mikeszekely

Life's been busy so I've had this stuff on the backburner for awhile. But I have some more stuff coming this week or next, so I better get these repaints out of the way. First up, we have Studio Series The Last Knight Nemesis Prime, who is a retool of Age of Extinction Optimus Prime. He comes with the same sword, shield, and gray part that lets you plug them onto his back. And, because Nemesis Prime was just a mind-controlled Optimus, deco changes are pretty subtle. The blue plastic is a little lighter, the gray plastic a little darker. There are some mold changes, too. The most obvious one is that he's porting a new head. In addition to having the extra purple eyes and red "I'm evil now!" stripe, they've swapped his masked face for his unmasked face, which I kinda like. They also remolded his forearms. That's because, for reasons I do not fully understand, Optimus gets like 95% of his new knight body when he scans a passing truck, but his arms change again to have a more armored look when he picks up the Sword of Judgement later in the film. That armored look is the one that carried over into The Last Knight. In addition to a new head and new forearms, Nemesis Prime has a few more accessories. The larger arm blade that could also be used as a handheld sword is gone. In its place Nemesis gets a smaller arm blade and the quad-barreled shotgun he used in the film. With the retooling being fairly minor, you can expect that Nemesis and Optimus have the same articulation and the same transformation. With none of the remolded parts showing in truck mode the differences are even more minor... again, there's the fact that the blue is a tad lighter and the gray plastic a bit darker, but that's nearly it. The only other difference, which seems to come down to cheaping out on how many parts need to be painted, is that the flames on the sides of the cab are shortened so they don't spill over onto that last panel. Prime's sword and shield can still work with the storage part, and despite being a new mold the smaller arm blade is designed to plug into the the shield, same as the bigger one. This allows the whole shebang to be stored on Prime's back in robot mode or on his trailer hitch in truck mode. The new shotgun is a bit trickier. It has a slot on one side that can fit over the edge of the window on Prime's backpack in robot mode. It can be stored on the side of the truck over the rear wheels by grabbing onto a tab there as well. I like the new head, forearm, and accessories... I kind of wish they'd left off the stripe and given him normal blue eyes as just regular The Last Knight Optimus. Personally, I think if you wanted a copy of this mold that I'd go with this one over the Age of Extinction version, but if you already have that one and aren't keen on shelling out 2026 Leader money on another one it's mostly the same toy. Next up, we have the Takara T-Spark 40th anniversary Lio Convoy. This toy reminds me a lot of what Takara used to do with their Legends figures (or what they've been doing with their Dramatic Capture Series). They took a mainline toy, in this case Legacy Evolution Leo Prime, and spent a little more money to "fix" it. Fixing it, in this case, means swapping the blue paint with a metallic blue paint, redoing some parts that were painted metallic gray/silver in white on his chest, adding metallic silver over the white on his inner thighs, finish painting the bottom of his abs, and coloring his shoulder joints. Of course, some minor deco corrections alone wouldn't be enough to get most people to shell out a premium to import Lio Convoy. No, the big change here is that they completely remolded the lion head and mane, including the bits on his forearms. This doesn't just change the look (which we'll address in a bit), it adds the spinning gimmick "Lion Typhoon" from the cartoon/original toy. Transformation is basically the same, but the result is something else. Gone is the Kingdom/Legacy habit of trying to make the beast modes look a little more realistic, a move that really didn't pay off for Leo Prime in the first place. I think a lot of people's main complaint with the figure was the doofy lion face. T-Spark Lio Convoy's lion face is very cartoony. I think you could fairly question whether it fits in with the other Kingdom/Legacy Beast Wars toys, but it's undeniably far more cartoon-accurate, and, IMHO, a marked improvement. That said, they come with some drawbacks. T-Spark Lio Convoy comes with half the accessories of the Legacy toy. He's got the longer, thinner weapons, which are now very nicely painted and can still store in the lion's back. However, the shorter, fatter blasters are omitted. This is because, due to how his mane was remolded, there isn't room to store them. Yes, there are still 5mm ports there. And yes, you can still flip the mane over and put the blasters there for an attack mode. There's even enough room to stow them there in robot mode (though, again, his back works). But there's not enough clearance to close the mane in lion mode. A side effect of this is that Lio Convoy has no handheld weapons, as the tabs on the blasters he does have do not fit in his fists. You can still plug them into the mane bits on his forearms, though. He's also got longer Lion Claws, which better match the original toy/anime. The longer claws are too big to fold entirely away inside the lion leg, but are oriented the other way around to hug the contour of the back of the leg. I've always been a fan of Lio Convoy's design, and while I was happy to get the Legacy toy at the time the fact that they didn't paint the rest of his abs and the terrible lion head were definitely sore spots for me. The T-Spark version fixes all of my biggest complaints with the toy, but the reduction in accessories is a bummer. On the whole, I'd say it was worth it to me to upgrade from the Legacy toy, and this is 100% the version I'd recommend getting if you want a Lio Convoy but don't have one yet. But if you already have the Legacy toy I can definitely see why it might not be worth it for you to upgrade. I'm not sure I would if they release the T-Spark mold in Nemesis/Dark Amber colors, and I don't have any plans to buy the announced Legendary Green version. Last but not least... ok, well, actually least. Yeah. It's Junkion Jalopy. Jalopy is a repaint of Axlegrease from the neck down. No mold changes, same exact accessories. The only difference is his head, which isn't even new. It's the head that Hasbro created for the Tow-Line repaint of Scraphook. I suppose I prefer the car retool that is Jalopy/Axlegrease/Lockdown to the truck version that is Scraphook/Towline... but if I'm being totally honest, while I was fine buying all the retools of SS86 Wreck-Gar (and would probably be willing to buy a few more), I was never a fan of these fan-fiction, waste of slots and new tooling budget (that would have been better spent on making a proper Breakdown instead of sticking a spoiler or Wildrider, and no, I will NOT let that go). I don't recommend Jalopy, because I don't recommend ANY of these Junkions. So, if I don't recommend Jalopy, a fair question to ask is why I bothered to pick him up at all. Honestly, I didn't, at first. But the answer is actually Axlegrease. See, I get where the team was coming from... the Junkions don't have to be this monolithic species, so why not make one that's a girl, and why not make her a Decepticon instead of the usual Autobot ally? See, whether I actually like/recommend them or not, I do already have Scraphook, Trashmaster, and Crashbar. Aesthetically and conceptually, Jalopy just fits in better with them than Axlegrease does. Now, again, maybe it's fine to have three dudes in the usual Junkion colors hanging with the Autobots, and one misfit who decides to run off with the Decepticons, except that an undocumented feature of the Junkions is the ability to combine into Junkasaurus as long as you have one Trashmaster (or, I suppose, Animated Wreck-Gar, who I definitely will NOT be getting), one Crashbar (or, I suppose, Road Pig from the Walmart Star Raiders line), Scraphook, and Axlegrease (or, in a pinch, Tow-Line or Star Raiders Lockdown). Swapping Axlegrease for Jalopy will give Junkasaurus a more cohesive, uniform color scheme.

Is that the XTB one? How are you liking it? Both it and Sovereign 2.0 look like an improvement on Sovereign 1.0, just not enough to make me feel like buying either of them.

Go Better's stuff has kind of gone downhill. I try to avoid the 3D printed stuff these days, unless it adds something more substantial than gap fillers. I just had TCP ship my stash. It's all DNA kits.

I actually like SS86 Hound. Yeah, he's far from perfect, but as retools of Siege molds go I think his was alright. In other rumors, take all this with the usual salt, but... 1. I'm hearing rumors of a Pulse-exclusive set that will contain Ironhide, Bluestreak, and Mirage. I do NOT know which versions, though I expect that Bluestreak and Mirage will be Earthrise. 2. I don't know if it's going to be an exclusive somewhere or not, since it's not part of the mainline Age of the Primes releases, but expect another release of the Armada Megatron mold as Megazarak. 3. I've mentioned before that Walmart will have an exclusive Energon capsule line. Sadly, it doesn't seem to be based on the Energon/Superlink. The first four releases will be Cybertread ( a retool of Kingdom Slammer), Cybertronic (a retool of Siege Sixgun), Optimus Prime (a blue repaint of Siege Optimus), and Dark Energon Megatron (a black and purple repaint of Miner Megatron). 4. I'd heard something about transforming faction symbols that seemed a bit out there. Well, my sources tell me it's real, they're going under "Icons" branding, and the first one will be Icons Optimus Prime, who turns from Autobot leader into Autobot insignia. Retail price around $46, should be out this fall, expect preorders in the very near future.

My original thinking was that I'd be fine with SS86 Optimus for regular colors, and that I'd just get the Magnus and Nemesis versions of MD005... but then I went and preordered the Optimus colors. My just arrived this week, and I showed it to my wife alongside SS86. I asked her to guess which one was the KO, and she picked the official. One of the smokestacks on my copy was a little loose, but that wasn't a big deal since I'd bought some aftermarket stacks for the official. Once I swapped them onto MD005 the figure is darn near perfect. My only serious complaint with the mold is that the fillers they added to the parts of Prime's legs that fold up from his calves do too good of a job; one of those cutouts on the official figure is the right shape to plug in the magazine of Prime's rifle, allowing you to store it without putting it in the trailer. Speaking of trailers... I prefer the blue stripes of the G1 toy (among other toys). I ordered the Toyhax trailer labels. I'll put them on the MD005 trailer and get the look I want while allowing the official trailer to remain pristine.

But Pulse doesn't charge your card until they ship, so you won't fee the Overgear stuff until December... when you're trying to buy Christmas presents. I just went it for a single Blackout. Until/unless he gets a G1-ified Generations version, Overgear Blackout will be my stand-in. I'll definitely go in on Prime, too, but I just don't care enough about Ironhide.

To be fair, Monstructor is a retool of Dinoking, who himself was a repaint of the Core-class Dinobots. If you'll recall from my reviews the were never the best, as Core-class toys were pretty limited by their budget when they only had to do a robot and alt mode, but the Dinobots (and Dinoking) were further hampered by having to do the combining gimmick. Frankly I'm impressed that that Hasbro even bothered to do any remolding to make their alt modes look a bit more like G1 toys (sans Pretender shells).

Because nothing says 'Murica like Walmart, that patriotic Airazor repaint will be a Walmart exclusive. Same goes for soccer ball Prime... er, Breakaway.

It's my understanding that they used unpaintable plastic for that part. (Note that "unpaintable plastic" doesn't mean it's actually unpaintable, just that for whatever reason the factory can't paint it). Every time I've preordered something at Walmart (almost entirely Walmart-exclusives) either they've canceled it, at which point I'd find it later at a local store anyway, or I'd cancel it myself because the toy turned up in my local store before Walmart bothered to fulfill the preorder.

This whole situation has gotten way out of hand. Tech companies are pushing hard for AI because they think it'll be cheaper than humans in the long run, consumers are pushing back hard against AI because it's stupid, creatively bankrupt, hallucinates, massively wastes resources, and maybe they'd like to keep their jobs, actually. So instead of rethinking this whole AI thing, the tech companies are doubling down, creating RAM and storage shortages that are spiking prices across a variety of tech products, delaying new tech products like the RTX 6000 series, Steam Machine, and the PS6, and creating shortages of current products like the Steam Deck. And the like two companies who are poised to do anything about it (did we need a reminder that monopolies are bad?) won't, because 1.) they're making a crapload of money exploiting the shortage, and 2.) they don't want to be left with a pile of suddenly worthless chips if/when the AI bubble does finally burst. I know it's kind of a meme to keep saying that every year is the worst year until the next one, but I genuinely don't think I've felt this pessimistic about the immediate future since the pandemic.

Studio Series preorders are live. I passed on the Matrix... $125 was already pushing it, but then Pulse wants $140 for some reason. And it sold out anyway. I already have Snarl, Wheeljack, and Sunstreaker, so... I guess good for those that need another shot at them, but that's like half the wave right there. I preordered the rest. Skywarp is the one I'm most looking forward to... While not perfect, I do think the 86 mold is an improvement over the Kingdom mold, and I'm looking forward to replacing (at minimum) the main three Seekers. Shockwave was a bit iffier... I am very dissappointed that they remolded some parts but couldn't find a way to make him bigger, but the remolded parts (especially the head without Siege greebles) and color are an improvement over the Siege toy. Kranix is one of those goofy characters with very little screen time that was never actually meant to have a toy... But that didn't stop me from buying guys like Devcon. Astrotrain is the real elephant in the room. I don't think anyone can argue that the Siege toy has a better robot mode, and for a lot of collectors that alone means the new toy is worse. The thing is, I really dislike both of Siege Astrotrain's alt modes. The shuttle has so many gaps and greebles at the rear that it looks unfinished. And the train looks like a bigger train giving birth to a smaller one- the wheels on the front don't even line up with the ones on the sides. The new shuttle mode is far from perfect, but I think it's at least a small improvement, and the train mode is significantly better. Two out of three modes improved, that's enough that I at least want to review it myself. *I agree that Springer is probably the best of Hasbro's triple changers. But I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Sandstorm came out pretty good, too. **Totally agree that MFT did the triple changers better for less on a smaller scale (at least the Decepticons). Anyone that upscaled them to Generations size could make a killing. ***If I ever win the lottery I'm going to start a 3P Transformers company that focuses only on making Generations-scaled toys for the figures that HasTak whiffed on.

I've been really looking forward to this kit. I'll review it proper when I get mine, but painting Grimlock gray and calling it a day was a huge letdown. This kit really looks to take the figure from dud to stud. I like supporting domestic small businesses when there isn't a huge price difference, and with DNA it was often even cheaper to buy from TCP than ShowZ in the pre-tariff days. But TCP has gotten to be BBTS slow lately. If it weren't for the fact that it's CNY and nobody's shipping anything for the next week anyway I'd cancel my preorder and just buy from ShowZ.

Oh, that'd have to be a Commander-class, I think. "Nobody transforms better than me. Nobody. I go from luxury semi-truck — the best truck, by the way, tremendous torque — into a giant, beautiful robot. People see it and they say, ‘Wow. We’ve never seen hydraulics like that.’ The fake Cybertronian media? They said it couldn’t be done. They said, ‘He’s just a truck.’ Wrong. Total transformation. The best transformation. Maybe ever. When I roll out onto the battlefield — chrome shining, engine roaring — the Decepticons? They scatter. They say, ‘Please, don’t rev the engine again.’ But I do. Because we’re bringing strength back to Cybertron. We’re making Cybertron great again. Optimus? Nice guy. Very stiff. Very by-the-book. But does he have gold trim on his armor? I don’t think so. Under my leadership, we’ll have the strongest Energon reserves. The best defense systems. No more bad trade deals with the Quintessons — terrible deals, folks. We will transform like never before. Fast. Powerful. Winning." In all seriousness, though, they should have picked some licensed muscle car... Studio Series Dropkick or Shatter, one of the myriad Camaro Bumblebees, etc, and just repainted it red, white, and blue with a bald eagle on the hood.

Near as I can tell, it was for awhile when Peacock was supposed to be making the reboot, but when the reboot died they dropped the older stuff from the platform.

Celebrate America's 250th birthday with... a lazy repaint of Airazor. 😒

Yeah, I think that even if/when we see Astrotrain transformed proper, the robot mode is clearly not as good as Siege's. But the thing is, they fixed the mess of a rear on the shuttle, making it slightly better, and the train actually looks like a train with all it's wheels lined up. So I'll probably get him anyway. Likewise, I'll probably grab Shockwave. The colors and the remolded parts are a bit of an improvement. But I'm very disappointed that they didn't do more with him. Disappointed or not, preorders will be Tuesday for the figures. Monday for the Matrix.

Yeah, but to buy digitally. It's not part of the Prime Video sub I already have (nor Netflix, Paramount Plus, HBO Max, Hulu, or Disney Plus).

Seeing this thread bumped reminds me again that BSG isn't available on any of the myriad streaming platforms I subscribe too...😒

I mean, that applies to MW, too. But that's ok, we Gen Xers know we're the best generation.

Someone pointed out that SS86 Skywarp's shoulders are black when they should be purple, and it's driving me nuts because I know it's wrong but I kinda think black looks better... EDIT: And yeah, Shockwave is WAY too small. If I were Newage, I'd make a Shockwave that's the same size as SS86 Megatron with none of the Siege holdovers like those heels. Get one over on Hasbro for making SS86 Optimus bigger so Romulus wound up too small.

Well, not particularly interested in Ironhide at that price, but I suppose I'll have to get Prime...

18cm is Voyager-ish sized. I don't have a ruler to double check, but iirc Hasbro listed SS86 Optimus as 18.5cm, and Megatron (despite being the same head height) as 21.5cm.

Maybe they're not ships, but airplanes.🤔

Disagree. The best Macross games were on the PSP.

Legacy of Kain: Defiance remaster, another Metal Gear collection, new Silent Hill, new Castlevania, and a God of War Greek Trilogy remake (I guess they forgot that there were six Greek games😒). Not sure about Control Resonant; I loved Control, but very unsure about the shift from atmospheric third-person shooter to a DMC-style action game. Here's hoping Sony keeps supporting PC. I do want that GoW Trilogy, but I'm absolutely done with PlayStation hardware.