Zob's Thoughts on Power of the Primes Beachcomber, Dinobot Slash, Skrapnel 2.0, and Windcharger

[Zobovor (the Man with All the Toys)]

Today, just for fun, I was poking around in the Item Locator screen trying to find store computer listings for Power of the Primes. Not only was I able to call them up, but it showed that my store had received 24 of the Legends toys. I had already worked all the new freight so I knew we hadn't gotten any shipping cases. I was very perplexed. Then I remembered that the annual Christmas toys "train" had arrived, named so because it's supposed to be set up on the salesfloor as a big, long row of cardboard displays, like train cars. Yeah, the Transformers were totally in there. They weren't in a shipping case so I don't have any hard data about case assortments, but I expect it's probably something like Beachcomber x2, Slash x2, Skrapnel x2 and Windcharger x2.

The premise of the Power of the Primes toy line is that there are 12 Primes, and each of them can contribute his spark power to a normal Transformer to augment their abilities. The collector cards that come with each toy describe a specific Prime interacting with that character and what the resultant effect is, so there are potentially 12 variations of each character to collect, where the only difference is the pack-in collector card. This is going to drive completists absolutely nuts.

The Titan Masters, who transformed into the heads of the larger robots, have been supplanted by the Prime Masters, mini-figures with similar functionality who are also reverse-compatible with Titans Return toys. Instead of turning into the heads of the robots, though, they turn into a weird sparky thing, to borrow a turn of phrase from the 2016 Ghostbusters film. On the new toys, the weird sparky thing represents one of the original Primes, and connecting the weird sparky thing to the other toys (the chest of Matrix-bearing toys or an auxiliary intermediate connector on the smaller toys) ostensibly grants that character the power of the Primes.

As an aside, we usually get the new year's product at the tail end of the previous year. It's so early in December still, though, that I'm having difficulty justifying these toys as intended 2018 product. Shrug.

BEACHCOMBER

We got a Legends-class Beachcomber in 2008 (back when "Legends" described a tiny six-dollar toy instead of a Basic/Scout-sized ten-dollar toy). It was a fairly good update, though his vehicle mode was a pretty radical departure from his original look. This new toy is a more faithful attempt at the G1 character, upsized to Legends format (which seems to be the current default size for all updates to the Mini Autobots now).

Beachcomber is three and a half inches in height as a robot. He's got blue head, arms, and lower legs with a matte grey body (the chest is made of black plastic; the ball joints for the arms remain unpainted) and upper legs. Just about the only thing that doesn't match the G1 toy is his grey fists, but I think they just did that to create a little more color differentiation. Giving him a single gold fist, as seen in "The Golden Lagoon," would have been better. Kids wouldn't get the reference at all, but it would still be cool. He's got some tampo printed details on his chest that echo the stickers on the G1 toy.

The head sculpt is great; they went with the cartoon look rather than trying to copy the weird mouth mask on the 1985 toy. He's got great articulation for such a small toy, with ball jointed hips and a mid-thigh swivel, ball jointed shoulders and elbows, and a swiveling head. The head doesn't have to do anything during transformation, so there are no cheats to the sculpt or weird hinges to interfere with his look.

For transformation, the body telescopes out, hiding the head. The arms stay where they are. The legs bend at the knees. That's basically it. So, G1. There is one minor twist where part of the roll cage is hidden inside the lower legs, so you have to peg those parts together. The only Autobot symbol on the toy is the two halves of the symbol on his lower legs, which ends up on the hood of the dune buggy mode. No domestic version of G1 Beachcomber was sold like this as far as I know, BUT he was pictured like this in the Hasbro product catalog (I think the plan was to give all the 1985 Mini Autobots regular Autobot symbol stickers before Hasbro developed the color-change rub symbols and added them to that year's product line).

His driver's seat is designed to accommodate a Prime Master mini-figurine, but I don't own any of those yet, so I have to test-drive the toy with a Titan Master. (This feels like when I bought the "Combiner Wars" Buzzsaw spy tablet and didn't have anything to put him in for about a year!) You have to disassemble the roll cage a little in order to fit a mini-figure inside, which admittedly isn't quite as bad as having to completely untransform Bumblebee or Roadburn. He cannot transform back to robot mode with a figure in place, because its presence prevents him from telescoping back into robot mode.

The collector card I got is Liege Maximo Beachcomber. "Convinces enemies to put down their weapons" is the description. It's a combination of Beachcomber's inherent personality traits with the Liege Maximo's capacity for persuasion (he's described as a "trickster" on the back of Slash's package). I wonder if there's a way to discover all the different variations without having to buy 12 different Beachcombers.

This is a great update for Beachcomber. It's a good size and the sculpt is very faithful to his G1 self. I think they finally managed to get him right. (If they did a green-and-orange version in G2 colors, I would buy it.)

DINOBOT SLASH

So, in 1984, in the cartoon episode "S.O.S. Dinobots," we were introduced to the original three Dinobots: Grimlock, Slag, and Sludge. Snarl and Swoop came in a subsequent episode, "War of the Dinobots," though I'm not sure why, since all five toys were released at the same time.

I am normally averse to new characters being shoehorned into the G1 mythos. I disliked the introduction of Alpha Bravo and Off-Road and Rook in Combiner Wars, for example, because the roster of the classic combiner teams should not be messed with under any circumstances. Introducing Slash wasn't wholly necessary, since she's not part of the Volcanicus combiner as far a I can tell (I had been anticipating that she could transform into a gun for the combined form, like the Combiner Wars Powerglide and Shockwave toys, but apparently not).

I feel differently about Slash, and I'm not sure why. The fact that she's a female character makes her special, for starters. She's the end result of a burgeoning movement to introduce more and more female characters into what has been, traditionally, a boys' market populated almost exclusively by male characters. (Look at the original Star Wars trilogy, for example, and name ten female characters who are not named Leia. It can be done, but it's difficult. It's much easier if you throw the new movies into the mix.) So, Slash is the Cruz Ramirez of the Transformers universe. I'm not offended by her existence. She even gets the unspoken single-syllable-name-that-starts-with-"s" naming convention right.

And, really, they did a pretty impressive job of making her look authentic to the Dinobot group. They had a pretty distinctive look. She's mostly grey plastic with some red and black robot parts and a little bit of gold. Had she been a G1 toy, the red part would likely have been die-cast metal, and it's believable that the chest and pelvis would have been a solid block of metal (they're interrupted by a silver stripe along the abdomen, but that could have been accomplished in 1985 with a consumer-applied sticker). The details on the fronts of her lower legs would also likely have been stickers, back in the day. The clear dinosaur head with gold components visible inside is also very authentic to the G1 Dinobot styling. The black component in the center of her chest could easily have been a Diaclone cockpit. The black robot head with a silver face and red eyes was the perfect choice. She reads correctly as a Dinobot without actually copying any of their existing color schemes (she's the closest to Sludge, at least in robot mode).

Just about the only color choices I question are her black feet and foreclaws; it's very likely that her toes would have been gold in color, and her claws and lower jaw would probably have been silver. I would have made the tip of her tail silver, too. Of course, each of the Dinobots broke their own design rules in one way or another (Swoop was the only one with wheels; Snarl was the only one without an opening jaw; etc.) so there's that. While the velociraptor really didn't rise to prominence in the public eye until 1993 with the release of Jurassic Park, the dinosaur had been discovered much earlier, so this choice of a transformed mode was, at least, theoretically possible in 1985. (It's very likely that a real sixth Dinobot would have taken the form of a creature more familiar to kids of the 1980's, like a dimetrodon or a styracosaurus. But, now I'm just kibitzing.)

To transform Slash, you tuck her robot legs up over her chest, swinging down the tail to hide the robot head. The robot arms form the dinosaur legs, and the head-and-claws assembly is partially hidden inside her body. A gold panel on her back opens to turn into a saddle of sorts for a Prime Master mini-figure. They can't sit in the seat properly; you have to bend their knees backwards and straighten their legs.

The collector card I got was Vector Slash, who "rips holes in space-time to access any point in history." Vector Prime is a time traveler, dontcha know. She does this four times in English, despite Beachcomber's card being translated into different languages.

We didn't necessarily need a new Dinobot team member, but Slash is okay in my book. She'll look really good with the other five Dinobots once all of them have been released.

SKRAPNEL

So, the original Skrapnel toy was released as a Generations toy in 2014 (an alternate name for Shrapnel for trademark reasons). His fellow Insecticons took a while to be released; we didn't get Bombshell until Combiner Wars in 2015, and Kickback was a Titans Return toy from 2017. With Skrapnel's rerelease as a Power of the Primes toy, I think this is the first time in history that three toys from the same sub-group have spanned four different toy lines. Similar to the problems with the six 1984-85 Decepticon jets, whose Classics/Generations toys spanned many years, the Insecticons weren't totally consistent in their color schemes. While the original Insecticons might have been gang-molded, the new ones enjoyed separate production runs, and their signature colors didn't quite match. Bombshell was a notably darker purple than the first Skrapnel, and had a darker schoolbus yellow for his chest and shoulders.

So, my suspicion is that the reason Skrapnel got worked back into the assortment was as a do-over. The new edition is a distinctly darker purple color, more closely matching the dark purple of Bombshell, even if it's not quite the same hue (Skrapnel is still more blue, while Bombshell is a little more on the red side of the spectrum). Also, now it's Kickback who's the odd man out, since he still uses the lighter purple of the original Skrapnel. Maybe it's Bombshell who should have been reissued in a LIGHTER purple! At least then he could have served as a handheld weapon for Abominus or somebody. Or, conversely, Kickback should have been reshipped, since he alone has the ability to accommodate a mini-figure.

The inclusion of the Skrapnel toy in Power of the Primes makes little to no sense, since while he has a peg mounting hole in the top of his insect form, he has no means to accommodate a Titan Master or Prime Master mini-figure. To this end, there is no mention made of any intercompatibility on the back of his package or in his instructions. He's a sad, antiquated artifact out of time. Spreading out his insect mandibles and allowing a figure to sit loosely within his maw as a makeshift seat is about as good as it gets. (I'm using the head that came with Magnus Prime, so the Optimus horns serve as a hook that helps to hold him in place. Not all the heads, or weird sparky things, have these, obviously.)

Weirdly, though, he does get a collector card. Apparently, even being near a Prime Master is enough for Skrapnel to gain access to the power of the Primes. I got Alchemist Skrapnel, who "can travel through electrical pathways."

The 2014 Skrapnel I bought had a defective insect mandible, so I didn't really mind replacing him. The idea of reissuing him was a good one, though now I'm not sure if the problem was solved, since now Kickback looks wrong when you put the three toys together. Maybe they'll just keep doing random Insecticon reissues until they get it right.

I'm actually kind of surprised they didn't do something else. I mean, Skrapnel already got reused as Chop Shop, so it would have made sense to do Kickback in Ransack colors. At least that would have made him Prime Masters compatible. (There was a rumor going around about how Venom was coming, too, and that if he wasn't a tail-end Titans Return toy then he'd be an early Power of the Primes toy. What happened with that?)

WINDCHARGER

Considering that this guy is probably the least-developed of the 1984 Autobots, he sure does get a lot of toys. There was the Reveal the Shield toy from the now-defunct Scout class in 2011, and then the Legends-class Combiner Wars toy from 2015. Honestly, I think Hasbro became aware of how highly coveted and sought-after the Scout-class toy was (it still goes for $20-30 on eBay), and they inferred that Windcharger was a hugely popular character and that we needed multiple toys of him. He's become the Cheetor of the G1 mythos.

The Reveal the Shield toy was pretty good, and even had hands that could swap out for pretend magnets, though it had a Prowl-style hood-for-a-chest that didn't quite fit the character's original look. The Combiner Wars toy was a little better, though he had weirdly spindly legs and gigantic, beefy arms. Sometimes, when updating a G1 character, they stray just a little too far from the source material, probably in a well-intentioned effort to improve or modernize the design. Really, though, I think "G1 with ball joints" is sufficient for most successful updates. The closer they get to G1, the better the update is, I think.

So, this new iteration of Windcharger is most unabashedly based directly on the 1984 toy. No attempts at redesigning the character, no new, weird transformation tricks... just a straightforward reading of the original toy. The side doors and windows for the car mode are mounted to his forearms, but they're fairly unobtrusive. He wears the hood of the car on his back, allowing him to have the correct head configuration as per the Sunbow cartoon. He's got an Autobot symbol in the center of his chest, but the person doing the sculpted details didn't seem to take this into account, since the Autobot badge overlaps some of the molded detail.

So, let's talk about his much-maligned head sculpt, which is already garnering plenty of negative traction in the fandom. It's based directly on his animation design. The G1 toy had a featureless silver mask and a black visor for eyes, a look which was dispensed with in favor of something more humanoid and easier to relate to. The toy copies the cartoon look precisely, so what went wrong? Why do the fans hate it so? I think the problem lies not in his head design, per se, but in the proportions. His face is too high up on his head. He has no cranium. There's no room in there for his brain. The proportions are off and so we reject it as wrong. I want to go off on a tangent about people using computers to design things but lacking fundamental design skills, but I guess I'd better stop now.

Transformation is pretty basic. Arms stay at the sides, knees fold up to form the back of the car. There's a little big of fidgeting involved to move the hood into the right place, and the roof of the car is actually tucked inside the feet, but other than that, it's G1 with ball joints. Also, he's actually shaped like a Pontiac Trans Am this time. That's a huge plus. They fiddled with some of the details to avoid a licensing problem (the front grill is in-your-face silver and weirdly devoid of any sculpted detail) but the toy is recognizable as Windcharger. He's got an off-center Autobot symbol on his hood, like the 1984 version (the 1985 version had a rub sumbol on the other side of the hood).

His Prime Master mini-figure compatibility requires you to untransform the back of the car, lifting the roof (which is attached to the back of the car) to allow access to the driver's seat. All the window elements were cast from translucent plastic, but for some reason the side windows were painted black. The T-top roof windows and the front windshield are still see-through, but the side windows don't let in much light.

The collector card I got was Nexus Windcharger, who "magnetizes other bots to quickly form combiners."

I would not be completely shocked to see this toy reused as (sigh) Tailgate. It would be a better Tailgate than the Combiner Wars edition, certainly. I would want to see a resculpted robot head and chest, if nothing else. (Also, if they wanted to sell this toy in black, with a red front grill, it would resemble K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider and I would buy the hell out of it. Maybe they could even call it something like Cyber Knight just to rub the joke in people's faces.)

I'm trying not to let the head sculpt bother me too much, because this is otherwise the best Windcharger toy we've ever gotten, hands down. It really is a great toy design. Since this size class has become the gold standard for Mini Autobot characters, I guess all we really need at this point is a new Gears/Swerve, a new Warpath (something like a downscaled version of the 2011 Deluxe toy would be great, since he was pretty much perfect), and a Huffer/Pipes. We know Outback is coming eventually, and hopefully Cliffjumper and Hubcap and maybe even Bumper are on the to-do list along with all those Throttlebots they allegedly have in the works.


Zob (getting the Christmas presents I ordered in the mail just slightly faster than I can wrap them)

[Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People.]

On Wednesday, December 6, 2017 at 11:40:50 PM UTC-6, Zobovor (the Man with All the Toys) wrote:
> Today, just for fun, I was poking around in the Item Locator screen trying to find store computer listings for Power of the Primes. Not only was I able to call them up, but it showed that my store had received 24 of the Legends toys. I had already worked all the new freight so I knew we hadn't gotten any shipping cases. I was very perplexed. Then I remembered that the annual Christmas toys "train" had arrived, named so because it's supposed to be set up on the salesfloor as a big, long row of cardboard displays, like train cars. Yeah, the Transformers were totally in there. They weren't in a shipping case so I don't have any hard data about case assortments, but I expect it's probably something like Beachcomber x2, Slash x2, Skrapnel x2 and Windcharger x2.
>

I dug through the TRU in store database today, after the website told me it was in stock, only for the website to say out of stock when I got there. It says they aren't getting any for months, but also doesn't have the inventory of the two trucks on the dock.
Luckily Walmart had 1 solitary Slugslinger, so I finished my TR toys and can look for PotP.

> The premise of the Power of the Primes toy line is that there are 12 Primes, and each of them can contribute his spark power to a normal Transformer to augment their abilities. The collector cards that come with each toy describe a specific Prime interacting with that character and what the resultant effect is, so there are potentially 12 variations of each character to collect, where the only difference is the pack-in collector card. This is going to drive completists absolutely nuts.
>

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Prime_Master/Combinations
They have started a database, some of the combinations are a bit baffling.

> The Titan Masters, who transformed into the heads of the larger robots, have been supplanted by the Prime Masters, mini-figures with similar functionality who are also reverse-compatible with Titans Return toys. Instead of turning into the heads of the robots, though, they turn into a weird sparky thing, to borrow a turn of phrase from the 2016 Ghostbusters film. On the new toys, the weird sparky thing represents one of the original Primes, and connecting the weird sparky thing to the other toys (the chest of Matrix-bearing toys or an auxiliary intermediate connector on the smaller toys) ostensibly grants that character the power of the Primes.
>
> As an aside, we usually get the new year's product at the tail end of the previous year. It's so early in December still, though, that I'm having difficulty justifying these toys as intended 2018 product. Shrug.
>

New and shiny is supposed to come out right before Christmas, many large corporations start their fiscal year in November or December to start the year strong.

> BEACHCOMBER
>
> We got a Legends-class Beachcomber in 2008 (back when "Legends" described a tiny six-dollar toy instead of a Basic/Scout-sized ten-dollar toy). It was a fairly good update, though his vehicle mode was a pretty radical departure from his original look. This new toy is a more faithful attempt at the G1 character, upsized to Legends format (which seems to be the current default size for all updates to the Mini Autobots now).
>
> Beachcomber is three and a half inches in height as a robot. He's got blue head, arms, and lower legs with a matte grey body (the chest is made of black plastic; the ball joints for the arms remain unpainted) and upper legs. Just about the only thing that doesn't match the G1 toy is his grey fists, but I think they just did that to create a little more color differentiation. Giving him a single gold fist, as seen in "The Golden Lagoon," would have been better. Kids wouldn't get the reference at all, but it would still be cool. He's got some tampo printed details on his chest that echo the stickers on the G1 toy.
>
> The head sculpt is great; they went with the cartoon look rather than trying to copy the weird mouth mask on the 1985 toy. He's got great articulation for such a small toy, with ball jointed hips and a mid-thigh swivel, ball jointed shoulders and elbows, and a swiveling head. The head doesn't have to do anything during transformation, so there are no cheats to the sculpt or weird hinges to interfere with his look.
>
> For transformation, the body telescopes out, hiding the head. The arms stay where they are. The legs bend at the knees. That's basically it. So, G1. There is one minor twist where part of the roll cage is hidden inside the lower legs, so you have to peg those parts together. The only Autobot symbol on the toy is the two halves of the symbol on his lower legs, which ends up on the hood of the dune buggy mode. No domestic version of G1 Beachcomber was sold like this as far as I know, BUT he was pictured like this in the Hasbro product catalog (I think the plan was to give all the 1985 Mini Autobots regular Autobot symbol stickers before Hasbro developed the color-change rub symbols and added them to that year's product line).
>
> His driver's seat is designed to accommodate a Prime Master mini-figurine, but I don't own any of those yet, so I have to test-drive the toy with a Titan Master. (This feels like when I bought the "Combiner Wars" Buzzsaw spy tablet and didn't have anything to put him in for about a year!) You have to disassemble the roll cage a little in order to fit a mini-figure inside, which admittedly isn't quite as bad as having to completely untransform Bumblebee or Roadburn. He cannot transform back to robot mode with a figure in place, because its presence prevents him from telescoping back into robot mode.
>
> The collector card I got is Liege Maximo Beachcomber. "Convinces enemies to put down their weapons" is the description. It's a combination of Beachcomber's inherent personality traits with the Liege Maximo's capacity for persuasion (he's described as a "trickster" on the back of Slash's package). I wonder if there's a way to discover all the different variations without having to buy 12 different Beachcombers.
>
> This is a great update for Beachcomber. It's a good size and the sculpt is very faithful to his G1 self. I think they finally managed to get him right. (If they did a green-and-orange version in G2 colors, I would buy it.)
>
> DINOBOT SLASH
>
> So, in 1984, in the cartoon episode "S.O.S. Dinobots," we were introduced to the original three Dinobots: Grimlock, Slag, and Sludge. Snarl and Swoop came in a subsequent episode, "War of the Dinobots," though I'm not sure why, since all five toys were released at the same time.
>
> I am normally averse to new characters being shoehorned into the G1 mythos. I disliked the introduction of Alpha Bravo and Off-Road and Rook in Combiner Wars, for example, because the roster of the classic combiner teams should not be messed with under any circumstances. Introducing Slash wasn't wholly necessary, since she's not part of the Volcanicus combiner as far a I can tell (I had been anticipating that she could transform into a gun for the combined form, like the Combiner Wars Powerglide and Shockwave toys, but apparently not).
>

Nope, no interaction anyone has found so far.

> I feel differently about Slash, and I'm not sure why. The fact that she's a female character makes her special, for starters. She's the end result of a burgeoning movement to introduce more and more female characters into what has been, traditionally, a boys' market populated almost exclusively by male characters. (Look at the original Star Wars trilogy, for example, and name ten female characters who are not named Leia. It can be done, but it's difficult. It's much easier if you throw the new movies into the mix.) So, Slash is the Cruz Ramirez of the Transformers universe. I'm not offended by her existence. She even gets the unspoken single-syllable-name-that-starts-with-"s" naming convention right.
>

I both like the female Autobots idea, but am just as hesitant to admit new characters into G1. Not to sound callous, but maybe they are getting carried away with token females. Yes we had a few before, but now we're getting more that seemingly randomly are females. I don't want it to be the affirmative action hire to make story lines seem balanced after the fact. Especially in to the G1 mythos. It's not like Dinobots stayed on Cybertron and Wheeljack decided to build a few more while on Earth. The only way to retcon her in to G1 would seem silly. Either Wheeljack had a bunch of leftover parts from the original Dinobots, or we go the comics origin and the other Dinobots left her buried a little while longer.

> And, really, they did a pretty impressive job of making her look authentic to the Dinobot group. They had a pretty distinctive look. She's mostly grey plastic with some red and black robot parts and a little bit of gold. Had she been a G1 toy, the red part would likely have been die-cast metal, and it's believable that the chest and pelvis would have been a solid block of metal (they're interrupted by a silver stripe along the abdomen, but that could have been accomplished in 1985 with a consumer-applied sticker). The details on the fronts of her lower legs would also likely have been stickers, back in the day. The clear dinosaur head with gold components visible inside is also very authentic to the G1 Dinobot styling. The black component in the center of her chest could easily have been a Diaclone cockpit. The black robot head with a silver face and red eyes was the perfect choice. She reads correctly as a Dinobot without actually copying any of their existing color schemes (she's the closest to Sludge, at least in robot mode).
>

Slash was one of the movie Dinobotz, and I wonder if she was a carryover from that.

> Just about the only color choices I question are her black feet and foreclaws; it's very likely that her toes would have been gold in color, and her claws and lower jaw would probably have been silver. I would have made the tip of her tail silver, too. Of course, each of the Dinobots broke their own design rules in one way or another (Swoop was the only one with wheels; Snarl was the only one without an opening jaw; etc.) so there's that. While the velociraptor really didn't rise to prominence in the public eye until 1993 with the release of Jurassic Park, the dinosaur had been discovered much earlier, so this choice of a transformed mode was, at least, theoretically possible in 1985. (It's very likely that a real sixth Dinobot would have taken the form of a creature more familiar to kids of the 1980's, like a dimetrodon or a styracosaurus. But, now I'm just kibitzing.)
>
> To transform Slash, you tuck her robot legs up over her chest, swinging down the tail to hide the robot head. The robot arms form the dinosaur legs, and the head-and-claws assembly is partially hidden inside her body. A gold panel on her back opens to turn into a saddle of sorts for a Prime Master mini-figure. They can't sit in the seat properly; you have to bend their knees backwards and straighten their legs.
>
> The collector card I got was Vector Slash, who "rips holes in space-time to access any point in history." Vector Prime is a time traveler, dontcha know. She does this four times in English, despite Beachcomber's card being translated into different languages.
>
> We didn't necessarily need a new Dinobot team member, but Slash is okay in my book. She'll look really good with the other five Dinobots once all of them have been released.
>
> SKRAPNEL
>
> So, the original Skrapnel toy was released as a Generations toy in 2014 (an alternate name for Shrapnel for trademark reasons). His fellow Insecticons took a while to be released; we didn't get Bombshell until Combiner Wars in 2015, and Kickback was a Titans Return toy from 2017. With Skrapnel's rerelease as a Power of the Primes toy, I think this is the first time in history that three toys from the same sub-group have spanned four different toy lines. Similar to the problems with the six 1984-85 Decepticon jets, whose Classics/Generations toys spanned many years, the Insecticons weren't totally consistent in their color schemes. While the original Insecticons might have been gang-molded, the new ones enjoyed separate production runs, and their signature colors didn't quite match. Bombshell was a notably darker purple than the first Skrapnel, and had a darker schoolbus yellow for his chest and shoulders.
>
> So, my suspicion is that the reason Skrapnel got worked back into the assortment was as a do-over. The new edition is a distinctly darker purple color, more closely matching the dark purple of Bombshell, even if it's not quite the same hue (Skrapnel is still more blue, while Bombshell is a little more on the red side of the spectrum). Also, now it's Kickback who's the odd man out, since he still uses the lighter purple of the original Skrapnel. Maybe it's Bombshell who should have been reissued in a LIGHTER purple! At least then he could have served as a handheld weapon for Abominus or somebody. Or, conversely, Kickback should have been reshipped, since he alone has the ability to accommodate a mini-figure.
>
> The inclusion of the Skrapnel toy in Power of the Primes makes little to no sense, since while he has a peg mounting hole in the top of his insect form, he has no means to accommodate a Titan Master or Prime Master mini-figure. To this end, there is no mention made of any intercompatibility on the back of his package or in his instructions. He's a sad, antiquated artifact out of time. Spreading out his insect mandibles and allowing a figure to sit loosely within his maw as a makeshift seat is about as good as it gets. (I'm using the head that came with Magnus Prime, so the Optimus horns serve as a hook that helps to hold him in place. Not all the heads, or weird sparky things, have these, obviously.)
>
> Weirdly, though, he does get a collector card. Apparently, even being near a Prime Master is enough for Skrapnel to gain access to the power of the Primes. I got Alchemist Skrapnel, who "can travel through electrical pathways."
>
> The 2014 Skrapnel I bought had a defective insect mandible, so I didn't really mind replacing him. The idea of reissuing him was a good one, though now I'm not sure if the problem was solved, since now Kickback looks wrong when you put the three toys together. Maybe they'll just keep doing random Insecticon reissues until they get it right.
>
> I'm actually kind of surprised they didn't do something else. I mean, Skrapnel already got reused as Chop Shop, so it would have made sense to do Kickback in Ransack colors. At least that would have made him Prime Masters compatible. (There was a rumor going around about how Venom was coming, too, and that if he wasn't a tail-end Titans Return toy then he'd be an early Power of the Primes toy. What happened with that?)
>
> WINDCHARGER
>
> Considering that this guy is probably the least-developed of the 1984 Autobots, he sure does get a lot of toys. There was the Reveal the Shield toy from the now-defunct Scout class in 2011, and then the Legends-class Combiner Wars toy from 2015. Honestly, I think Hasbro became aware of how highly coveted and sought-after the Scout-class toy was (it still goes for $20-30 on eBay), and they inferred that Windcharger was a hugely popular character and that we needed multiple toys of him. He's become the Cheetor of the G1 mythos.
>
> The Reveal the Shield toy was pretty good, and even had hands that could swap out for pretend magnets, though it had a Prowl-style hood-for-a-chest that didn't quite fit the character's original look. The Combiner Wars toy was a little better, though he had weirdly spindly legs and gigantic, beefy arms. Sometimes, when updating a G1 character, they stray just a little too far from the source material, probably in a well-intentioned effort to improve or modernize the design. Really, though, I think "G1 with ball joints" is sufficient for most successful updates. The closer they get to G1, the better the update is, I think.
>
> So, this new iteration of Windcharger is most unabashedly based directly on the 1984 toy. No attempts at redesigning the character, no new, weird transformation tricks... just a straightforward reading of the original toy. The side doors and windows for the car mode are mounted to his forearms, but they're fairly unobtrusive. He wears the hood of the car on his back, allowing him to have the correct head configuration as per the Sunbow cartoon. He's got an Autobot symbol in the center of his chest, but the person doing the sculpted details didn't seem to take this into account, since the Autobot badge overlaps some of the molded detail.
>
> So, let's talk about his much-maligned head sculpt, which is already garnering plenty of negative traction in the fandom. It's based directly on his animation design. The G1 toy had a featureless silver mask and a black visor for eyes, a look which was dispensed with in favor of something more humanoid and easier to relate to. The toy copies the cartoon look precisely, so what went wrong? Why do the fans hate it so? I think the problem lies not in his head design, per se, but in the proportions. His face is too high up on his head. He has no cranium. There's no room in there for his brain. The proportions are off and so we reject it as wrong. I want to go off on a tangent about people using computers to design things but lacking fundamental design skills, but I guess I'd better stop now.
>
> Transformation is pretty basic. Arms stay at the sides, knees fold up to form the back of the car. There's a little big of fidgeting involved to move the hood into the right place, and the roof of the car is actually tucked inside the feet, but other than that, it's G1 with ball joints. Also, he's actually shaped like a Pontiac Trans Am this time. That's a huge plus. They fiddled with some of the details to avoid a licensing problem (the front grill is in-your-face silver and weirdly devoid of any sculpted detail) but the toy is recognizable as Windcharger. He's got an off-center Autobot symbol on his hood, like the 1984 version (the 1985 version had a rub sumbol on the other side of the hood).
>
> His Prime Master mini-figure compatibility requires you to untransform the back of the car, lifting the roof (which is attached to the back of the car) to allow access to the driver's seat. All the window elements were cast from translucent plastic, but for some reason the side windows were painted black. The T-top roof windows and the front windshield are still see-through, but the side windows don't let in much light.
>
> The collector card I got was Nexus Windcharger, who "magnetizes other bots to quickly form combiners."
>
> I would not be completely shocked to see this toy reused as (sigh) Tailgate. It would be a better Tailgate than the Combiner Wars edition, certainly. I would want to see a resculpted robot head and chest, if nothing else. (Also, if they wanted to sell this toy in black, with a red front grill, it would resemble K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider and I would buy the hell out of it. Maybe they could even call it something like Cyber Knight just to rub the joke in people's faces.)
>
> I'm trying not to let the head sculpt bother me too much, because this is otherwise the best Windcharger toy we've ever gotten, hands down. It really is a great toy design. Since this size class has become the gold standard for Mini Autobot characters, I guess all we really need at this point is a new Gears/Swerve, a new Warpath (something like a downscaled version of the 2011 Deluxe toy would be great, since he was pretty much perfect), and a Huffer/Pipes. We know Outback is coming eventually, and hopefully Cliffjumper and Hubcap and maybe even Bumper are on the to-do list along with all those Throttlebots they allegedly have in the works.
>

I like the Thrilling 30 Gears/Swerve. All the recent Huffers have sucked. Someone was telling me to go 3rd party.

If they do a new Warpath they need to repaint it as that tank bot from TLK.
Don't reuse that Deluxe Warpath though, no H tank please.

[MWG]

On Wednesday, December 6, 2017 at 11:40:50 PM UTC-6, Zobovor (the Man with All the Toys) wrote:

> Today, just for fun, I was poking around in the Item Locator screen trying to find store computer listings for Power of the Primes. Not only was I able to call them up, but it showed that my store had received 24 of the Legends toys. I had already worked all the new freight so I knew we hadn't gotten any shipping cases. I was very perplexed. Then I remembered that the annual Christmas toys "train" had arrived, named so because it's supposed to be set up on the salesfloor as a big, long row of cardboard displays, like train cars. Yeah, the Transformers were totally in there. They weren't in a shipping case so I don't have any hard data about case assortments, but I expect it's probably something like Beachcomber x2, Slash x2, Skrapnel x2 and Windcharger x2.
>

Kinda funny that Walmart is so behind Target on getting this line (even Toys R Us site has had some PoTP stock, and cheaper than Walmart/Target's normal retail price currently -when it is in stock-, I think deluxes are $13.something). But Walmart is just so much more common around here and maybe they will suddenly get something that hasn't hit brick retail yet.

>
> BEACHCOMBER
>
> We got a Legends-class Beachcomber in 2008 (back when "Legends" described a tiny six-dollar toy instead of a Basic/Scout-sized ten-dollar toy). It was a fairly good update, though his vehicle mode was a pretty radical departure from his original look. This new toy is a more faithful attempt at the G1 character, upsized to Legends format (which seems to be the current default size for all updates to the Mini Autobots now).
>
> Beachcomber is three and a half inches in height as a robot. He's got blue head, arms, and lower legs with a matte grey body (the chest is made of black plastic; the ball joints for the arms remain unpainted) and upper legs. Just about the only thing that doesn't match the G1 toy is his grey fists, but I think they just did that to create a little more color differentiation. Giving him a single gold fist, as seen in "The Golden Lagoon," would have been better. Kids wouldn't get the reference at all, but it would still be cool. He's got some tampo printed details on his chest that echo the stickers on the G1 toy.
>
> The head sculpt is great; they went with the cartoon look rather than trying to copy the weird mouth mask on the 1985 toy. He's got great articulation for such a small toy, with ball jointed hips and a mid-thigh swivel, ball jointed shoulders and elbows, and a swiveling head. The head doesn't have to do anything during transformation, so there are no cheats to the sculpt or weird hinges to interfere with his look.
>
> For transformation, the body telescopes out, hiding the head. The arms stay where they are. The legs bend at the knees. That's basically it. So, G1. There is one minor twist where part of the roll cage is hidden inside the lower legs, so you have to peg those parts together. The only Autobot symbol on the toy is the two halves of the symbol on his lower legs, which ends up on the hood of the dune buggy mode. No domestic version of G1 Beachcomber was sold like this as far as I know, BUT he was pictured like this in the Hasbro product catalog (I think the plan was to give all the 1985 Mini Autobots regular Autobot symbol stickers before Hasbro developed the color-change rub symbols and added them to that year's product line).
>
> His driver's seat is designed to accommodate a Prime Master mini-figurine, but I don't own any of those yet, so I have to test-drive the toy with a Titan Master. (This feels like when I bought the "Combiner Wars" Buzzsaw spy tablet and didn't have anything to put him in for about a year!) You have to disassemble the roll cage a little in order to fit a mini-figure inside, which admittedly isn't quite as bad as having to completely untransform Bumblebee or Roadburn. He cannot transform back to robot mode with a figure in place, because its presence prevents him from telescoping back into robot mode.
>
> The collector card I got is Liege Maximo Beachcomber. "Convinces enemies to put down their weapons" is the description. It's a combination of Beachcomber's inherent personality traits with the Liege Maximo's capacity for persuasion (he's described as a "trickster" on the back of Slash's package). I wonder if there's a way to discover all the different variations without having to buy 12 different Beachcombers.
>
> This is a great update for Beachcomber. It's a good size and the sculpt is very faithful to his G1 self. I think they finally managed to get him right. (If they did a green-and-orange version in G2 colors, I would buy it.)
>

He is very well done. I kinda wish the roll cage were black and the hands unpainted like the G1 toy, but those are minor quibbles. Getting the cage to hook together securely is a bit fiddly for me. As for repaints, G2 colors would be vital since he is the only mini-bot to get distinct colors in G2 (Hubcap was basically a chromed Cliffjumper). I guess they could do that orange movie-verse Sandstorm or maybe a purple-ish Decepticon (I think there was a purple 'Con dune buggy in the early waves of the Cybertron toyline).

> DINOBOT SLASH
>
> So, in 1984, in the cartoon episode "S.O.S. Dinobots," we were introduced to the original three Dinobots: Grimlock, Slag, and Sludge. Snarl and Swoop came in a subsequent episode, "War of the Dinobots," though I'm not sure why, since all five toys were released at the same time.
>
> I am normally averse to new characters being shoehorned into the G1 mythos. I disliked the introduction of Alpha Bravo and Off-Road and Rook in Combiner Wars, for example, because the roster of the classic combiner teams should not be messed with under any circumstances. Introducing Slash wasn't wholly necessary, since she's not part of the Volcanicus combiner as far a I can tell (I had been anticipating that she could transform into a gun for the combined form, like the Combiner Wars Powerglide and Shockwave toys, but apparently not).
>
> I feel differently about Slash, and I'm not sure why. The fact that she's a female character makes her special, for starters. She's the end result of a burgeoning movement to introduce more and more female characters into what has been, traditionally, a boys' market populated almost exclusively by male characters. (Look at the original Star Wars trilogy, for example, and name ten female characters who are not named Leia. It can be done, but it's difficult. It's much easier if you throw the new movies into the mix.) So, Slash is the Cruz Ramirez of the Transformers universe. I'm not offended by her existence. She even gets the unspoken single-syllable-name-that-starts-with-"s" naming convention right.
>
> And, really, they did a pretty impressive job of making her look authentic to the Dinobot group. They had a pretty distinctive look. She's mostly grey plastic with some red and black robot parts and a little bit of gold. Had she been a G1 toy, the red part would likely have been die-cast metal, and it's believable that the chest and pelvis would have been a solid block of metal (they're interrupted by a silver stripe along the abdomen, but that could have been accomplished in 1985 with a consumer-applied sticker). The details on the fronts of her lower legs would also likely have been stickers, back in the day. The clear dinosaur head with gold components visible inside is also very authentic to the G1 Dinobot styling. The black component in the center of her chest could easily have been a Diaclone cockpit. The black robot head with a silver face and red eyes was the perfect choice. She reads correctly as a Dinobot without actually copying any of their existing color schemes (she's the closest to Sludge, at least in robot mode).
>
> Just about the only color choices I question are her black feet and foreclaws; it's very likely that her toes would have been gold in color, and her claws and lower jaw would probably have been silver. I would have made the tip of her tail silver, too. Of course, each of the Dinobots broke their own design rules in one way or another (Swoop was the only one with wheels; Snarl was the only one without an opening jaw; etc.) so there's that. While the velociraptor really didn't rise to prominence in the public eye until 1993 with the release of Jurassic Park, the dinosaur had been discovered much earlier, so this choice of a transformed mode was, at least, theoretically possible in 1985. (It's very likely that a real sixth Dinobot would have taken the form of a creature more familiar to kids of the 1980's, like a dimetrodon or a styracosaurus. But, now I'm just kibitzing.)
>
> To transform Slash, you tuck her robot legs up over her chest, swinging down the tail to hide the robot head. The robot arms form the dinosaur legs, and the head-and-claws assembly is partially hidden inside her body. A gold panel on her back opens to turn into a saddle of sorts for a Prime Master mini-figure. They can't sit in the seat properly; you have to bend their knees backwards and straighten their legs.
>
> The collector card I got was Vector Slash, who "rips holes in space-time to access any point in history." Vector Prime is a time traveler, dontcha know. She does this four times in English, despite Beachcomber's card being translated into different languages.
>
> We didn't necessarily need a new Dinobot team member, but Slash is okay in my book. She'll look really good with the other five Dinobots once all of them have been released.
>

She does look like a natural part of the team, with classic Dinobot styling. Nothing about the mold itself really says "female", but that is OK. I do wish they had made her chest a different color than red. Swoop having the blue cartoon chest adds a little diversity to the Dinobots boring silver-gold-red standard color set (though I would buy a red chest PoTP Swoop if it happens).

> SKRAPNEL
>
> So, the original Skrapnel toy was released as a Generations toy in 2014 (an alternate name for Shrapnel for trademark reasons). His fellow Insecticons took a while to be released; we didn't get Bombshell until Combiner Wars in 2015, and Kickback was a Titans Return toy from 2017. With Skrapnel's rerelease as a Power of the Primes toy, I think this is the first time in history that three toys from the same sub-group have spanned four different toy lines. Similar to the problems with the six 1984-85 Decepticon jets, whose Classics/Generations toys spanned many years, the Insecticons weren't totally consistent in their color schemes. While the original Insecticons might have been gang-molded, the new ones enjoyed separate production runs, and their signature colors didn't quite match. Bombshell was a notably darker purple than the first Skrapnel, and had a darker schoolbus yellow for his chest and shoulders.
>
> So, my suspicion is that the reason Skrapnel got worked back into the assortment was as a do-over. The new edition is a distinctly darker purple color, more closely matching the dark purple of Bombshell, even if it's not quite the same hue (Skrapnel is still more blue, while Bombshell is a little more on the red side of the spectrum). Also, now it's Kickback who's the odd man out, since he still uses the lighter purple of the original Skrapnel. Maybe it's Bombshell who should have been reissued in a LIGHTER purple! At least then he could have served as a handheld weapon for Abominus or somebody. Or, conversely, Kickback should have been reshipped, since he alone has the ability to accommodate a mini-figure.
>
> The inclusion of the Skrapnel toy in Power of the Primes makes little to no sense, since while he has a peg mounting hole in the top of his insect form, he has no means to accommodate a Titan Master or Prime Master mini-figure. To this end, there is no mention made of any intercompatibility on the back of his package or in his instructions. He's a sad, antiquated artifact out of time. Spreading out his insect mandibles and allowing a figure to sit loosely within his maw as a makeshift seat is about as good as it gets. (I'm using the head that came with Magnus Prime, so the Optimus horns serve as a hook that helps to hold him in place. Not all the heads, or weird sparky things, have these, obviously.)
>
> Weirdly, though, he does get a collector card. Apparently, even being near a Prime Master is enough for Skrapnel to gain access to the power of the Primes. I got Alchemist Skrapnel, who "can travel through electrical pathways."
>
> The 2014 Skrapnel I bought had a defective insect mandible, so I didn't really mind replacing him. The idea of reissuing him was a good one, though now I'm not sure if the problem was solved, since now Kickback looks wrong when you put the three toys together. Maybe they'll just keep doing random Insecticon reissues until they get it right.
>
> I'm actually kind of surprised they didn't do something else. I mean, Skrapnel already got reused as Chop Shop, so it would have made sense to do Kickback in Ransack colors. At least that would have made him Prime Masters compatible. (There was a rumor going around about how Venom was coming, too, and that if he wasn't a tail-end Titans Return toy then he'd be an early Power of the Primes toy. What happened with that?)
>

Loose-mandible T30 Skrapnels seem to be a widespread problem. Someone posted some elaborate fix involving heating the metal pin with a soldering iron (or something along those lines) and pushing it further in then dripping water on it to cool things back down. That sounds way more dangerous than I'm willing to attempt. It would've been nice if they could've remolded Skrapnel's torso to hold a titan/prime master like Kickback can (I'd like to see something similar for CW Bombshell but he already has the weapon mode thing going so he has enough gimmicks already). Eventually Hasbro or Takara will probably re-release the three "basic" legends-scale Insecticons in a box set with better matched colors, and maybe proper weapons. I could see other "deluxe" Insecticons happening in this line since they are doing robo-beasts. Kickback with his -master compatibility might be made into decent Ransack & Venom figures, and Bombshell might become a serviceable Barrage (a weapon for Abominus, would be nice to see that gimmick revisited and give an excuse to re-release Powerglide).

> WINDCHARGER
>
> Considering that this guy is probably the least-developed of the 1984 Autobots, he sure does get a lot of toys. There was the Reveal the Shield toy from the now-defunct Scout class in 2011, and then the Legends-class Combiner Wars toy from 2015. Honestly, I think Hasbro became aware of how highly coveted and sought-after the Scout-class toy was (it still goes for $20-30 on eBay), and they inferred that Windcharger was a hugely popular character and that we needed multiple toys of him. He's become the Cheetor of the G1 mythos.
>
> The Reveal the Shield toy was pretty good, and even had hands that could swap out for pretend magnets, though it had a Prowl-style hood-for-a-chest that didn't quite fit the character's original look. The Combiner Wars toy was a little better, though he had weirdly spindly legs and gigantic, beefy arms. Sometimes, when updating a G1 character, they stray just a little too far from the source material, probably in a well-intentioned effort to improve or modernize the design. Really, though, I think "G1 with ball joints" is sufficient for most successful updates. The closer they get to G1, the better the update is, I think.
>
> So, this new iteration of Windcharger is most unabashedly based directly on the 1984 toy. No attempts at redesigning the character, no new, weird transformation tricks... just a straightforward reading of the original toy. The side doors and windows for the car mode are mounted to his forearms, but they're fairly unobtrusive. He wears the hood of the car on his back, allowing him to have the correct head configuration as per the Sunbow cartoon. He's got an Autobot symbol in the center of his chest, but the person doing the sculpted details didn't seem to take this into account, since the Autobot badge overlaps some of the molded detail.
>
> So, let's talk about his much-maligned head sculpt, which is already garnering plenty of negative traction in the fandom. It's based directly on his animation design. The G1 toy had a featureless silver mask and a black visor for eyes, a look which was dispensed with in favor of something more humanoid and easier to relate to. The toy copies the cartoon look precisely, so what went wrong? Why do the fans hate it so? I think the problem lies not in his head design, per se, but in the proportions. His face is too high up on his head. He has no cranium. There's no room in there for his brain. The proportions are off and so we reject it as wrong. I want to go off on a tangent about people using computers to design things but lacking fundamental design skills, but I guess I'd better stop now.
>
> Transformation is pretty basic. Arms stay at the sides, knees fold up to form the back of the car. There's a little big of fidgeting involved to move the hood into the right place, and the roof of the car is actually tucked inside the feet, but other than that, it's G1 with ball joints. Also, he's actually shaped like a Pontiac Trans Am this time. That's a huge plus. They fiddled with some of the details to avoid a licensing problem (the front grill is in-your-face silver and weirdly devoid of any sculpted detail) but the toy is recognizable as Windcharger. He's got an off-center Autobot symbol on his hood, like the 1984 version (the 1985 version had a rub sumbol on the other side of the hood).
>
> His Prime Master mini-figure compatibility requires you to untransform the back of the car, lifting the roof (which is attached to the back of the car) to allow access to the driver's seat. All the window elements were cast from translucent plastic, but for some reason the side windows were painted black. The T-top roof windows and the front windshield are still see-through, but the side windows don't let in much light.
>
> The collector card I got was Nexus Windcharger, who "magnetizes other bots to quickly form combiners."
>
> I would not be completely shocked to see this toy reused as (sigh) Tailgate. It would be a better Tailgate than the Combiner Wars edition, certainly. I would want to see a resculpted robot head and chest, if nothing else. (Also, if they wanted to sell this toy in black, with a red front grill, it would resemble K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider and I would buy the hell out of it. Maybe they could even call it something like Cyber Knight just to rub the joke in people's faces.)
>
> I'm trying not to let the head sculpt bother me too much, because this is otherwise the best Windcharger toy we've ever gotten, hands down. It really is a great toy design. Since this size class has become the gold standard for Mini Autobot characters, I guess all we really need at this point is a new Gears/Swerve, a new Warpath (something like a downscaled version of the 2011 Deluxe toy would be great, since he was pretty much perfect), and a Huffer/Pipes. We know Outback is coming eventually, and hopefully Cliffjumper and Hubcap and maybe even Bumper are on the to-do list along with all those Throttlebots they allegedly have in the works.
>
>

I think PoTP Windcharger's main problem is he is a new mold in the same wave as a great new Beachcomber mold. I would've preferred they get Outback done earlier but he will happen. I am enough of a Windcharger mark to pick up most toys of him. I may still have the G1 version in a box somewhere at the parents home, but do have the keychain re-release. The RtS version is nice, but most of those character updates from early Generations/RtS feel like pseudo-Bayverse figures to me now. T30 Tailgate/CW Windcharger was a clunky mold with parts in the way, and those tacky blue-green flames on Tailgates chest sucked, so I wouldn't mind a new Tailgate. Huffer & Pipes DESPERATELY need a proper update, so does Warpath (he could be another one to have a "weapon" mode and go along with the rather nice CW Powerglide). Cliffjumper could work as a heavy remold of TR Bumblebee (or a mold that copies the transformation) since they look so similar in both modes naturally. I'm actually fine with Swerve & Gears but they do need to work on painting Gears' head.

I do hope they make Duocons with each component having robot modes but still also having combined modes that are interchangeable. Battletrap would give us awesome legends size helicopter and off-road truck toys, and fluff out the smaller-size ranks of the Decepticons keeping their "fewer in number but more dangerous" thing going.

[William A. Rendfeld]

On Thursday, December 7, 2017 at 12:40:50 AM UTC-5, Zobovor (the Man with All the Toys) wrote:
> Today, just for fun, I was poking around in the Item Locator screen trying to find store computer listings for Power of the Primes. Not only was I able to call them up, but it showed that my store had received 24 of the Legends toys. I had already worked all the new freight so I knew we hadn't gotten any shipping cases. I was very perplexed. Then I remembered that the annual Christmas toys "train" had arrived, named so because it's supposed to be set up on the salesfloor as a big, long row of cardboard displays, like train cars. Yeah, the Transformers were totally in there. They weren't in a shipping case so I don't have any hard data about case assortments, but I expect it's probably something like Beachcomber x2, Slash x2, Skrapnel x2 and Windcharger x2.

Is it too much to hope that the next time I go to Wal-Mart, I might see these on the shelves?

[Zobovor (the Man with All the Toys)]

On Thursday, December 7, 2017 at 9:43:45 AM UTC-7, William A. Rendfeld wrote:

> Is it too much to hope that the next time I go to Wal-Mart, I might see
> these on the shelves?

Ask if they have their Christmas toys train out yet. Apparently what is sent to the stores will vary somewhat, but if your local store has them, the train is likely where they'll be.


Zob (got my guns from Nonnef Productions in the mail today!)

[Zobovor (the Man with All the Toys)]

On Thursday, December 7, 2017 at 8:40:40 AM UTC-7, MWG wrote:

> Kinda funny that Walmart is so behind Target. Maybe they will suddenly get

> something that hasn't hit brick retail yet.

Walmart stores are getting a huge influx of freight suddenly. Some people are speculating it's due to the hurricanes delaying the container ships, similar to what happened with the dock worker strike.

> As for repaints, G2 colors would be vital since he is the only mini-bot to
> get distinct colors in G2 (Hubcap was basically a chromed Cliffjumper).

They could also turn this toy into Triggercon Ruckus if they wanted to. If he got a new head sculpt and a different chest design, I would be totally fine with that.

> She does look like a natural part of the team, with classic Dinobot styling.
> Nothing about the mold itself really says "female", but that is OK. I do
> wish they had made her chest a different color than red.

If you look really closely at her face, she has a tiny nose and girlish lips. But that's about the only overtly feminine aspect of her design, aside from her small size. I actually think the red chest is important, because it helps to cement her as a Dinobot based on her colors alone.

> It would've been nice if they could've remolded Skrapnel's torso to hold a
> titan/prime master like Kickback can

I don't think there is room to do an opening cockpit like Kickback's got. They would have had to remold the torso into a seat or something, and that would have totally ruined the robot mode. I actually don't care whether Skrapnel can accommodate a mini-figure or not. I'm glad they didn't try to retrofit the toy, like when they were adding pegs to the Beast Wars toys to accommodate the Armada Mini-Cons. That was just stupid.

> I would've preferred they get Outback done earlier but he will happen.

I'm excited about Outback. I just hope he gets a proper head sculpt and a remolded chest. And, also, a gun would be great.

> Huffer & Pipes DESPERATELY need a proper update, so does Warpath (he could be
> another one to have a "weapon" mode and go along with the rather nice CW
> Powerglide).

I want the guy who designed Beachcomber to work on Huffer/Pipes and Warpath. Because Beachcomber is amazing.

> I do hope they make Duocons with each component having robot modes but
> still also having combined modes that are interchangeable.

My prediction is that they will have some shared engineering, so they will probably be interchangeable. It would be kind of disappointing for them to revisit that kind of combining gimmick otherwise.


Zob (Flytrap and Battlewheels!)

[Zobovor (the Man with All the Toys)]

On Wednesday, December 6, 2017 at 10:40:50 PM UTC-7, Zobovor (the Man with All the Toys) wrote:

> The annual Christmas toys "train" had arrived, named so because it's

> supposed to be set up on the salesfloor as a big, long row of cardboard
> displays, like train cars. Yeah, the Transformers were totally in there.

Seems like any time I try to submit Transformers news to one of the message boards, like ten people jump on me and go, "Yeah, we already knew about that." And yet today somebody posted about this exciting new Walmart display as "news" and everybody's going crazy over it.


Zob (shrugs aggressively)

[William A. Rendfeld]

And yet, annoyingly, there's no Transformers present in this 'train' at my store. Then again, they had a block of them sitting there since the last movie came out, packed with first wave Titans Return and The Last Knight figures, so maybe that has something to do with the absence.

In any case, I found Slash at a local Target, so no problems anymore. Until the next wave, anyway...

[Zobovor (the Man with All the Toys)]

On Sunday, December 10, 2017 at 1:22:11 PM UTC-7, William A. Rendfeld wrote:

> And yet, annoyingly, there's no Transformers present in this 'train' at my
> store. Then again, they had a block of them sitting there since the last
> movie came out, packed with first wave Titans Return and The Last Knight
> figures, so maybe that has something to do with the absence.

That is annoying, and I'm sorry. I don't think a presence or absence of Titans Returns toys would have any effect on Walmart getting Power of the Primes toys, since they're completely different products in the computer system.

> In any case, I found Slash at a local Target, so no problems anymore.

What do you think of her? Tres cool, yes?


Zob (only thing cooler than robot dinosaurs is girl robot dinosaurs)

[William A. Rendfeld]

On Sunday, December 10, 2017 at 5:24:55 PM UTC-5, Zobovor (the Man with All the Toys) wrote:
> On Sunday, December 10, 2017 at 1:22:11 PM UTC-7, William A. Rendfeld wrote:
>
> > And yet, annoyingly, there's no Transformers present in this 'train' at my
> > store. Then again, they had a block of them sitting there since the last
> > movie came out, packed with first wave Titans Return and The Last Knight
> > figures, so maybe that has something to do with the absence.
>
> That is annoying, and I'm sorry. I don't think a presence or absence of Titans Returns toys would have any effect on Walmart getting Power of the Primes toys, since they're completely different products in the computer system.

Eh, you're not at fault for the crappy distribution system stores have in place. The Wal-Mart in question's got a horrible habit of not having any new product between the end of one year and May of the next, in any case. I might get lucky and see new stuff in January, but given the shelves are packed with older product...I don't know.

> > In any case, I found Slash at a local Target, so no problems anymore.
>
> What do you think of her? Tres cool, yes?
>
>
> Zob (only thing cooler than robot dinosaurs is girl robot dinosaurs)

Oh yes, I'm very pleased with her. She was the only one I wanted from this first wave of Legends, so this is especially nice for me.

Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I've got nothing against the other guys in the wave. The only reason I'm not getting them is because I have the T30 release for Skrapnel (minor color difference and a card is not enough to justify getting it a second time with the same name), I don't see the sense in getting a new Windcharger when I'm happy with a previous version (the RtS release, in this case), and I'm happy with the Energon toy for Beachcomber over the new one. Should we get repaints of Windcharger and Beachcomber, however, and assuming the Windcharger repaint isn't Tailgate (again, got the T30), I'll be all over them.

[Zobovor (the Man with All the Toys)]

On Monday, December 11, 2017 at 9:12:42 AM UTC-7, William A. Rendfeld wrote:

> Should we get repaints of Windcharger and Beachcomber, however, and assuming
> the Windcharger repaint isn't Tailgate (again, got the T30), I'll be all over
> them.

My money is on Beachcomber getting reused as Triggercon Ruckus. It's too perfect not to do. Toys like Cosmos or Seaspray would be much harder to recycle, but you can't tell me they're not already planning Ruckus.

As for Windcharger, a Tailgate remold certainly makes the most sense. Unless they want to mix it up and surprise the hell out of everybody and turn him into Wipe-Out from Marvel Comics.


Zob (I would be happy with either or both, honestly)

[William A. Rendfeld]

Tailgate, unfortunately, appears to be the one on the horizon, given that old leak from a few months back. Which is a shame from my perspective, but then again, I'm not Hasbro's sole customer.

[David Connell]

I appreciate the heads up. Thanks to you I have Slash!

[MWG]

On Monday, December 11, 2017 at 9:59:18 PM UTC-6, Zobovor (the Man with All the Toys) wrote:
> On Monday, December 11, 2017 at 9:12:42 AM UTC-7, William A. Rendfeld wrote:
>
> > Should we get repaints of Windcharger and Beachcomber, however, and assuming
> > the Windcharger repaint isn't Tailgate (again, got the T30), I'll be all over
> > them.
>
> My money is on Beachcomber getting reused as Triggercon Ruckus. It's too perfect not to do. Toys like Cosmos or Seaspray would be much harder to recycle, but you can't tell me they're not already planning Ruckus.
>

This would be fine. If Duocon Battletrap is split into two robots, the jeep half makes a potential Crankcase. If Flywheels happens later, the jet could be worked into Windsweeper and Dogfight, and the tank part could be made into sparkabot (sp?) Guzzle. That fills out a fair amount of slots, and the helicopter could be made into a Rotorstorm (or one of his repaint incarnations like MW Sandstorm) homage.

> As for Windcharger, a Tailgate remold certainly makes the most sense. Unless they want to mix it up and surprise the hell out of everybody and turn him into Wipe-Out from Marvel Comics.
>
>
> Zob (I would be happy with either or both, honestly)

Tailgate needs the redo, IMO, with a less clunky mold and without the stupid blue-green flames the T30 version had on the hood. They could toss us the yellow "concept" version of Tailgate, maybe as a "G2" incarnation, or Windcharger in blue. We need at least one blue car in the line-up. Gears is a truck, Pipes is a semi cab, and Beachcomber is a dune-buggy. None of those are really passenger-class cars IMO.

[William A. Rendfeld]

On Wednesday, December 13, 2017 at 6:04:17 PM UTC-5, MWG wrote:
> On Monday, December 11, 2017 at 9:59:18 PM UTC-6, Zobovor (the Man with All the Toys) wrote:
> > On Monday, December 11, 2017 at 9:12:42 AM UTC-7, William A. Rendfeld wrote:
> >
> > > Should we get repaints of Windcharger and Beachcomber, however, and assuming
> > > the Windcharger repaint isn't Tailgate (again, got the T30), I'll be all over
> > > them.
> >
> > My money is on Beachcomber getting reused as Triggercon Ruckus. It's too perfect not to do. Toys like Cosmos or Seaspray would be much harder to recycle, but you can't tell me they're not already planning Ruckus.
> >
>
> This would be fine. If Duocon Battletrap is split into two robots, the jeep half makes a potential Crankcase. If Flywheels happens later, the jet could be worked into Windsweeper and Dogfight, and the tank part could be made into sparkabot (sp?) Guzzle. That fills out a fair amount of slots, and the helicopter could be made into a Rotorstorm (or one of his repaint incarnations like MW Sandstorm) homage.

I'd rather Rotorstorm be a Deluxe class figure or larger, though. Just saying.

> > As for Windcharger, a Tailgate remold certainly makes the most sense. Unless they want to mix it up and surprise the hell out of everybody and turn him into Wipe-Out from Marvel Comics.
> >
> >
> > Zob (I would be happy with either or both, honestly)
>
> Tailgate needs the redo, IMO, with a less clunky mold and without the stupid blue-green flames the T30 version had on the hood. They could toss us the yellow "concept" version of Tailgate, maybe as a "G2" incarnation, or Windcharger in blue. We need at least one blue car in the line-up. Gears is a truck, Pipes is a semi cab, and Beachcomber is a dune-buggy. None of those are really passenger-class cars IMO.

I agree with the sentiment for a blue car character. Blue's a nice color.