It is what it is, pure unadulterated comic-book love. I'm totally into it, but I get some people expected a different thing.

 

The alt mode is probably gonna get remolded hard, but all of the pieces are there. Like with Knockout, if you look at the design of the toy and the art for Minerva you can see those hard similarities. I can see these as a last hurrah since IDW is reportedly loosing the license for TF later this year. Hell, look up in the thread and someone's already made a Digibash.

 

What the freaking heck is with them re-releasing a clean Siege Soundwave "to go with Blaster" instead of the proper ER one that has the correct, similar alt mode that made them rivals in the first place?

 

Wow everyone looks good and decent 

 

Getting Pointblank vibes from Alita-1.

New nose, big ass spoiler with 5mm port.

 

It's amazing how good this entire reveal is. The worst it gets is "this one just isn't for me". Nothing is bad. The vast majority are instant buys.

 

So apart from gushing about Jhiaxus (I have waited for this day for so long!):

• Tarantulus looks fantastic from a character likeness perspective. Love those bright colors. Probably will be sort of boring to transform, and that sawblade weapon is weirdly dinky, but I'm extremely likely to pick him up.
• Kinda into that Elita, but what is that alt-mode from / supposed to be? Feels a little like a "pre-paint."
• Not feeling the love on Knockout. Just does not capture the character -- especially the head sculpt, which was the one thing they really had to nail to sell it. These Prime homages have been real duds, and that sucks, because when they don't sell well, Hasbro's gonna be like, "Welp, the people don't like TFPrime I guess!"
• Still on the fence for this Menasor. I think these guys look roughly as good as you could hope for -- Motormaster's weird shins aside -- but at $190 for the full set, I'm getting cold feet. I'd kinda like to see the whole thing combined before I take the plunge -- sure, that Menasor shell gives you a real good idea what the full figure will look like, but we don't know how stable it'll be. But by that point it'll be a pain in the ass to find the first few figures.
• The more I look at Blitzwing, the less convinced I am that I'll be able to pull the trigger. I know triple-changers are impossible, but come on... one of the alt-modes has to be good.

 

Same.

 

Jhiaxus’s disgusting, hideous, monstrous, horrifying, rancid, putrid color scheme is the appeal. Easily my favorite of this wave.

 

Consider for a moment, they also didn't use VW Bumblebee in the Worlds Collide 4 pack and Netflix Elita hasn't seen reuse either. There may be a contractual reason (either with Netflix or Walmart) for why those 3 retools haven't seen a 2nd release.

 

   

It's an incredibly diverse set of generation spanning bots. Legacy indeed.

 

Final order:
Elita One
Tarantulas
Knockout
SG Magnus
Blitzwing.

December's gonna kill my wallet, lol.

 

still don't know why we have no Netflix soundwave rerelease but i don't care because ss bumblebee soundwave is to go for me

 

It might have something to do with Wal-Mart? ER Soundwave was an exclusive for then and they may have made a deal to retain the exclusivity for that mold, same could be true for VW Bee.

 

Brings up the page for Wildrider fsr.

 

They've been able to re-use that head tho. Look at that "Bumblejumper" that came in the 4-pack. Clearly the same head tooling

 

So is Soundwave even up for preorder? That makes it even more weird? Is it an exclusive somewhere?

Makes me think some other figure dropped out at the last second?

 

Very Excited for that Jhiaxus. Gonna get Tarantulas too.

Not really digging Elita in that mold though. Hoping it'll look better as Minerva.

 

I like the wave except for the clean Siege Soundwave re-release. It's annoying enough when you know that the Netflix version exists, but it's even more annoying when you remember his rival, who has an Earth alt mode, was released in the prior wave! There's not even a Buzzsaw cassette to try and make up for them releasing the wrong mold, which probably would have saved it for me (and I have Netflix Soundwave already, I imagine it's infinitely more frustrating if you don't have him).

But besides from that blunder, Jhiaxus and Tarantulus both look excellent (they even gave Tarantulus his TM Pizza Cutter!), Elita-1 looks pretty good (although I want to see it in Minerva colors), Knock-Out looks better than I expected him to, Motormaster's trailer is a bit short for my liking but otherwise pretty good, and Menasor looks like he'll be a stand-out on the shelf. And them including two heads with Delta Magnus/SG Magnus is really nice, I was not expecting them to do that.