Shining Series 01: Shining Roll Out

I saw some of these guys on a Transformers Discord chat and thought they seemed decent enough and thought I would like to get at least one to experience for myself. While browsing the website, I saw they actually had a Shattered Glass Optimus Prime version and in the same box is a rather cool looking Grimlock too. Hrm, I says...

The start of his fall into obsession

And then I had ordered a box with Shatty Prime and this single "Shining Version" of Optimus Prime. Essentially these guys are blind box purakit figures. That is, figures that you need to assemble yourself. I ended up actually using Aliexpress, because these guys don't have a Japanese distributor and even Amazon US seems to have a bit of a spotty range. And so this arrived in the post one day.

Thus one man's descent into insanity BEGAN!

Today, however, I am just going to be looking at the Shining Version. Optimus Impressed me enough to source myself a Megatron as well, the rest of the characters in that run, I am fine with not having the Shining versions. However, Beachcomber, with his Golden Lagoon hand and shining blue eyeballs, is kinda tempting...

Anyhoo, let's go with my impressions.

The box is a small little fella, but it does have some nice colouring and reflecty-hologramy thingie going on.

Er, obviously these are the Chinese boxes, so everything is in Chinese, but they look and fell legit.

When you get it out of the box, you have two bags, one has some hands and joints on a plastic tree and the other has a bunch of dismembered robot parts.

These are the bits for IDW Ultra Magnus, but you get the idea.

Once assembled, you'll end up with a non-transforming robot action figure.

You also get a stand and a few accessories. Megatron comes with an Energon cube, his energon flail/mace, a pointing hand and a stand. Optimus comes with an energon axe, his Ion Blaster, a Matrix, a stand for the matrix, a stand for Optimus and an extra pointing finger!

Grimlock not included

First we'll have a look at the general body.

They share the same basic build underneath, but have different "armour parts."

Shared parts are:

Calves
feet
thighs
upper arms
torso
hinge joints
Groin piece
hands

However they have different:

Chest piece
back
shins
shoulder pads
pants
face
helmet

The detail on both of them is rather good and the paintwork is very sharp.

Optimus' chest window is blue. but has some really nicely done tech paint, that has the outline of the matrix on it. So since I started there, let's check out Optimus closely.

Optimus looks very Optimus-y. Things are going well so far. As I said before, the paint work is really nicely done and clear. He has paint on his chesty lights, arms, GROIN, rib grille and leggies. Nice.

Look! Up there! What a mess you made Grimlock!!

Because the joint connections are relatively unhindered the articulation is really good. The joints on these Blokees are:

Butterfly & ball jointed shoulders.
Hinged knees & elbows, which have swivels.
Swivel waist.
Ball jointed hips.
Hinged knees with swivels.
Ball jointed ankles.
Ball jointed wrists.

Popping the accessories on and off is super simple, and so you can actually have a lot of fun with these guys. Since they are only 10cm tall they are great desk buddies.

HOWEVER

They are also very distracting, so not so good for having at work.

Back to Optimus. The hands have some little grooves in them, so you can have him hold the matrix in a way, it's a bit shaky however, but it doesn't looks bad. The axe just plugs into the wrist joint and it looks very axe-like and cool.

Essentially, exactly how you want it to be.

Megatron also looks pretty slick.

They all have a small port in the forearm for accessories. You'll have to decide for yourself whether you want the port on the outer or inner part of the arms when you make them. Megatron needs it on the outer, for his cannon, but Optimus doesn't, so I have set the arms appropriately for each one. It's entirely aesthetical though, so do as you wish.

While Optimus' head sculpt is pretty much what you would expect, Megatron's is ... er.. somewhat human looking. I noticed this with Bumblebee as well. It could be a little bit too human-y? Maybe. It's very smirky and arrogant, which is one thing I guess.

Although, having a look at Optimus' noggin', you can see the forehead grill crest thing is larger than normal. I guess these guys do fall a bit into the "chibi" proportional style somewhat. It doesn't make Op look weird, so it's ok.

Looks like I activated the lights as well. Check that chest detail too.

It's hard to photograph because they have a nice shiny paint over the translucent plastic.

Megatron's articulation is pretty unhindered and the big feet on all these Blokees I've experienced so far allow for great balance.

Look at that terrible Dancing in the picture next to us!

They also come with these Decepticon insignias on one side and Autobot on the other panel things. They're attached to the joint trees and can be plugged in, er, places. for, er things.

As you can see, Megatron's paint is pretty good. His red hinges are reminiscent of the red on the inside of his legs.

Megs comes with the following:

The flail just plugs into his wrist and is slightly curved. It looks pretty good.

Sculpt, paint and articulation are all pretty good, how about transformation? Well, I am sad to say these guys don't transform. Sorry.

HOWEVER!

Due to them sharing the same basic build, they are extremely modular in nature, so you can get inventive with making new characters, or, perhaps, very specific versions....

Nice! However, they aren't very shiny either are they? Why are they called "Shining version"?

Oh that is a good question, thanks for asking. The answer is LED. These Shining versions come with an LED in the chest piece which is designed through a light piping style of thing to go through to the head and chest area. Optimus' matrix chamber lights up, as well as his eyes, and Megatron's eyes shine red. In the dark, you can see a bit of light behind his Decepticon insignia, but that is unintentional. It's just because all the chest piece have a hole for chest lighting.

There is no switch and inside the chest is a CR9273V battery. You activate the light by giving the figure a little bump. Or flick, a gently bonk it on the ground.

It looks pretty effective and in the dark looks a bit like this:

The inside of their heads is translucent plastic and light is channelled up from the chest.

Swapping the heads also works.

Optimus Lights up really well, but Megatron and his eyes can be a bit harder to see. However, in low lighting, he can bust out a rather sinister shine.

Of course it always looks a bit better in darkened areas.

You can see the chest piece hole lighting the chest area here.

Overall these guys are just really simple fun little toys. Costing about 10 bucks or so, I feel that that feels about right. They are blind boxed, so you don't know what you're gonna get, unless you buy a whole case. Even then, there are chase versions that seem to show up every 4 cartons. That Shiny Grimlock in Dino mode is one of them. I've had an absolute blast with the ones I've received over the past few weeks.