I just got Prime Rumble and Airachnid in Hamleys Dundrum. Rumble is awesome, Airachnid is ok, but after getting TMNT 2012 Shredder for Christmas she is not as bad as is made out. Shows overall how good TF's are. They had dead end, kup and the others in the wave also. Tesco Dundrum had a few Kup's which I had not seen before. Completely forgot to look through the voyagers to see if they had dreadwing
Ken Black are connected to Smyth's, or is it Toymaster? You paid a pretty penny for them. I was there on monday. I remember seeing FOC Optimus and Jazz for €22 each. From my brief search, Tesco did not have any Dreadwings. None in Hamley's either. Rumble is a rather nice figure. Opened him over Xmas. He has a sort of gremlin with a forked tongue as his chest sculpt. I also liked that some otherwise useless kibble has missile launchers, which you can rotate into shoulder-mounted Prowl or Bluestreak style. You can't really compare TFs with other toys. That's like comparing apples with... crab apples. I've found this with my small collection of movie robots. Robots that don't even have to transform, that have no pressing need for comprise. They're usually clumsy things made from rubbery plastic with joints in the wrong places and inadequate posability. In the comparatively few requirements they have to meet, they are totally outclassed by even the most average transformer.
Well I wanted to make sure as Ken Black is down the country and the only place I've heard of having him, also Toymaster is still selling DOTM deluxes and voyagers.
Like Real Steel or Robocop? Surprised to hear that Shredder isn't too good, I thought the new TMNT figures were well received.
The 4 turtles are fantastic, well articulated and sculpted with loads of accessories. Shredder is sculpted well and has decent accessories also, but he has no knee or ankle articulation. So the only pose you can get from him is standing still, he has hip joints, but one of his feet is sculpted at an angle so they don't come in too handy. He looks standing next to the turtles, but that is all he can do stand. The lack of a knee joint is baffling.
That's the basic idea. I didn't see any merchandise from Real Steel, but I don't think I liked those designs much anyway. I got stuff from Terminator movies, some Wall-Es, some mech suits from Iron Man, Avatar, a few bots from Star Wars, whatever takes my fancy really. Maybe it's strange but I was never into human action figures. I don't like the visible joints. On robots it makes sense.
Do you collect them in any particular scale? eg 3.75, 6 inch etc... Have you seen the Marvel Universe Sentinel?
Smyths Fonthill road had nothing really new. Waves one to three of deluxes, and a single voyager Optimus Prime. They had loads of the Weaponisers Optimus Prime and Bumblebee. There was also one Optimus Maximus and some other Cyber-verse and Bot Shots stuff. Tesco Hillcrest had four voyager Optimi, as well as two Starscreams and a Bulkhead at €24.99. Deluxes; they had a few Kups, two Arcee's, two Airachnids and one of those Stealth Bumblebees, all marked down to €11.99. I picked up an Airachnid and an Arcee. Airachnid's pretty crap. Her helicopter mode is kind of fun but the robot mode could have been done a whole lot better. Arcee is fun though. I'm giving her shot-gun thing to Optimus for the moment, until I can maybe get those Dr. Wu guns.
Last time I checked a Smyths they had about 1 Optimus voyager left on the shelves. Perhaps they will be putting out new stock (Hopefully not more wave 1) soon. Voyager Dreadwing and Ultra Magnus are the only two figures left from Prime RID that I want.
Scale has always been too much of a challenge to stick with. That's pretty cool if I was more of a Marvel fan. Reminds me of an Iron Giant figure I always meant to pick up That's a lot of blue for one wave. FOC voyagers seem way more exiting. Ultra Magnus is a must though.
