WE'VE ACHIEVED SOMETHING: the it's walky! kickstarter has funded

Swoop is the second of two Dinobots available in the first wave of Power of the Primes Deluxe Class guys.  And y'know what?  He is pretty great!

I mean, Slug's okay.  He's an awkward-looking triceratops (which can be mitigated somewhat by creative transformation) who is, essentially, just the original Slag toy but with knees.  There's not a lot new there, other than the obvious "oh there's a combiner port hidden in me so I can become an arm for a giant robot."  

But Swoop does something important for me.  Sure, he, too, is pretty damn similar to his original toy, but with knees.  But his pterosaur mode has articulated legs.  This means you can swing them under his body, so he can stand up and perch properly -- or you can swing them back, and they can dangle behind him for flight.  Transformers pterosaurs rarely bother with giving you the choice, choosing to mold the feet in place one way or the other.  But being given the option really opens up Swoop to me.  

You might notice that Swoop has a blue chest instead of red.  This was a later change to the toy, since the promo images still had him in toy- (and comic-)accurate red.  But I guess Hasbro decided they wanted him to have a blue chest, like in the cartoon.  Ultimately, swapping the chest color and nothing else actually resulted in a kind of Diaclone-style Swoop. (Diaclones were the Japanese toys which Hasbro imported/localized as Transformers.)  Cartoon Swoop had a fully red helmet, while the Diaclone toy had a... blue front and a red back?  The black front and the red back on this Power of the Primes toy feels more Diacloney than cartoony.

I generally trend towards Marvel comics colors, but I'm okay with a blue Swoop.  It's nice to have a little variety, color-wise, plus I've decided that only the dinosaurs in the Dinobots get to be red-chested.  Swoop is not a dinosaur, so he gets a different color.  

Once again, Swoop comes with a combiner fist which the packaging prioritizes as chest armor.  The chest armor is supposed to house a Prime Master (sold separately), but since Prime Masters are cross-compatible with Titan Masters, it means you can plug a Titan Master head into the same spot.  Since there was a (renamed) Swoop Titan Master, you can totally have Swoop wearing a giant fist-smock with his own head embedded in it, kind of if he were piloted by Krang.

The instructions do not tell you how to connect the chest armor to his chest, and there's no obvious 5mm peghole there.  What you have to do is use the tabs on the inside of each of the combiner fist's thumbs to fit into slots on each side of the pterosaur head.  

There's also a sword for Swoop to hold, and a smaller peg on the sword for it to be used to stow in non-robot modes.  The only real good place to stow it is underneath the pterosaur beak.  It's not a GREAT place.  But it's slightly better than one of the other two compatible pegholes under his abdomen.

The only real complaint I have about POTP Swoop is that the front of the pterosaur face doesn't plug well into the back of its skull for beast mode.  It tends to kind of droop out.  I'd use some floor polish to make it a more solid connection, but, well, his robot mode face is kinda in there.  eehhh

OBLIGATORY: I have a Kickstarter running right now to print a first It's Walky! book collection!

Usually new toys show up in, like, Southeast Asia first.  That's closer to where the factories are, and you gotta add in Pacific Ocean Ship Time before things eventually show up in North America.  Not this time!  Suddenly, and weeks ahead of schedule, the first wave of the next Transformers subline, Power of the Primes, appeared in an Arizona Target.  They were also found in Dallas and Michigan that night, once we figured out the DPCI number and could track the toys' appearances in Targets across the country.  Today I showed up at a Target where no fewer than two other Transformers nerds were also there to ask the same question as I, and after a set of toys had already been put on hold by an unseen fourth (at least) nerd.  There were no toys for any of us there then, but I found a lone Slug at another Target on the way home.  

(It was mildly hilarious to me that this rush to Targets, crowding myself out, was very likely my own fault: I'm the one who published how to easily locate these toys at Targets online, and this knowledge was very quickly spread to the major websites.  Oops!  Too helpful!)

Slug is the new name for the Dinobot triceratops Slag, who can't be called that anymore because, as Dr. Kelso once reminded us on Scrubs, "Slag" is a gendered insult in some parts.  You can still call him Slag though if you wanna.  No one will stop you.

The gimmicks in Power of the Prime are... storied and legion.  Okay, so each Deluxe comes with a little bit of armor, right?  You plug that into their chest, easy as you please, and also there's this removeable center bit on the chest armor that you can replace with a Prime Master, which is sold separately!  Prime Masters are exactly like last line's Titan Masters, except instead of transforming into a face, they transform into a symbol.  There are 12 symbols, one for each of the original thirteen Primes (minus one?).  The idea is you plug this Prime Master into your larger Transformer toy and you imagine he is being bestowed with godly powers.  

There are trading cards included to this effect.  There are 12 possible cards with every toy, each explaining what power up they get from a certain Prime Master.  I don't recommend completism.  

ALSO, not mentioned on the exteriors of the toy packaging itself is the fact that the Deluxe Class-sized toys such as Slug are combiner guys again.  Slug's "chest armor" is actually a very thinly-disguised combiner mode fist.  Hidden within his chest is a Combiner Wars-style combiner plug.  That this is possible is detailed on the instructions and no where else.  Surprise combiners, guys!  (if you haven't seen the internet)  The decision to obscure this is very strange.

Slug is essentially the original G1 Slag, but with modern articulation.  He's got translucent parts that are painted gold on the inside to give him that original flavor, and he's... not really trying to be a modern understanding of a triceratops.  He looks like a 1980s triceratops (again) but with a slightly less dragging tail.  I recommend mistransforming him so he has a neck, keeping him from looking TOO doofy.  The biggest difference his in robot mode is that he doesn't have the wings on his back made of triceratops hide anymore.  

He comes with a gun (and his chest armor/combiner fist) but not a sword.  The clear plug on the outside face of the chest armor can be removed and held like a gun.  

And once you have the other four Dinobots from this toyline, you'll be able to make a Dinobot combiner.  

I'm pretty sure the Batman: The Animated Series 6" toyline is nearing its end.  I think there's only the Harley and Joker mega packs left (with the extra heads and accessories), and that's it.  And so the Batcave (with Alfred) is likely its last hurrah, as far as new characters go.

Which is why I bought it.  I needed an Alfred, and this is the only way to get an Alfred.

I skipped the Batwing.  Its, uh, footprint was just too big.  I mean, it's cool, but where would I put it?  The Batmobile is just narrow enough to fit on a shelf, but the Batwing is friggin' huge.  And so I skipped it.  However, the Batcave came along and it had the exact same problem.  It's like a foot and a half diameter.  A big-ass footprint.  But it came with Alfred!  And, again, I need an Alfred.  So I bought it, size be damned.

But you know what, I'm glad I have this Batcave thing anyway.  It's friggin' great.  I have no idea where it's going to go once it's no longer occupying the corner floor of my workspace, but I'm really happy I have it, regardless.  It's got electronic lights.  It's got incredibly bright electronic lights.  All of the monitors and a few other spaces besides glow with brilliant white light.  Turn off the lights in your room, flip the Batcave's on switch (under the medium-sized computer table), and happiness just floods your brain.  It's a pretty set-up.  Makes for some dynamic photographs.  

There's a large sheet of stickers you can place over many of the lights/monitors.  A few different choices are available for the bigger screens.  I presume the stickers are translucent enough for the lights to still glow through them.  I'm not sure I'll find them necessary.  I prefer the more abstract, stark white.  If I make any of the monitors too "specific," it makes it harder to swap in, say, Old Bruce and Terry without you wondering why the heck they're looking at a huge monitor of Tony Zucco.  Also, none of the stickers have Clock King on them, so what's the point.

There's also a large cardboard backgrop of the background of the cave you can stand up behind the Batcomputer.  This is excellent, though I wish the little cliffs in the background were drawn with some thinner lines.  

Alfred comes with a few accessories: a tray with some teapots and cups and saucers, some alternate hands, and a duster.  

tl;dr: huge but amazing

Joining TakaraTomy's Targetmaster Hot Rod and his retooled chest is TakaraTomy's Targetmaster Kup and his retooled arms and face.  Hasbro's Kup seems to be based off IDW's Kup circa the All Hail Megatron days, with his blocky, squared-off arms, and TakaraTomy was all noooooooope we're cartooning this guy up.  And so Targetmaster Kup's got new spherical shoulders and rounded forearms with his gauntlets or whatever those are supposed to be.  The biceps remain the same.

Which is fine, since those are what you see from the outside when you transform him into pickup truck mode.  They're not as obviously humanoid robot arms filling in the back of the passenger compartment with those rectangular biceps there.

The other new addition to Kup himself is the new face.  Hasbro's Kup face wasn't the best Kup face (it kind of looked like he's smelled a fart), but TakaraTomy's isn't super great, either.  I mean, the proportions are better, helmet-to-face ratio wise.  But that expression, man.  He looks coked out or something.  Or like the alien from Mac & Me.  (named "Mac," but if i just say "he looks like Mac" and no other context nobody probably knows what I'm talking about)  

Now, the paint job is indeed an improvement.  Hasbro's Kup, despite being a very appealing shade of teal (in person, if not photography) was really super plain.  I ended up painting his forearms and hands gray so he looked better (and matched his Marvel comics coloration).   There were so many sculpted details on him that were obviously meant to be painted, like the stuff on his translucent truck mode canopy.  Targetmaster Kup painted those details on, thankfully, as well as his belt and the yellow "L"-shaped stripes on his forearms.  Lots of little things like that.  He's not an appealing a brilliant teal, though he is almost entirely various other shades of teal.  

But, like Hot Rod, my biggest focal point was his Targetmaster partner, Recoil.  I had Targetmaster Kup as a kid, and dammit, I want my weapon-alt-mode Recoil, goddammit.   I've had Targetmaster Kup's Marvel comics character model etched into my brain since I was a child, and so having that huge-ass long-double-barreled nonsense weapon in his fist just kind of makes everything feel happily complete.  

In the included mini-comic, Recoil is a very young girl, Sue, the daughter of Marissa Fairborne and Dirk Manus.  Sure, why not.  That's already more information than I can recall about Nebulan Recoil off the top of my head.  And she's not old enough to be awkwardly sexualized, so we can avoid that whole... issue...

i mean she is still, like, an 8-year-old who transforms into an assault weapon, but

*puts finger to ear*

okay i'm being told that in weapon form she shoots beams that make enemies nice, rather than physically harming them

well all right then

I always hang with Kup, got The Touch, go fish to unwind

okay enough of that

Very recently, the TFwiki.net Tumblr ran a bit explaining why Hot Rod's red sometimes and other times magenta.  No point rehashing it so soon afterwards here, so grab yourself a link and a read and come right back here!  

I like magenta Hot Rod!  It's so much more interesting for the Heroic Protagonist Main Dude to not be boring ol' red but, like, y'know, practically pink.  Depending on your video transfer.  It's just... not normal.  I dig it.  And so I like when Hot Rods are animation colors rather than original toy colors.  Legends (Titans Return-ish) Hot Rod(imus) is one of those things.  He's not quiiiite as pink as I like my Hot Rods, but I demand a pretty pink Hot Rod, probably a level beyond anything we're ever likely to see.  

He's also painted fairly meticulously, too, compared to the relatively bare domestic version.  He's got his litte yellow forearm bits painted, he's got his dark gray legs, there's darker magenta trim everywhere... there's a paint budget here.  

But I'm not, like, sold on the remolding done.  TakaraTomy has a higher threshold of "IS THIS MATCHING THE ANIMATION ENOUGH" than Hasbro that they seem to try to adhere to, and so Hasbro's Hot Rod chest/hood is gone, with the bare midriff, and in its place is a new chest that's more animation-accurate, but really just kind of looks like a huge bib.  That midriff was the right choice, visually.  Without it, the torso just looks overly long.  Yeah, sure, it has a rotate-y piece that hides the exposed engine and replaces it with Hot Rod's standard collarbone thinger, so the number of moving pieces is conserved, but it just doesn't look nearly as good of a torso.  And the flame's pointed pretty low on there, too, which doesn't help.  A tummy flame isn't a great look.

The translucent flame hole on his chest is a neat idea, and I'm also not sure that it works terribly well.  But points for trying to do at least something different than usual.

(i've included an older photo of hasbro's hot rod, as i kinda totally repainted mine so a direct comparison image isn't strictly possible)

But the real reason I was after this release was I wanted Hot Rod's new Targetmaster parter, Firebolt.  In America, Firebolt transforms into Hot Rod's head, which is a departure from Firebolt's usual weapon mode.  In Japan, Headmasters aren't two guys, but a smaller robot piloting.... well, himself.  Themselves, I guess, since Windblade's on the way.  But with Hot Rod's head guy also being Hot Rod, that frees up Takara to give him a "real" Firebolt.  A transforming guy-to-gun robot.  And Targetmaster Hot Rod's always been my jam.  So I was gonna be after that.

...mind, i didn't really foresee the mini-comic that comes packaged with him recasting Japan's Firebolt as Hot Rod's Kiss Players parter Shaoshao Li, but whatcha gonna do

if you don't know who that is, good

So let's set a scene.  

It's 11:15am.  I've just gotten up, and I'm sitting on the potty.  (wait wait don't leave, let me finish)  I know there's the Transformers panel running at New York Comic-Con right then, and so I pull out my phone and start watching a live feed.

Oh, hello, John Warden!

Oh, huh, John Warden is pulling out two toys.  I guess each is one of the toy's two modes?

...oh, cool, it's Grotusque!  I guess we're getting a Grotusque!   That's a surprise!

......oh, i see, it is now suddenly on sale at HasbroToyShop.com right now

and those kind of things tend to sell out in five minutes

Can a man will himself to stop shitting so he can run to his computer and order exclusive product on a time budget of about ninety seconds?   The answer is, apparently, yes!

And a day later, here Grotusque (and his extra Titan Master partner, Scorponok) is.  These guys ship from Pennsylvania, and I'm just one state over, so the trek is pretty short.  It is ... insanely odd to go from "I just now know this toy exists" to "I have this toy in my hand" in a matter of hours.  Usually first you get the store listing, then you get the blurry and/or cropped stolen imagery, then you get the official announcement, and then you get six more months to wait for the damned thing to actually come out.  Grotusque went from Knowledge to Having in a day.  It's kind of rad?  I mean, definitely not rad if you were, say, at work that afternoon, and not a cartoonist who spends all day at home.  But for me it's definitely rad.

(He will reportedly be available later at Toys"R"Us as well, so there's another chance at him.)

Grotusque is half Doublecross/Twinferno and half new parts.  The bottom half, or the legs/tail is what's kept, while everything from the waist up is new.  (Okay, the wings and stomach are still retained.)  And, honestly, Grotusque is working for me a lot more than Twinferno.  Twinferno had this problem where his torso was awkwardly elongated, and he just looked kinda weird in beast mode.  But Grotusque throws all that stuff out and starts fresh.  The beast mode arms become robot arms, the beast head now opens and unfolds and integrates into the torso, and the result is a toy that looks proportional to itself in both modes.  So, like, score.  

Like Arcee before him, Grotusque has a "premium deco."  That means they actually paint him.  They don't, like, go overboard or anything, but they put enough paint on him that he looks like himself.  There's lots of parts that are painted over entirely just to get them to be the right color.  The wings, for example, are translucent plastic under there.  His head, Fengul, is sculpted and meticulously painted (for a Titan Master) to look like the Battle Beast Platinum Tiger.  This attention to detail also nudges him over Twinferno.

Also like Arcee, Grotusque comes with an extra little die-cast Titan Master head guy.  This time it's Scorponok.  Hi, Scorponok!

hey takaratomy maybe make this toy into fangry please and thank you

A "Headmaster Arcee" has been a hypothetical holy grail of a Transformer for so long, that its very name is a meme.  It's the punchline to a platoon of fandom in-jokes.  And now it's sort of real????

I only say "sort of" only because of semantics.  Though the exact trademark terminology involved is "Titan Master," this is a Headmaster Arcee.  It's a toy of Arcee where her head pops off and becomes a little guy.  A guy named Leinad, which is "Daniel" backwards, because Daniel Witwicky-the-10-year-old-child transformed into Arcee's head in the final episodes of the original Transformers cartoon.  This is a Headmaster Arcee.

Titans Return Arcee is another retool of Titans Return Blurr.  Unlike Nautica, which only added parts to Blurr, Arcee actually replaces some parts.  She's got new shoulders (with fake kibble Arcee shoulder stuff sculpted onto the back of them so she keeps her silhouette), she's got a new car hood/shield, she's got new handguns, and she's got a new swooshy-thing on the roof of her car mode.  And, of course, the new face, both for herself and for Leinad.

Everything's gloriously pink and white.

She's one of the two Transformers-related offerings available at HasCon last weekend.  (they say she'll also be at retail at some enigmatic later time through unspecified means, but we'll see)  Just one single BotCon-style exclusive (and one Optimus Prime phone charger that most people ignored) are kind of a step back from the figurative avalanche of exclusive products that BotCons had up until their demise, but, well, I dunno, a Headmaster Arcee is such a big, crazy deal that I feel that the exchange rate of one Headmaster Arcee kind of equals a dozen or so toys.  Also, I only had to spend $25 instead of like $800, so that's cool.  

The source mold for Arcee, Titans Returns Blurr, is still a great one.  Easily one of the best in this line, so it doesn't hurt so much that we're getting it reused repeatedly.  And she comes with a bonus Ultra Magnus Titan Master head, so everything's pretty good all around.  

Hi, Don.  Squeaky wheel, eh?

I mentioned how Masterpiece Movie Optimus Prime was a situation of deja vu, sharing a lot of transformation ideas (and scale) with an older toy of him.  This is not the case for Masterpiece Movie Bumblebee.  Bumblebees tend to be Deluxe Class (and thus smaller), and so the only comparatively-sized toy to the new Masterpiece is the old Human Alliance toy.  And that figure prioritized having a hollow drivers compartment inside so it could be driven by a Sam Witwicky figure, so it had to take a few liberties with robot mode accuracy.

And so MP Movie Bumblebee feels like a whole new animal, one that he will undoubtedly rip the spine out of.

There's lots of little things here and there that no Movie Bumblebee toy has attempted to replicate before.  Bumblebee has his little collar pointy things, for example.  And it's kind of amazing that it's taken this long to get a Bumblebee toy that gives him both sets of robot mode wings.  Yeah, in the movies, he doesn't just have only the doors for wings.  There's a second set of smaller wings made out of car parts underneath those doors, because insects (aka bumblebees) have two sets of wings.  Stuff like this is possible when you're working with a larger toy than usual, apparently.  

Another visual departure from earlier Movie Bumblebees is the robot mode proportions.  Deluxe Bumblebees tend to have some abbreviated lengths here and there in order to be able to fit everything inside the car mode.  The Masterpiece does its best to give the robot mode the proper room to breathe.  The thighs are the usual culprit, and here they are a comparatively luxurious length.  

Be warned, because there is a lot of shit going on in transformation, mostly in the back half.  In order to get those luxuriously-lengthened legs, everything basically explodes and then tabs back together differently.  This is another departure from the usual Deluxe Class Bumblebees, which accordioned its legs in a simple, graceful manner.  These legs do not accordion, they disassemble centimeter by centimeter.  The instructions are of no help while transforming the robot mode back to vehicle mode.  They don't show you how to put everything back.

The front half is relatively easy.  Often getting the arms shoved back under the hood of the car on the way back to vehicle mode is an annoying ordeal.  Here, so long as the hands are tucked inside the forearms, it's very straightforward.  You merely lay the arms lengthwise underneath the hood, and nothing's there to get in the way of you doing this.  

Like Prime, Bumblebee's head can swap back and forth between normal and armored faces.  Also like Prime, Bumblebee comes with a weapon, though his is a cannon tip which you plug in over his wrist stump.  This cannon tip can stow on his back in robot mode or splay open and plug underneath the vehicle mode.  

MP Movie Bumblebee's biggest fault is his ankles and heels.  Unlike MP Movie Prime, Bumblebee does not stand very well.  Only his toes are metal, and there's no ratcheting joints to prevent unwanted movement.  Standing him up is often a balancing game, and it's kind of annoying.

So, like, live-action movie Optimus Prime is now this deranged, pissy murder machine, but there was, like, a movie and a half where he was pretty okay!  There originally was some kind of majesty to him, honestly.  I don't think I'm ever going to cotton to the new kibble-less design for Movie Prime that's been in the past two movies partly because I associate that body with the murdery end of the characterization spectrum, but there remain some legitimately good feelings with the first look.

AAAAAND so I got myself a Masterpiece Movie Optimus Prime.  Just keep repeating to yourself that this is "Fate rarely calls us at a moment of our choosing" Prime and not "I'LL KILL YOU!!!!" Prime.  This is Movie Prime before he turned to cocaine to cope with his moviestardom.  

At first glance, you might wonder, okay, like, is this just a redeco of Revenge of the Fallen Leader Class Optimus Prime?  It's true, they're a little similar.  They're essentially the same size, and they transform very similarly.  Masterpiece Movie Prime is a completely new toy, though, and everything different about him is better.

If you've owned or handled an ROTF Leader Prime, you might recall that the transformation was incredibly involved, a little frustrating at points, but nevertheless somehow resulted in a surprisingly accurate action figure in both modes.  Masterpiece Movie Prime still has an incredibly involved (and, as noted above, very similar) transformation.  It's actually probably a little bit more involved!  The good news is, nothing frustrated me.  The transformation is more complex, but no parts get in the way of other parts, and I never wanted to throw it against the wall or give up in frustration.  So that's enjoyable!  

The toy is also more accurate in both modes.  The forearms are less-obviously hood chunks, everything's sculpted a little closer to on-model, and the kibble on the back tidies up much better and takes up a smaller volume.

There's also a buttload more paint.  (Takara's released a few ROTF Leader Primes with an obsessively-accurate paintjob, but this is the first for Hasbro, I believe.)  The flames are properly outlined in silver.  The insides of the legs are painted properly.  The biceps are wrapped in color instead of being left bare.  Silver areas are painted silver where it can be, rather than being left in silver plastic.

The headlights are translucent plastic, rather than being painted on.  Parts of the toy are in die-cast metal, which not only helps him easily stand (the feet are largely metal), but since the die-cast is left unpainted, it gives his metal parts an appealing, weary texture.

You can swap the faces on his head from mouthplated to bare mouthed.  There's a small Matrix inside his stomach.  He comes with two swords and his gun, which you can either give him to wield or combine and store on his back in either mode.  He has some finger articulation, and everything satisfyingly ratchets when you move him around.  

Also, there's an MP Movie Bumblebee, and the two seem to be in scale with each other.  That's allegedly the Masterpiece line's thing, robot mode scale, and that's an appealing draw to me.  I'm on board for accurate scale alone, pretty much.

He's pretty great.  I mean, he may eventually some day take your face, but the face-ripping hooks aren't included, soooooo.  

Of course Anode is my new favorite Transformers character.  She's a snarky lady asshole who's married to another lady Transformer.  I'm pretty sure I write like thirteen varients of this character already.  Her very existence makes me suspect at some point I get thrown back in time and become James Roberts.

Once Titans Return Windblade was announced, I was like, oh, hey, lady jet could maybe be painted into another lady jet (and both use propeller propulsion in some way), and I started making plans.  I asked Trent Troop to make an Anode head for his Shapeways store, and I bought one of those (in frosted extreme detail).  I prepared paints.  And, finally, I got a second Windblade so I could beige her up.  

I have to say, this ended up looking more like Anode than I'd expected.  The translation went pretty well.  I mean, she doesn't turn into a space-biplane, and she doesn't transform the same (legs unwrapping into upper wings), but in robot mode she clearly has the right vibes and all the colors can go in the right places.  

And so I am pleased.

And, obviously, I'm gonna make her wife Lug.  I've got a second TR Rewind on order, and I'm gonna see if Trent can't make a Shapeways Lug head.