The Unlicensed Third Party Transformers Thread

[mikeszekely]

On 6/11/2024 at 3:47 AM, Scyla said:

@mikeszekely it‘s good to see that these early 3rd party figures are not crumbling to dust almost 15 years later. It gives me some hope for the longevity of my collection.

Is it a bad time to mention a little piece of plastic around the backpack hinge fell off?

[Scyla]

On 6/13/2024 at 4:51 AM, mikeszekely said:

Is it a bad time to mention a little piece of plastic around the backpack hinge fell off?

Oh no… 

[tekering]

I love everything about this concept. 😍

 

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, tekering said:

I love everything about this concept. 😍

 

Interesting concept...although I noticed when some of the robots moved, details seemed to vanish in shift in weird ways.

[anime52k8]

Because it's AI garbage. I hate every single thing about it.

[tekering]

On 6/30/2024 at 6:13 PM, anime52k8 said:

AI garbage. I hate every single thing about it.

Who could've expected such prejudice, such hatred, such discrimination against machine intelligence... in a Transformers thread...?! 😬

[pengbuzz]

On 6/30/2024 at 5:13 AM, anime52k8 said:

Because it's AI garbage. I hate every single thing about it.

Hmmm...aren't Transformers themselves, artificial intelligence?

*ducks*

[JB0]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

Hmmm...aren't Transformers themselves, artificial intelligence?

*ducks*

No, they're a naturally-evolving machine intelligence. 

Unless they were made by the Quintesssons.

Or Primus.

...

You know what? This is why the Go-Bots are better.

[mikeszekely]

Well... I wanted to write about something else today, but FedEx elevated the act of telling me they're going to deliver on one day only to actually deliver a day or two later from an occasional "it happens" to absolutely every time they have to bring a box to my house.😠  So I guess today I'll make due with a couple of upgrade kits from Nonnef.

For starters, when I talked about Legacy Windsweeper the other day, I said:

Quote

For bot mode, I think the only things he really needs are a different chest and his flip out guns

Well... here's a kit that does just that.

We'll start with the easy part.  The chest piece has some tabs on it, and they're meant to go right into the recesses on his stock chest.  It's a lot closer to his G1 toy's look, now, although I wish Nonnef would have painted those two rectangles when he put the red at the top, and that the bottom of the chest reached down to the bottom of the silver part behind it.  Technically, I'll need to add a Decepticon insignia and some blue paint to the still-visible vents on the original chest, but that's not on Nonnef.

As for the guns, lay them flat, then plug in the other parts so that they stick off the back with the 5mm pegs on the side with the long barrels.  Once assembled, it's as easy as plugging the aforementioned 5mm pegs into the ports on the outsides of his forearms.  The guns can then swivel behind his arms, which is about as similar to the G1 toy as you're going to get without being able to stick the guns inside his arms.

The only negative here is that, due to how he transforms, the guns have to be removed to transform him.  There are ports on the underside of the guns, though, so you can plug them onto the tips of his wings, so it could be worse.  All in all, for $10 this is a pretty solid kit.

With Windsweeper upgraded and Ruckus coming soon, I recalled that the transition from G1 to Legacy left Crankcase with just these little nubbins.  I figured I'd better get him an upgrade, too.

As with Windsweeper, we'll start with the easy stuff first.  There's a pair of thigh fillers.  just slot them into the hollow insides of his thighs and you're good to go.

For the guns, put them so the peg on the rear is facing up.  Take the angled parts and put the big end over the peg so that the side with the groove is facing up and the the bottom is bending back toward the barrel.  Then take the small piece and fit it over the small peg on the angled piece; I don't think it matters which side.

Fully assembled, the tabs on those last little pieces fit into slots on Crankcase's roof.  The armature between those pieces and the actual guns allows the guns to fold against his back, or to swivel up and over the top of his backpack.  It looks pretty good and short of storing inside the backpack works just about as well as the G1 toy.

Unlike Windsweeper, you don't even have to remove the guns to transform him!  However, there's no way to hide them, since they don't fold into the roof the way the G1 toy's did.  Instead, they just chill out on his roof.  That said, they can still swing out in front of the windshield.

Again, my biggest complaint here is that the upgrade can't fold away and hide like the G1 toy, but that's a flaw of the Legacy toy using the Skids mold instead of getting his own new mold designed to work like the G1 toy in the first place.  Nonnef's upgrades work about as well as you could reasonably expect, and for a mere $6 they're a pretty easy recommend (for $3 you can get some hubcaps for his wheels, too, but I opted not to).

Last up, we have a kit for Legacy Windblade that provides a new sword and wing fillers.  The ones I got here are red fillers with black paint; the paint is neat but super thin; if you go this route you might want to repaint the black yourself.  The black fillers don't have any paint.  As for the sword, you can pick when you order if you want blue, red, clear, or smokey clear.  You can also order just a sword, so I wound up getting two- blue is the color she originally had when she first appeared in IDW Comics, but pink seems to be the color she's more often seen with, including her appearances in the RiD '15 and Cyberverse cartoons.

Nonnef clearly tried to copy the design of the hilt on the sword the Legacy figure came with as closely as he could, but the molded detail comes across as a bit flatter and mushier.  They retain the pegs that let you plug them into her hips, and she can hold them just fine.  The real difference, aside from color, is the shape of the blade.  Rather than looking like it's blazing with an Energon fire, it's got the same shape first seen in Sara Pitre-Durocher's IDW artwork, which carried over into the Cyberverse cartoon.

As for the wing fillers, they simply use a pair of pegs to plug into the peg holes under her wings.  They're cutout so that the turbines in her wings can still rotate.  Your mileage may vary here... there's no denying that the underside of her wings, which is the side that faces forward in bot mode, are all kinds of waffled.  Adding the filler smooths it out, but adds thickness to her wings takes up those 5mm ports.

Because the Nonnef swords have the same little pegs as the stock one, they can plug in between her ankles in jet mode the same way.  Of course, you can only store one sword this way, and a random blade sticking out the back makes a bit less sense than fire.

A lot of people online seem to be raving about the Windblade kit, but I'm pretty lukewarm on it.  I think the Nonnef swords look better in bot mode, but worse in jet mode.  And when the fillers do smooth out the underside of the wings, I'm not a fan of the added thickness.  At $12 ($6 extra per additional sword) this is the most expensive of the upgrade kits I'm looking at today, but I feel like it does less than the other two.  Ultimately, the value you derive from this kit will come down to whether you're more bothered by waffle wings or thicker wings.

[Scyla]

It seems like Fans Toys is getting ready to complete their first combiner:

I have to say no matter how good or bad it will turn out, it can only disappoint. 

[M'Kyuun]

Just got these beauties in today. Still haven't transformed either of them (may have to consult a vid for Blitzwing, er Commander). Both of these guys have a lot of crisp lovely paint, and Magic Square's light of Peace Toy Colored version has some nice tampos reflecting the G1 toy. He also has the silver stripe around the cab which, to me, is a bit of an essential detail that the toon unfortunately omitted. I wish he had leg vents instead of those stupid toony squares, but otherwise this is IMHO the best MP OP mold out there for how well it captures Optimus, with Magic Square's previous MP OP, Light of Freedom, a close second (love his chunkier proportions even if he does also have a chunkier hitch bed in truck mode. And he has leg vents FTW!) 😄

I've been waiting, along with everyone else, what seems like an eternity for Fans Toys to finally release their take on Blitzwing, only to recently have them announce that they won't be producing it in the near future. Fortunately, there was already a pretty damned good contender available, and after fence-sitting waiting on FT, I finally made the executive decision to go with Star Toys' lovely design (i.e. FOMO). In some ways, especially the shaping of the thighs, he's a bit too toony IMHO, but in all other regards, especially the incredible balance they achieved with his alt modes (looking extra especially at you jet mode), I'm really happy with this fig thus far. After watching a number of vids, I know that the tips of his weapons in jet mode parts-form, and while I'm not a fan of that approach, considering the extent of his complexity, I think it's a passable offense. On the subject of his jet mode, while most Blitzwing toys just leave the turret hanging off the jet's belly like some misbegotten WWII modification, Star Toys brought their A-game and by virtue of some effective plastic origami, integrated the turret into the fighter's form giving him a nice flat belly. So nice! For anyone not aware, I'm prior Air Force and a bit of a snob when it comes to the accuracy, or general lack thereof, when it comes to Transformers with jet modes. Demonstrably, even Star Toys' take is merely a loose approximation of the MiG -25 Foxbat just like the G1 toy, but this toy's superb adherence to the G1 toy's fighter and the cleanliness of its execution warrant a pass. I appreciate the effort. I'm looking forward to getting into the transformation.

Overall, these are simply amazing looking figures. 'We're eating well', to borrow a phrase. I try not to take it for granted.

 

Credit to Sixo and TFSource for the fighter pic

 

"Come on down, Autobrat."

Edited July 11 by M'Kyuun

[mikeszekely]

First, there was Maketoys vs TFC.  Then ToyWorld vs Generation Toy.  And not that long ago we had Magic Square vs. Newage.  But the Devastator Wars aren't over, friends.

I already knew we were getting three Sunbow-style options.

Fans Toys

MMC

and X-Transbots

And, yeah, after waiting how many years now for Fans Toys to finish one combiner their Scrapper looks far too chunky for me to be interested in what they're offering.  XTB's might look the best, at least the prototype stage, but again I don't actually trust them to pull it off.  Since Scrapper is my favorite Constructicon I might check just him out, from the other two, but MMC is the only one I planned to get all six of.

You'd think, with those three big names working on Constructicons that other players might want to work on something else.  But nope!  I found out that 01-Studio, the former Zeta guys who did an excellent 3P Unicron, are also throwing their hat in the ring, though their take is a bit stylized.

Dream Star Toys, who are doing that weird gunmetal super stylized Superion, are going to do a more IDW-style set.

Then there's this one.

It's apparently the first try from a new company called Mech Invasion.  Personally I think it looks a bit funky, but he's apparently going to be kind of cheap and come with Mixmaster, so it might be worth checking out.

[anime52k8]

That last one is weird but I kinda like it.

[mikeszekely]

1 hour ago, anime52k8 said:

That last one is weird but I kinda like it.

Right?  It gets weirder.

First off, here's Mixmaster.  He and Scrapper will be sold together as a set.

Stylized, but a little more conventional than Scrapper.  But there's the alt modes...

I mean, Scrapper looks fine in alt mode, but Mixmaster looks more like the Bayverse version.  But then there's the combined modes...

...arms.  Not legs, arms.  And those hands don't partsform, either.  Mixmaster's is in the mixing drum.  Scrapper's is in his back.  When they come, Bonecrusher and Scavenger will be legs, so Devastator will look like this:

And if all that isn't weird enough, Mecha Invasion is apparently also working on a Volcanicus.  They haven't shown any of it except for line art for Grimlock's alt mode... but I guess Volcanicus and Devastator are going to use the same connectors for the limbs, because they showed this at a trade show.

Now, I guess the question is whether or not there's a market for such an unconventional Devastator when three of the biggest names in 3P are promising Sunbow-accurate MP Devastators.  But Mecha Invasion have apparently announced a price for the Scrapper/Mixmaster set at 399 yuan.  That's almost exactly $55 USD at today's exchange rate.  Even after dealers get their markups and build their "free" shipping into the price, I'm guessing $70-$80.  And that's for two figures, with ratchets and diecast, that look to have good articulation, storage for their guns in alt and combined modes, and relatively straightforward engineering.  I think at that price they're not actually competing with guys like Fans Toys or MMC at all, they're simply making neat figures that you can play with at a very reasonable price.  I'm going to roll the dice on the first set.  Once they announced the price, they went from being a curiosity that I wasn't planning on buying to something I'm actively anticipating now.

As for the rest, I'm not sure I can do all the Devastators again, but I might try to get all the Scrappers, since he's my favorite.

 

Edited July 13 by mikeszekely

[mikeszekely]

Speaking of MMC's Devastator...

 

Edited July 13 by mikeszekely

[mikeszekely]

I think I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but I finally got my hands on MMC's Ignis, their MP-style Hot Spot.

So... I got out Combiner Wars Hot Spot and TFC's aging 3P version to compare with.  A more proper comparison might have been with Generation Toy's, but that thing was such a frustrating piece of trash that I managed to get it from combined mode back to a truck with several pieces coming off that weren't supposed to and wound up just tossing it into the closet.

Anyway, yep, that's what Hot Spot looks like in the cartoon, all right.  Cartoon colors, and the molded geometry like the rectangles on his shoulders, the trapezoids on his forearms, the lines in the red on his chest, the L's on his knees, and the striped rectangles on his shins are all spot on.  Wheels in his chest, biceps, and shins?  Check.  I'd say the only real discrepencies, and this is really nitpicking, are the fact that his thighs only have one circle each instead of two, there are molded stripes on his shoulders and knees (where the red and silver striped stickers go on the G1 toy), and the black squares on his chest have some additional silver details that aren't part of the Sunbow model.

Ignis has a little chunk from the sides and back, but realistically, what was MMC supposed to do?  His upper arms are actually somewhat cartoon accurate, but they were simply drawn smaller.  In the cartoon his ladder sort of just disappears, and MMC certainly tried to compress it all into a backpack.  Ultimately, given the dual sources of the Sunbow model and the G1 toy, Hot Spot came out better than he has any business looking.

He comes with a few accessories.  You have a pair of fireball cannons, which have a small handle that folds out for Ignis and a larger one that folds out for the combined mode.  You get an alternate open-mounted face for the combined mode head, and you get two hinged... doohickeys.  I think that's the technical name.  As part of the first batch, I also received a second combined mode head and an alternate open-mounted face for it, too, but I am unsure if MMC plans to include it in future runs of Ignis.

When MMC did their Combaticons Onslaught was, by most counts, the most compromised figure of the five due to the all-built-in gimmick.  You might expect that Ignis should be, too, and that if it's not his aesthetics that are compromised it must be his articulation.  But his articulation is actually pretty good!  His head is on a ball joint with pretty decent up, down, and sideways tilt in addition to swiveling.  His shoulders rotate, and a ratcheted hinge outside the rotation gives him 90 degrees of lateral movement.  His biceps swivel, though they can get caught on his kibble, and his double-jointed elbows bend 180 degrees.  His wrists swivel and have a little downward tilt, and his fingers are all individually articulated with the thumb as a solid piece on a ball joint for bending and rotating, while each finger is hinged at the base and two additional knuckles.  His waist swivels, and he has a ratcheted ab crunch that's almost 90 degrees.  His hip skirts are hinged to give his ratcheted hips the clearance to go 90 degrees forward, backward, and laterally.  His thighs swivel, and his ratcheted knees bend just about 90 degrees.  His feet, thin as they are, have toes that tilt up, half of his foot can tilt down, and his entire feet pivot 90 degrees at the ankles.

Ignis can hold his fireball cannons in both hands by slotting the tabs on the small handles into slots in his palms.

Ignis' transformation from robot to truck (or truck to robot) is fairly straightforward, once you know what you're doing.  I mean, there are some aspects like getting out the combined head, opening it, and storing Ignis' head inside before tucking the whole thing back into his torso, or figuring out the locks on his knees to bend his thighs up just right, that might trip you up the first time because you're not expecting it, but it all makes sense after you've done it once or twice.  It really boils down to stowing his head inside the combined head before stuffing both back inside his torso, opening up his big ol' biceps so you can bend his forearms inside and the front of his cab out, locking his arms/cab together, collapsing his legs and storing his toes, locking them together, filling in the gap with some of his backpack, then working his ladder out.

Ignis' truck mode isn't actually super cartoon accurate... but in MMC's defense, have you looked at his truck mode in the comics/cartoon?  I swear it's like the animators were looking at an entirely different toy, one based on a different truck with one axel in the front and two in the back, a totally different cab, and weird pipes along the sides.  I wonder if someone told the animators that Hot Spot is a Mitsubishi Fuso fire engine and they thought Fuso is a specific model rather than the name of a company within the Mitsubishi group dedicated to making large trucks and buses?  Instead, Ignis borrows largely from the G1 toy, swapping in some cartoon details like the white hose instead of black and the stabilizers near the back, and filling in some details of the cab like the grill, lights, and chrysanthemum badge with details from an actual Fuso fire truck.  Technically this does leave the door open for someone like X-Transbots to make a more cartoon-accurate truck, but given how little I can recall of his truck in the cartoon I think Ignis strikes a nice balance between cartoon, toy, and real life truck.

Ignis rolls on rubber tires.  His ladder can move up and down as well as swivel, and the stabilizers can be deployed.  Unfortunately, to make his ladder as small and collapsed as possible for his bot mode, Ignis' ladder cannot extend any further.  The handles on his fireball cannons can fold in, and tabs on the top plug into slots on either side of the ladder for storage.

MMC didn't stop at bot and truck, mind you.  With his arms folded up for cab mode you can swivel them so the cab is facing forward.  Tuck in his feet and make him do a split, then a groove near the folded-in handles of his guns allow them to slide partly over the stabilizers near his ankles.  Store his head as you would for truck mode, fold his chest down and out, and his ladder flips over where his head previously was.  Lastly, plug those doohickeys we didn't use in robot or truck mode into holes on the insides of his cab.  It's not exact, but the result is very close to the base mode of the G1 toy.  And the discrepancies (mainly the fact that his chest doesn't fold down all the way over his crotch and the fact that there's no blue molded detail behind his chest) can be easily overlooked by the fact that I simply do not care about this mode.  The doohickeys are going to wind up in a plastic bag inside a storage tote in the closet with all the other extra accessories figures come with that I don't use.

A mode I (and, presumably, most people) will care about is his combined mode.  The transformation to combined mode is fairly elaborate and less intuitive, with numerous locking mechanisms and a bit of origami that combines his arms with his torso to form the gestalt torso, gets his head and chest from inside his back, shifts his thighs into wider hips, turns his lower legs into gestalt thighs, and folds the entirety of his gestalt feet out from inside his legs on thin armatures.  I'll do a more complete review of the combined mode when it's all the members are out and I can actually combine them, but for now I'll just say that there are hinged tabs on the ladder that are used to help lock his back together in this mode, and they kind of suck.  It's a pain to get them in, and one of them even popped off the hinge a few times.

And, because I'm going to put one head in storage with the doohickeys, here's a comparison of the two heads.  The one on the right is the standard head that comes attached.  As near as I can tell, while appearing more detailed than the one on the left, it's actually the Sunbow accurate head.  The more squarish head on the left with the more simplified helmet seems to be based on his appearance in The Headmasters.

We still have two more Protectobots to go until MMC finishes their Defensor, and time will tell how the fully combined gestalt will turn out.  As Hot Spot alone, though, Ignis is an extremely good figure.  The bot mode looks fantastic and has plenty of articulation, the transformation to truck is pretty easy when you get the hang of it, and the truck mode strikes a good balance between realism, cartoon, and G1 toy.  I'd highly recommend Ignis, even if he weren't the only real option for an MP Hot Spot right now.

[JB0]

3 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

Ignis' truck mode isn't actually super cartoon accurate... but in MMC's defense, have you looked at his truck mode in the comics/cartoon?  I swear it's like the animators were looking at an entirely different toy, one based on a different truck with one axel in the front and two in the back, a totally different cab, and weird pipes along the sides. 

I suspect the divergence might be intentional to make him look more like a "normal" american firetruck, similar to how Skids was usually drawn as a minivan in media despite the toy being kind of the opposite.

Two wheels up front and one in the back just looks WRONG, like the bottom of the firetruck is backwards.

[mikeszekely]

18 hours ago, JB0 said:

I suspect the divergence might be intentional to make him look more like a "normal" american firetruck, similar to how Skids was usually drawn as a minivan in media despite the toy being kind of the opposite.

Two wheels up front and one in the back just looks WRONG, like the bottom of the firetruck is backwards.

Seems plausible.

Anyway, going from the big figures to the small figures, I got some new stuff from Dr. Wu.

So first up we have brand new figure Iron Jack, aka Wheeljack.  A number of people have been calling out the fact that Iron Jack is pretty out of scale with the doctor's Prime Commander... but it's kind of like, have those people been sleeping through releases like Seaspray, Beachcomber, and Powerglide?  Or are they only able to process scale discrepencies between Prime and a carbot?  I mean, we're talking about a Wheeljack figure that comes up to the knee on the Earthrise version, so I'm inclined to cut the little guys some slack.

The comparisons to the Earthrise figure are deliberate.  While Dr. Wu put a little more effort into not having hollow legs and making the cockpit on his chest more rounded, Iron Jack has a lot in common aesthetically with Earthrise Wheeljack.  They both have the back of the car on the sides of the shoulders, the wheels on the backs of the forearms, and split the spoiler to form his wings.

If I have to criticize one thing, it's going to be the sides of his legs.  The sides of his alt mode just stick up so far along the sides of his thighs.

Iron Jack comes with an accessory.  Sorry the picture is blurry, but this thing is tiny and it was hard to get my camera to focus.  But yeah, unlike Earthrise Wheeljack, Iron Jack comes with a cartoon-style shoulder launcher.  Nice.

Iron Jack's seems to be on a swivel.  There's no sideways tilt, but his transformation does allow for his head to tilt up and down.  His shoulders are ball joints and allow for rotation with no issue, but only about 45 degrees of lateral movement.  You can get more lateral movement by using a transformation hinge, but it's on the wrong side of the rotation.  Another ball joint serves as his bicep swivel, while a hinge bends his elbows 90 degrees.  No wrist or waist articulation.  Ball joints in the hips go over 90 degrees forward and backward, but only about 45 degrees laterally.  The movement of his hip sockets around the balls is all the thigh swivel he gets, and it isn't much.  His knees bend 90 degrees.  His feet can tilt 90 degrees downward, but nothing upward, and the front of his feet are on a swivel so he's technically got 360 degrees of ankle pivot.

Jack's shoulder launcher has a small hole under it.  This hole fits into a post by Jack's shoulder.

Once again, the comparison with Earthrise Wheeljack is unavoidable as they have essentially the exact same transformation.  The wings fold in to become his spoiler, the legs collapse and the chest double-hinges over his shins, his head folds into the gap, his waist spins 180 degrees, then his shoulders hinge up to form the back of the car and his arms fold down to make the rear sides and tires.  Literally the only differences are that Iron Jack's wrists don't spin, his legs are on sliders instead of doing a sideways Combiner Wars thing, and non of his cockpit window is in his legs.

And the resulting car is a lot like the Earthrise toy as well, a little wider or flatter than the he ought to be, and a little flat on the sides.  The livery is a bit more G1 toy than Sunbow, but that's fine.  There's also no storage for his shoulder weapon, which is a little less fine, but I'm still not too mad.  Again, this isn't a Masterpiece toy, we're talking about a car that's roughly as long as a AA battery.  And for the same price as a regular Hasbro Deluxe, you don't just get Iron Jack...

...you also get Fire Ladder.  Which, I'll remind you, is Inferno.  Except this Inferno is obviously colored very differently; this is apparently Inferno's Shattered Glass colors.  Aside from color, there are no differences from the standard version of Fire Ladder.

If you want something a bit different, you'll have to pick up another set and get Hammer.  Hammer is a retool of Dr Wu's Inferno/Grapple mold meant to be a G1-esque Bulkhead.  From the neck down he's pretty much the same figure, but they've replaced the crane/ladder with a bulky backpack.

They also replaced Inferno's gun hand with a Bulkhead-appropriate wrecking ball.  Oh, and right out of the box he actually has a different head.  It seems that the Dr. was working from some fan art of a hypothetical G1-style Bulkhead and copied the head that artist gave him before figuring out that fans would really prefer a head that actually looks like Bulkhead.

In truck mode, you can see how the cab and the bottom of the truck are basically the same as Inferno/Grapple's.  The difference again is in the backpack, which splays out and folds back around on itself to form the trailer of a military truck.  There's even a small peg on the back of the trailer that you can use to plug the wrecking ball onto.  It's not the prettiest, but it's alt mode accessory storage.

Hammer also comes with a copy of Iron Jack, with no mold changes, just a new deco based on Slicer, aka Shattered Glass Wheeljack.

And this is where I start to have issues with Dr. Wu.  Why not put the two Shattered Glass decos into one box, and the G1 decoes in the other?  Of course, the answer is actually quite obvious- because he's going to sell a lot more sets that way.  He's essentially bundling one figure you really want with one niche repaint, forcing you to by two sets to get the figures you actually want and moving way more of the figures with more limited appeal.  I can honestly say that I, for one, am only mildly interested in Slicer and have no desire to own an SG Inferno, but I'm stuck with them because I really wanted Wheeljack and Bulkhead.  And there's actually a third set, too!  You can get a back that has Wheeljack with a new head and shoulder guns as Exhaust, and a repaint of Inferno as Artfire.  I'd have been more into that and might have bought a set, but I wasn't going to buy three sets.

I don't really know what else to say.  Iron Jack is a figure that'd be kind of mid if he were larger or more expensive, but if you're into Dr. Wu's Micromaster-scale Extreme Warfare figures then he's pretty much a must have (as in, "I must have the entire G1 Sunbow cast at this scale!").  And Hammer is a pretty solid use of his Inferno mold as Bulkhead.  But you kind of have to want them enough to justify the $25 per set on just those two figures, because rather than bundle them together they're bundled with the least desirable repaints.  It's a page out of NewAge's book, and it kind of sucks.

[mikeszekely]

I'll keep this short, but Ignis wasn't the only MMC figure I picked up recently.  I also grabbed Shiftlane, their version of Robots In Disguise Rollbar.

So, much as Rollbar was a repaint of G1 Swindle, Shiftlane is a retool of Fraudo, MMC's version of Swindle.  He sports a new head, new crotch and hip skirts, new shoulders, and a new back.  Except...

...I actually had him turned around the in the above picture!  Swindle's Sunbow appearance has always been one of the weirder quirks of the animation in that, aside from being yellow and purple, he really didn't look look all that much like the toy.  MMC worked to make their Combaticons Sunbow-accurate, so as the demands came in for them to be redone as the RID Commandos the question became how to take a G1 cartoon design and get it back to the toy-accurate RID one?  Frankly, I think MMC could have swapped the yellow for green and the purple for orange and called it a day, and people would have been happy enough.  But MMC went above and beyond, retooling Fraudo's back to make it look like a toy-accurate front, removing the faux wheels from the shoulders, etc.  Now, it's still not perfectly cartoon-accurate- he's lacking the backpack with the front wheels, for example.  I can only hope that Hasbro might do something this clever if the seemingly-likely 2026 Bruticus gets an RID makeover.

As far as accessories go, Shiftlane has the same missile gun and spare tire as Fraudo.  Now, without the wheel to plug into, Fraudo's arm cannon simply can't be an arm cannon.  It can use the pair of tabs on the back part (which is the same part as Fraudo's) to clip into his shoulder, which in and of itself would be fine.  But the removable barrel is a new tooling, with a fold out handle to be used as another hand gun.

On that topic, the part that connects the cannon and missile for alt mode still stores on the back of one leg.  But since Fraudo's back is Shiftlane's front, you don't have the storage on the back for the spare tire anymore.  The instructions suggest plugging it onto the back of his other leg, which you absolutely can do, but it requires you to fold down the flaps on the backs of his legs and fold out the gestalt heels, making his feet a bit bigger than Fraudo's.

In addition to his weapons and wheel, Shiftlane comes with two extra faces.  So you have the stock stoic face (which I prefer as I think it bests suits Rollbar's personality), a smiling face, and a yelling face.

Transformation is basically the same, save for the fact that you don't have to rotate the waist because it's already done.  Unfortunately the kind of retooling MMC would have to do to get a toy/Rollbar accurate FMC HMCV would probably have necessitated doing an entirely new figure, so we're settling for the Sunbow Jeep in Rollbar's green.  Well, at least he's got the white star and "GV" on the hood.

Of course, Shiftlane still does the all-built-in leg mode thing, and aside from the colors the only difference is the retooled back... er, front.  And that still works!  Since Rollbar's chest was the front of Ruination's leg, having a toy-accurate chest on the front of the leg means that he's a reasonably-accurate Ruination leg.  Well, except for the green toes.

But, as nothing from the waist down was retooled, Shiftlane is compatible with the "slippers" from the add-on pack.  In fact, I rather expect that down the line their Mega Octane will come with the add-on chest(s) pre-installed and the add-on feet in the box.  But in the mean time, here's a look at MMC's Bruticus with Shiftlane in place of their Brawl.

So... yeah, I liked Fraudo when he was released, but when figures are $100+ I'm not super keen to buy into repaints.  I had no interest in G2, and I was not one of the people calling for Battle Gaia.  But, even though Robots in Disguise wasn't a great show, it holds a place in my heart for a couple of reasons (bringing the franchise back to transforming vehicles, delivering one of my favorite Optimus designs, etc).  Ruination is the one redeco I'm willing to double-dip on, and with his clever retooling Shiftlane doesn't disappoint.  I can only hope the other Commandos get as much extra attention as Shiftlane.

[David Hingtgen]

Out of nowhere, after 7 years---TFC is actually finishing their Abominus:

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

4 minutes ago, David Hingtgen said:

Out of nowhere, after 7 years---TFC is actually finishing their Abominus:

It must be coming from the same factory that made Fanstoys's Superion .

[mikeszekely]

34 minutes ago, David Hingtgen said:

Out of nowhere, after 7 years---TFC is actually finishing their Abominus:

I mean, I guess whoever they got to finish their Hun-Grr did a pretty good job of matching the aesthetic of the other four... but I wasn't really into that aesthetic in the first place.  Until someone does a proper MP Abominus I'll stick with Ordin.

On the other hand, Magic Square is upscaling their Legends Bruticus to MP, and so far so good.

Hopefully Magic Square will considering upsizing a few more of their Legends figures *cough cough Megatron cough cough*.

[mikeszekely]

Oh, and @M'Kyuun might be interested to hear that Dr. Wu is working on a Micromaster-scaled Prowl (and Kickback).

Don't expect him before the second half of 2025, though.  The good doctor has a ton of stuff already in the pipeline (Megatron, Cliffjumper & Shockwave, Warpath & Scourge, plus their repaints and remolds, plus some more tapes...).

[shazam]

 

[Chronocidal]

I actually did look up the original packaging to compare, and they very specifically removed ONLY the Autobot logos from the original box design.  I'm amused that that's somehow the line they couldn't cross to skirt copyright laws.  

I'm also slightly irritated at myself.  I didn't even think about the fact that this thing comes with spare fast pack covers that I could just paint completely from scratch, rather than having to strip and mask off the black section on the UN SPACY ones.   Still might be easier than matching the shade of red though, so we'll see.

[shazam]

 

[Chronocidal]

Small note, I just realized the timing of this.  They dropped this almost smack dab on the 40th anniversary of Jetfire's original release.

[danth]

Man, I could not be more tickled with m y KO Yamato Jetfire. It looks so great. I kinda want to buy another!

I also want to buy an old G1 Jetfire now. But when I went to look on eBay, I bought an old Takatoku 1S instead...and it was pricey. Long story short, this dang Jetfire knockoff has gotten real expensive!

EDIT: Oops, thought this was the Gray Market Valk/Bootleg Jetfire thread.

Edited Tuesday at 05:30 PM by danth

[Chronocidal]

6 hours ago, danth said:

Man, I could not be more tickled with m y KO Yamato Jetfire. It looks so great. I kinda want to buy another!

I also want to buy an old G1 Jetfire now. But when I went to look on eBay, I bought an old Takatoku 1S instead...and it was pricey. Long story short, this dang Jetfire knockoff has gotten real expensive!

EDIT: Oops, thought this was the Gray Market Valk/Bootleg Jetfire thread.

This one crosses the threads a bit, just like the product itself.  It pretty much counts as both.  

[mikeszekely]

I know, what with this being a Macross board and all, that the hot Transformers-adjacent topic is God of Flame.  Yes, my copy arrived and I've had him for a few days, but like I said in the gray market Valk thread I also happened to get a case of COVID.  Five days of quarantine and most of a course of Paxlovid later, I'm finally up and about and ready to talk about some of the stuff that's been piling up on my to-do list.

However!  The temporary table and poor lighting I've been using since my in-laws arrived just flat out isn't going to cut it for God of Flame.  Just not big enough.  I need my regular space back.  We won't have to wait too long, though, as my in-laws are going home on Wednesday.

In the mean time, I have a consolation prize for you... Dr. Wu's latest two-pack, Wasp and Wingman.

It's had to convey just how tiny Wasp is.  Crotch height to SS86 Bumblebee.  Mid-torso to Newage's v1 Bumblebee.  Belt-high to Wingman, his own pack-in buddy.  I mean, Dr. Wu started this line with figures like Optimus that were roughly the size of a G1 Micromaster, then figured Bumblebee needed to be even smaller so he put out a figure closer to a G1 Headmaster in size.

So, maybe his head sculpt is a little soft (still better than Newage's).  Maybe his waist/pelvis is just a stick, and not properly yellow.

Like the Studio Series toy, the wheels on his feet don't fold in, but unlike that toy there's nothing else under his feet, which leaves him stuck tilting his feet and standing on the inside edge.  And he's got a bit of a backpack, but certainly not the worst one I've seen on a Bumblebee figure.  To be honest, at this scale, I can forgive a lot... especially when it's still better-engineered and more accurate than Hasbro's own larger Core-class Bumblebee.

Wasp doesn't have a gun, which is pretty standard for Dr. Wu figures, but he does come with an alternate head.  Ostensibly it's the G1 toy's battle mask.  Practically, I think it's just a pre-tooled head for the Goldbug repaint.  I'm fine with the cartoon face, but if you want to swap you just pull the stock head off the ball joint and snap the other one on.

Wasp's articulation isn't the best.  His head's on a ball joint that can't tilt sideways or look down.  It does swivel, though, and he can look 90 degrees straight up.  His shoulders are hinged ball joints.  The balls provide the swivel and 90 degrees of lateral movement, while the hinges (which are really for transformation) give him some nice butterfly joints.  No bicep swivel or hand articulation.  Elbows are hinged and bend 90 degrees.  No waist articulation.  His hips are ball joints that get over 90 degrees forward and backward, and about 90 degrees laterally.  The motion of the socket around the ball is all the thigh swivel he gets.  His hinged knees bend 90 degrees.  Due to his transformation his feet can tilt down 90 degrees, but not up, and he lacks ankle pivots.

Wasp's transformation is fairly straightfoward.  His feet tab together, and the sides of the car unwrap from his heels.  His backpack folds up over his head, giving you the clearance you need to fold out his rear wheels.  His arms use the hinges on the ball joints to swing behind his back; make sure you've got his elbows bent and the arms oriented so that the hands point toward what's becoming the rear of the car.  You'll know you have it right when tabs on the back of Wasp's neck plug into slots near his wrists.  Bend his feet down, then use the hinges in his torso to bring his hips out and under, tucking them against his arms and lining up the front of the car.  Then it's simply a matter of folding the back and wheels into place and lining up the sides.

Zoomed in this close you're probably noticing things like the sloppy paint on his taillights, or the bulges for the hinges in his rear bumper and the back of his roof.  Yes, those things are there, and fair criticism, but again I feel like I have to stress how tiny this thing is.  From his front bumper to his rear, Wasp is only a tad longer than the pistol SS86 Bee comes with.  At this scale, I'm less bothered by the hinges and more impressed by the painted bumper, headlights, and spare tire, or the molded hood and boot covers.

We're really talking about a car that looks like a toy for the small-Deluxe that is SS86 Bee.  Again, a car that's smaller than the original Newage Bumblebee, but unlike Newage, actually has working wheels.  Maybe I'm too forgiving, but at this price and scale, I think Wasp is a pretty great Bumblebee and totally worth getting.  Well, as long as you're cool with his pack-in buddy...

...Wingman, aka Cyclonus.  And, man, you can really see how far Dr. Wu has come when you put Wingman with his Galvatron, which was one of his earlier releases.  The sculpt and proportions on Wingman are a lot better.

Wingman is still a Micromaster-scale figure, though, and fairly simple.  It's too bad that the Doctor wasn't able to copy a bit more from the excellent Kingdom figure.  Instead, Wingman's nose is just chilling on his back, with some flaps lying on his calves.

No accessories for (this version of) Wingman.  As far as articulation goes, his head swivels but has no tilt.  His shoulders use ball joints for swivels, but they're not cut out to allow any other motion.  He relies on hinges for a little under 90 degrees of lateral shoulder movement, and on the wrong side of the rotation at that.  His elbows bend 90 degrees on ball joints, and they can be used as bicep swivels.  No wrist or waist swivels.  Ball-jointed hips can go 90 degrees forward, backward, or laterally.  As with Wasp, the motion of the socket around the ball is all you get for thigh swivels.  His knees bend 90 degrees.  His toes have hinges for transformation that let you tilt them down, nothing up.  He does have hinges for just under 90 degrees of ankle pivot.

Transformation is, again, pretty simple.  Spin his head 180, then fold the nose up over it.  Tab his legs together, then use the sliders to collapse his thighs.  Fold his toes down, and use the flaps on his calves to fill in the gap behind his cockpit.  To avoid clearance issues, rotate his forearms inward 170 degrees as you double hinge the wings from behind his shoulders, locking the wings into his elbow gaps.  Then double-hinge his arms out from his chest and down to the sides of his legs.

As with Wasp, I feel like I can forgive stuff like the visible hands, the hinges on top of the nose, on top of the wings, and on either side of the cockpit, the short and blunt tip on the nose, even some of the gaps where his shoulders don't quite align with the fuselage or the wings with his arms.  Why are his wings kind of curved, though?  It's an odd design choice, but ultimately still a minor issue on what's otherwise another well-done, tiny figure by Dr. Wu.  It's especially nice that both the normal G1 decos come in the same box.  This time, the alternate decos were IDW Cyclonus with Bugbite, SG Cyclonus with Goldbug, and SG Goldbug with translucent Cyclonus (of which I might have picked up one more set if only Goldbug had come with IDW Cyclonus, but it's still an improvement).  And at around $25 for the pair, as always, they're priced fairly competitively with Hasbro's own Core-class releases at a smaller size that does even better at making Hasbro's Titans look big, making this pair another easy recommend from me.  Actually, having Galvatron and Cyclonus really makes me want a Scourge now... good thing he's in the works, along with Warpath, Cliffjumper, Shockwave, Megatron, Prowl, Smokescreen, Bluestreak, and the Insecticons.  I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it, I'd love for Dr. Wu to do the entire Sunbow cast at this scale.

[M'Kyuun]

I think the Doc's doing a pretty good job with them as well based entirely on product pics and @mikeszekely's comprehensive reviews. My personal druthers for Dr. Wu's products rest with his impressive Legacy-scaled micro-cassette figs of which he's done a fairly limited number thus far. I have both his versions of Slamdance and Squalkbox, and for their sizes, they're well-done and easily eclipse Hasbro's sub-lackluster cassettes (except Eject who is by far the best official cassette bot they've done thus far in their inexplicably preferred undersized micro-cassette scale). Dr. Wu has more cassettes on the way: Decibel, another combiner from the Japanese cartoon, as well as his versions of Overkill and Slugfest. My hope is that he'll eventually get around to doing the primary cast of cassette bots: Rumble, Frenzy, Ravage, Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, and Ratbat, as the official versions leave much to be desired.

I will say, however, SS86 Rumble was almost great: They could have omitted the crappy non-functional pile drivers in lieu of working elbows, which would have made him pretty much perfect at that scale. The engineering and appearance in both modes is fantastic; cassette mode suffers a little, but it's still better than most. I was hoping some third party would make new arms for him with working elbows (and perhaps even minimally functional drivers), but to wit, nobody has, more's the pity.