The Unlicensed Third Party Transformers Thread

[mikeszekely]

On 8/31/2019 at 4:41 AM, Negotiator said:

curious what the back of that thing looks like.

[Froy]

 

[nhyone]

On 8/31/2019 at 4:41 PM, Negotiator said:

zeta unicron, under 200?? i'm in.  curious what the back of that thing looks like.  

Brightened-up images:

The back of the planet is extremely panel-ly.

I have also brightened the front images that I previously uploaded.

[Dobber]

If only Zeta would increase the diameter of the planet “ring” it would look sooo much better and give the Bot mode larger “demon-Wings” that it needs. Seems like a simple enough change. Doubt they’ll do it though.

Chris

[David Hingtgen]

3 hours ago, Dobber said:

If only Zeta would increase the diameter of the planet “ring” it would look sooo much better and give the Bot mode larger “demon-Wings” that it needs. Seems like a simple enough change. Doubt they’ll do it though.

Chris

Bigger, LIGHT-UP ring.  THAT would sell zillions.  "Insert planetary debris/escape ships with only one chance into maw, to light up rings".

::edit::  Seriously, there's no animated GIF of Unicron's ring light-up sequence on the entire net?  That's like, the finale of his introduction.  An unstated but clear "explanation" that he eats planets for sustenance/energy, not merely malice. 

[mikeszekely]

OK, I can finally finish this "which Grimlock is the best for Siege" nonsense by diving into Fansproject's Lost Exo Realm series and taking a look at Severo.

Out of the gate, there are some things I definitely love about Severo.  He's got a stronger G1 influence than Planet X's Vulcan, for one, with but with Fansproject's usual anime-influenced spin.  This gives him burly arms, high shoulders, a broad chest, and big lower legs but thinner thighs and a narrow waist.  I dig the little spikes on his hands, his little toes, and (at first) the exhaust pipes on his shoulders that remind me of Dreamwave's War Within design.  His head is G1 Grimlock with exaggerated details- ears become horns, a little crest becomes a big one, his cheek vents are more prominent, the top of his mouth plate come up a little higher and makes his visor look more like eyes without actually being eyes, and the mouthplate itself isn't as flat.

The one thing I'm really not a fan of, though, are his wings.  Instead of his dino chest just opening outward the split halves fold down then roll backward.  No matter how you arrange them they just never seem to look right.  Plus, while the arms that they're on lock into his backpack, the wings themselves still have swivels where they connect to those arms.  Those swivels rely on friction that's a little too loose to stay perfectly in place.  And even when they are in place there just doesn't seem to be a good way to arrange the dino arms so that they're not getting in the way of the exhausts on his shoulders when you're posing him.

Size-wise, while shorter than MP-08 (or GCreation's Wrath, whom I no longer own) or ToyWorld's Grimshell, he's very close in height ot Planet X's Vulcan.  Much like Vulcan, then, he's arguable a tiny bit shorter than I'd like for scaling with Siege Optimus, but while MP-08 is often cited as good for use with CHUGs I'd suggest that he's a little too tall.  You kind of just gotta go with what looks right, and I guess I prefer Severo and Vulcan's size.

Anyway, Severo comes with quite a few accessories (more if you get the Deluxe version, which I did not).  You get a traditional Grimlock rifle, two big gatling guns, a sword with a little more crossguard than I'm used to on a Grimlock sword, a little dude that the box tells me is named Kottav (and I have to go by the box, since my copy didn't arrive with any instructions), and a backpack for said little dude.  If you get the Deluxe version you also get a crown and throne, plus a second identical little dude.

Little is, I suppose, relative, as his quite a bit taller than a Maketoys Headmaster, a Siege Battle Master, a Siege Micromaster, or one of Fansproject's own Headmasters.

The backpack has a tab on it that fits neatly into a slot on Kottav's back.  You'll note, though, that one side of the backpack has a peg.  You can pull that side off and give it to Kottav to use as gun.

As for articulation, Kottav's head is on a hinged swivel that can look straight up and down a little.  His shoulders use a ball joints for rotation but hinges to move laterally just shy of 90 degrees, plus a transformation hinge gives him a backwards butterfly.  His elbows are double-jointed and can curl almost the whole way up.  The upper joint is a hinge, but the lower one is a ball joint that doubles as a bicep swivel.  His waist can swivel, but due to transformation he has an ab crunch.  His hips are ball joints that go forward, backward, or sideways 90 degrees as long as his backpack isn't in the way.  His ball-jointed knees can bend 90 degrees and pull double-duty as thigh swivels.  His ankles are also ball joints, so they can swivel, and tilt up, down, or inward a little.

As for Severo's own articulation, his head is on a ball joint with a little up, down, and sideways tilt.  His shoulders are on big ball joints for rotation, but the socket in his shoulder is hinged.  Still, he can only move his shoulders about 45 degrees laterally.  Plus the rotating gray parts of his chest used for transformation don't lock in robot mode, and have a tendency to move when you're manipulating his shoulders.  His biceps swivel.  His elbows, despite being double-jointed, can still only get about 90 degrees of bend.  At least both joints are ratcheted.  His wrists can swivel, and a pin through his base knuckles allow his hands to open and close.  Due to transformation he can even bend his wrists downward, which is useful for posing with swords.  His waist has a ratcheted swivel, and he's got a little ab crunch plus he can arch his back significantly.  His hips can move 90 degrees forward or backward on ratchets, but again only about 45 degrees laterally, also on a ratchet.  That's about three clicks.  His thigh swivels are ratcheted.  His knees are ratcheted and fall just short of 90 degrees.  And then his ankles are just big ball joints which give him ankle swivels, a little upward tilt, tons of downward tilt, and a little over 45 degrees of inward tilt.  The friction of those ball joints can struggle to support the figure a little in mor extreme poses.  Not the best articulation then, even at the time Severo was first released.

He holds his gun fairly well.  He holds the sword securely enough, but there's a reason other Grimlock's don't have this wide crossguard on their swords.  He's forced to hold it turned a little one way or the other, because the dino claw on his wrist is in the way.

He can hold the gatling guns, too, but they don't feel as secure, and while my copy held up fine I could see them wearing down the ball joints in his shoulders.  As for Kottav, he turns into a pointy brick.  Meanwhile, you can pull his backpack apart and reconfigure it into a kind of stick with a peg on one end that fits into a peg hole on Kottav.  And it's a mace... kind of.  Sort of reminds me of the mace that came with the old Voyager-class Age of Extinction Grimlock.

All of his weapons have storage in robot mode as well.  There are peg holes on both of his hips that fit a peg on the sword, and peg holes on the backs of his wings that work with pegs on his gun and on the handle of his Kottav mace.  Meanwhile, the gatling guns have these t-shaped protrusions that, in theory, slide into gaps on the back of the wings.  In practice the fit is off a bit, so they don't go in all the way.

You can see where Fansproject was going with Severo's dinosaur mode.  It's heavily G1-inpsired, with the hexagonal dino cheeks, skinny, three-clawed dino arms, bulbous, round hips, and a mostly gray torso sandwiched between his gold pelvis and gold neck.  The alterations mostly serve to make him a bit more accurate compared to a real T-Rex.  His body is more parallel to the ground, with his tail held up behind him.  His legs have more of a digitigrade appearance, with a more accurate three toes in the front and dewclaw off the ground in the back.  As with his robot mode, though, there are some aesthetic.  His legs are a little short, and his tail is way too stumpy.  Plus his back has a sort of permanent arch going on.

At least Fansproject tried to give the dino mode a little more articulation than most Grimlock's.  The jaw can open, revealing an overly large, overly plain black cannon inside.  He can't quite close his mouth, though, and I suspect that the cannon actually has a bit to do with that.  At the top of his gold neck is a hinge that let's him move his head up/down a bit.  A large ball joint at the base of the gold neck lets him turn his head and look sideways a little bit.  His dino shoulders are ball joints for rotation and lateral movement.  His elbows are hinged and can bend about 90 degrees.  His dino wrists can swivel, and the claws, although molded as one piece, are hinged at the base to open and close.  Weirdly, he's got peg holes on his dino palms, but I'm not sure why.  The pegs on all his accessories are a little too small, so he can't really hold anything.  His robot arms become his dino legs, with his shoulder, bicep swivel, and elbow becoming the hip, thigh swivel, and knee of the dinosaur, complete with the same range of motion.  Some hinges allow him to bend his foot up/down a little at the ankle  The toes in the front also have a hinge to bend up and down, plus a swivel that lets to fake some dino ankle tilt.  His stumpy little tail does have some hinges as well, so he can bend it left/right a little.

I was able to store his sword and gun on his dino hips, although the fit is tight (maybe they're just meant to be screw holes?  Again, missing instructions here).  The handles on the gatling guns fold up and they tab together.  The combined gatling guns are meant to use recessed pegs near the barrels to fit into peg holes on short posts on his back.  The fit is very poor, though, and they'll fall off immediately if you tilt the figure.  As for Kottav, I was under the impression that the Lost Exo Realm guys are supposed to be in bot mode and ride the dinosaurs, but I can't see any seat for him or any way to fix him into Severo's back.

Severo is not a bad figure, but he's not a great figure, either.  He's just kind of ok.  I don't think I'd go so far as to recommend him.  I mean, Fansproject's Lost Exo Realm dinobots had to compete with ToyWorld's Dinobots, which I think were released shortly before, and especially Planet X's, which were released around the same time.  Just my observation, but I think most people went with Planet X over the Lost Exo Realm, and from an objective point of view Vulcan is the better figure.  He's got more articulation in robot mode, and his dinosaur mode blows Severo's out of the water in pretty much every way.  I find myself really wishing Fansproject could have mirrored some of Planet X's engineering, in the way that the the dino chest wraps around the dino head on the backpack, in the crazy articulation of the dino neck, and in the way the forearm expands and covers the hands to elongate the dino legs.

All that said, I think my final choice for Siege Grimlock is Severo.  We'd already ruled out the Generations one as far too small, and the Titans Return toy as both too small and too compromised by the combiner gimmick.  ToyWorld's (reviewed here) is close, with a strong G1 aesthetic and the perfect height, but also suffers from compromises made to combined mode.  MP-08 is a little floppy and slightly too large for my tastes.  GCreation's (reviewed here) is similarly too large, and with the worst engineering of the bunch.  It really comes down to Vulcan and Severo (no point considering the official Fall of Cybertron Grimlock when Vulcan does everything so much better).  And while Severo is the better toy, one that actual does get a recommend from me, I like Severo's stronger G1 resemblance and I think it's a better fit with the other Siege figures.  Plus, I think Severo is arguably more playable than Vulcan.  Neither are particularly difficult to transform, but Vulcan does have the one tail armature you have to bend to force past his thigh, something that doesn't feel comfortable and keeps me from transforming him too often.  Severo, on the other hand, is even less difficult and you don't have to force anything.

Edited September 2, 2019 by mikeszekely

[mikeszekely]

Having settled the issue of which Grimlock toy I'm using with my Siege figures, and having earlier covered Gigapower's fresh release of their MP-esque Superator, you might think I'm done talking about Grimlock for awhile.  And... well, not quite yet.  You may recall that the reason I wanted a Siege Grimlock in the first place was because I like the symmetry of having the same character on both my Siege and Studio Series shelves.  And it turns out that DNA Design reissued some of their upgrade kits, allowing me to pick up their DK-06 upgrade kit for Studio Series Grimlock.

Inside the box, you'll find two parts of a handle and two halves of the maul weapon that I can't recall if Grimlock actually had in the movies, but was seen in promotional images and was wielded by the old Voyager-class version from Age of Extinction.  You'll find a mace on a flail, a dinosaur tail, a dinosaur tongue, a replacement right arm, and a replacement left hand.  The head of the mace, the head of the maul, the new tail, and the new right arm all have that same paint wash that the figure itself has, so the new parts blend right in.

Installing the new left hand is as easy as pushing the original hand off the mushroom peg and pushing the new one on in its place.  The big difference is that the new hand has some extra articulation, with the thumb able to move up and down on a hinge, and all the fingers now hinged at the base with the index finger being separate from the others.  Installing the new right arm is a only slightly more difficult.  You have to pop the elbow pad off of the old arm, then push it off a mushroom peg at the bicep.  The new arm goes onto the mushroom peg, and you finish the job by putting the original elbow pad onto the new arm.  The hand on the right arm enjoys the same added articulation as the new left hand, but the more immediate benefit is that it's actually a hand in the first place, as opposed to the mace on the original.

Now we can arm him up using the new parts.  The halves of the maul's handle push together, then the halves of the maul fit over the t-shaped top.  Then you simply unfurl the spikes.  It takes a little bit of force to get it to go; I think the fit is a little off.  You can see that both the upper part of the handle and the inside of space it fits into on the lower part wound up with stress marks.  Plus, the halves of the maul don't fit quite right on my copy.  They push each other apart, making the whole head of the maul want to pop off of the handle.  As for the flail, the head can be removed.  There's a peg inside that fits into either hand.

You can just have him hold the head of the flail, giving him the mace-hand that the toy originally had and was seen in promotional images.  The flail is actually pretty great, though, as the base of the chain can swivel and there are a number of hinges along the chain.  The friction in the hinges is strong enough that you can pose Grimlock mid-swing, which I love.  What I don't love, though, is how poorly he holds both the flail and the staff.  See, the new hands have little tabs on the inside of the fingers.  The instructions make it look like you use slots on the weapons' handles to push onto those tabs, but that's not quite the case as closing the fingers will push the tabs out of the slots.  You kind of have to line up the slots and tabs as you close his hands, then push a bump on his thumbs into little peg holes on the sides of his index fingers to lock everything into place.  However, the tabs are small and the slots/peg holes are shallow, and in practice a slight breeze will knock his weapons loose.

But what about the tongue and tail?  We'll get to the tongue in a minute.  As for the tail, it has a long peg on the underside.  And you can use that peg to have him hold the tail in a manner that's extremely similar to the original Deluxe-class Classics Grimlock.  The tail also has a trio of tabs on it, one on each side and one on top.  One tab goes into a slot on his back that's usually for locking his hips in place in dino mode.  The others allow you to hang his maul and flail using slots on their handles.  This allows you to store all of his accessories in robot mode.  Be advised, though, that the DNA made the tabs slightly too large for those slots, or they didn't make the slots big enough, take your pick.  And as a result you can see I got more stress marks.

So far, these upgrades have added a lot of utility to Grimlock's robot mode, but we still want our Transformers to transform, and how these upgrade kits affect transformation is always a concern.  I mean, you'll recall that I really liked DNA's upgrade kit for Titan-class Fortress Maximus' robot mode, but I wasn't as impressed with how they integrated into his alt modes.  

Well, Grimlock's new left hand still tucks in the same as the old, so no big deal there.  However, the old right arm's mace hand unfolded to form half is tail.  With the new arm, you get half a tail with a fist at the end.  Finishing the tail simply requires you to slide the peg on the underside into his fist, which covers the fist in the process.  I think what you wind up with is a partsforming requirement, which isn't ideal, but ultimately gives you a more accurate tail that even has a pair of hinges for a little sideways curl, in addition to the benefit of having an actual hand in robot mode.  I think a little partsforming isn't a bad deal for that.

One half of the maul's head has a square rod that feeds through the fist curled up into his dino neck.  the other half fits onto the end of the rod, allowing the maul (with spikes folded in) to fill out his torso a bit and hide the fact that his neck and chest are mostly his robot arm doing  a curl.  A little more partsforming, but again I think the payoff is worth it, especially if you have him carrying the maul in robot mode anyway.  As for the maul's handle, as well as his chain flail, they again use some slots to fit over tabs on his tail.  It's not the prettiest, and I'll probably just leave those accessories off to the side when I have him in bot mode, but the option is nice.

Which just leaves us with the barely-mentioned tongue.  The tongue is ball-jointed to a flat piece with a notch cut into it.  The notch slides over a bit of structural plastic in the bottom of Grimlock's mouth, and the ball joint and a hinge give you some tongue posability (although, on my copy anyway, it always looks a little off-center.  The fit of the notch around the plastic in Grimlock's mouth also isn't great, and I wound up with yet another stress mark.

Just as Grimlock's new robot arm/hands had an effect on his dino mode you might find yourself wondering if this tongue affects his robot mode at all.  After all, unlike the other new parts a dinosaur tongue doesn't really have any utility, just an aesthetic boost.  You're probably less likely to suffer any problems it causes, then.  But I'm happy to report that the impact is minimal.  The tongue folds around to kind of lie against the back of his bicep while in robot mode.

The DK-06 upgrade kit continues what I'm starting to see as a pattern with DNA.  The kit is full of great ideas that add a lot of improvement to the base figure, but the materials are a little questionable and the tolerances are a little off in a way that feels a little sloppy.  New weapons are great, but only if he can hold them.  And tabbing one part where it's meant to go on another shouldn't be causing stress marks, especially when both the tab and slot are on DNA's parts instead of slotting DNA's parts onto Hasbro's tabs.  Still, I think this kit does enough for both modes that it's definitely worth checking out.

[David Hingtgen]

On 8/30/2019 at 10:25 PM, anime52k8 said:

OH GOD! HE'S TAKEN HIS FIRST FACE! NOW THERE WILL BE NO STOPPING HIS UNCONTROLLABLE BLOODLUST!

Which Prime is that? So few have silver thighs nowadays.  (I detest white/pale grey ones).  Looks MP-10ish but no insignia?

[derex3592]

That would be the Magic Square 3rd Party Prime - MS-01 I believe. 

[anime52k8]

Magic  square's MS-01X (the metallic version). He's pretty awesome and I really like him. I'm still undecided on if I want to get faction stickers for my 3rd/4th party stuff.

Edited September 3, 2019 by anime52k8

[eXis10z]

Wait a minute.. MS has a metallic version now!? I need to get on that.

[derex3592]

Seriously...I guess I totally blanked on that release...didn't hear anything about it!  Wonder if Transform Element is going to do something similar.

 

 

[mikeszekely]

When ToyWorld released Constructor many saw it as a game-changer.  Through the use of extensive partsforming a combiner could be more than simply the sum of its parts, the gestalt could have more natural proportions, and having dedicated hips, waist, and knees seemed to provide more stability in combined mode.  And while there are those who have derided what's now often called "pantsforming" in the TF community there were plenty who bought up Zeta Toys' version of Bruticus just for the size of the combined mode, myself included.  Even the biggest supporters of Zeta's pantsformer will tell you, though, that the individual Zeta Combaticons were kind of junk, covered in folded-up kibble panels and often sporting inaccurate alt modes.  So when MMC announced that the Combaticons were coming to their MP-esque Ocular Max line I was definitely interested.  If nothing else, I figured they'd be more accurate to display as individual robots.  But the real bombshell MMC dropped was that not only would they not be using pantsforming, their Bruticus wouldn't use any partsforming at all.  It seemed ludicrous to me.  I mean, even stuff like GT's Devastator or TFM's Motormaster that found uses for all of the parts were still technically using some form of partsforming.  The last time someone tried to make a combiner with zero partsforming at all was Hasbro's Fall of Cybertron Bruticus, and it was really bad.  Could MMC really pull this off?

Well, the jury's still out on the combined mode and probably will be for some time.  But we can take a look at their first Combaticon, Impetus, aka Vortex.

Well, we're off to a good start, at least aesthetically.  I don't think it's worth even mentioning Zeta's , but Impetus is cleaner and more accurate than Unique Toys' version.  His forearms have (mostly) more of the rounded shape of the cartoon, and his torso is less busy and greebly.  The one thing that stands out to me is that Impetus doesn't have the Starbucks cup-looking intakes on the sides of his shoulders, but I'll note that there's just enough molded detail on the sides of his not-quite-square shoulders to evoke that missing detail.  And he's even got windows on the sides of body, like the cartoon model.  He's missing the black shin stripes, but I'm honestly not sure how you'd pull off that detail without messing up the alt mode.  So I guess my only real complaints are how his torso is narrower at the top and gets wider toward the hips, and how flat the front of his torso is vs the cartoon model.  I can live with those things, though.

Impetus comes with just three accessories.  He's got a very cartoon-accurate rifle, and two smaller guns that fit into his forearms for robot mode.  Unlike UT's all-black arm guns Impetus' are cartoon-accurate with blue with black barrels.  Also unlike UT, these ones fit snugly.

Impetus has good articulation, especially when you consider what MMC's trying to pull off here.  His head is on a double ball joint, and the lower ball socket is on a hinge, so he's got some fantastic range there.  He can turn his head, tilt his head up, down, or sideways, crane his neck forward, recoil in horror, you name it.  There's only two things I'm not a fan of regarding his neck.  The first is that you really only want to swivel his head on the upper ball joint to have him turn his head, but it's toleranced much more tightly than the lower one so you often find him swiveling at the wrong joint.  The second is that it's extremely easy to pop his head off entirely at that lower ball joint.  I'm finding that it's almost easier to pop the head off, swivel his head at the upper ball joint to the position you want it, then push his head back on.  Moving along, his shoulders rotate and can extend laterally 90 degrees.  He has bicep swivels, although his right shoulder has a protrusion that gets in the way.  Curiously, his left arm doesn't have that protrusion.  His elbows are double jointed and can curl almost the whole way up  His wrists swivel.  His thumb is on a ball joint, and all of his fingers are individually-articulated with a base hinge at the bottom.  There's no other joints in his hands, though, so his fingers are still molded into a curl that kind of makes me wonder why they didn't simply mold all the fingers together, like an MP car.  His waist can swviel, and he's got about 45 degrees of ab crunch.  Moving his hip skirts out of the way, his hips can go forward 90 degrees and backward under 90 on ratchets, and 90 degrees laterally on friction joints.  This thighs swivel.  His knees can bend 90 degrees on another ratchet.  His toes can tilt up, and he's got a little bit of ankle/mid-boot pivot, although it's a little restricted due the combiner hand stuffed into his legs and the flaps on the inside of his lower legs that try to cover them.

As previously mentioned, the little guns fit snuggle into ports on his forearms.  As for his rifle, it has a little tab on the back of the handle.  This tab fits into a notch in the base of his hand.  It's a little unconventional, but I dig it, and he holds his gun securely.

I find it interesting that Impetus looks quite cartoony in robot mode, but not as much in alt mode.  Not that I'm complaining!  You see, his cartoon alt mode was kind of a generic helicopter, but the G1 toy was meant to be a Kaman SH-2 Seasprite helicopter, and Impetus transforms into a fairly accurate Seasprite.  The landing gear placement (and how it retracts) is accurate, and it's got the bumps on its chin in front of where the landing gear folds.  The windows are all accurate, and it's even got molded-on wipers and tiny rearview mirrors.  The engines appear to be accurate to at least the SH-2G variant.  You can't see it from my pictures, but it's even got the search radar on the underside of its chin.  For the sake of cartoon accuracy Impetus does have the blue stripe on the nose, though.

As impressive as the alt mode is, the engineering is the real star.  Unlike Zeta, who left most of the tail just chilling on the back, or Unique Toys, who tried to emulate the G1 toy and form the tail from the robot arms, Impetus' arms are actually the engines.  The entire tail is folded up and stuffed into Impetus's mostly-hollow torso.  Meanwhile, the main rotor blades slide over themselves to expand.  While it can take a little finagling to make sure everything is lined up right to store properly or to move the halves of the tail around his backpack it ultimately feels extremely clever and extremely satisfying to transform.

The arm guns can plug onto the base of the tail in a manner very like the G1 cartoon, which I approve of.  And the nose can be flipped down to reveal a peg hole.  You can fold the rifle's handle in, then plug the back of it into the peg hole.  I'm not a huge fan of this look.  For one, although it's tight enough not to fall out, the rifle does spin kind of loosely in the peg hole.  For two, the G1 toy had a smaller gun for the nose, and the cartoon's nose gun was smaller still.  Jamming Impetus' rifle into his nose seems like a half-hearted attempt to find somewhere to store the rifle and give him some kind of nose gun at the same time.

I don't normally bring up the combined modes until the end, when I review the combined mode.  But I did want to show you that MMC's got some interesting ideas .  For one, MMC seems to be using Impetus' hips and knees for combined elbow, ala Combiner Wars or old Warbotron stuff, but they've designed Impetus' hips to collapse and his thighs to lock together so the elbow is solid and gapless.  Essentially, MMC's Bruticus will have (at least on Impetus) double-jointed elbows with much better range than UT or Zeta.  Another thing is that I tried to line them up so that the bases of the combiner ports are in a line to give you an idea of the relative sizes.  While Zeta's is clearly the biggest, you'll note that from combiner port to wrist Impetus is similar in size to UT's, it's just the hand that's significantly smaller.  That makes sense, since I'm hearing that MMC's Bruticus will be close in size or a little taller than UT's and a bit shorter than Zeta's.  I'll also point out that while the materials on Impetus feel much better than UT's Impetus is still the lightest of the three Vortices I have here.  While some may decry that (along with the lack of a painted finish) as lacking that MP feel, I think it should be extremely beneficial in balancing the gestalt.

So, yeah, I bought Impetus largely to replace UT's Vortex in my display of individual Combaticons, and on that note he's a smashing success.  The engineering is brilliant, his robot mode is cleaner and more cartoon-accurate, his alt modes is more realistic, and the materials feel better in hand.  He's fun to pose, and he's fun to transform.  And he does all this without looking out-of-place with the other four UT Combaticons.  What's more, MMC seems to have delivered a figure a triple-changer with integrated combined-mode parts that has minimal concessions to any one mode.  The end result is so good and so intriguing that even though my intention was just to replace two or three of UT's Combaticons and not worry about the combined mode that I'm now planning on picking up all five.  Impetus ultimately isn't perfect, but he gets a strong recommend from me.

[anime52k8]

It's finally Here! The lord of Chaos, 2 DEFORMATION MODES!

[mikeszekely]

Out of curiosity, why THF and not IT?

[David Hingtgen]

2 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

When ToyWorld released Constructor many saw it as a game-changer.  Through the use of extensive partsforming a combiner could be more than simply the sum of its parts, the gestalt could have more natural proportions, and having dedicated hips, waist, and knees seemed to provide more stability in combined mode.  And while there are those who have derided what's now often called "pantsforming" in the TF community there were plenty who bought up Zeta Toys' version of Bruticus just for the size of the combined mode, myself included. 

 

Thing is, most companies have gone beyond "pants-formers".  They're now "overalls" or even "wrestling singlet".   They're neck-to-knees half the time.  Very similar to G1 Magnus---the "torso" bot, really just holds up the head, and nothing more.  Just fold it into a box, attach the head, then hide it away inside the 'real' robot body.    They're no longer "adding a waist-section to improve proportions/articulation", they're pretty much starting with a ginormous armless/footless action master, then selling 5 more bots to "fill in the gaps".  

[mikeszekely]

33 minutes ago, David Hingtgen said:

Thing is, most companies have gone beyond "pants-formers".  They're now "overalls" or even "wrestling singlet".   They're neck-to-knees half the time.  Very similar to G1 Magnus---the "torso" bot, really just holds up the head, and nothing more.  Just fold it into a box, attach the head, then hide it away inside the 'real' robot body.    They're no longer "adding a waist-section to improve proportions/articulation", they're pretty much starting with a ginormous armless/footless action master, then selling 5 more bots to "fill in the gaps".  

With the current crop of Menasors coming out it's getting even worse, as they all look to be nearly complete without any Stunticons. 

The next logical step is for 3Ps to nix the arm/Lego/torso mode for the team members, and sell the gestalt separately as a 20” complete robot that doesn't come apart.

[anime52k8]

1 hour ago, mikeszekely said:

Out of curiosity, why THF and not IT?

 

• THF's primary paint color is a darker, more metallic gunmetal color vs IT's grey
• The sculpt on the damaged chest and head are crisper
• The scope has a better quality speaker and a brighter purple LED (IT's is red)
• The sculpt on the Damaged chest and face are crisper on the THF
• The THF comes with the G1 toy face and squiggle chestplate.

Also the THF's are crazy cheap on Ebay right now. I got mine for $60.

[tekering]

16 minutes ago, David Hingtgen said:

They're no longer "adding a waist-section to improve proportions/articulation", they're pretty much starting with a ginormous armless/footless action master, then selling 5 more bots to "fill in the gaps".  

I've adopted a wait-and-see approach to the MP-combiners, so all this is news to me.  So far, I've only invested in the clear winners -- MMC's "Impetus," for example, or FansToys' "Roadking" -- and I realize the companies producing the most accurate individual 'bots probably won't have the best combined mode.  Plus, if ToyWorld's "Constructor" is any indication, the boxset re-releases are likely to have significant improvements over the individual releases (and cost less as well), so... I really haven't bothered keeping up with the deluge of information.  I'd rather wait for the flooding to recede, as it were.

5 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

With the current crop of Menasors coming out it's getting even worse, as they all look to be nearly complete without any Stunticons. 

I imagine FansToys' Menasor will follow the same pattern, if only because nothing about "Roadking" suggests a combiner at all, not even the inclusion of a gestalt head (and because Sunbow Menasor wasn't depicted as a combiner so much as "a grey robot with cars stuck on it" anyway)...

But would the same apply to Bruticus or Defensor?  

[anime52k8]

1 hour ago, mikeszekely said:

With the current crop of Menasors coming out it's getting even worse, as they all look to be nearly complete without any Stunticons.

To be fair, Cartoon Menasor's whole look was being complete robot with 4 cars strapped to it's arms and legs. and as for Constructor's pants; at least those were homaging the way the G1 toy combined.

[Axelay]

14 hours ago, anime52k8 said:

 

• THF's primary paint color is a darker, more metallic gunmetal color vs IT's grey
• The sculpt on the damaged chest and head are crisper
• The scope has a better quality speaker and a brighter purple LED (IT's is red)
• The sculpt on the Damaged chest and face are crisper on the THF
• The THF comes with the G1 toy face and squiggle chestplate.

Also the THF's are crazy cheap on Ebay right now. I got mine for $60.

I went the exact same route back when I got mine. Kudos to you sir.

[Negotiator]

 

Fixed pics

Edited September 5, 2019 by Negotiator
Fixed pics

[mikeszekely]

There's still things I like better about the HasLab Unicron, but Zeta's definitely got a cleaner robot mode and will sell for half the price, so I think I'm going to go with Zeta's.

[David Hingtgen]

Dang, if it really transforms "almost kibble-free" like that, that's amazing.  I can't help but suspect there's "half a planet" of panels hanging just off-screen...

Bonus points if they actually release it in orange, not yellow...

[Mazinger]

49 minutes ago, David Hingtgen said:

Dang, if it really transforms "almost kibble-free" like that, that's amazing.  I can't help but suspect there's "half a planet" of panels hanging just off-screen...

Bonus points if they actually release it in orange, not yellow...

The panels on the Hasbro version become parts of the legs and back.  There's a video link floating around here somewhere.  Seems like these guys are doing something similar.

[peter]

Looks good overall.

 

Only a few nitpicks:  

1. Ring should be bigger and further away from the body in planet mode.
2. Spikes around the equator are missing

 

• No religious or political debates.
• No graphic or vulgar descriptions/depictions of sex or sexual content.

 

 

[captain america]

It's impressive just how cleanly Zeta were able to make the transformation, and as a result I wonder just how much thought Takara put into the transformation of their own figure. If anything, Zeta has shown that even a sphere can transform into a robot with negligible kibble. The planet mode is consequently much smaller in relation to the robot mode than Hasbro's, and you can see where a lot of the planet's continents actually become parts of the bot. While this translates to a slightly "awkward" looking planet, had the figure been the size of Hasbro's offering, I suspect that a much cleaner fit of the continental panels could have been achieved. I also think the planetary ring could stand to have been larger and it wouldn't adversely affect the transformation or the robot mode.

The head/face is nice for what it is, but it's not faithful to what's seen in the movie. This version looks more like an idealized Unicron. 

[Negotiator]

And this guy looks bad ass.  His hips are more accurate than 3A.

my wallet cries.

 

 

 

Edited September 5, 2019 by Negotiator
Edit

[Dobber]

That Unicron is looking pretty nice. If only they’d increase the diameter of the Ring as that is really letting down the planet mode. It would also help improve the dinky look Wings in bot mode. I want to see how this transforms....like David, I’m becoming a little suspicious about “missing” panels. This looks a little too clean as there is an awful lot of missing curved surfaces from the planet on that bot, but I’d gladly be wrong.

Chris

[David Hingtgen]

On 9/5/2019 at 12:06 AM, anime52k8 said:

 

• THF's primary paint color is a darker, more metallic gunmetal color vs IT's grey
• The sculpt on the damaged chest and head are crisper
• The scope has a better quality speaker and a brighter purple LED (IT's is red)
• The sculpt on the Damaged chest and face are crisper on the THF
• The THF comes with the G1 toy face and squiggle chestplate.

Also the THF's are crazy cheap on Ebay right now. I got mine for $60.

What all are the options for a silver/metallic MP-36?  THF, MagTen----any others?  Is MagTen the only one with toy-esque red leg panels?  

If the THF is half the price of MagTen, I can live with the more boring leg color.   Anyone know of a good pros/cons of THF vs MagTen?

[mikeszekely]

I'd asked Mike why he went with THF instead of IT because everything I'd heard about the KO Megatrons was that IT was the way to go.  But I've personally zero interest in the MP-36 mold, so I don't have any opinions or insight to offer.  However, Ben of Ben's Collectibles (or Ben's KOllectibles) has reviews for MagTen, THF, and IT.

[anime52k8]

4 hours ago, David Hingtgen said:

What all are the options for a silver/metallic MP-36?  THF, MagTen----any others?  Is MagTen the only one with toy-esque red leg panels?  

If the THF is half the price of MagTen, I can live with the more boring leg color.   Anyone know of a good pros/cons of THF vs MagTen?

Honestly, while I liked the Darker gunmetal of Dynastron over MagTen's silver, I'm seriously considering painting the inner legs red on mine.

besides the chromed out MP-36+, I think those two are the only ones with metallic paint jobs. Pros for the MagTen (besides the paint) are an extra smirking face, a clear mini-stand for the gun mode and all of the Decepticon insignia are printed on the figure. On the downside, all of MagTen's faces are a slightly pinkish white; The printed insignia are all cartoon style, with the toy chest one being too large and spilling over onto the squiggles; and IMO the electronics in the fusion cannon are the worst of the KO's. The audio quality isn't very good and it only has 3 English lines on the same setting as the transformation sound, (the main dialog setting is all Chinese).

 

As for IT, I understand why people say it's the best but TBH all the things that it offered either didn't interest me that much or were a turn-off compared to the THF.  If anyone cares I'll could take some pics and do a write up on my experience with Dynastron.

[Dangard Ace]

Sun of the Empire Zeta Unicron test

 

[tekering]

Look, Zeta, I get it -- you've got to sell people on this design before they decide to order the HasTak instead -- but it's not just another third-party you're competing with this time.  HasTak are desperately trying to crowdfund their figure, and you're trying to take money out of their pocket, enticing them with an unlicensed version of the same character.

Do you know what "poking the bear" means?  

[nhyone]

On 9/6/2019 at 6:07 AM, Negotiator said:

So this is the toy that got Toy World into trouble...