The Unlicensed Third Party Transformers Thread

[M'Kyuun]

Yeah, I watched that review today, too, as I have Harry PO'd . Normally I wouldn't buy a legends scaled fig of a normally deluxe scaled character, as I'm primarily a CHUG and MP collector. However, I love G1 Prowl's design, and NA just nailed it, so I decided to get it as kind of a one-off purchase. He'll be my pocket TF that I take on trips and such.

Anyway, just in general, I've noticed that there's really no legend scale yardstick for third parties, although I think DX9, Iron factory, and Magic Square are pretty close, close enough anyway that figures from all three companies can be placed together in a display without too much scale issue. Iron Factory have their own aesthetic direction, and take some license with the designs, which may or may not appeal to everyone. MS and DX-9 seem like they're going more for a mini-MP look, hitting that G1 nostalgia button pretty hard. I bought MS' Strongman, as I wanted a more G1 accurate Huffer to replace my old IGear figure. He's almost too accurate and just a bit too small to fit in with the current Generations legends figs, but he looks so good I'm willing to fly the F**k-it flag. TBH, with its chunkier proportions, the IGear actually fits better visually. I'm eyeballing NA's Cosmos, as I like the squatter look of it-very faithful to the toon look. MS have a nice looking Cosmos, too, but it's slightly lankier, although the engineering looks better. Alas, the greatest of first world problems, choices.

[Tking22]

11 hours ago, tekering said:

Primus, what a mess.  

Indeed. I believe the term most fans use is legends+, unless that is referring to something else, I'm still too new to legends collecting to be sure.

10 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

Actually, I caught Skully's review of New Age's Prowl, and he's thinking that NA might be in a smaller scale than IF/DX9.

Yeah, it's definitely made getting into the Legends stuff sort of a challenge. There's just no clear MP-10 benchmark to measure against like there is for MP.

Yeah the lack of an official, or widely accepted jumping off point for scale makes legends collecting a bit wishy washy, it's more about what makes sense to you personally, head cannon and logic factored in as well.

[mikeszekely]

Well, before we can do Superion, we gotta do Silverbolt.  So let's take a look at Zeta's Silver Arrow.

So yesterday, when I wrote about Downthrust (Skydive), I said "while I tend to think Zeta did better with their Aerialbots than they did their Combaticons I'm still not convinced Zeta's designers have what it takes to make an individual toy that's on the same level as MMC, FansToys, DX9, X-Transbots, etc."  And I'm thinking I might have to walk that back a bit.  I mean, that's really good-looking Silverbolt.  I mean, there are things I could single out as being not totally cartoon accurate like the little bits of red on his abs, the smoked translucent panels on his chest, pelvis, and knees, the fact that his shoulders aren't black behind the faux molded wings, or differences in Silver Arrow's molded detail vs the linework on the cartoon.  But given that there are people nitpicking the prototype of Fanstoy's Silverbolt I feel pretty comfortable not pouring over every detail and calling out the minutia that's not 100% animation accurate on Silver Arrow.  Instead, I'll point out that the colors are actually quite good, he's got possibly one of the best head sculpts Zeta's done (and almost definitely the best one they've done that doesn't have a faceplate), and the proportions are good.  His feet are diecast, and there are some metal parts in his backpack.  He doesn't have a ton of paint, but what he's got is applied well.

For a character that always seems to be a robot with a jet hanging off of his back, Silver Arrow's back is even remarkably clean.  Different, but not necessarily worse than what FansToys is doing (based on renders).  Honestly, my only real aesthetic complaint is that I think he's too tall.  You can see he's maybe half a head or so taller than MS-01, and certainly taller than his teammates.  And given how much of the combined mode torso is a separate partsforming piece it just doesn't seem necessary to make Silver Arrow that big.

Speaking of, yeah, Silver Arrow comes with a gun, some screw hole covers, a big cannon, two hands, two heads, two feet, and a chunk that's probably half of Superion.    That piece is the knees, thighs, hips, pelvis, waist, the entire front of his torso, some of his sides, his collar, and the connection points for the arm bots.  Maybe, like the torso chunk for their Bruticus, it can do something besides wait to be combined.  The sides do fold in, and the top of the chest can fold back and in.  But it's not mentioned in any of the instructions.  Regardless, we'll save our discussion on most of this for later.  For now, we're really just looking at the gun on the bottom left...

...which he holds just fine, using the same method as the other four of a tab in the palm and a slot on the gun handle.

And as far as articulation goes, Silver Arrow's head is on a ball joint that has pretty good up/down/sideways tilt in addition to rotation.  His shoulders are ratcheted for rotation, and due to transformation there are actually a couple of hinges you can use to get his arm out 120 degrees laterally.  His biceps can swivel.  He's got a ratcheted elbow that can bend 90 degrees, but there's another ratcheted hinge just below the bicep swivel that can be used as a second elbow joint so he can curl his arm up almost to 180 degrees.  His wrists swivel, and his hands are the usual Zeta fair with a ball-jointed thumb and individual fingers pin-hinged at the base and friction hinged mid knuckle.  He's got a waist swivel, although it can get caught up on his backpack.  His hip skirts are hinged and move to accommodate his hips moving 90 degrees forward or backward and over 90 degrees laterally, all on ratchets.  His thighs can swivel around his hip joint so there's not cut thigh.  His knees bend a little over 90 degrees on a ratchet.  His foot articulation is limited to the diecast part at the front, but it can bend up, down, and turn like an ankle pivot.  Perfectly adequate, on the whole.

Silver Arrow turns into a Concorde, and not merely something with a vaguely Concorde shape.  And I have to say that I think Zeta did a pretty fair job with it, too.  Given the shape of a Concorde it seems like it's nearly impossible to make anything other than a plane with a lump of robot kibble underneath and we definitely got that here.  The thing is, I think Zeta did a pretty good job of keeping it all underneath.  If you were to look straight down at him I don't think you'd see any robot kibble.  That's more than I could say for G1, Combiner Wars, TFC, Jujiang, or (judging by the renders) even Fanstoys.

Another look, from the bottom, to help illustrate how everything moves to stay under the wings.  Even the corners of his shoulders hinge up and around to sit on top and stay under the wing, plus the details inside look kind of like intakes.  I'll go one step further and argue that this is definitely still a big chunk of robot kibble strapped to the bottom of a plane the torso changes shape enough, the biceps, thighs, feet, and hands are all hidden away, the shins tuck into the pelvis enough with the arms snuggly alongside that it's not super obviously a robot.  Some effort still goes into transforming him.

Not too much, though.  Like Zeta's other figures there's a lot of panels you have to unfold, it's just not hanging off his arms and lower legs.  So most of the transformation is really about unfolding the stuff that's tucked away and then lining up all the panels.  The hardest parts are giving yourself the clearance to close the lower legs over the thighs Combiner Wars-style and making sure that the shoulder joints are all bent in the right ways so that the arms line up properly.

He of course does have landing gear.  There are 5mm peg hole sunder the cockpit and on the underside of each wing.  You can use the one under the cockpit to store a gun, including the big cannon.  The ones under the wings are for the big cannon; the wings on the smaller gun don't give it the clearance to fit.  However, there are ridges on the gun, and notches on the underside of the thrusters at the back of the wings, and you can use them to attach the gun there.  And, because this is a Concorde, the nose can drop down.

I'd have to say, my only real complaint about Concorde mode is the deco.  It just looks a little bland, and what is "Mission Cyber" anyway?  Gold stripes down the sides, or at least gold windows and a gold stripe on the tail, would have gone a long way toward making Silver Arrow look more like Silverbolt.

Oh, and for the curious, from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail Silver Arrow is almost as long as FansToys' Phoenix.  Phoenix is wider, much heavier, and has a bigger wingspan, though.

I'm just going to come out and say it.  Silver Arrow is good.  And not "good enough," or "it doesn't matter because it's all about combined mode."  Silver Arrow is Zeta proving me wrong and making a good standalone Masterpiece figure.  I definitely recommend him.  If you want a Masterpiece Silverbolt then Silver Arrow is your guy.  He's good enough that I'm tempted to buy a second one to display uncombined, something I'm definitely not doing for the other four.  My only serious complaint is that the clips that hold the sides of his backpack together have a tendency to come loose when you're manipulating him, but they're not so loose that they'll fall out while he's just sitting on a shelf so it's just a matter of clipping the backpack back together after you pose him.

[mikeszekely]

What color do you think Superion's face is in the cartoon?  Black, or dark gray?

[M'Kyuun]

I have no answer for your face color question; I have little recollection of Superion from the cartoon. 

My comment concerns design aesthetic, particularly for aircraft in the TF world. The original Seekers did a pretty decent job of looking like F-15s, although we have Kawamori to thank for designing the original Diaclones. It seems, though, that depite what Kawamori was doing with his subsequent Macross designs in terms of producing very realistic jet modes, Takara went the opposite direction favoring the bot modes, which generally end up as boxy chunks with a few plane parts added to try and complete the illusion. Despite the amazing strides they've made with rendering all sorts of ground vehicles accurately, they never really applied the same design philosophy to aircraft, and that legacy has been carried over, by extension, to many of the third parties. Unless there's a serious paradigm shift at Takara, I'm sure this pattern will remain, sadly, the norm. I hope some of the third parties, unconstrained as they are, will at some point find a better compromise. I look at Unique Toys' Challenger and wonder why that level of origami can't be brought to bear. Imagine if they did a G1 Silverbolt, or an Bayverse Jetfire applying the same complex engineering to make a virtually seamless and accurate looking jet mode. As a guy who like planes, it's something I want to see happen: a revolution in design thinking as technologies emerge, and fan standards elevate. To that end, I'm glad Macross has enjoyed such a long life, and that Kawamori hasn't run out of ideas yet. After all these years, with thousands of inspired designers learning from his work, I still think he's unparalleled at what he does.

 

Edited February 22, 2019 by M'Kyuun

[Kuma Style]

[RavenHawk]

36 minutes ago, M'Kyuun said:

I have no answer for your face color question; I have little recollection of Superion from the cartoon. 

My comment concerns design aesthetic, particularly for aircraft in the TF world. The original Seekers did a pretty decent job of looking like F-15s, although we have Kawamori to thank for designing the original Diaclones. It seems, though, that depite what Kawamori was doing with his subsequent Macross designs in terms of producing very realistic jet modes, Takara went the opposite direction favoring the bot modes, which generally end up as boxy chunks with a few plane parts added to try and complete the illusion. Despite the amazing strides they've made with rendering all sorts of ground vehicles accurately, they never really applied the same design philosophy to aircraft, and that legacy has been carried over, by extension, to many of the third parties. Unless there's a serious paradigm shift at Takara, I'm sure this pattern will remain, sadly, the norm. I hope some of the third parties, unconstrained as they are, will at some point find a better compromise. I look at Unique Toys' Challenger and wonder why that level of origami can't be brought to bear. Imagine if they did a G1 Silverbolt, or an Bayverse Jetfire applying the same complex engineering to make a virtually seamless and accurate looking jet mode. As a guy who like planes, it's something I want to see happen: a revolution in design thinking as technologies emerge, and fan standards elevate. To that end, I'm glad Macross has enjoyed such a long life, and that Kawamori hasn't run out of ideas yet. After all these years, with thousands of inspired designers learning from his work, I still think he's unparalleled at what he does.

 

I know I've mentioned them before (but heck, I REALLY like them), but the Toyworld non-Throttlebots were the perfect mix of vehicle mode accuracy and compromise on robot modes, while all but one were, in my opinion, genuinely solid and fun to transform. Did they every accomplish anything similar for planes?

 

(not my pics, fyi; Google searched some, since mine had to get boxed up due to space constraints)

[mikeszekely]

While I don't think it's impossible to make transformers with good jet modes, given enough engineering, I think the Aerialbots are always going to suffer for the fact that they need enough mass to form Superion's limbs.  And frankly, even if he didn't have to combine, I think Silverbolt's always going to be a challenge.  An actual Concorde is really mostly a long, relatively narrow tube with some delta wings along the sides.  Even the engine nacelles, as big as they relative to a human, are fairly small and flat compared to the tube of the Concorde's fuselage.

Anyway, speaking of Superion's limbs, let's put together Zeta Toy's Kronos.

First we've got the legs.  Mostly they're what you'd expect, although they both have tricks to hang their tails and noses lower than they sit for robot mode so they don't hinder the knees.  The connection to the feet works the same on both: ridges on the inside of the leg-bot's legs grab onto the edges of the ankle base, then the leg bot slides back over a tab and another piece folds up and tabs over the front.  The connection is very secure.  The knee is also very secure.  The leg-bot's backs open up, and a diecast bar fits inside  Then hinges fold down and double peg into the leg-bot's shoulders.  Nothing's going to pop out the way it does on Zeta's Bruticus (especially Swindle).

With most of the torso already a complete partsforming chunk Silver Arrow curls up into a block in much the same way that Zeta's Onslaught does.  Once you have him in the right shape the grooves on his crotch slide over rails inside the torso, then a flap at the top of the chest folds down over some pegs on top of Silver Arrow.  Despite those being the only two points where Silver Arrow is physically connected everything is pretty tight, and it takes some force to get Silver Arrow back out.

Then we have the arms.  On paper they're pretty easy to get into arm mode, as it's mostly jet mode with the noses and tails put back into their robot mode positions and elbows deployed from inside their torsos.  In practice you're getting the joints out of those torsos that already had clearance issues folding in the arms and chest flaps, plus now you have to feed the robot heads back into the cavities the combiner elbows just vacated and get the combiner pegs out.  Not super hard, just a little more frustrating than it really needed to be.  Once they're all set you stick the hand on by wedging the connector into slots on the insides of the arm-bot's legs.  then you open the flaps on the combiner ports on the torso, slide them into place, and close the flaps back up to lock everything in.

Last but not least you put a head on.  Like their Bruticus, the head has a large peg at the base of the neck that fits into a peg hole on the torso.  This time Zeta gives you two heads.  One is based on the Studio OX art and has an actual face painted in silver, translucent red eyes and a translucent red piece in the forehead, more molded detail, and yellow paint on the antenna.  For that head, I'm not a fan of the red.  Studio OX Superion should have blue eyes.  As for the other head, the bigger visor, mouthplate, yellow plastic antenna, and simpler molded detail is very accurate to the cartoon, but the silver face needs to be darker, and the translucent red eyes look dead.  So neither head is perfect, but cartoon head for me, thanks.

And now we finally have the combined Kronos, and that's a really impressive Superion.  Ok, Fireflight's horizontal stabilizers don't magically turn white with his wing details and his wings don't magically turn red, and Air Raid and Skydive don't magically become identical bricks with slightly different planes on the calves.  And the molded detail, especially on the knees and chest, is definitely more Studio OX than G1 cartoon.  But it's still undeniably Superion, with some pretty great proportions at that.  The brickish shapes that kind of spoiled the jets, especially the F-15 and F-16, work great for limbs, and the V-shape torso that looked off on Bruticus is just right for Superion.

Also, if you want a cleaner look on his limbs, you can remove the wings from the jets and just stash them somewhere.  I mean his head, shoulder connections, the entire front of his torso, his hips, pelvis, thighs, knees, hands, and feet are all partsforming; if you're cool with that, I don't imagine that removing some parts would bother you much.

As far as accessories go, you can take Silver Arrow's gun, fold the barrel in half, then open the cannon and tuck Silver Arrow's gun inside.  I like this.  It gives Silver Arrow a cartoon-accurate gun and Superion a toy-accurate bigger gun, and it's much more effective than Hasbro's method.

When the gun is inside the cannon you can flip down a large handle with tabs on that fit into Kronos' palms, which is really no surprise.  But, whether intentional or not, you can also leave Silver Arrow's gun out of the cannon, then use a 5mm peg on the cannon to either plug into a peg hole on Fireflight's wing if it's attached or the peg hole his wing plugs into if it's not attached.  That gives him a cartoon-style arm cannon.

Then as far as articulation goes, Kronos' head can swivel on the peg it attaches with, and a hinge inside his neck lets him look up a great deal and down enough.  His shoulders can rotate on the same kind of ratchets that Constructor and Armageddon use (in fact, the arms are interchangeable between the three); you don't actually turn them on the ratchet, you pull the shoulder out, turn it to the position you want then let the spring inside pull it back into place.  The little wings on his chest are hinged and will move out of the way.  His shoulders move laterally 90 degrees on ratchets in the combiner pegs.  Both arms have bicep swivels above the elbow joints; just be careful as the arm-bot's hips can get caught up on the jet kibble on their backs, especially Slingshot's.  The elbow on Fireflight can bend 90 degrees with no problem, and the one on Slingshot can get close to that but comes up a little short because of the VTOL nozzle.  There's a second swivel below the elbow, and a swivel at the wrist.  The wrists can also bend up and down on ratchets.  The thumbs are connected to the hand on a hinge that moves the thumb across the palm and a swivel that spins the thumb on the hinge.  It also two knuckle hinges.  The fingers are hinged at the base, with swivels just above the base that splay the fingers apart.  Then there are additional hinges at the middle and top knuckles on each finger.  He's got a ratcheted waist swivel, and a small ratcheted ab crunch.  His hip skirts have hinges to fold up, but just like Constructor and Armageddon they can also swing to the side to give the hips extra clearance.  The hips themselves can go 90 degrees forward or backward on ratchets, and over 90 degrees laterally on some scary tight ratchets that require quite a bit of force to move.  The thighs swivel around the hip joints.  The knees can bend over 90 degrees on ratchets.  The feet have ratcheted ankle pivots that get about 90 degrees, and ratcheted toe tilts that bend up.  He's quite possibly the best-articulated combiner to date, honestly, but articulation is only as good as stability.  Proponents of Zeta's so-called "pantsforming" argue that making the waist, hips, pelvis, thighs, and knees a separate piece just for combined mode makes the gestalt more stable, but that claim was definitely dealt a blow by Armageddon being far more difficult to balance than designs like Unique Toys' Bruticus or Generation Toy's Devastator.  Fortunately, that's not the case with Kronos.  He's still slightly back heavy and can lean that way, but he doesn't have those same huge cannons dragging him down, and Silver Arrow doesn't seem to stick out as far in the first place.  There's also not nearly as much play between ratchet clicks in the hips and knees, and the ankles connection is much more secure.  It takes some work to pose him; a figure this size with heavy ratchets for most of his joints is just kind of unwieldy.  But balancing him after I had him in a pose wasn't a problem.

Zeta's individual Aerialbots might not be worth picking up as standalone figures (except Silver Arrow).  Down the road I'll keep an eye on FansToys to see if they can do better in that regard.  But I think you should still definitely pick up this set for the combined mode.  The partsforming element isn't going impress anyone with the engineering, but the completed Superion is well-proportioned, sturdy, posable, stable, and big in a way that puts it ahead of Constructor or Armageddon.  In fact, I find myself thinking of him less as a combiner and more as one large robot, like the various MP Omega Supremes.

Oh, and one more thing...

21 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

What color do you think Superion's face is in the cartoon?  Black, or dark gray?

Well, this is what color I wound up going with.  I think I'd have liked it a little lighter, but it was basically this (metallic black), slate gray, or silver.  At least this has a sheen to it that does set it apart from the rest of the helmet.

[sh9000]

Will this Superion be taller or around the same height as XTB Menasor?

I just discovered that there are XTB G2 Stunticons and might get those as well.

[mikeszekely]

3 hours ago, sh9000 said:

Will this Superion be taller or around the same height as XTB Menasor?

I just discovered that there are XTB G2 Stunticons and might get those as well.

According to XTB, their Menasor will be 49cm. This Superior is 50cm, so it should be close. Of course, we're just taking XTB at their word until they actually show more of their prototype.

[David Hingtgen]

Re: Silverbolts.   Interesting, TFC's is actually the right color (G1 Silverbolt, and Superion's combiner kibble, is off-white, contrasting with Slingshot's pure white).  

Zeta's concave, mosquito-nosed Concorde still looks terrible for no reason.  It's a convex/ogival shape if anything, the exact opposite of "pinching in".  A pure straight cone would have been simpler/better.  (not right, but still better than what we got).  That "pinched-in nose" just ruins it for me.  There's not a Concorde photo in the world where it'll look like that, so I don't know WTF Zeta was referencing for nose-shape.

 

Real ones bulge out, not in, and it's subtle, not extreme:

[sh9000]

https://tfsource.com/products/view/product_id/15665/

The UT Ragnaros set is nice but I’ll let someone else buy it so that I won’t be tempted to get it.

Thanks for the Superion info @mikeszekely.

[mikeszekely]

1 hour ago, David Hingtgen said:

Zeta's concave, mosquito-nosed Concorde still looks terrible for no reason.  It's a convex/ogival shape if anything, the exact opposite of "pinching in".  A pure straight cone would have been simpler/better.  (not right, but still better than what we got).  That "pinched-in nose" just ruins it for me.  There's not a Concorde photo in the world where it'll look like that, so I don't know WTF Zeta was referencing for nose-shape.

Perhaps because it has to fold inside the fuselage for transformation?

[David Hingtgen]

Would the correct shape not fit?  Clearance is that tight? 

[mikeszekely]

5 minutes ago, David Hingtgen said:

Would the correct shape not fit?  Clearance is that tight? 

Difficult to say.

As designed, I'm thinking not.  But if the inside were more hollow, then probably yes.  The barriers seem to be structural support.  I guess the question is whether the inside could have been designed differently to accommodate the nose and maintain the same structural integrity.  I'm not an engineer, though, so I can't really answer that.

[David Hingtgen]

Just IMHO, there's plenty of space for it to be shaped correctly, or close to it---the shape is off the most, in the areas furthest away from anything else. 

[Kuma Style]

The review and gallery article for MakeToys' MTCD-05 Buster Skywing is up on KumaStyle.com: http://kumastyledesigns.com/maketoys-buster-skywing-review/

 

It's 1:1 to the Stealthwing released in everything besides color so there honestly wasn't much to say besides the fact that the colors rock. Here are some pics from the gallery portion:

 

 

 

Edited February 24, 2019 by Kuma Style

[RavenHawk]

I have to say that I've become a big fan of MakeToys' stuff. Their designs really, in my opinion, do a great job of being very original, while still being homages to Transformers (and other things, as well).

I have Overheat and Axle and really was impressed by both. I don't collect planes anymore, but if I did I'd definitely be getting Buster Skywing or Stealthwing.

[Kuma Style]

19 hours ago, RavenHawk said:

I have to say that I've become a big fan of MakeToys' stuff. Their designs really, in my opinion, do a great job of being very original, while still being homages to Transformers (and other things, as well).

I have Overheat and Axle and really was impressed by both. I don't collect planes anymore, but if I did I'd definitely be getting Buster Skywing or Stealthwing.

Ya know... I know you're not a fan of planes in general but you should check out their Blindfire from the Quantron (Computron) team. It's relatively cheap and honestly one of the best damned figures they've ever made which is a super surprise being part of a combiner team.

 

[RavenHawk]

16 minutes ago, Kuma Style said:

Ya know... I know you're not a fan of planes in general but you should check out their Blindfire from the Quantron (Computron) team. It's relatively cheap and honestly one of the best damned figures they've ever made which is a super surprise being part of a combiner team.

 

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll keep an eye out for good deals on that one.

It's not that I'm not a fan of planes. I love planes, cars (thus the not-Throttlebots that I collected), trucks (as in tractor trailers and Ultra Magnus, big time), and motorcycles, and have since I was a kid. It's just that there came a point where I had to decide what to focus my collecting on, and, since I'm most passionate about bikes, that's the route that I went.

That said, the Technobots were a personal favorite in a big way when I was a kid, and I was really tempted to get Quantron. Blindfire, funny enough, was the most tempting to me, since I really dig that scifi fighter design, loved the original toy from the '80s, and felt that Blindfire and Overheat were the two new designs that most clicked with me. I didn't end up getting him, but already regret not getting Quantron this most recent Black Friday...

 

Edit:

I forgot to mention that I also have MakeToys Battle Tanker (I think in two different colors) and am really impressed by that one as well. That fell under my first culling of collecting, where I narrowed it down to Motorcycles, Ultra Magnus-related stuff, and Prowl.

Edited February 25, 2019 by RavenHawk
Had a thought right after I clicked submit

[mikeszekely]

1 hour ago, RavenHawk said:

It's just that there came a point where I had to decide what to focus my collecting on, and, since I'm most passionate about bikes, that's the route that I went.

If bikes are your thing, keep an eye out for this guy.

[RavenHawk]

6 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

If bikes are your thing, keep an eye out for this guy.

Oh, I have been! Haha. He's been listed on pre-order for like a year now.

[mikeszekely]

2 hours ago, RavenHawk said:

I didn't end up getting him, but already regret not getting Quantron this most recent Black Friday...

What was the Black Friday price?  He's in stock for $200 at TFSource.

[RavenHawk]

12 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

What was the Black Friday price?  He's in stock for $200 at TFSource.

Don't remember for sure, but I think it was around $125 or $140.

[slaginpit]

12 hours ago, RavenHawk said:

Don't remember for sure, but I think it was around $125 or $140.

Incredible how much this thing has dropped in Value.

 

WOW. I paid 300 for him when he was going for much more.

I think its an awesome combinor.Not sure why its getting so much hate .

[RavenHawk]

1 minute ago, slaginpit said:

Incredible how much this thing has dropped in Value.

 

WOW. I paid 300 for him when he was going for much more.

I think its an awesome combinor.Not sure why its getting so much hate .

Has it gotten any negative reviews, or did sellers just over stock on it?

[slaginpit]

On 2/22/2019 at 8:09 PM, mikeszekely said:

While I don't think it's impossible to make transformers with good jet modes, given enough engineering, I think the Aerialbots are always going to suffer for the fact that they need enough mass to form Superion's limbs.  And frankly, even if he didn't have to combine, I think Silverbolt's always going to be a challenge.  An actual Concorde is really mostly a long, relatively narrow tube with some delta wings along the sides.  Even the engine nacelles, as big as they relative to a human, are fairly small and flat compared to the tube of the Concorde's fuselage.

Anyway, speaking of Superion's limbs, let's put together Zeta Toy's Kronos.

 

First we've got the legs.  Mostly they're what you'd expect, although they both have tricks to hang their tails and noses lower than they sit for robot mode so they don't hinder the knees.  The connection to the feet works the same on both: ridges on the inside of the leg-bot's legs grab onto the edges of the ankle base, then the leg bot slides back over a tab and another piece folds up and tabs over the front.  The connection is very secure.  The knee is also very secure.  The leg-bot's backs open up, and a diecast bar fits inside  Then hinges fold down and double peg into the leg-bot's shoulders.  Nothing's going to pop out the way it does on Zeta's Bruticus (especially Swindle).

 

With most of the torso already a complete partsforming chunk Silver Arrow curls up into a block in much the same way that Zeta's Onslaught does.  Once you have him in the right shape the grooves on his crotch slide over rails inside the torso, then a flap at the top of the chest folds down over some pegs on top of Silver Arrow.  Despite those being the only two points where Silver Arrow is physically connected everything is pretty tight, and it takes some force to get Silver Arrow back out.

 

Then we have the arms.  On paper they're pretty easy to get into arm mode, as it's mostly jet mode with the noses and tails put back into their robot mode positions and elbows deployed from inside their torsos.  In practice you're getting the joints out of those torsos that already had clearance issues folding in the arms and chest flaps, plus now you have to feed the robot heads back into the cavities the combiner elbows just vacated and get the combiner pegs out.  Not super hard, just a little more frustrating than it really needed to be.  Once they're all set you stick the hand on by wedging the connector into slots on the insides of the arm-bot's legs.  then you open the flaps on the combiner ports on the torso, slide them into place, and close the flaps back up to lock everything in.

Last but not least you put a head on.  Like their Bruticus, the head has a large peg at the base of the neck that fits into a peg hole on the torso.  This time Zeta gives you two heads.  One is based on the Studio OX art and has an actual face painted in silver, translucent red eyes and a translucent red piece in the forehead, more molded detail, and yellow paint on the antenna.  For that head, I'm not a fan of the red.  Studio OX Superion should have blue eyes.  As for the other head, the bigger visor, mouthplate, yellow plastic antenna, and simpler molded detail is very accurate to the cartoon, but the silver face needs to be darker, and the translucent red eyes look dead.  So neither head is perfect, but cartoon head for me, thanks.

And now we finally have the combined Kronos, and that's a really impressive Superion.  Ok, Fireflight's horizontal stabilizers don't magically turn white with his wing details and his wings don't magically turn red, and Air Raid and Skydive don't magically become identical bricks with slightly different planes on the calves.  And the molded detail, especially on the knees and chest, is definitely more Studio OX than G1 cartoon.  But it's still undeniably Superion, with some pretty great proportions at that.  The brickish shapes that kind of spoiled the jets, especially the F-15 and F-16, work great for limbs, and the V-shape torso that looked off on Bruticus is just right for Superion.

Also, if you want a cleaner look on his limbs, you can remove the wings from the jets and just stash them somewhere.  I mean his head, shoulder connections, the entire front of his torso, his hips, pelvis, thighs, knees, hands, and feet are all partsforming; if you're cool with that, I don't imagine that removing some parts would bother you much.

 

As far as accessories go, you can take Silver Arrow's gun, fold the barrel in half, then open the cannon and tuck Silver Arrow's gun inside.  I like this.  It gives Silver Arrow a cartoon-accurate gun and Superion a toy-accurate bigger gun, and it's much more effective than Hasbro's method.

 

When the gun is inside the cannon you can flip down a large handle with tabs on that fit into Kronos' palms, which is really no surprise.  But, whether intentional or not, you can also leave Silver Arrow's gun out of the cannon, then use a 5mm peg on the cannon to either plug into a peg hole on Fireflight's wing if it's attached or the peg hole his wing plugs into if it's not attached.  That gives him a cartoon-style arm cannon.

Then as far as articulation goes, Kronos' head can swivel on the peg it attaches with, and a hinge inside his neck lets him look up a great deal and down enough.  His shoulders can rotate on the same kind of ratchets that Constructor and Armageddon use (in fact, the arms are interchangeable between the three); you don't actually turn them on the ratchet, you pull the shoulder out, turn it to the position you want then let the spring inside pull it back into place.  The little wings on his chest are hinged and will move out of the way.  His shoulders move laterally 90 degrees on ratchets in the combiner pegs.  Both arms have bicep swivels above the elbow joints; just be careful as the arm-bot's hips can get caught up on the jet kibble on their backs, especially Slingshot's.  The elbow on Fireflight can bend 90 degrees with no problem, and the one on Slingshot can get close to that but comes up a little short because of the VTOL nozzle.  There's a second swivel below the elbow, and a swivel at the wrist.  The wrists can also bend up and down on ratchets.  The thumbs are connected to the hand on a hinge that moves the thumb across the palm and a swivel that spins the thumb on the hinge.  It also two knuckle hinges.  The fingers are hinged at the base, with swivels just above the base that splay the fingers apart.  Then there are additional hinges at the middle and top knuckles on each finger.

 

Nice review! I need to purchase my silverbolt to get them together.

[mikeszekely]

13 minutes ago, slaginpit said:

Incredible how much this thing has dropped in Value.

 

WOW. I paid 300 for him when he was going for much more.

I think its an awesome combinor.Not sure why its getting so much hate .

 

11 minutes ago, RavenHawk said:

Has it gotten any negative reviews, or did sellers just over stock on it?

It could be retailer overstock, or it could be MT made too many and agreed to drop the price to the retailers, either resulting from supply exceeding demand.  I don't think that the lack of demand was necessarily "hate"- I think it was fairly well reviewed at the time, but it came at a time when a lot of collectors were really shifting into MP.  The Maketoys Technobots were too small, too stylized, and/or used too many ball joints to make that cut for a lot of people.  Plus they were facing competition from Warbotron's Technobots... Constructor hadn't set the "MP Combiners are 20 inches!" precedent yet, and between MMC, UT, TFC, Warbotron, and pre-Constructor ToyWorld 13-15 inches was becoming the 3P combiner standard and the MT/FP combiners were starting to seem undersized.

I bought it a few years ago, later bought the Warbotron ones, and I eventually sold Quantron (along with Guardia and M3).  It came down to a couple of factors, I guess.  I really liked the alt modes on MT's Strafe and Afterburner, but the engineering on Strafe was really behind the times.  Their Scattershot was pretty cool, but built as if G1 Scattershot was Bruce Banner and MT's was the Hulk.  And I found their Lightspeed and especially their Nosecone to have fiddly engineering that I just didn't think was any fun to mess with.  Add in the fact that the four limb-bots were all smaller than your average Hasbro Deluxe at the time, and the combined mode was smaller than the average 3P combiner at the time (although the combined mode was honestly really good), and I just wasn't satisfied with it.  I greatly preferred the engineering, size, and stronger G1 aesthetic of the Warbotron Technobots, even if the combined mode didn't look as good.

And now I guess I'm waiting for Zeta to do a 20" pantsforming Computron...

[Chronocidal]

You know, for as much as Silverbolt always winds up being a plane with a giant box of kibble underneath, why hasn't anyone tried using the XB-70 Valkyrie as the alt mode?  It's literally a big long slender fuselage and tails slapped on top of a giant delta wing, with a huge blocky intake and engine box underneath.  You wouldn't be fitting the entirety of the body in a properly scaled underside, but it'd be better than using a design that's supposed to have nothing down there.

I'm still waiting for someone to attempt an MP-style Dreadwind combiner.  

Edited February 25, 2019 by Chronocidal

[mikeszekely]

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

You know, for as much as Silverbolt always winds up being a plane with a giant box of kibble underneath, why hasn't anyone tried using the XB-70 Valkyrie as the alt mode?  It's literally a big long slender fuselage and tails slapped on top of a giant delta wing, with a huge blocky intake and engine box underneath.  You wouldn't be fitting the entirety of the body in a properly scaled underside, but it'd be better than using a design that's supposed to have nothing down there.

That question comes up from time to time, and these days the answer seems to be "because G1".

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

I'm still waiting for someone to attempt an MP-style Dreadwind combiner.

Someone like KFC?

Maketoys showed silhouettes years ago that suggested they were in the chain for them, too, but there's been no updates.

[JB0]

5 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

You know, for as much as Silverbolt always winds up being a plane with a giant box of kibble underneath, why hasn't anyone tried using the XB-70 Valkyrie as the alt mode?  It's literally a big long slender fuselage and tails slapped on top of a giant delta wing, with a huge blocky intake and engine box underneath.  You wouldn't be fitting the entirety of the body in a properly scaled underside, but it'd be better than using a design that's supposed to have nothing down there.

Because that would be the smart thing to do.

[Chronocidal]

Nice, I don't keep up with transformer stuff enough to have been aware of those KFC molds.  Will be interested to see how they turn out.

[Kuma Style]

Got the review up for Double Evil: http://kumastyledesigns.com/fans-hobby-double-evil-review/

 

TL/DR summary: I think it's a visually impressive piece but the build and engineering really turned me off to the robot mode.

Some pics from the gallery:

 

 

 

[valhary]

Finally received mine very late to join the party but Im very happy is a great toy between the masterpiece and the cartoon 

really feels like the mp10 evolution slightly caricatured but not too much

[derex3592]

Looks great! Patiently waiting for my TE-01 to get re-stocked and ship hopefully this month!