M'Kyuun

What made String stand out to me was that he was written and performed as an edgy guy who combined culture with an undercurrent of violence. Most 80s shows were fairly lighthearted, even in their darker episodes. Michael Knight, the A-Team, Street Hawk, Automan, Blue Thunder, etc were all lighthearted fare. There was something a little dangerous about Jan (he struggled with alcohol and drugs), and that edginess came through in his performance, which is why he, among his fellow tv action heroes, always stood out as someone who doesn't need the machine to be dangerous; Airwolf only amplified his tendencies. It didn't hurt, too, that they chose a beautiful helicopter to portray the eponymous machine of death and destruction. Concerning the missile/rocket launchers, while the reuse of tubes to fire volley after volley is pure make believe (missiles are surprisingly large and heavy weapons- an AIM-9 Sidewinder (heat seeking) missile is about 9 feet long, 5" in diameter, and weighs close to 200 pounds, and it is one of the smaller missiles in the US arsenal). Stealth aircraft carry these weapons on retractable trapeze systems, usually with two or more missiles attached to each trapeze, depending on the missile's size. It's interesting to think that even while Airwolf was airing, these delivery systems were under development for both the YF-22 and the YF-23, and were in use already with the F-117, albeit for bombs. I always thought it was interesting how missiles always looked like blobs of plasma when they fired from Airwolf. Ah, well, it made for fun viewing. One of the coolest things about the 80's was our collective ability to suspend disbelief, since effects were a far cry from what they are now.

I used to have the same debate with another student in Middle School. I always argued for Blue Thunder, as it was a far more realistic helicopter in the way it was portrayed. The movie was a bit of a sleeper hit, and the show was corny but fun (Dana Carvey played JAFO). Airwolf was pure tv magic, with its Mach speeds and infinite ammo, especially missiles/rockets from those underbelly tubes. So silly, but fun. What made Airwolf so engaging was the darker tone it often took, dealing with real emotional issues, especially those affecting Vietnam vets. Jan-Michael had a real talent for conveying emotion. He really carried the show, and his absence changed the entire feel of the show when Barry Van Dyke took the lead, at which point I stopped watching. His on-screen chemistry with Earnest always appeared genuine, and the two of them were one of the best action show teams (along with Jean Bruce Scott). It's disheartening that we've lost yet another talented actor who influenced many of our childhoods. RIP, Jan, and condolences to your family, friends, and fans.

Glad you like him, valhary. I preferred him over the TE version, and I've no regrets at all- he has great presence, fantastic articulation, a decent truck mode (not as nice as TE's, I'll concede), and some nice extras to reenact various scenes. And compared to MP-44, a much easier price tag to digest. Just got my copies of Maketoys Skycrow (Skywarp) and Zeta Toys' Jazzy, two toys I've been waiting some time for. Skycrow is just sublime. He has a very animation accurate look that's smooth and lovely, far superior IMHO than the old MP mold. There are some fiddly bits that pop off a little too easily, but they snap back on easily, so not a dealbreaker. The fighter mode looks equally good, capturing the look of the venerable F-15 very well. The joints in the vertical stabs are rather loose on mine, but will maintain their position with some tweaking. The overall toy is pretty sweet, well worth the wait. I'm anticipating the release of their Thrust, as it'll come with the wing fillers for Skycrow, and I've always like the look of Thrust compared to the other two Coneheads. I'm probably in the minority for choosing Zeta's Jazz over Maketoys, but I love the way it homages the original toy better than the Maketoys. After transforming it twice now, it's a mixed bag. The upper and lower body transformations are fairly straightforward once you know how to position the bits making up his waist. the problem I have with mine is alignment of the rear and front halves of the car; the rear half sits just a little too low and just a little too far back to line up properly and connect at both doors and roof. I have to do a lot of squeezing and compressing to get the two to mate up, and I'm left with gaps between the forward edge of the doors and the front fenders when I get the doors and roof flush. I'm not sure what's causing it; I followed the instructions, which aren't the clearest I've seen, and watched a vid (Skullface Coolsville), and I'm still having the same result as the first transformation. It feels like something somewhere isn't compressed enough to allow everything to come together naturally. It's a bit disheartening because it has a beautiful car mode- mine just has gaps. Anyway, the bot mode is what really made me want the figure, and overall, it's a pretty G1 toy-faithful entry, with the toy sticker details from both the chrome torso section and the knees picked out in molded detail and corresponding colored paint. I love it. In every way that matters, he looks like Jazz. Articulation is decent- pretty standard, but no ab crunch. He does have waist swivel, though, which is good enough for me. The hands are odd- the index and middle fingers are attached together as well as the ring and pinkies. The finger clusters are typical typewriter posed and swivel at a base pin joint. The thumb is on a ball peg. The hand also has a bit of molding that forms a semicircle to help hold the gun. It looks a little odd if the fingers are open, but it does allow the gun to be held firmly. Personally, I'd prefer the standard tab-on-gun-handle, slot-in-palm method that Takara and most other third parties use, but I can overlook it. It's functional, but not pretty. I'd like it, but the transformation issues just kinda suck some of the joy out of it, especially since I've been waiting for it to be restocked for about eight months. Oh, one other criticism I've seen online, and that is true for my copy as well, is the lack of blue paint on his waist skirts that is shown in Zeta's promo shots, but missing on the actual toy. It's a small thing, but if you're going to advertise it, it should be on the actual product. It's an odd omission given how otherwise well painted the figure is. And beautifully tampoed, for that matter. I'll give it a soft recommend to folks who want their MP Jazz to favor the G1 toy. However, the transformation is a little complex, and mine has alignment issues that may or may not be endemic to the entire batch of reissues. Mine will remain in bot mode for the majority of its display time, as he fills that Jazz spot nigh perfectly for my tastes. Of course, YMMV, but that's the great thing about options. Cheers!

Just got back from a LEGO convention in Portland, and I went to the LEGO store a day too early. They were sold out on release day, so I didn't get one on my second trip. Feeling a little envious of you guys who've got it already. I did, however, pick up the new modular building set, the Corner Garage, which looks like another fun build. I'm not much of a building builder myself, MOCwise, but I thoroughly enjoy the Creator Modular Buildings. As large sets targeted at more mature builders, they're always a great mix of detail, more advanced building techniques, unique parts usage, the occasional Easter egg, and enterprises such as a detective's agency, or a pool hall, that don't generally appear in regular retail sets aimed at younger builders. In other LEGO news, the new Avengers: Endgame sets have been revealed: https://www.brothers-brick.com/2019/03/04/more-lego-sets-from-avengers-endgame-revealed-including-war-machine-buster-ultimate-quinjet-news/ Loving the new Quinjet, new Hall of Armor ( the previous version from Iron Man 3 left a bit to be desired), and the War Machine Buster Armor. I know that the kneelessness of the large armors is a turnoff to some, and, as a mecha builder myself, not just a little frustrating, but overall I find these sets to be fun just to mess with.

Awesome. Skipped the original release, but this time around I'm in for some Go-Lion action. Never understood the allure of vehicle Voltron, but to each his own.

Transformers and transforming toys for me has always really been about the toy first, its engineering, and whenever possible, the story of its development. To that end, I found a pretty cool article on Seibertron.com showing some pre-Diaclone prototypes, illustrating what pre-CAD concept work was all about. Hope you enjoy. https://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/rare-hand-made-transformers-prototypes-shown-in-figure-king-magazine/42990/ I wish I could read Japanese, as I'd love to know what's said in that article. I hope Figure King gets a lot of positive feedback for this article, as I'd love to see more of these.

I think that's why it worked for me, and why, if anime remains popular here in the US, it'll enjoy a better shelf life than live action GitS, which seemed to cherry pick the things it remained faithful to. I get the sense, just from the OVA scenes I know, Alita didn't stray too far from the source. I see people complaining about pacing, but I don't have that issue. There is a fair bit of stuff going on, but I didn't feel like anything was really rushed. However, in hindsight If anything, I was worried that the romance story was going to feel rushed, or without substance, as most movie romances go- all action, a little witty banter along the way, and yet two strangers risk life and limb for each other repeatedly and fall madly in love despite not really knowing each other at the end. I won't say all action movies are like that, but the vast majority that I've seen are. To that end, Alita showed a progression in the relationship over time. It worked for me better than most. Too, I'm guessing that's how it goes in the manga. It felt more rushed to me in the anime, but that seemed to be more compressed than the live action. Anyway, I think they set a benchmark with this film with both the look and their adherence to source. As kajnrig says, it loves its source, and that's the impression I got as well. I enjoyed it, I hope it makes a profit, and I hope the story continues on the big screen.

Even after all these years and numerous Lamborghinis later, the Countach is still, from stem to stern, one of the most beautiful cars ever made. I'll give it to Takara; when they designed the Diaclone line, they definitely had good taste in the cars they chose for alts (well, maybe not Skids, or the vans), but the Lambos, the Fairlady bros, F1 Ligier, Lancia Stratos, etc. were all very eye-catching vehicles. That's one area where Bay did well- the man knows his nice cars; it's just a shame that the bot modes were so horrible.

That's what I was thinking, too. It's a panel-forming CW toy, and while it's cool for becoming Ecto-1, not $50 cool.

I have no answer for your face color question; I have little recollection of Superion from the cartoon. My comment concerns design aesthetic, particularly for aircraft in the TF world. The original Seekers did a pretty decent job of looking like F-15s, although we have Kawamori to thank for designing the original Diaclones. It seems, though, that depite what Kawamori was doing with his subsequent Macross designs in terms of producing very realistic jet modes, Takara went the opposite direction favoring the bot modes, which generally end up as boxy chunks with a few plane parts added to try and complete the illusion. Despite the amazing strides they've made with rendering all sorts of ground vehicles accurately, they never really applied the same design philosophy to aircraft, and that legacy has been carried over, by extension, to many of the third parties. Unless there's a serious paradigm shift at Takara, I'm sure this pattern will remain, sadly, the norm. I hope some of the third parties, unconstrained as they are, will at some point find a better compromise. I look at Unique Toys' Challenger and wonder why that level of origami can't be brought to bear. Imagine if they did a G1 Silverbolt, or an Bayverse Jetfire applying the same complex engineering to make a virtually seamless and accurate looking jet mode. As a guy who like planes, it's something I want to see happen: a revolution in design thinking as technologies emerge, and fan standards elevate. To that end, I'm glad Macross has enjoyed such a long life, and that Kawamori hasn't run out of ideas yet. After all these years, with thousands of inspired designers learning from his work, I still think he's unparalleled at what he does.

That's really nice. And all that dark blue.

I was running an errand on base yesterday, and it just so happens that the Base Exchange (like a department store on a military base. Fairchild's is rather small, as the size of the BX is determined by any number of factors, but I digress) had all their Transformers on markdown, a rarity. So, after about 15-20 minutes of picking it up and putting it down, I bought Studio Series Blackout for just under $40 (there's no sales tax at the BX, either. As Spokane sales tax is 8.8%, it's a nice savings). Anyway, I've been looking at pics of this thing since it came out, and I generally like the look of the overall sculpt, with exception of the hands, which I think was a common criticism. In hand, seeing all the other joints throughout, it boggles my mind that they didn't put the hands on a mushroom joint so they could both pivot for transformation and then rotate into a proper configuration. Moving on, I wasn't sure what to expect with articulation, but it's a lot more limited than I thought it would be. The thighs are impeded by a single-piece hip skirt, which can be moved out of the way a bit, but it still doesn't allow for much forward leg movement. The rest of the leg, however has a fair bit, especially with its digitigrade design. The knees are a little weak on my copy, however, and this is a pretty decent sized figure, so I'm not sure how its going to do over the long term. The shoulders are limited to fore and aft, like a LEGO minifig, due to its mounting within the pontoons. The small plate to which the shoulder mounts, is on a hinge for transformation, and allows for an iota of lateral swing. More lateral movement can be achieved by untabbing the larger panel, which moves the arm from helicopter position to robot position. On mine this large panel untabs fine from one side, but the other does not and I was afraid I was going to snap the tabs off (they are sideways 'L' shaped tabs which grab and lock into their relative recesses. Nice for strength, but stress-inducing to get them to relinquish their hold). Pressing on, I bought this guy primarily because he becomes a CH-53 Pave Low helicopter, an impressive aircraft I had the opportunity to see up close when I worked at Hurlburt Field many moons ago. Moreover, of the Bayverse designs, his was one of the better ones, IMHO. The '07 toy just never quite did the job, so when this was announced, I was all but ready to part with my cash. Then I saw the hands, and for some reason, that just killed my enthusiasm. Anyway, Blackout is in large part a panel-former, which I think can be excused given the shardy nature of Bayformers, and the size of the resulting helicopter. I was pretty impressed with the size of this thing- about 13 inches from the tip of its refueling probe to the upper aft surface of its vertical stab. Little more if you measure rotor overhang, both main and tail. And it looks very good from top and sides. Viewing from the rear, he has a gaping hole where his cargo ramp and door should be, and the entirety of the bottom reveals the robot inside. I wish they could have found a solution for the cargo door, but as the aft side fuselage panels become the soles of his feet, there really is no non-complex way, nor room, to add more substantially decent sized folding panels. It's a concession, much like the bottom of just about every Transformer alt ever made. One issue that seems endemic to largely panel forming figures is fit, and mine has a couple issues here: the forward halves of the cowling above and directly behind the cockpit on mine do not tab firmly, leaving an omnipresent eighth inch gap, and the large panels to which the arms attach don't flush and tab on either side of the heli mode, which also leaves unsightly gaps. Otherwise, everything else seems to go together pretty smoothly, and the final result is a rather large, fairly accurate, and imposing Pave Low. My final thought is that SS Blackout makes a better display piece, in either mode, than a playable toy. Short of swooshing, there's little playability to the helicopter mode. The main rotor hub has friction, ostensibly favoring the robot mode, so you can't free spin it. I think some sort of optional locking device would have been favorable here, but c'est la vie. The landing gear are permanently extended, which likely doesn't bother most; I would have preferred retractable gear. Purely subjective. The bot mode certainly has presence due both to his design and size. Posing him in any sort of dynamic pose will take a bit of creativity, and probably some untabbing. Overall, it's still a fairly 'faithful' depiction of '07 Blackout, and despite its flaws, quite literally stands above any previous official incarnation of the character. Somehow, though, I still think the little legends sized Blackout is the more fun toy- it's adorable, and far more posable- a fantastic little Mini-me for his Studio Series big brother. That's all I've got. If anyone's on the fence, and you're just looking for a nice display piece at an affordable price, this is probably the toy for you. If you're looking for a better overall figure, especially in bot mode, Wei Jiang's Hide Shadow is, IMHO, the superior option. Cheers!

You're not impressed with it, either, I take it. Ah well, it's not the worst figure I've bought over the years. I think with all the positives that have surrounded this line thus far, expectations have been raised. There's definitely a notable improvement since Combiner Wars, which was probably the cheapest looking mainline I've seen. So, in that respect, Siege Megs is a step up, but it's tank mode is uninspired, and the figure's articulation is pretty much at the minimum standard of current expectation. I could sing its praises if they at least improved him in that aspect to make up for his lackluster alt. I guess it can only get better from here. Fingers crossed.

Yeah, I watched that review today, too, as I have Harry PO'd . Normally I wouldn't buy a legends scaled fig of a normally deluxe scaled character, as I'm primarily a CHUG and MP collector. However, I love G1 Prowl's design, and NA just nailed it, so I decided to get it as kind of a one-off purchase. He'll be my pocket TF that I take on trips and such. Anyway, just in general, I've noticed that there's really no legend scale yardstick for third parties, although I think DX9, Iron factory, and Magic Square are pretty close, close enough anyway that figures from all three companies can be placed together in a display without too much scale issue. Iron Factory have their own aesthetic direction, and take some license with the designs, which may or may not appeal to everyone. MS and DX-9 seem like they're going more for a mini-MP look, hitting that G1 nostalgia button pretty hard. I bought MS' Strongman, as I wanted a more G1 accurate Huffer to replace my old IGear figure. He's almost too accurate and just a bit too small to fit in with the current Generations legends figs, but he looks so good I'm willing to fly the F**k-it flag. TBH, with its chunkier proportions, the IGear actually fits better visually. I'm eyeballing NA's Cosmos, as I like the squatter look of it-very faithful to the toon look. MS have a nice looking Cosmos, too, but it's slightly lankier, although the engineering looks better. Alas, the greatest of first world problems, choices.

I have no idea; I didn't realize there were two variations of the same mold. I had no interest in it, so I gave it enough attention to see whether it was the VW version or other. I have no interest in the VW version either, TBH, but for some reason which I don't understand, I care enough to check. Anyway, sorry I couldn't be more specific. BTW, your knowledge of the numbers and variations of the Studio Series is a bit daunting. I have a vague awareness of all the characters made thus far, but of the entirety, I only own Dropkick. I'd own Blackout if it wasn't for those terrible hands; funny how a small detail like that can completely derail your interest, but it did. Concerning Siege Megs, I find myself hoping that he'll receive a whole new mold when it comes time to bring the line to Earth, as I'm thinking they will eventually. It'd be fantastic if they actually gave him a gun mode, but I know that's a forgone conclusion. It's an irony not lost on me. Anyway, if they're dead set on making him a tank, I'd hope they'd make him something akin to an M-1 Abrams instead of the more sci-fi quad tank he possesses as his Cybertronian alt. I also hope this hypothetical new mold has improved articulation. Just not feeling like I'm getting my $30 worth from Siege Megs.

While I was at Wally today, I made the usual sojourn to the normally sparsely populated Transformers section. To my surprise, while they had one SS old Camaro Bee, and one copy of Skytread, they had a couple copies each of Megs and Optimus (they usually have nothing bigger than deluxe, so voyagers are a rare sight indeed). So after some hmming and hawing, I bought Megatron. Not quite as nice as I thought it would be, but ok. Prime is certainly the better figure, judging from vids. I think Mike's pics up there seduced me to the Dark Side. I will say that the joints on mine all feel tight; nothing flops when I pick it up and change its orientation. However, his right ankle becomes floppy loose once ankle tilt is used. For those who don't own the figure, the feet are attached to a pivot that has a molded panel which fills the inside leg. When the ankle tilt is engaged, the panel, which is held in place by a small raised nub, snaps into a hollow cavity behind it, providing a fairly ample amount of ankle tilt. Once engaged, the ankles are a little floppy, one worse than the other on my copy. I like transforming tanks, so I caved on this guy, although, IMHO, there are better tank figures.

Just looked at the artist's Twitter- some of those transforming designs are brilliant. Love the red triple-changer that goes from bot to plane to car. I saw the wheels, so when it went to a plane first, I was totally surprised. Awesome. This guy's pretty much a Chinese version of Kawamori. Hopefully, he'll find a career in animation, and we'll get to see these things in action. And toys- there must be toys....

Perhaps the joint issue was endemic enough that Hasbro received complaints. At any rate, good to hear that they're fixing the issue. Gotta say, not at all crazy about the G2 color scheme. For me, that goes for just about everything G2, though- they went Crayola crazy with some of those schemes, and few, if any, that I've ever seen really appealed to me. Anyway, Megatron's tank mode is great until you get to those obvious feet hanging out. It's the only weak point on an otherwise good tank-alt Megatron. I very much like the G1 color scheme of Seige Megs, but it looks like they went overboard on the battle damage, like he's got mud splatter all over him, but the placement on his shins makes little sense in tank mode (if it was mud, but I know it's not). I'm curious if they're going to do a straight reissue with him if, and when, they start doing Earth alt modes. I could see them changing the cannon to look more realistic, but otherwise, not much really needs to be done. Seige Prime will need a little more work, but the core bot should remain about the same, I'd say. That vid of Skyfire up there (I know they're still calling him Jetfire, but we all know what his name really is) is cool, but much too limited. I'd love to see some more transformation stuff going on. I'm glad they didn't copy FT's arm transformation, which is brilliant for how it becomes part of the fuselage, but found their own method of stashing the arms. It's not as efficient, but far and away better than their usual non-solution of just letting them hang off the sides. I've got this guy PO'd from Hasbro's Pulse site, and I can't wait get him.

Never heard of 'Armored Gull', but that bike looks cool. Transformation is reminiscent of the Garland, but differs enough in both modes to be its own thing. Hopefully the manga, and potential OVA, will become popular enough to get some toy treatment. I also like transforming bikes, so this would be nice.

I've not read the manga, either, so again, I'm making inferences just based on the OVA and the live action. My thinking is that she's a complete construct, artificial from head to toe, but the makeup of her brain, similar to the cyberbrains from GitS, is still somewhat organic, hence her need to eat. However, her brain and other pseudo-organics can survive hundreds of years, even without nourishment. We know that her head is a construct, as one can see bits of her metallic skull peaking through holes in the skin when Ido finds her in the scrapyard. Considering she's likely been there for some time and there seems to be no normal decomposition, that to me indicates that everything is artificial even if it has organic similarities. I assume Shirow-san took inspiration from Gunnm when he created his cyborg society in Ghost in the Shell, such are the similarities.

I bought Twinferno after passing him up many times after I got the Grotusque exclusive. I had the original Grotusque toy, and they did such a nice job on the TR toy that I splurged the $24 for him. No regrets. Anyway, learning that the same basic body was used for Twinferno, I picked him up on impulse shortly thereafter. I thought both were done really well relative to the rest of the TR line, which I enjoyed thoroughly and agree with Mike that it was best of the Prime Wars trilogy line. the only real issue I have with the toy is trying to tab the leg bits into his torso in beast mode. On both Grotusque and Twinferno, they don't line up naturally and I have to use a bit of force to get them to do so and tab in. Beyond that, fun figures.

I liked that part, too. It wasn't maudlin, but just simply stated, and a nice sentiment towards Ido.

Zeta's take on Movie Bee looks better to me than any of the official toys. Purty nice.

I didn't think it felt rushed, either. I think they used the 2.5 hours to good effect. The love story actually felt like it developed rather than just existed, like many action movies where the leads barely say ten words to each other and suck face at the end. Honestly, it didn't even feel that cheesy to me- watch anything on Hallmark for just five minutes; you can spread that sh!t on crackers. I agree the story was fast paced, and there were a lot of story elements taking place, but I think it all flowed logically, told a good story reinforced by some amazing visuals and some good acting by the leads. Rosa killed it; she makes Alita a real person, and I'd assume as part of her MoCap work, her facial expressions informed those of Alita. Anyway, I was sold. Ed Skrein, Francis from Deadpool, does a very entertaining turn as a cyborg character. I thought Christoph Waltz, who generally plays eccentric characters, played Ido very straight and true to the character(as I know it from the anime, anyway), and watching that relationship develop, while not as focused as that of her and Hugo, was no less satisfying. Even the gritty world they created was a character, as it's made the people what they are. From start to finish, I enjoyed it, and that ending just leaves you wanting to see more, as they drop breadcrumbs throughout. Hopefully this will make oodles of cash , and demand, in the Asian markets, and in a couple years we'll be watching the further adventures of Alita.