Universe Deluxe Class wave 5: Smokescreen and Dinobot - OUT

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Nevermore
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Universe Deluxe Class wave 5: Smokescreen and Dinobot - OUT

Post by Nevermore »

We've had the preorders before, now we have pics (we already had pics for Smokescreen's vehicle mode from the Collectors' Club magazine cover, plus those not-to-be-posted-in-public scans from the Club magazine interor).

Now we have public pics.

Smokescreen and Dinobot - new mold and redeco of Universe Silverstreak/Prowl, respectively.
Looking for a complete Energon Sky Shadow (from Superion Maximus).
Offering: Binaltech Hound, Swindle, Ravage (Corvette), Skids.
Can buy in stores: Robot Heroes Tigatron/Inferno, Ricochet/Predaking.
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Old Peter
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Post by Old Peter »

Dinobot looks a lot better than Cheetor, imo. And Smokescreen might be a must-have.

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glazios
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Post by glazios »

Smokey = Meh in a "To Be Expected" way. Might get when/IF it comes to the UK... and if I happen to feel like it at the time.

Dinobot = Shocking. In both good and bad ways. They fixed the whole bit where the raptor's undercarriage was crap on the BW mold... but why does he still have a gun hidden in his arse? That bit never made sense the first time around. Smarmy remarks aside, not too sure I likes the colour scheme. Looks like he got beaten with the whole Ugly Tree then dragged through a tarpit all kick-y and scream-y. :nonono:
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Post by Transformer Kamen »

Dinobot is totally in. His colours aren't exactly show accurate, but the mold looks completely awesome anyway. Although, it does look like his beast mode has a touch of robot kibble on his belly.

Already having Prowl and Silverstreak, I can't say I'm excited about Smokescreen even though it was expected. He definiately has a Skittles "Taste the Power of the Rainbow!" thing going on, which is amusing. Still, that is a good mold, so I'll regulate him to a definite maybe status.
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Post by RID Scourge »

I'll pass on old Chopperface. Strangely enough I like the old version better.

I'll be getting Smokescreen since I plan to get Silverstreak. Figure I might as well round out the Datsuns.
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Post by poyguimogul »

Dang the Bright paint of smokescreen is beautiful.

Dinobot, looks pretty good too,not much dif tho from his beast wars.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

It's difficult to believe they could fail so spectacularly with the Smokescreen deco. He looks like a kid ate a box of crayons and threw up on him.
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Post by borg72 »

Cliffjumper wrote:It's difficult to believe they could fail so spectacularly with the Smokescreen deco. He looks like a kid ate a box of crayons and threw up on him.

my nostalgic g1-love wants to slap you upside the head in a mark harmon style. i'd order this in henkei just for chrome-cannon goodness, never mind that he looks awesome as-is.
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Post by Treadshot A1 »

Cliffjumper wrote:It's difficult to believe they could fail so spectacularly with the Smokescreen deco. He looks like a kid ate a box of crayons and threw up on him.
I dunno, really. That's traditional smokescreen colours, imo. I'm glad they kept the front bumper black though. Looks better that way, to me.
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Post by zigzagger »

Hmm, I don't know. I mean, yes, it looks fine, I just think a little extra blue in the torso area would have broken up the red better, creating a slightly more consistent pattern, rather than adding the extra black. The colour placement seems kind of random.
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Post by Knightdramon »

Smokescreen is like yesterday's news, bring on that Dinobot. In that version AND the henkei version. That's how much I like it.
Few stuff in the UK to trade/sell. Measly sales thread.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

borg72 wrote:my nostalgic g1-love wants to slap you upside the head in a mark harmon style. i'd order this in henkei just for chrome-cannon goodness, never mind that he looks awesome as-is.
My common sense says you're a twit.

G1 Smokescreen is probably my favourite Transformer, especially in toy form, and largely because of a toy scheme so good the series has never topped it. That thing looks like a small child attacked it with their first paint set. The white stripe is, what, three miles thick (leading to a pair of wing-doors that look like they belong to a different figure). The colours are going to burn themselves into my monitor if I leave the images open too long. And even putting that down to Hasbro's usual promotional photography, why are his forearms multicoloured? And why is the spoiler yellow? They look awful. Nice of the robot mode to splotlight blue exhaust pipes, too.

Add onto this that Universe Prowl is a lousy figure anyway, what with the muddled arms, spindly chest, poor head sculpt, crappy neckblock, knock-off quality wheels and special Heath Robinson transformation, and this is a good reason why certain figures shouldn't automatically be repainted into the same people every damn time (Bluestreak seems to look a lot better, but then it'd take serious work to cock up that deco).

It's nothing to do with "nostalgia g1-love", it's about having something approaching ****ing taste rather than going "That's traditional smokescreen colours, imo". Movie Smokescreen had traditional Smokescreen colours, so did that Cybertron piece of shit. Both were lousy figures, and this is as well - Smokescreen deserved better (if they wanted to do a Smokescreen cash-in homage from this mould, the Alternators Rally deco would have worked better).

The original has "traditional smokescreen colours" and "chrome-cannon goodness", and looks miles and miles better. It can transform without bits popping off as well (disclaimer: unless you're a clumsy wanker). There's progress for you, eh?
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Post by Treadshot A1 »

True, it is a bit garish/multicoloured/looks like a rainbow, but i think it looks ok. Sure, there's room for improvement, but i guess i just have low standards. At any rate, i'd probably bash it.

Probably into that Alt. Rally deco you mentioned. :up:

I don't really know if "smokescreen deserved better". I guess i just don't care for the character as much.

EDIT: After more detailed look at bot mode, i see what you mean. hey scr*wed it up pretty badly. I can stand the car, though. Although, the bot mode is 'cute, in a Mugenbine combiner sort of way.
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Post by ganon578 »

These photos just made Smokescreen a must have for me...
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Post by borg72 »

Cliffjumper wrote:My common sense says you're a twit.

...

The original has "traditional smokescreen colours" and "chrome-cannon goodness", and looks miles and miles better. It can transform without bits popping off as well (disclaimer: unless you're a clumsy wanker). There's progress for you, eh?
My fiancee agrees with you regarding all repaints, despite multiple attempts to explain the four classics seekers sat next to each other on my bookshelf, she still thinks i'm an idiot for buying the "same" toy four times (three if you don't count ramjet).

Although talking about common sense and bitch-slapping me with "but its not geewun!" rankles. I disagree with what you say about the mold, which I enjoy, and have yet to pop anything off of. Call it hand grenades or horseshoes, but it's close enough for me.

If you want the original... go look on your shelf, and quit moaning about something you have no interest in anyway.
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Post by Neuronutter »

Cliffjumper wrote:
Add onto this that Universe Prowl is a lousy figure anyway, what with the muddled arms, spindly chest, poor head sculpt, crappy neckblock, knock-off quality wheels and special Heath Robinson transformation, and this is a good reason why certain figures shouldn't automatically be repainted into the same people every damn time (Bluestreak seems to look a lot better, but then it'd take serious work to cock up that deco).
Heh. Prowl is one of my favourite figures from Universe, though Onslaught is probably my favourite, I just think Prowl looks very dynamic and I like how poseable he is. Saying that Bluestreak looks to have a good colour scheme and Smokescreen looks bloody awful.

Certain figures being automatically repainted into the same people is ingrained in Transformers history now. It's way too late to change that. Just look at the automatic Thundercracker, Skywarp repaints in Animated. Sure they've thrown in Sunstorm and the girl as well but it's always the same old guys.

I'm really not sure about Dinobot. I don't have any BW figures, having started recollecting TF's during Armada, so I'd like to get some. The robot mode isn't convincing me that much, but the Dino mode is really good. I especially like the large toe!
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Post by Cliffjumper »

borg72 wrote:Although talking about common sense and bitch-slapping me with "but its not geewun!" rankles.
Sorry, when did I say it was bad because it wasn't G1? I said it was bad because it looks bad - hence breakdown of failures and everything. And noted that a colour scheme of a toy that has little more than minimal resemblance to the G1 toy (the bit where I mentioned the Alternator scheme - did you read the post?). That's the common sense... common sense isn't "Oh, that uses the same basic colour scheme as Smokescreen, so it must fit the mould like a glove!", common sense is "Oh, that uses the same basic colour scheme as Smokescreen, which doesn't fit the mould and thus looks like shit".

Lots of characters have been improved by updates over the years - definitives for me include Universe Sunstreaker, G2 Sideswipe, Classics Skywarp/Bumblebee, RobotMasters 'Mirage' and 'Optimus Prime', Energon 'Wheeljack' and so on. But some characters, either through good design in the first place (Skids, Soundwave) or consistently botched homages (Grimlock, Prowl) still haven't bettered the original figures. Simple, right?

Do you even have the faintest clue what I'm talking about? Or is automatically equating preferring a specific G1 figure over a specific Universe figure with "but its not geewun!" just about the level you're capable of?
If you want the original... go look on your shelf, and quit moaning about something you have no interest in anyway.
It's a discussion board, idiot.
Neuronutter wrote:I just think Prowl looks very dynamic and I like how poseable he is.
My main problem with the mould is kinda just that - he looks pretty decent throwing certain 'dodging a null ray' poses, but complete balls in other ones (especially anything ressembling standing casually) - basically anything that shows off his Paris Hilton boobs-and-bones chest. The head articulation is a big problem with me as well, as all those poses ar slightly counteracted by the head only being able to rotate, and thus looking wrong in most modes... Most of the figures I love are 30 years old and you're lucky if the arms move, let alone anything else, but I find a figure that can basically breakdance with its' limbs, and yet has a relatively immobile head to be very annoying.
Certain figures being automatically repainted into the same people is ingrained in Transformers history now. It's way too late to change that. Just look at the automatic Thundercracker, Skywarp repaints in Animated. Sure they've thrown in Sunstorm and the girl as well but it's always the same old guys.
The thing is Thundercracker/Skywarp/Starscream have the same basic colour layout - not got the toys in front of me (actually, not got them at all - the on redeeming feature of the original Decepticon jet mould is people pay good money for it...), but I'm fairly sure on most of them (excluding stickers) what's grey on Starscream is black on Skywarp and blue on Thundercracker, and so on - this tends to transfer fairly naturally across most moulds, so if it works for one it'll work for the other two.

The Datsuns, however, have three different colour layouts. The mould was obviously designed with Prowl as the primary goal; Bluestreak is easy enough because he's deco's simple, especially with the 'third' colour hidden away in car mode (and there's even the option of leaving the black off if it'd screw things up). Smokescreen's is considerably more complicated and different. The original Diaclone is a result of someone sitting down and working out a scheme that would look good on that figure. The Universe Smokescreen is a result of someone lazy at Hasbro going "Hey, Prowl and Smokescreen used the same basic mould in the 1980s, that'll get us another figure out of this!" without stopping to think about whether it'd actually work.

The worst thing is the deco would probably be salvagable - de-accentuate the white stripe so it's a lot thinner (maybe just running between the wheelarches, brining the red down half an inch all around), and have the maroon and blue roughly where the white and black are on Prowl. Get rid of the random primary colours on the arms (especially the red) and spoiler, and it'd look a lot better (it also wouldn't show off the huge join lines in the car mode quite so much... as is, Smokescreen is basically colour-coded for transformation...).

It's lazy work. If some people want to wolf it down, that's up to them.
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Post by Neuronutter »

I'd never looked at the Seekers enough to realise the colour schemes translate. It makes sense, I'd just never realised. And yeah Smokescreen's scheme looks all off - the red arm patches is a perfect example of what you're saying.

I don't think I've posed Prowl in anything other than a dynamic pose, which is where he looks good. So I didn't notice how crap he must look if posed otherwise. That's quite amusing.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

In the grand scheme of things Prowl's probably alright... it's just compared to the job done with Mirage, Sunstreaker, Bumblebee, Starscream etc. he seems quite disappointing by comparison. Moving the front wings out with the doors is a big mistake, IMO - the car mode looks fragmented, and the robot mode chest looks... incomplete because of it (and the painted transparent plastic? Yuck, especially for the front wings). The main problem with the headcast is the prominent brow - not because it's inaccurate or anything, but because there's just no way you can convince yourself he's looking up with his optics and just keeping his head still...

The random red on Smokescreen's forearms just breaks up the scheme even more... Not sure why they didn't use black (not only for accuracy, but because it would have looked better... grey also would have worked). IMO, the mould's been designed for Prowl and Bluestreak, and Smokescreen is someone after the event going "If I finish this in 10 minutes, I can take a long lunch" without actually thinking it through. They should work in one of those hilarious injoke numberplates saying something like "W1LL TH15 D0?".

I may wll keep an eye out for the Henkei version, however - not for chromed missile goodness or whatever, but simply because there's a chance Takara will think about the paint deco and sort out the problems.

One I do think would probably work would be Sunstreaker/Sideswipe as Red Alert - red stripes down the inner leg probably wouldn't do much harm (and to be honest), and the rest of him would translate pretty naturally
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Post by borg72 »

fine. but now i'm not only buying him, I'm buying him *at* you. chrome goodness and all.
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