The Stunticon’s Deadend.

Deadend, the depressed member of the Stunticons.  I always liked this guy and I still like this incarnation of him as well.  A clever recolour of the Animated Jazz body, he looks like he has a new head, but it is just a clever bit of painting!!

The Motormaster. Leader of the Stunticons!

The Motormaster here is based on the wrestler Randy Savage apparently.  He comes with his instructions and a g1 style tech spec card.  He is a recolour of Animated Optimus Prime and sports a new paint job and newly sculpted head.  He is the only Voyager sized figure from the set.  Appropriate considering how he is the leader after all.

SDCC and Wonderfest makes an interesting weekend!

The San Diego comi-con and Wonderfest both happened to be on the same weekend this year.  Both have some very interesting toy goodies to show off and have me very excited for the rest of the year.

 

My Wallet however is very fearful.

 

Wonderfest in Japan had an awesome slew of figma that have been previously unannounced.  Comi-con had some excellent news in regards to Transformers: Prime toys and Masters Of the Universe as well.

Botcon 2011 Stunticons Boxset. Wooooo!

I finally received my boxset of this years Botcon toys.  Impressions are good so far! 

 

I really like the box art this year.  Simple and effective!

 

 

A little shot of all the Stunticons.  They are as most Botcon toys are recolours of existing figures.  This year three of them have a new head.

 

They are nicely packed in the box and well cushioned in the foam.  Tech Specs and instructions are underneath the foam.  Each year there is a Botcon badge included.

 

This year, I managed to make it in quickly enough to get the 1st day ordering badge.  I am pretty happy with that as I usually manage to miss out on that one!

 

I quite like this, as it is the Stunticon Decepticon symbol.  In a badge for me!

 

Good thing is the toys are pretty good as well.

 

 

 

Reviews and shots in progress.

The evil Professor Z. Small but deadly

The Cars a movie by Pixar was one I never got around to seeing.  The sequel however is another story, mainly because of it having some amusing Japan sections.

After seeing it though, I thought the story was predictable and average at best, but I was terribly impressed at how they managed to make the whole world carry the car theme.  Mountains shaped like Cadillacs as just one small example.  This made me enjoy the movie much more than I thought I would.  All the characters were well suited to their assorted vehicles.  Two in particular caught my eye, and so the hunt for the toys began.

The Tale of Two Hulkies

At the toy sale the other day I picked up this funky little Red Hulk figure.  It appears that he is quite photogenic.  As I also had a whinge about the retail Price for this guy normally, I brought out my Marvel Legends Hulk.  Long story cut short comes down to, boring, long night shift at work = photos snapped.

Fluff ball of Fun?!??? GRIZZLOR!

Oh, how the plastic crack addiction weaves it’s magic.  Here I am grabbing more Masters of the Universe figures and a weird one at that!  This guy is from the She-Ra, Princess of Power line, but the toy was in the Masters Of the Universe line (as most of the bad guys were).  I saw a review of this guy and thought he looks like a bit of a cool and interesting figure.

What a DAY!

Had a lazy day, went to a little toy selling fare that I rock up to every now and then.  Made some $$ caught up with some pals.  Surprisingly I didn’t spend a lot today! HUZZAH!

Ironfist.. errr, I mean Fisitron!

To keep the ball rolling on the Botcon 2011 figures and because I suspect my box ‘o’ Stunticons will be here soon, I have done these pictures NOW.  And it helps that Fisitron is a recolour of Ironhide and Ratchet, which I have covered before.

Badly Written Bios - Fisitron.

Fisitron
Function: Weapondry Expert 
“A brilliantly designed piece of firepower is a work of art”
Fisitron is an overly enthusiastic maker of tools, and the genius behind some of the most effective weapons in the Autobots arsenal.  In his cozy lab he makes whatever comes to mind.  For each strange gizmo he dreams up, he also manages to develop devices that can turn an Autobot into a one-bot wrecking crew.  He always keeps a pair of nucleon shock gauntlets handy.  Although Fisitron created Optimus Prime’s laser axe, it is often credited to his rival Skyfall.

• Strength        - 8
• Intelligence    - 9
• Speed           - 5
• Endurance     - 8
• Rank             - 7
• Courage        - 6
• Firepower      - 8
• Skill              - 9

OK, for a start is ‘weapondry’ even a real word?  I can see my spellchecker doesn’t like it.  Surely they mean ‘weapons’ or ‘weaponry.’  Or even perhaps ‘Armourer’?  All of those would be a better option than some random combination of letters or odd suffixes to get their meaning across.

“For each strange gizmo he dreams up, he also manages to develop devices that can turn an Autobot into a one-bot wrecking crew.”
 I think the message of this sentence is a little bit off.  I would recommend dropping the ‘he also’ as with it, it implies that he is creating other strange things, like a “flavour-wave” that are unrelated to weapons and the weapons that are dangerous are just a side project, which is not the case.

The shock gauntlets look like they are just a side comment with no relevance.  It could have worked better is it was something like “His Nucleon Shock Gauntlets were one of his earliest inventions.”  Which justifies what they are and keeps them in theme of his inventing and weapons creation.

Finally, the spelling of ‘cozy’ as opposed to ‘cosy’ although I suspect this is an American fascination with phonetic spelling, like ‘apologize’ and ‘apologise’ and dropping the ‘u’ from ‘colour.’  I will let this slide.

On the positives, we finally have the correct usage of ‘Although’!!  Well, they use it often enough, so they were bound to get it right at least once.  Huzzah!


The Bio in question.

Highbrow is Hunting.

Highbrow, one of the toys from the ‘Hunt For the Decepticons’ line at the end of the Revenge of the Fallen series.  Or was it ‘Autobot Alliance’?  I don’t know, they sometimes put too many damn names to these series sometimes.  I am just glad it wasn’t the ‘Revenge Battles’ or ‘Blah blah Battles’ since Hasbro have a passion for the word ‘Battles’ in their series names.

I got Highbrow for a couple of reasons.  The first is because like Mindwipe, he is named after a Headmaster character.  Unlike Mindwipe though, there is more than just a name similarity.  They both have propellors on their arms.  The second and most important reason for my getting him by a long shot, is that he is based on a World War II fighter bomber, the p-38 lightning.  Google it, it’s very interesting.

Wooo! Dinobots! 5 of Them!!

Oh, hang on, they aren’t the G1 Dinobots lead by Grimlock.  Oooooh, so these are the Dinobots released under the Power Core Combiner line?  The leader isn’t Grimlock, it’s Grimstone.  Aaah, ok.  That’s not so exciting then.

I will admit right now that I dislike the Power Core Combiner Transformers.  I bought Smo(u)lder with the incredibly cleverly named Chopster and I was most disappointed with it.  The teams also look just as bad.  Except for these Dinobots.  So I thought I would try them out….

Badly Written Bio . Grimstone

Welcome to my first “Badly Written Bio” segment where I will rant and rave either about grammar, writing style or the message conatined within.  Our lucky first contender happens to be the Power Core Combiner of Grimstone.  Come on down!

Grimstone is here for two main reasons, please read the following bio, taken right from the side of his box.

Grimstone has always dreamed of power and the privilege it brings.  Despite his hunger for power, however <WHA? Why is this here??>, he has always  considered the needs of others before himself.  He believes it is the responsibility of the powerful to protect those less fortunate – A belief he intends to aggressively enforce now that he has his own Power Core Team.

• Strength       -9
• Intelligence   -6
• Speed          -3
• Endurance    -10
• Rank            -8
• Courage        -9
• Fireblast       -5
• Skill             -5

Now here we have another badly written bio.  An unnecessary ‘however.’  As well as the point that Grimstone here intends to “aggressively enforce” his beliefs upon others.  “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings” is the call of Optimus.  “As long as it’s MY type of freedom,”  should be in a sub-clause.

Sure they may be beliefs that are well intentioned, but surely thrusting your views on others is only going turn them off.  Just like various zealots of many flavours, both religious and non-religious, although to be honest I can’t think of many that aren’t religion centric off the top of my head.  Aar, Autobots, Transformers and politics.  Gotta love it.  All this and they went to the effort of changing the Seacons to be more friendly.  I sometimes wonder if these bio-writers ever re-read what the write.

In this bio I see little that separates this Autobot from the Decepticons.  Here we have an Autobot willing to use force on others to make them follow his ideals.    Unless it means that now Grimstone is more powerful HE will protect those weaker than him.  If that is the case, then it should have been worded differently.  Perhaps the wording “aggressively defend” instead of enforce would be better.

Grimstone: “Hey, You!  It’s the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak”

Tough-Bot: “Yeah, I know, I am busy right now though”

GS: “Raaaarrgh! Not good enough! PROTECT THE WEAAAAAK! Or I will aggressively enforce my views upon you!!”

TB: “Man, I think I am going to punch you in your faces if you keep on like that!”

Arriving today.

 

In my post box today were these little fellars.  One Grizzlor of the Masters of The Universe or Princess of Power series depending on how you think about it.  One ‘The Faceless One’ complete with a face, although it does lack any particular details really.  I guess he could look a bit like Lord Voldemort. and best of all, one Fisitron A.K.A Ironfist of the Animated variety, shame about the name change (no doubt due to licensing and suchlike), but he did use Fisitron  as his pen-name.

 

Pics in the works, hopefully up at the same time as this.

Big the Cat and Froggy by Jazwares.

Ever since his debut in Sonic Adventure, Big has been one of those characters that makes me groan a little bit evrey time I see him.  Partly because I am still haunted by his levels in S.A.  I mean fishing in a Sonic game?  What is this? Legend of Zelda or something?  Come on, that was juts silly and about the only real interest I had was finishing it so I could play as Super Sonic. 

Big has had cameos in other games, he proved his worth as a character in Sonic Shuffle and showed up for bits in Sonic Adventure 2 and I even grew to like him in Sonic and SEGA All-stars Racing.  He actually was a good strength characters in Sonic Chronicles as well and his rain dance move was pretty effective. His voice though, man it was irritating in all his appearances.  I did learn something very important from Big though.

Stealth Force Bumblebee

OOOOh!  Stealth Force.  The Transformers that don’t transform.  I have been keen on the SF series for a while, mainly because of the M.A.S.K possibilities contained therein.  Most of them were overpriced when they cam out towards the middle of the Revenge Of The Fallen line.  Electronic Optimus and the normal Soundwave were the only ones I was interested in all the rest were waaaaaay over priced.


No with the Dark of The Moon movie using the forms and the game of the movie featuring them quite heavily (almost to the detriment of robot mode), I spied this new line of larger electronic sized cars and was intrigued, especially since Barricade is in the line up too.


Bumblebee didn’t interest me at first, but then after seeing the movie and playing the game, I kept an eye out for a sale, as the original $50 retail price (I kid you not!) is one of the larger rip-offs that we Australians have to put up with.  Luckily the toys sales abound and the price came done to $30.  Still a rip-off considering how the US is looking at an 18.99 price, but not too bad I guess.  So I got one.  This way he can go up against Barricade!

Animated Cheetor. Shmexy to the maxx!!

Regular readers of my blog (I thank you ) will know how much I love the Animated series of Transformers, so I think it is only fair to put a fan-boy-alert in this review.  Animated Cheetor here is a recolour of my favourite figure of the line.  He is Blurr with a new head and I love the Blurr mould the most.

Tets Plays Sonic Generations demo

Woooo, so for the 20th anniversary of Sonic the Hedgehog, SEGA are in the process of making the rather cool looking and hopefully good game of Sonic Generations.  The actual date of the anniversary is the 23rd of June 2011, so since the game isn’t ready for release just yet, SEGA have released a demo version of it to the Playstation Network and Xbox.  The demo lets you play through 1 level as Classic Sonic.

Masters of the Universe Classics Sy-klone

I have come to the conclusion that I quite like these MOTUC figures.  After my experience with Scareglow, I jumped onto the web and ordered Sy-Klone and Moss Man.  Why?  Well when I was a young-un, I had Sy-Klone as one of the few Masters of the Universe figures that I owned.  The other one was Stinkor (Come on Mattel, give us a Stinkor!!).  I really liked both of them and seeing how this Classic version of Sy-Klone looked, I thought I would try and reclaim some of that youth.

Surprise Sunset

The reason this is a surprise is because I just discovered this picture on my laptop, amongst a bunch of Sonic toy figure shots.  I remember taking this a good 6 months or so ago.  I think there had been bushfires and the like, but it is quite spectacular.

 

 

Actually, this was on the same day as this post.  Wonder why I didn’t use it.  Oh well.

 

The Robots, An old comic I found.

Do you remember these guys?  I sort of do…  While searching around and have a bit of a reorganise, I found this old comic that I got with one of these toys.  The toys were robots of different types, and they all had a ‘suction’ cup on the bottom, but it was very large.  Pressing a button on their back would make them smack their fists together.