The Unlicensed Third Party Transformers Thread

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

Toyhax/Reprolabels have already made a set for Downbeat.  IMHO, it's crappy and I think they may referenced markings from a different Martini livery.  It's a good thing Downbeat looks great without any markings.  I'm just gonna slap an Autobot sigil or two on him and call it a day.

[technoblue]

Speaking of Downbeat, BBTS sent notice that preorders will be processing in the next 10 days. It won't be long now. 

[Tking22]

1 hour ago, technoblue said:

Speaking of Downbeat, BBTS sent notice that preorders will be processing in the next 10 days. It won't be long now. 

Yup same, here. I'm VERY excited, this is my MP Jazz, I doubt the official TT version will anything I'm interested in based on these past few releases.

[David Hingtgen]

18 hours ago, Valkyrie Hunter D said:

Toyhax/Reprolabels have already made a set for Downbeat.  IMHO, it's crappy and I think they may referenced markings from a different Martini livery.  It's a good thing Downbeat looks great without any markings.  I'm just gonna slap an Autobot sigil or two on him and call it a day.

They referenced the wrong type of Countach for MP Sideswipe, so I wouldn't be surprised if they got "not quite the right car" for Jazz. 

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

Yeah, it's too bad.  I'm not much of a car nut, but it's clear exactly what Porsche racing car Jazz was based on.  Shoot all they had to do was look at boxes of old Tamiya model kits to find that Porsche.

[mikeszekely]

This review is a tad overdue; I had him sitting in my stack since November waiting for more stuff to come out so I could ship him.  Here's Maketoys' Rioter Despotron, their original take on Megatron for their Cross Dimension universe.

Due to the whole original universe thing Maketoys is doing, Rioter Despotron obviously isn't your G1 Megatron.  And yet, he's arguably much closer than the old Classics Voyager Megatron.  He's still mostly silver with black hands, pelvis, cannon, and lower legs.  He's still got the silver down the front of his legs, red biceps, and red accents on his abdomen.  The fusion cannon still sits on the outside of his arm when his elbow bends forward.  And he's still got a gun barrel on his back (two, actually).  That's all more than we could say for the ol' Nerf gun.  The Cross Dimension stuff mostly adds a large pentagonal section to his chest, a crest to his bucket head, the aforementioned second cannon, and changes some of the smooth, blocky shapes to angles and ridges.  The overall results exude power and menace.  Despite being only slightly larger than ToyWorld's Hegemon he feels like he should be much larger.  Needless to say, I'm a big fan of this design.

Here's a quick look at the back and the side of the legs, so you can see the little molded and painted details.

Rioter Despotron comes with a few accessories.  There's, of course, his fusion cannon and the two gun barrels.  He also comes with a sword, and a silver pentagon.

One end of the cannon comes off, and the sword can store inside.  I like this a lot.  One of my gripes with Striker Manus, their Cross Dimension Optimus, is that there's nowhere to store the rifle in robot mode outside of his palm, but everything has a place on Rioter Despotron.

One other little accessory that Rioter comes with is a purple Matrix.  This shouldn't come as a total surprise if you read the comic that came packed-in with Striker Manus.  It's just a shame that Maketoys didn't paint it at all.

While you're in there, if you don't like the big clear purple gem on Rioter Despotron's chest you can swap it with the silver pentagon.  In my opinion, the purple gem breaks up the silver if you're the type that doesn't put faction symbols on your 3P toys, but if you do that silver piece gives you nice, flat spot for one.  So it's nice that Maketoys gave us options.

Rioter's head is on a ball joint at the base of the head that's hinged in his chest.  He can turn his head, look up a little, look down a lot, and has a fair amount of sideways tilt.  His shoulders can rotate at the torso and there's a hinge inside his shoulder armor.  Something I really like that Maketoys did is that the shoulder armor looks like it'd stop his arms from getting 90 degrees of lateral motion, but there's a flap on the side of of the shoulder armor that actually allows you to get slightly more than 90 degrees.  His biceps swivel, and although his elbows are single-jointed they basically bend all the way until is forearm starts banging on his shoulder armor.  His wrists swivel.  His thumb is fixed, but his fingers are hinged at the base with the index finger being a separate piece from the remaining three.  His waist swivels, and there's just shade of foreward ab crunch.  His hips are ratcheted for lateral movement, and he has no trouble doing the full splits.  His hip armor is on hinges and attempts to move out of the way.  He can bend his leg 90 degrees backward, but the thick silver part on his thigh still bumps his hip skirts so he gets a little less forward.  He has thigh swivels.  His knees are double-jointed, mostly for transformation, but the result is still more than 90 degrees of knee bend.  His ankles are sort of like big double ball-joints.  He can rotate his ankles, he's got good forward and backward tilt, and a good 45 degrees or so of lateral ankle tilt.  The armor around his ankles is even hinged so it can bend out of the way of his ankle tilt.  Due to his transformation, his toes can also bend downward.  All-in-all he loses to Striker Manus in the articulation but still blows a lot of 3P toys in that department.

Although Maketoys seems to have intended the pop-off section to be the front of fusion cannon barrel, you can (and I prefer) to flip it around.  Rioter's sword and palms use the same slot-and-groove system that Striker Manus has, so it's easy to slide in and it stays secure in his palm.

The fusion cannon uses the same slot-and-rail system as the gun barrels, and he's got the rails on both arms.  So if you like options, you can put the fusion cannon on his back and the gun barrels on his arms for smaller, dual-wielded arm cannons.  In fact, it's actually necessary to swap them (sort of) like this for alt mode.

The rails on his back have a few points of articulation, too.  Plus, the gun barrels can plug into the front and back of the fusion cannon for a really big gun.  Technically he can carry the really big combined gun on his arm, but I like to swing it around his hip.  It's sort of like Armada Megatron, although it actually reminds me more of Buster Gundam.

Rioter Despotron's alt mode is a pistol... of a fashion.  I'm not going to like, I know it's G1, but generally speaking I prefer tanks or what not to pistols for Megatron's alt mode.  And the same lack of smooth, blocky shapes that makes him so menacing in bot mode makes for kind of a sloppy gun mode, in my opinion.  I have to say, though, in hand it's not as bad as I thought it would be.  He tabs together very securely, and I like how Maketoys did the "one leg for a handle, one leg under the barrel" thing that Classics Megatron did without resorting to the huge, shellformery wings.  He's even got a spring-loaded trigger, and although he's lacking a trigger guard and the handle has all those jagged ridges it almost looks like a pistol you might see someone using in Star Wars.  Also, despite the ridges, his handle is longer than Classics and thinner than Hegemon's, giving him the best palm-feel of the three.

Striker Manus was rightfully praised for being sort of like Classics Optimus, but with much greater articulation and without a ton of kibble.  Despite that, despite him being a very good toy, I got a him a few days after getting a KO of MP-10 shrunk down to basically the same size.  When push came to shove, the Cross Dimension aesthetic seemed to clash with my other Autobots and MP10v became my de facto Optimus Prime while I debate whether I should sell Manus or not.  Rioter Despotron, though, is different story.  Yes, he's got that Cross Dimension look, but it seems to work so much better on Megatron.  While I could tell you that Striker Manus is good toy and worth buying if you don't mind a separate shelf of just Cross Dimension figures, Rioter Despotron is an easy recommend either for a Cross Dimension shelf or just because you want a Megatron in this size.  He is so much better than any Hasbro/Takara Voyager Megatron release, and he makes Hegemon look nearly as bad.  Buy him, I say.  I might not have reviewed him until now, but he's retroactively gaining a spot in my top 3 figures of 2016.

[M'Kyuun]

I'm kinda meh on his sci-fi pistol mode, but I think his bot mode looks striking. Thanks for the review, Mike.

I received my TFSource box of joy yesterday containing X-Transbot's Eligos (Cyclonus), and MMC's Terraegis (Trailbreaker).

I'll start with Eligos; Cyclonus is one of very, very few TFs with a Cybertronian alt mode that I really like, and upon Eligos' unveiling, I was pretty much sold on him, and PO'd him at the first opportunity(over a year ago). I've watched a number of reviews in preparation, so I pretty much thought I knew what to expect, both good and bad. Well, fate gobsmacked me, and I ended up having an issue that I've not seen or read about anywhere else: his backplate, which becomes the jet mode's upper fuselage and includes the cockpit canopy has two rounded interlocking pins forward of the canopy that are intended to push down into the nose section and lock everything together. The problem I had was that they are godawfully tight, necessitating my having to press extremely hard to try and push them into place. I only succeeded in getting the left one in. The right side absolutely would not press in, and eventually it began to stress until it bent, and then broke off. Not a happy moment. I sanded the broken piece a bit, and still have not been able to get it to press in. I'll likely sand it some more and either glue it into its slot permanently, or try to glue it back onto the backplate and sand it to a point where it just slides in and out of the detente without friction. The plates on the bottom of the jet that wrap around the head also took a Herculean effort to press together, and require a tool to separate, so tough is the interlocking mechanism employed. Closing the legs after sandwiching the external engine exhausts and stabs is a pain, too. In short, not a fun toy to transform. Additionally, where there are panels that need to move to allow other parts to pass, like the aforementioned lower panels that cover the head and the robot calves, don't open far enough to provide good clearance for the parts that need to pass through them- just that would facilitate a far easier transformation. Also on my copy, the canopy once opened does not close smoothly, catching on the surrounding fuselage. I have to carefully bend the canopy and backplate a little to allow the canopy to close. I think the backplate on my copy became a little warped in the package, which would account for both the ill fit of the canopy and the right interlocking pin that broke off.

On the good side, once the transformation process is thankfully completed, the resulting bot or jet modes look amazing. He has a lot of ratchets, and overall articulation is very good, esp given the size of this figure. Troubles aside, I'm still glad I got him, even if he's a pain to transform.

 

Terraegis, OTOH, is a pretty sweet figure, esp after messing with Eligos. Overall, the coloring and fit on mine are really good, as I know that these were issues with other folks' copies. The leg transformation is slightly complex, but overall, IMHO, it has a very official MP feel to it, both in transformation and in the final product. The truck mode is beautiful (kudos to JesslynB for a great sculpt), revealing little in the way of its transforming nature. Bot mode, too, is extremely evocative of the character, and I like how he's been engineered to assume a streamlined animation model, or ,with a quick head swap and the sides of the hood left in their truck configuration, a look homaging the G1 toy. If I have any gripes at all, they are that the side mirrors would have been better done in a rubbery plastic (I've already smashed one of them, but fortunately it didn't break),  I wish the die cast heels could bend down to give him more stability in forward leaning poses, and I wish his weapons were integrated in the transformation process. These are all nitpicks, and I am really happy with this figure. I've always liked Trailbreaker, and have long desired an updated G1 version that didn't make him look like a squat fat bot with a beer belly. MMC delivered.

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

Terraegis would've been in my grubby mitts a couple of weeks ago, but I had to delay my Pile O Loot shipment for Artifex and in a surprise appearance, Downbeat.

Toyworld's Coolsville actually turned out to be a lot better than I thought.  I have a couple of nitpicks with its bot mode, but it still looks good.

[mikeszekely]

I think Terraegis pulls off a better Trailbreaker than Speedbump, but Artifex is a bit too heroic, a bit too much like a green Terraegis with a different head and different stuff in the truck bed.  He's just not dumpy enough to be Hoist.  I have to hand it to Badcube, Lorry has some tricks to make him a lot dumpier than Speedbump.  Honestly, I kind of like that both companies did both characters, but each one got a different one better (at least in my opinion), because two different takes on characters that are traditionally remolds helps them feel more unique and less like you're buying the same toy twice.

I was going to write a review tonight, but I spent too much time playing with the toy.  I won't tell you what toy it is, but if you check back tomorrow you can Seacon for yourself. 

[Tking22]

I'm going with Artifex for Hoist because I love the MMC mold, and I REALLY hate transforming my Speedbump. Lorry does look better in bot mode, alt mode fails due to the massive amount of visible kibble. I think Artifex will do just fine, he's already shorter then Terraegis, and I'm just going to spread the hood/chest area out so he's as fat as possible, works for me, I really don't want to deal with another fiddly Speedbump mold.

11 hours ago, Valkyrie Hunter D said:

Terraegis would've been in my grubby mitts a couple of weeks ago, but I had to delay my Pile O Loot shipment for Artifex and in a surprise appearance, Downbeat.

Toyworld's Coolsville actually turned out to be a lot better than I thought.  I have a couple of nitpicks with its bot mode, but it still looks good.

Coolsville has a better alt mode then Downbeat, but for me his bot mode is a dozen kinds of meh, especially that flap behind his head, that is SO distracting.

[M'Kyuun]

11 hours ago, Valkyrie Hunter D said:

Terraegis would've been in my grubby mitts a couple of weeks ago, but I had to delay my Pile O Loot shipment for Artifex and in a surprise appearance, Downbeat.

Toyworld's Coolsville actually turned out to be a lot better than I thought.  I have a couple of nitpicks with its bot mode, but it still looks good.

Once you have him in hand, I think you'll like Terraegis- I've been messing with him for the last couple days- really digging this guy. I wish his feet could articulate forward and back more, or that his heel could rotate down for more stability, but as-is, he can still pull off some nice poses.

While Downbeat looks pretty good overall, I don't care for the rear end of the car mode, and the lack of detail on the silver part of his torso under his chest. I took my first look at Toyworld's Coolsville this morning; a couple minor nitpicks aside, that's what I want to see in a MP Jazz figure. I tend to skew more towards toy than animation accuracy, so seeing all that painted detail reminiscent of the G1 toy's markings (love those knees and the silver torso details), not to mention a cleaner car mode, I'm keeping an eye on this figure. I was hoping Chosen Prime would have done an early review (I really appreciate those), but I'm sure it won't be long. It'd be nice if they closed those gaps in the forearms (nice place to tack on his winch, just sayin'), and yeah, fold that flap behind the head out of sight. From what I see, TW are taking the opposite approach from Takara in this particular design, i.e., slavishly homaging the toy. Those are both things I could live with, though, if this is the final model. Overall, Coolsville is looking good so far.

[Scyla]

All that Terraegis talk makes me want to talk about mine. While I still think that Sphinx is the pinnacle of the Ocular Max line Terraegis is a lot better than my Backdraft. He has almost no quality control issues. Everything is painted sharp and it has the extra detail (like 4wd prints and delicious 80s color blobs) Backdraft was lacking. 

The only qc issues besides the mismatch in paint for the A-pillar and the hull for the truck bed is a bit of overspray on the silver paint apps on his lower legs. While the paint (that is suppose to be black) looks out of place on the stuff that it is painted with I would love to see it applied to the details on the shoulders, the legs and the head crest to give the toy more depth.

The real issues I have with the toy (he is a fantastic Trailbreaker) lie more in the design than in the build quality. This is a 180 degree turn from Backdraft where most of the issues on mine stem from the factory that built the toy. 

Before all the vile stuff I will say about the design first the stuff I like about it (don't worry it is not that bad ^_^):

The base of the transformation follow some very logic, easy to understand ideas. It is rounded off with nice attention of detail like the possibility to have a slimmer chest with the collapsing hood (something I wish MP Lambor had) and the retracting wheels that form a solid upper torso. The way the lower legs become solid chunks of robot out of all that parts is a great trick.

He also has all the articulation you need with more than 90 degree bend on the arms and a in concept double jointed knee. He also includes an ab crunch for looking down on those pesky humans.

The use of die-cast is again nicely done. I think here they learned the lesson from Sphinx and only put the metal where it is beneficial to the structural integrity of the toy. He feels hefty and significant. 

He comes also with a fair share of accessories. Among them an alternative head that is inspired by the toy design which really stands out. 

Enough praise onward to criticism (from top to bottom):

I don't like that many of the accessories are needed to be parts formed on and off the toy during transformation. This goes for the shield generator, the shoulder cannon and the gun arm. To make things worse none of the accessories can be stored in alt mode. I understand that this can be tricky to achieve but Backdraft handle his accessories very well.  Minor nitpick. The head is on a floating platform that doesn't lock into place. The joint is tight (not like on MP Roadrage) so it stays in place. However there is the possibility that it will get lose over time.

The design of the elbows is not my cup of tea. They are similar in their design to the ones on MP Primal. I'm not sure why they where designed in that way since they collapse into the forearms and don't need to bend for transformation I don't see why you couldn't design a proper elbow joint. Small criticism for the hands since they don't make convincing fists and don't lock into place when you extend them for robot mode. 

Onward to the lower abdomen. The section around the waist joint looks hollow since there is a place where you can clearly see that the upper and lower body is only connected by the thin spine. I wish it would collapse further to close the gap. I'm also not a fan of the hip joint. Terraegis implements the MP Grimlock hip design that, in my opinion, just don't look right when you have the toy in a dynamic pose.

Lastly the knee and lower legs. While I think that the transformation for the legs is nifty the small pieces that secure the knees just doesn't seem to end up in a position without a gap. They always look like they are bent at an angle. And while they work (kinda, sorta) this is not pleasing for the eyes. The way the lower legs transform they end up with a large part of the side car panel on the back which prohibits the knee joint from a deeper bend. The toy would have benefited from an additional panel that would free up the movement for the knees. This might have lead to an instability in alt-mode (he locks together quite solidly) so I can understand why they didn't do it. Another nitpick here: I wished the read wheels and the panels I talked to would lock into place. Now they are just dangling around. If your not careful during transformation you could pop them off from their rotation point. This happens on mine a couple of times during the first transformation. Word of advice they should swing into position freely. If they don't want to move into position something is blocking them like the feet. Also the post they are attached to are rather small and made of plastic so they might break if you are not careful. Tough on my copy they just popped of the posts without leaving stress marks.

These not be big issues but in the end they sum up in a way where I think the toy is not as good as it could be. Before I had the toy in hand my biggest design gripe was the gap on the tailboard that become the feet. I couldn't understand why they where design in that way. The designer of Terraegis mentioned on the TFW board that this decision was made so that Terraegis had more rounded feet. While I can understand that I think it was the wrong decision and I would rather have a tailboard without it. 

Nevertheless I'm satisfied with my purchase and I would recommend him especially if you don't care about all the issues I've listed here. He is a fun toy and I prefer him over the big mess of nope that is Speedbump. He is also a clear improvement over Backdraft build-wise so with the next release of the Ocular Max line we should be back to Sphinx levels if the trend continues which is a good thing.  While I was weary of the ups and downs of the quality of the line I now look forward to the next releases.

For Hoist however I will wait for FansToys offering or the official Masterpiece release (if it happens). While I think Ocular Max put a lot of effort into distinguishing the two characters from one another I rather have a Hoist with a totally different engineering approach. 

 

[Tking22]

^Well said on Terraegis. I think he's a great figure, and after a ton of flip flopping and talking up Speedbump, I can happily admit I sold my Speedbump to a fiend several hours ago while on lunch at work. It looked pretty good, and had nice paint, but he just wasn't as nice all around as Terraegis. Terraegis hits all the marks for me for an MP Trailbreaker, even though I was never a big fan of the character, this figure has really warmed me up to his design. My Terra is pretty much flawless, and I love the mold so much I'm getting Artifex even though I really don't care for Hoist either.

Also, Downbeat is officially in stock at BBTS, I have mine sitting in my Pile of Loot. That's going to be a fun box, MP Hasbro Asia Soundwave, Figuarts Mikey, Chogokin Voltron, and finally, after years of waiting, MY MP Jazz. I've been eyeing the Reprolabels set for him, I've never applied a set to any of my figures, I really don't like gumming them up with a bunch of stickers, it seems very cheap to me, but this set does look pretty decent. And compared to Coolsville he does have the objectively more plain alt mode. I don't know, I may just give him some Autobot logos and call it a day.

Edited January 20, 2017 by Tking22

[mikeszekely]

Well, here's the review I promised; TFC's Mentarazor, their take on Seawing/Kraken.

I'm using the other Seacon limbs for comparison today, because I've shown how they size with other 3P toys and I'll show the next one off with an MP car or something.  For now, I figured I'd just give a peak at how the whole team is coming along.

And, yeah, they've been mostly pretty good, but a little stylized.  Mentarazor is possibly the most-stylized of the bunch.  Generally, I dig the light gray, minty green, and black color scheme... but that gray should be darker, that green should be bluer, and he's kind of lacking in the black department.  Just going by the toy, the black should have covered that panel between the two circular protrusions, he really shouldn't have had any green on this chest, and his thighs and feet should have been black.  I'll let the green feet slide, as well as the green panels on the sides of his legs, as they're kind of necessary to give him some green in alt mode.  TFC also replaced the blocky ridges on Seawing's chest with yellow translucent bits and molded hoses.  I honestly would have liked him to have at least had black thighs, but on the whole I don't mind TFC's take.  Even the lighter gray is a fair match for his IDW appearance.

Mentarazor comes with a bunch of accessories.  There's two of the hand/foot connectors, the handle for gun mode, two pink bladed thingies, two guns, two silver pieces for the combined mode sword, and a combined mode foot.  Like the other limb bots' guns, Mentarazor's can open up and have a longer barrel flip out.  The foot is identical to the one that came with Cyberjaw/Overbite.  Not pictured are some screw hole covers for his tail.

Mentarazor's head is on a ball joint; he can't really look down at all, and due to the combiner port behind his head he can't look up if he's facing straight ahead.  He has better up range if he turns his head a little and then looks up.  He can also tilt his head sideways a little.  His shoulders rotate on ratchets, and there's a hinge for lateral movement.  His shoulder armor interferes with his lateral movement very slightly, but you can basically get 90 degrees of motion.  He has a double elbow joint.  The top joint is ratcheted, the lower joint is just a friction joint, and he can get a full bend (it's actually necessary for at least one of his transformations).  He lacks a true bicep swivel.  There is a swivel, but it's between the elbow joints.  Despite the odd position, he still has plenty of range on the lower joint.  His wrists and waist have swivels.  Hips hips are universal joints, ratcheted for forward/backward about 90 degrees, and ratcheted laterally for the full splits.  Kudos to TFC, his hip ratchets have plenty of detents so he doesn't go from stock straight to wide A-stance.  His thighs swivel just below the hip.  His knees are ratcheted and can bend 90 degrees.  The problem is that there's a second transformation joint below his knees, and the ratchet in that joint is weaker than the one in his knees.  When you bend his leg the transformation joint is the one that wants to go and you have to wrestle it down and you have to make an effort to hold it down and force the knee joint to bend.  His feet are a little unusual, which has been par for the course on this set (although Mentarazor's are perhaps less odd than the other limbs).  His feet are actually two parts, the front and the heel, and they tab together on the underside.  Out of necessity, then is ankle is a pair of ball joints, one in the front and one at the heel.  They can move in tandem to give him some inward/outward ankle tilt and that's about it.  Now, if you untab the parts of his foot you get a little more inward/outward tilt plus some up/down tilt and rotation on toe half.

His wings have a few points of articulation as well.  There's hinges near his collar to raise or lower the armatures his wings are attached to, dual hinges attaching the wings to the armature so you can bend his wings back or forward, and the tips are on hinged ball joints so they can fold over the wings or rotate.  The above picture shows them how the manual tells you to position them, with the points of the tips going up and the tips folded over the front of the wings a bit.

If you prefer, though, you can fold them back so the tips are out of sight.  You could also turn the tips so that they're pointing downward, or even flip the entire wing over on its armature if you want them sitting lower.

Naturally, he holds his guns fine.  He can also hold the bladed weapons with no problem, although they're clearly a case of being a part of the combined-mode sword first, smaller robot weapon second.  They work a little better than Ironshell/Snaptrap's, though.  While it's pretty clear that the silver bits are really just part of the combined mode sword if you put them together Mentarazor can hold it.  The peg is just a little short.

Mentarazor's alt mode is probably the weakest of the Seacons so far.  He looks less like a robotic ray-monster and more like a vehicle with the propellers in his wings.  The large eyes of the G1 toy are much smaller on the sides of the horns, and largely overshadowed by the unnecessary yellow bits on top.  He's also entirely lacking a beast mode mouth or feet.  More on that in a bit.  His tail, traditionally black, is green with a translucent purple sting.  Speaking of the sting, a real sting ray's barb is before the tip of the tail, and the G1 toy was anatomically correct.  Mentarazor is not.  (Although basically everything else about Seawing like the shape of the wings, the horns, and the eyes on the sides of the horn instead of on top of his head, and the mouth in front instead of underneath suggest that he's really a manta ray, but I digress).

As with the bot mode, you can decide if you want the wing tips to point forward like the G1 toy or backward like a real manta ray.  There are peg holes hear the little "claws" on the wing to mount his guns.  You can either have the barrel pointed forward and the gun largely overhanging or you can spin it around like a fin.  The tail has a trio of joints for articulation with the stinger itself being on a hinge.  The last segment of the tail comes packaged separate from the rest of the tail.  In theory it just pegs in place, but in practice the connection is looser than I'd like and it tends to fall off when you manipulate it.

A look at his underside.  He's a little fat, eh?  I mentioned before that there's no beast legs, and that's frustrating because his robot arms became his beast legs on the G1 toy.  As you can see, if TFC had just slapped some claws on his forearms that was absolutely doable.  I can see how, due to his transformation, that a beast mode mouth wasn't really going to work here but the lack of beast legs is much harder to forgive.

So... he's ok.  He's a decent robot toy that fits aesthetically with the other Seacons released so far.  He has probably the easiest transformation of the set.  I can't help but feel like TFC just phoned in the alt mode, though.  Given a decided lack of other modern Seacon options, though, he's still the best Seawing/Kraken we've got.  Honestly, I still think I like him better than Cyberjaw/Overbite, but he's definitely not as good as Big Bite/Skalor or Ironshell/Snaptrap.  And if you've collected all the TFC Seacons up to this point, chances are you're starting to think more about combined mode anyway.

[David Hingtgen]

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

Dayum.  WFC Trypticon?

[David Hingtgen]

Yup.  From Planet X. 

[mikeszekely]

Alright guys, I really hope you enjoy tonight's review, because we're looking at a toy that hasn't been covered by any of the usual gang of YouTubers I watch.  Tonight, we're looking at a third-party take on Astrotrain that isn't DX9's Chigurh or ToyWorld's Devil Star.  This is Fancy Cell Toys' Transportation Captain.

Right off the bat, the Captain is definitely a very G1 cartoon Astrotrain.  He's got the gray and purple colors of the cartoon, with the purple head, the red and purple marks on his abs, purple on the the outside of his lower legs, the square panels on his hip skirts, the blocky, three-tiered torso, the vents on his shins near his knees, the panels that overhang his hands, and even (although you can't see it in this picture) the purple detail on the outside of that panel.  And he does this without having obviously visible shuttle cockpit parts on his lower legs and feet, which is something that Chigurh, Devil Star, Classics Deluxe Astrotrain, and Titans Return Voyager Astrotrain have all failed to do.  Fancy Cell did spruce him up a little with a few extra touches of purple on the forearms, shoulders, thighs, and shins, and crotch, some yellow on the forearms and the hip skirts, and a little more detail on the shin vents than the animation model provided, but I personally think those little extra flourishes help him pop.  Regardless, this still arguably the toy that's the closest to his G1 cartoon appearance ever made at the time of writing.  I didn't even think about it when I was taking the pics for this review, but you can even fold out the train wheels behind his head.  Speaking of his head, if I do have one complaint it's that his head is on the smallish side.

I think the one other area that might be a hangup for people aesthetically is his size.  For me, he's a good size.  Perhaps arguably too tall, as he's a head shoulder than iGear's Raptor Starscream, but still smaller than some of the combiner torso bots in my collection.  However, while he is a good bit taller than an MP car and a little taller than an iGear Raptor, he's a little short compared to an MP Seeker.  I don't care enough about the Sunbow scale chart to know where Astrotrain fits, but I know enough to expect that a lot of MP collectors will want Astrotrain to be at least that big, if not bigger.

If you're into the toy look (or the IDW look, which seems to hew closer to the toy), Fancy Cell has you covered.  You can pull the shuttle's tail out of his torso and split it down the middle over his chest.

Fancy Cell also included a second toy-style head as well.  Ultimately, Astrotrain is tricky to do and please everyone, because his animation model was based on a mistransformed prototype, his original Japanese release was white and black instead of gray and purple, and his American release swapped most of the black and some of the white for purple, but retained some black and still didn't have the cartoon's gray colors.  I think the ability to split the tail and the toy-style head are nice options, but they obviously had to pick between cartoon gray and toy white.  I think they made the right choice, but fans looking for a more toy-accurate Astrotrain may find the Captain lacking.

Besides the alternate head, Transportation Captain comes with a bunch of other accessories.  There's his gun, which aside from having more paint apps is pretty close to the G1 toy, two racks of missiles, four little Energon cubes, a Sky Spy-ish satellite, a boom arm, and a whole train car.  The instructions seem to indicate that the missiles can come off the racks, but I couldn't see a way to do it without applying excessive force.  The boom has a hinge in the middle, and the satellite can sit on the peg end.  The solar panels on the satellite are on rotating hinges so you can turn and fold them.  The Energon cubes are on the smallish size, but they were designed so that the one cube can fit into the Captain's grip.

The train car opens up and gives you more options for your accessories.  You can use the piece in the middle like a computer station for the satellite, and your can have stuff like the missiles stored like the Captain is saving them in there for later.  Alternatively, the center piece rotates, and there's a slot for his gun.  The gun can pivot up and down, and the missiles can be pegged on the sides, making for a pretty cool weapon emplacement.

The boom goes onto a tiny peg between the two missiles on either missile rack, which themselves peg onto the sides, the barrel of the rifle folds down onto the floor, the satellite tucks in the space between with it's panels folded around the gun barrel, and the Energon cubes line up under the rifle's butt between to notches.  With this arrangement, the train car can fold back up and all of the accessories except the second head fit inside.

Transportation Captain's head is on a ball joint with rotation, minimal lateral tilt, but good downward and very good upward tilt (at least, using the default head).  His shoulders are on ball joints with cuts at the top so he can get a little over 90 degrees of lateral movement.  His shoulder rotation is hindered by his wings, which can only hinge backward a little.  Despite the hindrance his shoulder rotation is still mostly in-line with what an average human could do, and therefore adequate.  He has bicep swivels, and his elbows can bend 90 degrees.  His wrists can swivel.  His thumb is fixed and his fingers are all molded together with a curve, but a hinge at the base knuckles of his fingers allow his hand to open and close similar to an MP car.  His waist can swivel.  His front and side hip skirts are on hinges, so he can get 90 degrees of forward bend and almost 90 degrees of lateral motion on universal hip joints.  His wing section does again get in the way when he bends his legs backward, but he can still get about 45 degrees and I think that's adequate.  He has thigh swivels and 90 degree of knee bend.  The front of his foot is hinged so it can tilt downward a little, and that front part of his foot is connected to his heel via a rod running through the base of the foot.  The heel and the front of the foot can turn inward together to provide ankle tilt.

He can hold his gun ok, but it's entirely due to friction.  Although his hands do seem to have slots in them, there are not corresponding tabs on the handle of the gun.  One of the other accessories really do anything in robot mode.

As you might have guessed, what with the "train" part of the name "Astrotrain" and with the train car accessory, Transportation Captain does indeed turn into train.  Once again, the Captain is probably the most cartoon-accurate Astrotrain on the market.  He retains the steam locomotive form that recent HasTak versions have traded for modern bullet trains (or whatever the heck TR Astrotrain is), without the weird junk around the wheels of Chigurh.  Like the G1 toy, the train wheels are just molded and painted onto the sides and the train actually rolls on four little wheels underneath.  The windows at the back are translucent yellow to match the yellow windows on the cartoon.  Really, the only deviations from the animation model are some added detail like the riveting, some gray and silver, and a little black to break up the uniform purple of the cartoon, and a more prominent pilot.

The Captain even has the rocket nozzles on the rear of the train.  This is, naturally, not a realistic train feature and therefore something that was omitted by both the ToyWorld and DX9 takes on Astrotrain.  However, it is totally accurate to the animation model.

Still, if it's something that bothers you, you can link the Captain to the extra train car accessory.  That'll make the train mode a little longer, and provide a rear that you might actually see watching a train go by.  The extra car also seems to be the only place to store any of his accessories while in train mode.

Fancy Cell didn't forget about Astrotrain's other alt mode.  I think, whatever your preferred robot-mode scale, any version of Astrotrain is going to scale poorly in shuttle mode.  Then again, we're talking about a fiction where in one shot Starscream could barely duck inside yet later there was enough room for the Constructicons to form Devastator, so I can't really say that alt mode scale matters to me all that much.

Aesthetically, he is once again the most cartoon-accurate Astrotrain, although this is probably his least screen-accurate mode.  He's the only Astrotrain toy that has the cartoon's cockpit-peeking-out-of-a-collar look, although the collar seems to blend in with the fuselage instead of wrapping around it like the cartoon.  His translucent yellow windows should actually be blue, but yellow/orange is also what DX9 and ToyWorld went with.  The purple panels along the fuselage should also be gray to match the cartoon, with a large yellow and red marking, but going with purple seems to be an aesthetic choice to keep the purple on the sides of his legs in robot mode, so I'm ok with that.  He's also lacking the humps where just before the rocket nozzles.  The overall shape is closer, though, than the more realistic Devil Star, the stylized Chigurh, the obvious train parts on Classics Astrotrain, or the even-more-stylized Titans Return Astrotrain.

The shuttle mode can't really interact with the train car accessory, but it can work with some of the other accessories.  The missile racks can clip under each wing, and the handle of the gun can slot down into the hollow space vacated by the tail fin.  Unfortunately, it doesn't really lock in place there, though.

While not a proper shuttle cargo bay, there are panels on the top that can hinge open.  You could probably drop an Energon Cube or two into the hollow space it reveals.  Even cooler, there's tiny pegs just inside on either side that the boom arm can attach to.  With the satellite on the other end, you can pose the Captain is if he were deploying the satellite in space.

By this point, I've spent a lot of the review telling you how much more like cartoon Astrotrain this toy is than eveything else, so I want to take a minute to address what's not so great about it.  What it really boils down to is that Fancy Cell Toys is no MMC, Maketoys, Fans Toys, etc.  This is, as far as I know, the only thing they've ever released, and while it's not bad by any means it's definitely lacking some of the polish you get with the bigger names.  For starters, the plastic isn't as good.  Again, it's not cheap dollar store toy plastic, but it's not as good as what you're probably used to.  It actually kind of reminds me of the plastic in the new Playmates Voltron toys.  Second, some of the hinged panels will turn fairly freely to a point, then suddenly require a little more force than you'd actually want to use on a thin part.  There's the aforementioned fact that the gun doesn't lock into the shuttle mode, or into his palm.

That being said, it's still a very impressive piece for a one-off by a no-name company.  He manages to pull off all three modes fairly close to Astrotrain's animation model.  His transformation is much easier than Chigurh or Devil Star's.  He gets his animation accuracy (again, across all three modes) and his easier transformation without sacrificing articulation.  And despite having a fairly simply transformation, he's still got a few neat engineering tricks, like the folding panels that give him a uniform shape in robot mode and how they open and tuck into his wings to reveal his actual torso, or the way the sliders in his legs move and tab to lock in place.  And I think all that good more than outweighs the bad here.

Astrotrain was, to my recollection at least, a pretty major character in the cartoon, probably more than Blitzwing (and way more than Octane), and Transportation Captain is as much the Astrotrain I always wanted as MP-10 is the Optimus I always wanted.  While opinions are subjective, I seriously can't understand why anyone would opt for Chigurh or Devil Star when this guy is an option, unless his smaller size really bothers you so much that you'd rather settle for Devil Star's funky proportions and toy-style design or Chigurh's passable robot mode but somewhat out there alt-modes.  Needless to say, if you want an Astrotrain toy this is the one I'd recommend.

[sh9000]

That Astrotrain looks like a very good G1 cartoon MP in all three modes.  Cool.

[David Hingtgen]

That is not technically a train as there is no rolling stock.  That's not a train car, it's the locomotive's tender.   A locomotive by itself (the tender is considered part of it), is not a train.   

[technoblue]

Don't worry about the terminology, Mike. My Grandfather was an engineer in his younger days, and even though you didn't type locomotive or engine when describing this rendition of Astrotrain's "rolling" mode I understood the point you were making. Not every review has to be text book exact.

Thanks for the write up, as always. 

[mikeszekely]

1 hour ago, David Hingtgen said:

That is not technically a train as there is no rolling stock.  That's not a train car, it's the locomotive's tender.   A locomotive by itself (the tender is considered part of it), is not a train.   

And here I was thinking I was cool for using "pilot" instead of "cow catcher".

13 minutes ago, technoblue said:

Don't worry about the terminology, Mike. My Grandfather was an engineer in his younger days, and even though you didn't type locomotive or engine when describing this rendition of Astrotrain's "rolling" mode I understood the point you were making. Not every review has to be text book exact.

Thanks for the write up, as always. 

Glad you enjoyed it!

[David Hingtgen]

Well, I'll give you points for "pilot".

(I like trains almost as much as I like planes, and many years I'll have spent more on trains than on TF's)

Also, I've never been able to pinpoint what exactly, but something about that toy's eccentric rod has always bugged the heck out of me.  (Besides the entire motion being flat/printed/cartoony).   

::edit::.  Think I got it.  It's actually the main rod/piston.   It's WAY above the drive axles.  It couldn't actually drive the wheels, it'd have severely asymmetric thrusts.  

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

Toyworld's Bruticus is gonna be a smidge taller than their Devastator. Yikes.

[David Hingtgen]

And I think it'll achieve that by having a lot more parts-forming and combiner-only kibble.  

[mikeszekely]

Regulars in this thread know that I initially went with Constructor.  I think I had that thing completed and on my shelf for maybe a month before I decided it was too big and replaced him with Gravity Builder.  And while I do wish GT's Bonecrusher was more like, y'know, Bonecrusher, I'm pretty happy with my choices overall.  Constructor just didn't look right with any of my other combiners.  I know there are a lot of people who want their combiners that size because they think it's more "MP," and I guess it's cool that ToyWorld is delivering, but I spent a sickening amount of money on 3P combiners last year, and I'm not starting over again just to get bigger ones.  Right now I'm wrapping up Poseidon, I'm collecting the TFM Stunticons as they come out to replace M3/Intimidator, and I'm working in the Warbotron Computron dudes as my budget allows to replace Quantron.  After that, it's "Warbotron-sized" or bust for me.

[Scyla]

I've got MMCs Kultur (IDW Tarn) and he is pretty good sometimes even great: 

The toy does some things really well. He looks the part. In robot-mode he is spot on to the IDW character he homages and I think that alt-mode is a close enough approximation. I wish the designer for Kultur had found a way to include the tank thread covers into the toy but less is more I guess (more on that later).

Like Titanika he has all the attributes that make the Reformatted line my favorite Transformers toy line. Sturdy and dense plastic, spot on paint applications, great articulated and tight joints (you name it he's got it) and playability that really captures the spirit of an adult oriented toy and not a finicky display piece. He is much fun to play with. For example he has four missiles in his toe that can be removed as well as a missile compartment on the backpack. Macross missile spam galore. The face under the (removable) mask is painted in a very dark color. Probably so you can see the red eyes shine through the viewing slot (think of Batmans eye makeup) which is a nice touch. The face sculpt is a good enough representation of the character that became Tarn in my opinion. 

Quality control-wise my copy is almost perfect. He has a nasty paint chip on the white paint on his forearm and I hope I can get an replacement piece from PSX where I ordered him from. He had a tiny splotch of paint on his gun mount that was easily removed. Regarding paint I have some remarks. I would have loved it if MMC painted the inside of his fusion cannons with that lovely Energon pink to give poses where he points them into the faces of his victims more impact. He also has some molded rectangular details (painted gold) on his feet where the factory painted a triangle on the top of the rectangle also in gold which is a strange decision in my eyes (it also looks weird and out of place). Maybe they found out that the detail should look this way but where too far the pipeline to change the molding.

So why is the toy not great if he has so many intriguing parts to him. Well this comes down to the other aspect he shares with Titanika. He is under-engineered. In my opinion to an even more degree than Titanika.

Where with Titanika you had the shoulders and the back kibble that inhibited articulation Kultur has many more spots where I think a more clever engineering approach would have made the toy great. Maybe even the best release in the Reformatted line (which is to me Spartan/Commotus).

Let's start from top to bottom. The first issue are the shoulder threads. You basically fold them in half for transformation but the outer pieces don't peg onto the inner ones. This means that you always knock them out of alignment while posing him. A nitpick for sure but it is annoying.

Secondly there is the lower arm section where the elbow meets the tank thread shoulders. While they are line art accurate I feel that it would have benefited the toy if you could slide the lower arms a tad outward. Not much, maybe 4-5 mm. This would make the figure look more natural and would have freed up the range of motion of the arms.

This brings me to my biggest issue with the toy the fusion cannons. Similar to to Titanikas shoulders they really impede the movement of the arms but unlike Titanika you can't really bring them out of the way properly for many poses. If they put more moving parts into the cannons so that the could slide forward, that the weapon mount could sit more snug on the forearm or that the elbow joint could extend to give the cannons more room would had helped a lot. Even making the whole gun turret a tad smaller would have given the arms more freedom to move without sacrificing the look in alt-mode.

The same issue is present on the lower legs. The threads just fold to  the back of the legs and sit there which limits the double-jointed knee to a 90 degree bend. Again if they put some more thoughts into the design they might have found an way to transform them either to the inside of the lower leg to hide them or to fold them closer to the back of the leg with the possibility to slide them downwards for certain poses it would benefited the toy a great deal. I would have been ok with the hind thread being thinner compared to the front ones if that meant more range of motion in the knees. Now they just sit there floating behind the leg which is also not aesthetically pleasing.

Somehow I get the feeling that MMC looked at the design and thought it was good enough and stopped. Luckily the design and fit and finish is strong enough soften the blow a ton unlike other recent toys (looking at you Jaegertron)

I do still recommend the toy since he has so many great qualities but depending on how you feel about the negatives I brought up you might have a different opinion about him. And despite the negatives he is a ton of fun, plays well, looks stunning together with the the other members of the DJD on the shelfs and he IS Tarm  in my opinion.

(I really need to figure out how to make better pictures)

[edit:] Two things I've forgot to include in the initial post. They are more general observation on the direction of the Reformatted line than specific points for Kultur.

First it is really sad to see that MMC opted not to use the boxes with the flip top and the magnet clasp. Supposedly it was not uses because Kultur and Titanika where packaged in alt-mode but I still think it would give the toys a more stellar presentation. The packaging always gave the reformatted line an extra premium feel.

Secondly the Reformatted design language shifted also into a more simple and streamlined look similar to the Takara Masterpiece line. Thus you find many areas on the toy that is lacking details where they might have been some sculpting on previous releases. Areas like the elbow joint for example. This is not a bad thing just an observation that the Reformatted line will be focusing on the comic look. 

 

Edited January 24, 2017 by Scyla

[mikeszekely]

Mine is on the way. I expect to have a full review up for Kultur by the end of the week.

[mikeszekely]

I debated on whether or not to wait on this review, but an update I got today makes me think it'd be awhile if I wait, so we're going to do as is.  Here's TransForm Mission's Carnage, aka Breakdown.

I'd say he looks about right, compared to the other GT/TFM cars.  

And he's definitely got a lot of details you'd associate with Breakdown, like the door arms, the tires on the shoulders, the mostly white torso broken by a line of blue, white/silver forearms and thighs, blue shins, blue hands, front of the car on his back, and an ab vent.  The head has mostly the same boxy blue shape with a red face that the cartoon does but opts for the toy's yellow eyes.  As much as I do really love Fansproject's version of Breakdown, Carnage is definitely striking me as more Breakdown-y.

And where he does depart from G1, with stuff like the guns on his wrists, the lights on his knees, the weird angle of the shoulder tires, the ab vent being silver instead of blue, silver vents on blue hips and crotch instead of a silver/white crotch, the goofy feet... well, that's mostly still accurate to TFM's source material, which wasn't actually G1 but Don Figueroa's IDW design.  (And in hindsight, it's curious to see how some of those details made it onto Combiner Wars Breakdown, including the silver ab vent and circular details on his shins that definitely recall Don's knee lights.)

When you get down to it, TFM actually captured a lot of that detail, including the way the tires are folded into the shins, the four little red dots under the white part of his chest (they look sort of gray or purple in my pics, but trust me, they're red), and the layered paneling on his lats.  

Fortunately, TFM didn't go with Don's head, which struck me as a G1/Bayverse hybrid (a style which thankfully didn't hang around for long in the comics).  Instead, they went with probably the best smirk since Warbotron's Swindle.

Carnage's lone accessory is his gun.  Like Disorder's, it's done in purple plastic with some gunmetal paint around the barrel.  I think most of you know by now that, just as with Fansproject's Menasor, the combiner parts will come with Motormaster.

Carnage's articulation is ok, but there are a few hangups that Disorder didn't have.  His head is on a ball joint, and he's got very good up range but no lateral tilt and, due to how short is neck is, no real downward tilt.  His shoulders are disappointingly on ball joints, and they're a little tighter and a lot squeakier than I'd have liked.  He can, of course, rotate his shoulders with no really issues and he get maybe 100 degrees of lateral movement.  The ball peg is hinged in Carnage's chest, so he also gets a slightly forward/backward butterfly motion, which I do dig.  His biceps, wrists, and waist all swivel.  His elbows are oddly double-jointed.  Now I saw oddly because usually a double joint is a good thing, but in this case only the lower joint really works for an elbow and it gets him a little over 90 degrees of bend.  The other joint bends backward, like the joint Disorder uses to collapse his arms in alt mode, despite Carnage's arms not needing to collapse in the same way.  Carnage's hands are like the other GT/TFM toys and the MP cars with a fixed thumb and all four fingers molded as a single piece with a single joint at the base knuckles.  His hips are universal joints that can do 90 degrees forward, backward, or laterally with the hip skirts on hinges so they can move out the way.  He does have thigh swivels, but the thick thigh pieces will collide with his crotch and prevent you from turning them too much unless you spread his hips more.  Honestly, I think that's ok, as you're probably not going to need a very dynamic thigh swivel unless you're putting the hips in an equally dynamic pose.  Things start to go south when we hit the lower leg.  Due to the aggressively-designed rear of the car sitting at the back of his leg his knee bend is limited to about 45 degrees.  Then there's his feet, which are just weird.  They basically consist of a thin piece hinged at the back of his leg that folds up to form the base of his foot, then another thin piece that hinges up from that over a gap in his shin to form both his toes and the front of his shin.  In theory, the hinge at the back of his leg can tilt his foot downward, and the hinge itself is pinned on so that it can rotate for inward ankle tilt.  In practice all but the slightest of adjustments will pull the front of the shin away, revealing a huge empty gap and spoiling the look.

He holds his gun nice and tightly with the tabs on then handle slotting nicely into his palms.

Carnage's alt mode is a Lamborghini Sesto Elemento, which is neither his G1 Countach mode nor his comic book's unspecified but fairly Gallardo-esque alt mode.  Actually, I think the Sesto Elemento is a fairly clever choice, not just because it allows for Breakdown to be a modern car that's still a Lamborghini but because a fairly signature part of Breakdown's design is the red on his hood.  The red indented triangles are actually part of the Sesto Elemento's design, so it gives Carnage that signature Breakdown red on the hood while keeping the overall paint job clean and understated (well, as understated as Lambos get).  Unfortunately, the attention to the real-life car details that TFM put into Disorder seems to have waned a bit.  While they captured the hexagonal vents over the engine, the aggressively-angled side view mirrors, the unique fuel door, and the general angles, the rims are fairly generic compared to the Sesto Elemento's and there's no intakes in front of the rear wheels.

While Disorder was sort of plain, being almost entirely painted in gunmetal, the mix of blue, silver, red, and white makes Carnage pop.  You'll notice, though, that the white paint isn't a simple flat or glossy white, but a pearlescent white.  It's similar to what GT used for J4ZZ, but a little cooler.  I don't know if it's the call I'd have made if I were in charge.  I think it worked for J4ZZ but somehow strikes me as less appropriate for Breakdown.  Less subjectively, the undetailed silver-painted triangles that pass for headlights are easier to loose in the pearlescent paint that they were on Fansproject's.

As was the case with Disorder, Carnage's gun folds up and pegs in under the hood.  He cleans up fairly well, too, without much in the way of obvious robot parts hanging out down here.  I'm sure even his hands could be turned another way.  Side note, I really wish GT would have done something similar with J4ZZ instead of putting a place to tab his gun onto the roof.

You'll notice mine is missing half a spoiler.  If you've seen other reviews, you may have heard that the spoiler comes off pretty easily (as do the side view mirrors), and that's true.  At least it is for the half that's in the picture.  The other half was sheered off out of the box, with some of the blue plastic still stuck inside, which is only part of my frustration with this figure.

And that's pretty much the case all around.  Disorder is a frustrating mix of smart and shoddy.  He's got paint all over.  All that white is paint, the silver rims are paint, even the break calipers are picked out in red.  But the paint is applied less than neatly in spots; on mine, you can sort of see in this pic how the panel between the hood and the door doesn't match, like it only got a base coat.  I don't think it's as obvious from the pictures, but there's some rough spots on the roof and hood where it looks like the paint wasn't fully dried and stuck to the foam when they boxed it.  The tires are rubber, but the spoiler is a poor plastic that wouldn't have broke on mine if they'd used the same sort of rubbery plastic J4ZZ's spoiler was made of.  His robot mode is close to a perfect balance of Don's IDW design and G1, but those feet are horrible.

Now, there's no question that my perception is likely tainted from getting one that's broken.  I do think, if I'm being fair, that Carnage is still a good figure with some flaws.  But the fact remains that Breakdown is my favorite Stunticon, and I really wanted him to be as good or better than Disorder, and that's just not the case.  He's the only Breakdown that scales with the MP cars, although for a lot of MP collectors he simply isn't G1 enough.  I also don't know that anyone's really done a better Breakdown; as much as I do like Fansproject's he's not perfect either, and he's really small.  Still, people looking for a Breakdown standalone to add to their collection might want to hold off to see if someone else does him better.

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

That totally sucks about the broken spoiler on your Carnage.  I'm hoping TFM's quality doesn't degrade as they continue onto Powertrain.

[M'Kyuun]

Speaking of broken toys.... I broke one of the forward locking tabs on my Eligos and, after being summarily ignored on the TFW boards, I thought I'd seek advice here for what kind of glue to use to effect repair. I believe the upper fuselage panel, which contains the canopy, is ABS, but there's no way to be certain short of asking  XTransbots (I'm dubious of receiving a reply) . I've already tried Superglue, but it wasn't strong enough ( the plastic is is pretty thin). I'm thinking of using epoxy, both to secure it and to do a little buildup on the underside of the panel to give it additional support. I'll prob do the same to the other side as well, since it is already showing stress. Before I do, though, I'm open to suggestions from some of the more experienced folks here.

[mikeszekely]

I'd like to help, but my only experience has been with super glue, and like you I've found it to be pretty useless.

[Tking22]

3 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

Speaking of broken toys.... I broke one of the forward locking tabs on my Eligos and, after being summarily ignored on the TFW boards, I thought I'd seek advice here for what kind of glue to use to effect repair. I believe the upper fuselage panel, which contains the canopy, is ABS, but there's no way to be certain short of asking  XTransbots (I'm dubious of receiving a reply) . I've already tried Superglue, but it wasn't strong enough ( the plastic is is pretty thin). I'm thinking of using epoxy, both to secure it and to do a little buildup on the underside of the panel to give it additional support. I'll prob do the same to the other side as well, since it is already showing stress. Before I do, though, I'm open to suggestions from some of the more experienced folks here.

That sucks to here. I've had some good experience using Jet when regular super glues fail. Instant Jet is pretty good stuff. In a pinch I've also used a small little bit of epoxy too, that can get sketchy but the stuff holds really well. Epoxy is thick too, so you could do some buildup and filling in like you said you wanted to do.

[M'Kyuun]

After I posted, I contacted XTransbots; I still haven't heard back from them, but I hope they'll reply eventually. I took the blame for breaking the toy and praised the toy for its merits (I still think he's the overall best Cyclonus figure I've seen, even with its flaws. I have no regrets, excepting my lack of patience.) Anyway, I hope to hear from them.

I didn't ask for it, but I'd be thrilled if they sent me a new backplate. I'll just have to invest in a pin vise.

[valhary]

I recently received the primorion of toyworld unfortunately comes without back light

I already contact robotkingdom support for help 

and really is a shame because probably is the best optimus prime toy ever made