Wasting Time

Woops, it's been awhile.  My bad.  No excuses. 

Just stopping in with a time waster today, no real blog. 

I noticed on Seibertron someone linked to a hilarious Conan sketch, which can be viewed here and has a cameo by the Dinobots: Link goes to Youtube of clip

Inspired by that, I threw together a lazy gif.  Hope you enjoy!

Arms Micron Madness

Arms Micron Madness!

(or: Snap Into a Slim Jim.)

I don't write this blog for recognition.  Or money (click the ads, lol).  Or fame.  I do it, clearly, for the women.

This is a rare post though.  This is, as far as I'm aware, the first In-Hand Review of some Transformers releases.  This is a review of Takara's AMW 13 and 14 Arms Micron Weapon sets.  

First, a disclaimer.  I have no idea if these are a weird semi-exclusive-pre-release or just a leak.  They were packaged like this:

There's many colors in the Micron Rainbow. Don't be afraid.

I bought these off a random eBay auction that swore that these were exclusive, clear, metallic, and red/black all at the same time.  Look, I don't know.  I bought them despite the confusion.  I'm pretty sure the actual mass release of AMW 13 and 14 will require assembly.  Whether or not they'll be these exact decos, I'm not sure.  Anyways, here are some Autobots!

Oh good, another R.A. recolor. No, that's awesome. Really.

Clear, Metallic, Red/Black, and Exclusive.  Suuuuure.

This set consists of OP, uh, B2, I.Ro, and RA.  "uh" is not an actual Micron name.  I just have no idea what Wheeljack's Micron's name is.  Probably WJ, if I were to guess.  Because they've been so creative naming these things.  Yeeeah...

Anyhow, as your eyes can see, these are all redecos of previous releases.  I don't think any Arms Micron has been released in the same deco more than once outside of Shining OP.  They've made it as hard as possible to even sort of Catch 'em All.  I.Ro and Wheeljack's dude have clear plastic.  I.ro is the same red as the Hell Flame Microns, and Wheeljack's guy is the same clear yellow as the Shining B2 from the Tokyo Toy Show.  

They all combine into the "Advanced Star Saber":

UT Era Starscream and Hot Shot molds can still hold it <3 td="td">

The combined mold is pretty cool.  Not the best combined Micron assembly I've seen, but hey, they come in one set, so you don't have to buy 5 Takara redecos of inferior molds that you don't want a second time to put it all together.  I put this practice down as if I haven't done it.  It's a dirty lie.  I've bought a lot of AM toys for just the microns.

Since we're on the topic of lies, here's some damn lies.  Or, Decepticons, if you will:

Clear, Not Clear, Metallic, Not Either, and Not Either. Still Not Convinced.

Gora shows a missed opportunity from UT: Megatron's
arm cannon should've been a micron a long time ago.

This set consists of Gora, Gul, Nozi, Ida, and Zori.  At least the Decepticon ones have something close to a name instead of just being acronyms.  

They also combine into this uber weapon, in this case the "Gravity Planet Bow Gun Weapon".  Somehow, that doesn't roll off the tongue.

Looks... unwieldy.

The Arms Microns have really injected some life into a line that is otherwise feeling a bit uninspired. These sets continue that trend and give you an awesome opportunity to have a bunch of molds and a bunch of fun all at once with very little frustration.  If you haven't yet dabbled in the realm of these, out of either apathy or fear of plamo, these sets would give you a good chance to see how you really feel about things.  

Looking forward to also getting the main release and seeing if what's in this blog is actually special, or if I'm just some dude buying things early 'just because'.  

'Til next time, 'Til all are one...

(James Roberts has really ruined my sign off line forever)

A new era?

There may be a new era coming to this blog.

Today, I bought a light tent.  No more bush-league pictures?  We'll see (in 5-8 business days).

All Your Base

All Your Base

(or: Are You a Bad Enough Dude to Rescue the President?)

We all have grails in Transformers collecting.  Some of these are easily attainable.  Some of these are expensive.  Most grails are both of these things - wanting things you can't have is the foundation of most of our desires, goals, and failed hook-ups with that one chick back in college that lived too far away and was probably too young anyway.  

Sometimes though, you get lucky.  One of the walls breaks down, or perhaps the standards one sets themselves to lower a bit, and the grail is attained.  Maybe it isn't always perfect, or what you had always imagined, but sometimes just getting something out of the way is exactly what you need to do.  

And I'm not talking about disappointing boobs.  

I'm talking about Japanese Transformers.  C'mon, what kind of blog do you think this is?  A blog?

Fun fact: there are more Micromaster helipads in the line then there are Micromaster Helicopters.

  That, my friends, is my grail.  C-371 Grandus.  You'll notice there are no radars - these are the standards that I lowered because The Price Was Right, Drew.  There's always the Brave Series one and paint.  Yes, this is the current plan.  

I knew a guy named Garry once.  Spelled his name like that and everything.  I called him Sky Garry once and he was monumentally confused.  I don't blame him.  

Grandus is 1/3 of the Battlestars, the other two being Sky Garry and Star Convoy.  They connect to form a sort of base like thing, but really, this is Micromaster stuff and you just kind of have to go with it and base it up as you see fit.  

Crow's nest view

Like that.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the quick look at Grandus.  When I have some radars, there may be a proper review of the Battlestars team.  

'Til next time, 'Til all are one!

A Quick Word

A quick word before starting on my next actual post -

In the event you were wondering, Minicon Month got scrapped for a variety of reasons.  Mostly, crazy work schedule, but also... damn it was unpopular.  Not one of those posts has even a double digit view count.  So, combine reader apathy and a busy schedule and... just couldn't keep it up.  

Anyways, off to type up something else now :D

Unite!

Unite!

(or: Seeing Green)

This is a strange post.  You're also reading, roughly, the third fourth fifth version of it.  Writer's block?  Lack of inspiration?  Boring Content?  I don't feel like any of those things apply.  I just realized at some point that I didn't have much to say.  Then, I realized I did, just not in a lot of words.

The show must go on.  

Welcome to a comparison post.  

Double Vision

In the past 14 months or so, Third Party Transformers have been seeing green - in more ways then one when one considers how much 3rd party stuff costs.  Two separate renditions of the Constructicons have been unleashed upon fans and their wallets - Maketoy's "Giant" and TFC Toy's "Hercules".  The question that has come up time after time, and been answered time after time as well, is which one is the one that I should buy?  (Spoiler alert: buy the one you like best!)  Here is this blogger's attempt at answering that question for you.  

Thanks to Tabtiurf for bringing over Giant and paling around for an afternoon so I could take these pictures.  You'll be able to soon see his thoughts on video at his Youtube channel, which I highly recommend checking out if you never have (hint: his thoughts are more concise and sharp than mine typically are!)

There are a few ways to compare the two, and several considerations when deciding "which is better!?"  Please note, the Hercules team members are decked out in the fantastic custom sticker sets available at www.reprolabels.com - if you have Herc and don't have these labels, you'll notice mine look a bit different/better.  Let the subjectivity begin!

The Scavengers

Your legs are treads?  Mine too!

Since Exgraver was the first bot in the Hercules set released, we'll start by comparing the Scavenger of each team.  This is the easiest comparison for me.

Check out my abs!

The Excavator (creative name!) from Giant underwhelms me considerably in robot mode.  He's small, has weird (though not really inaccurate) abs, and his shovel looks like kibble.  I do prefer his feet, because they don't seem to rely on plastic on plastic gears like Exgraver's feet.  The bits of yellow and black detail are also a nice touch.  

This is probably a good time to go ahead and point out the differences in the green, as if you couldn't see them.  It is worth noting that the green on Giant is hard to photograph - it gets a bit washed out on camera, and I don't do any post production to these pictures to correct it.  In other words - in person, Giant looks more green than in these pictures.  Giant does have a closer green to the original G1 toys.

These shoulders took some work at the gym, brah.

Exgraver gives Scavenger something he's never had before - presence.  Broad shoulders, a shovel as a weapon, and although the pose in this picture is boring, the toy is quite capable of awesome poses (note: Maketoys Scavenger is also very poseable, possible more so).

Big scoop, little scoop

The vehicle modes are really where you can see a marked difference in size.  Maketoy's version is a bit more true to an actual Earth-mode, while Exgraver takes some liberties with its altmode.  Aesthetically, it's easy to lean towards Giant on this altmode, but the tiny size bugs me.  I know the size is done so that the arm is proportional, but I still don't have to like it.  The huge scoop on Exgraver is a plus but the rest of it feels like a box with treads that has a driver's booth kind of tacked on as an afterthought.  I guess this is a case where I'm not really crazy about either of these guys in altmode, but for entirely different reasons.  

Before we move on, let's explore a fun feature of Giant's Scavenger:

I didn't have any of the canned kind of spinach.

He can steal spinach from unsuspecting rabbits, consume it, and activate Popeye mode.  This is totally how it's done and the instructions definitely don't cover it.  

Long Hauls

Nothing long about 'em

Occasionally, a take on a character is radically different from another take on the character.  This is definitely one of those times!  First, Giant's version of Long Haul:

Well they recruited me for linebacker, but now I play Fullback

This bruiser takes Long Haul, turns him around, beefs up his shoulders, and throws his tires to his waist.  I know, that had no punchline and ended up being descriptive instead of funny.  Pretty sure you'll get over it, or just quit reading this abortion of a paragraph and move along to the next part.  

This is definitely the more creative take on Long Haul when comparing Giant and Hercules.  The big upper body is very fun, and even the robot mode makes you feel like Long Haul could form the core of a super massive giant robot.  It's a good thing he can - with my beer gut, if I had to do the same task, it would fail pretty horribly.  No one would be happy with me and I've have to run away and start a family band and tour the countryside and you're not invited.

Fun with posing before moving on to the next one:

Three point stance of doom.

"Heavy Labor" sounds like a long night.

The Hercules take on Long Haul is a bit more traditional, with the front of the dump truck becoming the chest.  I like the look of Heavy Labor, but they really did play it safe here.  That's not a bad thing necessarily, but the articulation is pretty straightforward.  There is a waist joint hidden in there, even though it doesn't look like it, but the rest of the torso is pretty blocky and limits what you can do with him as an individual.

Not so different now.

The alt modes on these are really, super similar.  I mean, only so much you can do with a dump truck.  I think Giant's Dump Truck (yes, that is its name) comes across much cleaner, and it has some nice built in detail - a lot of the detail on Heavy Labor comes from the Reprolabels.

The Hooks

Dr. Crank was a guy I knew in college.

You don't expect a Hook figure to be very good, since he has to simultaneously be a weird alt mode, torso, head, and shoulders of the combined Devastator.  Crane does this very well.  Dr. Crank does this 'ok'.  Let's explore why.

Green in the face, but not very sick.

Crane manages to get his crane out of the damn way.  This opens up the rest of the individual bot to be able to move, twist, and generally be kind of dynamic.  I think the face is my least favorite part, just kind of plain and the eyes are too big.  And the green head is out of place.  Otherwise, again, one can't complain about the huge amount of articulation and general look.  They did a good job here making the kiddle not be too kibbly.  Shoulder wheel kibble has been done much, much worse plenty of times.  The only part of the bot that doesn't really look good is the portion of it that ends up below the knees.  There's a specific reason for this, something that really bugs me.  Here is that reason:

And you thought IDW made a mockery of Devy.

That is Devastator's head.  Once you see something like that, you can't unsee it and then want to make jokes.

I had another head.  For symmetry.

Ok, enjoy that for a moment.  Now onward.

Like having a built in pillow!

Dr. Crank does feel a lot like Hook to me.  Tall, lean (despite himself), and with an arrogant face.  Unfortunately there are some problems with the bot mode, namely, that it's an afterthought.  This toy was made to be a crane truck that turns into Devastator's torso.  It happens to also have a robot mode.  The articulation is lacking and while you can remove the crane to make him look a little better, there's still that horrible post behind his head.  At least the Devastator head hides better.  A lot better.  In other words, at least he doesn't have head foot, but overall, Dr. Crank ends up being a bit too brickish for my liking.  

The Scrappers

Size differential rearing its head again.

The leader of a group is important.  Scrapper is the leader of the Constructicons.  I'll let you decide who looks better.  Seriously, I won't say anything else (until the end "verdict").

Nice cop out quick way to get through another comparison, eh?

The Mixmasters

Hey dude you uh... may wanna get those growths checked out...

Time for an admission - Mad Blender is weird, over bulky, and doesn't look much like Mixmaster.

Too much.

There's just too much going on.  Too many missile pods, too much darn behind the head kibble (when it should be interesting robot bits).  Not crazy about this guy as Mixmaster.

See?  Robot Bits.  Or something.

This guy though.  Cement Mixer (or whatever his overly generic name is) is cool as hell.  If they sold him separately, I would double dip.  Alas, they don't.  

I'm much more ok with Mad Blender in alt mode.  I like both alt modes quite a bit.  Cement Mixers always seemed to me as a kid to be good things to be Transformers.  They're big, unconventional, and if you're under 8 years old, just a lot of fun.  It's a truck with a spinning drum that makes roads and shit.  Or Devastator legs.  Or it could be my love of Quick Mix (the 80s version).  Even the Cybertron Quick Mix is a fun toy in his own way, though he did prove that having the mixing drum as a huge gun wasn't the best idea ever conceived. Any of these ways are good excuses for liking Cement Mixer Transformers.  If you like them, you are good and you should feel good.  

The Bonecrushers

:sigh: Maketoys, did you even try?

This is another case where I realized that the arms of Giant are supposed to be vehicles that turn into arms.  The robot modes are built in because they must have felt like they had to.  

Look, I own worse toys.  I don't blame you if you like this guy.  They did do one really cool thing and the articulation is very good!  The alt mode is good and the arm mode is an arm!  This robot mode is silly.  

At least he can Beam Spam while he Beam Spams.

At least they gave him Beam Sabers.  No beams, you'll have to go raid your Gundam stash for that.  I didn't dislike this guy as much at first, but the more I looked at the pictures and thought back to it, the more I disliked it.  It's purely opinion (obviously, this is a blog), but something about it just bugs me.  

I don't like him either, let's not kid around.

Something about Neckbreaker doesn't sit right with me either.  Is Bonecrusher that hard to design?  I know he has weird connector torso in G1, but is updating him such a chore that I don't like either third party take on him?  I guess it must be.  I'd rather have had a super stylized connector torso thing on one of them, but it didn't happen on either.  Oh well.  Here's a quick look at vehicle mode.

Yay let's push dirt and stuff.

I do like the alt modes.  There, I said something nice.

The Teams

Prepare for Trouble! Make it double! Uh, guys, the next line doesn't sound like us...

One thing that must be remembered is that these are, more than any other combiner group, made to be a team.  Both teams go together quite well, and display well together whether or not you choose to combine them or leave them as individuals.  

This is not why you're here.

Unite!

The combined mode of each is the money shot.  The home run.  The Tony Danza.  Both are big, imposing, and look like Devastator.  The size is surprisingly comparable given the smaller stature of Giant's individual bots:

The scale is pretty good on them when lined up with other Decepticons in the same "Universe":

You can like either of them better, that's you're call, but one thing's for sure...

The Hasbrostator sucks compared to these two.  They volunteered to help.

Thanks, bros.

The Verdict

Pros of Giant

• Highly articulated individual robots.
• Mixmaster is great!
• Long Haul is creative and a fresh take.
• Vehicles actually look like 'real life' construction vehicles.
• Costs less (sorry, this is a factor).
• Out of the box decos are good.
• Green is extremely close to G1 toys.

Cons of Giant

• Scrapper, Bonecrusher, and Scavenger robot modes are weak.
• Robots do not consistently scale with one another.
• Forearms are extra vehicle kibble.
• Devastator's face is not as detailed as other figures.
• Tentative conclusion on this - hard to pose/stand when combined (I could be convinced otherwise).

Pros of Hercules

• Huge.  Big, imposing, and fits the part.
• Looks great with the Reprolabels.
• Creative forearm transformation and gun configuration means little extra kibble.
• Visor for Devastator's head is just awesome.
• Green feels like an update and is very bold.
• Scrapper is dead on nearly perfect.
• Extremely stable in combined mode.

Cons of Hercules

• Expensive.  Again, sorry, this is a factor.
• Blocky robots and simple transformations not for everyone - leads to limited articulation.
• Looks great with Reprolabels (they cost extra!)
• Hands become vehicle mode kibble.
• Mad Blender/Mixmaster is a poor homage.

Ultimately, I can recommend one of these over the other, but the margin is slimmer than I expected it to be.  Cost aside, even though it is a factor, if you can afford Hercules, do it.  It took me awhile to figure out why I thought that.  Why did Giant not make me regret Herc?  It's a good toy, with great articulation, great detail, and passes great for a Classics Devastator, and costs roughly half as much.  Well, one night a moment of clarity hit and I realized - Hercules just is Classics Devastator.  It goes above and beyond passing to the point where even Hasbro/Takara, with limitless resources, may not ever top it.  The size, look, and general grandeur of the toy make it my choice for Devastator.  There's a certain magic in putting Hercules together for the first time, a certain childlike joy of buying individual parts over several months and finally, at long last, having the centerpiece of your Classics Decepticon shelf, towering over everything else.

Giant gives you one box where it's basically combined already.  Boo!  Still a good toy though.  If you can't drop the $600 on Herc, it's totally understandable and no one should look down on you for the choice of Giant.

'Til next time, 'Til all are one!

Day 3: Guardian Speed

October is Minicon Month!

Day 3: Guardian Speed

Series: Revenge of the Fallen (JP) (Campaign)

Partner/Team: Guardian Team

Repaint/Variant Count: At least 7

Very pretty.  Pick this up if you ever see it!