Optimal Omega's Transformers

Well, Hasbro let me down.  Although, Sky Lynx is cool.  I wonder if Takara will do the same?  I find it highly doubtful.  Let's start slow and work our way towards the good stuff.  Again, all pictures are from TFW2005.com.

I had pretty much decided to pass on Combiner Wars Devastator.  Hasbro's version really didn't so anything for me.  Any excitement I might have felt at the time of the initial announcement had passed rather quickly.  He just looked weird, and the individual bots did nothing for me.  They really looked like upscaled Legends-class figures.  Takara has remedied that by doing some remolding on the elbows of several of the Constructicons so that they actually have elbows!  Such a small touch really does wonders for how the figures look in my mind.  Sure there are G1 accurate weapons and purple fists, but the elbows really have me sold on Devastator.  I'll just have to see how much it's going to cost to import him before I truly make up my mind.

I found the announcement of Optimus Primal from Beast Wars to be an odd, if welcome proposition.  Can it really be that Beast Wars will be 20 years old next year?  That makes me feel so old.  At any rate, while I really like Optimus Primal, and a Masterpiece figure is a welcome addition, I wonder just how many characters from this series will get the Masterpiece treatment.  I can see Megatron, Dinobot, Silverbolt, Black Arachnia, Cheetor, and maybe Tigatron.  I'd really like to see Inferno, just because I always liked him. This is all Takara had to show during their presentation, so any real kind of judgements will have to wait until some pictures of the robot mode are seen.  I'm liking what I see, so far.

The real star of the show?  Masterpiece Ironhide!  A G1 Ironhide with a head!  He looks pretty freaking good.  I've seen some flak about the panels on the sides of his waist, but I could really care less about that.  As a fandom, we're pretty fickle and tend to get ticked off over very minor things.  How can someone really be mad about a couple of panels, when Ironhide has so many accessories!  Just look at that picture!  There are accessories that he used in both the cartoon and original toy!  The freaking battle sled is included!  This, this is a thing of beauty.  I really don't know what else happened or what was shown at the Tokyo Toy Fair, and I really don't care.  Freaking Masterpiece Ironhide is happening!  It's a reality.  Automatic buy.  Just waiting on the preorder.