M'Kyuun

5 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

What I've found most often is that when those clips lose their clutch power, the main cause is tiny fractures in the center of the clip.  They don't shatter outright, but the tension will be lost once that pressure fractures the surface of the clip.  They'll stay that way a long time, but the friction will be gone.

The concern is that I'm experiencing the lack of clutch power from new, never-used skeleton arms. I turned to my older stock, in fact, because until just recently, I had a higher degree of efficacy from them than new parts.  Even my older parts, which haven't seen much use, are evidencing a reduced clutch power which makes me wonder if it is indeed an environmental issue.

6 hours ago, David Hingtgen said:

Keeping the drop-mechanism, but implementing the swinging-rear-doors aspect of the original, would be very difficult I imagine.  Pretty much has to be one or the other.   So, if you want rear doors, you also need to redo the entire center section to have either a drive-in rover, or a slide-in cargo pod.  At which point we might as well just start from scratch, since the entire mid-section needs to be massively re-worked in that case... 

My thinking is to move the release mechanism's trigger to the forward bulkhead freeing up the engine section to be modded into doors thus mimicking the original's design. I love cargo as a theme and as a design feature; the omittance of the original's cargo box to house the land vehicle is a strike against this set as an update. That's a fair bit of playability lost: loading and unloading the vehicle into the box, loading and unloading the box itself, which requires the additional feature of opening doors and the possibility of a ramp, and finally, the modularity of the box to be incorporated into another smaller ship utilizing the cockpit and a single engine component. With further modification, both the air drop feature and a land-based cargo door/ramp features would expand the playability of the design by a fair margin and bring it closer to the original set in its characteristics. I wouldn't mind applying these and other modifications in an effort to render it a much more faithful, albeit properly upgraded, version of the original Blacktron Renegade. While modding is not at all my strong suit, as I tend to concentrate on variable mecha, as an owner of the original set there's a part of me that's a bit discontented with this new Renegade, especially when looking at the excellent execution of 10497 Galaxy Explorer compared to the original 497/928. This set misses the mark in a few areas.

On 12/21/2024 at 12:32 AM, danth said:

I like how this guy fixed the colors:

https://brickset.com/article/117215/improving-the-new-renegade

I stumbled on that independently very early this morning when I couldn't sleep. I was going to post it, but I'm glad I didn't now. Huw Gilliam is a pretty well-known British builder who does a lot of CAD rendered MOCs but also builds the odd model with real brick. Looks like this recoloring is the latter, and IMHO, it's an improvement on the original. I think the cockpit, especially, benefits from the removal of all the yellow, but overall I think the greater use of black throughout improves the model and brings it closer to the original look of Blacktron. I appreciate that he built a central container like the original, but honestly, I'm not really feeling those heavy latticed support elements on top. Huw didn't change the drop mechanism, either, and IMHO, the new Renegade is due for a retrofit of swinging doors and a ramp in the back to bring it closer to the original.

2 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

Fair, it's not that the clips are a bad system to use, they do offer a lot of compact options in a lot of different configurations, and they definitely hold well.  The Saturn V set makes that pretty clear.

My general issue with them is just how many of them I've found broken over the years.  They've gone through a few revisions to make the clips sturdier (and I think I still have a few really old ones that are really thin plastic), but it seems like I'm always finding new broken ones on builds I've left on display.  Last time I picked up my Ideas shuttle build, the tail and one wing flap both fell off from broken ones.

The Saturn V is an exemplary set for use of clip and bar joints. Just a brilliant set.

I find it alarming that you've had so many clip breakages; I keep a lot of sets out on display and to whit I've never had an issue yet with broken clips. Add to that my numerous transforming MOCs which I manipulate and put on public display every year.

However, I've noticed a lessening of clutch power in some parts with clips of late. I built a pumpkin that turns into a spider and it relies heavily on the skeleton arms to effect motion in a goodly portion of the model. I gave my last good model of it away this last BrickCon and ordered enough parts to build two more from LEGO's online PAB. I've built at least six copies of this thing since the original in 2019, which itself went through probably a hundred or more transformations at a convention before I gave it to its intended owner. Even after all that manipulation, all the joints were still tight, and thus it was for pretty much every other model I built of it until just recently. I did a lot of mixing and matching of various parts with bars and skeleton arms before finally finding a group that only somewhat have the collective clutch power of every previous version. I'm not sure what's going on, but it's frustrating. I could blame it on mold fatigue, but I even resorted to digging into my parts stash for older parts that I've had for years and the problem persisted. I keep my parts at room temp (around 77 degrees Fahrenheit) and that temp doesn't swing much in either direction throughout the year. I think the problem lies with the skeleton arms, but I'm not sure why I'm experiencing the same weakness in my older parts when I never did before. It's weird. However, my issue lies more with clutch power than breakages, of which I have had very, very few over the years despite my heavy use of them in my models. 

On 12/20/2024 at 10:56 PM, Valkyrie Hunter D said:

I've been building my own Speed Champions lately, finishing up a couple of legends of LeMans - the venerable Porsche 962c and the revolutionary Mazda 787b:

These original designs by SFH Bricks and custom decals make these builds on par with the Speed Champions line, which makes me glad I don't have to wait for LEGO to make their official versions.  The decals are quite well done.  They even have some for the minifig drivers:

I fallen down deep into the rabbit hole with 8-stud wide builds of fine autos.  More to come!

These are brilliant. the white one in particular doesn't even look like LEGO on first glance, so well is the build and the applied livery. Hope you'll share more pics of these. I'm not a car guy, per se, but I enjoy the Speed Champions line quite a bit.

On 12/20/2024 at 11:23 PM, sketchley said:

While poking around to try and figure out why the 2025 Blacktron Renegade looks off, I stumbled across the following pictures showing the Cruiser and Renegade clips, and clipped together:

Source: Jay Ong's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jayong28/p/DDw8DqWPivq/?img_index=1

 

As for why the Renegade looks off: the overall silhouette (in red) is octagonal, whereas the original was more diamond-shaped.  In addition, the 'bulky bits' (in green) are arranged in an H shape on the new one, while the original was a rectangle.

As the new Galaxy Explorer is fundamentally the exact same shape as the original—just bigger!—one wonders why the Blacktron Renegade's shape was so drastically changed...  Perhaps the Lego group will have much better sales if they didn't market it as the Renegade, but as an entirely new Blacktron ship? 🙄

 

I appreciate that comparison. Purely from an initial view, the new Renegade is notably much chunkier than the original, which had a more minimalistic skeletal look to its frame that helped it to look sleeker. I, too, wish the designer had opted, like Mike Psiaki's excellent update to the Galaxy Explorer, to maintain a closer appearance to the original ship while enlarging the whole and updating various areas and features accordingly. The new design is a notable departure from the original, made all the more apparent by a side-by-side comparison. I still plan on getting a copy or two, but my enthusiasm is much less for this than what I had and still have for 10497. However, it's Classic Space, and I want them to continue reviving more old Space themes, so I'll be getting at least one.

On 12/20/2024 at 11:35 PM, Chronocidal said:

This... makes no sense to me.  Why would they specifically design the two linkages using exact opposite setups?  It's not like it's hard to modify them at all...

Otherwise though, I'm really getting tired of these clip systems.  They might hold well enough, but why is it so hard to just pin things together with technic pins like we've been doing for roughly forty years?  Did they discontinue the bricks with permanent pegs attached?

Whatever the situation though, I do hope I can pick up a pair of these.  I just want to extend the design and scale it up more faithfully like the Explorer set.

Usually I'm in agreement with your views, Chronocidal; however, I much prefer using the clip and bar connections as opposed to Technic pins, which oft prove to be a royal PITA to engage when two or more are used for a quick disconnect system. So far as the GWP Invader set, oddly renamed Cruiser, goes, I surmise that it was designed independently from the Renegade with little or no bleedover, hence the differences in clipping systems. Fortunately, it shouldn't be too difficult to mod to bring it into compliance with the Renegade's clip system. I oft entertain fantasies of modding sets, but I seldom follow through, even after buying copies of the sets that I intend to mod. I find building my own stuff more fulfilling (and time-consuming) and generally abandon modding efforts. This is a set that could definitely stand some heavy modding to render it closer to the OG set as well as rendering it closer to what 10497 did for the Galaxy Explorer, but I already know that I'll likely never bring myself to do it. However, I'm curious and I look forward to other folks' mods for this thing, as there's a bit of discontentment already swirling and you just know mods are coming.

On 12/23/2024 at 4:22 PM, mikeszekely said:

You guys know that Animated Optimus Prime's a fire truck and should have a trailer, right?

So it's kind of weird that we've gotten how many toys of Animated Op over the years but the closest we've got to a trailer is an axe that folds up to look like part of the truck on the original Voyager.  Luckily, for the Legacy version, DNA has stepped in to give us a trailer.

This is DK-54, and there's a couple parts in this package.  It's a bit spoilery, but I'm going to say that there's two guns, two arms, two feet, a ladder, a hammer, an extra handle, a mask, a visor, and a backpack.  But all those pieces becomes a trailer, I promise!

We're going to start by opening up the hammer.  It happens to be hollow on the inside, and that hollow space is big enough to store the mask and visor parts.  Once the hammer's all closed up, you'll notice that there's a 5mm port on either side of the handle.  We're going to take the extra handle and plug it into one of those ports.

Get the backpack part, and it'll wrap around the hammer so that tabs on the sides of the hammer will plug into slots on the red parts.  At this point, the extra handle should be below the original one; if it's not you can pull it out and plug it into the other hole.

We need that top hole because that's what the ladder is going to plug into.  Don't worry if it doesn't seem very secure yet.  We'll lock it down when we add...

...the feet parts!  They'll come out of the box attached to each other already, but if you don't have them together yet (or are taking them apart) be aware that DNA used an unusual method of connecting them to each other.  Rather than normal tabs and slots, they have hooked tabs with slots under and in them, so you have to slide the left side up before pulling them apart, or down to lock them together when you're connecting them.  Anyway, they go under the edges of backpack/hammer handles/ladder, such that the slots I've marked in green fit on tabs on the red plastic edges, and the slots marked in orange fit onto tabs on the bottom of the ladder.

If you've done everything correctly so far, you'll have the ladder pointing toward the front, tires and boosters on the back, and a flap on the backpack flips open to reveal some mechanical fire truck details.

We're going to finish the top of the trailer by installing the arms.  Take the fists and turn them sideways, so the fins point up and the fingers are curled in toward the edges of the trailer.  Get the fists under the tabs (marked in green) and slot them into the slots on the armor the fists are attached to.

We can finish it off by attaching the guns (or water nozzles?) to the end of the ladder.  Now that the trailer is fully assembled, you'll notice a pair of red pegs under the front of the trailer.  You attach the trailer by plugging those pegs into the peg holes on Prime's feet.

Oh yeah, that's much better!  No, it's not totally cartoon accurate, what with the dual nozzles and the rocket boosters, but it's close enough for me and it definitely goes a long way toward selling the idea that Prime's supposed to be a fire truck.

Heck, there's even 5mm ports on the sides, so you can store the axe Prime came with on it.  Which is good, since the trailer is attached to the spot Hasbro intended for axe storage.

Now, I might buy an upgrade kit that gives Prime a trailer and does nothing else, but you guys might not.  Also, if it was just a trailer, it wouldn't need to come in so many pieces.  So, yeah, the gun nozzle things have fold-out 5mm pegs, and Prime can hold them like guns.  The rocket boosters on the sides of the trailer come off, and you can plug them into Prime's shoulders.  The bottom of the hammer's handle comes off, allowing you to slide it into one of Prime's fists.  And if you prefer Prime to have the battle mask on look, the one in this kit just clips onto his face.  In fact, if you really prefer the masked look, the mask can stay on during transformation to alt mode.

Fans of Animated may recall that Prime had Ratchet build him a jetpack in the two-part series finale.  What fans may or may not be aware of is that the jetpack was a simplification of a design to create a whole God Ginrai sort of upgrade for the canceled fourth season.  While you can use the parts from the trailer to recreate the jetpack from the show, DNA went the whole nine yards to recreate the concept art for season 4 Prime.  And we'll begin by folding Prime's hands in, and attaching the arm parts by simply plugging them into the 5mm ports on Prime's forearms.

For the leg parts, flip the toes and heels out from the underside, and lift the white part up to reveal a 5mm peg.  Take note of which way the built-in ankle hinges bend, then attach them to the correct feet by plugging those revealed 5mm pegs into the peg holes under Prime's feet, then closing the white part over Prime's own knee pads.

Open Prime's back flap, then take the main trailer part and fold the sides back to make a pair of v-shaped wings.  Plug them into the inside of Prime's back, and turn the boosters so they're pointing their exhausts down at the ground.

The ladder has a 5mm peg that folds out from the top; plug that peg into the 5mm port between the wings.

Prime's new backpack wings have a pair of 5mm ports on top, just behind Prime's head.  You can use 5mm pegs on the guns to plug them in there and give Prime shoulder cannons.  Then slide the visor over Prime's head and mask.

And here we have Prime's armored up super mode, and it looks pretty great if you ask me.  The new parts all fit securely, due to most of them simply using existing 5mm ports on Prime's body to connect.  Articulation is more or less the same; the new feet have their own ankle pivots, and though they don't have the extreme range of the toy's original feet I think the 45 degrees they give you is enough.  The new wrists swivel, and unlike the base figure the fingers are hinged at the base and can open, allowing you to pop the hammer into his hand without pulling the bottom off.  Actually, you can plug the second handle into the bottom of the original one to give the hammer an extra long handle that Prime can hold with both hands.

If that's not enough, you can remove the ladder from Prime's back, and fold a gun barrel out from the end.  The 5mm port can then plug into his hand, giving Prime a BFG.  My only complaints here are that DNA didn't make the barrel compatible with the usual blast effect parts, and that there's no paint that could have helped distinguish it from being just part of the ladder.

Overall, though, I think my complaints are very minor about what's turned out to be one of the very best kits DNA has made.  I mean, it gives Prime a decent fire truck trailer in alt mode, it gives Prime an optional battle mask and guns, it gives you the backpack, shoulder guns, and hammer to recreate his look in the series finale (something only Takara tried to do before), and then goes one further by giving you all the parts you need to recreate the God Ginrai-esque concept art for Prime's season 4 upgrade.  There's no loose parts in trailer mode, and there's no loose parts in his fully upgraded robot mode.  Everything fits together snugly in both modes.  There's a lot of upside and very little downside in this kit, which elevates an OK figure to pretty darn good one.  If you bought Legacy Animated Prime you should consider this kit to be an essential upgrade.  If you don't have Legacy Animated Prime, then this kit might be worth picking him up for.  Highly recommended.

As a fan of Animated, it would stand to reason that this would appeal greatly to me, but oddly it doesn't, at least not enough to have moved me to order it. That doesn't mean I don't think DNA did a great job; quite the contrary, I think they did an excellent job, and I especially appreciate how all the bits come together to form his firetruck appendage as seen in the show, or close enough, anyway. I was just never partial to his Wingblade look, and with this being a rather pricey set, I opted out. Even now, having read the review, I'm feeling a touch of regret; I dig that firetruck look and the fact that it comes with his iconic battle mask and the Magnus Hammer as well as all the armor accoutrement to capture what would have been in fourth season (we were so robbed!). I just don't think I'd want him on the shelf wearing the armor and to me, that defeats the purpose of buying it.

3 hours ago, tekering said:

It's kind of ironic that NA matched the Studio Series packaging so faithfully, only for a figure too small to scale with SS'86 Optimus. 🙄

TBF, it's obvious that NA developed Romulus with an expectation that SS86 Prime would be complimentary to ER Prime in scale. I think a lot of folks were surprised, myself included, when SS86 Prime was notably larger, and by that time NA was already well past the stage where they could change it. While it's slightly disappointing, I shan't cast aspersions as I've been waiting and hoping for a CHUG scaled G1 Megatron that turns into a Walther P38ish pistol, and thus far, only NewAge have had the chutzpah to even attempt it, let alone pull it off. Moreover, I felt that their legends scale fig was a bit lackluster and I'm both happy and relieved to see that Romulus is a new figure from top to bottom, a marked improvement. I'm looking forward to getting my copy as he'll be the one fig that's sorely missing from my CHUG collection. All that said, I still opine that Magic Square's Doomsday is the best iteration of G1 Megatron I've ever handled at any scale and I seriously hope they'll take a note from NA's playbook and produce Doomsday at SS86 Prime's scale. It would be both a nice coup for them from a business standpoint, but more meaningfully, it would give us fans a nigh-perfect Megs to both match the new Prime toy and fill that missing void in many a collection. I'd be happy to have CHUG Megatrons from both companies. I have both of their legends toys, but mainline is my primary Transformers collection and at the very least, I want all the first season characters.

On a side note, if Magic Square was to upgrade Doomsday, I would hope they'd also give their Optimus the same treatment, as both their 2023 legends Prime (Light of Victory) and their MP scaled variant (Light of Peace) are IMHO absolutely the best versions of that character in existence, and a CHUG scaled version would be superior to SS86. I think having CHUG scaled versions of both would preclude my ever needing to buy another G1 OP or Megatron fig for my mainline collection. I hope it happens.

12 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

The arms and head are too small for the torso.

The head is a tad small, but I can live with it. I do wish the forearms were about an inch longer, though, and it's odd that they kept them short considering they're add-on pieces unaffected by any design considerations for Scavenger or Bonecrusher. They could have been any length. Ah well, third party will likely address it along with other nitpicks. Since this figure isn't going to have a frame system to rely on for stability and all mechanisms to that end are going to have to be designed into the Constructicons themselves, with the exception of the waist and thigh section, of course, stability is a greater concern than proportions. I'm hoping lessons were learned from the Combiner Wars era and this thing benefits by being solid.

On 12/21/2024 at 6:38 PM, sh9000 said:

Here's the video.

 I didn't get CW Devy due to the lack of articulation and some wonky proportions among the various Constructicons, as well as the odd decision to change Mixmaster's cement truck design. This team of Constructicons and their Devastator combination is looking much better to my eyes. I see Has/Tak are taking a note from the third-party playbook insofar as combining the extra bits into a trailer, albeit a typically odd looking one. But hey, 'A' for effort. I'm a little disappointed that Long Haul's dumper bed isn't hollow and that it can't properly dump. Even among third party toys, Long Haul always gets shorted his real-world vehicle mode's ability to dump, with XTransbots' recent version being the only exception- kudos to XTransbots. While it appears that some of the Constructicons' proportions are still going to be a bit wonky like the CW toys before them (looking at Legacy Bonecrusher's ridiculously short forearms) and ball joints are in evidence for major points of articulation on deluxe figs, overall I think these are shaping up to be better figs that the CW toys and Devastator looks great.

On 12/22/2024 at 12:00 AM, Scyla said:

Devastator is odd looking. The gap (?!?!) in his chest is even more off-putting now in color compared to the gray prototype.

And why are the leg robots off center on the thighs? Is it a reference to the off center feet on the G1 combiners? 

I agree with @mikeszekely that the "gap" in Hook's backside (Devastator's chest) is the top of Hook's head. As to the legs' connecting a bit off-center, again I defer to Mike's answer as it's likely to prevent the legs from colliding if they're placed perfectly straight. The CW toy did the same; it only looks like it's more filled in because of the big tires on Long Haul's thighs which are canonically not present on this version given the intention to make it look like the Movie animation.

14 minutes ago, danth said:

I don't think I made my point very well. I wasn't worried about the buggy staying in place.

I was just saying that the feature seemed to be focused on the "action" element. You fly low and drop off your buggy in one quick swoosh. Unlike the Galaxy Explorer where you have to first land, open the rear doors, and then pull out the ramp. The former seems more fitting for a kids action theme than an 18+ Icons set. Whereas fiddling with functional bay doors and ramps might appeal more to us older "kids".

Ah, I see your point now. Sometimes the ole cranium is like that lab door in Tron. I concede your point and, too, would have preferred a removable box and double doors at the rear, like the original, as well a fold out ramp akin to that on 10497 Galaxy Explorer. The air drop mechanism is cool in its own right, but IMHO, neither fitting for this particular model nor as engaging, practical, or fun as the original's box and door setup.

19 minutes ago, danth said:

II noticed that too! Weird.

I would assume, perhaps erroneously, that Chris, the owner and host of Duckbricks, who himself has been to Billund numerous times for unveilings of new sets and interviews with their designers, keeps abreast of what other reviewers, especially those of Tiago's stature as a former designer himself, are posting. Chris himself is friends with a number of LEGO designers and is generally well-informed on his subjects. Having watched Tiago's interview before Duckbricks', I was a bit surprised that Chris continued his assurances that the GWP Cruiser, an update to the original Blacktron Invader, was compatible with the new Renegade. I'm sure he owns that set (he has over 6000 LEGO sets in his collection and intends to found a LEGO Museum) as he often receives full waves of sets free from LEGO to review as well as specialty items. I guess that only proves he's human like the rest of us. 

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

I'll probably pick one up regardless (provided the orders aren't another stupid limited release disaster), but I've got more than enough parts to rebuild it into something that feels more substantial and functional, like an actual vehicle loading bay instead of an open-air trailer.

I'll likely try to get two copies. I don't hate it, but I sure do wish Jae hadn't sacrificed the central cargo box to the gods of creative liberties. I haven't looked much elsewhere online, but I'm curious if there are similar sentiments coming from the fandom. If so, I kinda feel bad for Jae, as he seems rather passionate about Classic Space and wanted to put a new spin on the old set. Unfortunately, no one told him along the way that perhaps the box and the double cargo doors in the back should remain as essential play features.

On 12/19/2024 at 9:50 AM, danth said:

In the video, the designer shows the drop ship fall very quickly and swooshes the ship away. I don't think he got the memo on 18+ Icons sets. Adult Icons sets should have interesting, well thought out mechanisms that don't sacrifice the overall integrity of the design for an "action" feature. Just dropping an exposed buggy out of an otherwise empty mid section of the ship -- that belongs in a kid's action theme, not in Icons.

The buggy doesn't even look like it fits snugly into the ship's midsection. It just hangs back an entire stud behind the front cross beam. If the front of the buggy sat on and hid the crossbeam, it would feel like, hey, someone carefully designed this. As it is, it just looks haphazard.

TBF, Jae holds the ship almost vertical to retract the gears and the buggy stays in place. It would've been cool had he done a roll with it just to prove that it's secure, but after watching the vid, I'm feeling confident that the buggy won't arbitrarily fall out. Of course, that does little to ameliorate my disappointment that the box element is altogether missing. I can't smite that deceased Equus enough. On a side note, while I appreciate the 'B' build, it just doesn't say Alienator to me, either. I've seen MOCs over the years that did it better, IMHO. I really wish Mike Psiaki had been the designer. His update to the Galaxy Explorer introduced an interesting way to realize the superstructure and the wingplan all while still retaining the essential look and features of the original ship, as well as adding some new ones. It's a masterclass in approach to creating an update of a vintage model. However, no model is created in a vacuum; even the most experienced designers still get feedback from other designers as well as other folks throughout the process of bringing a model to production, and with Jae being a new designer and this being his first Icons model, I'm sure there were many eyes on it and lots of feedback sought and given along the way. That it made its way through all those checks without having some fundamental changes made to hew it closer to the OG ship is telling for future vintage Space updates. Check your expectations.

edit: After posting, I checked out Duckbricks' review in which he turns the ship completely upside down and the buggy remains secure. Oddly, he continually reiterates that the GWP Blacktron Cruiser set from earlier this year is cross-compatible when Jae the designer of the new Renegade said it is not due to differences in the clip systems utilized for modularity.

7 hours ago, renegadeleader1 said:

There's a YouTuber named Tiago who has uploaded an interview with the designer. Looks like it was somebody completely different than the Galaxy Explorer designer, a relatively newer guy to lego named Jae Won Lee. The video does a could job giving some insight it why he made the design choices he did.(Not that I 100% agree with them.)

 

 

I'm familiar with Tiago. He was a former set designer who reluctantly quit the job for family reasons. Concerning the interview, until now, I wasn't familiar with Jae but I think it's cool that as a new designer he got to work on a project of this level. I appreciate his passion as he walks Tiago through the features and functions. Alas, knowing the background has done little to change my feelings about the model on the whole.  There are a few things I like but it's just not quite what I was hoping for or expecting, especially after the excellent 10497 Galaxy Explorer set the bar so very high for these Classic Space revival sets.

10 hours ago, Scyla said:

Count me in as being unimpressed. Something gone missing from the original design.

The original toy of the Blacktron Renegade had this big loading bay in the center of the ship that is missing from this picture.

Also the original design had a think, swan neck connection between the main fuselage and the cockpit that is also missing here.

Of course it is hard to tell from this one picture how the final toy will look like so my opinions can change. For example a container could be included that fit in the empty space in the middle or even the vehicle shown in the image.

Still, while I think the Galaxy Explorer was an awesome recreation of the original toy, this is a miss to me. Doubly sad because I have no nostalgia for the Galaxy Explorer and all the nostalgia for Blacktron I. 

[edit:] Some more pictures from TFW:

Still meh to me. But it looks a lot better in the picture on the box.

I haven't been on social today as I was busy making soup earlier and then working on a MOC. I decided to check my messages and this thing popped up. Needless to say, curiosity piqued so I put the MOC on hold to do some internet recon. I got the Renegade for Christmas as a kid, probably in '87 the year it came out. I loved the Blacktron I figs with their all-black suits, that cool white-printed harness, and that awesome black visor. I was a big Robocop fan and I loved putting those guys' visors halfway down so only their mouths could be seen. Decades later, they're still one of LEGO's most striking original minifig designs. Concerning the update, like others, it's a mixed bag for me as well, especially as someone who grew up with the original theme and still has a copy of the original Renegade on his Classic Space shelf.

The OG Renegade

First the negatives: I wish they'd produced a new version of that windshield that tapered towards the front, even if only by two studs, i.e. 6 studs wide in the back- 4 in the front, or even 2 in the front. I think it would have helped the look of the cockpit considerably. However, the OG set had a similar shaped canopy, albeit only 4 wide, with a printed wedge brick to serve as the nose. Lacking a proper piece at 6 studs' width to represent said wedge brick, the designer used a large polyhedral flag which looks ok. It's not the best and one would think a company making a couple billion dollars a year would spring for a new mold or two, but apparently not. I also wish the winglets on the sides of that cockpit were larger to scale better, as the original's did. The little scooter craft on the wings employ yellow triangular road signs in a pattern invocative of the Blacktron trifoil, but honestly, I'd rather they had used a printed slope on the front of those scooters and also found a way to reuse those old tri-directional thruster pieces. I think the OG did it better.

The proverbial elephant in the room is the lack of a removable cargo container and opening back doors a la the Galaxy Explorer to facilitate its loading and unloading.  Instead, there's a functional air-drop mechanism built in to simply let the vehicle fall out of the ship. Lacking a crane and being confined to its alcove on all sides, there seems to be no other way of disgorging the vehicle when landed. IDK about all of you guys, but opening the cargo doors on those old ships to remove whatever sufficed as cargo was a huge part of the fun and they've engineered that salient feature right out of this design. Moreover, the vehicle doesn't even get a cargo box with a lid to nest in, which was also part of the fun of the original. That nesting box was also a modular component which could be attached to combos of the other bits and bobs to form smaller craft in the OG set. Wasted opportunity, IMHO. Also lost is another opportunity to build in a folding ramp to load the vehicle. The area behind the cockpit tapered down to a nice gooseneck on the OG ship; this one has a bulky section instead to house the retractable landing gear. While I LOVE retractable gear in a model, I can't understand why the gear couldn't have been more compact allowing at least a little of the original's taper to remain intact on this update. It seems that many of the salient features were ignored or rebuilt in such a way as to remove any flavor of the original set. The positives. Retractable landing gear! As I said, I absolutely love it when LEGO includes this feature in a set, as it's a rarity. I think the housings are oddly too bulky , but I'm glad the feature's there. The asymmetry is also preserved even if the cockpit section doesn't extend out as much as it did on the original. It looks a little stubby on this model which isn't helped by the bulky gear housing. However, the designer seems to tried to mitigate that bulkiness and give the impression of a thinner "neck" by using these girder support bricks  which also add a nice heavy industrial feel to the ship. The modularity is also preserved, although the lack of a central cargo box erodes the playability compared to the original set. It comes with an additional minifig and a little buildable robot that looks identical to the one that came with the FX Star Patroller, another excellent CS set.

Arguably the best updated part of this set is the ground vehicle, a much larger and more heavy-duty take on the OG. Alas, there doesn't seem to be a single printed tile or brick with the Blacktron trifoil, but all the signature colors are there, and it looks downright lovely. Again, it's a shame that the main ship doesn't feature a ramp enabling it to drive into its alcove. A storage box with drop-down sides with tools and accessories would have been glorious and would have really gone a long way towards redeeming some of the set's other misses.

I'm not certain if any background details behind this set's development are in the public domain just yet but given the differences in approaches between this and the Galaxy Explorer update, it seems like there were two very different goals or two different designers behind them. As 10497 was an improvement in virtually every facet of the original's design (baseplates and little satellite station notwithstanding), this takes too many liberties thus eliminating much of what made the original's set design appealing. IMHO, they were going for a heavy-duty industrial feel as opposed to the original ship's minimalistic and more streamlined design. Personally, I wish this was more streamlined with more interior spaces for the figs to work/live in, like a small area behind the cockpit with a bed or a small galley with snacks, built into a tapered cowl to match the original enabling all three minifigs to ride in the cockpit section. I love the ground vehicle and to have had a cargo box that accommodated the vehicle along with a small workbench area with tools and accessories that can be offloaded as a total unit out the back of the ship while landed would have added a great deal more playability to the set than the air-drop function. LEGO has been doing a pretty good job over the last few years giving us the occasional Classic Space era homages so perhaps they were due for a dud. I don't outright hate this version, but it's admittedly not what I was hoping for either. I'm still going to get it, and with luck, like 10497, it'll get early price reductions like 10497 did at Wally back when it came out. Even at $100 MSRP for 1151 pieces, it's a pretty good deal, but I wouldn't mind picking up a second copy perhaps to mod at a reduced price.

24 minutes ago, TangledThorns said:

Came across this game trailer that looks very much Zoids (among other things) inspired, May check it out soon.

 

 

The dialog is pure stereotypical over-the-top tripe, but the gameplay and visuals look solid. I wonder if everything is piloted, or if the animalistic bots are A.I. partners to the anthropomorphic mecha? While it'd be fun to pilot a creature mech for a change of pace, having it as a partner to send out on various commands or errands would be interesting, too.

11 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

Sure, but if you're going to start making improvements to articulation, why not make more improvements? Replace stickers with paint. Fix the wonky proportions. Tweak the decos to make them more cartoon accurate. 

...whoops, I've made Generations. Or Masterpiece.

And that's kind of where I've landed. I love the G1 toys because they're what I played with as a kid, warts and all. And if I want improved versions, I've got lots of options for truly improved versions and not simply G1 toys with better articulation.

Maybe age is a factor here? I was four when I got Sideswipe, my first TF. I was too young to be bothered with the limitations of the toys back then, my little mind was simply blown by the fact that I could have a cool car that turned into a cool robot.

Age is potentially a factor; I was thirteen when Transformers came out, so a very different outlook and set of expectations. Compared with Gobots, and many other cartoons, I appreciated the more mature tone and story of the first season. Alas, they round filed that direction and devolved into silliness and whimsy for the remainder of the series and I pretty much stopped watching it with any regularity during second season. To this day, the first season is the only one I own and the only one I've seen in its entirety. So far as the toys were concerned, after picking up Prowl, I really wanted that fig in the box to look like that box art so my disappointment was profound from the very beginning. MP Prowl was the realization of what I wanted in a Prowl toy; I only had to wait about thirty years for it. I also love the WFC and Earthrise Datsun bros toys, especially Prowl (I just love his overall livery and look) and Newage's Harry. I missed the boat on Magic Square's version as I was just starting to dip my toes into the legends stuff and didn't want to get sucked in. Shoulda known that was an effort born in futility. 😄

So far as articulation, that was always my greatest source of disappointment with the og toys, so that's a personally subjective focus for my criticism. I liked the deco of the G1 toys, stickers didn't really bother me, nor the sometimes-wonky proportions as there was nothing else better to compare with at the time, at least known to me. Had the OG toys been what Missing Link is, I'd have had a completely different view of those toys and a far deeper appreciation for them. But, by and large, they were pretty statues and I found them too limited to be much fun, especially with the really well-articulated GI Joe figures and even better articulated Microman figures existing concurrently with Transformers. I constantly questioned why the Transformers toys couldn't have the same levels of articulation. That was my constant complaint about the toys until the 90s when ball joints started to be introduced and figures finally started to be fully poseable, with limitations of course. But it was a step in the right direction, and I was happy to see improvements in that area, as well as sculpting, paint apps, and complexity as the years, and new toylines, came and went. Complexity was another area I was hawkish about until Bayformers took it to the far extreme. As I get older, I find I'm more easily frustrated by really complex transformations and I tend to be more heavy-handed as well which doesn't always bode well. Patience was never an easy virtue for me. But back in the early 2000s, I welcomed increased complexity with gusto. Just shows how our perspectives can change over time.

I can't say that age is really a primary factor for appreciating G1. There are fans who were born after the millennium who are discovering G1 and have a passion for it- everything from the toys, the show, the comics, and they pursue collecting those things the same as the folks who grew up with G1. Like anything, it comes down to personal tastes and biases, personalities, and influences. At the end of the day, we like what we like for whatever reasons and so be it. I don't know why big robots that turn into other things (with lots of articulation!) ignites a passion within me; it just does and I suspect it's the same for other fans of whatever they're fans of. 

4 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

Because it is the toy I had as a kid.  Don't get me wrong, I love Missing Link, I think it's neat how Takara added so much articulation to the original toy, but once they did that it's not really the original toy anymore.

😄 For me, that's the point. The original toys sucked.

Edit. After thinking about it for a minute, let me amend that. I think the OG toys, many of them anyway, like Jazz, Prowl, Sideswipe, etc, presented very well. I liked the way they looked but deeply lamented their lack of pose ability which greatly reduced their value and enjoyment as a toy. They were more knick-knack than toy due to those limitations. While I'm not collecting them (yet), I think Takara struck gold with the Missing Link line. Had they done this ten, fifteen years ago I'd have been over the moon and likely would have bought them all without hesitation. But, IMHO, better toys exist, and have existed for some time now, which capture a good marriage of both toon and toy aesthetics along with a goodly range of articulation, all the things the OG toys lacked. I think they should have released this line years ago before alternatives existed. That said, seeing as how they're moving into the carbots with Sunstreaker, I'm hoping for Prowl to receive the ML treatment. He was my first G1 toy and I ruined my copy trying to jimmy-rig some articulation into the hips when I was a kid. Still regret it, and if I have the opportunity to get an improved version, I will.

1 hour ago, mikeszekely said:

Pass.  I'm sure someone's into it, but personally I don't get the desire for a figure that's the G1 toy, but colored like the cartoon.  If I want G1 toy, I have the G1 toy (and Missing Link).  If I want cartoon accuracy, I have SS86,

Likewise. I have a reissue of G1 OP (I don't think I ever opened it. It's tucked away somewhere in storage), I have the deluxe Legacy United OP, which makes some improvements over the Missing Link at a fraction of the cost (I can live without chrome and die cast), and I have both Earthrise and SS86 Optimus Primes, either of which can fill the void in my mainline collection. SS86 is great, but I still love the Earthrise fig.

IMHO, with Missing Link a reality, I'm not sure why one would want the original toy. Well yeah, nostalgia. Nostalgia only carries me so far. At least the Missing Link toys offer a close facsimile to the OG toy while delivering much improved articulation and other features. Even as a kid collecting the odd G1 bot, due to their many limitations my disenchantment with those toys grew with every acquisition (except the cassettes, which are still pretty cool and far superior to the crappy cassettes in Legacy). I would much prefer modern takes with all the articulation and complexity they offer. However, to each their own.

On 5/24/2019 at 3:39 AM, Xigfrid said:

Here are a few battroid pictures

There are a few places where the paint has been scratched, but I think it gives a natural weathering that I don’t dislike, I need to paint the scratches a little darker though. 

I'm playing some serious catch-up. I completely missed this back when it was new and I regret it greatly, as I'm sure I would've been in for a kit. This is on a shortlist of valks that I wish would get official toys. I just started working on a LEGO version, but the shortcomings of that particular medium along with my own as a designer mean that any final product will still fall short of the finesse, craftsmanship, and beauty of yours, Xigfrid. This is brilliant work. 

Just perused the Cybertron Con pics over on TFW2005 and I realized that the pic with the opened shins was the Superion combiner frame and not Silverbolt. I think it's a shame that they resorted to another frame system instead of figuring out a way to just let the bots themselves form the limbs. Perhaps they couldn't stabilize them hence the wobbly instability issues inherent of the Combiner Wars gestalts. Granted, Menasor proved a frame system is effective, but I reiterate my constant mantra that this company has forty years' experience designing these things and finding a solution to solidify a bunch of bots connecting together to form a solid larger bot should not be beyond their capabilities. Looking through the pics, I realized there was very little on display that interested me. I'm curious to see what the new Rescue Bots crossovers look like in toy form, as I thought they did a great job with Chase. I like Animated, but I'm not sure if I'll pick up a copy of Wasp or not. Who am I kidding, I probably will. I don't own a copy of Wasp from the original line so this would fill that void. I still really, really wish they'd made a way to rotate his feet so that the actual front sections of his car formed his toes. 

As to Wingtail and his tails, I know extremely little about the Sonic Universe as I never played the games and have no interest in the character or associated media. I realize I'm likely in the minority of people my age who grew up with it, but I didn't and so I never formed associations with it. To that end, this is the first time I ever heard of Wingtail or Blue Rooster, so I didn't know what Wingtail looked like until @mikeszekely posted the above pic. Regarding the figure, you can't even squint and imagine that those empennage sections look like fox tails, as it seems they didn't incorporate any plastic origami to attempt to make them look somewhat fox-like. I suppose it's enough that they split in two. For me, it's moot as I don't intend to get the set. I still think Blue Rooster needs a retool/repaint into a Batmobile/Batman mech; I'd be down for that.

Ms. Lofting left an indelible impression. Baroness is the role that I know best, a voice I heard nearly every weekday afternoon as I did my homework or just chilled in front of my small  CRT tv in my room after school. Good memories. RIP.

Amazing how all three Aerialbots are inaccurate misshapen messes in alt modes but this Sonic biplane, though somewhat cartoony, is fairly accurate and smooth betraying little of its transformative nature. It looks great, one of their better plane alts. I'm not into Sonic or I'd consider getting it.

However, Wingtail's bot mode suffers the indignity of having the empennage halves just hanging awkwardly off his back.

Is it just me, or does the car mode give off a Fisher Price Batmobile vibe? I wish it was Batman instead of Sonic as I'd likely get a copy.

Blue Rooster looks like he fared better in bot mode than Wingtail. I'm trying to imagine that fig with a Batman head. 😄 The whole set is just begging for a Batman recolor with Joker replacing Wingtail. If you're reading this Hasbro, repaint potential all over this set with only minor retooling!

Someone forgot to close Silverbolt's shin panels, or at least I'm assuming so.

2 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

Depends on what you mean by "accurate".  The AOTP Aerialbots aren't accurate to their real-world jets, no. But they're pretty close to their animation models... I just wish Air Raid had bigger wings and his arms tucked in a bit better like Slingshot's.

I suppose I should have expected them to skew far more towards the toon than the G1 toys, which actually, blocky bot undercarriages notwithstanding, resembled the real-world aircraft they were meant to represent fairly well, at least from a top-down perspective. Anyway, I've about given up on ever having a set of Aerialbots that I like, especially when companies are chasing the toon look and they can't even be bothered to integrate the robot arms or tuck them in flush to the aircraft's fuselage. That sort of thing almost never happens with ground vehicle alts, but for some reason, they just don't seem to care how much robot sticks out of the alt mode when the alt mode is a plane. Well, on the bright side, with my shelf space dwindling, I can save both money and space by passing on these guys.

9 minutes ago, David Hingtgen said:

I'm only going to comment on what seems to me to be a "doesn't get how airplanes work" issue, and skip any "alt-mode accuracy" things specific to Harriers/Concordes etc:

Silverbolt's now a double-decker plane it seems. (look how high the cockpit is above the passenger windows---that only happens when the cockpit is a full deck higher than the passengers are). 

As a rule---the cockpit windows are level with the passenger windows, because everyone's seats are all bolted to the same floor. The 767 and 757 are about the most extreme examples----the 767 cockpit is 1 step above the main floor, the 757 cockpit is 1 step down from the main floor. That's as far as you can "stray". 

Other than that----you're either level with the main deck passengers, or WAY above them via staircase (747, A380, and even C-17/C-5 when moving troops or medical evacuation on the main deck) 

I wonder if Hasbro was trying to do more of a fighter jet cockpit for Silverbolt, which really doesn't scale or make sense with all the little passenger windows.

I don't even think it's a matter of their not understanding, but more an absence of care. Takara has demonstrated said lack of care when it comes to aircraft alt modes since the Diaclone era. The only reason the Diaclone seeker was even close was because Kawamori, an aircraft enthusiast, designed it, and the VF-1 which would be repackaged as Jetfire.  That's not to say that every aircraft alt has been a total fail- they seem to do a great job with helicopters, and there are a handful of jetformers that have been decent. On the whole, however, looking at the totality of forty years of these things, most Transformers with jet alt modes are executed poorly to egregiously poorly on the alt mode end. Unfortunately, that same defective approach seems to affect third parties as well, so it's not just Takara. I think the Machine Robo toys had some of the most accurate jet modes in the 80s, and unfortunately, the care died with that line of toys. I'll mention Chinese company Touch Toys as a notable exception: to wit, they stand alone as the only company currently producing transforming jets with remarkably realistic and accurate jet modes. I don't own any of them, but that doesn't prevent my vicarious enjoyment of them via pics and vids. I wish Takara had even a fraction of their investment.

Any faith I had that Has/Tak might actually produce Aerialbots with decent somewhat accurate alt modes has dissipated entirely. The Combiner Wars bots and planes looked better, IMHO. These are just beyond terrible. I will say I think this version of Silverbolt looks better than CW Silverbolt, but that doesn't erase the fact that he's still a giant block of bot under a plane, with none of that long fuselage used to form the robot. SMH. Pretty f'n shitty for a company with 40 years' experience making these things, and yet, not unexpected. And yet still, rather disappointing given the overall quality we've come to expect from the main line of late. I'm equal parts sad and mad.

3 hours ago, renegadeleader1 said:

It's all good my friend. Realizing though that we likely both saw the same FB post from the same FB group has me like this...

 

Lol!

In other news thanks to Lego's holiday sale I've expanded my starship collection with a Space Hoopty and a Space Bus.🤣

😄

I also took advantage of the sale and scored a Hoopty! I was hoping they'd mark the similarly ludicrously overpriced X-Men Blackbird down too, but not yet. At $85 for 342 pieces, I can't imagine it's flying off shelves when there are so many other more reasonably priced sets with more to offer. I'll bide my time and hope it comes down. If not, I still have the original Blackbird from 2014 which was priced much fairer and came with a small buildable Sentinel. (And a better Magneto, IMHO)

After building the Hoopty, a pleasant build, too, I might add, I fail to see what drove the $85 price tag. There are some larger parts in there, but ultimately nothing that would drive the price to double what a set this size would typically command. According to the Bricklink inventory, there were no new molds although there may have been some recolored parts that are new, which LEGO considers new parts. There were no new prints, either, beyond the minifig torsos. It's a headscratcher that only the bean counters at LEGO understand. Anyway, I paid $54 for it before tax, and while still a little overpriced, it was far better than the MSRP. Anyway, it's a unique and lovely looking ship, and I'm glad I have it now.

5 hours ago, mark-1s said:

Thx!

NP. Always happy to help!

5 hours ago, mark-1s said:

 I was just thinking maybe LEGO came up with something more robust and practical for larger mech builds by now.

Man, I wish. The best thing they've given us for larger mecha are these relatively new bits

which work with , this brand-new Technic joint  and .

Unfortunately, these joints are still fairly small scale, although they do impart far more strength and stability to medium sized mecha than the old Exo-Force joints could handle. Look no further than Cole's Titan Dragon Mech, set 71821 as a perfect official example of a good scale for use of these joints. This mech is nearly 15" tall and those shoulders are hefty. Both shoulders and hips utilize a combination of the first two parts I posted as well as those Exo-Force ratcheting connectors. Cole's Titan Drago Mech, designed by Niek van Slagmaat (Toothdominoes), a mecha enthusiast and LEGO designer, was an attempt to make the most articulated mech possible as a final set since Niek got a promotion and will no longer be directly designing the Ninjago sets. It's a very impressive set and really shows what LEGO can and should do as a matter of course regarding articulation and complexity.

i