Love Baccara, yes Sir I can indeed Boogie

 

Hey guys, long time lurker but I’ve been starting to post a few things recently. I tried to stay away from posting as I had a healthy message board addiction in the early 2000s.

Anyway living up in Perth. Which seems to be a black hole for any sort of TF collecting. Which is probably a good thing as I’ve been unemployed for the better part of this year and the job opportunities aren’t amazing if you don’t have connections. Thankfully my amazing wife passed her teachers assessment and is now into her probation year and doing well.

Any collecting I do is from odd jobs I get around the place or from selling stuff. It’s a good assessment of what you feel you need in a collection. Turns out I’m focusing on Iron Factory, whatever siege I can afford (refraktor from tree chopping money) and my MP Carbots and Microhange style guys.

Still hopefully a proper job will turn up as I really like the Diaclone reboot stuff but that is waaaay to expensive. I have the first Diabattles and two of the little suits but that’s it.

 

That opening melody before the beat drops is just too damn sexy. Got it on vinyl, la. Like a true ponce!

 

Hey Gnaw, met your new friend Scraplet.

You should get on well.

Or maybe not....

 

Fair enough, looking at it now I don't think Defender has aged very well whereas T30 Springer is timeless.

Thought I was probably exaggerating a bit with the Lego Falcon but I kept seeing pics every so often. Given the choice between one of the collector's edition Lego sets or Unicron I'd go with the Lego although having seen the sheer insanity of some of the custom spaceships I've seen people displaying at conventions on YouTube even those would be a bit underwhelming....I want an 8 foot Serenity dammit!  

I have a few Marvel sets including all the ones from the first GOTG movie which're fun but they're currently rotated out of my displays due to a lack of space and have also expanded my minifigure collection considerably due to the existence of the KO's which enabled me to get SDCC Exclusives for a couple of quid  

@MyTea Boc,
Glad you had a nice Sunday afternoon!

If I like it I'll likely end up binge watching Stranger Things and be caught up fairly quick so I'll see how it goes.

EDIT,
Just got a shipping e-mail from TFS Express for Iron Factory Helex!  

Also got one from Comics & Cocktails for Marvel Legends 80th Anniversary Captain America.....(crosses digits and hopes I get one without wonky eye paint)

 

Optimus Prime
Function: Commander
"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings"

 

Yeah, Hong Kong was pretty much fucked up after he tried that in AoE.....

 

Well fan my brow. Didn’t know they’d even appeared here yet. My eyes are peeled as I need many.

That soapy pearl plastic is just so nasty but those massive screws on Apeface’s waist are unforgivable. How could Hasbro let this pass?

 

Not much robot-wise to report, other than I am in a quandary that I need to sort out in expectation of some display room once our extension is done, but no room to sort out as we need more room hence the extension, and I need to clear them out of the loft so we can do the extension! D'oh!

Christmas present sorted, a quick question to HMV reveals the release of all 5 Samurai Jack seasons on region 2 2nd December, although my son berated me as season 5 has more violence than he is theoretically allowed ("violence and bloodshed, violence and bloodshed, VIOLENCE AND BLOODSHED")!

Laters.

 

The thing about those MOCs (My Own Creation - any model built and displayed by collectors) that use thousands of pieces and end up huge and elaborate is that lose the feel of being a toy. As far as I'm concerned, anything made from Lego ought to be playable for an 8-year-old, and if it isn't, it's fallen short of the mark. If you're interested in building a massive detailed model, you might as well get into actual modelling, as Lego is a pretty lo-fi medium to be doing it in. Just, y'know, keep toys fun.

*picks up Siege Ironhide and makes brum brum noises*

Ahem.

As for the minifigs, it's a cynical business. Quite apart from those SDCC exclusives, even the regular ones are intentionally made hard to get. For the Age of Ultron line a full compliment of Avengers would cost £170, and end up with multiple Iron Mans and Hulks. It got worse for Infinity War and Endgame, the latter doing the characters all over again... but wearing the quantum suits so they all look the same and boring. A full set of the Scooby Doo gang was £100 and get spare Shaggies and Scoobies, but worst was Pirates of the Caribbean, where Jack Sparrow was literally in every single set. The cheapest way to get the entire Fellowship from LOTR was £152. Lego's a great toy, but they're not above cynically splitting up groups to get you to buy more.

 

Boom! Earthrise wave one stuff and the last two Seacons pre-ordered. Saw IDToys saying Jan 2020 for Earthrise wave one. That can't be right, can it? I was expecting April.

 

Yeah, I'll be seeing how Siege-hide compares with the TR lads and having a guestimate later.

Definitely agree with you their dude. You got to love things despite/ because of their flaws.

Never played Dark Void, but I can definitely think of a few games like that. Stranglehold and Ace Combat 6 spring to mind.

Same with movies. Sometimes I think you need to watch a few duff movies to appreciate how good the good ones are.

Welcome! Quite a nice collection you have there!

Tis a fun romp in my own humble opinion!

Simple, they know idiots like me will still buy it  .

The pearly plastic is a bit jarring. I'm hopeful it just doesn't photograph well and it isn't quite so white in hand.
The waist screws... well not great, but we've seen worse.

 

Boom too! Decided to B-word-proof the Wave and get them now (with ID) rather than see just how bad pricing gets in a month or so when they go up elsewhere.........Plus of course "elsewhere" isn't a comprehensive guarantee of getting a whole Wave anymore so why not?  

Oh Apeface, why have they carved you from soap?  I'm hoping somehow He will be one of those "oh Much Better in hand than pics!" jobs because bloody hell He's going to need to be. Signs are not enocouraging thus far.  

 

Hasbro usually give later dates for release than when they actually show up. I think January is a realistic estimate on ID’s part, as they’re almost certainly not going to be out in time for Christmas.

Deffo. Most of us don’t actually get to see the truly terrible movies out there, aside from the ones that become cult hits like The Room and Troll 2. It irks me when people say that the Star Wars prequels or Twilight or whatever are the ‘worst films ever’ or something. Not even close. They’re generally competent films that they just don’t like. They are at worst, average. Even when I hate on Michael Bay’s films I’ll grudgingly accept there’s talent on display there. Even in TLK, which I regard as a crime against my eyeballs.

 

Exactly. Gamers are worse for that kind of behavior. So many games are just fine but not great, but folks act like the disk popped itself out of the console and farted in their mouths.

Although some games seem to get released in some truly buggy/ shoddy states these days.

I don't know, I reckon we could see the deluxes out just before Christmas.

I thought the Wave 5 of Siege was due closer to xmas, but according to Kapow's site they are due Oct/Nov - and Apeface, Astrotrain and Spinister are all listed as being sold out. Sooo.... hopefully?

Would love to hear an update on Omega Supreme though!

 

Omnibots rock! More pics in the G1 thread as per.

 

Maybe the Siege extension is more shoe-horned in than we could have imagined, what with Space Choo Choo getting an instant repack in Earthrise?
Also it finally dawns on me that Earthrise Cliffy might just represent the death knell of Legends as a size class? Thank goodness MFT stepped in for Gears!

 

Nice week to all

 

It's hard to quantify Sky Lynx. He wasn't in the movie, instead introduced with season 3 of the cartoon, he wasn't designed by Hasbro or Takara, he doesn't have a robot mode, and he doesn't have a personality that can be summed up in a single word like the others. Sky Lynx is an oddity. Oh wait, that was a single word summary. Uh, moving on.

It's equally odd that he got so much prominence in season 3. Not the role he took, essentially being the Autobots' answer to Astrotrain, but that he was a tough sell, both as a character and a toy. A space shuttle that unfolded into a sort of bird thing and a slab that unfolded into a slab with legs and a head. You see the problem here, it's not actually all that cool. Buuuut, just like with G1 Springer's toy, being a bit naff doesn't mean something can't be enjoyed, and Sky Lynx's portrayal in the cartoon pretty much gets there. As an absolute egotist, he managed to stay just on the right side of utterly insufferable, in many appearances throughout the show. Unlike, say, Sunstreaker, Sky Lynx actively encourages his comrades to be as awesome as he is. There's something charming there, to be generous with your ego.

Let's be honest, there wasn't much of a chance that Sky Lynx was ever going to get into Generations without a major redesign and a boring robot mode. The design is just too out there, too un-Takara to ever really be practical. So to show up in Combiner Wars as the ultimate wildcard is actually a pretty sharp and sensible move on Hasbro's part, and proves that despite everything else, they still have the capacity to surprise.

And when you get him in hand, you start to see why this was never a great idea. Sky Lynx doesn't so much transform as he just folds up a bit. Going from beast mode into shuttle mode isn't a particularly exciting time as there's nothing new to see. All the shuttle parts were on display as beast parts already, only now they're a little bit more boring. Presumably he needs to be in this mode for proper space flight, and stretches his legs out during his downtime so he can pose dramatically in front of the others. Seems about right.

But since the slab bit and the shuttle bit are now eternally fused together, there's no chance of bird/lynx duocon shenanigans. I can live with that. There's not a whole lot they can do in separate parts that they can't do together, so why bother? Well, the fun of deploying the cargo brick from flight like a badass, actually. That would be cool, but it's not really worth it. Not when the lynx makes a surprise cameo as....



....now that's a combiner. What a curveball. What an absolute swerve to the batshit bonkers side of the tracks. Everything about Sky Reign (for so it is named) is a special kind of crazy. No robot head - those are for losers - instead having a golden lion face with an insane popped collar. The blue takes over as the primary colour, and the rocket engine swings down to become a stonking great chest crest. The only downside is that the shoulders don't have anywhere to properly lock in, so you have to hold them in place when rotating the arms. Annoying to be sure, but compared to Menasor's propensity for every tab to pop apart when you try and move anything, it's still an improvement. Not only that but the hip joints have way more detents in the ratchets, making the legs a hell of a lot easier to pose.

Sure, Sky Lynx was kinda-sorta-maybe associated with the second lot of classic Autobot repaints in CW, but come on. You don't need to be told what to do. Sky Reign is like Galvatronus, Tsarscream and Elita-1 for being a place to take the spare combiner bots you don't have any other place for and give them a good home. Rook, Alpha Bravo, Ricochet, whoever you like. Be creative! Or be like me and use him as a surrogate kitty parent for the dinobots you stubbornly didn't buy the Grimlock for. They make a remarkably coherent whole once you accent them with the HFGs from G2 Menasor.

This is pretty much the last word on Sky Lynx from Hasbro. It's pretty much impossible they'll ever revisit this weirdo again, as he just doesn't fit any regular Transformers aesthetic. Get any thoughts of commander or leader-class versions out of your heads, he's not nearly a popular enough character to pull that off. We were genuinely lucky to even get a voyager-class rendition as deluxes are always guaranteed to sell better. And to have it as an absolutely mental combiner with a cat head, that's meowgnificent.

Yes, I'm ending with meowgnificent. Fight me, losers.

 

Oh, dear. It seems ZOIDS have been...uh..."Yu-Gi-Oh!"-ed?