The Transformers thread (shows, comics, toys, all things TF)

[The Nemesis]

I've seen reports that Canadian retailers are starting to see some of Wave 2 of War For Cybertron figures appearing on their shelves. Gonna have to keep an eye on that. And I still need my Shockwave from wave 1

Also apparently the Karyuudo fansubs release of Beast Wars Neo should reasonably be out soon (as of the start of March they only had about 4 or 5 more episodes to finish subbing). That would put us at a point where every single Transformers TV series made is available to watch in English in some form or another.

And finally, I just saw this today:

Humble Comics Bundle: Transformers 2019 by IDW (pay what you want and help charity)

Humble Bundle has a pay-what-you-want release of a whole bunch of IDW's Transformers series comics. For any amount over a couple bucks you get a good amount of their book series. And for just $15 US (about $20 Cdn) you can get a gigantic swath of comics in digital form that would apparently be worth hundreds of dollars to buy individual issues for. That's a good deal and there is some good stuff in there (and some ridiculousness)

The proceeds of the bundle go to the Hasbro Children's Fund.

 

[The Nemesis]

Found a single, lonely Shockwave at Wal-Mart the other day. It's... nice. There are a lot of cool things about the figure, but it's also kinda expensive at a Leader-class price point for a figure that is basically halfway in between Deluxe and Voyager class figures size-wise, but comes with weaponizer parts (It's functionally different from Ultra Magnus in that Magnus' armor pieces create the "real" Ultra Magnus design, whereas base Shockwave is what looks familiar, whereas with the weapon parts he's like creepy nightmare Shockwave with 4 arms (3 of which are guns) and more guns on his feet.

But with that said:

• the full armored-up Shockwave is neat looking
• You can disassemble the armor parts and make them into a sort of mini-module. It's actually not listed in the instructions, but box art shows it being used like a hoverboard. On the other hand, I think it looks more like an attack drone.
• the head has a light-piping gimmick like old figures used to have. What that means is if you have a light source above his head, it makes the central face "eye" light up. It's really good, far better than old figures and the eye lights up super bright. I just wish it was red instead of lime green (although many incarnations use lime green as the eye color. Red is a more recent invention).
• the alt mode is a sort of spaceship thing. It doesn't look good on its own, but with the armor pieces it completes a fairly cool looking battlecruiser.
• There's actually a rubber hose that runs from shockwave's back to his gun arm. It's cool, but I wish it was longer, it limits how much you can move the arm and I feel like it'd be easy to rip out or damage.

 

[The Nemesis]

I finally watched all of Cyberverse season 1. I think my final assessment of the series so far is that it's thoroughly mediocre. There's some good voice acting and some really bad acting. There are some good character updates/personalities and some really bad ones. There's some fanservicey references in using characters like Slipstream and Acid Storm instead of more prominent, traditional bots, but there's also a broad feeling that they are, at times, pulling too many concepts from too many different incarnations of the series and it muddies how well that fanservice stuff can pay off. The color palette and character design is nice in an inoffensive cartoony sort of way, but at times the animation suffers from a certain amount of simplisticness or relying on its more cartoonish look to let it cheat and get away with not being as detailed as it could be.

Maybe it's kind of a backhanded compliment to the franchise as a whole that being a mediocre series is probably good enough to put it in the category of being "watchable", but it's the kind of thing where I could see that if you have a rainy day and nothing to do for 2-3 hours (I believe the season runs a total of 18 episodes and each one is 10-11 minutes in length without commercials), it could probably be background noise as you surf the internet or do something else besides just watch TV.

I also noticed today that Toys R Us Canada's website has a pre-order listing already for War for Cybertron Omega Supreme at the low, low price of $250 Cdn. I suppose that's pretty fair for most of the Titan Class figures over the last few lines.

 

[The Nemesis]

This morning I decided (against my better judgement) that I might want to consider getting Beast Machines just to complete the Beast Era story and have a piece of all the various parts of Transformers history.

I still haven't decided if I want to buy the DVDs or not, but I got a big laugh out of the fact that when I searched "Beast Machines" on Amazon, one of the results they gave me on the first page is "Step Up 3"

Ok. Makes sense

 

[The Nemesis]

About 14 hours left in the Humble IDW Bundle for a whole whack of TF comics for less than $20.

 

[The Nemesis]

So I'm just watching Bumblebee for the first time. I just got past the intro on Cybertron.

Why the hell couldn't we just get a whole movie of that? It's war. On Cybertron. With G1 characters. That look like G1 characters. And sound like G1 characters (Soundwave! Eeeeeeeee!).

Seriously, give me 2 hours of that and I will give you all of my money. All of it.

EDIT: The one thing so far that I don't like is that the Bayverse has now forever given us "Bumblebee doesn't/can't talk" as a thing. It was I guess sorta interesting the first time they did it in Bay movie 1, but through 4 movies of that (including undoing it being fixed once), Prime, Cyberverse, the High Moon games (War for/Fall of Cybertron) and now this, it's kind of overdone. Just let him talk like normal.

EDIT 2: The human characters, at least Charlie's parents, are already annoying. I don't know where most hollywood writers went to school, but I'm getting sick of the same dumb tropes they always apply to teenagers (petty, stupid cool kids, patronizingly out-of-touch parents, etc) as if they're the universal trope of adolescence.

 

[The Nemesis]

"Ravage, eject!"


EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

 

[The Nemesis]

My crazy internet sleuthing and Excel math-work trivia fact of the day:

By the end of 2020 there will have been over 1,000 episodes of Transformers fiction aired on TV worldwide if you count every episode of every series released either here in the west and/or in Japan (this counts any given series only once, even if its Japanese/Western dub is wildly different from the source material. So Armada and Micron Legend are a single entry as the same root series, as are Beast Wars and its goofy screwball comedy dub version from Japan.)

Some time during the season 2 run of the little-kids' show Transformers: Rescue Bot Academy will be that 1,000th episode. The crazier part is that even if we bent the rules and counted all the various 20+ different incarnations of the franchise as a single "series" it wouldn't be enough to dethrone a bunch of anime series that have run largely unbroken for 30+ years in Japan, some of which have racked up more than 2x that amount of episodes. Nor would it immediately take the crown from a western library of related shows that would qualify under that same rule, as assorted versions of the Bugs Bunny/Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show put up like 1,050 episodes in their combined existence.

That's crazy, no?

 

[The Nemesis]

Toys R Us has some of their Transformers stuff on sale right now. Most of it appears to not be available in-store, but there are some deals.

WFC Leader Class (Shockwave, Ultra Magnus) are marked down from $69.99 to about $52.
WFC Voyager Class figures (Megatron, Optimus Prime) are down from $39.99 to $29.97
WFC Deluxe Class figures (Hound, Cog, Sideswipe, Skytread) are down from $29.99 to $22.

and the deepest discount, PoP Predaking is down from like $230 to about $170 (about $28 per figure in the pack, which is fair for a set of 6 Voyager-sized figures)

Transformers Toys, Action Figures & Collectibles | Toys R Us Canada

 

[SoundwaveIsCharisma]

Toys R Us has some of their Transformers stuff on sale right now. Most of it appears to not be available in-store, but there are some deals.

WFC Leader Class (Shockwave, Ultra Magnus) are marked down from $69.99 to about $52.
WFC Voyager Class figures (Megatron, Optimus Prime) are down from $39.99 to $29.97
WFC Deluxe Class figures (Hound, Cog, Sideswipe, Skytread) are down from $29.99 to $22.

and the deepest discount, PoP Predaking is down from like $230 to about $170 (about $28 per figure in the pack, which is fair for a set of 6 Voyager-sized figures)

Transformers Toys, Action Figures & Collectibles | Toys R Us Canada

Thanks for this! Finally got Predaking, just couldn’t justify getting him at over 200, so pretty stoked

 

[The Nemesis]

Thanks for this! Finally got Predaking, just couldn’t justify getting him at over 200, so pretty stoked

It's an impressive piece. Very G1 styled rather than the upgraded look of most other figures in modern lines (all the predacons have very boxy designs in animal mode) but it also makes for a better looking combined mode as Predaking than most other modern combiners and is a closer homage to the G1 originals than some other figures in the line. It's also gigantic (like a foot and a half tall at least) so make sure you've got some good, tall display space.

 

[SoundwaveIsCharisma]

It's an impressive piece. Very G1 styled rather than the upgraded look of most other figures in modern lines (all the predacons have very boxy designs in animal mode) but it also makes for a better looking combined mode as Predaking than most other modern combiners and is a closer homage to the G1 originals than some other figures in the line. It's also gigantic (like a foot and a half tall at least) so make sure you've got some good, tall display space.

Well dang. Predaking came but my Divebomb only came with one gun. It doesn’t look like it ever got put in since there’s not even holes for the plastic straps

 

[The Nemesis]

Well dang. Predaking came but my Divebomb only came with one gun. It doesn’t look like it ever got put in since there’s not even holes for the plastic straps

Weird. I've heard some stories about QC when it comes to assembling or packaging the modern figures (stories of people getting a figure with missing pieces or even cases where someone got a figure with two right legs or the wrong gun in the pack) but I've yet to have it happen specifically to me.

Presuming you have the bill/invoice, you could always try either contacting Toys R Us about an exchange or Hasbro customer service to see if they'll give/sell you a replacement part.

 

[SoundwaveIsCharisma]

Weird. I've heard some stories about QC when it comes to assembling or packaging the modern figures (stories of people getting a figure with missing pieces or even cases where someone got a figure with two right legs or the wrong gun in the pack) but I've yet to have it happen specifically to me.

Presuming you have the bill/invoice, you could always try either contacting Toys R Us about an exchange or Hasbro customer service to see if they'll give/sell you a replacement part.

Yea, I’ll give them a call tomorrow to see if I can just exchange it in store or something, just unfortunate that such an expensive figure is missing at least a piece (saw it wasn’t there, checked to see if it had just popped out somewhere, repackaged without seeing if anything else was missing). Hoping for better luck on the next one!

 

[The Nemesis]

Yea, I’ll give them a call tomorrow to see if I can just exchange it in store or something, just unfortunate that such an expensive figure is missing at least a piece (saw it wasn’t there, checked to see if it had just popped out somewhere, repackaged without seeing if anything else was missing). Hoping for better luck on the next one!

Yeah, good luck.

The one thing I will say is be careful with the Razorclaw transformation. There's a piece that hangs down behind the lion head on Predaking's chest (it's kind of triangular with two points and painted gold and red) that moves in concert with another piece of the body for the change to Predaking torso mode. I kept thinking that it was supposed to fold up and down on its own because it's not firmly attached all the way to the rest of the body and looks like it has a hinge at the top to pivot on. I ended up snapping it off and breaking the pieces that secured around the metal "pin" it apparently hinges on with a bit of undue force and while it holds on just fine if you put it back in place, it almost feels like a bit of a trap that they could've secured in place better to prevent it from appearing to move on its own

 

[The Nemesis]

Today in Transformers history:

Nemesis, Part 2, the series finale of Beast Wars premiered on television.

 

[Guardian17]

The official U.S Air Forces Central Command Website has uploaded a pair of pictures showing off a real US Air Force F-15C Eagle Featuring a Decepticon Symbol. Starscream has never looked so real, not even in the Masterpiece line.

It also says “STARSCREAM” under the canopy.

Real US Air Force F-15C Eagle Featuring a Decepticon Symbol - Transformers News - TFW2005

 

[The Nemesis]

That's cool.


Also the other day Karyuudo Fansubs released their latest project, a complete english translation of Beast Wars Neo. IIRC this is basically the last of the Japanese Transformers series that needed to be translated. Haven't watched it yet. It's apparently quite weird just like Beast Wars II.

Karyuudo Fansubs　狩人ファンサブ

 

[The Nemesis]

I'm glad I just picked up War for Cybertron Chromia, but I'm equally disappointed that this is the 3rd fembot in a row that uses exactly the same basic mold of the futuristic car alt-mode. What's worse is that it's obviously the same mold as Moonracer and Novastar but that they've just made minor cosmetic changes like taking away the "windshield feet" (which ironically makes her less stable to stand under her own power with all that back-loaded vehicle kibble) and then stripping out the combiner mode peg from inside her torso, leaving a big cavernous gap visible from above that makes it pretty blatant that she has no mass inside her body (again, making the back-loaded weight a bigger issue.)

Would it have killed them to have repurposed a motorcycle mold like Wreck-Gar/Groove? Or even come up with something new because they're not bound by the necessity of being a combiner limb?

I still hold out eventual hope for a motorcycle mode WFC Arcee at some point.

Also yes, this is confirmation that Seige wave 2 is making its way onto store shelves in Canada. My wal-mart still mostly had wave 1 (a solitary shockwave, gobs of Megatrons, and a bunch of Cogs) but in amongst them were one each of Chromia and Prowl.

 

[The Nemesis]

There's concept/promo art of forthcoming wave 3 WFC figure Impactor, making his wide-release toy debut after having mostly been available as a special limited-run or convention exclusive sort of character.

Look at that fantastic Generation 2 style coloring. LOOK AT IT!

 

[Brodeur]

I'm pretty sure anybody reading this thread has probably already seen it, but I rewatched the Transformers episode on Netflix's "Toys That Made Us" show and it's still so enjoyable.

 

[The Nemesis]

I found out the other day that this is real:

Sadly they neglected to inform that is appears to be pre-order only through EBGames in Canada and Gamestop in the US, and now that I try to find one nobody has any that were neglected pre-orders (and making matters worse, EB's online stock checker actually counts on-hold items in their stock. So I get like 4 green check marks around me for locations that say they have them only to find out that 1 has a pre-order that's being held until Monday, one has a time-limit-exempt pre-order as a make good because a customer at another store had their pre-order sold out from under them, 1 straight up has no stock in at all even for pre-orders, and one has no idea what the hell I'm talking about.)

I mean, if there's a good side it's that it's probably a $60 figure that is the size of a $20 regular figure and I don't need to spend money like that, but **** you Hasbro for getting in on this stupid artificial scarcity made-up-collectors-market bullcrap.

 

[The Nemesis]

Hasbro's going full-bore into the whole artificial-scarcity "you can't get one" marketing crap now. Amazon had begun taking pre-orders on the special pack with Greenlight (the cameo fembot from that one G1 episode). Yesterday it was available, though only to amazon prime members. Today it was sold out on Amazon.ca And it doesn't even release for another 4-5 days.

I managed to snag one off Amazon.com by signing up for the free 1-month Prime trial (because apparently being a Prime member on .ca doesn't carry over) but now it means I have to take a 2 hour trip across the border to pick it up when it arrives. Also I have to remember after I get the figure to cancel the Prime membership for .com so I don't get billed for a service that I'll literally only use maybe once every couple of years.

The worst part is that there's at least 3 or 4 more special release type packs coming up in this series (Skywarp is going to be released through this, as is another one-off obscure character (a red seeker), a Jazz redeco done up as a rando Japanese targetmaster (that used to be a sort of holy grail figure for western collectors) and I think one more. I'm not going to be getting everything, but come on. Nobody needs or wants the way that stuff is now marketed to hardcore fans with "we could make 500,000 of this figure so that everyone could get one, but we'd rather just make one tiny production run so that they sell out after 18 hours and most of the real money ends up in the hands of scalpers that buy 6 and sell them on eBay for a 350% markup.

 

[The Nemesis]

Update on the above: Ahead of Prime Day Amazon.ca came back into possession of some Greenlight figure sets and made them available for purchase. So I was able to swap out my .com purchase for this one and no longer have to pay the extra 2 or 3 dollars on the exchange rate difference or the trip down across the border for pickup (to negate sky-high shipping costs).

Also it appears that Hasbro is actually finishing off the fembot combiner team:

There are teases and rumors of an upcoming figure named "Lancer" that is yet another redeco of the PoP Moonracer/Novastar mold that will be released soon-ish. Lancer is the purple and orange fembot that also appears briefly in The Search for Alpha Trion along with Greenlight. She's supposed to have her combiner gimmick intact which means that that there will be enough pieces to make a 5-piece combiner out of Elita-1, Moonracer, Novastar, Greenlight, and Lancer. It also seems that promo material has redubbed the name from "Elita-Infin1te" to "Orthia."

There are also rumors that either late in Siege or into the next line in this trilogy there will be more Seekers released, including potential redecos of fan favorite background characters like Acid Storm or Nova Storm (the assorted multi-colored seekers that often appeared on Cybertron as nameless background filler in the G1 cartoon. the two I named were the "rainmakers" from the season 1 episode Divide & Conquer, shown in bright blinding green and yellow respectively)

There's also also rumors that with Springer and Impactor seeing release in Siege that future lines will feature more of the Wreckers.

 

[Guardian17]

Also it appears that Hasbro is actually finishing off the fembot combiner team:

There are teases and rumors of an upcoming figure named "Lancer" that is yet another redeco of the PoP Moonracer/Novastar mold that will be released soon-ish. Lancer is the purple and orange fembot that also appears briefly in The Search for Alpha Trion along with Greenlight. She's supposed to have her combiner gimmick intact which means that that there will be enough pieces to make a 5-piece combiner out of Elita-1, Moonracer, Novastar, Greenlight, and Lancer. It also seems that promo material has redubbed the name from "Elita-Infin1te" to "Orthia."

All-Female Combiner "Orthia" Combined Pics - Transformers News - TFW2005