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Zob's Thoughts on the Target-Exclusive "Creatures Collide" 4-Pack
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Zobovor
Jul 31, 2022, 10:29:25 PM7/31/22
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I've been checking my local Target store for this set without success, and the #FOMO has been hitting me hard. Well, today after work I went out to IKEA, for the third time in as many months, to finally get some spiffy glass display shelves for my G1 collection and other highly esteemed toys. (I got six of them. Not sure if it will be enough. But it's a start.)
So while we were in town, my wife mentioned that there was a Target about nine minutes away, so it made sense to check. On the way in, I was grousing about all the people on Twitter humblebragging about finding the set, saying jokey things like "hay guise, I got Goldbug today, but there's something wrong bc there were like bugs in the box with him lololololololololol." You know how it goes.
And my wife said, "Wait, isn't that Goldbug right there?" and points to the lone Creatures Collide set that somebody picked up and discarded, while I like a total dunce had walked right past it on my way to, you know, the actual Transformers section of the toy department. And it seriously was the only one in the store. So, I was super happy. I can't even claim credit for finding the set!
So the box is interesting. It's 2.5" by 7.5" by about 20" across. Same measurements as the previous Worlds Collide set? I dunno. I didn't measure the box. Buzzworthy Bumblebee trade dress, which in a plasticless packaging world means a painted graphic with the four characters in the foreground (technically five because Scorponok is launching his Cyberbee) plus the almost confusing montage of random characters on the side panel (is Arcee in the box, too? Is Mirage? Is Optimus Prime?). There are little hexagonal-shaped cut-outs in the top box panel (you know, like a honeycomb, buzz buzz) so you can kinda-sorta take a peek and make sure your toys are actually in there, and haven't been replaced with, like, a bunch of unwanted, unloved Earthrise Arcees or something.
Many accessories (like 12) are wrapped in tissue paper and can be found on the left-hand-facing-you side of the box, i.e., the Goldbug side. Pull them out, and there are three Deluxe-sized toys strapped down to the inner cardboard tray with rattan ties, and there's also Goldbug, who is smol.
AUTOBOT GOLDBUG
There are snarky fandom pundits who like to claim that Hasbro can't just slap "Autobot" in front of any random name and gain ownership over it. And yet now they can use Goldbug's true and proper name now instead of calling him Goldfire. Isn't that interesting.
Basically, everybody bought this set for Goldbug. And, perhaps, to a lesser extent, Ransack. Skywasp is not a vital Beast Wars character by any stretch of the imagination (he didn't even exist during the original toy line) and Toy Scorponok is, well, toy Scorponok. So, realistically, you are paying $70ish for Goldbug and getting three other toys of questionable value for free. Just accept it.
He's based on the Netflix Bumblebee mold, of course, the only modern-era neo-G1 Bumblebee toy to actually turn into a Volkswagen Beetle. Yes, he's fully licensed. No, I don't know why Hasbro can't reissue Netflix Bumblebee and yet they can sell what amounts to the exact same toy somewhere else. Different name means different character, I guess? I don't know how these things work. I'm not a Hasbro lawyer.
I have been wanting them to make Throttlebots out of this toy design since Earthrise Cliffjumper first came out, and it's finally happening! He does use the same head sculpt as the Shattered Glass Goldbug toy release previously, but the mask is painted differently—there's more silver on this one, so it looks like the mask stretches across his face farther, unlike the smaller silver paint deco on the Shattered Glass version, which created the illusion that the sides of the helmet wrapped around the face a bit more.
He's sort of a combination of mustard yellow (for the parts visible only in robot mode) and a metallic painted gold veneer (for the parts that comprise the car shell). His robot shoulders and pelvis are cast in blue plastic, but they're painted gold as well. Autobot symbol is right-side up in robot form, so it's upside-down in car mode, but honestly who cares. This is a Very Beautiful Toy.
In car mode, he has silver painted headlights, grey plastic for the front and rear bumpers, smoky translucent windows that are not-quite-black, and silver painted hubcaps with little VW logos on them. Tail lights are not painted red. No biggie.
The instructions show you how the rear chunk of the car mode can be held as a shield, but Goldbug is a Throttlebot. Therefore the proper way to transform the toy, as decided by me, is to plug it into his back and have it hanging over his head as a very large backpack. This is the way.
This toy doesn't exactly look like G.I. Joe blew him up, couldn't figure out how to rebuild him, but stuck him back together wrong anyway. But, it does indeed look like a new paint job, which is how the Goldbug form was presented in "The Return of Optimus Prime" part 2.
Same weapons as Cliffjumper, Hubcap, Netflix Bee, and the rest of the sweet baby gang. One bazooka chunk is matte black plastic; the other is gold plastic painted glossy black. A bit of a mismatch. Water skis are blue; flip-out gun is mustard yellow with a blue gun barrel. We've seen just about every possible color combination at this point.
I don't know what it is that I love about the Goldbug form so much. Maybe it's the fact that the 1986-87 era was filled almost entirely with newer, unfamiliar characters, so some of my favorite third season moments were when old, familiar characters like Bumblebee or Starscream or Soundwave still came out to play. I will be very happy to see more Throttlebots. With sufficient reshelling, they could do every character except Wide Load using this same basic engineering. Wide Load would be tougher to pull off.
RANSACK
Getting the joke out of the way now: this is the first Deluxe Insecticon who is also a Deluxe Insecticon.
In addition to the three small Insecticons that Hasbro licensed from Takara, they also licensed four larger transformable insect toys from Bandai, originally part of the Armored Insect Corps Beetras assortment in Japan. (Ransack was designed for the toy line but didn't actually get a Japanese release per se.) Deluxe Insecticons were larger, had more complex transformations... and were also entirely off-limits to the cartoon show, for the same reason Takara didn't want other Bandai products like Jetfire or the Deluxe Autobots advertised in the cartoon. The original G1 Ransack was indeed a grasshopper, transforming differently than Kickback.
Despite this, Ransack is similar enough, in broad strokes, that a Kickback redeco actually kind of makes sense. The 1985 version of Ransack was more bug-shaped as a robot (insect legs protruding from his arms, a visible grasshopper abdomen between his legs) but when you tart up the Kickback toy in black and yellow colors, and give him a new head, it's honestly not a terrible likeness.
The color mapping works better in robot mode than insect mode, probably, since the front and middle insect legs are the wrong color (black during G1; yellow for Legacy). But, you can plug in the wing-shaped weapons, which were largely superfluous for Kickback, and create a bright yellow abdomen for Ransack, which is authentic and correct, and also helps to differentiate him a bit from Kickback. The abdomen parts are made of the same translucent orange plastic as his wings, but they're painted yellow so they're almost opaque, but not quite.
He comes with a black version of Kickback's gun. The G1 version of Ransack came with a black gun and a yellow shield. The wings/abdomen kind of double as the shield, I suppose.
Ransack also comes with an extra Kickback head. I'm not sure why. Swapping heads isn't mentioned in the instructions, so I almost wonder if it was a mistake—like they forgot to close the gate on the mold during production, ran off thousands of Kickback heads, and so they just threw them in the package. Hard to say without confirmation from Evan Brooks or Mark Maher or somebody.
Hasbro isn't likely to devote brand-new molds to developing the Deluxe Insecticons (especially since there may be licensing issues preventing them from doing so), but a Kickback in Ransack colors is the next best thing. When they get around to doing a Deluxe-class Shrapnel, a redeco as Chop Shop seems inevitable. A modified Bombshell with a different insect stinger would make a good Barrage, so the question remains how they'll give us a good Venom. (Maybe they can foot the bill for a new mold and then reuse it again as Cicadacon...?)
SKYWASP
I hate this toy's name. I hate it so hard. It's a stupid, gratuitous, jokey name. Get it? He's got Skywarp's colors, but he's a wasp, so he's SKYWASP. Ugh. Just shoot me now.
Honestly, this feels like a toy we would have gotten about twenty years ago, back when the diehard fans were demanding that Hasbro bring their beloved G1 characters back, but Hasbro had no idea yet that they were sitting on a gold mine. "Oh, you like G1, huh? Well, check this out. It's a Beast Wars toy! But it's in G1 colors, and it looks like Skywarp. There's your update, now shut up." Seriously, this would have been right at home with the Beast Wars versions of Lazorbeak and Grimlock and Prowl the owl. And we would have all gobbled it up, because it was the only meat that tasted a little like G1.
I mean, don't get me wrong, it's an attractive color scheme. Black and purple and red, with gold trim. It's very sexy. It's based on the BotCon 2015 color scheme for the Waruder toy named Parasite, who was a redeco of the Generations 2014 Waspinator. Things have come full circle, truly. I stopped paying attention to BotCon toys after like 1999 or so, so to me this is far less real of an homage, and far less important, than, say, Noble Predacon Sandstorm. But, it's cool-looking. It could easily have been one of the alternate playable color schemes for Waspinator in the Nintendo 64 game.
Suffice to say, though, I didn't buy this set for Skywasp. They should have produced a Waspinator toy in G1 Starscream's colors or something instead.
PREDACON SCORPONOK
In the world of the Transformers (cue G1 commercial narrator voice who isn't Victor Caroli), Predacon Scorponok is distinguished with a prefix to differentiate him from Earthrise Scorponok, the Decepticon. So how do we differentiate toy-colors Scorponok from TV-series-colors Scorponok? Uh, we don't? I guess? Same name. No attempt to assign him a new moniker, like Silverstreak, and have him exist in the same universe as the other Scorponok. This is just Scorponok wearing a different pair of pants.
Also, it's kind of ironic that these are Toy Scorponok colors, and yet the actual toy Scorponok reissue sold currently in Walmart stores (though not for long, as he's on clearance now) was not produced in these actual colors.
So, the old Kenner version of Scorponok from 1996 was black with bright red, and had some translucent bluish-purplish bits. In the show, they made his body grey and opaque, so there was a real disparity between the two looks. This version kind of returns to his roots, even though this toy is based on the CGI model, which took some liberties with the shape and proportions of his body.
One very cute detail I didn't know about is that his little missiles have painted Maximal symbols on them! This is an homage to an early Beast Wars episode ("The Web," I think?) where Scorponok mistakenly had Maximal insignias instead of Predacon ones. Story editor Bob Forward later justified this with a No-Prize, saying it was meant to be the mark of his hated enemy, as if to say, "This missile is for you, Maximals!" So, this toy also has painted Maximal symbols on the missiles. Nice touch.
He does come with two heads, the standard head that was used for the CGI model, as well as the alternate toy-based head that came with the Sandstorm redeco. I kind of like the alternate toy head, because it really drives home the toyetic nature of this release. He still has the derpy scorpion face in beast mode, though.
I'm not sure if I would have bought this toy if it had been released on its own. Oh, who am I kidding. I bought Toy Terrorsaur and Naked Dinobot, so of course I would have bought Toy Scorponok. I'm such a sucker.
Zob (gonna try to figure out how to build a Detolf shelf now)
So while we were in town, my wife mentioned that there was a Target about nine minutes away, so it made sense to check. On the way in, I was grousing about all the people on Twitter humblebragging about finding the set, saying jokey things like "hay guise, I got Goldbug today, but there's something wrong bc there were like bugs in the box with him lololololololololol." You know how it goes.
And my wife said, "Wait, isn't that Goldbug right there?" and points to the lone Creatures Collide set that somebody picked up and discarded, while I like a total dunce had walked right past it on my way to, you know, the actual Transformers section of the toy department. And it seriously was the only one in the store. So, I was super happy. I can't even claim credit for finding the set!
So the box is interesting. It's 2.5" by 7.5" by about 20" across. Same measurements as the previous Worlds Collide set? I dunno. I didn't measure the box. Buzzworthy Bumblebee trade dress, which in a plasticless packaging world means a painted graphic with the four characters in the foreground (technically five because Scorponok is launching his Cyberbee) plus the almost confusing montage of random characters on the side panel (is Arcee in the box, too? Is Mirage? Is Optimus Prime?). There are little hexagonal-shaped cut-outs in the top box panel (you know, like a honeycomb, buzz buzz) so you can kinda-sorta take a peek and make sure your toys are actually in there, and haven't been replaced with, like, a bunch of unwanted, unloved Earthrise Arcees or something.
Many accessories (like 12) are wrapped in tissue paper and can be found on the left-hand-facing-you side of the box, i.e., the Goldbug side. Pull them out, and there are three Deluxe-sized toys strapped down to the inner cardboard tray with rattan ties, and there's also Goldbug, who is smol.
AUTOBOT GOLDBUG
There are snarky fandom pundits who like to claim that Hasbro can't just slap "Autobot" in front of any random name and gain ownership over it. And yet now they can use Goldbug's true and proper name now instead of calling him Goldfire. Isn't that interesting.
Basically, everybody bought this set for Goldbug. And, perhaps, to a lesser extent, Ransack. Skywasp is not a vital Beast Wars character by any stretch of the imagination (he didn't even exist during the original toy line) and Toy Scorponok is, well, toy Scorponok. So, realistically, you are paying $70ish for Goldbug and getting three other toys of questionable value for free. Just accept it.
He's based on the Netflix Bumblebee mold, of course, the only modern-era neo-G1 Bumblebee toy to actually turn into a Volkswagen Beetle. Yes, he's fully licensed. No, I don't know why Hasbro can't reissue Netflix Bumblebee and yet they can sell what amounts to the exact same toy somewhere else. Different name means different character, I guess? I don't know how these things work. I'm not a Hasbro lawyer.
I have been wanting them to make Throttlebots out of this toy design since Earthrise Cliffjumper first came out, and it's finally happening! He does use the same head sculpt as the Shattered Glass Goldbug toy release previously, but the mask is painted differently—there's more silver on this one, so it looks like the mask stretches across his face farther, unlike the smaller silver paint deco on the Shattered Glass version, which created the illusion that the sides of the helmet wrapped around the face a bit more.
He's sort of a combination of mustard yellow (for the parts visible only in robot mode) and a metallic painted gold veneer (for the parts that comprise the car shell). His robot shoulders and pelvis are cast in blue plastic, but they're painted gold as well. Autobot symbol is right-side up in robot form, so it's upside-down in car mode, but honestly who cares. This is a Very Beautiful Toy.
In car mode, he has silver painted headlights, grey plastic for the front and rear bumpers, smoky translucent windows that are not-quite-black, and silver painted hubcaps with little VW logos on them. Tail lights are not painted red. No biggie.
The instructions show you how the rear chunk of the car mode can be held as a shield, but Goldbug is a Throttlebot. Therefore the proper way to transform the toy, as decided by me, is to plug it into his back and have it hanging over his head as a very large backpack. This is the way.
This toy doesn't exactly look like G.I. Joe blew him up, couldn't figure out how to rebuild him, but stuck him back together wrong anyway. But, it does indeed look like a new paint job, which is how the Goldbug form was presented in "The Return of Optimus Prime" part 2.
Same weapons as Cliffjumper, Hubcap, Netflix Bee, and the rest of the sweet baby gang. One bazooka chunk is matte black plastic; the other is gold plastic painted glossy black. A bit of a mismatch. Water skis are blue; flip-out gun is mustard yellow with a blue gun barrel. We've seen just about every possible color combination at this point.
I don't know what it is that I love about the Goldbug form so much. Maybe it's the fact that the 1986-87 era was filled almost entirely with newer, unfamiliar characters, so some of my favorite third season moments were when old, familiar characters like Bumblebee or Starscream or Soundwave still came out to play. I will be very happy to see more Throttlebots. With sufficient reshelling, they could do every character except Wide Load using this same basic engineering. Wide Load would be tougher to pull off.
RANSACK
Getting the joke out of the way now: this is the first Deluxe Insecticon who is also a Deluxe Insecticon.
In addition to the three small Insecticons that Hasbro licensed from Takara, they also licensed four larger transformable insect toys from Bandai, originally part of the Armored Insect Corps Beetras assortment in Japan. (Ransack was designed for the toy line but didn't actually get a Japanese release per se.) Deluxe Insecticons were larger, had more complex transformations... and were also entirely off-limits to the cartoon show, for the same reason Takara didn't want other Bandai products like Jetfire or the Deluxe Autobots advertised in the cartoon. The original G1 Ransack was indeed a grasshopper, transforming differently than Kickback.
Despite this, Ransack is similar enough, in broad strokes, that a Kickback redeco actually kind of makes sense. The 1985 version of Ransack was more bug-shaped as a robot (insect legs protruding from his arms, a visible grasshopper abdomen between his legs) but when you tart up the Kickback toy in black and yellow colors, and give him a new head, it's honestly not a terrible likeness.
The color mapping works better in robot mode than insect mode, probably, since the front and middle insect legs are the wrong color (black during G1; yellow for Legacy). But, you can plug in the wing-shaped weapons, which were largely superfluous for Kickback, and create a bright yellow abdomen for Ransack, which is authentic and correct, and also helps to differentiate him a bit from Kickback. The abdomen parts are made of the same translucent orange plastic as his wings, but they're painted yellow so they're almost opaque, but not quite.
He comes with a black version of Kickback's gun. The G1 version of Ransack came with a black gun and a yellow shield. The wings/abdomen kind of double as the shield, I suppose.
Ransack also comes with an extra Kickback head. I'm not sure why. Swapping heads isn't mentioned in the instructions, so I almost wonder if it was a mistake—like they forgot to close the gate on the mold during production, ran off thousands of Kickback heads, and so they just threw them in the package. Hard to say without confirmation from Evan Brooks or Mark Maher or somebody.
Hasbro isn't likely to devote brand-new molds to developing the Deluxe Insecticons (especially since there may be licensing issues preventing them from doing so), but a Kickback in Ransack colors is the next best thing. When they get around to doing a Deluxe-class Shrapnel, a redeco as Chop Shop seems inevitable. A modified Bombshell with a different insect stinger would make a good Barrage, so the question remains how they'll give us a good Venom. (Maybe they can foot the bill for a new mold and then reuse it again as Cicadacon...?)
SKYWASP
I hate this toy's name. I hate it so hard. It's a stupid, gratuitous, jokey name. Get it? He's got Skywarp's colors, but he's a wasp, so he's SKYWASP. Ugh. Just shoot me now.
Honestly, this feels like a toy we would have gotten about twenty years ago, back when the diehard fans were demanding that Hasbro bring their beloved G1 characters back, but Hasbro had no idea yet that they were sitting on a gold mine. "Oh, you like G1, huh? Well, check this out. It's a Beast Wars toy! But it's in G1 colors, and it looks like Skywarp. There's your update, now shut up." Seriously, this would have been right at home with the Beast Wars versions of Lazorbeak and Grimlock and Prowl the owl. And we would have all gobbled it up, because it was the only meat that tasted a little like G1.
I mean, don't get me wrong, it's an attractive color scheme. Black and purple and red, with gold trim. It's very sexy. It's based on the BotCon 2015 color scheme for the Waruder toy named Parasite, who was a redeco of the Generations 2014 Waspinator. Things have come full circle, truly. I stopped paying attention to BotCon toys after like 1999 or so, so to me this is far less real of an homage, and far less important, than, say, Noble Predacon Sandstorm. But, it's cool-looking. It could easily have been one of the alternate playable color schemes for Waspinator in the Nintendo 64 game.
Suffice to say, though, I didn't buy this set for Skywasp. They should have produced a Waspinator toy in G1 Starscream's colors or something instead.
PREDACON SCORPONOK
In the world of the Transformers (cue G1 commercial narrator voice who isn't Victor Caroli), Predacon Scorponok is distinguished with a prefix to differentiate him from Earthrise Scorponok, the Decepticon. So how do we differentiate toy-colors Scorponok from TV-series-colors Scorponok? Uh, we don't? I guess? Same name. No attempt to assign him a new moniker, like Silverstreak, and have him exist in the same universe as the other Scorponok. This is just Scorponok wearing a different pair of pants.
Also, it's kind of ironic that these are Toy Scorponok colors, and yet the actual toy Scorponok reissue sold currently in Walmart stores (though not for long, as he's on clearance now) was not produced in these actual colors.
So, the old Kenner version of Scorponok from 1996 was black with bright red, and had some translucent bluish-purplish bits. In the show, they made his body grey and opaque, so there was a real disparity between the two looks. This version kind of returns to his roots, even though this toy is based on the CGI model, which took some liberties with the shape and proportions of his body.
One very cute detail I didn't know about is that his little missiles have painted Maximal symbols on them! This is an homage to an early Beast Wars episode ("The Web," I think?) where Scorponok mistakenly had Maximal insignias instead of Predacon ones. Story editor Bob Forward later justified this with a No-Prize, saying it was meant to be the mark of his hated enemy, as if to say, "This missile is for you, Maximals!" So, this toy also has painted Maximal symbols on the missiles. Nice touch.
He does come with two heads, the standard head that was used for the CGI model, as well as the alternate toy-based head that came with the Sandstorm redeco. I kind of like the alternate toy head, because it really drives home the toyetic nature of this release. He still has the derpy scorpion face in beast mode, though.
I'm not sure if I would have bought this toy if it had been released on its own. Oh, who am I kidding. I bought Toy Terrorsaur and Naked Dinobot, so of course I would have bought Toy Scorponok. I'm such a sucker.
Zob (gonna try to figure out how to build a Detolf shelf now)
Gustavo Wombat
Aug 1, 2022, 1:23:05 AM8/1/22
to
Zobovor <zm...@aol.com> wrote:
> AUTOBOT GOLDBUG
>
> There are snarky fandom pundits who like to claim that Hasbro can't just
> slap "Autobot" in front of any random name and gain ownership over it.
> And yet now they can use Goldbug's true and proper name now instead of
> calling him Goldfire. Isn't that interesting.
>
> Basically, everybody bought this set for Goldbug. And, perhaps, to a
> lesser extent, Ransack. Skywasp is not a vital Beast Wars character by
> any stretch of the imagination (he didn't even exist during the original
> toy line) and Toy Scorponok is, well, toy Scorponok. So, realistically,
> you are paying $70ish for Goldbug and getting three other toys of
> questionable value for free. Just accept it.
I like toy Scorponok!
> AUTOBOT GOLDBUG
>
> There are snarky fandom pundits who like to claim that Hasbro can't just
> slap "Autobot" in front of any random name and gain ownership over it.
> And yet now they can use Goldbug's true and proper name now instead of
> calling him Goldfire. Isn't that interesting.
>
> Basically, everybody bought this set for Goldbug. And, perhaps, to a
> lesser extent, Ransack. Skywasp is not a vital Beast Wars character by
> any stretch of the imagination (he didn't even exist during the original
> toy line) and Toy Scorponok is, well, toy Scorponok. So, realistically,
> you are paying $70ish for Goldbug and getting three other toys of
> questionable value for free. Just accept it.
>
> I don't know what it is that I love about the Goldbug form so much.
> Maybe it's the fact that the 1986-87 era was filled almost entirely with
> newer, unfamiliar characters, so some of my favorite third season moments
> were when old, familiar characters like Bumblebee or Starscream or
> Soundwave still came out to play. I will be very happy to see more
> Throttlebots. With sufficient reshelling, they could do every character
> except Wide Load using this same basic engineering. Wide Load would be
> tougher to pull off.
Bug Bite that’s a bug.
> RANSACK
>
> Getting the joke out of the way now: this is the first Deluxe Insecticon
> who is also a Deluxe Insecticon.
> The abdomen parts are made of the same translucent orange plastic as his
> wings, but they're painted yellow so they're almost opaque, but not quite.
I would have liked a small remold to let the abdomen chunks form a shield.
> wings, but they're painted yellow so they're almost opaque, but not quite.
>
> SKYWASP
>
> I hate this toy's name. I hate it so hard. It's a stupid, gratuitous,
> jokey name. Get it? He's got Skywarp's colors, but he's a wasp, so he's
> SKYWASP. Ugh. Just shoot me now.
> Honestly, this feels like a toy we would have gotten about twenty years
> ago, back when the diehard fans were demanding that Hasbro bring their
> beloved G1 characters back, but Hasbro had no idea yet that they were
> sitting on a gold mine. "Oh, you like G1, huh? Well, check this out.
> It's a Beast Wars toy! But it's in G1 colors, and it looks like Skywarp.
> There's your update, now shut up." Seriously, this would have been
> right at home with the Beast Wars versions of Lazorbeak and Grimlock and
> Prowl the owl. And we would have all gobbled it up, because it was the
> only meat that tasted a little like G1.
animals.
> I mean, don't get me wrong, it's an attractive color scheme. Black and
> purple and red, with gold trim. It's very sexy. It's based on the
> BotCon 2015 color scheme for the Waruder toy named Parasite, who was a
> redeco of the Generations 2014 Waspinator. Things have come full circle,
> truly. I stopped paying attention to BotCon toys after like 1999 or so,
> so to me this is far less real of an homage, and far less important,
> than, say, Noble Predacon Sandstorm. But, it's cool-looking. It could
> easily have been one of the alternate playable color schemes for
> Waspinator in the Nintendo 64 game.
>
> Suffice to say, though, I didn't buy this set for Skywasp. They should
> have produced a Waspinator toy in G1 Starscream's colors or something instead.
him. I seem to want a lot of Bug Bite so far… it’s a nice color scheme,
especially the wasp version which has bits of pink.
But I would love to have the Seekers as a trio of matching animals. Birds,
Pterosaurs or Wasps… I would want more-G1 heads though.
Preferably not the wasp, as it’s a bad mold. It’s creatures collide, not
insects, so they could have even given us something from Titans Return or
PotP.
> PREDACON SCORPONOK
> Also, it's kind of ironic that these are Toy Scorponok colors, and yet
> the actual toy Scorponok reissue sold currently in Walmart stores (though
> not for long, as he's on clearance now) was not produced in these actual colors.
>
> So, the old Kenner version of Scorponok from 1996 was black with bright
> red, and had some translucent bluish-purplish bits. In the show, they
> made his body grey and opaque, so there was a real disparity between the
> two looks. This version kind of returns to his roots, even though this
> toy is based on the CGI model, which took some liberties with the shape
> and proportions of his body.
Honestly makes me enjoy the mold a lot more.
William A. Rendfeld
Aug 1, 2022, 8:56:09 AM8/1/22
to
On Sunday, July 31, 2022 at 10:29:25 PM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:
> I've been checking my local Target store for this set without success, and the #FOMO has been hitting me hard. Well, today after work I went out to IKEA, for the third time in as many months, to finally get some spiffy glass display shelves for my G1 collection and other highly esteemed toys. (I got six of them. Not sure if it will be enough. But it's a start.)
>
> So while we were in town, my wife mentioned that there was a Target about nine minutes away, so it made sense to check. On the way in, I was grousing about all the people on Twitter humblebragging about finding the set, saying jokey things like "hay guise, I got Goldbug today, but there's something wrong bc there were like bugs in the box with him lololololololololol." You know how it goes.
Amusingly enough, the only IKEA in my state is within walking distance of a Target itself. Granted, said walk involves crossing a busy highway, but still, walking distance.
> I've been checking my local Target store for this set without success, and the #FOMO has been hitting me hard. Well, today after work I went out to IKEA, for the third time in as many months, to finally get some spiffy glass display shelves for my G1 collection and other highly esteemed toys. (I got six of them. Not sure if it will be enough. But it's a start.)
>
> So while we were in town, my wife mentioned that there was a Target about nine minutes away, so it made sense to check. On the way in, I was grousing about all the people on Twitter humblebragging about finding the set, saying jokey things like "hay guise, I got Goldbug today, but there's something wrong bc there were like bugs in the box with him lololololololololol." You know how it goes.
> Basically, everybody bought this set for Goldbug. And, perhaps, to a lesser extent, Ransack. Skywasp is not a vital Beast Wars character by any stretch of the imagination (he didn't even exist during the original toy line) and Toy Scorponok is, well, toy Scorponok. So, realistically, you are paying $70ish for Goldbug and getting three other toys of questionable value for free. Just accept it.
> He comes with a black version of Kickback's gun. The G1 version of Ransack came with a black gun and a yellow shield. The wings/abdomen kind of double as the shield, I suppose.
> Hasbro isn't likely to devote brand-new molds to developing the Deluxe Insecticons (especially since there may be licensing issues preventing them from doing so), but a Kickback in Ransack colors is the next best thing. When they get around to doing a Deluxe-class Shrapnel, a redeco as Chop Shop seems inevitable. A modified Bombshell with a different insect stinger would make a good Barrage, so the question remains how they'll give us a good Venom. (Maybe they can foot the bill for a new mold and then reuse it again as Cicadacon...?)
> One very cute detail I didn't know about is that his little missiles have painted Maximal symbols on them! This is an homage to an early Beast Wars episode ("The Web," I think?) where Scorponok mistakenly had Maximal insignias instead of Predacon ones. Story editor Bob Forward later justified this with a No-Prize, saying it was meant to be the mark of his hated enemy, as if to say, "This missile is for you, Maximals!" So, this toy also has painted Maximal symbols on the missiles. Nice touch.
> Zob (gonna try to figure out how to build a Detolf shelf now)
Irrellius Spamticon
Aug 1, 2022, 7:41:32 PM8/1/22
to
On Sunday, July 31, 2022 at 9:29:25 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> I've been checking my local Target store for this set without success, and the #FOMO has been hitting me hard. Well, today after work I went out to IKEA, for the third time in as many months, to finally get some spiffy glass display shelves for my G1 collection and other highly esteemed toys. (I got six of them. Not sure if it will be enough. But it's a start.)
>
> So while we were in town, my wife mentioned that there was a Target about nine minutes away, so it made sense to check. On the way in, I was grousing about all the people on Twitter humblebragging about finding the set, saying jokey things like "hay guise, I got Goldbug today, but there's something wrong bc there were like bugs in the box with him lololololololololol." You know how it goes.
>
> And my wife said, "Wait, isn't that Goldbug right there?" and points to the lone Creatures Collide set that somebody picked up and discarded, while I like a total dunce had walked right past it on my way to, you know, the actual Transformers section of the toy department. And it seriously was the only one in the store. So, I was super happy. I can't even claim credit for finding the set!
>
> So the box is interesting. It's 2.5" by 7.5" by about 20" across. Same measurements as the previous Worlds Collide set? I dunno. I didn't measure the box. Buzzworthy Bumblebee trade dress, which in a plasticless packaging world means a painted graphic with the four characters in the foreground (technically five because Scorponok is launching his Cyberbee) plus the almost confusing montage of random characters on the side panel (is Arcee in the box, too? Is Mirage? Is Optimus Prime?). There are little hexagonal-shaped cut-outs in the top box panel (you know, like a honeycomb, buzz buzz) so you can kinda-sorta take a peek and make sure your toys are actually in there, and haven't been replaced with, like, a bunch of unwanted, unloved Earthrise Arcees or something.
>
> Many accessories (like 12) are wrapped in tissue paper and can be found on the left-hand-facing-you side of the box, i.e., the Goldbug side. Pull them out, and there are three Deluxe-sized toys strapped down to the inner cardboard tray with rattan ties, and there's also Goldbug, who is smol.
>
> AUTOBOT GOLDBUG
>
> There are snarky fandom pundits who like to claim that Hasbro can't just slap "Autobot" in front of any random name and gain ownership over it. And yet now they can use Goldbug's true and proper name now instead of calling him Goldfire. Isn't that interesting.
>
> Basically, everybody bought this set for Goldbug. And, perhaps, to a lesser extent, Ransack. Skywasp is not a vital Beast Wars character by any stretch of the imagination (he didn't even exist during the original toy line) and Toy Scorponok is, well, toy Scorponok. So, realistically, you are paying $70ish for Goldbug and getting three other toys of questionable value for free. Just accept it.
>
> He's based on the Netflix Bumblebee mold, of course, the only modern-era neo-G1 Bumblebee toy to actually turn into a Volkswagen Beetle. Yes, he's fully licensed. No, I don't know why Hasbro can't reissue Netflix Bumblebee and yet they can sell what amounts to the exact same toy somewhere else. Different name means different character, I guess? I don't know how these things work. I'm not a Hasbro lawyer.
>
> I have been wanting them to make Throttlebots out of this toy design since Earthrise Cliffjumper first came out, and it's finally happening! He does use the same head sculpt as the Shattered Glass Goldbug toy release previously, but the mask is painted differently—there's more silver on this one, so it looks like the mask stretches across his face farther, unlike the smaller silver paint deco on the Shattered Glass version, which created the illusion that the sides of the helmet wrapped around the face a bit more.
>
> He's sort of a combination of mustard yellow (for the parts visible only in robot mode) and a metallic painted gold veneer (for the parts that comprise the car shell). His robot shoulders and pelvis are cast in blue plastic, but they're painted gold as well. Autobot symbol is right-side up in robot form, so it's upside-down in car mode, but honestly who cares. This is a Very Beautiful Toy.
>
> In car mode, he has silver painted headlights, grey plastic for the front and rear bumpers, smoky translucent windows that are not-quite-black, and silver painted hubcaps with little VW logos on them. Tail lights are not painted red. No biggie.
>
> The instructions show you how the rear chunk of the car mode can be held as a shield, but Goldbug is a Throttlebot. Therefore the proper way to transform the toy, as decided by me, is to plug it into his back and have it hanging over his head as a very large backpack. This is the way.
>
> This toy doesn't exactly look like G.I. Joe blew him up, couldn't figure out how to rebuild him, but stuck him back together wrong anyway. But, it does indeed look like a new paint job, which is how the Goldbug form was presented in "The Return of Optimus Prime" part 2.
>
> Same weapons as Cliffjumper, Hubcap, Netflix Bee, and the rest of the sweet baby gang. One bazooka chunk is matte black plastic; the other is gold plastic painted glossy black. A bit of a mismatch. Water skis are blue; flip-out gun is mustard yellow with a blue gun barrel. We've seen just about every possible color combination at this point.
>
> I don't know what it is that I love about the Goldbug form so much. Maybe it's the fact that the 1986-87 era was filled almost entirely with newer, unfamiliar characters, so some of my favorite third season moments were when old, familiar characters like Bumblebee or Starscream or Soundwave still came out to play. I will be very happy to see more Throttlebots. With sufficient reshelling, they could do every character except Wide Load using this same basic engineering. Wide Load would be tougher to pull off.
>
this is one mold I have yet to get. When Cliffjumper came out I spent that budget on XTB Toro, who is Cliffjumper, and Bumblebee every time I picked one up someone offered me even more than I paid to sell it to them, so I did. I already have so many Bumblebees and had just gotten more from meeting Dan Gizelvan at the time.
> I've been checking my local Target store for this set without success, and the #FOMO has been hitting me hard. Well, today after work I went out to IKEA, for the third time in as many months, to finally get some spiffy glass display shelves for my G1 collection and other highly esteemed toys. (I got six of them. Not sure if it will be enough. But it's a start.)
>
> So while we were in town, my wife mentioned that there was a Target about nine minutes away, so it made sense to check. On the way in, I was grousing about all the people on Twitter humblebragging about finding the set, saying jokey things like "hay guise, I got Goldbug today, but there's something wrong bc there were like bugs in the box with him lololololololololol." You know how it goes.
>
> And my wife said, "Wait, isn't that Goldbug right there?" and points to the lone Creatures Collide set that somebody picked up and discarded, while I like a total dunce had walked right past it on my way to, you know, the actual Transformers section of the toy department. And it seriously was the only one in the store. So, I was super happy. I can't even claim credit for finding the set!
>
> So the box is interesting. It's 2.5" by 7.5" by about 20" across. Same measurements as the previous Worlds Collide set? I dunno. I didn't measure the box. Buzzworthy Bumblebee trade dress, which in a plasticless packaging world means a painted graphic with the four characters in the foreground (technically five because Scorponok is launching his Cyberbee) plus the almost confusing montage of random characters on the side panel (is Arcee in the box, too? Is Mirage? Is Optimus Prime?). There are little hexagonal-shaped cut-outs in the top box panel (you know, like a honeycomb, buzz buzz) so you can kinda-sorta take a peek and make sure your toys are actually in there, and haven't been replaced with, like, a bunch of unwanted, unloved Earthrise Arcees or something.
>
> Many accessories (like 12) are wrapped in tissue paper and can be found on the left-hand-facing-you side of the box, i.e., the Goldbug side. Pull them out, and there are three Deluxe-sized toys strapped down to the inner cardboard tray with rattan ties, and there's also Goldbug, who is smol.
>
> AUTOBOT GOLDBUG
>
> There are snarky fandom pundits who like to claim that Hasbro can't just slap "Autobot" in front of any random name and gain ownership over it. And yet now they can use Goldbug's true and proper name now instead of calling him Goldfire. Isn't that interesting.
>
> Basically, everybody bought this set for Goldbug. And, perhaps, to a lesser extent, Ransack. Skywasp is not a vital Beast Wars character by any stretch of the imagination (he didn't even exist during the original toy line) and Toy Scorponok is, well, toy Scorponok. So, realistically, you are paying $70ish for Goldbug and getting three other toys of questionable value for free. Just accept it.
>
> He's based on the Netflix Bumblebee mold, of course, the only modern-era neo-G1 Bumblebee toy to actually turn into a Volkswagen Beetle. Yes, he's fully licensed. No, I don't know why Hasbro can't reissue Netflix Bumblebee and yet they can sell what amounts to the exact same toy somewhere else. Different name means different character, I guess? I don't know how these things work. I'm not a Hasbro lawyer.
>
> I have been wanting them to make Throttlebots out of this toy design since Earthrise Cliffjumper first came out, and it's finally happening! He does use the same head sculpt as the Shattered Glass Goldbug toy release previously, but the mask is painted differently—there's more silver on this one, so it looks like the mask stretches across his face farther, unlike the smaller silver paint deco on the Shattered Glass version, which created the illusion that the sides of the helmet wrapped around the face a bit more.
>
> He's sort of a combination of mustard yellow (for the parts visible only in robot mode) and a metallic painted gold veneer (for the parts that comprise the car shell). His robot shoulders and pelvis are cast in blue plastic, but they're painted gold as well. Autobot symbol is right-side up in robot form, so it's upside-down in car mode, but honestly who cares. This is a Very Beautiful Toy.
>
> In car mode, he has silver painted headlights, grey plastic for the front and rear bumpers, smoky translucent windows that are not-quite-black, and silver painted hubcaps with little VW logos on them. Tail lights are not painted red. No biggie.
>
> The instructions show you how the rear chunk of the car mode can be held as a shield, but Goldbug is a Throttlebot. Therefore the proper way to transform the toy, as decided by me, is to plug it into his back and have it hanging over his head as a very large backpack. This is the way.
>
> This toy doesn't exactly look like G.I. Joe blew him up, couldn't figure out how to rebuild him, but stuck him back together wrong anyway. But, it does indeed look like a new paint job, which is how the Goldbug form was presented in "The Return of Optimus Prime" part 2.
>
> Same weapons as Cliffjumper, Hubcap, Netflix Bee, and the rest of the sweet baby gang. One bazooka chunk is matte black plastic; the other is gold plastic painted glossy black. A bit of a mismatch. Water skis are blue; flip-out gun is mustard yellow with a blue gun barrel. We've seen just about every possible color combination at this point.
>
> I don't know what it is that I love about the Goldbug form so much. Maybe it's the fact that the 1986-87 era was filled almost entirely with newer, unfamiliar characters, so some of my favorite third season moments were when old, familiar characters like Bumblebee or Starscream or Soundwave still came out to play. I will be very happy to see more Throttlebots. With sufficient reshelling, they could do every character except Wide Load using this same basic engineering. Wide Load would be tougher to pull off.
>
I guess I should pick up Goldbug
Or just get the last 2 pieces of the Toyworld combiner.
> RANSACK
>
> Getting the joke out of the way now: this is the first Deluxe Insecticon who is also a Deluxe Insecticon.
>
> In addition to the three small Insecticons that Hasbro licensed from Takara, they also licensed four larger transformable insect toys from Bandai, originally part of the Armored Insect Corps Beetras assortment in Japan. (Ransack was designed for the toy line but didn't actually get a Japanese release per se.) Deluxe Insecticons were larger, had more complex transformations... and were also entirely off-limits to the cartoon show, for the same reason Takara didn't want other Bandai products like Jetfire or the Deluxe Autobots advertised in the cartoon. The original G1 Ransack was indeed a grasshopper, transforming differently than Kickback.
>
> Despite this, Ransack is similar enough, in broad strokes, that a Kickback redeco actually kind of makes sense. The 1985 version of Ransack was more bug-shaped as a robot (insect legs protruding from his arms, a visible grasshopper abdomen between his legs) but when you tart up the Kickback toy in black and yellow colors, and give him a new head, it's honestly not a terrible likeness.
>
> The color mapping works better in robot mode than insect mode, probably, since the front and middle insect legs are the wrong color (black during G1; yellow for Legacy). But, you can plug in the wing-shaped weapons, which were largely superfluous for Kickback, and create a bright yellow abdomen for Ransack, which is authentic and correct, and also helps to differentiate him a bit from Kickback. The abdomen parts are made of the same translucent orange plastic as his wings, but they're painted yellow so they're almost opaque, but not quite.
>
> He comes with a black version of Kickback's gun. The G1 version of Ransack came with a black gun and a yellow shield. The wings/abdomen kind of double as the shield, I suppose.
>
> Ransack also comes with an extra Kickback head. I'm not sure why. Swapping heads isn't mentioned in the instructions, so I almost wonder if it was a mistake—like they forgot to close the gate on the mold during production, ran off thousands of Kickback heads, and so they just threw them in the package. Hard to say without confirmation from Evan Brooks or Mark Maher or somebody.
>
> Hasbro isn't likely to devote brand-new molds to developing the Deluxe Insecticons (especially since there may be licensing issues preventing them from doing so), but a Kickback in Ransack colors is the next best thing. When they get around to doing a Deluxe-class Shrapnel, a redeco as Chop Shop seems inevitable. A modified Bombshell with a different insect stinger would make a good Barrage, so the question remains how they'll give us a good Venom. (Maybe they can foot the bill for a new mold and then reuse it again as Cicadacon...?)
>
> SKYWASP
>
> I hate this toy's name. I hate it so hard. It's a stupid, gratuitous, jokey name. Get it? He's got Skywarp's colors, but he's a wasp, so he's SKYWASP. Ugh. Just shoot me now.
>
> Honestly, this feels like a toy we would have gotten about twenty years ago, back when the diehard fans were demanding that Hasbro bring their beloved G1 characters back, but Hasbro had no idea yet that they were sitting on a gold mine. "Oh, you like G1, huh? Well, check this out. It's a Beast Wars toy! But it's in G1 colors, and it looks like Skywarp. There's your update, now shut up." Seriously, this would have been right at home with the Beast Wars versions of Lazorbeak and Grimlock and Prowl the owl. And we would have all gobbled it up, because it was the only meat that tasted a little like G1.
>
> I mean, don't get me wrong, it's an attractive color scheme. Black and purple and red, with gold trim. It's very sexy. It's based on the BotCon 2015 color scheme for the Waruder toy named Parasite, who was a redeco of the Generations 2014 Waspinator. Things have come full circle, truly. I stopped paying attention to BotCon toys after like 1999 or so, so to me this is far less real of an homage, and far less important, than, say, Noble Predacon Sandstorm. But, it's cool-looking. It could easily have been one of the alternate playable color schemes for Waspinator in the Nintendo 64 game.
>
> Suffice to say, though, I didn't buy this set for Skywasp. They should have produced a Waspinator toy in G1 Starscream's colors or something instead.
>
> PREDACON SCORPONOK
>
> In the world of the Transformers (cue G1 commercial narrator voice who isn't Victor Caroli), Predacon Scorponok is distinguished with a prefix to differentiate him from Earthrise Scorponok, the Decepticon. So how do we differentiate toy-colors Scorponok from TV-series-colors Scorponok? Uh, we don't? I guess? Same name. No attempt to assign him a new moniker, like Silverstreak, and have him exist in the same universe as the other Scorponok. This is just Scorponok wearing a different pair of pants.
>
> Also, it's kind of ironic that these are Toy Scorponok colors, and yet the actual toy Scorponok reissue sold currently in Walmart stores (though not for long, as he's on clearance now) was not produced in these actual colors.
>
> So, the old Kenner version of Scorponok from 1996 was black with bright red, and had some translucent bluish-purplish bits. In the show, they made his body grey and opaque, so there was a real disparity between the two looks. This version kind of returns to his roots, even though this toy is based on the CGI model, which took some liberties with the shape and proportions of his body.
>
> One very cute detail I didn't know about is that his little missiles have painted Maximal symbols on them! This is an homage to an early Beast Wars episode ("The Web," I think?) where Scorponok mistakenly had Maximal insignias instead of Predacon ones. Story editor Bob Forward later justified this with a No-Prize, saying it was meant to be the mark of his hated enemy, as if to say, "This missile is for you, Maximals!" So, this toy also has painted Maximal symbols on the missiles. Nice touch.
>
> He does come with two heads, the standard head that was used for the CGI model, as well as the alternate toy-based head that came with the Sandstorm redeco. I kind of like the alternate toy head, because it really drives home the toyetic nature of this release. He still has the derpy scorpion face in beast mode, though.
>
> I'm not sure if I would have bought this toy if it had been released on its own. Oh, who am I kidding. I bought Toy Terrorsaur and Naked Dinobot, so of course I would have bought Toy Scorponok. I'm such a sucker.
>
>
> Zob (gonna try to figure out how to build a Detolf shelf now)
Zobovor
Aug 1, 2022, 7:43:38 PM8/1/22
to
On Sunday, July 31, 2022 at 8:29:25 PM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:
> I've been checking my local Target store for this set without success
It went live on Target's web site today. You can order Red Cog, too, if you're interested in such things.
> I've been checking my local Target store for this set without success
Zob (almost pulled the trigger on Red Cog, but... ugh, so many toys, so much money, I'm such an addict)
Travoltron
Aug 11, 2022, 5:44:45 PM8/11/22
to
On 7/31/2022 7:29 PM, Zobovor wrote:
> Also, it's kind of ironic that these are Toy Scorponok colors, and yet the actual toy Scorponok reissue sold currently in Walmart stores (though not for long, as he's on clearance now) was not produced in these actual colors.
I didn't know the reissue was recolored. So I thought I should get one.
> Also, it's kind of ironic that these are Toy Scorponok colors, and yet the actual toy Scorponok reissue sold currently in Walmart stores (though not for long, as he's on clearance now) was not produced in these actual colors.
Never saw it in stores. It was $46 though! Oh well, I can sell my
original and make that money back.
I wish they would have done more of this sort of thing to make the toys
more show-accurate in these re-releases, they way Takara did. I think
collectors would have been more motivated to shell out for these
reissues if there was something different about them.
Zobovor
Aug 12, 2022, 1:17:56 PM8/12/22
to
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 3:44:45 PM UTC-6, Travoltron wrote:
> I didn't know the reissue was recolored. So I thought I should get one.
> Never saw it in stores. It was $46 though! Oh well, I can sell my
> original and make that money back.
At some Walmarts they have reportedly gone down to as low as $21.
> I didn't know the reissue was recolored. So I thought I should get one.
> Never saw it in stores. It was $46 though! Oh well, I can sell my
> original and make that money back.
> I wish they would have done more of this sort of thing to make the toys
> more show-accurate in these re-releases, they way Takara did. I think
> collectors would have been more motivated to shell out for these
> reissues if there was something different about them.
It's super weird how we're getting original toys in show colors, but at the same time we're getting show-accurate toys decked out in the original toy colors. When they consistently subvert expectations every time, then don't you eventually come to expect that?
Zob (if they released toys in their original colors, that would subvert our expectations that they'll subvert expectations!)
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