The Unlicensed Third Party Transformers Thread

[M'Kyuun]

If they do just a cassette pack, that'd be great. But then I'd probably want Soundwave to use with them. It's a vicious circle. 

[Kuma Style]

[mikeszekely]

Warpath is, I think, the last minibot that I don't have on my MP shelf.  I was waiting to see how the reviews for Fans Toys' new one was, and it sounds like they can be summed up as "the leg fell off."  Eh, I can live with partsforming, but I prefer it be intentional.  So that led me to look at the alternatives, and a fortunate side-effect of a Fans Toys release is that those alternatives are pretty cheap if you don't mind a used one.  So I picked up this guy: Badcube's Wardog.

Y'know, for a minibot Wardog isn't exactly mini.  I could charitably say he's around the size of an MP car, or I could less-charitably say he's actually slightly taller than Bluestreak here.  Regardless of where he was meant to fit on the scale chart, though, I think he was depicted as the same size as the carbots enough in the cartoon that he can get away with it here.

Aesthetically I think he fits the Hasui-era.  I was put off at first by the tank treads dangling from his arms, but I quickly realized that they're cartoon accurate.  Indeed, pretty much all the cartoon details are there- treads on his arms, treads on his feet, silver in his torso, silver on his shoulders, otherwise mostly red, the u-shaped indent on his pelvis, but he's also got details like rivets, lights, and paneling that you'd expect on a robot that turns into a tank.  Some more fair complaints might be that he's a little chunkier than he was shown to be in the cartoon, and he is sporting a bit of a backpack.

The G1 minibots didn't come with accessories, they weren't often shown using weapons in the cartoon, and you'd think a guy with a tank barrel sticking out of his chest really wouldn't need one.  That didn't stop Badcube from including some accessories for Wardog, though.  You get a kind of strange sci-fi gun, and a large chunk of partsforming with a handle.

Wardog's head is on a hinged swivel.  He can turn it and look up a good deal, but nothing really down and no sideways tilt.  His shoulders are a bit of a problem.  They're connected to his torso via ball joints, and on my copy, either through wear or through poor initial tolerances, they're very loose going outward.  He can at least hold a forward/backward rotation.  There's also a ratcheted hinge inside the shoulder, which allows for better lateral movement when the arm isn't totally perpendicular to the body, but it's really for transformation and it's really only good for a click or two.  His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees.  His wrists swivel, and his hands are just like a carbots with a fixed thumb, all the fingers molded together as one piece, and a single hinge at the base of the fingers.  His waist has a ratcheted swivel.  His hips go forward a little under 90 degrees and backward about 60 degrees on a ratchet, and a softer ratchet allows for a little under 90 degrees of spread.  His thighs swivel around the hip joint, and his ratcheted knees bend 90 degrees.  His feet have two hinges and a ball joint, and between them he can tilt his feet up and down and his ankle pivots 90 degrees.

He can hold both of his accessories using the fairly typical method of sticking a tab on the handle into the slot in his palm.  It's a bit of a pain, though, because the shape of the handles don't give you a lot of room to work with; you kind of have to slip the handle around his fingers then close them so they push the handles into his palms.  

If you don't care for Warpath to be walking around a gun and a riot shield you could leave them in the box, sure, although the shield has a role to play in alt mode.  So if you don't want to box them you can fold the shield up, stick the gun on it, and then attach the whole thing to his backpack.  However, his backpack is already fairly big, and with the shield on it it's pretty obnoxious.  Worse, it's actually enough weight far enough back on his body that he starts to have trouble balancing even with those huge feet.

Wardog somehow manages to get bigger as he transforms, coming out much larger than an MP car.  If there's one crowd that should please it's the alt-mode scale crowd, because an M551 Sheridan isn't a big tank, but it's still bigger than a car.

Much has been made over the years about Wardog's engineering and how transforming this guy is supposed to be a nightmare.  Honestly, I think those stories have been greatly exaggerated; my copy arrived in bot mode without instructions, and since it seems like all the big Youtubers went from tank to bot I wound up just winging it.  Now, I'm not going to tell you it's all rainbows and roses.  A lot of his parts are on armatures and sliders, and transforming him really involves dislodging and unfolding all his parts into a flayed, floppy mess then moving them around and locking everything back into place, and that always seems to involve a bit of finagling and massaging to get everything lined up right and tabbed in.  Despite that I didn't really encounter any tolerance issues, nor was I ever really unsure where something was supposed to go or how it moved.  Even the shoulders, which are often cited as one of the more difficult parts, really aren't that difficult once you understand what you're supposed to do, and on the whole I think Wardog is much easier to transform than pretty much figure Fans Toys has released for a movie/Season 3 character.

As I mentioned, Wardog turns into an M551 Sheridan tank, and it looks pretty good.  I know some reviewers complained that the tank barrel seems small, but it's actually pretty accurate.  There's lots of riveted detail.  The lights, driver's window, and hooks on the front are pretty accurate.  The treads even seem to have the correct number of wheels (five big ones, two small ones).  And in a cartoon-accurate fashion he's mostly red but he's got a large silver section behind the turret.   I think the tank might look a little better with a machine gun on top of the turret and maybe some smoke launchers on the sides, but then I suppose he'd be less cartoon-accurate.

The turret can rotate; it actually uses the ratcheted waist joint to move.  The barrel can only move up and down a little, though.  There are no wheels under the treads so he doesn't roll.

Now about that partsforming.  The shield actually forms the bottom of the tank, and the gun can still store on it.  It gives him a very clean underside and helps solidify his tank mode, to the point that you can almost miss the fact that it transforms.  If you really wanted to leave it and the gun in the box, though, you can.  The bottom won't be as clean, but that's not a huge deal.  More concerning to me is that it'll leave some minor gaps you can see through under the sides.

So Wardog... well, he's an older figure now.  And with what Takara is doing today maybe we can overlook his backpack.  The alt mode is very good, and the robot mode is a little chunky but better than I first though, at least aesthetically (although I could have used a lot more paint and a lot less bare red and gray plastic).  I think I'd be totally satisfied with this figure if not for the shoulders.  I mean, with all the sturdier hinges and ratchets used on the rest of the figure it's really baffling that they used such crappy ball joints there.  And while I don't think his engineering is as bad as its reputation I do wonder if it's a tad more complicated than it really needed to be.  That makes it a bit difficult to really recommend Wardog.  There's something about him that just screams, "I'm a placeholder!"  If there's one thing that Wardog's really got going for him it's that FT's doesn't look like that slam dunk to replace him that we expected it to be.

[M'Kyuun]

I dig the chunkier aesthetic of Wardog over FT's Sheridan. I don't feel a strong compunction to own a MP Warpath, but if I did, this would be the one I'd go for.

[derex3592]

Eagerly awaiting my 1st New Age Seeker (Thundercracker) to show up Friday, found Lucifer (Starscream) in stock at BBTS last night and so I ordered him too...LOL. Had to have him shipped to my office though...didn't really tell the wife about that one..haaha! 

[nhyone]

12 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

And while I don't think his engineering is as bad as its reputation I do wonder if it's a tad more complicated than it really needed to be.  That makes it a bit difficult to really recommend Wardog.  There's something about him that just screams, "I'm a placeholder!"  If there's one thing that Wardog's really got going for him it's that FT's doesn't look like that slam dunk to replace him that we expected it to be.

Wardog is complicated for 2015.  Maybe the designer went on to work on the FansToys movie bots after that. 

I got Wardog for its tank mode. I never thought of him as Warpath.

Other than Sheridan's broken leg, I don't think there has been other complaints about the figure? At least the waist can swivel.

[mikeszekely]

2 hours ago, nhyone said:

Other than Sheridan's broken leg, I don't think there has been other complaints about the figure?

Something about it being greasy, but that seems kind of minor compared to the leg.

Yeah, if FT releases a fixed version of Sheridan later I might still pick it up.  Hopefully they don't do it soon, because almost everything I had preordered is supposed to come in the next month or so.

2 hours ago, nhyone said:

At least the waist can swivel.

Iceman?  Since I already have the first two Aerialbots I'll still be picking Iceman up, but yeah, my impressions of FT's Aerialbots is that they've been kind of mediocre so far.

[Mechapilot77]

yeah wardog is a good piece.  he isn't cartoon accurate proportions at all but thats fine.  hes more chunky and mecha like....the shield...just leave int eh box other than to take a fwe cool pictures and when i pretend he isn't warpath.  lpl..  i'd argue he doesn't really need it in alt mode that much either...i mean do we pick up our carbots and say hello to visible arms adn faces underneath? haha

[Tking22]

I was almost in for FT Sheridan out of impulse, I can care less about Warpath as a character, and I never intended to have an MP of him, but he looked cool. Glad I waited on reviews, the leg thing is atrocious, it's a ticking time bomb like official MP Hound, money saved, bullet dodged. I read replacement screws are out in the wild, you can only get one if you have a single broken leg though, apparently you can't request an extra screw just in case the other leg falls off too, that's a bummer. 

[Kuma Style]

[Kuma Style]

[mikeszekely]

56 minutes ago, Kuma Style said:

Gorgeous.  I'll be curious to see your review; from the picture though it looks like this should be a sure thing for the collectors that don't care if it transforms.  

[Kuma Style]

So far... pretty bad crap.

[mikeszekely]

37 minutes ago, Kuma Style said:

So far... pretty bad crap.

That's unfortunate.  It looks great, and I might have been willing to overlook a part or two that needed to be popped back on or possibly even the missing thumb (it wouldn't be the first time I had to get a replacement part).  But the tolerances on those hips are inexcusable at that price.

[M'Kyuun]

Sorry to hear about the issues with this guy; at the asking price, the manner of packing, the lackluster instruction, a missing thumb, poor tolerances, a broken bit on the back are all poor quality indicators that just shouldn't be. The metallic paint job is nice, but after watching Skullface's review of GigaPower's gorgeous Grassor repaint today, I have to say I find the paint apps a bit underwhelming, especially in a dedicated display piece. It'd be cool if the wheels on the bike could spin, as well, but I get that it's for display.

Slaughter Laird's pretty, but I'm not sure if you got what you paid for, Kuma. The issues are concerning. Hopefully they'll send you a replacement thumb, and you can get the back piece reattached, with minimal fuss. Best wishes, man.

[nhyone]

9 hours ago, Tking22 said:

Glad I waited on reviews, the leg thing is atrocious, it's a ticking time bomb like official MP Hound, money saved, bullet dodged. I read replacement screws are out in the wild, you can only get one if you have a single broken leg though, apparently you can't request an extra screw just in case the other leg falls off too, that's a bummer. 

You should be fine as long as you avoid the first batch. It only affects part of that batch.

[Kuma Style]

1 hour ago, M'Kyuun said:

Snip

It's ridiculous but at least the only thing not immediately repairable was the missing thumb. It's more the looming fact that the company blatantly gave no care in the world to presenting something of value particularly at it's msrp. 

When it comes to paint in general I just plain don't like it on transformers and have yet to really find a transforming tf company that does it particularly well. It's all a notch below higher end figures, IMO and it's why I'd rather do without most of the time.

No need for best wishes or any of that as it's just toys. I appreciate the sentiment but... this hobby just really isn't that important for me.

---------------

On the flip side I got Warden today and fell right back in love with it. I tried the stilt upgrade things and have to say I like them a lot more in hand than I thought I would. Looking at getting and painting an extra set for gaurdia.

[Kuma Style]

[Mechapilot77]

i'm not sure if its still true kuma, but IMO when warden was released it was the best build quality of any transformering transformers piece i've ever held.  it just feels like a high end toy.  that was years ago but i'm not sure its been surpassed by any transformers toy 3p or offical in terms of quality of feel.  i sold mine off only to buy it again as well.  i don't collect that scale and he doesn't really fit in with many guys but hes just really nice in hand.  i never got the stilts...forget what they're called  and have no idea where i'd find them these days.  it does look aces though!  the MMA piece is a shame...

[Kuma Style]

Warden is till really high up there to this day. The only company that really even has come close to matching it is MasterMade but a lot of people sleep on them because of their products being SD. You're dead on with that assesment.

And yea the MMA review is processing now... needless to say I wasn't very kind in my remarks.

----------------------

[mikeszekely]

Been on a bit of an upgrade kick lately.  I think it's because the newer Siege and Earthrise figures have been so good.  Like, on an older Hasbro figure I'd probably be like, "it's kind of meh, but oh well, that's Hasbro."  But now it's like they're so close to what you really wanted that the deficiencies seem both more glaring and more easily corrected.  This time, instead of importing a 3D-printed kit from an obscure group in China I decided to try a smaller domestic outfit, not as big as players like Dr Wu or DNA Design, but still well-regarded in the community, called Nonnef Productions, and this is their kit for Earthrise Wheeljack.

Unlike the Chinese kits I've been looking at Nonnef's stuff isn't 3D printed.  Instead it appears to be injection-molded, and in fact some of the parts are still on runners.  What you get here are a pair of wrenches, a pistol, and a missile/barrel on their own plus the parts to make a shoulder launcher on the runners.  The parts almost look like they're painted a glossy gray, but I think it's just the color of the plastic.  Additionally, you get a pair of translucent wing parts.

The wings are pretty straightforward.  If you looked, you might have noticed that Wheeljack's spoiler-wings are just pegged in place, with little tabs to stop them from rotating past certain points.  To swap in the Nonnef wings you simply pull the old ones off and pop the new ones in place.  They even have the same little tabs that stop them at the right points.  The translucent color does match the original MP Wheeljack and G1 toy, but I think I'd have preferred them to be silver on the front side and white on the back.  More on that in a bit.  The main thing is that they're longer and more prominent, and that's a big upgrade over the stock ones... in robot mode.

For the shoulder launcher, start by removing the parts from the runners.  You'll have two sides, a front, and two inner parts with tabs for the slots on Wheeljack's shoulders.  Note that you only need one; the tabs are slightly offset, and one is designed to sit on his right shoulder, the other for his left.  Since right is more cartoon accurate that's what I went with.  Insert it onto one of the sides, then close the other side over it.  Slip the front over the hole, then slide the missile part in.

The resulting shoulder cannon will have a tab that fits into the slot on on Wheeljack's shoulder, just like the accessory he came with.  Unlike that one, though, the new one is far more cartoon accurate and even has a hinge so it can raise up.  As for the gun and wrenches they slip into Wheeljack's hands just the way you'd expect.  Actually, if he's holding the gun and one wrench you could say that you've got an extra wrench for Siege Ratchet.  While the wrenches do fit Wheeljack's personality it's the gun whose absence was the most sorely felt.

Bigger wings, a cartoon-accurate shoulder cannon, and an actual handheld gun make for some substantial improvements to Wheeljack's robot mode.  Unfortunately this kit really drops the ball in alt mode.

I'll give them credit for trying with the wings.  Because they're longer you'd expect them to collide, but each is slightly kinked in opposite directions so one slides over the other and they still make spoiler.  The problem is that it's translucent.  As I said before, if it were white on the back and silver on the front the silver side would make for cartoon-accurate wings and the white side would be the right color for the car's spoiler.  And this seems like something that'd be an easy fix, except Hasbro used a dirty, off-white shade for Wheeljack that won't be as simple to match as grabbing a can of white spray paint.  What I think most of us are going to wind up doing is keeping the original spoiler (which can fortunately be stored on the backs of Wheeljack's legs in robot mode), pulling the Nonnef ones off, transforming him into a car, then putting the originals back on.

While the original wings can stow on the robot mode, if you swap the spoiler back for alt mode there isn't a place to store the Nonnef wings.  In fact, you can't really store any of the accessories in alt mode.  The new shoulder launcher has the tab that fits the robot shoulder, but not the peg that pets it store on the roof.  Ok, but surely the pistol does, right?  Nope.  The handles on the Nonnef accessories aren't perfectly round.  This isn't a problem when you fit them into round peg holes, like Wheeljack's fist, but the one on his roof is one of those holes that's actually a hexagon.  The hexagonal hole combined with the irregular shape of the handles makes for a super loose fit.  So what you really wind up doing is using the entire kit for robot mode, then removing the entire kit and setting it off to the side for alt mode.  It's not the end of the world, but it's inconvenient and it really didn't have to be like that.  If Nonnef doesn't paint his parts the spoiler wings could have at least been cast in a white plastic that matches the figures, and the customers could paint the other side silver if they really wanted to.  The gun could have had a regular, round 5mm peg for a handle that fit snugly into the roof, and a slot on the gun could have fit the tab on the shoulder launcher.

Speaking of paint, I'd heard someone say that Nonnef's stuff doesn't take paint very well.  I can't speak for the translucent parts, but that doesn't seem to be true for the gray ones.  I'm not a fan of the glossy gray plastic, so I painted them silver with a simple Rust-Oleum spray can (the kind that's paint+primer in one can, metallic silver) available at Walmarts, Targets, and most hardware stores.

It's frustrating to me that the Nonnef kit for Earthrise Wheeljack winds up coming off and not storing on the car mode, especially because I don't think it had to go that way.  However, at around $8 + shipping it's a pretty inexpensive kit that does a lot for the robot mode.  If you're cool with Wheeljack as he comes out of the package and like to transform him a lot then maybe you don't need this kit.  But if you mostly keep him in bot mode and wish he had longer wings, a better shoulder cannon, and an actual gun or wrenches for his hands then you'll probably get your money's worth even if you don't use them for alt mode.

[Kuma Style]

[Kuma Style]

 

[slaginpit]

On 5/12/2020 at 8:47 PM, mikeszekely said:

Warpath is, I think, the last minibot that I don't have on my MP shelf.  I was waiting to see how the reviews for Fans Toys' new one was, and it sounds like they can be summed up as "the leg fell off."  Eh, I can live with partsforming, but I prefer it be intentional.  So that led me to look at the alternatives, and a fortunate side-effect of a Fans Toys release is that those alternatives are pretty cheap if you don't mind a used one.  So I picked up this guy: Badcube's Wardog.

Y'know, for a minibot Wardog isn't exactly mini.  I could charitably say he's around the size of an MP car, or I could less-charitably say he's actually slightly taller than Bluestreak here.  Regardless of where he was meant to fit on the scale chart, though, I think he was depicted as the same size as the carbots enough in the cartoon that he can get away with it here.

Aesthetically I think he fits the Hasui-era.  I was put off at first by the tank treads dangling from his arms, but I quickly realized that they're cartoon accurate.  Indeed, pretty much all the cartoon details are there- treads on his arms, treads on his feet, silver in his torso, silver on his shoulders, otherwise mostly red, the u-shaped indent on his pelvis, but he's also got details like rivets, lights, and paneling that you'd expect on a robot that turns into a tank.  Some more fair complaints might be that he's a little chunkier than he was shown to be in the cartoon, and he is sporting a bit of a backpack.

The G1 minibots didn't come with accessories, they weren't often shown using weapons in the cartoon, and you'd think a guy with a tank barrel sticking out of his chest really wouldn't need one.  That didn't stop Badcube from including some accessories for Wardog, though.  You get a kind of strange sci-fi gun, and a large chunk of partsforming with a handle.

Wardog's head is on a hinged swivel.  He can turn it and look up a good deal, but nothing really down and no sideways tilt.  His shoulders are a bit of a problem.  They're connected to his torso via ball joints, and on my copy, either through wear or through poor initial tolerances, they're very loose going outward.  He can at least hold a forward/backward rotation.  There's also a ratcheted hinge inside the shoulder, which allows for better lateral movement when the arm isn't totally perpendicular to the body, but it's really for transformation and it's really only good for a click or two.  His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees.  His wrists swivel, and his hands are just like a carbots with a fixed thumb, all the fingers molded together as one piece, and a single hinge at the base of the fingers.  His waist has a ratcheted swivel.  His hips go forward a little under 90 degrees and backward about 60 degrees on a ratchet, and a softer ratchet allows for a little under 90 degrees of spread.  His thighs swivel around the hip joint, and his ratcheted knees bend 90 degrees.  His feet have two hinges and a ball joint, and between them he can tilt his feet up and down and his ankle pivots 90 degrees.

He can hold both of his accessories using the fairly typical method of sticking a tab on the handle into the slot in his palm.  It's a bit of a pain, though, because the shape of the handles don't give you a lot of room to work with; you kind of have to slip the handle around his fingers then close them so they push the handles into his palms.  

If you don't care for Warpath to be walking around a gun and a riot shield you could leave them in the box, sure, although the shield has a role to play in alt mode.  So if you don't want to box them you can fold the shield up, stick the gun on it, and then attach the whole thing to his backpack.  However, his backpack is already fairly big, and with the shield on it it's pretty obnoxious.  Worse, it's actually enough weight far enough back on his body that he starts to have trouble balancing even with those huge feet.

Wardog somehow manages to get bigger as he transforms, coming out much larger than an MP car.  If there's one crowd that should please it's the alt-mode scale crowd, because an M551 Sheridan isn't a big tank, but it's still bigger than a car.

Much has been made over the years about Wardog's engineering and how transforming this guy is supposed to be a nightmare.  Honestly, I think those stories have been greatly exaggerated; my copy arrived in bot mode without instructions, and since it seems like all the big Youtubers went from tank to bot I wound up just winging it.  Now, I'm not going to tell you it's all rainbows and roses.  A lot of his parts are on armatures and sliders, and transforming him really involves dislodging and unfolding all his parts into a flayed, floppy mess then moving them around and locking everything back into place, and that always seems to involve a bit of finagling and massaging to get everything lined up right and tabbed in.  Despite that I didn't really encounter any tolerance issues, nor was I ever really unsure where something was supposed to go or how it moved.  Even the shoulders, which are often cited as one of the more difficult parts, really aren't that difficult once you understand what you're supposed to do, and on the whole I think Wardog is much easier to transform than pretty much figure Fans Toys has released for a movie/Season 3 character.

As I mentioned, Wardog turns into an M551 Sheridan tank, and it looks pretty good.  I know some reviewers complained that the tank barrel seems small, but it's actually pretty accurate.  There's lots of riveted detail.  The lights, driver's window, and hooks on the front are pretty accurate.  The treads even seem to have the correct number of wheels (five big ones, two small ones).  And in a cartoon-accurate fashion he's mostly red but he's got a large silver section behind the turret.   I think the tank might look a little better with a machine gun on top of the turret and maybe some smoke launchers on the sides, but then I suppose he'd be less cartoon-accurate.

The turret can rotate; it actually uses the ratcheted waist joint to move.  The barrel can only move up and down a little, though.  There are no wheels under the treads so he doesn't roll.

Now about that partsforming.  The shield actually forms the bottom of the tank, and the gun can still store on it.  It gives him a very clean underside and helps solidify his tank mode, to the point that you can almost miss the fact that it transforms.  If you really wanted to leave it and the gun in the box, though, you can.  The bottom won't be as clean, but that's not a huge deal.  More concerning to me is that it'll leave some minor gaps you can see through under the sides.

So Wardog... well, he's an older figure now.  And with what Takara is doing today maybe we can overlook his backpack.  The alt mode is very good, and the robot mode is a little chunky but better than I first though, at least aesthetically (although I could have used a lot more paint and a lot less bare red and gray plastic).  I think I'd be totally satisfied with this figure if not for the shoulders.  I mean, with all the sturdier hinges and ratchets used on the rest of the figure it's really baffling that they used such crappy ball joints there.  And while I don't think his engineering is as bad as its reputation I do wonder if it's a tad more complicated than it really needed to be.  That makes it a bit difficult to really recommend Wardog.  There's something about him that just screams, "I'm a placeholder!"  If there's one thing that Wardog's really got going for him it's that FT's doesn't look like that slam dunk to replace him that we expected it to be.

I know FT...FTs!!!!! are nice figures but i really prefer this version 

[Kuma Style]

[Kuma Style]

 

 

 

[M'Kyuun]

Perfect Effect may not have made the most accurate versions of these guys, but they more than made up for it with accessories and fun factor. I considered getting them awhile back, but never did. I'm happy with my Hasbro Refractors, but I still enjoy seeing pics of these guys when they pop up from time to time.

[Kuma Style]

These came out towards a decade ago and were insanely ahead of their time. The first TF figures at this scale to have real articulation and detailing while having unique and innovative weapons/full storage in both modes. They're fantastic and honestly hold up to this day. Heck they're better than the first wave of Iron Factory figures, even.

It's cool to see 3Ps really take Legends scale by the horns and make them a more real and regular thing but between stuff like this, the shadow warriors, etc. etc. PerfectEffect really did innovate in this area.

[M'Kyuun]

Absolutely; official legends scaled figs up until recently have always been lackluster figs with minimal detail and virtually no articulation to speak of, so these were at the cutting edge for their time, demonstrating what's possible in a small figure.  The IF stuff is nice, but I'm not into IDW, and much of their stuff is very stylized, but nice looking, nonetheless.  The stuff that has my attention, and my dollars, of late are the New Age figures, and to a lesser degree, Magic Square, for the insane levels of detail, paint, articulation, and innovative transformations involved.  They're just incredible little Transformers. And PE were paving the way to this point a long time ago.

I wish MS or NA would consider upscaling some of their designs to fit in with CHUG. I'd love to have their Seekers in voyager scale to replace the mediocre Earthrise mold.

[Kuma Style]

Yea I like IDW **BECAUSE** I don't like slavish G1 stuff but obviously I can see how the opposite would apply just as well. It's great to have so many options, particularly of good quality.

----------------

Meanest TF sculpt I've seen in some time

[CoryHolmes]

As a kid I loved Six Shot.  I just kept transforming him and even kludging together some new modes for him.

 

As an adult (eek, scary concept!) I can't stand how half-assed his modes look.  Squint one eye and pretend this car makes any kind of sense doesn't cut it for me anymore.  I can still appreciate the engineering and manufacturing that went into him, though.

[M'Kyuun]

Even as a kid I didn't care for Sixshot, as none of his modes looked like anything remotely real, and that was a large part of the appeal to me. Still is, TBH. It's why, to this day, I generally dislike Cybertronian alt modes, as most of them are rather poor, IMHO.  I liked most of the Siege carbots, but then most of them weren't too far removed from their Earth modes. 

I guess, from a purely fun POV, having a toy that shifts between six modes is cool. Just not my cup.

[Kuma Style]

[Kuma Style]

[Negotiator]

Man I need I good jazz. What is that one?