The
Cast 2
Limited to 30 pieces, "The
Cast 2" is signed and
numbered by the artist and printed on 8.5"x11"
cardstock glossy paper. A copy is $25, and you can order
by sending your mailing address to wiigii@hotmail.com.
Check, money order or Paypal,
please!
[2008/10/10 10:45 pm] Joyce and Walky!:I FEEL ASLEEP
And David said, "Let the earless Nightbeat toy sent by FedEx have ears, and may they be ears from Cobra Commander guns." And it was so. David called the new ears "sweet," and the completed kitbash "totally rad to the max." And David saw that it was good.
Wheee! Now my Nightbeat makes me fully happy. No longer do I have to wince at Nightbeat's featureless sides of his helmet, knowing that something, somewhere is terribly missing. Quick, Fun Pub, bring unto me a Siren!
I spent a while this morning Dremeling away the bits of the Cobra Commander guns I didn't want. I sanded away the handles, removed the nubs at the end of the barrels, and got rid of the pegs I didn't want. I left two pegs on the guns for later.
Because the next step was drilling in holes on each side of the head. I was afraid of starting with too big of a hole, so I started small and drilled it bigger until I could fit the remaining pegs of the guns in securely. And then, the gluing.
After I finished, I realized I had to remove some more gun off the bottoms, to make them level with the bottom of the head. So that got Dremeled off as well.
I have no idea why the shot of Nightbeat's head from under the car mode amuses. But it does.
As I suspected, I do have to remove the head during transformation, and then reattach it after I'm done. Which, as I said, is something I had to do anyway, since the head is REALLY LOOSE. God damn, does it just fall off. Geez.
But again. Perfection is achieved. [2008/10/09 10:59 pm] Shortpacked!:She feels your pain.
Oh, a picture is worth a thousand orgasms.
Nightbeat and Hot Shot are powerlinxed together! My two favorite Transformers, combined at the crotch into a super being. The slashfic writes itself.
FedEx dropped off my Timelines (Classics) Nightbeat on our porch this afternoon. The delivery guy was already to his truck by the time I got outside, so he escaped my hug. I've been wanting this toy for a long time. Since... 2003, really, when Energon Hot Shot was announced and I immediately started demanding it be redecoed as Nightbeat. Okay, I demand pretty much everything be redecoed into Nightbeat, but this was the one that stuck.
Nightbeat is a blue and yellow Energon Hot Shot with a new head. Apparently the head was supposed to have his gun ears sculpted on there, but when the guys at the Chinese factory realized they prohibited him from, well, transforming, they did the only sensible thing and hacked them off the tooling without anybody's say so. Well! And since Fun Publications was trying to rush these things out the door and have them available by BotCon 2008 in April, they really had no time to go back and address this.
And then he wasn't available for six months more after that. Yeah. Uh. Good job, guys.
He's pretty, definitely. His choice of yellow and blue is... strong? They're a very potent yellow and blue, I think I want to say. Neither color is the original's straight primary color setup, instead opting for a more orangey yellow and a more cyanny blue. He's certainly striking. The application of yellow paint on his chest feels a little sloppy, but I'm not sure how much of that I should chalk up to the general dangers of painting yellow on top of black plastic.
And he's still definitely the Energon Hot Shot mold, for better and for worse. For me, that's for better, but I readily admit I am in the minority there. This means his poseability is restricted, yet it's still a step up from the original Nightbeat toy, who had... shoulders. Now Nightbeat has... elbows, rotatey biceps, and hips! His head can turn a few degrees to the left and right, but this is barely perceivable.
The majorest problem with Nightbeat, besides the lack of ears, is again something to do with his head. The balljoint socket on the new noggin is terribly shallow. The ball doesn't so much pop into the socket as it... well, it connects, but not very securely. So his head is probably going to come off when you transform him, if yours is at all like mine.
Which makes me feel better about my planned alteration, because after attaching guns to his head, I'd probably have to remove it during transformation anyway. But if it's gonna come off regardless, then I feel a lot better about the whole thing.
I've kept these Cobra Commander guns around for, geez, more than six months, waiting for this thing to get off its ass and mailed to me. I'm gonna Dremel off everything I don't need from them, like the outwardly-facing pegs and the handles, drill some holes in the head for the remaining pegs, and glue Nightbeat some ears.
So far, I've got them stuck to his head with sticky tack. It's a start.
(Nightbeat is still for sale at FunPub's site, if you're interested.)
Silverstreak is the toy from this wave I was looking forward to the most, yet he's the toy about which I have the least to say. Why? Because he's pretty. He's the Prowl mode, but with extra gorgeous. Of the three Nissan dudes, Prowl, Silverstreak , and Smokescreen (Fan Club members got to see him), Silverstreak is easily the best use of color.
There have been a scant few silver automobile Transformers in recent years that got to have a real painted silver finish, instead of comparatively dull silver plastic. Universe Silverstreak is one of the chosen! This has its downsides, as my Silverstreak looked pretty damn perfect on-card, but the side facing away from me on the bubble had a few scratches on it. Nothing bad enough to get me to demand an exchange, but the scratches are definitely there. (And sort of noticeable in the vehicle-mode photo, if you care to squint.)
His silver and his black and his dark red are a great combination, and it's almost entirely the doing of the dark red. It helps him stand out from his bright primary-color peers. But what puts the icing on the cake are the spots of blue on his crotch. Sublime.
Otherwise, he's the same ol' toy Prowl is, albeit minus the police flashers. So expect those doors to pop off during transformation! Hell, expect to have to pull them off yourself during transformation, just to make room.
Pardon me, for my experience with Universe "Classics Series" Sideswipe has been soured with poor QC. It's very localized, but it still drives me mad. You see, the door-kibble on his left arm is very loose. Incredibly loose. It is free-wheeling. And so, it always hangs down limply. There is a screw to tighten, but it is not in an accessible place. Maddening! I am considering returning Sideswipe, which is a rare circumstance for me in this hobby.
Sideswipe is mostly the same toy as his "brother" Sunstreaker (yellow dude on left). The only real difference is the new head, though his fists are swapped left-right as well. The toy was designed from the beginning to be able to transform in two ways, in anticipation of making Sideswipe from Sunstreaker. Basically, now you turn the toy around at the waist, so the back becomes the chest -- hence the swapped fists.
There's also all sorts of varying things you can do with his weapons. He comes with a gun and booster engines, same as Sunstreaker, but you can configure and/or combine them differently to distinguish their looks. The boosters are based on the kibble from Sunstreaker's original toy, so they can peg onto the back, but if you peg them upside-down, they can double as Sideswipe's jetpack. They can also clip onto the gun, if you want to make the gun look bigger. You can then put the gun, combined or not, in Sideswipe's hand or into a peg on his shoulder. The gun-on-shoulder bit is cribbed from Sideswipe's original toy. Pick a configuration that suits you and run with it.
I really like the choice of white as Sideswipe's secondary color. Well, "choice." His secondary color was white on his original toy as well, so it was bound to happen regardless, but I still think it looks pretty.
In the tradition of yesterday's photos of Ironhide next to his earlier BotCon counterpart, the second and third photos feature this new Sideswipe with OTFCC 2004's exclusive Sideswipe. I was thinking of doing it but wasn't sure if it'd be of interest, but then Graham was over here playing video games after school, and he was all "MAN YOU SHOULD GET OTFCC SIDESWIPE OUT IT IS THE ONLY WAY YOU WOULD HAVE WORTH IN MY EYES AS A HUMAN BEING" and so I go dig him out and then Graham barely grunts when I set everything all up. That bastard. I'll kill him.
Anyway, there they are. Together. For those of you who'd like to see them together.
Like that jackass Graham.
First report of someone getting their Nightbeat popped up today. And he didn't even want him. DAMN YOU WHERE IS MINE?! I DESIRE HIM WITH THE BURNING OF A MILLION SUNS.
I found Wave 3 of the Universe "Classics Series" guys at Wal-mart yesterday, to my delight. The wave included Ironhide, everybody's favorite Autobot redneck.
His first toy famously had no head, a side effect of being a toy originally designed as a human-piloted mech for another toyline. Ironhide's first toy got around this by placing a sticker on the back of the seat where the driver would have sat. Clever! The comic and cartoon would not have this, so they made up a robot mode from scratch, integrating only the toy's chest into the design, and completely fabricated a head for him. So you can imagine the pleading over the years for an Ironhide toy with a head. Well, here it is! For $10!
(BotCon 2005 gave us a headed-Ironhide as sort of a stop-gap measure, retooling Energon Towline with a new noggin. That toy is seen in the left of this blog post's provided photos. The new Universe Ironhide is on the right. If you still want the BotCon Ironhide, I'm pretty sure he's still available at Fun Publication's webstore for ~$300. Until the release of this new Ironhide, he was pretty much the sole reason for buying the set. Whoops.)
I did not have high expectations for this toy. From the looks of him, he is a jumble of messy parts. The sides of his vehicle mode is a crisscross of creases, so much so that his windows are painted on, as localized transparent plastic just wouldn't be feasible. (The bright blue his side windows are painted does not mesh well at all with the transparent blue windshield.) From the outset I figured the toy would be a pain. I'm happy to report that he is not as terribly complex as he looks. He's still a mess of parts, but it's fairly easy to put him together in either mode. Sure enough, in midtransformation he's an explosion of plastic pieces, but it's all intuitive.
He has a weapon that can mount on either of his arms. There's a blade at one end and a gun at the other, depending on which side you prefer, and though the instructions and packaging photos show his hand folded in against his forearm, his hand can fit snugly inside the weapon. Whether this is accident or intentional, who knows, but it's more visually pleasant. (I find it tougher to fit the hand inside in gun mode, but your mileage may vary.)
Ironhide is not without his downsides, but they're not the downsides I was expecting. His head does not sit fully upright in robot mode; it faces down at a slight angle. I've seen it reported that this can be fixed by shaving off some plastic inside, but I wish I didn't have to do this myself. Like his other contemporaries, he has a little trouble staying together in transformation. Mostly, mine likes to snap apart at the waist. It's no big deal, as it pops right back in, but it has become a regular feature of his transformation for me. He's also got an ample amount of kibble hanging from his back which likes to unfold and become unwieldy. And again, his painted windows doesn't match very well the translucent windows.
On the other hand, I really like his blue face. It's the same bright blue color as the windows, and I don't think I've seen anybody else share my opinion of it. I just wish his face were painted more cleanly -- the blue paint barely reaches his eyes. I may have to fix that somehow.
I haven't had much interest in Mattel's DC Universe Classics line, the DC Comics counterpart to Marvel Legends. After all, I have a whole shelf of 80% of the desirable-portions of the DC universe already, but in Bruce Timm style. I saw no need to be redundant. Plus, I had a buttload of DC Direct Batmen in variant styles already, so my usual "in" was taken care of.
But, dude, Slade--- er, Deathstroke the Terminator called to me. First, he's orange and dark blue with some brown, which is a color selection I've long been smitten with. And I liked him a lot in the Teen Titans cartoon. It's hard to go wrong with criminal-mastermind/creepy pedophile Ron Perlman. And though I have both of Bandai's Slade toys, neither of them are really appropriately scaled for my DC Animated toys, so it's not like a new toy would be replacing the old one. He'd be a fun diversion.
I have to say, when I got him open, I was really impressed. I don't know how I didn't notice until then that this guy was packed with assorted weaponry. He's got a sword, a handgun, a automatic rifle, and a martial arts staff. The best thing? They can all store. All at once. It's awesome. He's got a sheath for his sword and a holster for his gun on his belt, his rifle has a strap which wraps around his chest, and his staff clicks onto the back of his ammo belt. Swapping out weapons is grand fun, and none of them have to lie somewhere on the floor if you don't want him using them.
Deathstroke being my first DCU Classics toy, this was also my introduction to the line's articulation. I'm enamored with the unique universal joints of the hips, versus the balljoints the Marvel Legends toys usually have. Looks more seamless. The paint is really nice, as well. I did put back one of th e two Deathstrokes I found, since the first had some orange splotches on the blue half of his face, but my specimen is perfectly clean.
I was so impressed that I kinda want more figures from the line, but I'm hard pressed, looking at DCUC's lineup so far, for a character I need for $11. Maybe one will come along. If they ever did any iteration of the Secret Six, I'd probably go for those.
(God, "Deathstroke the Terminator" is a goofy-ass name.)
Look how loved I am! These Robot Heroes, the ones I have been seeing neither hide nor hair of for over a month, were sent to me by reader David Laramie. He remembered I hadn't found them, and when he spotted them, he scooped them up. Well, huzzah!
Citizens of Plattsburgh, New York: I implore you to inquire a name from every stranger you come across. If he answers "David Laramie," lavish him with praises and the finest jewels.
Whee, all caught up on Robot Heroes. Finally! (Next wave of Robot Heroes, this is your cue to start showing up. I demand you, Silverbolt and Transmetal Megatron.) Arcee here, on the left, wasn't the one from the pair I was looking for, but she's a good addition to my growing Generation 1 Robot Heroes collection anyway. She has big, cute eyes, and a better female face than Blackarachnia. (This is not hard.) She has articulation at each shoulder and the neck. I do kind of wish her face were a different color versus her helmet. Like, a very light pink, or something.
I was about to type, "Finally, I own Robot Heroes Princess Leia," but I'm pretty sure there's a buttload of those already over in the Galactic Heroes line.
Rumble, on the right, is the prize here. Ha ha, and he's red. Like he should be. Nyeah. His pose is dynamic, his signature piledrivers are fun, and his face sculpt is great. I love the open-mouthed grin. He's enjoying pounding the ground beneath you. He's totally into it. He's got articulation at the shoulders and the neck, same as most Robot Heroes.
These strips have been revisiting the most popular corners of Shortpacked! lore, which apparently are the store, Robin's other job, Batman, Transformers, and, well, you know.
(Frankly, it was Maggie's idea, and one I couldn't resist once the idea was put forward. I knew it was the perfect end to this week.)
I went back after drawing the strip and put this together. It's linked instead of inlined because a lot of you read through the blog first, and I wanted to preserve the surprise. Apparently there was some money resting on who'd show up today.
I mentioned the other day that the Transformers Collectors' Club Magazine offered us our first look at the new Hot Shot. Well, did you know they also showed off Universe (25th Anniversary) Dinobot. A new mold Dinobot. Like, totally new! From scratch! And it's about freakin' time, since the original mold was redecoed and/or retooled about ten zillion times. The tooling must be applesauce by now.
So we're getting a new one, with a better raptor mode and, amazingly, a robot mode that looks about as close to the show's CGI model as physically possible in a Deluxe-class toy. (And considering the level of THIS CANNOT POSSIBLY TRANSFORM INTO ANYTHINGness that Dinobot's CGI model achieved, this toy is a monument to some sort of genius.) It is Against The Rules to for members to post scans of the pages, but a good verbal description of some kind is probably available somewhere. Heck, maybe someone even drew a picture.
Lord, I am so pumped. Dinobot's wave, coming sometime in early 2009, cannot come quick enough. Between Hot Shot and Dinobot, it's like Hasbro has been invading my dreams and taking notes.
Not exactly the kind of merchandise I usually find myself buying, but damn if I can't admire it from afar.
("Real-like built in flamethrower"? For rizzle? This toy is more fun than I ever suspected!)
Today the first sighting of UniverseIronhide, Silverstreak, and Sideswipe were reported. Woo, at a Wal-mart in Utah, apparently. It feels too soon to go look for them myself here in Columbus, but within days I shall strike. And strike hard. That Silverstreak is sexy.
©2008 David Willis 
