mikeszekely

Ok, three seasons down, one to go, and it might be the best show I've seen since in years. Dang, I might actually want to check out Dune: Prophecy, but I already decided that I'm canceling Max. EDIT: I know it's said that the Butlerian Jihad is about 10,000 years before Dune, and they're advertising Prophecy as also about 10,000 years before Dune, but if Prophecy is about the founding of the Bene Geserit it should be roughly a decade after the end of the Butlerian Jihad.

Meh. Street Fighter is fine, but Kunitsu-Gami, Power Rangers, and Civ VII are what caught my attention.

It's a shame that four good-to-great figures is all we're likely to get out of Transformers: Reactivate. Word on the street is that it's been canceled. Honestly, I'm not surprised. I mentioned months ago that they said they were scrapping what they had and starting over with a new engine. From what I know of the game industry, "canceled" comes after "started over with a new engine" way more often than "released to universal acclaim."

Surprise! They did! This time we've got Falcon, the 29th release in their Mech Soul line that began with Samurai, though I think this one was worked on by Mechanic Studio, who have also collaborated with Dr. Wu. In any case, what we have here is a robot that's roughly the same size as Samurai, but significantly more cartoon accurate. The gray on his legs is a bit bluer, and (from the front) free of kibble. The face, hands, and thighs that were white the first time have that greenish tinge now. His shoulder pads, with their yellow fronts, wrap around his shoulders as you'd expect. The yellow chest vent is more than just a small cutout. And though the face sculpt is a little mushy (forgivable at this scale), the shapes and proportions are tweaked to be that much more Sunbow. The sides of his legs have the wheel well seen on the Sunbow art, and his backpack has the little engince nacelles the previous version omitted. You may also note that the backpack sits a bit higher and doesn't hang down over his butt. His calves aren't hollow. My only real complaint is the folded fins on his calves, but it's a minor complaint on what is clearly a huge improvement on Springer's robot mode. Falcon doesn't have as many accessories as Samurai, but he's got what he needs without stuffing the box with Diaclone knock-offs. You've got a sword, and this one is more solidly built and works more traditionally than Samurai's. You've got a rifle that's similar in sculpt to the G1 toy's. You've got the catapult missile, because apparently it's very important to include that thing from the movie even though there's no real way for the toy to interact with it, and you've got a flight stand adapter. Note that the gun and missile are silver paint over green plastic. The silver coat is a bit thin, so the green plastic winds up giving the silver paint a bit of a gold tint. In person it is NOT as bad as my camera's processor is making it out to be. I'm happy to report that aesthetics are not the only improvement here. Falcon's head is on a ball joint that has ok-ish up/down/sideways tilt in addition to swiveling. His shoulders are ball joints that swivel and move 90 degrees laterally- no Hot Rod shoulders this time. His biceps swivel, and his double-jointed elbows could bend 180 degrees if his shoulderp ads weren't in the way. No wrist swivels, though. His waist can swivel, and this time it's unobstructed- he can swivel his waist a full 360 degrees. His hips are ball joints, and they can go about 90 degrees forward and backward, though the lateral movement is limited to about 60 degrees. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend a little short of 90 degrees. His feet can't really tilt up, but they can tilt nearly 90 degrees downward, and his ankles can pivot over 90 degrees, plus he has ankle swivels. He can hold his sword and gun just fine by sliding the handles into his static fists. He doesn't appear to have any storage for them aside from holding them, though. Falcon's transformation is a bit more involved than Samurai, but still simpler than any of the MP options or even the Siege toy. Begin by pulling the entire front of his torso away and opening up his backpack. That will allow you to free a little sliver of the cockpit window, tuck his head into his torso cavity, and lift his chest up to become the front of the vehicle. His shoulder pads unfold, then the front wheels fold out from his chest and tab into the underside of the shoulder pads. The sides of his legs open up, allowing you to slide them up over his thighs as well as folding out the rear wheels before closing them back up. The smaller fins near the tops of his legs remain folded flat, but the large ones angle outward, and his feet spin around and fold onto the backs of his legs. Once his legs are set and tabbed together, the backpack can hinge down and back, sliding over some tabs on this thighs to lock into place, then his arms simply peg into the backpack to finish it all off. Falcon's car mode is pretty solid, and fairly Sunbow accurate. My biggest complaints are that the fenders don't really reach in front of the nose the way they should for this mode, and that the fins on the back are pointing in the wrong direction. I'll also note that the back is a bit messy, but that's almost par for the course on Springers, even for the big MP-style ones, and that I'm not a fan of his visible fists, but if Hasbro can't manage that on a $50 Leader why should I expect MFT to do it on a much smaller $30 figure? The wheels roll, but on this size we're not getting gimmicks like headlights or a cockpit that can open. Honestly, I'm not even sure if the car mode has intentional weapon storage. That said, both of his fists are still accessible so you can plug his weapons in there... although the sword will look kind of stupid, as it's sticking straight up. Like with Samurai, the gist of the helicopter mode is to unfurl the tail boom from his legs, curl his arms up alongside the fenders, and split the sword to make the rotor. In practice, there's a bit more going on this time. The wheels tuck back under the nose, which leaves space for the shoulder pads to fold up a bit, shortening them to sit well behind the nose. While his arm curls up, the inside of it folds back out, and futher allows you to fold out the landing skids. While unfurling the tail boom, you have to rotate his waist and then rotate his thighs 180 degrees, which brings them close together so they can tab in properly. Finally, in a step I missed for these photos, his feet do swivel around and still tab into each other. Falcon's helicopter mode is a definitely improvement over Samurai's- better colors, engine nacelles on the top, landing skids that don't require partsforming, horizontal stabs on the tail, and they did work in a way to change the geometry of the fenders/wings. However, I think it's probably his weakest mode. We've still got the visible fists. There's a little gap in the fuselage, where his chest vacated his torso that's not being hidden by his arms anymore. There's a larger gap on the back of the tail (and under it), and the entire tail boom seems a bit too large for the fuselage. My biggest gripe is one that actual returns from Samurai, and that's that there's nothing locking the fenders/wings in place; they can rotate and move freely on the shoulder ball joints. While we can trust the sword to form a nice rotor, again there doesn't seem to be any deliberate storage for his gun. Of course, there's still the visible fists, if you don't mind the asymmetry. As for the flight stand, it plugs into a screw hole on Falcon's butt, currently on the underside of the helicopter. Like I said yesterday, Iron Factory, Magic Square, and NewAge haven't done a Springer. So, by virtue of being better than Samurai, Falcon is the Springer I'd recommend for your Legends collection. And for your money you'll be getting an excellent robot mode, a decent car mode, and an adequate helicopter mode, as well as the knowledge that if Iron Factory ever gets around to doing a Springer it'll certainly be too stylized for a Sunbow G1 Legends collection anyway. The real threats will be Magic Square and NewAge, who I imagine will almost certainly do a better Springer, but at the cost of being more complex and more expensive.

And Tomahawk, from the 2010 Hunt for the Decepticons movie line, was done as Springer as part of the GDO line for Asian markets. Who also only had a single alt. Yeah... I might have been looking at Botcon Springer because, by this point, Botcon Springer might be the only Springer toy I don't have. Period. (And, even though I don't have Botcon Springer, I do have Roadbuster from the Autobot Ambush pack that was being sold at Targets around the same time as the pack that gave us Evac Springer.) BTW, please excuse the less-good lighting for awhile. Like I said, I usually do my photography in the guest room, but my wife's parents are visiting from China... until September. 😩 Of course, I'm still buying stuff, so I needed to do something. I wound up buying smaller, cheap folding table at Walmart, with the same posterboard I normally use for the background. But I only have half the lamps with this setup, and I'm working out of my bedroom which has worse lighting to begin with.

Oh, you have no idea how far down the rabbit hole I've gone now. Let's just say I was pricing Botcon Springer a little bit ago...

Well, @M'Kyuun requested it, so even though I reviewed all the MP-style options for Springer, I guess we're breaking into Legends. But none of the big three (Iron Factory, NewAge, & Magic Square) have done a Springer that I'm aware of. Instead, we're looking at MechFansToys, who have done a few 3P Legends-class triple changers by now. But this one would be their first, a figure that many stores have labeled as Samurai. For the record, I don't know where the name "Samurai" comes from. Nowhere on the box does it say "Samurai." Rather, it says things like "Mech Soul," "Lost Planet," and "Assault Soldiers." As near as I can tell, "Mech Soul" is a designer or sub-brand of MFT, and "Lost Planet" or "Assault Soldiers" (or both!) refer to the product line/universe. Either way, here he is with two other MFT figures for scale. Aesthetically, I'm not sure what Mech Soul was going for. His fenders are his entire shoulders, rather than moveable shoulder pads, so they're always straight up. They can't angle forward OX-style, nor do they wrap around Sunbow-style. There's no yellow on them, either. For that matter, while the vents in his chest are painted yellow, there's not quite enough as it's surrounded by green. His legs have quite a bit of kibble on them. You expect that there's going to be helicopter parts jammed up on most takes on Springer, but here it's a bit low-effort, hanging off the sides of his legs while his calves are pretty hollow. I'll also note that his backpack, while somewhat typical at first glance, does hang down past his butt. It's going to be a factor later. Samurai comes with a ton of accessories... but they're mostly not his. There are two swords that are for him, though the second is pretty superfluous. The two guns at the bottom of the picture of for him. But the rest of the accessories- a container, a little mecha, two claws, two shoulder guns, and a hand gun- speak to what MFT was really doing at the time. They were KO-ing Takara's Diaclone reboot toys. I couldn't tell you which Diaclone toy specifically MFT is KO-ing here... MFT may have even made some original parts for it, but it's definitely based on the Power Suit designs that were sprinkled between larger releases. The shoulder guns mount onto holes on it's back, the claws can either be held or plugged onto its legs, and it can hold its hand gun. The front opens and you can stuff a Dianaut in there. And his pelvis can slide up its back along a track, allowing you to scrunch up its legs and fold its arms back so you can stuff it inside the container. But enough about Diaclone, we're here to talk about Springers. So, Samuari's head is on a ball joint. It swivels, it can look up, and it can tilt decently sideways, but there's not a lot of clearance for tilting downward unless you push the top of his chest in, as you would for transformation. His shoulders rotate, and they can move laterally about 60 degrees before his shoulders hit his head. They are, unfortunately, "Hot Rod" shoulders that can't move up and laterally at the same time. He's got a ball joint for a bicep swivel, and it pairs with a hinge to give him double-jointed elbow that bend a full 180 degrees. His wrists swivel. His waist swivels, but it's limited by the fact that his backpack hangs down over his butt. It gets caught on his hips. Speaking of hips, they're ball joints. Because his hip skirts don't move, they get a bit short of 90 degrees forward and about 75 degrees laterally. His backpack is once again a hinderance, as there's little room for any backward movement on the hips. He's got thigh swivels, and his knees bend nearly 180 degrees. His feet are on hinged ball joints, which give him good up/down tilt but a pretty limited ankle pivot. He can hold his swords or guns in either hand. He doesn't have storage for the extras on his body, though. Samurai has pretty simple engineering. The top of his chest collapses inward to create a gap for his head to fit through as you fold the rest of the chest up and over it. His biceps rotate 45 degrees so the fronts of his forearms are facing outward, then his hands rotate back so that the green backs of his hands are still facing outward. You can push his arms in so that they're a little closer to his body, but the problem is that they don't tab or lock into place at all. You line them up with his sides and just trust friction to keep them there. Hinges fold his feet out of the way, then you tab his legs together and fold them over his thighs. Clips on the backpack will grab his shins, locking them into lace. His feet, meanwhile, sort of rotate so the toes are pointing forward, but again they don't actually lock into place. The car mode is a mixed bag. There's that distinct lack of yellow we talked about in robot mode. The fenders do not come up in front of the nose. The fins on the rear are green and angled the wrong way. They kind of draw your attention such that, if you follow that line down the edge of the fin and imagine that's where the rear ended you might think the car mode looks pretty good. But a more careful examination reminds you that there's a ton of stuff hanging out back there, well past his rear wheels. In car mode, Samurai isn't meant to work with any of his own accessories, which is kind of a bummer. However, if you rotate his forearms back to their robot mode positions, you can take the Diaclone shoulder guns and push their pegs into slots on the backs of his arms. I guess, if you wanted an armed car mode, that's one way to do it, but it's just weird that you have to use KO Diaclone accessories to do it and not the actual guns made for him. If you have Samurai in car mode, you're already close to having him in helicopter mode. Turn his wrists so that the green part is facing up, then curl his elbows. Slots on his arms will lock into tabs on his shoulders. Take the fins and fold them away from his legs, then use the double hinges to line them up and form his tail boom. Take one of the swords and, rather than pull them apart and splay the blade open, realize that the sword actually two parts pinned together and scissor them apart. Jam the end of the pin into Samurai's back to make the main rotor. Samurai's copter mode has a lot of the same issues. While his arms do lock into his shoulders, there's nothing locking his shoulders so they can still rotate freely- but they're really in the same position as they were for car mode. His tail is still green instead of gray, and he lacks horizontal stabilizers. There's not enough yellow on the front, and his feet are just sort of flopping against his sides. Still, with the tail boom folded out the rear seems more purposeful, and the shoulders were in more of what you'd think of as the helicopter position already, so I think I prefer this mode to his car mode. Since it forms the main rotor, Samurai is using one of his swords in helicopter mode. You can also use both of his guns in this mode. They have tabs on one side, and those tabs fit into slots on his arms, essentially forming gray (still not yellow) landing skids. My recommendation is that you don't buy Samurai. I don't want to judge him too harshly- this figure is around seven years old, and one of MechFansToys' early releases. But I have to be honest, it's not very good. The aesthetics are just off, and while I suppose his bot mode might be passable the engineering is a little too basic, even by 2017 standards. There's no excuse for not securing his arms better. His helicopter mode looks OK, but the car mode feels unfinished. And the thing is, I've reviewed MFT's Astrotrain, their Blitzwing, and their Octane. All three are figures I've held up as examples for what Hasbro should be doing, and are figures I've wished would get upsized to Voyagers. I know MFT can do a much better figure than this. Maybe if they took another crack at it..?😉

Oof. Not loving the Autobot Dramatic Capture set. If there's a difference between that Jazz and the regular SS86 release it's so minimal that I'm not seeing it- it even still has "14" instead of "4" on the side. Prime looks good, arguably what he should have looked like in the first place... except we're supposedly getting an even better Commander-class SS86 Optimus this year. And Mainframe is definitely colored a lot closer the original Action Master toy... but who gives a crap about Mainframe? Maybe if they ditched Mainframe for a Prowl with the paint and mold tweaks they used on the dead one, but made him not dead and actually fixed Jazz's number, but as it stands I'll pass.

Both Autobots, you're in the clear.

For those that don't read katakana, it lists the following: Ginrai - 10m Super Ginrai - 15m God Ginrai - 20m King Poseidon (Piranacon) - 20m Overlord - 20m Black Zarak - 25m Lightfoot (Getaway) - 10m Ranger (Hotwire) - 10m Roadking (Lube) - 10m Hydra (Darkwing) - 10m Buster (Dreadwind) - 10m

Yeah, those big-budget Hollywood films look sooo much better. I mean, just look at these films that were also released in 2023... (No, I'm not actually suggesting these movies looked better than Godzilla Minus One. I'm being sarcastic.)

I'll watch it. Let There Be Carnage wasn't as good as the first one, but I enjoy the interplay between Tom Hardy and the symbiote.

Why? Sony has been gunning for their own super hero cinematic universe since The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Venom has been their only even moderately successful attempt. So... the first one is, given that they were constrained to make an origin story for Venom that didn't have anything to do with Spider-Man, is probably about a good as it could have been. That is, it's not great, but Tom Hardy is pretty good in it, and the interplay between him and the symbiote is a pretty good time and makes the film a guilty pleasure of mine. Tom and the Symbiote are still the highlights of Let There Be Carnage, but on the whole I thought it to be a weaker film.

Looks like a straight reissue of the Playmates '84 Voltron that came out near the end of the Netflix show's run a few years back, yep.

Yeah... but remember, aside from what they have planned for Transformers One and a few store-exclusives, I had word for everything through the end of 2025. No Jetfire... in fact, the only other Armada release in the works that I'm aware of (after Galvatron and Tidal Wave) is a Voyager-class Red Alert. Energon is getting no love aside from a Galvatron repaint of the Core-class Megatron. Nothing else is in the queue for Cybertron. A big chunk of 2025 is going to be Aerialbots and members of the 13 Primes.

I started collecting again when Hasbro launched the Classics line, which happened to launch in the late middle of Cybertron. I picked up a few Cybertron figures, and they were pretty much on parity with those Classics figures. Sure, those figures are coming up on 20 years old already, and the engineering of modern post-Siege figures has improved in the last two decades, but I don't think those older figures are all that bad. Now, it's no secret I collect Optimus Primes. And recently, after the Haslab Omega Prime got funded, I went on a bit of a kick buying up some of the older Primes I didn't have. I managed to snag a sealed boxed Armada Optimus Prime, and holy cow. I think the engineering improved more in the four years between Armada and Cybertron than in the 13 years between Cybertron and Siege. Prime's Super Mode legs are immobile flaps for the front and outer edges (and basically nonexistent on the backs and insides), plus the pegs that are meant to hold the flaps together have a tendency to not do their job. My kid and I have been watching Transformers before school in the morning, and we got a bit over halfway through Armada before the school year ended. It was enough to remind that in Armada Jetfire was really a glorified pants for Prime. I decided to buy a used on on ebay... $50, in good shape, only missing the missiles and instructions. Jetfire kind of surprised me... was he secretly one of the best figures in the line? His articulation is a far cry from modern figures, sure, but a huge improvement over Prime and Hot Shot (the only other Armada figure I have). He even has ankle pivots! And yeah, with his more solid legs and working ankles he makes for much better pants than Prime's own trailer. I guess all of this is a roundabout way of saying I really hope Hasbro makes a Legacy Armada Jetfire.

You had me running around comparing my Star Convoy to different figures. Looks like Super Ginrai will be pretty close to Commander Jetfire, the original Armada Optimus in Super mode, and the original Omega Prime. He'll be a little taller than Haslab Deathsaurus or Victory Saber, and significantly taller than Legends Super Ginrai. He should actually be a slightly shorter than Haslab Super Optimus Prime and at least a head shorter than Haslab Omega Prime. The top of MP-44's head (or whatever your flavor of 3P Prime) should fairly even with the bottom of the cab windows on Super Ginrai's chest, maybe a little higher. He'll be a bit shorter than Fans Hobby's Power Baser (and way shorter than KFC's Grand Raijin). Ginrai himself is definitely far too small to scale with previous MPs, and should be perfect for Generations/WfC/Legacy. Super Ginrai will be a little too tall for Generations/WfC/Legacy, but way less too-big than Haslab Omega Prime (or Super Prime, or Optimus Prime), and still closer to Generations/WfC/Legacy scale than old MP.

I think that's fairly accurate. MP/MPG Ginrai should be a little bigger than the original in robot mode, and much smaller than MP-44, KFC's Raijin, Fans Hobby's Power Baser core robot. I guess that confirms that MPG is NOT using the regular MP scale; pretty sure Ginrai is supposed to be bigger than Optimus. I'm not sure an official size exists for G1 Optimus, but TFWiki says 6m. Then again, TFWiki says 8m for Ginrai, but the official scale charts for Masterforce clearly say 10m. I'm more curious how big Super Ginrai will be. Ginrai looks like he has pretty similar proportions (but better articulation) than the original toy but Super Ginrai's body seems bigger proportionally to the cab, and he's definitely got longer limbs than the G1 toy.

Re-using Ironhide for the Diaclone repaint of Ironhide makes a whole lot more sense than dumping MP for MPG. I mean, MP made sense... these toys are the high-end, definitive (until version 2... or 3...) "masterpiece" ones for these characters. And when MPG came out, sure, the marketing said the "G" could be "great" or "giant," but it was understood that it was really "gattai." Raiden was a combiner. Ginrai isn't a combiner in the Raiden sense, but the human Godmaster combines with the cab, and the cab combines with the trailer. And eventually Super Ginrai will combine with Godbomber, so it still makes sense. You know what doesn't make sense? MPG Guard. That mold doesn't combine with anything, it's not giant, and by now it's not particularly great.

I have to get more? Because Virtus is in that picture, between Saltus and the G1 toy. *sigh* OK, MFT Springer on the way. In the meantime, here's X-Transbots Virtus. By showing up last, XTB definitely found themselves in an interesting position. As I'd covered in my previous reviews, despite numerous options all of the Springers we looked at had some flaws... Spanner and Allen weren't Sunbow enough, Big Spring was cheaply made and had an ugly face, Apache had a PITA transformation and poor articulation, and Saltus had some interpretative takes on Springer's alt modes (including probably the worst helicopter of the bunch). But at the same time, this is X-Transbots we're talking about. Could a company with their spotty track record really unseat offerings from fan-favorites like MMC and Fans Toys? Well, out of the box I'd say that Virtus is a tad skinnier than I picture in my head when I think of Springer, and the gray used for his legs is a tad light, but he definitely makes a strong showing. Green elbow joints, a more proportional head, and better molding on his yellow belly button are technically improvements compared to Saltus (left), and the shape of his chest (although a tad too narrow) has more Sunbow-esque proportions. And, while I don't often talk about stuff like paint and diecast because I don't think it's the be-all-end-all the way some collectors do, I feel compelled to point out that XTB almost seems to be deliberately 1-uping Fans Toys. Almost every surface is painted, and he's borderline overloaded on diecast to the extent that Virtus appears to weight more than Apache or Saltus. Virtus has what's probably the largest backpack among the Springers, but I don't think it's all that terrible. And, XTB's still going to XTB, as one of the quirks that you can see in this side view is a small gap in his torso. It's like somehow XTB just didn't get the parts that they designed to line up right, and it's somewhat compounded by the fact that the front of his torso doesn't actually lock in. Rather, there are flaps that overlap to make his collar, and Virtus sort of relies on the tension of the overlapped panels to hold everything in place. Still, I think we can agree that aesthetically Virtus is a very good Springer. Personally, I think Saltus looks just a tad better, but Virtus definitely beats out Apache and the rest. One area XTB was determined not to lose on is accessories, because Virtus has a ton. You get not one but two guns, each with slightly different sculpts and very different paint jobs. I am too lazy to dig through Season 3 to see if either gun is cartoon-accurate. He's got the missile from the '86 movie, and his sword. He's got a pair of blast effect parts, an entirely alternate IDW-style head, five alternate faces for his Sunbow head, a flight stand, a reasonably well-painted but totally un-articulated human figure from that one episode with Cobra Commander, a round translucent part, and eight (only three pictured) trapezoidal clear parts. About those faces... I'm not a huge fan of the default face. There's something that's just off about his Mona Lisa smile. But, as noted, options. You have an IDW face for the G1 head, a more neutral face with a narrow jaw, a slightly different neutral face that's a bit fatter, a happy face, and a... I dunno, disgusted? face. I think the fatter neutral face might be the most Sunbow, but the face is a bit fat for Virtus' leaner frame, so I'm personally going with neutral face with narrow jaw, and I think that works pretty well for me. As for the entire IDW head, the face on it doesn't appear to be swappable. It's nice that XTB is giving us options, but without the IDW body to match it just kind of looks out of place. Anyway... Virtus' articulation is pretty good. The neck is double-hinged, so he can look up and down a good bit and crane his neck forward, but there's no sideways tilt. His shoulders rotate and move laterally 90 degrees. He technically has butterfly joints, too, but you have to untab the shoulders from his sides to use them as they're actually transformation hinges. His biceps swivel, and his double-jointed elbows curl until his hands touch his shoulder pads. His wrists swivel, and his hands are fully articulated. Each finger is pinned at all three knuckles, while the thumb has two pinned knuckles but is connected to the palm via a ball joint. His waist swivels, and he's got a ratcheted 45 degree ab crunch. His hip skirts open on the front and sides, so the hips can ratchet about 60 degrees forward, 45 degrees backward, and over 90 degrees laterally. A note here, I've heard a lot of complaints that the spaces between the teeth on the lateral ratchets are too big. So, those complaints aren't wrong, but what those complaints tend to leave out is the fact that there's enough friction between the clicks that I haven't actually found it to be a problem. You're choices aren't stock straight or click out to a wide A-stance; the friction between clicks will get you a nice, natural A-stance. Anyway, the thighs swivel, and the knees bend 90 degrees on ratchets. The feet don't tilt down, but they can tilt up a good 90 degrees, and they have around 45 degrees of ankle pivot both inward and outward. All-in-all not quite as good as Saltus' articulation, but on par or better than every other Springer. As far as his accessories go, he can cradle the missile, but that's about it. I don't know what you'd even want to do with the human slug. They're both going back in the box. The guns and the sword work, in theory, using the standard MP-style tabs on the handles into slots on his palms. In practice, the pale gun with the green trim doesn't seem to fit too well. I'm not too bothered; if he's holding his sword he only has one hand free for a gun anyway, and I prefer the gray one. I don't have any trouble with him holding those. The blast effects can be plugged into the guns' barrels. And everything else isn't for bot mode. Oh, but one feature he's got that doesn't require any accessories? He's got the little arm blaster from the '86 movie. For those keeping score at home, that's a feature that only Saltus has had so far. XTB's transformations aren't usually as straight-up bad as Fans Toys, but they're rarely good and often full of questionable design choices and bits that wind up flopping around on too-delicate armatures. So it's with some surprise that I'm saying that Virtus' transformation is actually pretty good. As you'd expect, his chest lifts up and his head tucks into it to form the nose, and the backpack unclips and hinges out, but you'll find that the inside of his torso is actually hollow. Instead of turning his arms into his wings and landing skids, they scrunch up and fold into the hollow space in his torso- that scrunching of the arms is probably the least intuitive part of the transformation, as it involves collapsing his biceps into his shoulders, bending his elbow the wrong way, disconnecting his wrist, spinning it around, and plugging it into the inside of the elbow, then using his actual elbow joint to bend the arm around so his fists are now resting under his biceps, and there's not a ton of clearance for stuffing his arms into his torso. Once you get it, though, it's pretty smooth sailing. His legs open up to extend the tail boom, then wrap back over his thighs; be mindful of these little bits that fold out of the boom and tab in behind his knees. With the boom in place, the rest is simply sliding the wings out of the backpack and unfurling the landing skids, tabbing the top of the helicopter in place, then using a pair of hooks to secure the fuselage to the tail boom. Minus the arms, it's all fairly easy and intuitive, though there are a few of those XTB-style quirks. The obvious ones I already touched on, the hooks that hold the fuselage to the tail boom, and the lack of clearance for stuffing his arms into his torso, but another one that kind of bugs me are the landing skids. They're on sliders, and kind of scoot out these crevasses under the wings. I don't get why XTB though sliders were were a better idea than simply pinning the skid and having it unfold from the crevasse like a knife. Minor engineering quirks aside, it's hard to argue with the results. I might again point out that the Sunbow art actually uses green for most of the boom and the horizontal stabilizers, but almost nobody does it because then the robot would have green legs. Green for the rotor might have been nice too, but I can live without it. If I'm being very picky I might suggest the wings are a tad small, and I wish those flaps that are just laying on the wings found a way to fold out of the way. On the whole, though, I'd say it edges out Allen and Apache as the most Sunbow-accurate helicopter mode. And XTB is bringing the gimmicks, too. Of course, the sword splits in half to form the rotor. The cockpit opens, and rather than nothing or a hint of molded detail Virtus has a cockpit with tons of molded details and a pair of seats with steering yokes... though it's too small for his slug (which couldn't sit anyway) or the human figures that came with MP-44 or anything like that. Like Saltus and Big Spring, Virtus does have the flip up headlights, and in a step up from those two Virtus' lights actually light up. Each light takes a pair of AG-0/LR521/SR521 batteries, and there's a little button on the side that turns them on or off. Of course, I couldn't test that feature because, despite years of accumulating different-sized button cell batteries for my toys, the manufacturers keep finding sizes I don't have. Anyway, one last gimmick that Virtus uses to stand apart from the pack is that he has actual landing gear with little rolling wheels. One is in his chest, under the nose of the helicopter. The others are his robot heels.' You might have noticed a little rectangle on Virtus' crotch. It has a spring to push back out, but the rectangle does slide in to make a slot. That slot allows you to mount Virtus to the included flight stand, which is a fairly elaborate piece of kit. There's a sliding bit to lift the main arm up and down, with a tab that locks it into place. Meanwhile, a pair of flaps on the sides open and close to lock/unlock a hinge near the tip so you can angle the helicopter according to your desires. Aside from the stand, the blast effect parts can be plugged into his engines. And, in a kind of neat gimmick, instead of using the sword to form the rotor you can assemble the eight trapezoidal clear bits around the circular one, and plug that into the top of the helicopter instead. The idea is that this now-massive disc creates the illusion of rapidly-spinning rotors without actually spinning the rotor. But wait a second... if you use this massive disc, where do you put the sword? Or his guns, for that matter? XTB does actually have that covered. Under the stand, there's slots that fit into tabs on the sword's handle and the sides of the guns, plus a pair of clips for the blast effects, allowing you to store it under the the stand. Too bad there's no storage for the missile or the extra faces, though. Oh, and if you'd rather leave all the accessories but one gun and sword in the box, that's fine too. I found that you can stick the barrel (of the gray rifle, anyway) into a gap under his chest with the handle fitting between Virtus' fists, under the helicopter. It's not super secure, which is why I don't think it's intentional, but it's secure enough that I gave him a little shake and it didn't fall out. Transforming Virtus into his car mode is 75% the same transformation as helicopter. The chest is still flipping up, the arms are still stuffing into the torso, and the fender are still coming out of the backpack. The simply use the sliders they're on to move up further, extending past the nose, and you leave the rest of the wings stored inside the fenders, deploying his front wheels instead. With the fenders slid forward you have room to fold the flaps that were laying on top of them in helicopter mode onto the sides. Most of the difference is in the rear. You still have to open the legs up and wrap them around the the thighs, but you have to turn the thighs 180 degrees. You kind of start to unfurl the tail boom, but you wind up turning the rear rotors around and then collapsing them back up against the legs. While you have the legs open, you'll want to fold out the rear wheels, and use them to tab his legs together. The roof should just clear his feet, and tabs on it will grab into slots on the legs. Now, Springer's car mode has always been kind of stupid. I'm not sure whether the toy came first, or Floro Dery's design, or maybe if we even started with Dery's design, made the G1 toy from it, then refined the design before animating the movie, but across the board it's sort of like they designed a robot that would turn into a futuristic helicopter, decided after the fact that they wanted a triple changer, so they added wheels, scrunched his legs back up, shifted his arms a bit, pulled the rotor off, and said, "space car?" And I did praise Saltus for trying something a bit different to look like it was more purposefully designed as a ground vehicle and not a smushed helicopter on wheels. The fact remains, though, that Saltus' car mode is not Sunbow-accurate. But Virtus? Well, technically the rims on the wheels should be green, and his rear is a touch gappy, but Virtus has far and away the most accurate car mode. I mean, I really don't have much else to say about it, because it nails the colors and proportions so well that the color of the rims and the gappy rear end are really they only deviations from the Sunbow art to even remark on. You can plug a gun into the rotor hole on the roof; the rotor's rotation is actually on the sword itself, so the gun won't spin or anything. It can also be stored in the back of the car by sticking slots on the sides of the rear of the gun into tabs near Virtus' toes. The instructions also tell you that you can store the sword underneath the car. I assume that was part of the plan at some point, and one I wish they would have included in the final product, because there's a loose sheet that tells you, "hey, ignore that bit in the instruction book because you can't store the sword under the car after all. And hey, I wasn't about to let a piece of paper boss me around. I really tried to get the sword in. It looks like the handle was supposed to go into a gap in his chest (the same gap I stuffed his gun's barrel into in helicopter mode), then the blade would run along the bottom and between the rear wheels. But, it seems like XTB had to add that page because there simply isn't room to do that. Trying to get the blade between the wheels will just push them apart and start untabbing his legs. On very final thing to note. You might have noticed in my pics that the faux fenders on Virtus' shoulders are entirely yellow, which isn't accurate- they should be yellow in the front, but mostly green. What's more, they're solid diecast chunks painted yellow, and basically everyone winds up chipping the paint trying to get his arms in and out of his torso during transformation. That's no good! But XTB picked up on the issue right away and began manufacturing replacement parts, which my retailer included with my order without me even having to ask. The replacement shoulders aren't diecast, they're green plastic, with just the fronts painted. So in addition to (hopefully) not suffering from chipped paint, they're the correct colors! Swapping the parts is easy, just pull the fake headlight covers off and you'll find a screw. Remove it, and the front and back halves just slide right off. Slide the new parts on, screw them in, and then shove the replacement fake headlight screw covers into place and you're good to go. And now, the moment of truth... with all the Springers in hand, did XTB pull it off? Is Virtus the new best Springer? Do I recommend this figure? Actually, yes! But technically, more like a "yes, but". See, I think that Virtus is the best all-around version of Springer. In a rare win for XTB, I have no complaints about the build quality or QC (after replacing the shoulder pads). The materials are solid, the joints are solid, the paint is excellent. If you didn't know any better you could almost mistake the paint and materials for something Fans Toys put out. You get tons of accessories, decent articulation, and the transformation isn't bad at all. The robot mode looks great, if a little thin, and if you care about cartoon accuracy Virtus pulls off both alt modes better than anyone else. I think, if you're not sure which Springer is the one to get, that Virtus is probably the safest/best choice for most people. Now here's the but... as good as Virtus is, with a better head sculpt, a proper stocky body, and better articulation, I feel that Saltus is still edges out Virtus in robot mode. And that's kind of the rub- I've often said that if you have to make some concessions, you make concessions to the alt mode for the better robot mode. If you're not transforming your figures much or at all, and you really just want the best-looking, most posable robot to put into a cool action pose on your display shelf then you might still be better off with Saltus. But no matter what, it's Saltus or Virtus. If you've been thinking about picking up Apache, don't, and if you already did consider upgrading.

I dunno... he might be in the queue...

Yesterday, when talking about Apache, I mentioned a few times that at the time of its release Saltus and Virtus weren't out, that the only real competition was Big Spring and Allen. Of course, I'd reviewed Big Spring and included him in the photos with Apache. But I still felt like we were missing some context, so silly me, I went and got a copy of Unique Toys Allen. I think you can't talk about Allen without first talking about Unique Toys. They were one of early names in the 3rd party scene, breaking into the market with a collection of Predacons that kind of fit with what Hasbro was doing at the time, but was also not as good as what MMC was doing with their own Predacons. They put out a few more Generations-style figures like the well-regarded Mania King and their Terrorcons, but the market was already changing. Fans Toys had released Quakewave the same year that Unique Toys put out their Predacons, and by the time they completed their Terrorcons Fans Toys had done Bombshell, Perceptor, and several Dinobots, KFC had done their Blaster, MMC put out their first Ocular Max release, X-Transbots had put out Wheelie, Huffer, Scourge, and Megatron, and Badcube had put out their Huffer, Brawn, Warpath, Sunstreaker, and had started on their Insecticons. The market was clearly shifting toward more MP-style releases, and Unique Toys was kind of already dipping their toes into that water under their sister company, DX9, as they'd released a Mirage, Rodimus Prime, Galvatron, Astrotrain, and Blitzwing. Those last two are really where I want to focus, because they, along with Unique Toys' versions of Octane and Sandstorm, set the template for Allen. They're all big figures, clearly meant to fit scale with other Masterpiece and MP-style 3P figures, but they're also from an era when the ultra-Sunbow aesthetic hadn't been fully established yet, and Unique Toys/DX9 were offering more stylized designs as in afraid of risking Hasbro or Takara's ire. And we definitely see that in Allen. He's a very bright green, with spots that would be G1 Springer's darker olive coming across as barely a different tone. There are extra flourishes, like yellow stripes on his shoulders, some gunmetal accents added to his abs, shoulders, and forearms, molded vents on his shins that aren't present on the Sunbow sheet, and a bright, clean white used on his thighs, hands, and neck. He also has some weirdly puffy proportions. The thing that's the most out-of-place for me, though, are his bright yellow feet. Looking around his body there are some other things that I'm going to talk about more when we do his alt modes, and some more more gunmetal accents. I want to draw special attention to the piston details on his elbows, though. It's a detail not not on the Sunbow model, but one that UT added that actually serves a purpose beyond simply looking neat. Anyway, like Apache Allen is a little light on accessories. He's just got two, a gun and a sword. The gun as a sculpt that definitely seems Springer-esque, but I'm not sure about it being entirely green save for the white handle. The sword is a bit more stylized than we've seen on other Springers, with a thick blade, round hilt, and prominent pommel. It, at least, has some painted bits and does look pretty cool. Allen's head can look up slightly, but not down, on the hinge in his head, but his neck is on a double joint for transformation that you can also employ to kind of stretch his neck up and forward, improving his upward tilt and giving him actually good downward tilt as well. His shoulders rotate on ratchets, and move laterally a little over 90 degrees on ratchets (no Hot Rod shoulders, either). His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. His wrists swivel. His thumb is fixed, and his middle, ring, and pinky fingers are molded as a single curled piece with a hinge at the base. His index finger is separate from the other, hinged at the base and an addition middle knuckle. His waist swivels. His hip skirts do NOT move, which unfortunately limits his ratcheted hips to about 45 degrees forward and just under 90 degrees backward and laterally. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees on ratchets. His feet can tilt up but not down, and a set of double hinges for transformation gives him about 90 degrees of ankle pivot. So, a bit lacking in the hips, but if I'm being fair the hips still have enough range for some dynamic poses and honestly cost him less than Apache's abysmal shoulders. Allen can hold his gun and sword in either hand, using the time-honored method of plugging tabs on their handles into slots on his palms. The large peg on the middle of the sword's hilt can also be plugged into Allen's back, allowing him to store his sword in robot mode. I can't find any storage for the gun, though. Here's where things get fun, and you can see shades of the "turn it inside out" engineering that UT would later use to great effect on their Bayverse figures. You see, the front end and grill? That's not his chest. His chest is under the vehicle, and when it folded down it provided the clearance to pull a whole second version out from the inside of his torso that covered over it and his head. His backpack pulls away, then instead of forming the fenders his arms fold straight out behind his back and the backpack tabs into them to form the top half of the vehicle. The entire top of his body rocks back, then his legs turn inside out. some of it winds up turning, but otherwise staying mostly in place to form the rear with the wheels and fins. But the front of his legs spin around and stretch out, filling in the bottom of the vehicle but also carrying his feet up to the front of the car where they form the fenders and front wheels. It can be a little daunting the first time you do it until you figure out what goes where, but once you learn it it's honestly one of the easier and most fun transformations I've encountered on a Springer toy. And, trust me, by now I've done a lot of Springers. Now, going into this I was aware of the liberties Unique Toys had taken with their Octane. Their Sandstorm traded a dune buggy mode for an enclosed-cabin that was referred to by some as "the Wienermobile". And, given the liberties taken with Allen's robot mode, I think I kind of dismissed him at the time as being too stylized for my collection and just assumed that applied to his alt modes, too. But, actually having Allen in hand, I'm a bit surprised to note that his car mode is fairly Sunbow accurate. I mean, yeah, they added some gunmetal accents to the engines on top, and for whatever reason they cast his fins in green plastic and added some yellow accents when they'd traditionally be as gray as the part they're attached too. But the colors are pretty good, otherwise, and the proportions are more correct than Apache or Big Spring. With the caveat that I like the liberties that MMC took with Saltus, one could argue that Allen's actually the best car mode we've seen so far when it comes to capturing the Sunbow art. Like most of the other MP Springers, Allen's got rolling rubber tires and a cockpit that can open. There's not much to look at in there but the molded suggestion of a seat back, though. The handle on his gun can fold it to reveal a tab, and that tab fits nicely into a slot on either side of the vehicle. As for his sword, you can either plug it into the top of the roof, or the peg on the hilt happens to fit into the rotors outside the rear wheels. Sadly, just like Apache, there's no flip-out headlights. Getting to helicopter mode isn't terribly different than going to car mode. Much of the difference is simply turning his legs further inside out, stretching them into the tail boom, then you twist the bits with the translucent plastic around so that they can tab into the boom instead of the folded stabilizers that were on top of the boom. The fenders slide back into their helicopter position by sliding the shins that they're attached to backward. The front wheels fold down and allow for the wings to fold out from under the fenders. The only trick to remember is that there are bits on sliders that fold out from Allen's robot sides to fill in the gap vacated by the wings under the fenders to keep everything nice and solid. One again, the helicopter is honestly more Sunbow accurate than I gave it credit for. There's some gray on the sides where his shin panel forms the body of the helicopter that's really green on the Sunbow art, but better than then green shins in bot mode, eh? The landing skids don't have quite the right shape, but they're appropriately yellow (with a touch of that gunmetal accent). We could bemoan the fact that the rudder is green instead of gray again, but that's kind of offset by the fact that the entire tail boom and the horizontal stabilizers are green. This is the only Springer I've looked at that that doesn't have some gray on the boom, and that doesn't have gray stabs. Indeed, you've probably seen so many Springer toys with gray on the boom and gray stabs that you might think that's correct, but look at that Sunbow model sheet again. Green is Sunbow accurate! Aside from green on the rudder and a few yellow and gunmetal accents, it's the propellor that has the most liberties taken simply because it's angular, thick, and gray instead of basic thin green rectangular blades. About that, of course the sword forms the rotor, but the transformation is more unique than I'm used to. Rather than splay the blade out and use the handle as the connection, the entire sword splits in half, then one half turns over and you push it back together. This allows you to use the big peg from the hilt as the connection point. Allen's cockpit still opens if that's your thing, and you can still plug the rifle into the side. But Allen's got one more thing to talk about, something none of of the other Springers have had thus far. Actual fold out landing skids! That's right, he's not just resting on his tummy and tail. Green skids are part of the stuff that unfolds with the wings from out of the foot fenders, and a white one is stored under the tail rotor. I have to be honest... I'm not entirely sure what motivated me to buy Apache and Allen. I just sort of realize that I wasn't super familiar with them, despite owning a few other Springer toys, when we were talking about the upcoming Studio Series version. I figured I'd play with them a bit, get that experience, take a few pics and write about them, then sell them off again. I mean, with Apache's articulation issues and Allen's unique aesthetic neither were really a threat to Saltus in my MP display, right? Right. Kinda. I mean, yeah, I told you flat out yesterday that I don't recommend Apache, that Saltus is the better MP Springer. And I will indeed be listing him for sale soon. And yeah, Allen's bot mode is definitely far enough removed from Sunbow G1 to disqualify him from most people's MP displays. Indeed, as a display piece, Apache is a more accurate robot, and it does sort of help to see why so many people jumped on that train at the time. I'm not going to give Allen a recommend. But, I've decided against selling Allen, and that's because Allen brings something to the table that even Siege Springer didn't... Allen is a really fun toy. He's chunky and sturdy. It feels good to move his joints and pose him, and he's actually fun to transform. Saltus gets to stay in my display, but Allen gets to stay on my desk where I can play with him.

So if you also follow the official Transformers thread you might have noticed some discussion about Studio Series 86 Springer, and how he's still missing the horizontal stabilizers on his tail, and how all the 3P Springers pulled it off. And you might have caught the part where I randomly decided to increase my collection of 3P Springers. Now, for the record, I already owned Open & Play's Big Spring, MMC's Saltus, and even Toyworld's Spanner. Feel free to read (or re-read) up on those... and then immediately forget about Spanner, because as much as I really do like that figure he's most definitely not a cartoon-accurate, MP-style figure. Now... is Saltus safe on my shelf? Tonight's competition comes from Fans Toys, and the brand alone is enough to make up the minds of a lot of collectors. This, then, is Apache. I mean, the first impression isn't a bad one, especially given that at the time of Apache's release only Unique Toys' Allen and Big Spring were on the market yet. And right away we do see Fans Toys playing to their strengths. The sculpt is solidly G1 cartoon, but with the slightly more heroic proportions Fans Toys was using at the time before everyone started going a little too hard after those Sunbow three-quarter control drawings. And the materials are solid, with sturdy plastic, lots of diecast, and plenty of paint. I can't find my postage scale, but I'd guess that Apache weighs at least as much as Saltus, and double Big Spring. And if you give him a gentle shake none of his joints even budge. Things get a little messier when you start looking around the sides and back, though. The yellow on the front of his shoulder pads is doubled, because reasons. Tires are prominent on the backs of his forearms. His backpack is fairly accurate, as long as you ignore the butt flap. Likewise, the legs are pretty accurate, and even have details like the fins on the backs of his legs and the rotor and vents at his ankles, but you have to overlook some wheels poking out of his shins and some flaps (his horizontal stabs in copter mode) just chilling against the sides of his legs, not even locked in place. And that's just the gray part! His calves are absolutely dominated by some helicopter bits that certainly aren't present on the animation mode... or Saltus or Big Spring. Let's be honest, though... most of us do pose our figures with their backs to the wall. A butt flap, arm wheels, and some messy calves can be overlooked. Apache, perhaps, offers value elsewhere. Elsewhere probably isn't accessories, though. What we've got here is pretty basic... a rifle, painted silver, and two swords. The swords are nearly identical; the only difference is that one has the blade painted silver, as that seems to be the "standard" way to do Springer's sword, while the other is painted entirely green to better match the green rotors on Sunbow's control art. Seems a bit skimpy... Saltus and Big Spring both came with the catapult missile thing, plus Saltus came with a lance and two alternate heads. That said, I guess a gun and a sword are really all you need. Articulation is a more serious issue. Head's a hinged swivel, which can look up/down about 30 degrees, no sideways tilt. His shoulders rotate. They can also ratchet out about 90 degrees laterally, but here's the kicker- he's got "Hot Rod shoulders." That is, the joint for lateral movement is in his chest, on the wrong side of the rotational joint, so he can't raise his arm and move it laterally at the same time. I get annoyed enough to see that on a Hasbro Voyager, but on a MP-style figure it's pretty inexcusable. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend slightly over 90 degrees. While that's what I consider to be the minimum "standard," it's worth pointing out that Saltus and Big Spring both have double-jointed elbows. His wrists swivel, and each finger is individually articulated with a hinged ball joint at the base of the thumb and each finger having a hinged knuckle at the base and middle- better than Big Spring, and slightly more finger articulation than Saltus, though he lacks Saltus' tilting wrists. For whatever reason, he's got a ratcheted waist swivel, but not Saltus' ab crunch. The front of his hip skirts fold up so his hips can ratchet 90 degrees forward, but only a single click backward. Laterally, they get a little under 90 degrees. For those keeping score, that's a bit worse than Big Spring and significantly worse than Saltus. Thighs swivel, and knees bend 90 degrees on ratchets (same range as Big Spring, worse than Saltus. His feet tilt down a bit, arguably slightly up (similar to Big Spring, worse than Saltus). The front of his foot swivels, giving him 90 degrees of faux ankle pivot. That's technically more than Big Spring or Saltus, but (a) their whole feet pivot, not just the toes, and (b), to get the clearance to swivel his feet have to be angled slightly downward. Apache does a good job of holding his weapons, using the standard MP-style handle tabs and palm slots. Maybe the transformation is better? Wait... you guys did remember that this is Fans Toys, right? They're not exactly known for their smooth engineering. Now, to be fair, by Fans Toys' standard this one wasn't too bad. Some of it, like making the tail boom out of most of his legs and collapsing the arms is fairly intuitive. Where everything goes horribly wrong, though, is transforming his torso. At first it seems like it should be easy enough... you lift his chest up, and there's a hatch so that it can get up over his head... but there's no enough clearance. Then you realize the chest is on sliders, and they are insanely tight. I wound up using a silicone lubricant to even get them to budge, and even then I was sure I was going to break it. Ok, I finally get the chest up over his head. Smooth sailing from there, right? Nope. His sides collapse toward his spine, and guess what? Those sliders are also way too tight. After manhandling the thing, afraid of breaking it the entire time, I finally have the torso done. Then I realize I'm connecting the arms to his sides by plugging them into flimsy flaps, swinging his shins and feet around to the underside of the helicopter where some armatures loosely tab into the underside of his arms then wrap around so the "wings" with the landing skids can tab even more loosely into the sides of his arms. At least I can say that the effort was probably worth it, because once you get it there I can't complain about that helicopter mode. Between Apache, Saltus, and Big Spring Apache is the clear winner. The proportions are better than Big Spring with half-sized tail, or Saltus with his just plain wrong tail. The wings with the yellow ends (not just the spike of the landing skid) is correctly yellow, and a good portion of the tail boom is green like the animation. The wings are even angled a bit, the way the cartoon was drawn. Apache's got bigger horizontal stabs than Big Spring or Saltus, and more prominent engines than Saltus. My only real nitpicks are that the back of the engines are entirely yellow, instead of yellow-striped gray, and the vents on the backs of his wings are also yellow instead of green. As is typically the case, the main rotor is Apache's sword, split and splayed down the middle and plugged into a socket to form the main rotor. Once installed, the rotor will spin. As for his gun, you can store in on the helicopter by folding then handle in to reveal a tab that plugs into a slot on the helicopter's chin. Other than that, there's not much to talk about. The canopy does open, but all it reveals is a screw. No seat like Saltus or Big Spring. And Apache is completely lacking the flip-out headlights Saltus and Big Spring have. Transforming Apache to car mode is honestly worse than the helicopter mode. I mean, you still have to deal with the too-stiff sliders in the torso, but then rather than shift the shoulders the way pretty much every other Springer does to slide the fenders up past the nose, Fans Toys thought it'd be better to rotate the arms 180 degrees, then open a flap to turn the 180 degrees the short way around the shoulder joint before closing a similar flap on the other side. Clever, except that there really isn't enough clearance, making that maneuver decidedly uncomfortable. Oh, but that's the easy part! Despite the fact that his legs are mostly just in their robot-mode configuration, you do have to open the sides of his legs to shift some things around to shorten his thighs. But as you're extending the wheels in his shins and folding up his feet, you realize that said feet have to lined up just right so that a tiny peg can fit into a tiny hole. You got that part? Cool, now take the helicopter wing kibble and make sure it's also lined up just right, so it'll lock into the fins. If you finally managed that without popping the feet back out, you then get to tab the legs together at both the inside of the lower legs and the helicopter wing kibble, this time without popping out the feet or the kibble. Once you finally do that (and it'll take you more than one try, trust me) then you can lock the whole thing together by tabbing the butt flap into the backs of his thighs, all the while praying that that doesn't cause the kibble or feet to come undone. Unlike the helicopter mode, it's not even worth it! I mean, it's technically a bit more cartoon accurate than Big Spring's car mode, and a lot more accurate than Saltus', but it's way too stretched out, thick at the front and thin at the back. And it's loaded with out-of-place kibble between the fins. Big Spring's car mode was a bit unfinished at the back. Saltus' car mode wasn't accurate, but in way that was like "the Sunbow car looks kind of dumb, what if we changed it up a bit to make it look more purposefully like a land vehicle?" Fans Toys looks like they were trying to make a Sunbow-accurate car but failed in ways that just emphasize what was bad about the Sunbow car in the first place. Apache's sword has a small peg on one side of the hilt. This peg plugs into a hole under the front of the car, so they blade runs along the length of the bottom. Good storage in theory. In practice, the weight of the figure will cause the rear wheels to slide back into his shins, causing the sword to scrape along the ground and potentially scratch the paint on the blade. Storing the gun is worse. There are long, thin tabs just above the handle. You can use those tabs to sandwich the gun between the yellow helicopter kibble on the back of the car... but to do that, you need to undo the butt flap and spread his legs apart, which you most definitely NOT doing without undoing the copter kibble and and feet. The cockpit still opens, but despite flipping the arms around the headlights don't open on that side, either. There's a part of me that wants to say again that, at the original time of Apache's release, the only other cartoon MP Springers on the market were Unique Toys' Allen and Open and Play's Big Spring. I can't comment on Allen (yet), but I can see why someone would prefer Apache over Big Spring. The head sculpt is far better, and the paint and materials are far better. The helicopter mode is still one of the best. If all you were looking for was a figure that looks excellent in a stoic robot pose for your MP shelf, Apache does that better than Big Spring. However, Big Spring is more poseable and far more fun to transform and play with. But also, it's not like Apache happened in a vacuum. Apache's articulation is pretty sub-par, period. And while they wouldn't come until later, MMC and X-Transbots had both announced their Springers and shown prototypes. Fans Toys could have delayed Apache, maybe try to rework some of the design, to get better articulation and a car mode that wasn't trash. Instead, they rushed to be first and banked on their brand, ultimately delivering a figure that feels very phoned in from a company with their reputation. Do I, in 2024, recommend Apache? Frankly, no. Because today the competition isn't just Big Spring. Today we also have Saltus, and objectively Saltus has equally good paint and materials, better articulation, better transformations, and more accessories. I'd add that I subjectively think Saltus has a better car mode, and quite frankly a better bot mode that more accurately captures the stocky build of the Sunbow art, so even if you just want a good-looking robot and don't care about accessories/articulation/transformation/alt modes Saltus is still king. The only point I can give Apache over Saltus is the helicopter mode; as much as I love Saltus, his helicopter mode is kind of trash while Apache pretty much nailed it. I think that, short of buying multiple figures to display in multiple modes, most collectors care more about the robot than the helicopter, though. So today, my official recommendation is to pass on Apache, go with Saltus. Tomorrow, though...

I'd rather fast food change in response to consumer demand than a wave of bad publicity from a guy trying to pass off his liver damage on McDonald's instead of his serious issues with alcohol, but that's just me. That said, 53 is pretty young, and cancer isn't something I'd wish on much worse people. My condolences to his family and loved ones.

Usually I like to have a few more figures to write about before I do a Repaint Roundup, but my in-laws are coming for the summer next week and the guest room is where I do my photography. Needless to say, I don't know when or how often I'll be writing this summer. For now, here's Legacy Evolution Powerlinx Hot Shot. Truthfully, I wasn't super interested in this repaint. I mean, it's basically the same not-great-but-mostly-ok Hot Shot we already got, just in a color scheme he only used for like the last seven or so episodes and with a few extra accessories. But recently Hasbro had an outlet sale and Powerlinx Hot Shot was down to a more acceptable price, plus the only original Armada toy I own (until buying Prime) was Powerlinx Hot Shot, so I caved. Deco-wise, it's very much what you'd expect... the colors are updated to better reflect the original Powerlinx Hot Shot's deco, but just like the standard release he's lacking painted detail in the shins and in the faux car parts on his arms. On the topic of new accessories, Hot Shot retains his engine gun, but he gets two new rifles. The colors are simply gray plastic, which is a tad unfortunate, but they are designed to look like the rifles Hot Shot used in the episode "Dash." You also get a pair of (yet more) three-sectioned effects parts, and most notably, the Minicon Jolt. Jolt's coptor mode, as seen in the previous picture, is a bit stumpier than the original. This seems to be because the designers prioritized the robot mode really capturing the look of the cartoon. Which means that, instead of being primarily yellow like the Jolt that came with the original Powerlinx Hot Shot, he's primarily orange. He's got no head articulation, ball joints for shoulders that swivel and move laterally 90 degrees, no bicep or wrist swivels, elbows that bend 90 degrees, no waist articulation, ball-jointed hips that can go 90 degrees forward, backward, or laterally, no thigh swivels, knees that bend over 90 degrees, and no feet. Unlike the original toy and counter to his cartoon appearance, he cannot connect to Hot Shot's engine gun. Hot Shot's new rifles are meant to store on his back, as they did in "Dash." You move his axle out of the way, then you're supposed to use little tabs on them to connect them to cutouts near the hinge on his backpack before moving the axle back into place. The catch is, at least on my copy, one of the rifles fits perfectly, the other will not stay plugged in and pops back off the second you let it go. Meanwhile, Jolt has a 5mm peg that folds out from underneath, so you can plug him onto Hot Shot's back, shoulders, etc... basically anywhere you can find a 5mm port. The exception is the 5mm port that's on his back behind the axle, so he can't attach to Hot Shot's back while he's doing his "Axlezooka." Hot Shot's car mode is, again, pretty much what you'd expect. I have to admit, the primary red color, yellow spoiler, and the yellow flames on the hood are very evocative of G1 Hot Shot, which was surely the intention going all the way back to the original toy. As was the case with the regular Hot Shot release, they painted the grill (correctly) then painted the part of the hood right above the grill (incorrectly) instead of the engine cutout. Attaching Jolt or the engine gun don't activate any spring-loaded gimmicks or anything as they would on the original toy. But I'll note that the engine gun storage is still there, and the bumper can be manually opened. There's room on the spoiler for the new guns, and Jolt actually has a third transformation just so that his nose can plug into the peg between the wings of Hot Shot's spoiler but angle the rest of his body so the propellor faces backward, as in the cartoon. And since there's no actual molded difference between the Hot Shots, you can use Jolt with the regular yellow Hot Shot. Is Powerlinx Hot Shot worth picking up? I mean, most of the geewunners here aren't into Armada in the first place, so a deco that appeared in just seven episodes probably isn't super appealing. At the reduced price I do kind of dig having an updated version of the only deco I actually had of the original, though, and the extra accessories are pretty cool. Jolt is an especially welcome addition; the size and engineering on Jolt (and for that matter, the Whisper Minicon that came with Shattered Glass Sideswipe) aren't quite Core-class figures, but they're a step up from the Siege Micromasters. Instead of constant repaints, though, I think it'd be cool if Hasbro maybe did a few Minicon three-packs... say one with Sparkplug, Leader-1, and Swindle (Prime, Megatron, and Starscream's Minicons), one with the three components of the Star Saber, one with the Skyboom Shield, one with the Requiem Blaster, etc. Or maybe just one big Minicon set akin to the some of the store-exclusive Micromaster sets released during Siege/Earthrise.