GobotFool

I was able to slip in and get the Boba Fett pre-ordered at HLJ before it sold out, but I missed out on slave 1. Ended up having to pre-order it BBTS along with the episode 7 x-wing. I E-mailed BBTS because I was wondering how this impacted the current kits they have up for pre-order and this is the response I got Either BBTS is totally oblivious to the situation, Knows something we don't or their supplier is someone who is not able to be bullied by Disney or Bandai. Hope it's the latter 2.

It still seems strange to me that across the board its primarily Bandai's Plastic Model Kits being targeted by this legal technicality. Here is the best case scenario that I am hoping is true. Bandai/Disney/Revell are, or already have worked out some kind of deal as described above, and the current pressure on asian importers to stop selling the original asian releases is to make sure there is actually enough demand for the kits when they are officially brought onto the international market. That's just my best case scenario speculation. I actually find it encouraging that Revell actually bothered to make any kind of statement regarding peoples justified or unjustified anger at revell for the currently emposed ban. It does show that they have at least noticed fan's dissatifaction with the products they are currently offering and might encourage Revell (if they already haven't) to hash something out with Disney and Bandai to officially import Bandai's kits under Revells name for the international market, or at least make a better line of model kits.

Saw it thought it was great. As for the MRA stuff, I think they just look at Max and realize they can never be as much of a man as him and weep. The fact that they can say the say the same thing about Furiosa probably does not help matters.

I am so getting this still knowing they are going to pull the same BS they pulled with the Dark Knight Batman, where they release a mega deluxe edition with all the features the first one should have initially had. I am of course speaking of the required head and out variants need to simulate how he appeared in his final show down with the T-1000 Complete with a thumbs up hand.

Thanks for the pics Eriku. I like what I see and when I have a little more cash plan to pick this lil guy up.

Could someone post a picture of the pile of parts that needs to be removed to make transformation from fighter to battroid possible with the stripped down VF displayed beside it? That would really solidify my feelings toward this toy.

The set up itself is a work of art. Major respect to you MavRick, compared to you, we can't even be Iceman, merely Goose.

VFTF1 also as a TFer fan I do have to point out that a lot of the comic book action is G1 inspired.

not certain how you can tell from those pictures the underside is larger, unless you've seen or handled one in person, if so do share the juicy details! I find the fact that his arm can fully convert into his launcher mode to be impressive.

Yeah, that really miffed me about the design of the toy, one of the few times it really would have been more accurate to portray it as a parts former and have it look better and they tried to make it perfect transformation.

It seems like all the engineering effort went into the new leader prime and this starscream. Though to be fair to jetfire, he had to transform into a robot and a jet and combine with prime.

Disney's The Black Hole

I really like this line. I was mad about the size to price ratio, but once I had it in my hands and started to play with it all that melted away. The engineering is fantastic, its complex without being frustrating, and because its smaller than an alternator/binaltech it was easier to handle as well. I really hope they continue this line.

While it is true that cars are capable of standing still and looking attractive, the beauty of most a sports cars stem from the fact that they are aerodynamic, as the form of the cars body has been crafted for the purpose of maximizing the cars final function. The best sports cars aesthetically scream speed because they were built to be fast high performance vehicles. In the best machines there is a near fusion of the end form and the end function. While some people will place pointless adornments on a sports car, or rice them up, the addition of pointless crap merely for the purpose of some bizarre aesthetic trend tends to not only diminish the cars ability to function aerodynamically but its beauty as well. A truly great functional design should not be twisted to fit a form of style over the objects function, which is very arguably what the designs in the transformers movie do. Or do they? For a old cartoon, bland boxy robots, distinguished by the car parts that hang off of them and a few minor adornments to distinguish their head designs, is fine. It is also fine for machines that are truly intended to be soulless factory built automatons, with no will of their own and are incapable of altering their form and changing over time. AKA Things that were built with an end in mind. One thing that the new movie established that makes this new breed of Transformer designs more dynamic than any previous series is we have machines, that within particular limits, can choose the forms they wish to take at any time. No more stepping into a chamber and having Telatran One tell you your going to be a POS Camero from the 70s. No, BB would rather be a newer, faster, more beautiful car and now he has a say in the matter. While the portrayal of them as characters kinda sucked in the new movie because of a lack of dialogue, their designs, for me at the very least, left me with the impression that I was not looking at a mere machine, but at an alien life form that happened just happened to be made out of metal instead of meat. A life form is never fully at rest unless its dead. While these new designs may have failed to faithfully channel the original character sheets of the old cartoon, they did manage to successfully (for me at the very least, as art is a purely subjective matter) evoke for me the idea of a living machine with a will of its own.

My eyes! They burn!!!

Could you take some snapshots of the damage?

There is a small legal problem regarding retroactivity. Because the ban on phthalates in children's products is being enforced by the "Consumer Product Safety Act" this does protect products that existed before the law was enforced from being retroactively banned. This allows for a gradual phase out of a hazardous substance in consumer goods and does not criminalize anyone selling a product that does not the current standards, as long as that product was produced before the new standards were introduced. But the ban on lead tainted paint, while part of these new additions to laws regulating consumer product standards, is being enforced under the "Federal Hazardous Substance Act", so toys with lead paint do not just violate current standards, but considered a hazardous substance that must be eliminated. There is no reason that this harsher standard should have been applied to lead paint, as it could have easily been applied to phtalates, other than a knee jerk reaction to the recent events involving shady material choices from chinese factories. While some might complain about the banning of particular products, like lawn darts, that is a specific product targeted for elimination for whatever good or bad reason they had for doing it at that time. It has been illegal to sell banned "recalled" products of any kind long before this act. What makes this particular law "hazardous" to citizens of the US is it is not even banning a specific product, it is declaring all products containing paint that violates current standards as a hazardous substance, and cannot be sold anywhere, even if they were made before the new standards came into being. Of course as has been mentioned before, for the most part its not gloom and doom, and fears of some toy kind of toy-police knocking down doors and shutting down collectible and thrift store is unlikely. 1. No one is obligated to test products made before the enforcement of this act. All the stuff you see about changes to official certification of a toy's adherence to safety standards, does not apply to your current collection. So you're not obligated to test stuff in your possession if you choose to sell it if it was made before these new standards, however if someone else starts testing older toys, just for the fun of it and their results prove credible and show that a particular older line exceeds the current standards, you might be in trouble. As much as I don't like "don't ask don't tell" policies of any kind, in this case, the simplest solution when it comes to keeping your collection safe, is don't tempt fate and test older toy lines for lead paint. 2. Fortunately most of your old toys probably adhere to these standards, regarding the lead content in the paint used on them, and if they do have pthalates in them, the new law doesn't apply to them retroactively. For the most part its much ado about nothing, the most you have to fear is some crazy radical that wants to ban all toys, so I wouldn't panic, but collectors and sellers of vintage toys do need to be aware that this law is not absolutely toothless. You can find the legal report I got this information from in this PDF 320.pdf

Sam, ever consider selling these bars? I'd definitly buy one.

Judgment day will be pushed back to infinity with every action they take to stop it until John Conner is in a retirement home and a T-800 walks up to him and says "come with me if you want to live."

So there will be no toy revolution? I can't lead a battle charge while shouting, "they can take our lives, but they'll never take our toys?" How disapointing.

Hot damn! That is a serious improvement over the old figure. I am definitely nabbing this one. While everyone has mentioned hope for a remold of Starscream, I'd like to see improved versions of Ironhide, ratchet, and barricade as well. Are they going to bring back blackout? I'd love to have a better leader class scaled figure of him, I know the chances are slim, but I thought he was one of the coolest designs in the film. While I would love to see a more accurate bumblebee figure as well, the deluxe they made for the last movie was good enough.

Now that they have the rights for arnold's likeness It would be nice if they would go back and redo the original terminator figure they made, and gave us some T2 figures, sideshow's offerings while the sculpts were good were seriously hampered by the crappy bodies they stuck the figures on. I tried to remove their heads and put them on better bodies they stuck them on bodies very tightly.

From what I understand harmony gold decided that the e-frames looked to much like robotech mecha and sued, and to try and placate HG universal proposed a cross over and everything fizzled from there. I just ignore the final episode, the episode before that that offers enough closure.

Anyone have problems with their Fuke CM's hip joints breaking? Mine was broken right out of the box.

For regular retail bought figures, Classics hound