The Transformers Thread (licensed) Next

[JB0]

7 hours ago, lechuck said:

This one popped up in my YouTube, pretty neat I must say.

 

Man, if Starscream can't outfly a Nighthawk he DESERVES to get trashed.

 

I don't really understand why Megatron keeps getting reinvented as a stealth bomber. It seems off-brand for him to be stealthy.

 

 

[mikeszekely]

6 hours ago, sh9000 said:

I'd buy a G1 Megatron that transforms into a F-117

If some 3P like Unique Toys could figure out how to get G1 Megatron with some extra hip kibble and a cockpit next to the gun barrel on his back to turn into a Nighthawk, sure.  Because that's pure anime magic there.

In the meantime, not a Nighthawk, and not really even a B-2, but there's always GT's Megatron.

[mikeszekely]

We're doomed to never have a decent Wheelie, I guess.  This is supposedly an upcoming Studio Series Core-class one.

 

[mark-1s]

I've never met a Transformers fan that was a Wheelie fan. They all seemed to want to see him, um "offed".

Maybe that's why.

[mikeszekely]

26 minutes ago, mark-1s said:

I've never met a Transformers fan that was a Wheelie fan. They all seemed to want to see him, um "offed".

Maybe that's why.

Oh yeah, Wheelie and Beachcomber are probably my two least favorite characters in the cartoon (whiny Season 4 Cerebros is up there, but Headmasters Fortress replaces him in my canon).  But the fact remains he's the last of the "new" '86 movie cast that needs a proper doing in the mainline.

[mark-1s]

Ah, now I understand. 

[mikeszekely]

Well, it seems like more Studio Series stuff is starting to trickle out.  Unfortunately, not my copy of Sludge, but you can't win 'em all, I guess.  In the meantime, Voyager-class Galvatron arrived from Amazon today.

Age of Extinction was when I really started to get fed up with the movie figures, so I don't think I actually bought any from that movie (except a crappy Voyager Grimlock), so unlike previous movie "Megatrons" I don't have the original to compare with the new Studio Series figure.  I guess I'll just use the TLK Prime I custom painted (and whose decals are coming off).

So looking at him, I dunno... I can definitely see that they tried.  He's not a shellformer with a truck on his back, I mean, and I think the AoE designs are going to be harder to translate from film to toy simply because they never bothered to work out a transformation, they just designed a robot that flew apart into Legos that magically turned into vehicles.  The fact is, a Hasbro Voyager isn't going to have the budget for engineering that Unique Toys gave to their Nero, so I do appreciate that they tried to hide as much of the truck as they could from the front and they tried to include some accurate details to his back.  But I still have to ding them for the overly-rectangular torso, the panels wrapping around his calves, the wheels and the black plastic they're attached to dangling on the sides of his legs, and the awful hollowed undersides of his forearms.  

While he does sport a lot of silver paint, as well as some copper around his chest hole, the blue accents are fairly dull and kind of lost in the gray plastic.  I could do with more paint, but he's not the worst off...

I mean, here he is with my other Megatrons (I replaced the original DotM release with the Transformers: the Ride version), and I'd say that by now it's RotF Megatron that looks the worst for lack of paint*.  Kind of makes you wonder why Takara released a barely-different version of the movie 1 Megatron in the Premium Finish line, when it alreayd head a ton of paint, instead of RotF Megatron.

*Yeah, TLK Megatron looks pretty out-of-place there, too, but to be fair that's not a Studio Series release.  I hope he does get a SS release eventually, though, even if it is the exact same figure with a nice coat of gunmetal paint on all that wonky gray plastic, because the underlying figure is still good.

I digress.  I guess the thing thing you notice about Galvatron specifically in this lineup is that he's kind of small.  I guess that's accurate, though?  Megatron was kind of big, hunched, and scary looking, but Galvatron was supposed to be one of KSI's "heroes" and sized more like Optimus.

Anyway... Galvatron comes with two accessories.  You get his hand cannon, which has a nice sculpt and some silver paint, but it's kind of lacking some blue and copper that would have helped it pop.  He's also got a rack of missiles.  They're just done in plain black plastic.  I couldn't be bothered to remember how accurate that is.

Compared to the other Megatrons, Galvatron's articulation isn't too bad.  His head is on a ball joint.  There's really not much tilt; he can look down slightly, but his head only moves up enough to clear the bumps on his collar, and nothing really sideways.  It does swivel 360 degrees, though.  His shoulders rotate and extend laterally about 90 degrees, although the panels they're on actually limit lateral movement to about  45 degrees if he raises his arm and moves it laterally.  His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 180 degrees on a double-hinge.  No wrist swivel (which is dumb, because there's no reason he couldn't have except to cut costs).  He does have a waist swivel, though, something the other Megatron's don't have.  His hips can go over 90 degrees forward, and a bit under 90 degrees backward and laterally, which is perfectly fine for most poses.  His thighs swivel around his hips, which again limits there range but should be adequate for most poses.  His knees bend a bit over 90 degrees, and while his feet don't have any up/down tilt they can pivot almost 90 degrees.

His hand cannon simply uses a 5mm peg to slide into his fist.  It's designed so that it wraps around and covers his right fist only.  The missile, on the other hand, has a tab on it.  There's slots on either forearm that they can plug into.

If you don't want him armed with the missiles you can open his chest and find a gaping void inside... with a slot.  The same tab that plugs into his arms plugs into the slot inside, storing the missiles in his chest.  I looked all over, but I could find any storage for the hand cannon.

Transforming Galvatron is not exactly difficult, but not exactly fun, either.  I mean, he's not wearing a whole truck on his back, sure, but a lot of the nose and roof are, and the side panels actually fill in from his legs.  Lining all those thin panels up is a tad frustrating, especially because his arms kind of overlap inside of him and it seems to throw off the alignment on one side.

Galvatron's truck mode seems to scale fairly well with TLK Prime (and Bumblebee Prime), but I'd expect that it's going to look a bit big next to any of the movie 1-3 SS Primes or DotM Megatron.

And as we all know, Galvatron turns into that truck Dr. Eggman had in Sonic The Hedgehog.  Ok, technically it's a Freightliner Argosy, and Galvatron came first (although, to my knowledge, it's the same truck in Sonic... I don't just mean same make and model, I mean the actual truck on set for AoE was re-used by Paramount in Sonic).  And... yeesh.  I mean, Hasbro actually got the license for this, and you'd think Freightliner would have been a bit pickier.  Most of the gray plastic is too light, so the silver paint for the stripes doesn't have enough contrast, especially in photos.  The black band on the sun visor shouldn't be just a band in the middle, it should cover the entire sun visor.  The black on the grill should stop at that painted bar, and they did a poor job painting the grill in the first place so it looks like it stops well before it does with a random black stripe on the bumper.  I think it'd have been nice if they used blue on the headlights, not just the marker lights.  The black flap on the back of the cab fails to cover the hollow interior, nor does it cover mechanical details from his robot legs.  But, lest you think I'm only nitpicking little details, oh yeah, you can't plug a trailer onto Galvatron because his giant robot feet are just sticking in the way.  No, that's not mistransformed.  There's really nowhere else for them to go, but that's more because of lazy engineering than the designers not having the space; the toes closer to the cab could have folded down more, between his legs, while the toes closer to the back could have been on double-hinges that could have turned them so what is currently their tops would point in toward each other, mating to be the hitch.

He can use his weapons in alt mode, at least.  The missiles can plug into a slot on either fuel tank, while his hand cannon can plug onto the roof.

And hey, if a truck driving down the highway with missile launchers and alien cannons seems to defeat the whole "robots in disguise" thing for you, Galvatron's got storage for them, too.  There's a tab right on the barrel of the cannon that allows it to plug into a slot on his feet, basically stuffing down into the space between his legs (where I wanted his toes to go).  As for the missiles, if you flip him over and undo where his back plugs into his front wheels there's a void between the wheels.  In this void, there's a square tab.  That tab fits into a notch on the side of the missiles opposite the tab you use everything else.

Sometimes I get to the end of a review, where I recommend a figure or not, and I kind of get stuck.  Are you collecting mainline movie Transformers?  Are you into the Studio Series?  I can't say definitively, since I didn't have any of the other versions, but I'd venture that this is the best version of (AoE) Galvatron that Hasbro has done.  Should I recommend him, then?  But Galvatron was perhaps my least-favorite Megatron design of the five (I don't love movie 1 Megatron, either), and despite having better articulation I prefer the other Studio Series Megatrons, with DotM being my favorite.  Maybe you are collecting some movie figures, but just the first one (because it was the best of the Bay films), or maybe just the first three (because DotM wasn't too bad, even if RotF was kind of trash, and that was before the design shift and the addition of Marky Mark).  In any of those cases, if you think your collection is fine without Galvatron then I'm comfortable telling you that it's ok to pass on him, because he's pretty mediocre.

[JB0]

5 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

And as we all know, Galvatron turns into that truck Dr. Eggman had in Sonic The Hedgehog.  Ok, technically it's a Freightliner Argosy, and Galvatron came first (although, to my knowledge, it's the same truck in Sonic... I don't just mean same make and model, I mean the actual truck on set for AoE was re-used by Paramount in Sonic). 

This is my headcanon now. Robotnik teamed up with Galvatron.

[tekering]

7 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

I didn't have any of the other versions, but I'd venture that this is the best version of (AoE) Galvatron that Hasbro has done. 

I respectfully disagree...

Despite the kibble on his back, I'd argue the original Voyager looks better in both robot and vehicle modes.

I certainly won't be replacing mine with the Studio Series version.

Thanks (as always) for the review, Mike! 

Edited July 18, 2022 by tekering

[mikeszekely]

2 hours ago, tekering said:

Despite the kibble on his back, I'd argue the original Voyager looks better in both robot and vehicle modes.

The truck, definitely. Especially if that's the Takara. But I personally think the robot looks a bit garish with too much blue and gold, and a very wide box on his back.

[tekering]

1 hour ago, mikeszekely said:

The truck, definitely. Especially if that's the Takara.

It is, of course. 😊

1 hour ago, mikeszekely said:

I personally think the robot looks a bit garish with too much blue and gold, and a very wide box on his back.

Given that figure's been my primary image of the character for -- what, eight years now? -- the Studio Series version looks extremely plain by comparison, lacking color, presence, and individuality.  It may be more accurate to the movie design, but... I have no intention of revisiting that film to confirm it. 😝

[mikeszekely]

17 minutes ago, tekering said:

Given that figure's been my primary image of the character for -- what, eight years now? -- the Studio Series version looks extremely plain by comparison, lacking color, presence, and individuality.  It may be more accurate to the movie design, but... I have no intention of revisiting that film to confirm it. 😝

Fair enough... I know I'm not willing to watch it, either.😄

But I do have UT's Nero to compare with...

I agree, the Studio Series is too plain- they really used have used a brighter blue, and maybe added a few more gold accents.  But the old AoE figure, as a course correction, goes too far in the opposite direction.

[mikeszekely]

Hey, wait a minute...

On 2/26/2019 at 1:46 AM, tekering said:

Having just bought another Bayverse Megs (Model Wizard's "Metal Rendsora" version of The Last Knight Megatron), I'm not keen on ordering yet another smallish (and overpriced) Leader-class figure...

 

After now having replaced Lockdown, Blackout, Grimlock, Prime, and Megatron with larger, more accurate third-party versions -- at increasingly low prices -- I've finally decided it's not worth ordering the official Leaders at all.

You wrote that after I reviewed SS DotM Megatron.  But...

Maybe I should take this "I'm not buying it!" as another "I'm not buying it... right now.  Maybe later."😆

[tekering]

6 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

Maybe I should take this "I'm not buying it!" as another "I'm not buying it... right now.  Maybe later."😆

Like you, I have a bad habit of buying figures I had no intention of purchasing if I unexpectedly find them at retail... 😔

My wife calls it my "shohdoh seigyo mondai" (衝動調節問題), meaning "impulse-control problem."

Frankly, I don't know what she's talking about. 😉

 

[tekering]

7 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

I agree, the Studio Series is too plain- they really used have used a brighter blue, and maybe added a few more gold accents.  But the old AoE figure, as a course correction, goes too far in the opposite direction.

Oh, it's definitely on my list of "Bayverse figures to completely repaint" (which is admittedly a very long list)... 😅

...but my success with previous AoE repaints has been encouraging. 😇

[mikeszekely]

3 hours ago, tekering said:

Like you, I have a bad habit of buying figures I had no intention of purchasing if I unexpectedly find them at retail... 😔

The struggle is real!  It's one thing to say "I don't want/need this" when you're looking at it online, it's a whole different story when you haven't had a fix of plastic crack in awhile and you're in the store with a toy you don't own in your hands.

[sh9000]

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Transformers-Collaborative-Top-Gun-Mash-Up-Maverick-Action-Figure/133379442

https://hasbropulse.com/collections/new/products/transformers-collaborative-top-gun-mash-up-maverick

https://hasbropulse.com/collections/new/products/transformers-legacy-velocitron-speedia-500-collection-deluxe-autobot-cosmos

[mikeszekely]

Cosmos already sold out?!

I pre-ordered Clampdown, Road Hair, Override, and Burn Out. I reserve the right to buy the others if I see them in the store, but for now I don't really feel the need for another Blurr, I'm more interested in the rumored Flame War repaint of Arcee than Road Rocket, and that Scourge is just terrible.

Edited July 21, 2022 by mikeszekely

[M'Kyuun]

Unbelievable that Pulse is sold out on these new figs after only two hours. 😠 I wasn't even aware they were dropping today; just saw the posts here by happenstance. I managed to get Override on PO, but Clampdown and Cosmos, the fig I really was anticipating, is already sold out. Hopefully they'll do a restock. Not holding my breath, though.

At least, fortunately, I see these things in stores with more regularity now than I have in probably the past 3-4 years. My Wally has been carrying core, deluxe, voyager, and leader class figs for the last year or so, so I do see them in the wild. That said, I prefer a sure-thing, so an early PO is much preferred.

Looks like Pulse is doing a live SDCC thing today. Still waiting for them to start broadcasting at this time.

Edited July 21, 2022 by M'Kyuun

[sh9000]

Cosmos is a shared exclusive with Walmart but I couldn't find the link earlier.  Maybe it's still available there so if anyone has the link then please post it.

[M'Kyuun]

31 minutes ago, sh9000 said:

Cosmos is a shared exclusive with Walmart but I couldn't find the link earlier.  Maybe it's still available there so if anyone has the link then please post it.

The SDCC fanstream was done and over quickly. All they showed was Shattered Glass Flamewar, a repaint of Legacy Prime Arcee. Rather disappointing.

Walmart link     I didn't even see Cosmos listed. Hoping Pulse will restock, or that I stumble on him in-store.  Shouldn't be this hard to buy a retail toy.

Edited July 21, 2022 by M'Kyuun

[sh9000]

Here's the link for Cosmos if the listing is live again later.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/seort/308373193

[mikeszekely]

The Walmart link was live earlier, and sold out. Unless Walmart or Pulse restock it the best chance of finding Cosmos is in store. Even if Walmart restocks you're probably better off checking your local stores. I don't think Walmart's ever fulfilled one of my pre-orders- either they've cancelled because they oversold and randomly decided I didn't make the cut, or I found the stuff in store before they fulfilled my preorder and I cancelled.

I get that store exclusives allow Hasbro to put out more figures than the mainline allots spaces for, but if I were in charge Walmart and Walgreens would NEVER get exclusives, and the exclusives would be limited to repaints/minor remolds.

[sh9000]

https://hasbropulse.com/collections/new/products/transformers-generations-selects-deluxe-dk-3-breaker

https://dorksidetoys.com/collections/new-pre-orders/products/transformers-generations-selects-deluxe-class-dk-3-breaker-action-figure

[sh9000]

[Chronocidal]

I'm actually kind of glad to see that VF-11 Starscream come back.  Always wanted to repaint one.  

[JB0]

"Autobot Blanker"?

Is Pointblank too violent for their franchise about robots shooting each other?

[mikeszekely]

No big surprises, although I'm kind of irked that a proposed Deluxe-class Gears got canned, I'd kill for a Deluxe-class Swerve, Windchanger/Tailgate, Brawn/Outback, Powerglide, Seaspray, and Beachcomber, Hound never got a proper Earth-mode, Cosmos is a stupid Walmart exclusive that sold out in some kind of record time, we need Deluxes for Bombshell and Shrapnel to go with Kickback, and I'd still like proper releases for Sandstorm, Broadside, and Octane, but instead they're filling slots with Skullgrin and Crankcase.  Oh, and Pointblank (sorry, "Blanker" has the stupid Sunbow head instead of the cooler toy/Headmasters one.

[mikeszekely]

I think this will be a Pulse exclusive.

[Hikuro]

I mean a two pack that's a repaint of Kup and Scourge isn't a surprise, plus it comes with Vector Sigma....so I guess I'm okay with that.

Pointblank, I mean, eh, I'll either get him or pass. Inferno will be a must have, course I'm collecting the Stunticons so that's a must, Skullgrin....I feel a bit disappointed, I don't know, either I'll get him or I'll pass, I wanna see more images of him in particular before I make a decision. I already got his Titan's Return little guy so to me it doesn't really matter I suppose. 

[mikeszekely]

Oh, I'm in for the whole third wave.  Crankcase will even go with Krok, Spinister, Misfire, and Flywheels/Skytread to almost finish off the Scavengers (alas, no toy for Fulcrum).  I'm just not happy with some of the choices being made here.

[sh9000]

I want that Alpha Trion and Orion Pax set.

[M'Kyuun]

I'm with Mike so far as wanting at least the rest of the core mini-bots in deluxe scale, Shrapnel & Bombshell, a proper Earth mode Hound, Omnibots, and a new improved G1 Seeker design with a good jet mode.

Pointblank looks decent, but what's up with that spaced out crotch? It definitely detracts. I didn't have the original, but I remember pouring over the toy brochures that came with the G1 toys and thinking PB had the coolest looking alt mode of the six '87 Targetmasters, Hot Rod coming in a close second. I'm glad they made him, but the bot mode's looking a little wonky.

As for this wave, I'm down for Inferno, Pointblank, & Dead End. 

[Scyla]

Bobby Skullface reviews MPG Shouki:

I think this is a lot of fair criticism. 
Personally I really dislike the use if clear plastic. In my opinion opaque plastic with translucent black inlets like MMC did for their Vortex would habe been the better choice.

I still have this morbid curiosity of what a Takara MP combiner would be after 3rd party went through 3 or 4 generations of combiners already so I look forward to the other 5 Trainbots.

[lechuck]

Wow... that review was terrible and I am not talking about MP Shouki. Absolutely zero homework done prior to shooting that. Wish I could quantum leap back into myself to get those 20 minutes back.

It is amazing that a wotafa toy review done in a language I don't speak will provide me much better insight and allow me to evaluate if the pros outweigh the cons.
It is unbelievable that a BSF toy review done in a language I do understand will not help at all at assessing if a toy is good or bad.