toy review – TOBOMI

Quickie Review Photodump: Planet X Triton

General Tekno — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 04:24:15 +0000

Or, well, PADDLES!

To provide a super quickie history course… Paddles is the sixth Dinobot. From a UK short story collection. Who turns into, well, not Champ. Not Nessie. But OGO. POGO. A Plesiosaur.

A ****ING PLESIOSAUR

Anyway Venture Bros reference aside, that Planet X did this is pretty cool. He’s a retool of their take on Sludge, only with flippers instead of legs, as well as a new head. And in altmode HOLY HELL IS HE IMPRESSIVE. Like, he’s freaking huge.

Like LOOK AT HIM next to my keyboard. SO FREAKING LONG

Transformation has a couple tricks to it, but is otherwise pretty straightfoward. A lot of the mass compresses into a nice squat bulky robot with some decent posability to it. He looks nifty indeed!

*slams BW Megatron voiceclip button* SIDE-GUNS!

Weaponwise, he’s got a king’s ransom of armaments. Twin giant cannons and a Transmetal Megatron tailwhip are his main weapons. He also comes with some translucent swords that, as I understand it, are meant to go with their Swoop moreso (but he can still hold/store them). But honestly the BFGs are enough… especially given you can plug them in onto his shoulder flippers so they sit above the shoulders nice and stable-y. His own set of side-guns!

In summary… I won’t lie. Paddles WAS a bit of a novelty buy. With BBTS having him for 30 bucks back in December, he was a no-brainer to throw in a box with a couple other things. But he’s a really REALLY GOOD novelty buy.

Anyway hopefully next review doesn’t take as long for me to actually writeup. Meant to talk about him the week after Akane Shinjo, but then got sidetracked.

Quickie Review Photodump: MP-10 SG Optimus Prime

General Tekno — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 07:50:16 +0000

Or, should I say, Masterpiece Akane Shinjo.

This next Kaiju’s gonna light our darkest hour!

This was one of those figures I had no interest in, really. And then within an episode of Studio TRIGGER’s “SSSS Gridman” premiering, everyone realized that virtually all the characters in the cast were stealth Transformers homages – mostly of the Shattered Glass variety. And the main antagonist, who was awesome in her own right (seriously, what a fantastically realized character) was SG Optimus Prime.

It’s not just Gridman with vehicle partners now!

Then BBTS put this Asian market exclusive on a crazy good sale over the holidays and I caved. (There’s something else I got too worth talking about but that’s for a future post). And getting it in hand – it’s pretty nice.

Truck mode is… well, it comes with the trailer! Which is a cool bonus feature. It doesn’t come with a Roller drone, surprisingly (or a Spike), but the main Combat Deck functionality is still all there. The trailer’s pretty sparse on paint but given it’s in black plastic, it doesn’t really need it.

Rikka, you’re the only one for her.

(Fun fact, for the TFcon 2018 custom class figure, we actually made an SG Optimus from the Perfect Effect PMOP figure. And, given I had a spare lying around, I painted up a copy of the trailer portion of Ginrai to go with it/give it Powermaster armor using this figure as the basis for what the trailer would look like.)

Robot mode, meanwhile…. well, it’s an MP-10. I know MP-44 (Optimus 3.0) is due out really soon, but this is still a mold worth owning due to the fantastic engineering.

ACQUIRING SHIPMATE

Really, the biggest noticeable change from the stock MP-10 is the lack of chrome. Given this was made at more of a budget that’s a little understandable, BUT unfortunately this leads to a design flaw, because the tolerances for the chest locking into place were all built around the extra thickness the chrome layer provides. This is obviously fixable with some properly applied floor polish, but it’s still a flaw nonetheless.

I’m going to love you and hug you and squeeze you and call you George!

Also worth noting too is the plastic. It’s not as uniform as the plastic on the Hasbro Optimus that I have – in fact it’s got some swirls in it here and there. This very much comes across as a release that they wanted to put out for fun and on a budget, given it’s not up to the same standards as a regular Masterpiece release. BUT THAT SAID! It’s still the MP-10 mold. These flaws aside, it’s as poseable as a regular MP-10 is.

I WANT YOU INSIDE ME RIKKA; YOU WERE MADE FOR ME

This is a figure definitely not for everyone. It’s a niche thing, especially given my reasons for wanting this (I can’t help but think of this as Akane Shinjo’s transtector, after all). Wouldn’t pay full price for it, but for a sale it’s worth it. And, more importantly, it’s a way to justify keeping a copy of the MP-10 mold if you want MP-44 or one of the 3P Optimus options coming out this year and don’t want to Optimii in your collection.

KEEP AWAY FROM MY WAIFU, YUTA

Quickie Review Photodump: MMC Cylindrus

General Tekno — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 06:06:26 +0000

So I kinda decided I wanted to use this site for more things this year given I never use it. Actually create some content and the like.

So with that said, “Toy Review Crap” is gonna be a new feature – basically me doing quickie text reviews of things I got, using whatever photos I randomly took for fun on Twitter or something with my phone.

And first up, we have a big one – the (currently) final retool/redeco of Mastermind Creations’ Kultur mold – Cylindrus. Or, in actual character names, Roller from the Roberts/Milne/Lawrence MTMTE/Lost Light series at IDW.

I’ve seen people on certain major Transformers forums whining about MMC. And all the redecoes/retools they’ve put out in the last year. And I won’t deny it’s a lot. But A) you don’t have to buy them, B) retools/repaints are a way to recoup mold costs/create seed money to cover upfront costs for new tooling, C) take a look at their upcoming slate for 2019 and all the new molds within, D) you don’t have to buy them, E) YOU DON’T HAVE TO BUY THEM.

(So anyway, I bought all of them.)

Vroom vroom!

Just checking out altmode, it’s a fairly involved retool of the already very involved retool of the Collisus (Thunderclash) retool of Kultur. While it’s also an eightwheeler, lots of parts have been clearly changed (I’ll do the rundown in the botmode section), and the clear windshield is a really nice touch that helps sell the “it’s Roller” of the retool. Unlike all the other iterations, he looks like he can actually carry passengers in theory. While not accurate, it’s on the level of a Hasbro “this comic design is neat so let’s use it as the basis for a new toy with a different altmode” that we saw a lot of around 2012 or so.

Even bigger than a giant mug!

Botmode, naturally, is where this toy REALLY shines, though. As they retooled a LOT for this version of the mold, even just comparing him to Collisus – back kibble, cockpit, chest, head, shoulder kibble, knee kibble, and toes have ALL been retooled to bring him closer to Roller’s character design in the IDW comics. As with all the other iterations of the mold, he’s got a killer amount of range in his posability. The head sculpt is pretty darn bang-on, and the color layout is a pretty great match for Roller’s comic art. As one can tell in the group photo, while he shares a LOT of parts with Tarn and Thunderclash he’s very much got enough changes to give him his own distinct visual identity.

Accessories aren’t that numerous, but he’s got what he NEEDS – the rifle originally tooled for the Machine Wars Optimus Prime version of Collisus (which, interestingly, uses a DIFFERENT attachment point, showing some forward thinking on that mold!) and the most important accessory…. the Kremzeek juice box he’s always holding. If he hadn’t come with that, it would have been a travesty, but he does, and while it’s a little tricky to get in, it’s sculpted to fit in his hand in a “has been squeezing the juice out of it” shape. A necessary accessory for most robot mode posing you’re gonna want to do with this guy, indeed.

He’s got the moves like squids and noseless kids

Anyway, end conclusion? Posable toy, and a solid use of the mold. If you’re hung up on comic accuracy to altmode/botmode, you may want to wait for the Roller FansProject is doing, but if you want something without a breastmaster gimmick and with a good solid large size, decently accurate botmode, and proven QC track record, the MMC one is for you.

And to cap this off, here’s a non-listicle of my subjective ranking of all the Kultur mold uses:

Thunderclash
Roller
SG Tarn
Tarn
MW Optimus Prime