I know there's already a CHUG thread, but I though that the Thrilling 30 line deserved its own thread.

So... Commence the appreciation of this amazing line!

 

Metroplex, springer, rhinox and waspinator have truly renewed my faith in this brand. I was always a collector, I just became jaded in the past few years, with quality control and cost cutting issues. The figures I mentioned are truly some of my favorite ever, they are that nice.

 

Sums it up quite nicely for me!

 

Honestly, the way I look at it:

As fun as the previous Generations molds are, the new ones blow everything out of the water in terms of quality. They're just as hollow, but the hollowness is used better. They're using the smaller size to give us certain scaling that is better, such as Waspinator's near perfect scale. It's amazing.

So yeah, gimme moar.

 

APPROVE. The only disappointments for me so far are Blitzwing and Legends Optimus. The worst thing about this line is how slowly it seems to be trickling out...however that's only the part of my brain who NEEDS RHINOX NOW.

Special props to the media integration making me want a neo-Armada toy and a pack of new Minicons, things I would otherwise have had no interest in. Oh yeah, and giving us a Seeker trifecta. Oh yeah, and giving us a BASEFORMER.

 

YES. He's huge, poseable, and looks great standing on a shelf towering over everything else. He's a lot of fun. I'd tell you about some of the problems he has, but I'm too blinded by the good stuff to remember the bad.  

 

Yes. I know that this is a post to a necro thread. I was actually looking for a place to celebrate Thrilling 30 that wasn't just a CHUG thread. This is because T30 gave us some of the coolest figures in our collections that we don't quite acknowledge the same way we do CW or TR. The IDW comics, the characters inspired by the comics and in general a varied list of characters some even sporting their own unique gimmicks. So sure, this is a dead thread but I'd like to pay a special tribute to T30 anyway and I'll do it here. Not the best quality but I get rest mostly at nights now.

 

I used to have Jetfire... thats about it...

 

Loved the chug Thrilling 30 Figs!!! Yeah i helped in bumping an old thread but this sub line produced some of my favorite generations figs!!!

Wreck N Rule- by ricemaster76, on Flickr

generations windblade!- by ricemaster76, on Flickr

Leadrer Class Jetfire- by ricemaster76, on Flickr

generations gears!- by ricemaster76, on Flickr

 

These were some of my favorite Transformers of the modern era. I'll have to dig mine out of storage and share some pics...

 

I ordered myself Whirl just the other day and I must say he is probably my favourite Autobot toy to date... I'll share some pics as soon as possible.

 

Ah thrilling 30, what a great line it was. I still get a kick out of transforming Springer back and forth between his three modes. Still a great toy and with Sandstorm, probably two of the best voyagers in the last decade imo.

 

Springer was one of my first figures and the one that really started me off on collecting! What a fantastic figure!

 

And they all had heads!
And this was good!
And the peoples rejoiced!

 

Springer is amazing.
The Skids mold is awesome as well, though I myself prefer the Crosscut deco.
The Gears/Swerve mold looks very cool, but I've yet to obtain either myself.

 

Thrilling 30 was an awesome line indeed. Not only did it follow up on the heels of the success of the IDW series but it also gave us fembots in one fell swoop!

Not only that but Windblade was the first fan made bot we ever had. I remembered voting and just being happy that as a community, we had some effect on the character's overall creation! I tip my hat to this fembot  

Chromia, Arcee and Windblade enjoying a day outside.




Here is Arcee and Windblade having a friendly sparring session. They gave Arcee soooo many accessories!




Fembots weren't the only thing this line offered. It also gave us an updated Legends Cliffjumper but also two long anticipated Ark 84 bots: Gears and Trailbreaker! Sure T30 Trailbreaker isn't scaled correctly but he's still cool to me.



Here you can see Suppressor, Cliffjumper's mini-con partner, showing his true colours.



...and Eagle Eye doing something about that!



Man. This line is so awesome.

 

So I've worked my backwards with these G1/CHUG reviews from Titans Return to Combiner Wars and now I arrive at Thrilling 30.

The last Insecticon to review is my favourite Insecticon by a wide margin. I can't quite remember how I wound up with my childhood Shrapnel. I suspect my paternal grandmother bought him for me, but it's pretty fuzzy.What I do remember is how much I liked him. But we'll come back to that. Another thing I don't really remember is if I ever saw him in any of the cartoons. So few of the cartoons were shown on UK tv that I think I probably only saw maybe ten episodes of the cartoon, including the stuff I saw on VHS. My memories of Shrapnel in the comic were a little less vague but not much, a few scenes here and there in the US stuff and one fantastic sequence early on in Target:2006. Jeff Anderson made him look like a total and utter bastard. It was magic.

click for the full review

Spoiler

He's an amazingly handsome little figure. I loved his face sculpt, the classic little Diaclone benign smile and wrap around shades. It's funny, but despite being surprised by how small so many of them were, the Diaclone figures are the ones had the archetypal proportions and Shrapnel sure has them. There's nothing lanky or stubby about him. It feels like he's been designed with care and consideration. There's so many things I love about this figure in 'bot mode, from that amber cockpit, to his massive chrome antennas - so cool and and distinctive - to the little guns on the underside of his arm. His 'insect' mode isn't a convincing insect, but as a freakish alien war machine it's perfection. He has an incredibly premium look for a low price point figure. It's no surprise that so many of us remember the Insecticons so fondly.

What's funny about looking back at the Thrilling 30 'Skrapnel' is how primitive he looks compared to the other Generations Insecticons. It's crazy to think there's only a couple of years between Skrapnel and Kickback.The sophistication of the design and engineering seems so much greater to my quite uneducated eye. Now that's not to say Skrapnel isn't a great figure. It's well designed and engineered, with the robot legs to bug thorax sequence being one highlight and the admirable amount of articulation being the other. But Kickback was such a little modern wonder that the inevitable comparison isn't a favourable one.

There's a few things that I'm not a massive fan of, such as the insect legs being so visible in 'bot mode and the head is just that little bit too tiny. Minor quibbles. In the remaining positives, that facesculpt really gets across what a little rotter he is and the insect mode is much more obviously a creepy bug that it's G1 forefather.

These Thrilling 30 Legends all came with a targetmaster-lite gimmick. It's a nice idea but I found every single one of them to be utterly disposable. Reflector gets some points for being Reflector and for doing a good imitation of G1 Shrapnel's gun.

Oh, and the name. 'Skrapnel'. It's awful. Now I understand the bind that Hasbro are in when it comes to keeping hold of certain names and I'm sympathetic o the loops they sometimes need to jump through. But often when they get 'creative' the results can be cringeworthy. Skrapnel may be the worst offender. I can imagine the meeting where the name was suggested, the slow clap it was greeted with and the angry response "well, have you got anything better?"

...Snapnel? no? ok, fine. Skrapnel it is.

 

Some nice figures there though I thought Jetfire was Combined Wars. I'm probably thinking of the Seekers retooled from him.

Swerve is nice. The cheerful face captures his IDW self.

I'm going to have to get another Trailbreaker and Jetfire since I repainted them as Kick Off and Hooligan.

 

Thanks to the roaring success of James Roberts More Than Meets The Eye comic we've seen some d-list characters suddenly become fan favourites. Suddenly the rather tired minibot repaints we got in 1986 are everyone's favourite minibot EVER! Back to the shadows for Huffer, Windcharger and Gears and veritable renaissance for the likes of Pipes, Tailgate, and of course Swerve.

Click for the full review

Spoiler

I remember nothing about Swerve. Nothing. Well, almost nothing. i'm fairly certain at least one friend had him. I'll have picked him up for maybe two minutes, transformed him, and then went off to look at something more interesting. Maybe Wreck Gar? I don't think he even appeared in the comics. Outback was my '86 minibot of choice, due to his appearances around issue 100 of the Uk comic. He was cool. I could get behind him. Unfortunately Nick Roche only went and killed him off panel in Spotlight:Kup so any hopes off seeing him in the IDW universe were dashed. but I digress.

Yer school of '86 Swerve is a fine little minibot. A very minimal retool of Gears, with a paint job and a new head that the animators wouldn't have to redesign to imbue him with some humanity. That burgundy is very appealing but the dash of pink over his face isn't. I'm sure someone that hadn't already seen Gears will have fallen in love with him, but I was already jaded by 1986 and this guy wasn't going to set my world on fire.

Suddenly our world (aka tumbler) is full of fan art and obscure memes about this wee arse. A twatish, show stealing loud mouth that people seemed to love despite his unlikeability. Lest that sound like I'm criticising all those that have fallen for the guy, let me just say that the bell-end usually brought a smile to my lips, and his dialogue was always quotable. Roberts was obviously having a ball writing the guy.

His toy embodies this iteration's sheer irrepressibility. It's mainly down to the lop sided, wide grin on the head sculpt. We don't often see smirking toys in the Generations line and this mold benefits from it tremendously. I often talk about judging these figures on how much character they pack in, and Swerve is an easy 10 out of 10 for character. Smug mug aside, the toy is fantastic. He's well articulated and, more than Skrapnel, he still looks great alongside any Titans Return legends class figure. His transformation is simple but satisfying and the vehicle mode looks sweet as. He has great paint apps but part of me does wish he was a closer in hue to the '86 model. Once again, he comes with a target master style mini-minibot called um, let me just check....Flanker! Right, Flanker. sure. My subconscious contempt for this gimmick has manifested itself in me losing one of the wings. SWell, why would you bother with an accessory like this when you can give Swerve 'My First Blaster', right?

 

Like what you're doing with these small reviews, man. Keep 'em coming