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.

BotCon 2015 and Tokyo Toy Show Reactions Part One - The Hasbro Effect

There's been a lot of new reveals popping up on the inter-webs from both Hasbro and TakaraTomy thanks to BotCon and the Tokyo Toy Show.  Sadly, I was unable to attend either one due to prior commitments hanging out with James Hetfield and Jeff Walker and working on forming a metal supergroup of epic proportions.  Hopefully my touring schedule will allow me to attend one or noth next year.  Thankfully, all of the online Transformer sites had news and pictures!  I'll give my thoughts on what I thought were important items from BotCon today and tomorrow I'll go over the Takara stuff.  Maybe a few items that aren't that important.  All of these pics were pulled from TFW2005.com.

Let's start with a figure that I'm both excited for and really don't care for at the same time - Sky Lynx.  Sky Lynx will be a Voyager-class figure, which is okay, I suppose.  I'd really prefer for this to be a Leader-class figure.  This looks like a really good design.  I just think that if Sky Lynx was made a Leader-class, we'd get the separation into two figures that I feel we need.  Then again, Sky Lynx in media nowadays is depicted in the combined form, so I can kind of understand where Hasbro is coming from.  Know what I really don't like?  The fact that Sky Lynx is not part of a freaking combiner team now.  Ugh.

Again.  Ugh.

Sky Reign, I think is the name that Hasbro is going with.  First off, that's a horrible name.  Second, what?  Is every G1 figure going to combine now?  Sky Reign is made up of Sky Lynx, Wheeljack, Hound,  Smokescreen, and Trailbreaker.  I guess this is good news as this means that Trailbreaker might not be dead in the comic anymore, and Hound is getting a new figure, but it's still a bit odd to have every single Autobot combine. It takes the uniqueness and power away from what gestalts are - rare super warriors.  It's beginning to feel like when everyone was all of a sudden a mutant in the Marvel books.  It's becoming freaking ubiquitous.  Speaking of Sky Reign's limbs, the only one I'm mildly interested in is Hound.

Even then, he doesn't look spectacular.  He is an improvement on the Universe figure, but like every other Combiner Wars limb, he's a retool of one of four base molds.  Ugh.  The rest of the team are just as uninspired.  Here's a look at Wheeljack.

Where's the inspiration?  The innovation?  The Breakdown mold gets used again for Sunstreaker.  Look, I understand that most of the original Scramble City combiner limbs had the exact same transformation scheme regardless of alt mode, but that was during a time of limited engineering.  There just isn't any real excuse for this anymore.  Sure, there are some changes to the figures, but they all look pretty much the same.  It's just laziness.  Swap heads and chest pieces on Breakdown, Sunstreaker, and Wheeljack, and you still have the exact same figure.  And this new iteration of Wheeljack is so much worse than the figure released five years ago.  Just look at the older figure.

Ok, this pic isn't from TFW2005, it's from TFWiki.net

Is the original Generations figure, perfect?  No, but it is by and large, to me at least, a much better looking figure than the Combiner Wars figure.  It seems as though we're headed towards a point where figures are losing certain aspects and after awhile, we'll be back to having bricks for figures again.  Just ugh.  Speaking of ugh...

This is one ugly Sunstreaker.  Gah.

Bruticus looks pretty good for a figure made up almost entirely of retooled figures.  Brawl looks like a new mold, so there's that.  Freaking fists and feet still look horrible.  And Blast Off is a straight repaint of Slingshot, from the looks of it.

So Sky Lynx is a definite buy and Hound is a maybe. The rest, maybe if someone gave them to me.  Bruticus would look better with proportioned feet, so he's a possibility, what with the proliferation of third party upgrade parts.  Still, after spending close to $100 on a figure, I can't imagine having to spend about $30 bucks for feet.  Besides, not purchasing these figures gives me more money for vintage figures and what was released from the Tokyo Toy Show.!  We'll go over that on my next post.

Botcon News I'm Excited About

Another year and another Botcon has passed.  It has always been a dream of mine to actually attend a Botcon.  Maybe someday that will happen.  Until then, I will always be glued to sites such as Allspark and TFW2005 for up to the minute Botcon updates and Twitter for up to the second details.  Several things caught my attention whilst perusing the news and I'd like to share what has me excited the most.

First, in a huge surprise, Hasbro is reissuing Predaking!  No, not the current Beast Hunters dragon, but the once and current king of the gestalts/combiners.  This is great news for those who never got the original or any of the Takara reissues as I'm sure it'll be a lot cheaper than trying to get any of those three.  I'd be all over this of it was the plastic version, but judging by the pictures, it looks to be the diecast version, which I have thanks to the last Takara reissue.  The plastic version doesn't have the sagging arms because it's not as heavy.  Still, this is great news and shows Hasvto thinking outside the box a bit.  I haven't been able to track down a price, release date or even which retailer will carry this. Most likely it'll be a Toys R Us exclusive.

From www.tformers.com

Up next, we have the Legends class figures.  Just like Bumblebee and Optimus, these new figures will be two packs.  I haven't bothered to get either Bumblebee or Optimus because I'm generally not a fan of the figures in this size range.  Thanks to Swerve and Cosmos, that has changed.  I love that Swerve looks like he was ripped from IDW's MTME.  And Cosmos has never looked better!

Welcome to Swerve's!

Beautiful

Speaking of MTME, check out Skids!  He finally gets some love!  And he's a Deluxe!  I love the fact that he still has all of weapons that his G1 version did.  The most heavily armed theoretician ever indeed.  Joining Skids in the Deluxe assortment is someone I wasn't expecting - Waspinator!  While I've never been particularly fond of Beast Wars, it's nice to see him included for the 30th Anniversary.

Nineteen eighty-four!

The Voyagers are interesting as well.  I really love the new Rhinox figure.  Making him a Voyager just makes sense for some reason.  Hasbro is also giving us a redeco of Blitzwing as Doubledealer.  I like the deco, especially the shark stuff on the jet mode.  The head sculpt is great too as it really captures the look of the G1 figure.  Hopefully the q/c issues that plagued Blitzwing will be corrected by then.

Maximize!

Dealer

There's a joke here somewhere...I'll think of it eventually.

Lastly, we get our first look at Masterpiece Acid Storm!  The new packaging for the Hasbro's Masterpieces is...interesting.  It certainly sets it apart on the shelf.  As for the figure, I'm a known lover of the mold, both original and the retooled version.  I'm still not sure why Acid Storm and not Sunstorm, however. Maybe Hasbro is trying to brand their own Seeker to distinguish themselves from TakaraTomy?  Who knows.  The green is a little brighter than I'd imagine, but still a very good looking figure.

Not exactly neon, but close.

So that's it for this post.  There are some great figures on the way in the coming months and year.  After what I felt was a down year from Hasbro in terms of figures and quality, they've more than made up for it.  It seems that Hasbro has found a way to pry money from my wallet.  I can't wait!