The Cast 3 "The Cast 3" is signed and numbered by the cartoonist and printed on 8.5"x11"
cardstock glossy paper. Limited to 15 pieces, a copy is just $20, and you can order
by sending your mailing address to wiigii@hotmail.com.
Check, money order or Paypal,
please!
Even though I pay cash money for my Livejournal account so I can inline it into this page, apparently the functionality for it has been down for five friggin' days and counting. Oh, sure, they know about it and they'll fix it whenever, apparently. Great. Anyway, that means my site's auto-update script won't work, since it will stall while trying to pull the LJ data. And if I just yank the LJ code out temporarily, then my ad networks no longer have a wall of text to make them happy. So, hey, fuck you, LJ.
If you want current blog posts, click the "Respond to Blog!" link above.
I wasn't sure whether I was gonna pick up this Target-exclusive Legends two-pack. Bumblebee would end up immediately in a bin somewhere, for example. And I wasn't sure I if I needed Shadow Striker. Sure, she uses the name of an old BotCon character, but is that enough?
On the other hand, the profile written for these two is... interesting. To sum up, Shadow Striker is really sarcastic. So Bumblebee is going to kill her.
Yeah, um. There's not quite enough information in the bio to suggest whether Bumblebee is actually justified in giving this lady a beatdown. He's frustrated and he feels insulted, and apparently nobody likes her, but it's still kind of devoid of real justification for Bumblebee's intended retaliation. Hell, half the words to describe Shadow Striker make her sound like potentially a fun person to be around! Is sarcasm so wrong? Is it because it's unladylike?
Basically, I feel like Bumblebee's painted here as kind of a misogynist, whether that was intended or not. (Prooooobably not.)
Anyway, the tipping point is that the pair was just $6.99. One Legend is just $5, so that's a great deal. And if I eventually decide I don't care about our gal Shadow Striker here, I can pretend she's Shattered Glass Wheelie.
Hey, did you know that Shortpacked! turned five years old last month on the 17th? Yeah, uh, I guess I sorta forgot.
Oops.
Well, at least you all were spared some back-patting hamfisted anniversary strip. It's hard to resist those.
Meanwhile, I've started gearing up for this year's conventions. I'm going to a lot of them! And, well, my old banner display thingy is starting to show its age. It's got ancient art, the old logo, and I didn't really give the printer a high enough DPI. So, gross.
But I'm Mr. Moneybags now, so I'm gonna replace the one banner display with THREE! Mwahahaha. And they'll all line up to show a bigger picture. And if I don't have room behind the booth for all three at a particular convention, I can just use one or two instead!
So that's is what I've cooked up. Have some art.
Long time readers may boggle at the idea that Shortpacked! has now run longer than It's Walky!. (Well, minus Roomies!. It'll be two more years for that.)
[2010/02/01 11:13 pm] Shortpacked!:Robin knows the score.
Hey, if you want yesterday's strip at printable size, email me. I'll give you a link.
I've got myself a Dinotron! Well, most of him. I was dumb and didn't read that he was missing his tail, and I didn't notice that the eBay auction said he was missing his tail until I got him and noticed his tail was missing and I re-read the auction to make sure it was my fault and not the seller's. Reading comprehension is apparently not my thing. (It really isn't. It was always my worst score in achievement tests.)
But no big. I bought a cheap junker Dinotron that had the sword immediately thereafter, and soon he will arrive.
I got Dinotron to complete my Dinobot collection. I'm thiiiiiiiiis close to having every iteration and retool of the original Dinobot mold. All that's left is Thrustor. And it's really dumb, because I once had a Thrustor and I sold it.
About tonight's strips: Yeah, I guess Playmates is shelving both TMNT and Star Trek so that they can make Shrek IV and Michael Jackson stuff. Alrighty. Oh, and I saw some Revenge of the Fallen Valentine's Day cards in stores and was really disappointed by them. So you're welcome, I guess.
Ha ha ha, I remember a few days ago I was talking about this year being a Transformers lull. It's funny, because the next day everything that was sort of hovering off in the distance that I kinda really wanted started to drop into stores simultaneously. That 5% of toys I was after all came out at once.
The Legends-scale Devastator is one of them. I think we caught wind of this guy long before Revenge of the Fallen even came out in theatres. He's been a long time coming. And after what feels like a million years, here he finally is. This Devastator's unique in that he's the only version of ROTF Devastator whose components can transform into robots as well as vehicles.
The reason for this is understandable, after playing with this guy. Legends Class Devastator is the perfect size for this kind of undertaking. He's about the size of a Deluxe; any bigger, and I think he'd basically be unmanageable. The $100 sized one is probably smart to keep him playable when combined. You should be able to bash him around. He shouldn't be a two-foot tangle of balljoints.
Legends Devastator has just enough articulation in combined mode to be interesting. His legs don't do much besides rotate at the thigh, but his arms and head do get some movement. He's got elbows, for what it's worth, and some limited shoulder rotation. His head is on a balljoint and can look around as well. The toy is most pleasing to me when he's in this form.
Devastator is also unique in that he's made up of seven guys. The $100 version omits Overload, the red hauler that forms the super robot's crotch. He also has the only toys of Overload, Scrapper, and Hightower that transform into robots. Those three have no individually-sold toys. Now, technically, this still isn't a full roster of the guy we see form Devastator in the film. Two mysterious dudes show up for a few seconds to make small parts of Devastator, in addition to the seven we see here - one guy forms his left hand and the other forms half of a leg. But other than those guys (which Hasbro ignores in its marketing), this Devastator is complete.
And he holds together pretty well! Lots of tabs and slots. The whole thing is pretty ingenius, engineering-wise, and not at the expense of his component parts. Other than Mixmaster, they're all solid toys even when you ignore that they're combiner parts.
A Walmart exclusive, Devastator's $32, which is about $3 less than the $5-per-component you'd have to spend on his pieces individually. (Not that you can.) With that in mind he's not a bad value, but he's only about the size of a deluxe, so he doesn't seem as good a deal when out on the store shelves next to other toys.
Well, I went out this morning hoping to find Animated Arcee. I didn't! I guess I'll have to enjoy this live-action Arcee in the meantime. Drat.
(Please excuse the asymmetrical paintjob on Deluxe Ratchet's shoulders. I've been absent-mindedly paint detailing one side of his vehicle mode in my free time.)
Legends Class Arcee here is the first transforming toy I've owned of any of the three Arcee bikes from the film. I was sorta waiting for this one, since it was small. I don't need toys of them that large, really. They're motorcycles! They're tiny! And I'm actually pretty okay with life if Hasbro never makes the other two in this size. In fact, I'm counting on it at this point in the toyline, even though there's a mysterious connector peg behind Legends Arcee's rear wheel. Hmmm.
Waiting wasn't so bad, either! I like this little toy. It's pretty damn complicated for a Legends Class toy. Maybe it's partly because she only has one leg to give pieces to, but she is dense with hinges and balljoints.
Thank God there's some ridges alongside her two wheel-halves which allow her to stand. It's not terribly easy to do so, since she has a precarious center-of-balance, but it's doable. The Deluxe versions of her kinda cheat, giving her a little stand that folds out of other parts of the vehicle. Those are probably more stable, but ruin the visual effect. S'pose that's the tradeoff. She's much less visibly held up by something, but she's much more easily knocked over. Y'know how it is.
I really like her shade of pink.
Y'know, I'm pretty sure Columbus area stores completely skipped over the previous wave of Legends Class figures. I never ever saw a Wheelie or Soundwave, and I was kinda wanting the former. And neither of them is in this new assortment. D'oh.
[2010/01/27 11:00 pm] Shortpacked!:It's a post-9/11 world.
See, here's the thing. Nick Roche "gets" the Wreckers, he "gets" Transformers, and he "gets" visual storytelling. That last bit is the most important. Artists rarely do. Even more rare are ones who can also write!
Wreckers, the concept, has principally been about grabbing a gaggle of forgotten toys, making them a team, and sending them off to probably die against a frightening foe. And Roche has totally done that. He's given us a handful of Europe-only late G1 and G2 guys and given them life. Nobody's really touched these characters. They're the kind of characters that, if they're lucky, show up in the background. If they're even luckier, they're not cheap cannon fodder. But Ironfist, Pyro, Guzzle, and Rotorstorm, most of whom haven't been properly characterized ever, are now all "real" characters to me. That's awesome.
Meanwhile, the story pumps up Overlord as a very scary yet entertaining villain. And since this is Wreckers, and since Overlord is a really sadistic terrible guy, I know some horrible things are going to happen. And they'll happen at a good pace, with lots happening panel to panel! With actual facial and body expressions!
Heroes I like. A great villain. Competent storytelling.
The first half of this year in Transformers is basically an off-time for me. The Revenge of the Fallen toyline has given me 95% of the characters I wanted, that being guys who showed up in the film, and I'm not big on the repeats. ... with exceptions. Long-time readers know I'm a sucker for a Dinobot, Ratchet, or a Ravage. These personal favorites will still grab my attention.
With that in mind, hey, it's a new Ratchet! I love me some Ratchet, who's probably my first favorite Transformers character from my childhood. And I glomp onto the live-action film versions as well. I spent an inordinate amount of time adding finishing touches of paint and stickers to my Movie Ratchet from the first film. And yet I was still disappointed when the ROTF re-release of that mold didn't give him a new head like his buddy Ironhide. Like most of the first movie's toys, the sculpting was done off of unfinished concept art. So, well, I was kinda hoping for a new Ratchet that is based on the actual finished model, put together by Hasbro/Tomy now that its folks have seen Ratchet in a movie or two.
This new Deluxe Class figure is close to what I was hoping for. Close enough, anyway, for now. He's not, uh, quite big enough to truly replace my current favorite version of Ratchet. But he certainly is a huge step in the right direction in other facets! He has a much more accurate head, for starters. When I painted up my first Ratchet's head, I had to fudge some details since it didn't quite line up with what he really looks like. But on this guy, the correct ridges and nooks and crannies are all sculpted in. That makes me a happy Walky.
Even neater are the three headlights nestled into the front of his vehicle. When you push his tummy down into place during transformation, gearing reconfigures those three headlights into a triangle formation, which is exactly what happens during his movie model's transformation. That is a long, geeky-but-awesome way to go for screen accuracy.
He has more accurate a lot of other things, as well, but they come with some compromises. The legs are obviously more screen-accurate than the original's, since they were basically carved half-assedly out of large blocky vehicle chunks. But what you trade these legs for on the new Deluxe is the pair of hip kibble. See them folded out behind him? Yeah, the back half of Deluxe Ratchet is basically a shellformer. Past his torso, everything tucks up underneath a cascade of interlocking panels. On the plus side, these panels do fold up very compactly. The entire roof and rear bumper of the vehicle piles up inconspicuously on his back. The sides of the vehicle, as stated, fold up on his hips. It's definitely a trade-off.
Another trade-off is his altered vehicle mode. It's not exactly the model seen in the film. There's a big diagonal chunk taken out of the back end, presumably to reduce the amount of kibble that would hang off him in robot mode. He's closer to an actual H2 Hummer, rather than a Hummer poking its head out of an ambulance-shaped box.
But all this nitty-gritty aside, there's another huge reason why I wanted him. There's a new Lockdown, a character created for Transformers Animated, redone in this movie style and shipping in the same case assortment as this Ratchet. And not only do their respective bios pimp their Animated-inspired rivalry, but the new Lockdown can still steal Ratchet's weapon, just like their Animated toys. Ratchet's gun plugs into his arm and his roof with a peg shaped identically to his Animated self's war wound, and new Lockdown has that same unique peghole shape. That is fangasmic.
If only Big Bad Toy Store had sent me Lockdown too. I preordered both! But just sent me Ratchet. That's kind of infuriating.
Hey, guess what? You can preorder your Mike Warner statue now! PatchTogether put the order page up late last night, and already we have a good thing going with him. At $34.95, he's even $5 less than Amber was. (Probably the lack of translucent parts or an accessory.) So, woo! Have at him!
Now that Mike's confirmed for preorder, I put together some more angles of him for the sculptors. I was kinda putting it off. Mike's hair, as I've belabored in the past, doesn't work in 3D. It doesn't! But I threw down some lines anyway, and hopefully the poor sculptors can figure it out.
The Transformers Wiki got invited to Hasbro's "Collectors Event" at Toy Fair this year. This is where a buncha website dudes show up, Hasbro does a presentation, and everyone gets to look at some of the toys being offered this year. We take pictures, we hurry to be the first ones to put them up, yadda yadda.
And holy cow, I'm going on behalf of the Wiki! Being (sort of) at Toy Fair is something I've always sort of dreamed of, so I'm ecstatic. I'm also apprehensive, since I've actually never been to New York City before. I sorta drove through the northern boroughs on the way to ConnectiCon last year, but that hardly counts. It took 15 minutes. So, yeah, it'll be a new experience.
So, hey, NYC-local folks, anyone have any advice on getting a hotel? I've already searched a bunch and found one I may go with, but figgered I'd mention it here before making a commitment. The Toy Fair Collectors Event is basically in Times Square, so that's where I'm looking at.
Woooo!
Today's photos are of BotCon 2002Cyclonus. He's another of my Random Photos For The Wiki. I'm, uh, actually very pleased that his chrome shows absolutely no sign of shedding. (Unlike, say, Shokaract's frightening spider-webbing.) He's super-pretty! And whee, his electronics still work, even. Hot dog.
