Transformers Collectors' Club

With Mike's statue dealt with, it's time to turn our attention back to the next Shortpacked! statue!  Check out this preview of Robin here on the left.  She's still being finalized, but I wanted to share a sneak peek anyway.

Robin's in the preorder stage, meaning you can grab her for $5 off the full price.  If you're on the fence, now is better than later to decide!

Oh,  hello, Blurr.  I remember you.  You're that speed-talkin' Micro Machines guy.  You know what my favorite Blurr moment was?  When  Hardhead forcibly shut you up by smothering you.  That was pretty great.

And, sure, there were times when you didn't have the speed-talking gimmick.  There were your few pre-Furman Marvel comics speaking roles.  There was, uh, All Hail Megatron.  The sad thing that I learned is that Blurr needs his speed-talking gimmick.  He's super boring and unexceptional without it.  It's all he has.  Blurr's problem is what makes him remarkable is also what makes him annoying.  He's an incredibly superficial character.

Which is why (gasp) I am going to go out on a limb and say that I like Drift's character more than Blurr's.  So, yes, you might believe that Drift is the worst kind of Marty Stu, being some kind of magical sword guy who shows up just to be righter about everything than everyone else, with a dark, scandalous past and godlike training from a secret Mary Suetopia which he discovered...  but at least he's not That Guy Who Talks Fast.  It's way more fun to hate Drift than it is to love Blurr.

Thus part of my problem ranking Blurr's toy versus Drift's.  As you can see, one is a retool of the other.  Blurr has a new head (based on his IDW comics design), a large gun and two handguns instead of a large sword and two ... handswords?, and a different spoiler.  And despite being a less interesting character to me, he's much, much, muuuuuch prettier.  Drift's colors are pretty boring.  He's solid white and dark gray, with some tiny bits of red.  Blurr, instead of being solid white, has this vivid range of blues.  The only non-blue non-black color on him is the red for his knees and his chest symbol.  He's not solid blue.  He's multi-blue.  And they're very good blues.

I probably stared at Blurr the most of all the toys in Hasbro's BotCon 2010 display cases.

Blurr's guns work real hard to out-cool Drift's swords.  Blurr has a huge gun, of course, just like Drift had the huge sword, and it's a huger gun than Drift's sword.  It also has a fold-out peg in the middle of the barrel so that Blurr can hold the gun two-handed.  What you can do with Blurr's two handguns is pretty neat.  Yeah, they still store in the hip holsters, just like Drift's mini-swords did, and Blurr can run around carrying them individually while the big gun's snapped onto his back... but you can also clip them onto the end of the barrel of the larger gun.  If you face them barrel-forward, you end up with a three-pronged supergun.  If you face them barrel backwards, you end up with a tripod for the larger gun.  A tripod!  You know, for all your crouching and waiting snipery needs.

And yet is it cooler than swords?  I dunno.  That's a tough call.  Sure, lots of  characters come with bunches of guns, but who the heck comes with a veritable golf bag of blades?  However, these blades don't combine like Blurr's guns do.  And Blurr is prettier than Drift, hands down, but Blurr-the-character just isn't that interesting to me.  You can't even ironically own Blurr's toy like you can ironically own Drift's toy.

People ask, which of the two should they get?  I answer... fuck me if I know!

A while back I sent the Esteemed Linkara of Atop the Fourth Wall my copies of the first volume of Dreamwave's Transformers comic.  I think the video speaks for itself, other than to say that it's too bad that "The Touch" isn't interrupted to note that Optimus Prime's truck mode has an uneven number of wheels.

Good work, Linkara, good work.

Hey, guys!  It's a custom Alternators-style Shattered Glass Ravage, painted expertly by Rod!  He was kind enough to show us his work in the forums, so come check out his image gallery.  Dude, he painted a black toy white.  Do you know how hard that is?  It's friggin' hard core, is what it is!

Seeing this gallery makes me want to dig out my Alternators Ravage again.  That was one fine-ass toy. (Well, the second one was.)

(I love the response from the guy who's pissed off that I write toy collecting strips specifically for a toy collecting website on topics that only toy collectors would understand.  Should they be about sports?)

The Transformers Animated toyline is undoubtedly done in the States, but Japan's still cranking out what remains of what we didn't get over here.  Good news!  Also, bad news, since their stuff is not often compatible with our stuff, what with the metallic paint coating.

Nonetheless, I decided to chip in for Takara's Wingblade Optimus Prime, which gives Optimus his flight powerup that we saw in the final episodes.  Originally, these parts were supposed to come with a battle-damaged-less version of Deluxe Class ($12) Optimus Prime and be sold as a Voyager ($20).  But because Hasbro made sure that the upgrade was equally compatible with Voyager Optimus Prime, Takara opted for using the bigger Prime with their Wingblade release.

(I don't have access to my Deluxe Prime, so no pictures of the new parts on him just yet.)

Prime's mine because even if he ended up not fitting in with the rest of my Animated display due to his clashing deco, he'd still make a pretty good solo display piece.  Takara released the newer, more-in-scale Bumblebee at the same time, but I declined to order him because, well, the whole point of getting the more-in-scale Bumblebee is to stand him with other dudes... and he's in colors that definitely won't mesh well with my other dudes.  So dang.  Maybe I'll pick him up at a BotCon if I get needy.

Takara already released a Voyager Optimus Prime in metallic paint, so they decided to make the base figure of their Wingblade Prime release in translucent plastic.  Parts of him are still painted metallic (probably the parts they couldn't cast in translucent plastic), but he's still mostly translucent.  Thankfully, his Wingblade parts weren't done in translucents, probably just so you could combine the parts seamlessly with the original metallicky release if you wanted to.

Let's get something out of the way.  I don't like the metallic paint.  Why?  Because these things are shipped tangled up in twist-ties.  Not the new paper ties Hasbro has recently changed to, but the old plastic ones.  These like to scratch up metallic paint something fierce.

It's a bad idea.

The parts snap on easy enough.  Obviously this upgrade wasn't planned from the beginning, since the add-ons are done pretty creatively.  Did the original toy have some sort of random tab or groove somewhere?  Guess what, that's getting used!  The arm parts fit over the previous arms, pegging into the fistholes.  The jetpack plugs into the flashers on Prime's back the same way the flashers plug into the top of the truck roof during transformation.

Now, the new truck mode is where it gets kinda sloppy.  Basically, all you do is pile everything onto the back of the vehicle.  In layers.  It doesn't really create anything pretty.  It's a truck with wings and a pair of forearms on it.  There is a Magnus hammer shoved somewhere in there.  It's inelegant, but it serves its purpose.  And, really, nobody is going to care that much about this mode.

I thank God that the new parts don't stand out that much when plugged into my matte American Voyager Prime.  That's what I was hoping for, anyway!  Sure, some of it's shiny, but it doesn't matter all that much.  They were hastily-added upgrades in-fiction as well, so I can even justify it like the continuity nerd I am.

Even if Denton Tipton looks down his nose at me for being so.