Is Energon cool or what?

[Beware of Blast]

Now, now. I'm not Hasbro or Takara's salesman, but I've just gotten Skyblast, Divebomb and Strongarm, and I gotta say this - Go get them fast!

They are so much fun to play with, poseable and they're cheap! For such small toys, they quite well-articulated. Their tranformation is so simple, and yet, they're well-thought out and sophisticated enough for this Macross VF fan. Their panel lines are well-impressioned on the cheapy hard plastic - beautiful and sturdy. Their cosmetic appearance in their robot and alternate modes are lovely, you get designs of sleekness or blockiness within reason. You won't look at the toys (while on display) and go, "Eh?" like the kinds of doubt one would get from looking at any Armada or RiD toys. I get the idea that certain amount of time and love have been put into them. Especially for the three Energon bots that I have.

And Strongarm has a waist joint too! He's somekind of a futuristic 4WD all-terrain vehicle that tranforms into a robot with the kind old skool-ish funky ugly, blocky design that I dig. I simply love this guy. Now I know, of the three I have, Divebomb seems to be THE popular choice with most TF fans, with Skyblast coming in a close second; but Strongarm just said, "hello" and grabbed me. I'm the kid who constantly play with that one toy and sleeps with it again. I dunno, maybe it's his design, his color combination, maybe maybe it's the Energon axe! He has his quirks though - his feet, but they are quickly dispelled with a little imagination.

I haven't buy any of the larger deluxe bots yet, but they seem to have several misses as well as hits. Landmine is the best so far, but he's not stylishly beautiful nor funky ugly enough for me. He has a nice color combination though.

I'm starting to have faith again in TF toys... don't get me wrong, I mildly liked the Beast Wars and some of the Beast Machines toys; I also love the deluxe Dinobots most of all, but I'm more drawn to mechanically-styled robots than the organic looking ones.

Skyblast, Divebomb and Strongarm, has so far proven to me that Energon is almost everything that RiD and Armada are not. And they have been the best cheapy tranforming toys I've seen so far. They're even cheaper than the MSiAs.

I'll be paying attention to their future releases.

Edited April 14, 2004 by Beware of Blast

[SupremeKaioshin]

Crap!!!

[Cyclone]

The colors! My eyes! Hurting!

Cyc

[Dangard Ace]

Energon Basics are fun. Skyblast and Divebomb are the super fun ones. Strongarm....I want to paint green and call him Hound. Energon anything else.....differ in quality.

[eriku]

Those are three of my favorites too, BoB. If you want to try out some of the larger size Energon TFs, I strongly suggest Starscream and Snow Cat. Starscream is undeniably cool and has a great overall design, while Snow Cat has a lot of that blocky and ugly G1 charm you referred to. They're both endowed with lots of articulation too. I also like Hot Shot and Rodimus but I don't think they are as much of a sure-fire hit as Starscream and Snow Cat.

Wait until Tow Line comes out, he should have tons of G1 charm since he transforms like Ironhide. This time there is a head though.

[Bloodcat]

I wasnt that interested in Energon till I saw Strongarm. He is great.

[MrDisco]

no. it's not cool.

[NERV]

i have divebomb that i modified to an enhanced robot only mode i love the wing/leg mechanism

[wolfx]

Pictures anyone? Or...which of these are they?

http://members9.tsukaeru.net/ty1_toys/toys/SL.htm

[CF18]

They still look like poop.

[Hoptimus]

Some of them are cool. Much better than Armadas crap designs. The show is pretty good too. Its on at 6am now on CN.

[areaseven]

Stick with Alternators instead.

[NERV]

Pictures anyone? Or...which of these are they?

http://members9.tsukaeru.net/ty1_toys/toys/SL.htm

none of those, thats just the possible combinaitons of the larger ones

[Radd]

Some of the basics are better than most anything from Armada, and better than a lot of the late G1 toys. I still think they're pretty ugly toys. Sure, they're posable and some of them are starting to have alt modes that aren't quite as hideous as those in Armada, they're still ugly. The least ugly Energon toy I've seen is Starscream.

On the other hand, some of the larger Energon toys are even uglier than their already ugly Armada counterparts. Sure, Megatron's new design is a throwback to Galvatron. I hated Galvatron, as I did most of the post-movie designs. His vehicle design is absolutely wretched, far worse then the Armada Megatron.

Prime? Do we even need to compare? Prime was not a pretty toy for the Amrada line. His cab was ok...not good, certainly not great, but decent. His robot mode was fairly spiff, even, thouygh could have used some improvement. His trailer and his combined forms were both ugly messes. Garbage. Now, for Energon? He's been packing on the pounds. He really does look like a joke in all modes. His trailor is rediculous, his cab mode is a joke, his robot mode is the most tasteless joke of all and there's really not much of an improvement in his Power Ranger mode.

I would like to pick up one of those Armada Prime toys, the ones that were smaller and didn't have the trailer, and I've already picked up Rodimus (who was not as cool as I expected, and my hopes were not all that high) and Starscream (who's OK, but still mainly running on nostalgia), and I intend to pick up Arcee when she comes out. Other than those toys, I'm concentrating on the only Transformers line that has really caught my attention in a long time, the Alternators.

[justvinnie]

why does prime have his head between his crotch when he forms the legs in the combined form?

and is it me or are all those combined forms really sucky and unwieldy looking?

vinnie

[NERV]

why does prime have his head between his crotch when he forms the legs in the combined form?

and is it me or are all those combined forms really sucky and unwieldy looking?

vinnie

its not you, they suck, greatly

[eriku]

Man, the hostility towards Energon here is almost scary.

[gerwalk25]

Wow not that much love for Energon/Superlink on MW? IMHO they are better than the Armada toys; some Micron/Mini-Con's excluded which I own . I had my misgivings when I took a look at the Le' Target. In the past month I ended up buying Strongarm, Hot Shot, Inferno, Prowl and Rodimus Prime and I'm not disatisfied with'em and they were cheap $5, $7 at most and has that extra mode to "Superlink" with each other, each medium figure (minus Strongarm) can be a "Pants" or "Shirt" mode and look pretty cool plus it adds to the play value.

that's my 2cents

[justvinnie]

now that I look closer, it seems like all the combined forms have a head in the crotch. Also the self combining is really scary... almost incest if you will?

vinnie

[Beware of Blast]

Man, the hostility towards Energon here is almost scary.

LOL! I know but I can empatize their complaints. The problem with most of the current deluxe and ultra Energons, is that they lack the charm that the basic Energons have - well-designed robot modes. I mean, they are suppose to retain that full-humanoid look, but they are either without a visible lower torso, or something is missing, or doesn't look quite right overall. Although I must admit, Landmine and Starscream seems okay for both modes as far as the bigger Energons are concerned. Most of everything else are just upper torso and then, you get the legs. We don't have that kind of problem with most G1 toys, despite the lack of articulation. The extra articulations for all the Energons are nice though but it seems like they compromised too much to have them, or didn't try hard enough to get a good bot design.

Edited April 15, 2004 by Beware of Blast