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[HotShot81]

I went a little cra-cra today.

First time I saw 4/5 of these bots in stock.

TR: Broadside
TR: Bubblebee
TR: Gnaw
TR: Kickback
TR: Chromedome (and for some reason I hear this name I hear it like they say it in the Japanese headmaster cartoon followed by head-on)

[Warcry]

I found myself a Triggerhappy last night! He's definitely every bit as good as the feedback says. I've always thought the original was a lovely design, both in robot and jet modes, and I'm really impressed with how good a job they did in capturing both. Having his huge jet-mode cannons dangling off of his wrists hurts his poseability a bit, and previous design teams probably would have tried to "fix" that, but I'm glad they didn't. It's a big part of what makes the guy recognizable.

Also, G1 Triggerhappy has some of the most beautiful colours and I'm really happy with how good a job they did matching them, something that doesn't always quite work (see the modern Legends Insecticons for examples of that going wrong).

If I have any complaints it's that I wish they'd based Blowpipe on the toy's head instead of the cartoon's, but that's just because I've had the G1 toy since 2004 or so and I've gotten used to it. The face looks a lot better in person that it does in photographs, anyway.

[Skyquake87]

I was idling around town waiting for my train home and stumbled into B&M which currently has some Combiner Wars figures on clearance (and also all of DCs 6" Movie Themed Suicide Squad figures with a BAF that's Killer Croc - I didn't bite as they looks kind of weird, especially Harley Quinn whose eyes are too far apart), and picked up Prowl and Mirage (thought I might get Sky Lynx some random limb mates).

Prowl is pretty awesome, for an afterthought repaint. I had Streetwise before selling the Protectobots on, but I think Prowl does a better job of the mould Streetwise. Maybe its the super crisp black and white paintwork, but he really is much nicer than I was expecting him to be.

Mirage is pretty good too. The curvy-ness of the Drag Strip mould suits him and the better integrated blue combiner port works wonders for the robot mode. Headsculpt is nice, but I'm not sure about the buck-toothed beard thing he's got going on. He's lumbered with a grey repaint of Dead End's rubbish sword thing, which is the only real downside.

[HotShot81]

I went shopping for shoes, and a DVD yesterday. Now we all know the stories about Wal-Mart, and how you can find everything and anything there, except a decent paying job. Ohh, how I kid here.

Well, after finding the DVD I wanted to buy, I visited the Plastic Crack Department, I.E the Toy section. Who should I see they are just stocking? Why Ominus & Skyshadow, and thanks to the great review on him, I took one out of those boxes Hasbro shipped him in and made a bee line for the cash. I mean why should Wal-Mart care if I didn't take him off the shelves.

[Blackjack]

I've been getting a fair amount of Titans Return toys over the past month or two, but been too lazy to post here, mostly because my opinions are the same as everyone else... but this time I've got something different! Something Beast Wars-y. I've got BW Insecticon and BW Inferno as part of my ever-growing zoo of Beast Wars toys.

Insecticon is freaking amazing. I've had him for half a day, and he's easily one of the best toys I own. Generally toys that auto-transform with springs are either super-simple, or are kind of shit because of it, but not Insecticon. He pops from bug to robot very smoothly, his robot mode has enough articulation to make some toys engineered two decades after him feel shame, his paint scheme and his matte bug shell looks wonderful... and that would've been enough. This toy is nearly as old as I am, being a well-articulated toy that looks good as a robot and as a bug would've been good enough. It's not just that, however -- its bug wings can open, and within those bug wings are two parts of a crossbow weapon. I didn't know Insecticon even had a weapon, let alone such a cool-looking one that fits in neatly in his beast mode. I'm not talking shit about the other Beast Wars toys, but in a toyline where everyone uses chunks of their beast mode to fight, Insecticon's weapon looks really unique.

Also he's exactly as tall as the three Legends Class Generations Insecticons that are swarming my table.

Inferno... is a bit of a disappointment. I knew he was a bit of a bad toy even before getting him, though, so at least it's a known quantity. His beast mode has very obvious robot mode kibble, what with his robot legs pretending to be the rearmost insect legs, but his robot mode is... eh. It suffers from the same problem as Titans Return Scourge and Blurr in that it's not necessarily a bad mould, but it's just so damned boring with being cast in two shades of the same colour. And for Inferno it's a bit worse since I have a clear image in my mind how Inferno's supposed to look -- and the CG model has a lot of metallic gray highlights on his limbs and crotch that makes him a lot more interesting than his toy. His gun is also a lot less impressive than what the cartoon leads me to believe.

The thing is, the toy actually has paint -- it's just all on the inner sides of his (admittedly fun) rotating abdomen thing. Which looks cool -- Inferno's abdomen splits apart into these rotor blades, and inside is like this gatling gun looking thing. But it's only visible if Inferno's aiming his split-open butt at you, and from the front his toy looks kinda boring.

He's decently articulated, though the big honking abdomen sticking from his waist means that there's not a lot of poses he can hold without support. And while two of his bug-mode legs end up on his lower arms, the other two just hang awkwardly off the sides of his chest, either screwing up his arms' articulation range, or screwing up the spinning abdomen blade gimmick. No wonder this dude shelfwarmed in spite of being a relatively long-running show character. Still like him, though -- he hangs out next to his mighty queen, burning everything in his path.

So yeah, I've got one of the best toys in Beast Wars and arguably one of the worst... but I still love them. So.

[Skyquake87]

Y'know, one of the things that did make the BW show toys look a bit pale was that the CG models with their metallic touches made some of the original figures look poor by comparison (Megatron is another). That's not the case when you get to the Transmetals and Fuzors, though, which match up pretty well to their onscreen counterparts (still love TM Tarantulas and Rampage).

Insecticon is awesome. He's my favourite of all those early Basics figures, followed by Terrorsaur.

[Warcry]

I've owned Insecticon for like 21 years now and I still love the figure as much as I did the day I first opened it up. In fact I love it so much I bought an MoC one a year or two ago to replace my rather well-loved, beat-up original. He's one of the classics of his era, up there with stuff like the Cyberjets, Laser Prime and the original munky Primal.

(And the best part about most of those toys is that you can still get them for a reasonable price more than two decades on!)

Not surprised that Inferno was a disappointment. I've never owned one but the lack of paint and the almost candy-looking plastic used for some of the parts really make him look poor. He's one of a handful of show characters that I'm really hoping get a Generations or MP update in the near future, right up near the top of the list with Dinobot and Black Arachnia.

[Skyquake87]

Dinobot's original toy (whilst not show accurate in anyway - the CG model takes a lot of liberties and has an awful lot of dino parts just...disappear) is actually pretty good and I really like it! The only big flaw in it is that the shoulders don't lock into place. I suppose the big robo-legs are a bit of a miss, but cast in translucent plastic, they don't look too bad in beast mode.

The original Spider-bot mould is pretty awful,though. Not even the CG model makes that look good. Especially for Tarantulas.

[Blackjack]

A side-effect of reading so many of your excellent reviews has got me very, very curious about the individually-packed Titan Masters. The first two toy shops I went to didn't have any of them, though, other than a lone Clobber, so I decided to go one price point up and look at the Legends class toys. Don't care about the cassettes, Bumblebee looks good but I don't care about him either, but Gnaw? Yeah, I do want him. Watching the 1986 movie last night might've been a factor to me suddenly wanting a Sharkticon toy.

He's a chubby robot that turns into a chubby fat shark-thing... well, vaguely shark-thing? I think Ganon's description in his review of TR Gnaw, "Walking Chubby Piranha-Frog", is as apt as any. His colour scheme is a portent to the glorious Seacons and Spinisters and Quakes that the G1 toyline will release a couple of years after the original Gnaw, with pink and teal randomly mixed in with the mainly-gray paint scheme. It's a bit more hollow than what I'm used to because they had to make him such a fatty-fat, but I like him.

His robot mode is, I think, the weaker one out of the two thanks to how hollow his back feels, but eh, it's a Sharkticon. I'm displaying it in its Sharkticon mode.

Also he can fit Titan Masters in his mouth. Which is a lot cooler than the very boring cockpit or whatever that other Legends-class Titan Masters toys have.

[Blackjack]

A side-effect of reading so many of your excellent reviews has got me very, very curious about the individually-packed Titan Masters. The first two toy shops I went to didn't have any of them, though, other than a lone Clobber, so I decided to go one price point up and look at the Legends class toys. Don't care about the cassettes, Bumblebee looks good but I don't care about him either, but Gnaw? Yeah, I do want him. Watching the 1986 movie last night might've been a factor to me suddenly wanting a Sharkticon toy.

He's a chubby robot that turns into a chubby fat shark-thing... well, vaguely shark-thing? I think Ganon's description in his review of TR Gnaw, "Walking Chubby Piranha-Frog", is as apt as any. His colour scheme is a portent to the glorious Seacons and Spinisters and Quakes that the G1 toyline will release a couple of years after the original Gnaw, with pink and teal randomly mixed in with the mainly-gray paint scheme. It's a bit more hollow than what I'm used to because they had to make him such a fatty-fat, but I like him.

Also he can fit Titan Masters in his mouth. Which is a lot cooler than the very boring cockpit or whatever that other Legends-class Titan Masters toys have.

[ganon578]

A little box from HTS showed up last night that contained CW Groove (Legends) and CW Chop Shop. The latter is pretty darn awesome, and none of the pictures I have seen so far really captured the slight metallic flake in the rust-colored plastic. It really gives him a bit of buggy-translucence that I didn't expect. Overall he's super solid, and I think I might actually like him better than Shrapnel!

Groove is... OK. Mostly I bought him as a starter to eventually build a Defensor, figuring I would start on the cheap end and work my way up. The little motorcycle mode is pretty sweet, and he's a nice little figure. I'm bugged a bit by how lanky and long his legs are compared to the rest of his body. I think I like him a little bit more than I should though, so we'll see if that holds up in a few weeks.

[Skyquake87]

CW Ironhide and Sunstreaker

Bought to round out some limbs for Sky Reign (Mirage and Ironhide make for good legs for him, Prowl is passable as an arm, as is Sunstreaker, but the yellow doesn't work with the red white and blue everyone else has going on).

Ironhide makes a decent go of the Off Road mould, although his head is a biton the small side. I like his bright red plastic and gun metal paint apps on the hubs and grill. The yellow striping is very clean and crisp too and, as with Prowl and Mirage, I really like him!

Sunstreaker though, ugh. He just looks awful. I can't understand why everyone rags on the Brawl mode so much when this faux-Lambo mould is to my mind the weakest of the CW moulds by a country mile. Whilst the vehicle mode is very striking, the robot mode is just a flabby pile of crap with horrible stick arms. Sunstreaker's tiny bonce draws too much attention to all the flaws of this mould. It makes me sad.

I've also really enjoyed the comics that came with Mirage, Prowl, Ironhide and Sunstreaker, being as they feature actual proper chunks of the Combiner Wars storyline.

[Tantrum]

I found CW Jetfire at a thrift shop for US$3. He's missing his accessories, rudders, and al-mode cockpit. But, his bot mode looks great, especially with TM Brawl and Siren/Loudmouth plugged into his wrists as weapons. I've also got Apeface and Clobber/Grimlock mounted as weapons on his wings, and my other T-rexes mouned to his legs.

For some reason, I really like the way the shoulders articulate out. I guess I'm just used to any shoulder armor moving with the limb, so the jets staying aligned with the torso seems like a nice change. The way the chest transforms into the jet vents is pretty clever.

[HeavyArms]

I finally bought Generations T30 Sandstorm as he wasn't available over here only getting the movie line at the time, after shopping around for literally the last couple of years, locally, used at about retail price.

[Heinrad]

Titans Return Megatron: I kinda had to talk myself into this one, because barring Sixshot, Magnus Prime(as long as they release him the way they teased him, Super Ginrai in American packaging), and a hoped for Nightbeat, I don't think there's a lot in the line coming up that I really want. In fact, I was planning to wait for the Blitzwing retool to get this mold. Then I saw this mold in the store. And you know, I really like it. He looks really good. I even like the stickers, as baffling as that sounds. They feel kind of cheap, but they work. My only real complaint is lack of color. A little extra trim color(through stickers if not paint) would work great.

That and I think I'm going to take a black marker to Megatron's Titan gun seat thing. It makes his fusion cannon look odd.

EDIT: After taking a Sharpie to it, his fusion cannon now looks far more uniform than half a fusion cannon with a grey chair on the back.

[Brendocon 2.0]

So I've got my mits on MP Grapple. Much the same deal as Inferno, but with tweaks here and there to accommodate the crane in place of a telescopic ladder.

Having quite a bit of difficulty getting the back to click into place properly, to be honest. I can see where stuff looks like it should line up and tab/click together, but it's just not going without misaligning other parts along the way. As ever the instructions being in a fictional language doesn't really help.

The legs have a lot more sculpted detail than Inferno (ie they actually have sculpted detail) which breaks up the effect a lot more so it looks less lazy.

Good tight joints, nice effect. Still a bit on the chubby side, but that's the character model for you. I think people will have made up their minds about this before they buy it, to be honest. If you want to love it, you probably will... if you didn't like the Inferno toy, I don't see this doing much more than the pictures would have done to win you round.

Hopefully now they'll carry on this size point with Trailbreaker and Hoist.

[inflatable dalek]

Tarn!

After wrestling with Impactor both times I've tried to transform him, I was expecting a toy that would basically be just a cool robot. To my great relief though he has by far the most straightforward transformation of any 3P toy I've owned, I only had to look at the instructions for the arms! And then it was fairly obvious what you were supposed to do, it just took a bit more pressure than I was expecting so I double checked.

The result is still more a robot than a alt mode toy (made up tanks are nice and all, but not all that sexy), but it's a really nice robot that looks good and imposing and has a nice range of motion with the ludicrous double fusion cannon not messing things up to much.

Considering 3P's have avoided faction symbols up till now I'm amazed they did the mask. The fact it's removable is cool, whose face is beneath it is hilarious though (ah, 3P hubris, making assumptions before story-lines are concluded).

Oh, and be careful if you open up the panels on what are his feet in robot mode, what the instructions don't tell you is there are six little removable missiles in there. Went right in my face.

Yeah, a winner. Now I want an Overlord and Deathsaurus to disapprove of him.

The "No, honestly, this is a totally original character!" comic is rather sweet with this one, though still awful. Turns out Kulture is a guy who likes...culture! He goes to the theatre (or based on the size of the fembots boobs, a strip joint), likes wearing a cape, hanging about with Autobot X (are they doing him as well, or is that totally random?) and disguising himself by painting his face red to perform Jeremy Beadle style pranks.

Zany guy.

[Brendocon 2.0]

The fact it's removable is cool, whose face is beneath it is hilarious though (ah, 3P hubris, making assumptions before story-lines are concluded).

You won't be laughing when they do the proper face as an add-on in a future toy you don't want but will end up buying to get the part.

[HeavyArms]

TR Ravage

Still need to get Rumble and Soundwave to complete the group, however Soundwave doesn't appear to be available in stores here so I'm going to have to buy him online along with Rumble possibly as well.

[Heinrad]

Titans Return Twinferno: I've always liked Doublecross' design, but I never got the toy. He's a really odd 2-headed dragon, but he does look neat. My only complaint is the holes in the sides of the dragon heads for the guns when he's in robot mode. They throw he symmetry off. Robot mode looks pretty good, and his feet have a neat design.