Voltron Vs Voltron and Voltron?

 Bandai Chogokin                   Toynami  EX                               MT King  Beast

Being a bit of a derpy nerd for Lion Force Voltron, and also finding the licensing issues contained therein an interesting winding snake of complexity, I found myself puzzled by the sudden onslaught of what appears to be official Voltrons.

No real updates this week...

...because I managed to get a PS4 at Black Friday sales.  If you're interested, I am currently playing Just Cause 3, Batman Arkham Knight and trying to finish Strider and Okami.  Woo!

Toy Wise, I had delivered to my door, the wonderful Legends Chromedome, (Mind)Wipe and Highbrow.  Nice.

This week saw the revelation of a God Bomber to go with Ginrai.  Which I really like the look of, but I need to think about both.

Work is busy, and I've finally got my hands on Arkham Knight, which I've been looking forward to for ages.  Now I just need to find a day or two to spend some quality time with him!

LG23 Galvatron Comic Translation

Good people of the Internet. Yes, with a capital ‘I.’  To celebrate the joy that Black Friday sales bring (i.e a PS4), I have decided to release this enjoyable little gem to the English reading world.

Once again, with arrowed and arrowless versions.

Share and enjoy.

Toy review and Bio translation is here.

There aren’t really any notes to be added here.  I think the girl on the bill board is one of the chicks from Kissplayers.

Weirdwolf seems to be a bit of tricky fellow and it’s nice to see that Tarantulas doesn’t have much in the way of loyalty to anyone.  He also likes to chuckle a lot.

Toy lines and First Contact

When a new Transformers or toy line comes out, I generally judge the quality of the whole line on one toy.  Am I the only one?

Recently I’ve been watching the RID2015 cartoon and taken quite a fancy to the Decepticon designs, but having been able to have a look at a friend’s Steeljaw, I was not terribly taken with it, essentially, wishing that he was a bit more complex to make the robot mode look a bit better.

With that in mind, I gave up hope on the line and only bothered with a few of the Transformers Adventures (TAV) – The Japanese RID series toys.  Even then, the toys I picked up were the Japanese versions of toys from earlier lines, such as Japan's answer to BlackJack, Runabout, Animated Swoop, Animated Lockdown, Adams (Cosmos – Generations) and Powerglide(Generations/Combiner Wars).  All these toys were pretty good, but I either already had them, or being from an earlier time knew they were reasonable quality.

Eventually, TAV Scorponok took my eye and seeing some pictures of him online, my curiosity increased, I really liked his monster style robot mode.  Eventually after gaining information that informed me he wasn’t a complete mess of a toy, I tracked one down and bought it.

I was underwhelmed I put the TAV line into the basket along with TF4 toys; Toys to Avoid.

A friend really wanted TAV Windblade.  As did I, the show design I rather liked, but I KNEW that with the simplified toys, it would be bad.  However this opportunity proved a nice testing ground.  I bought my friend his Windlblade, who was a bit hard to find at the time and got permission to open and play with it.

She turned out OK.  Not amazing, but not terrible.  I got one for me.

Then there’s the case of Bisk.  This character I wanted since the start of RID2015/TAV because he has a great name and character design.  A crustacean robot mode and a name of Bisk.

In the meantime, Scorponok had been slowly growing on me, but I still had low impressions of the line as a whole.  Nothing had wowed me like many of the toys in the TR line.  I found Bisk and  I hesitantly bought him thinking at the very best he’ll be a weird novelty character and not a good toy.

I was wrong, I actually really like Bisk as not only a novelty character, but as a cool toy as well.
It was an interesting exercise for me, since had I bought Bisk first off, I’d have a much better opinion of the line as a whole.  I guess it’s very unfair to judge a whole line on one figure.

I kind of thought this as well with the Japanese Legends toys as well, more specifically the new Headmaster toys.  I knew Galvatron was flawed, so I bought him with low expectations.  Skull was my first one toy really enjoy and I was surprised.  Expectations were high.  I then found myself a bit disappointed with Scourge though.  Had Scourge been my first toy of the line I might have not bought as many Legends Headmasters.

So the lesson is this. Don’t judge a line solely on one toy, I guess every line has its bad toys. 
Although I think that can kind of suck if you’re trying to avoid finding too much about about a toy and have to research it.  For me, I like that first transformation and feeling to be something new, whether bad or good.

What about you guys? Have you ever dropped a line because your first toy of that line left a bad impression?  I’d love to hear some stories!

Legends Sky-byte or Gelshark Comic Translation

Here, ladies and gentlemen of the internet, I have to translation of Sky-byte’s Legends Comic.  At first I thought this would be an easy job, but as I was going, there was much struggling.  First challenge, are any of the boxes haikus?

 The answer, no.  That was a relief.

The next step was some of the phrases were a bit odd.  But after some battling, I managed to work them out.

The final hurdle was whether to make everything use the Japanese names or English names.  For all the others, I tried to do a good translation by swapping names for their English versions whenever possible.

However, Gelshark here struck me with a unique problem. 

If I called him Skybyte and had him as a Predacon, that means his enemy was Optimus Prime.   Yet on the second page, he refers to Optimus Prime as being “Fire Convoy’s overseas name.” 
Bugger. 
I thought I could’ve swapped the names around, BUT he ends up dressing up as Optimus Prime from TF4.  In the Transformers movies, even in Japan, Optimus is called Optimus (not Convoy as usual).  So for the joke to work I decided to go with the Japanese names of factions for this comic, so instead of being a Predacon, Gelshark (Not Skybyte) is a Destronger, Autobots are Cybertrons and Decepticons are Destrons.

So, now that’s out of the way, please enjoy Sky-byte’s Gelshark’s comic translation.

(Oh, his Legends’ toy review is here)

(And the TFCC toy review is here)

Again, directional arrows provided for ease of reading.

Extra notes after the jump.

Transformers Legends Nightbird (Shadow) & Comic Translation

Nightbird.  This figure really surprised as I never expected her to be made into a toy.  Coming from the G1 cartoon, Nightbird was a one episode (Enter the Nightbird, a reference to the Bruce Lee movie Enter the Dragon?) ninja robot made by a Japanese professor for some reason.

Because she is a macguffin! 

Nightbird also took me by surprise in that they’ve remoulded the Arcee mould to make her. 

Somehow it works.  Crazy I know

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

LG-EX Armada Megatron Comic Translation

Again, another toy I don’t own, but a friend has and so I was able to have access to the comic for translation.  Annoyingly it wasn’t a scan, but photos, so I don’t have a clean Japanese version to show because I had to slap two photos together and forgot to save the original  But hey, doesn’t matter now does it?

Share and Enjoy!

Comic notes:

Apparently Rattrap can powerlink with his butt…. And he enjoys it.

Also, try and spot all the Minicons.

Some of the more obscure ones my keen eyed friend eyed:

LG 18 Super Mode Armada Starscream Comic Translation

I don’t have Legends 18 Starscream, which is a shame since I think I rather liked the normal Starscream toy, however after receiving the Collector’s Club Ramjet, I’m not so sure anymore.  Anyway, I managed to find a decent enough copy of the scanned comic  from the internet without an obtrusive watermark, (thanks to whoever uploaded it) and got to work making a translation.

At the request of friends, I added some directional arrows, as I’ve had comments from people that make me believe they’re not reading it in the right sequence.  So here you go.

Share and enjoy.

There's a lot of very rare Transformers of various types features in this little comic, can you spot them all?

ArkIvor did a pretty good job for me of spotting them, so test your knowledge.  Answers after the jump!

When's a Collector's Edition, not a collector's edition?

when it's

Sonic Mania,

 the game that looks very nice.  Also a bit of a sad situation for SEGA really.  They have to get fans to program a good 2 Sonic game.    As a fan of Sonic's games ( no, I didn't program this one) and generally disliking many modern Sonic games, I was excited to hear of a Collector's Edition Sonic Mania.

Ooh, says I, that will go nicely with my Sonic Adventure 2 Special edition (Celebrating 10 years of Sonic) and my Sonic Generations (celebrating 20 years of Sonic) special editions.

You may have gathered that I have a loong history with Sonic and I consider myself a GAME collector, for better or worse.  So it was with some dismay that I noticed a most important item missing from the Sonic Mania Collector's Edition.

Let's look at what you get.

• Box  -check
• Statue (with SEGA start sound) -check (and kinda cool)
• SEGA cart ring holding thing  -- Check (also very cool!)
• Game  - ?

Oh,

• Metallic Collector's Card with Download code  --ooooh..... check... I guess.

Wow, now I find it odd, being a collector's item, aimed probably at collectors.
Probably at collectors of Sonic games.
Collectors who like Sonic games that have the old style of gameplay.
Collector's that are very highly likely to have played on a Megadrive/Master system, which meant having physical copies of the game.

But there is no disc for the game.  Really?

So, I might as well go and buy a dl code and some random Sonic merch and make my own ltd Sonic Collector's set.  WOW!  Only 1 in the whole world!

 L@@k! RARE!  Sonic Mania LTD edition

That's how I'll list it on ebay.

Really, I think considering how it's a Collector's edition, they could've set up a small run of discs or something for it.  Sheesh.  Lazy effort detected.

Some Collector's Edition, obviously not aimed at game collector's that's for sure.

Who's it for?

Trinket collectors.

Come on SEGA, where's my damn physical copy of the game?  Don't you have any faith that it will make money?  Or are you too busy thinking up new pachinko machine ideas.

Looking Wheelie good!

 

Survivalist Wheelie.  Oh Wheelie, your toy bio was all wild-child found in the jungle stuff going on, but the cartoon turned you into an annoying little schmuck.

After sitting through the torture of Headmasters, I came to the conclusion that Japan hates you too.  Plus the original toy was pretty crap.  Eventually you got an update in a legion size toy and you were pretty good.

Now you’ve gotten another update and the comic points you out as being extremely annoying!  That’s of little consequence, as I like toys more than comics and Wheelie could be very cool.

Legends 17 English comic Translation Black Widow / Arachnia LG17

Continuing on with my translating efforts, here is the comic for Blackarachnia / Black Widow.  This one is a pretty cute one too.

Toy review is here



Some things of note that I picked up on while looking closely.

• Of course this is Halloween themed.  Blackarachnia was released in Japan at the end of October.
• When BA wakes up, you can see the Legends Megatron toy and G1 Megatron in gun mode next to her, as well as a Megatron book/magazine/comic.
• On her wall are Megatron posters with Prime megs, Movie Megs and possibly 2 others the are obscured.
• She sleeps on Decepticon bed sheets.
• Slipstream is a bit put out by BA in their OL clothes.  Is this due to bust size? (yes, I think it is).
• The Femme-con ladies costumes are, BA – Cat girl, SS – Devil (maid?) and NS – Traditional Japanese burial clothes, usually used to depict a female ghost.
• Nightbird uses signs, since she doesn’t speak. (Silent Ninja Y’see)
• Windblade is dressed in the top part of Japanese school girl sailor uniform, combined with a school style swimsuit.  Typical school girl fetish clothes.  Airrazor is dressed as a female nurse.  Odd since Airrazor was a boy in Japanese Beast Wars…
• The FemmeBOTS 3 shot picture, Arcee is a maid, Windblade has her school theme (perhaps indicating she’s the youngest?) and Chromia is a Bunnygirl… Maybe a reference to her large bust size…  Chromia also doesn’t seem to be too fond of her costume.
• Rattrap is looking right up Arcee’s skirt….
• Megatron’s hat is of course Krimzeek.
• BW Megatron has some kind of cape.  Both his dino head(hand) and robo head have top hats.  Is he a classy vampire?  Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?

The original here.

Blue guy that isn't Sonic The Hedgehog

I’ve always dug Blurr, his super sleek space car mode looks nice.  His robot mode, well it wasn’t so sleek, (but animated fixed that!).  The only Blurr toy I have so far is the recolour of Drift (and Animated), where he as a rather chunky looking car that turned into a chunky robot.  I did really like his headsculpt though.

Legends has brought about a Headmaster Blurr.  Hrm, Okay.  He had a Nebulan chum in G1, but it changed into a gun.  How does this guy turn out?

Nice. Very nice is the short answer.

ThunderForce IV : Great Gaming Moments

Been a while since I've done one of these, so here's one that's been in the back of my mind for a while, it's the wonderful SHMUP, Thunderforce IV on the Megadrive.  I didn't own this game, I hired it and that's how much this one stuck with me! Wow!

Sweep(s) the Leg, A Legends Scourge review

Scourge, the leader of the Sweeps and tracker of um, things across the galaxy.  Working for Galvatron he is a nasty fellow.  NOW he is a headmaster.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Scourge’s weird vehicle mode. 

He’s a boat.

That flies. 

Through space. 

Riiiight, about as much sense as Rodimus’ space camper van.

He is also standing on my  desk?  How does he rate after the wonders of Hardhead and Skullcruncher?

Read on to find out…  oooohhhh Mystical!

Shocking Shockers review

Wowsers, another Shockwave?  How many can one guy possibly have? At least Three by the looks of things, maybe four (now).  Thus the introduction for Legends Shockwave has finished.

And the review starts.

Cinema Screen sizes, an explanation.

A conversation I often have with people is about screen sizes of movies.  As I used to work as a projectionist, it annoys me greatly when dvds/blu rays are played in the wrong ratio, resulting in a distorted picture.  It also annoys me even more when a show that was originally designed for a certain ration is pushed into another. 

So with that in mind, I made up a chart using the wonderful technology of a ruler, paper and a pencil, Scanner came along later (Changed to something nicer because my hand writing is nasty) so that the explanation will become easier.

First of all, let’s get some clarification on the terms I will use:

• Ratio is the comparison of the sides of the screen, i.e height and length. A Widescreen cinema picture has a ratio of 1.85:1.  If 1 = 1 metre, then it will be 1 metre high and 1.85 metres long.
• Masking is fabric on the sides and sometimes top of the cinema screen that is used to sharpen the edges of the projected image.  Often mistakenly called ‘the curtains.’
• Widescreen [cinema]  (Shortened to “WSC”) is the image on screen with a screen ratio of 1.85:1
• Cinemascope  (shortened to “CS”) is the image on screen with a ratio of 2.35:1

Cinema screen ratios differ from the size of the screen on TV.  When the screen length widens this is often interpreted by the average viewer as widescreen, but is in fact cinemascope.  This confusion partly stems from the TV sizes, as a TV ‘widescreen’ image is 16:9, which is terribly close to cinemas 1.85:1, but not perfectly so. 

When the cinemascope size is seen on a TV, the image will have black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.  This is usually referred to as ‘anamorphic’ in dvd cases.  Some examples of dvds that show in cinemascope on the TV are the Pirates of Caribbean, Transformers (2007 onwards) and Harry Potter movies. You can test these yourself to see the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, showing an image that is longer than it is tall.

When watching a broadcast of these movies from most TV channels, I have noticed that they will go and make arrangements to have the image fill the whole screen of the TV, thereby cropping the image quite a bit on the left and right hand sides.  Apparently to avoid missing any important details on the sides of the picture, they will scroll the image across if need be, thereby cropping the opposite side even more so, but since the point of interest is focused, the cropped section is not missed.  If you watch carefully, you will often see a slight distortion on the credit roll as they often just force it into TV widescreen to fill the screen.


To illustrate the cinema sizes, I have made up a little chart.

So as you can see, Cinemascope has the most length, Widescreen has the most height (In regards to picture volume) and the other is so rarely used, I wonder why I put it on the chart.  In case you are wondering, these are all in scale, with a side height of 1.


Here are the screen sizes for TV.



So now the common TV ‘widescreen’ image is 16:9, which comes down to 1.77:1 (Cinema W/S is 1.85:1).  Which is close, but not quite the same. However a WSC cinema image will look almost exactly the same.  So therefore, to get the CS format on a TV,  black bars need to cover the space at the top and bottom of the screen.

For TV 4:3 is the standard format of the old ‘square’ CRT TVs.  A good example of this format is most early cartoons are in this size.  Watching them on a 16:9 TV will result in back space on the left and right of the screen, but you can force them to the 16:9 ratio, however the image will be badly distorted.  This applies to most old video games as well.

Be aware that a lot of enhanced Blu ray releases force shows into 16:9 when they shouldn’t be.  For example, I have Transformers the Movie from the 1986 cartoon on blu ray and it has been forced to a full screen image on a 16:9 display.  This has cropped a massive amount of the picture, as it should be shown as a 4:3 image.


Extra Bit

I included masking in the terms, but see I didn’t mention it.  In the days of film projectors, masking was often used to keep the edge of the image sharp.  Masking would consist of thick black fabric and depending on the setup of the screen be at both sides of the screen, or at the top and bottom.

In the case of the side masking, CS would allow for the largest picture, whereas in the case of the top/bottom masking, WS would allow for the largest picture.  In modern cinemas (That is ones that use digital projectors) the projected image is sharp enough on the sides to get away without using the masking, but masking does manage to make it look just that touch nicer.

Legends Hardhead. (Insert pun here)

Wow, LG 21.  Looking at the release numbers for these guys, I’ve been going backwards. Ha ha ha ha.  Oh wells.  In this post, I will be looking at Hardhead, the first Headmaster released in the Legends line.  I initially skipped ordering this guy because I thought the vehicle mode looked a bit flat.

Then I saw the robot mode and regretted that.  Being a stingey bugger, I refused to pay the prices he seemed  to be creeping up to on Amazon Japan (annoyingly enough, the marketplace sellers just seem to try and outdo each other pushing the prices higher and higher).  So it was a awhile after experiencing the joys of Skullcruncher and the mediocrity of Galvatron before I managed to find one (the last one) on the shelf of a shop.  Huzzah.

I bought it.

Something Something Skull Something Spoo

I always preferred the Decepticon Headmasters over the Autobot ones.  I think it’s because the Autobots all looked like random Space vehicles, a pet hate of mine that I seem to have been ranting on about a lot lately. 

Luckily the Decepticons managed to connect to my love of robot animals (Dinobots are the top baby!) so the weird versions of the Decepticon HMs manage to get off scot-free.  I mean, as a kid, I seriously doubted whether or not Mindwipe was a bat.  How many bats have a big spiked looking tail?

Well, that was a bad introduction for announcing the impending Skull(cruncher) review.  I’m a bit torn, his Japanese name is Skull, but Skullcruncher sounds much cooler (while being quite a bit longer to type as well.).  Hasbro named him Skullsmasher, but luckily I don’t have to deal with that, as his lovely JP box has Katakana Skull and English written Skullcruncher.  Skullcruncher it is. Sometimes.

LG 23 Galvatron, is a Headmaster?!??

After my previous excited post about Headmasters, you may be wondering if everything from now will be all love and praise for any and every Headmaster that may or may not pass through my door.  I like to look at toys rather critically, no toy is ever perfect for me and I will always have criticisms on them.  That doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy the toys so don’t worry about my love for Head Masters.
Currently I have two.  One I meant to cancel after a cup of tea, but didn’t.  The other I fully intended to get.

This post is about the lucky one.  The one that owes his home to a cup of tea.

His name, Galvatron.

Slightly Excited Ranty Post on Headmasters

Or S.E.R.P.H for short

Yay, It’s the return of the Headmasters!!  I’ve been hoping for this day, since, well, a long long time.  As a kid I thought the Headmasters were the bee’s knees.  Admittedly I thought the English premise for them story wise was a bit silly, as they pushed the two personality thing a fair bit. That always managed to pose so many questions for me.  If highbrow was highbrow before, when he bonded with Gort, what happened to Highbrow?  Surely highbrow would change as he would be influenced by Gort’s thoughts and personality, resulting in a permanent change in Highbrow’s personality, meaning that in the end, he wouldn’t be Highbrow anymore….  Wow man.

Then on top of that, why would a Decepticon subject themselves to such a situation.  Take Snapdragon for example, inactive without his head and stuck with Krunk, surely Snapdragon would not be a happy chappy at being controlled by a human?  Sure, if there is some amazing power that becomes available, I guess they might go for it, but aside from having a wingman, that’s it.  Surely they could’ve just made a small wingman robot that is remote controlled by the larger Transformer and be done with it?

See?  It just doesn’t seem to make sense.  That’s why I just prefer the Japanese version of how they came about.  Initially little robots, they made Transtectors (Cool name too) which were vehicles and big robot modes.

That got a bit off-Track.

So bringing us back, I loved the Head/Power/Targetmasters.  The fact you had a little robot that could drive a vehicle AND THEN become the robot’s head was just too damn awesome in my mind.

Now, Headmasters is the theme of the day and many not-headmaster characters are becoming headmasters!  How do I feel about this?  I don’t mind as long as the toys are good!  Although I’d prefer that they adopted Powermasters and Targetmasters at the same instead of forcing PMs into HMs (ginrai/PM Prime for example.), but the toys do look nice.  Now, this was originally going to be an introduction to my Galvatron review, but it got a bit long and ranty, so I’ll just leave it as a “I’m happy about all this Headmaster loving that is going on” and an obvious note that I am working on my Legends Galvatron review (not a video one, so you can have a reprieve from my ‘singing’).

Well, not RIGHT now…  Right now I off to watch some Voltron, Legendary Defender Episodes to help me get more excited by the SOC Voltron later in the year.  So, stay tuned!

UW07 Brawl : Combaticons Series Review Part 3

As we slowly climb our way to Bruticus, here is brawl, the angry guy who "likes smashing stuff."  I'm glad to report that this toy is a nice improvement over the Fall of Cybertron version of Brawl, although this one doesn't have a gun emplacement mode.  But I'm fine with that.

Please share and enjoy.

UW07 Vortex: Combaticons review, Part 2

Here is my review of Vortex of the Combaticons, an odd toy which I kind of like and don't like at the same time for reasons that are stated in the video.  This is the Unite Warriors version, so it has a few minor differences to the Hasbro Combiner Wars Vortex.

Also, Cosmos destruction continues!

UW 07 Blastoff :Combaticons review, Part 1

Yay, the wonderful courier man dropped off my Combaticons and they look lovely.  As a result, here is my review of Blastoff.
Sadly it might be a while before I do any others as Onslaught has a Dickie Knee in that it doesn't like bending, so I have to go through the rigmarole of returning and getting a replacement.

For now though, enjoy Blast Off!!

Revoltech Melona - Queen's Blade 005

So, long time since I’ve done a Queen’s Blade figure review.  Today I’ll be having a look at the Protean Assassin Melona.  It took me a while to work out what Melona was supposed to be, but it turns out the she is a “goo-girl” as they are sometimes referred too.　That bubbles down to a slime character, or shape-shifter to you and me.

Having gone to the effort of getting most of the Revoltech QB figures, I eventually got Melona just to finish the set.  I wasn’t that huge of a fan of her design, but the creepy character kind of grew on me and in a way, she is kind of the Deadpool of the QB universe, taking on shapes that are unlikely to exist in the QB world.  She’s also probably the most evil of the bad guys trio, well, the most devoted to the Swamp Witch at the very least.    So the design of the character is interesting, how well does she translate into an action figure?

Figuarts Captain America Civil War

Man I love Captain America.  He’s just so over the top, and a bit of an arse kicker in the Marvel Vs series from Capcom.  I never read the comics, so the games are where I got my Capt mojo from.  As a result his somewhat silly comic costume was my favourite.  When the Marvel/Disney movies came along, I was sceptical about the costume.  How to reduce the cartoon look to make it look cool, but still have it retain the essence of the character?

 

Well, for whatever reason, I ordered the Civil War version of Captain America which seems to have quite muted colours.  I really did want a Figuarts Cap though, so here we are.  How is he?

 

Time for Unite Warriors Menasor

Now for some big sized action.  I’ve taken care of the component parts, now it’s time to form

MENASOOOOR!

TAV Runabout

Character updates are lovely and here we have another new addition to the ranks of the unstable Stunticons.  This toy was coloured and named BlackJack in the Combiner Wars line by Hasbro and since I have the Micromaster BlackJack, I really wanted that toy.  However after having a good look at him, his head is very not BlackJack.  It also turns out that this toy as originally modeled to be an update of the Battlecharger Runabout.

That makes more sense since his head looks a lot more like Runabout than BlackJack.  So after some hunting around, I finally got my grubby mitts on this guy.

The King of the Road

Motormaster, anyway you look at him, the guy is a prick.  I think that’s kind of why I like him.  Adding a horrible, brutal bully who is a tough bugger just adds to the personality woes of the Stunticons.

When I first saw the Combiner wars images of MM, I was sceptical.  After all, where is his trailer?  Then the robot mode showed up and I still wasn’t convinced.  Then an (obvious) Optimus Prime remould came along and I thought, “Wow, they actually designed this toy as Motormaster first and Optimus is the cheap re-hash.”

As you can see, I obviously have a Motormaster, despite my reservations, so does he disappoint, or what?

Stunticons’ Backup has arrived! Offroad

Offroad is an interesting little figure to me.  He is obviously heavily influenced by theG1  Triggercon Ruckus and according to TFwiki, was originally meant to be Ruckus, but there were doubts about how well he’d fit into the Stunticons....  Considering that Ruckus is a loud adrenaline junkie, I think he’d fit in just as well as the other mal-adjusted  members of the team.  Colour wise, well the original Ruckus could have been an easy replacement for Breakdown, since they both consist of white and blue.

Personally I’m am open to the addition of new characters to a team, but since the Stunticons are high performance cars, it seems a bit of a contradiction to that theme to suddenly have a ute/pickup truck thrown in to the mix.

Sigh, I guess I should do Deadend…

Continuing on with the Stunticons joy is the never ending ray of sunshine that is Deadend.  Deadend was the original base for Wildrider, so this will look mostly at the colours and head sculpt.
Let’s goo!

Unite Warriors Wild Rider!

This review is all about Wild Rider, the one who is missing from HB’s line up for Menasor.  Sure he came back as Brake-neck, pfft, meh.  Who cares about that guy?  Is he actually worth all the anger?

Unite Warriors Drag Strip

Next on the list of Stunticons is Dragstrip, the winning obsessed speed freak.  On the original toy, he was very yellow.  This one is bigger and still very yellow.  Is he TOO yellow?

Stunticons Breakdown, no pun title.

The Stunticons are probably my 3rd favourite combiner of the original toys.  What I did really like about the Stunticons is they really promoted the personality aspect of  Transformers as all the Stunticons have some sort of personality disorder.  I’m going to start my series of reviews with my favourite vehicle from the team,

Breakdown!

Sega Saturn Transparencies explained!

In a delightfully lazy effort as an update post, I am going to drop in this video I stumbled upon while cruising YouTube one day.  You may have noticed that I kind of rather like the humble SEGA Saturn game console.  You would be right!

However I have always been interested in the main weakness of the console, well perhaps a popular note of discussion, that the Saturn can't do transparencies (well).  This always bothered me a little bit, as I have many games with the old mesh making up for transparent effect in games, yet I've also seen games using some rather nice looking transparencies too.  I have also seen games using BOTH mesh and transparencies.  This has aroused my curiosity and despite some reading upon it, I never really understood the situation very well.

Until I came across this video, which explains it rather well, along with some example footage.  It's pretty well done.

Although I strongly slapping on the annotations as the guy's English, while grammatically isn't bad, his accent is VERY strong.

Frame Arms Girl, Materia White version.

Here I am with a light but rather large box and it happens to contain a Frame Arms Girl figure in it.  It turns out that these guys are like little plastic model kits that you need t assemble yourself.


Good thing I’ve been sort of practicing with these model kits a bit lately. Let’s go!!

Transformer’s future–> Looking good!

Last weekend  was rather exciting for me. 

Toyfair has hit and hasbro had a pretty good display to show off what they had planned after Combiner Wars finsihed (or, as TF lines in Australia do, fizzle out, leaving me to scrounge for the last figure or so).  I was wondering what they had planned for the next line.  Oddly, I have managed to avoid getting a complete Combiner  team yet.  None of them have quite tickled my fancy enough for forking out the money for a complete set yet.  Bruticus will probably change my mind, but until then….

I think the movie styling has lost its shine and CW is kind of running its course, with HB saying they had no plans for monster combiner teams (I want Abominus dammit!!).  Then came along the trickle of info.  It started with a few shots of this and that and it looked pretty good.   Lots of Headmasters were mentioned.

Looks a lot like Voltron - King of Beast

This was a whacky one.  What started off as me messing about with my new Voltron CD and making a parody introduction, ended up turning into a review.  Which I was never really entirely satisfied with.  After recording the talky-talk (yeah, professional terms here folks) about 3 times, I gave up and edited the video for a shorter video.  Original length of 25 min, way too long to be bored I thought, so I've managed to chop it down to a more bearable 14 min.

So in the end I have a video I am mostly satisfied with, but I just realised that I forgot to cover two things, the alternate face and his shield thing, and on top of that, I don't even have any photos.  Whoops.

This is Madtoys' King Of Beast.  Essentially a third party Voltron toy.  It certainly beats the snot out of the Toynami Masterpiece Voltron by about a quazilbajillion percent (may not  be a real number).  This year's Wonderfest has also unveiled a licensed version of this very toy as the REAL thing.

AH MAH GAWD.

So, I guess, you could consider this a prototype review.  Ooooh, I son't think I have any prototypes of any toys!

Clockwork Knight; Unwrapped

In the episode of Unwrapped, I have a play of Clockwork Knight on the Saturn.  I'd heard that as far as platformers go it isn't too bad and as I am a big fan of platformers, I thought I'd check it out.



After playing it a bit more in the following days I've come to the conclusion that its's not ad, but not fantastic either.  I do see it as being a bit of a nice one for showing off the old 32bit gaming power of the Saturn in the early days

Nendoroid Kirby Video review

Here's a review of Nendoroid Kirby, made by the people at Good Smile Company, the very same that bring us the delightful figmas!  YAY!

I don't generally like Nendoroids, the dimensions are generally a bit ugly looking to me, but I have a couple in my collection.  Kirby however doesn't bother me, because the small, pudgy dimensions fit him fairly well.

Enough blab!  Watch the videooooooo!

Racing Miku EV Mirai Ver 2014 Figma

You may have noticed that I like Hatsune Miku.  I don’t know why. Maybe the Ulala Space Channel 5 feel I get from her or what.  Ever since they have been using her for the Goodsmile Racing capaigns, I’ve grown quite fond of her various “Racing” incarnations.  Here’s one that I was a bit taken by surprise by, not only as it kind of snuck up on me, but also as it’s rather cool as well as being quite different for Hatsune Miku.

Preamble is finished, let’s have a look at 2014 EV Mirai version of Hatsune Miku.

Top 5 Toys of 2015

Well, what an interesting year for toys last year was.  The change of the new year got me thinking about this, and I’ve never really taken an account of what toys I have bought in any given year.  2015 was a lower count year and making up a quick list has inspired me to catalogue my stuff a bit better as well as make this post. 

To make things consistent, I aim to keep this list to toys that were released in 2015, as opposed to toys acquired in 2015, although this year there is barely any difference, and then I can make a best of or some such lazy recycling post.