Holding out for a Beero

by David Willis on January 7, 2013 at 12:15 am
Posted In: Blog

Can’t find my Frenzy! So pushing back talking about the Data Disk guys once again.

Here’s Beast Hunters Bumblebee. I found him and nobody but him when I was out looking for his wave, and as I am weak, I snatched him up. He wasn’t on my list or anything, since my place is kind of lousy with Bumblebees already, but after seeing some photos of him in-hand on the Internet, I saw that he was pretty neat-looking. And, hey, Bumblebee with spikes all over him. He reminds me of Johnny Five at the end of Short Circuit 2 where he covers himself in random spikey punk rock shit and then uses his last five minutes alive for spiteful vengeance, as you do.

As you might notice, he is heavily retooled! Not much of the original toy survives, though the engineering and transformation is the same. Let’s see, the middle of his upper torso, all of the gray of his middle torso and thighs, and the non-vehicle-y parts of his lower legs, plus his arms from the biceps on down… those are all old parts. The head and pretty much the entirety of the vehicle mode (other than that middle hood section) are new.

He still comes with the two arm-mounted blasters of the original tooling, plus a crossbow-like weapon that mounts on his hood or his arm or in his hand. He comes with a whoppin’ six dang missiles, which the crossbow-thing can fire with a spring-loaded mechanism. This dude is armed. He will murder you. If you’re a beast, anyway. Or so I think the story goes.

He’s pretty hard core.


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New new New Soundwave

by David Willis on January 5, 2013 at 6:04 pm
Posted In: Blog

Instead of finishing up the little Recordicon Data Disk guys, I thought I’d talk about the other toy of the exact same Soundwave I got this past week-or-so.  It’s him from the future and/or our present!  And he’s lost weight!

Hasbro’s new direction for the Transformers Prime toyline is called Beast  Hunters, which was a title that was first used for Beast Machines in its preliminary stages.  The forgotten Predacon race of Transformers dragons has returned!  And the Autobots and Decepticons apparently have covered themselves in spikes and shit to combat them!  I found the new spikey Bumblebee first, and I think he was a pretty successful execution of this concept, but I’ll talk about him later.  Soundwave, though, I dunno.

I bought him only for Ravage, as I do, because Ravage is awesome and I ain’t not gonna buy a Ravage.  Like the first Soundwave toy’s Laserbeak, Ravage does the splits and fits X-shaped into Soundwave’s chest.  You can swap him with Laserbeak and vice versa, as I demonstrate in that first photo up there on the left.  And,  yes, Ravage’s butthole is placed under Soundwave’s nose and Ravage’s head is reaching for Soundwave’s crotch.  Let’s acknowledge this and move on.

Soundwave himself is heavily retooled from the original Transformers Prime Soundwave.  The yellow and dark blue parts on Beast Hunters Soundwave remain from the original tooling, but everything else is new.  The result is kind of a mess, I think.  I’m not really sure what’s going on, and it kind of detracts from Soundwave’s sleek design.  On the other hand, he does transform into something that now looks less like those things the President uses to kill civilians in other countries!

shit now that’s all the comments are going to be about now isn’t it oh well

Beast Hunters Soundwave comes with a new grappling claw weapon as well!  It’s one of those spring-loaded missile launcher deals but with a string.  It’s not pictured because I forgot about it.

So let’s sum up: Ravage comes with a Soundwave that’s kind of a mess and possibly ultimately forgettable.  He transforms exactly the same way, but he’s got more stuff on him.  And he has a grappling hook.  Maybe I’ll come around on him later?  Right now, he’s just hard to visually resolve.


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New New Soundwave

by David Willis on January 4, 2013 at 10:53 pm
Posted In: Blog

Hey, guys, Soundwave’s got a new toy where little guys fit into his chest and pop out and you can buy a whole army of the little buggers. There’ve been other Soundwave toys since 1984 where a guy fit into his chest, but this was always a limited enterprise of one or two dudes. This Soundwave’s got six so far, not counting the five upcoming Autobots which also utilize the same interaction.

Soundwave‘s part of the first wave of Voyager Class ($25) Generations figures.  Who does he share that first wave with?  HIMSELF!  One out of every four figures in the case assortment is actually Soundblaster, a same-character redeco of Soundwave based on his black-gold-and-red Headmasters appearance.  That’s right, it’s “New Soundwave,” as regaled by the infamously terrible English dub of those episodes.  Soundwave comes with Laserbeak (red) and Soundblaster comes with Buzzsaw (gold).

I wasn’t super keen on either Soundwave or Soundblaster, honestly, but I can’t not buy a Buzzsaw toy.  Buzzsaw is awesome.  (Also, turns out I kind of have a growing nigh-complete Recordicons display, and the inclusion of these guys is perhaps mandatory anyhow.)  So when I found Soundwave and Soundblaster buried deep in the Batman stuff while I was in San Diego, I put Soundwave back where he goes and grabbed Soundblaster for myself.   Besides, I already have a toy of Aligned Laserbeak, so this particular iteration of him isn’t super-high priority.  He can wait for sales.

I had already found the sets of the other guys (Frumble/Ratbat and Frumble/Ravage), so I knew I was gonna like Buzzsaw.  Ratbat was the best of those guys, and Ratbat’s just a reshell of Laserbeak/Buzzsaw.  The reason why he’s the best is that he’s the simplest and least irritating.  When  he drops in Data Disk mode onto the ground and the button underneath him springloads him into “vulture” mode, that’s it.  That’s the end of the transformation.  There’s no more left to do.  And he’s easy to put back in Data Disk mode.

Plus, y’know, he’s Buzzsaw, whose predecessor was a frightening friggin’ monster who will kill you with his face.

I will talk more about the gimmick itself when I write later about the other Recordicons, but it will suffice to say this now: WHEN THE INSTRUCTIONS TELL YOU TO PUT THE DATA DISK INTO SOUNDBLASTER’S CHEST WITH THE BUTTON FACING OUT, THIS IS A HORRIBLE LIE.  DO NOT DO THIS.  EVER.  PUT THE DISK IN BUTTON-FIRST, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

Soundblaster himself is basically a larger version of the Deluxe Class War for Cybertron Soundwave from a few years ago, but now with a chest that flops open when you press a button on his shoulder.  He’s got lots of tightly-ratcheted joints, so he’s pretty solid.  I dunno if his vehicle mode is particularly inspiring, as it’s a box with wheels, but I suppose that’s probably better than a box without wheels, which is what Soundwave usually transforms into.

(Comics return on Monday, btw.)


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Merry Happy

by David Willis on December 25, 2012 at 4:15 pm
Posted In: Blog

I wanted to talk about these guys last Christmas, but ha ha ha ha ha funny story

no not really

So I really like Community, right?  And I really like toys?  So hell yeah I’m gonna preorder some Community figurines from the NBC/Universal online store.  I preordered these guys in October, with an announced ship date of November/early Decemberish.  It’s been a while.  But, you know, before Christmas.  I felt pretty secure in this order!  NBC/Universal is a large company that pays people whose entire job is to mail stuff.  It’s like my job minus the actual cartooning and website management and people interaction and convention going.  Just putting stuff in boxes with shipping labels!

Mid December hits, and I’m wondering, okay, where are my preordered figurines.  I check the website.  Oh ho.  These figurines came in two sets.  Well, one set was canceled!  Apparently!  Well, just the order was canceled.  The product still existed on the website and was available for ordering, listed as “in stock.”  The other of the two sets was, um, in limbo?  I forget their exact term for “we’re thinking of mailing it soon.”  EDIT: Oh, right.  ”Processing.”  Okay.  Well.  That’s weird.  I re-order the canceled one and ask about the in-limbo one.  The in-limbo one ships.

The re-ordered set does not.

It goes into the same limbo as the other set.

Christmas passes.

I send an email perhaps once a week, asking if the other set will please ship.  Every time they tell me they will totally tell the shipping people to ship me my stuff.  The second set remains in “processing” status, which is infuriating.

January passes.

So I’m pretty angry by now!  These were supposed to be for Christmas!  Anyway, I throw a fit on Twitter, and my pal Rob who physically works at 30 Rockefeller goes downstairs, buys the three guys I’m missing from the NBC/Universal store, and mails them to me himself.  Because he’s awesome.

Of course, they arrive the same day that the online store’s set arrived.  Grargh.  It is February.

Anyway, the figurines are all right.  I like them.  I’m never ever ever using the online NBC/Universal store ever again.   Screw those guys.

Rob is fantastic.

Merry Christmas.


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Kickbacks

by David Willis on December 17, 2012 at 10:36 pm
Posted In: Blog

You can count the number of (Insecticon) Kickbacks on a Ninja Turtle’s hand.  I am imbibing the sauce right now, but I’m fairly certain that Fall of Cybertron Kickback is merely transforming grasshopper Kickback #2.   That’s not a lot of toys for a dude who was in the first season of the original cartoon!  He was also a toy I had as a kid, and he starred in one of my favorite Transformers children’s storybooks.  You know, the one where Grapple looks like an orange Hook.

I am also super-jonesing for new beast Transformers these days, and Thundertron was kind of a butt.  (Which is a funny thing to call him, since his huge problem is he didn’t have one.)  WOULD KICKBACK TURN THIS SHIT AROUND????

Yes and no!  His robot mode is pretty friggin’ great.  I mean, look at it.  It’s crazy and mean and also crazy.  It’s a sharp redesign that loosely interprets the original toy.  He has huge stompy boots and giant claws that reach over his shoulders.  If you want a slightly more G1y look, you can clip his insect wings back onto the shoulder claws, but that inhibits their clawyness.

And his insect mode would be perfect if not for two problems, one of them bad and one of them merely annoying!  The merely annoying problem is that his weapon doesn’t store anywhere in insect mode.   It just hangs out.  There ain’t no place for it to peg in, even off at a dumb clunky angle.  And it’s too bad, because it’s based on the Gear Shredder weapon from the Fall of Cybertron game, and so it launches a disc.  Grasshopper with a buzzsaw weapon?  Yes.  But it is not so.

EDIT: Apparently it slots in somehow on the claw/wings?  Whaaaaaaaaaaa

The bad one is how notly his grasshopper hind legs peg into the sides of his beast mode.  They just sorta hang out on the sides, flippy floppy, gettin’ in all sorts of annoying trouble.  It makes him amazingly fiddly.  This decreases funness!  And it makes me sad.  If there were only a peg or something in there that held it all together, he’d be the bestest.

But at least his robot mode’s frickin’ sweet.  C’MON HASBRO I NEED A PERFECT NEW BEAST TOY YOU GUYS

WE’RE TALKING IMMACULATE


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