M'Kyuun

Likewise. I quit collecting them after Dinobot; the retail offerings sufficiently meet my need for BW figs, and they're more space-friendly in my ever-shrinking house. as you say, it's great for the BW collectors who want to finish off the core cast. Funny, I love the Dinobots, but I've never been much into the Predacons, which really should have been the proper antagonists for the Dinobots, both with their robo-beast alts. Easy pass on that set, which ostensibly looks good from the pic. If Takara & Hasbro get around to doing a set in Legacy, I'll consider getting them if I like how they turn out. I have yet to own a set of Predacons/Predaking, so that would be my first. Yeah, this thing looks tragic. I've already posted my rant, but looking closer, there couldn't be two more diametrically opposed designs between OP and the VF-19 Fire Valkyrie. So what's this thing going to turn into: a truck with weird plane bits hanging off of it, or another extremely boxy jet that's more robot cargo hanging under jet facade than a proper jet? Like I said above, they should have just asked Kawamori to help them design a bargain version of the VF-19 maintaining its salient features and transformation and maybe given the bot mode Basara's turtle shell shades as a nod. I would hate the head, but if everything else was truly VF-19, I could live with it as a crossover.

The point of "Basara Prime" is lost on me. Elevating the most worthless and ineffectual protagonist within the entire series to Prime status is laughable on the surface. However, my real concern is with the eventual abysmally reimagined VF-19 that they're going to attempt to make him become, and the terrible non-canonical bot mode that they've created for him b/c they are so very bad at designing transforming jets. The real tragedy of this is that the VF-19, one of Kawamori's most beautiful and iconic designs, exists. They could simply ask Kawamori to work with them designing a Transformers toy that captures the VF-19 in both modes, albeit at their budget limitation. I would rather have a slightly lesser quality VF-19 that looks and transforms like the VF-19 than some crappy remake that pretends to be a VF-19. Obviously Big West and likely Kawamori gave the ok to TT for this, but if I was Kawamori, I'd want to supervise the design to keep it close to source. That faded pic says otherwise. This saddens me; how amazing would it be if we could get the Macross pantheon of valks as Transformers characters, maintaining the og designs?!! It would be revolutionary, and we'd finally have some TF jets worth a damn at a more affordable price point than most of Bandai's and Arcadia's offerings. Even if they did them all at commander class price points, if those budgets went into the mecha and not into peripherals, i.e. a lot of useless accessories and effects parts, to keep them as close to source as possible, that would be excellent and would offer a fantastic crossover element to the line. The glimpse of what's coming dashes all hopes of any further Macross crossovers living up to the potential. Well, at least we got Maverick and Jetfire.

I feel more badly for the folks who were working on the game than actually not getting the game itself. All that incalculable investment of time and effort by those people was just shelved; I can only imagine the emotional and mental toll something like that must take. It's unfortunate and dismaying.

I have my own quibbles with it, but overall, I like it too. I'm a battroid guy and one of my greatest beefs with the old Yamato was the disproportionately skinny legs, wobbly hip joints, and tiny feet that made it both awkward looking and unstable. The DX fixes those issues; it stands and poses well and looks pretty darned good doing it. Anyway, I'm glad for the positivity.

Every success to you! Share your experience, as it's an ambitious project.

Appreciate the brief commentary. Mine's on its way from Denmark along with the new Blacktron Renegade. I visited my local Wally today hoping to find a lot of the 2025 sets and the series 27 CMFs, but they didn't have the CMFs nor the new Space mech polybag (they had one of a toucan, though) nor either of the large spaceships. Glad I ordered them, as I'll likely have them in hand next week. Meanwhile, I've been staying busy building the two 'B' models for the Dreamzzz Mateo and Z-Blob the Knight Battle Mech set. I'll be building the 'A' model soon, but IMHO both 'B' models were 'A' model-worthy designs themselves. I've been wanting this set all year and I resisted the temptation to order it earlier so I'd have something to request of my wife for Christmas. We lucked out and I got the display copy, their last, at one of our Barnes and Noble stores, the only place I've seen this set, including our LEGO Store downtown, all year. Happy to have it at last, and happier still that it was such a well-executed set with really enjoyable alternate models. The other set my wife got me is the Dark Falcon, and I'm looking forward to putting that one together, too. I just couldn't resist having a white Darth Vader fig in my collection, and the rest of the paradoxical characters in this set are also welcome additions. For those who don't know, the Dark Falcon is based on a design from the LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy series on Disney Plus, a typically humorous and 'alternate universe' take on the galaxy far, far away that we all know and love. It's well done and worth a watch IMHO. And as a bonus, Mark Hamill voices Luke Skywalker. I've seen some of Nick's builds in person at BrickCon in Seattle. I believe I even spoke to him once, but this was years ago and I was blissfully unaware of the extraordinary talent in whose presence I was basking at the time. I hope he comes to BrickCon again in the future so I can hopefully convey my awe. Concerning this and his other models, one need only spend a minute or two watching his assembly video to understand that you're seeing talent on a rare level. I wish that LEGO would release builds on this level in their 18+ line, as they'd make for some truly interesting, immersive, and challenging builds for those of us who are already building at a high level. I'm no slouch with the brick, but Nick is truly stratospheric in his ability to use LEGO in novel and creative ways and I'm simply left gobsmacked with every frame, and I'm humbled to the point of feeling like an amateur.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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. 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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

😄 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.

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.

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.