade (even with the baby hands), then I would recommend checking Overwatch out. Just be prepared to give him a little extra TLC.

Man, I'd love to have more info on that Autobot multipack to share... but the discussion in certain parts of the internet has devolved into a 30 pages of heated debate over the term "partial" for some reason at the board that shan't be named. It's so bad that, even though I didn't contribute any posts to that nonsense, I'm still feeling like I need to get off the internet for awhile and touch grass. But before I venture out into the cold, how about a quick review? Because I've got Studio Series Core-class Mohawk sitting on my desk here. Mohawk's interesting in that someone somewhere put a lot of effort into creating a character with a certain look and personality that was basically a disposable throwaway with a whopping minute and a half of total screen time in The Last Knight. And... I'm not sure how well this figure captures that personality. I think a lot of that is coming down to the small budget that Core-class figures get. Like, the broad strokes are there. He's got the bug eyes, and wide mouth. He's even got some gold paint on his teeth. He's got tires near his shoulders, but not on them. There's splashes of green paint. It looks like they tried to mold some details, like the blades on his forearms and the knives on his legs, but much like his namesake mohawk they're molded as details on fin-shaped bits of plastic rather than having any individual separation, which causes that detail to be lost. The overall result is a little more fish-like than I remember him actually appearing. Meanwhile, other details like the chains he wore, the Decepticon badges in his teeth, the cans of spray paint taped to his chest, and the baby doll head on his right hip are simply absent. He's not looking great from behind. I don't think you get a very clear look at his back in the film, but he's missing the exhaust pipes, and he's filled with hollow gaps and large hinges. Mohawk's sole accessory is this knife. He doesn't really live long enough in the film to use a weapon, but given the knives he had strapped to his legs it seems appropriate. Mohawk's head swivels, and due to his transformation you can kind of tilt it up, but not down. His mouth opens. His shoulders are hinged ball joints for rotation, 90 degrees of lateral movement, and a bit of a shrug. Elbows are also hinged ball joints that can technically bend up to 180 degrees, but the ball is also his bicep swivel and the hinge is above it. No wrist or waist articulation. His hips are more ball joints, capable of swiveling and moving laterally 90 degrees. In what's probably my biggest issue with his articulation, he lacks any articulation at his actual knee joint. Instead, he only has a hinge at the lower digitigrade joint (which is technically an ankle!); it can bend a little forward (the direction that joint should bend on a living digitigrade animal), and back so far you'd think the designers thought it's actually a knee. Then he's got ball joints at the foot that can swivel and tilt down a little but nothing really upward. And, while they do have some pivot, they pivot the wrong way. Mohawk can hold his knife in either hand. Or, you can use the large notch in the blade to grab onto a peg on his butt, allowing him to store the knife on his back. Hasbro's been cranking out a few bikes lately in both the Core (Bouldercrash, Arcee) and Deluxe scale (Arcee, Prowl), and they tend to do the same thing. Arms stretch out to form the top and seat of the bike, body and legs sort of crumple up to form everything underneath. It's kind of refreshing, then, that Mohawk does the opposite. I mean, sure, his body stays underneath, but it's his arm doing the scrunching. Then you invert his hips and fold the legs up and over, with his feet pegging together to form the seat. My first thought was that Mohawk isn't the prettiest bike mode. And no, the toy isn't exactly screen-accurate; for one thing, the bike in the film only had one headlight. However, the bike used in the film, a Confederate Motorcycles P51 Combat Fighter, is a pretty unusual (and rare, only 60-ish were ever produced) motorcycle with a chassis carved from a single block of aluminum, and believe it or not Mohawk's honestly a bit closer than you might expect to pulling it off. It's nice to see some paint was thoughtfully applied to the alt mode, with the aforementioned headlights being picked out in white, red brakes, black shocks, painted handlebars, and a gold chain on the rear tire. Once side of thee bike has a tab near the bottom that lets you store the knife. If you have him balanced just right, you can turn the bike so that the knife side is on the back and lean the bike so that the knife holds it upright. Other than that, the wheels spin freely but the front doesn't turn or anything. Mohawk is a pretty basic figure that lacks a lot of details from the movie. However, as a pretty small guy in the films Core-class is about as big as Hasbro could make him and keep him relatively in scale (although, if you want to go smaller, Dr. Wu apparently made a Mohawk figure half this size). He's got a lot fewer issues than a lot of the other recent Core-class figures I've looked at, a novel transformation, and a bike mode that looks passably like the film. Honestly, I kind of like him. I mean, he could definitely be better, but what you get here seems fair for the $10 asking price. I think I'm going to give this guy a recommend.

In all seriousness, while I think SteamOS is better for console-style handheld PC gaming the ROG Ally has been my go-to for awhile. It was a little rough at launch, but Asus has improved it through BIOS and driver updates. Battery life isn't great, but the Z1 Extreme in the Ally beats the Steam Deck's custom APU, and while Windows is gonna Windows the simple fact is that not everything I want to play on the go is part of my Steam library, or Steam Deck compatible even if it is. Now MSI's getting into the game, and the more I read up on it the more the Intel chipset in the Claw seems like it's a better CPU than the Z1 Extreme, but I have serious doubts about that Arc graphics and XESS will make for a better GPU.

5-pack. And no, I asked for clarification and was told "fan channel." So Pulse, but also stuff like BBTS, Entertainment Earth, etc. It will NOT be sold at Target (or Walmart). My source also suggests that this will be the first of four of these multipacks. That source said not to expect major changes, that the impetus behind these sets is to give people a chance to get some figures that are harder to find now. But another source (not sure if as trustworthy, so take with a grain of salt) said that Trailbreaker at least will have a more cartoon-accurate deco. It's possible but unconfirmed that the translucent plastics will be replaced with colored plastic and painted windows. All pre-Buzzworthy. And Redwing... really? He was never stocked at stores, he was a Target.com exclusive, and was available for a very long time. The only real barrier to getting him was that you needed a Target Red Card. I know a lot of people were complaining that they didn't want to apply for a credit (or debit) card just to get him, but as a relatively frequent Target shopper myself it was a non-issue. Define "minimal". I think one four foot section is standard. Around here, that's several pegs that have to include all the Cores and Deluxes from Studio Series and Legacy, all the smaller Earthspark toys (Warrior, Deluxe, those stupid flipchangers) and all the smaller ROTB toys. Top shelf is Voyagers, (SS, Legacy) and larger Earthspark toys. Then there's a shelf for Leaders (SS, Legacy) and some ROTB stuff like the masks. Bottom shelf fluctuates, sometimes it's multipacks (like I think it's currently for the troop builder pack), sometimes it's for Commanders (I distinctly remember a spot for Motormaster that was never stocked), and other random bigger boxes like the RC Optimus and the Jada Metals. Occasionally the shelves will be invaded by whatever overstock they have of the toys on the next four foot section, but the pegs are usually safe. The problem here isn't really a lack of space, or that the shelves aren't being stocked. It's that the stock that was put out doesn't sell. I was at my local Target the other day and found a Shrapnel (which I'd wanted a second of for customization) behind a couple of Crosscuts... both of those figures were released in Evolution wave 2. Voyagers were almost entirely Nemesis Leo from wave 3, and Leaders were limited to Blitzwings (which could be leftovers from wave 2, but IIRC were package refreshed in another wave). One the Studio Series side, you have your choice of Arcees, SS86 or Bumblebee, Galvatron in the Voyagers, and Sludge. All of which were released in 2022. And for the record, I'm in a pretty small town area. We're one county east of Pittsburgh, population hovering just above 30,000 and declining according to the last census. My house is in a plan built behind a dairy farm. No pegs? Or are they just full of stuff like those stupid ROTB toys with the Deluxe-ish sized but super simple figures that come with an animal that turns into armor? Either way, that's weird. I remember my Target having a spot for Blackout, but hasn't actually stocked anything MP since Starscream, who shelfwarmed so hard they marked him down at least half off.

I mean, I can only speak to my local Targets, but despite my desperate scrambling to preorder figures the minute they were available due to FOMO, I've seen pretty much every Buzzworthy release in stores, with more than a few turning into shelfwarmers... I mean hype for the Origins figures drove some kind of initial surge, but they seemed to restock and wind up on clearance, and Kup, toy-colored Dinobot, Towline, and all the N.E.S.T repaints were definite shelfwarmers. Oh, and to this day I can still walk into Burlington or Ollies and pick up $6 Silverstreaks that Target wrote off). The only Target exclusives that seemed genuinely difficult to get were before they started using the Buzzworthy Bumblebee branding, like Thrust and Runabout.

Heads up. You guys remember the Target-exclusive Buzzworthy Hound that was supposed to come out (before Detritus)? Apparently Target decided to cancel some of their exclusives when some of the previous ones didn't sell too well. Well, the good news is that Hound's not dead! The bad news is that he's now going to be part of a multipack along with Jazz, Wheeljack, Sunstreaker, and Trailbreaker, and I have no indication how (if at all) the other four are going to differ from their WfC/SS86 releases. The listing is "Gen Selects Autobot Multipack", so while nothing's been stated to me definitively yet I'm thinking it might wind up a Pulse exclusive.

I noticed that in recent years I've bought a lot less 3rd party Transformers figures. What was once an exciting competition to see who was going to fill the gaps in Takara's Masterpiece collection has shifted into an arms race to between Magic Square and NewAge to make figures that seem like Masterpiece in terms of looks and complexity, but in figures somewhere between Hasbro's Core-class and a smaller Deluxe. That's great for collectors who want good representations of a very large cast of characters to fit in limited shelf spaces. But what if you want something easier to transform, cheaper, and even smaller? Well, for that we've got Dr. Wu, and tonight I've got his latest figure in hand, Fire Ladder. Fire Ladder is, as you can see, Inferno. I've suspected that Dr Wu's stuff isn't exactly in-scale with the fairly tallish mini-bots they've done, and now we've got Inferno who's roughly the same height as Optimus. But I don't really mind it too much, because... ...they're very tiny figures! I mean, Fire Ladder is only knee-high to Earthrise Inferno. Despite his diminutive size he's got the sorts of details you'd expect- the ridges around his forearms, the squares on the front of his shoulders and the pylons on top, the wing and gun/nozzle on the side of the block around his head. He's even got the hoses on the sides of his legs, and half of the circles on the sides of his forearms. His ladder doesn't hide away like the MP, but it folds up into his backpack at least as well as the Kingdom toy does. Oh, and speaking of the Kingdom toy, like that figure Fire Ladder has both of his hands. But if you want the cartoon gun-hand look, well, he comes with one accessory. Guess what it is... Fire Ladder's head can swivel, but only about 45 degrees to either side due to space constraints inside his head box. His head flips around in the box for transformation, but you can use that to tilt his head up and down. His shoulders are ball joints that swivel without issue, but the pylons limit his lateral movement to about 45 degrees. Elbows are ball joints that bend 90 degrees and act as bicep swivels. No wrist or waist swivels. Hips are ball joints that can go about 75 degrees forward, and nearly 90 degrees backward and laterally. The limited swivel around the ball joints are all he's got for thigh swivels. His knees bend 90 degrees. Due to his transformation he's got a lot of downward tilt in his feet, but not much upward. He does have 90 degrees of ankle pivot, though, so you can get him in some dramatic wide stances. His gun accessory attaches by simply fitting over his fist, with the cutout facing in toward his body. It's funny, Fire Ladder's engineering is very similar to the Earthrise toy. His head is on an armature that expands and moves it and the ladder backward, his arms fold back with the pylons tucking into the back of the cab. His hips fold backward and his feet fold back, then the armature with his head plugs into them. What's funny about is that I think it made the Kingdom toy seem fairly simple compared to some of the other Voyager-class toys at the time, but when you shrink it down to make a fire truck closer in size to Micromaster Red Hot you get one of the more complex figures Dr. Wu has done so far. The fire truck mode looks pretty good, too. There's a bit of gap where his black hips are showing, but that's technically true for the Earthrise figure, too. The hinges and clips for his shoulders don't look too great, and his hands aren't really hiding at all. On the other hand, he's got a nice white bumper and grill, with painted blue headlights and windows, and even painted windshield wipers. He's even got some white paint on the skid plating above his rear wheels. Although they're not painted, the sirens are molded onto the top of the cab. The white plastic used for the hoses, ear wings, and ladder also looks a bit better than the gray Hasbro used for the Earthrise toy. Fire Ladder's ladder can swivel and be raised up. And if you're looking for a place to store his accessory, look no further! It simply clips on the smaller molded nozzle at the end of the ladder. I've been a big fan of these little Dr Wu figures from the get go, and Fire Ladder's definitely another hit for the good doctor. Sure, a little more articulation would have been nice, maybe hide the hands in the alt mode, but we gotta remember just how tiny these guys are. I showed him next to Earthrise Inferno, but even if you put him next to a figure like NewAge or Magic Square's Optimus and Fire Ladder is still not even reaching Prime's crotch. And they're cheap to boot! Fire Ladder ran me about $20. That's in the ballpark of a Hasbro Deluxe, which doesn't seem too bad for a figure that still looks better than most of Hasbro's Core-class figures. It's also half (or less) the price of Magic Square or NewAge's versions of Inferno. Honestly, it's also about half of what I spent taking my wife and daughter to Wendy's, so I'd say it's comfortably in impulse buy territory. So I'll happily recommend Fire Ladder, I look forward to the inevitable Grapple retool (and possibly even Artfire, Roadhauler, and maybe Bulkhead), and quite frankly I hope Dr. Wu continues to crank out at least the entire S1-S3 cast.

Happy New Year, friends! And what better way to start the year than with the last of 2024's first-wave Legacy United figures (which arrived at the last minute in 2023)? This, friends, is Leader-class Tigerhawk. This one's a bit of a weird one that requires a bit of quick Beast Wars recap for the geewun, trukk-not-munky crowd. Although ties to the original Transformers cartoon was kept deliberately vague at first, by the end of the first season it's established that Beast Wars is meant to take place in the same continuity as the original cartoon, with the show's characters coming from some time in Cybertron's future before traveling back in time in Earth's prehistory. Beast Wars also introduced us to the Vok, a race of aliens who were doing stuff on Earth because... well, I don't think their origins or motives were ever fully explained. But one of the things they did in the second season was abduct Tigatron and Airazor. Now, skip ahead all way to the end of season 3, and the Vok are kind of miffed that the Maximals and Predacons are screwing with time, so they rebuild Tigatron and Airazor into one robot, Tigerhawk. At first Tigerhawk worked something like a mech suit for the Vok, who used him to attack the Predacons, but he was narrowly stopped by Tarantulas. Tarantulas managed to get the Vok out (killing himself in the process), which allowed the sparks of Tigatron and Airazor to take back over, which caused Tigerhawk to briefly join the Maximals before being killed in the series finale. Put another way, Tigerhawk was a character that appeared in just three episodes of the cartoon. All that being said, Tigerhawk looks pretty cartoon-accurate. He's got cartoon purple instead of the original toy's blue, and he's got the the copper/gold accents present in the cartoon that weren't on the original toy. And he's a big boy, too, standing significantly taller than the Voyager-class Tigatron and Deluxe-class Airazor he's supposedly made from, with enormous wings. Perhaps not as evident from his back and sides, but Tigerhawk's got a somewhat asymmetric design. I mean, sure, his shoulders are obviously different, but if you look a bit closer his whole arms are, with something like tubing on his right arm but pistons on his left. The greebles on the white part of his chest are different. His kneepads are different; the one on his right is thicker at the bottom, the one on the left is thicker at the top. His right foot has a more mechanical appearance with a more organic heel, and his left foot is more organic with a more mechanical heel. Even the sides of his helmet are subtly different. To be clear, I'm not certain how cartoon-accurate this asymmetry is, though it's subtle enough that you might not even notice it at first. I will say that I like it, though... it helps illustrate his origin as an amalgamation of two other characters. Really, my only serious complaint with how Tigerhawk looks is that the underside of his wings (that is, the side facing forward in bot mode) are hollowed out. Tigerhawk comes with a few accessories, and they're particularly well-integrated on this figure. In fact, they were all in the previous pictures. We've got two feathery swords, two big cannons, and a smaller double-barreled gun. Tigerhawk's head is on a ball joint that can look down until his chin touches his chest, but has minimal sideways tilt and nothing really upward. His right shoulder rotates and the translucent part opens to allow it to move 90 degrees laterally. His left arm is a bit more of a pain. In theory, it too rotates, and the top of the tiger head opens to allow 90 degrees of lateral movement, too. In practice, the entire shoulder wants to pull up from the torso (as it does for transformation). Once you get the shoulder extended, when you try to bring it down his bicep wants to disconnect from the shoulder instead of swiveling it back in. Regardless, both biceps swivel and both elbows bend a little over 90 degrees, but neither wrist swivels. His waist does swivel, but it's limited to about 45 degrees to either side, and the feathery flap over his crotch moves with his upper torso. His hips ratchet forward and backward over 90 degrees, and use friction joints to move 90 degrees laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. His feet don't really tilt up or down without starting the process of transforming them to alt mode, but they do have 90 degrees of pivot. Tigerhawk can hold his feather swords in either hand. They also have ports on them that allow them to be placed on the tips of his wings, where they blend in with the other molded and painted feathers. He can also hold the double-barreled pistol in either hand, or plug it into the 5mm port on his left arm... ...but the best place for it is the 5mm port on his right arm, because then you don't even have to remove it to transform him. If you do leave it on his arm, you can always arm him up with the cannons instead, as they use 5mm pegs to plug into his fists. But, they also have ports on them, which allows them to be stored in the nacelles on his wings. And while they're part of his nacelles, they can flip around to be deployed from his back, though this is really more of an alt mode thing. Tigerhawk's transformation is as different as you'd expect from an alt mode like that. If we start with a reference frame that says his wings don't actually move, then his beast legs have to come off of his shoulders, his chest opens up, and his pelvis splits in half. Then his head and the purple part of his chest have to go where his crotch is, the inside of his torso has to spin 45 degrees so that his right shoulder is on his front and his left shoulder is on his back, the white halves of his chest have to encapsulate his right arm, then his hips come up to where his shoulders were originally, all semi-simultaneously. Once you've sorted all that out things get easier as you sort the left arm into his back, arrange his rear beast legs to your liking, then transform his robot legs into his front beast legs. Tigerhawk seems reasonably accurate in beast mode. Perhaps, if I'm being picky, he could have used a bit more white on his shoulders and the rear legs, but it's definitely the front half of a tiger with the wings and rear of a hawk. I do have to complain about the weird purple growths on his forearms, though. They're not present in either the cartoon nor the original toy, and it's because they're his robot heels, which don't quite fold in all the way. But... why do his heels need to fold in? Why do his robot feet need to transform at all? I don't know if they did on the original toy or not, but here is beast feet (which fold out of his calves as his robot feet fold into his shins) look basically like his robot feet, but longer. Seems like the design of the character intended that his robot feet and his beast feet were the same feet. Note that the swords are still in the wings, and the cannons are in the nacelles. In this basic configuration, the nacelles have gatling guns facing forward. One departure from the original toy is that he's got gold armor over his eyes, where the original toy simply had a tiger head with a blue helmet sort of hovering over it. The original toy was meant to have an attack mode; the helmet drops down over the tiger's face, the wings angle forward to fire feather missiles, and the cannons in the nacelles flip out. Legacy Tigerhawk can bend the wings forward and flip the cannons out, but the blue helmet is missing. For what it's worth, though, the gold armor over the eyes instead is more cartoon-accurate. Meanwhile, if you left his double-barreled gun on his right arm like I told you it'll already be in its alt-mode spot... sticking out the back of his underside like double-barreled genitals. In beast mode, Tigerhawk's head has a decent up/down tilt, with the back of his head opening as needed for clearance, but no sideways tilt or swivel. His jaws can open. His shoulders work the same as his robot hips. His elbows bend less than 90 degrees, but as his front paws don't bend up a whole lot you're kind of stuck with his elbows at maximum bend just to get his front feet semi-flat. At least they have swivels. This will give his front feet ankle pivots. In theory, you could try to pose him so that he's swiping with the claws, but in practice the ball joints in his rear hips and the friction hinges in the knees, ankles, and paws of his digitigrade rear laws aren't strong enough to support Tigerhawk's weight without both of his front paws on the ground. Due to the shape of his robot chest directly under them, his tail feathers are constantly angled upward with the ability to tilt slightly more upward. His wings, which we neglected to talk about in robot mode, are hinged to flap up/down at the base, with an additional up/down hinge on the outside of the nacelles. Then there are hinges in the translucent green discs that sweep the wings forward or backward. I have seriously mixed feelings about Tigerhawk. Like, even though I'm ok with giving other Transformers shows some representation, I find the inclusion of a character that appeared in just three episodes (and was killed off at Hasbro's direction, because they were seriously thinking about not releasing the original Tigerhawk toy in the first place) over Quickstrike, Depth Charge, or Rampage* to be a questionable choice, let alone some of the missing G1 characters or some of the more popular characters from other Transformers media, especially when he's eating up the only new Leader slot in the wave. And Tigerhawk's definitely a figure with a few issues, mostly in the alt mode articulation and the tolerances of some of the tabs on holding his arms together in robot mode. But I have to admit that the figure winds up being an ambitious design with an interesting transformation that could only have been pulled off with a Leader budget and engineering. And, hey, at least Tigerhawk appeared in more episodes than Devcon, whom we also got a figure of in Legacy. So if you're a Beast Wars fan I'd go ahead and recommend this one. Even if you're not it's still a pretty interesting toy, just one of a relatively minor character. *Didn't mention Silverbolt because we know he's coming... he's already been solicited in Japan, and he should be part of Wave 2 in the West.

Did anyone here see Asteroid City? I remember the previews for it looked kind of weird, but maybe a good kind of weird. Worth the time to watch it on Prime?

Still waiting for the one and only new Leader-class (the other being a repackaged Laser Optimus, remember?) to finish up the first wave of Legacy United. Haven't gotten it yet, but it looks like the first batch of 2024 Studio Series figures are starting to go out. Or at the very least, Voyager-Class Gamer Edition Starscream did. This is an interesting case, because this is the first time the Studio Series Gamer Edition has really gone up against Planet X, a brand whose bread and butter has largely been unlicensed toys from High Moon's War For Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron games. Planet X never did Bumblebee, Cliffjumper, or Barricade, and while they did do Optimus and Megatron they did the Fall of Cybertron versions while Hasbro did the War For Cybertron ones. And... well, of course Planet X's looks better! It retailed for nearly triple, and that was before pandemic inflation. I think, instead of focusing on how Hasbro did it worse, it's better to point out where Hasbro went right. I mean, his arms could use a touch more mechanical detail, maybe a bit darker gray on the biceps, and some purple glow on the shoulders, but his limbs are fine, for the most part. He's got the intakes behind his head like he should, and I dare say that I prefer Hasbro's head over Planet X's. It's really the torso where things start to go screwy. Like, he's got the collar parts (which are not attached out of the box), but they're kind of small and don't flow into the front of the torso. Speaking of, Planet X looks like they tried to put some effort into getting his torso right, while Hasbro kind of slapped some red lines on some fairly flat gray spaces and called it a day. But the thing that most people are going to notice first is the cockpit. It's like twice the size it should be! Honestly, fresh out of the box I don't think it bothered me too much, but when I started looking at concept art, screenshots, and the game CAD files it became super apparent how chunky the toy's cockpit is. Frankly, next to Planet X's the official Starscream looks like he's pregnant. A common refrain I here about messy backpacks is, "Who cares, who poses their figures with the back facing you?" Thing is, as the games were third-person shooters you spent a lot of time looking at the characters backs, and I appreciate that Hasbro did put some effort into keeping things accurate here. Like, sure, the tapered bottom with the blue exhausts did come out a bit better on Planet X, but Hasbro at least molded and painted the exhausts onto the more squarish backpack they created. And one thing they actually did better is to include the tail on the backpack. I'm not entirely sure why they put the little blue fins on the sides of his legs, though. Starscream comes with a single rifle, and a mace in two parts. The rifle is pretty different than the rifle(s) that Planet X included with theirs, but that's ok. While it could have used more paint, the one that came with Hasbro's Starscream is a fairly accurate Null Ray from the War for Cybertron game, while Planet X's were based on the Nucleon Charge Rifle from Fall of Cybertron. As for the mace, the spikes are better on Planet X's, and they have more accurate gunmetal bits around the purple. But the shape of the mace is better on Hasbro's, with a pattern on the inner bits that seems more game accurate. Starscream's head is on a ball joint. He's got negligible sideways tilt and a slight downward tilt, but a pretty good upward tilt and swivel. His shoulders rotate and move laterally almost 90 degrees. His biceps swivel. His elbows are double-jointed and bend a good 180 degrees. His wrists swivel. It's a bit limited, but he does have waist swivel. His hips go forward, backward, and laterally 90 degrees. His thighs swivel and his knees bend a bit over 90 degrees. No real up/down foot tilt (his front toe bends down for transformation), but he does have 45 degrees of ankle pivot. Starscream can hold his mace in either hand. And, based on customer feedback, Starscream's Null Ray has a 5mm port on the bottom so he can hold it in his hand as well. Apparently this will be the standard going forward. They haven't abandoned the gimmick, though. You can still remove Starscream's right arm to reveal a 5mm stump. That stump plugs into a port on the back of the Null Ray for the arm-turned-gun game look. When not using his weapons, both the Null Ray and the mace can be stored on 5mm ports on Starscream's back. I couldn't find anywhere to store his arm when Starscream is using the Null Ray instead of an arm, though. In a totally undocumented feature, Starscream's cockpit tummy can be opened while he's in bot mode, and the cavernous interior has plenty of room for storing the Matrix that came with GE Optimus. All hail Screamus Prime! One thing that Hasbro's definitely doing a bit better than Planet X is the transformation. This isn't to say that Planet X's was bad, but it is a bit more complex, more like the transformation you'd find on a Masterpiece figure, while Hasbro's is the kind of typical Voyager fare that you can keep on a desk and flip back and forth fairly easily. About half the transformation is just unfolding the backpack into what will become the wings, tail, and a good chunk of the fuselage. The front of his torso lifts up, and his head folds into the cockpit (which is why it had to be so wide in the first place. Meanwhile, his legs open up so his lower legs can fold up and wrap around his thighs, sort of Combiner Wars-style, but sideways instead of front-and-back. Now, sure, I have my gripes. The cockpit is still too fat, and there's actually a small hollow gap behind it that his forearms don't entirely fill. The quartet of intakes on his back need some blue paint, and the blue fins I was complaining about on the robot mode really aren't present in the game. I'm also not loving the hollow bottoms of his feet. Technically these would be his engine exhausts, and in the game they're pretty open, but subjectively I think the translucent purple Planet X used looks better. Speaking of Planet X... Hasbro's actually got the more accurate alt mode. The wider rear and the main wing placement is more accurate. Subjectively, I might argue that proportionally bigger wings look better on Planet X's, but I double-checked the in-game models and sure enough Starscream really did have stumpy wings like that. It's not pretty (or really game accurate), but Starscream can carry his weapons on his alt mode. There's a 5mm port on either side of his tail, and you use the 5mm handle on the Null Ray or the extra 5mm peg on the handle of the mace to plug them right in. Strictly speaking, as a display piece Planet X's figure looks better in bot mode on a shelf, especially with other Planet X figures (which run a bit larger than Hasbro's). And Starscream's baby bump is a major contributing factor to that. But given the limitations of Hasbro's Voyager budget these days, GE Starscream is a surprisingly good figure. He's probably the best Gamer Edition figure after Optimus, although in a sub-line that delivered what is probably the worst of Hasbro's releases last year (GE Barricade) I'm not sure how much weight that actually carries. Still, we're talking about a figure that's got good articulation, is reasonably accurate in both modes (if you ignore the extra-large canopy and the need for just a few more paint apps), a transformation that's pleasant and straightforward, and adequate accessories that give you the option of replacing his arm but don't require it. I'd say this one actually does get the recommed from me.

Tales of Arise is on PC and Xbox as well. The Persona games I mentioned are in PS4/5, Xbox, PC, and Switch.