Of course Anode is my new favorite Transformers character.  She's a snarky lady asshole who's married to another lady Transformer.  I'm pretty sure I write like thirteen varients of this character already.  Her very existence makes me suspect at some point I get thrown back in time and become James Roberts.

Once Titans Return Windblade was announced, I was like, oh, hey, lady jet could maybe be painted into another lady jet (and both use propeller propulsion in some way), and I started making plans.  I asked Trent Troop to make an Anode head for his Shapeways store, and I bought one of those (in frosted extreme detail).  I prepared paints.  And, finally, I got a second Windblade so I could beige her up.  

I have to say, this ended up looking more like Anode than I'd expected.  The translation went pretty well.  I mean, she doesn't turn into a space-biplane, and she doesn't transform the same (legs unwrapping into upper wings), but in robot mode she clearly has the right vibes and all the colors can go in the right places.  

And so I am pleased.

And, obviously, I'm gonna make her wife Lug.  I've got a second TR Rewind on order, and I'm gonna see if Trent can't make a Shapeways Lug head. 

I also have Sky Shadow!

I got him quite a bit ago.  There was a long dryspell of new Transformers (like a week or two) and I saw this guy in a store and I bought him, even though I'd planned to skip him.

He's pretty, at least!  It's hard to go wrong with black, silver, and red.  And he's Overlord from the pants down.  The top half transforms into a completely different jet.

I dunno.  I have regrets.  It's not that this toy is bad, but there were reasons I was skipping him.  I'm happy with the Sky Shadow I already had, and that Sky Shadow takes up way less room on a shelf (he's a Deluxe) and IDW comics based their design of him on that earlier toy.  I just don't need a giant-ass Sky Shadow.  It was a bad impulse purchase.

But here he is, anyway, for you to look at.

Like I said, he's not bad.  He's just surplus to my requirements.  And I have an Overlord now, who's mostly this guy anyway, but as a character I wanted.

So.

Not that he wasn't somewhat of a deal before, but folks have been very loudly asking for a new Overlord ever since he was the big villain in 2010's Last Stand of the Wreckers.  BotCon tried to jump on this hype in 2012 with a version of him retooled from Revenge of the Fallen Bludgeon, but that's always felt like a band-aid on a gushing wound of desire for the real thing.  Well, here he is, the Real Thing, probably!

I mean, I can't rule out that there'll be a Better-er Overlord at some point, but this offering seems like it's the most on-the-nose that retail can muster.  He looks like Overlord (the original toy, at least, though not the LSOTW redesign), he splits into two vehicles like Overlord (not a common gimmick), and he's the largest size class that isn't a city or a combiner, which is suitably Overlordy.  Overlord was a big-ass guy.  But, frankly, anything much larger than this and he isn't gonna fit on any of my shelves.

(note: TakaraTomy just solicited their Overlord, and they're officially mistransforming his feet in a way that extends his legs, making him taller by about an inch.  Essentially, theirs is on tippy-toes.  You can do that easily on the Hasbro version as well if you want your Overlord to be a smidge taller.)

In addition to the tank and jet modes and the combined robot mode, the two vehicles can also combine into an okayish base mode.  I probably won't be using this much, but it's there.

Since Overlord is a Titans Return toy, that means he's got a little dude that turns into his head.  And since Overlord is a LARGE Titans Return toy, that means his little dude actually just transforms into the face, which sits inside a larger helmet, so that body parts remain proportional.  There's also little head-guy-shaped crevices inside doors on his chest where you can capture two other head guys.  (These take the place of the Powermaster engine plug-in spots on the original toy.)  

Overall, Overlord is a solid toy.  His robot mode is where it's at and stays together like a toy that doesn't transform at all, featuring most of the articulation you'd want (though no waist rotation), and he transforms into two smaller vehicles which are also individually fun entities.  The tank mode's turret doesn't rotate, but considering how the thing transforms, that's not really surprising.  

Just keep him away from Pipes.

I've got a Trypticon!  He's a big Trypticon, unlike the tiny Legends of Cybertron class Trypticon I've had for a decade, and even bigger than the original Trypticon I got last year when it was reissued.  We found out about this new Titan Class Trypticon like the day before my original Trypticon reissue arrived in the mail, and I don't regret it.  He's Trypticon.  He's a very large robot dinosaur and/or kaiju.  There should be more of him.

Trypticon is definitely of the "original design with knees" school of design most Transformers seem to graduate from these days.  He's essentially a bigger version of the original.  But with articulation.  And no electronic walking gimmick.  There are some improvements, though, like how there are fewer.... pieces.  Trypticon stays whole when he changes from dinosaur to spaceship to city, instead of having to rip some smaller parts off him and move them around.  The only part that really comes off is his separate little race car guy, Full-Tilt.  And this makes sense because, you know, he's a separate little race car guy.

That I said "from dinosaur to SPACESHIP to city" is a clue at another improvement.  Trypticon's third mode used to be a battlestation instead of a spaceship.  But, honestly, battlestation versus city is not a very large distinction.  And so now he has a new spaceship mode, which looks very much like his original battlestation-like mode with tiny wings attached, which we've decided is the Nemesis.  

Also, like, you can put little Titan Master guys in his mouth and they dump into his tummy.  Or out of his tummy, if you have his tummy hatch open.  Food spills out of his maw like Cookie Monster.  This is an excellent addition.

Some problems!

1) Full-Tilt is pretty heavy, as he's a full Deluxe-Class-sized toy, and the weight of him kind of pulls Trypticon's tummy hatch open constantly.  Is there a way to secure this better?  I dunno.  

2) Some people have reported that Trypticon's leg springs are so tight that they destroy the legs if you try to move them at the hip.  Mine does not have this problem, but it's something to look out for, just in case.  Apparently you need to screw open his hips and snip the giant-ass spring inside to lower the pressure.

3) WHY STICKERS, WHY.   I mean, I could see if they were GOOD stickers, but the thinner-than-paper foil stickers that Trypticon comes with are... not good stickers.  And they're incredibly difficult to place without error, because, like, they're constantly staticky and want to jump to the wrong place, and because they're so thin you can't actually remove them once they're placed because they will tear or crumble instead.  Also, sometimes the stickers aren't fully cut from the sheet!  Hooray!  WHY, WHY IS THIS A THING, WHY CAN'T WE JUST HAVE PAINT, OR AT LEAST QUALITY STICKERS THAT ARE NOT SHITTY, STOP TRYING TO MAKE THIS GIJOE, THE WORST PART OF GIJOE WAS THE SHITTY STICKERS

All that said and swept under the rug while we whistle, this Trypticon is easily the best of the three big Titan Class city/battlestation guys we've gotten so far.  Both Metroplex and Fort Max are fine, sure, but neither of them transform into friggin' dinosaurs, and that's kind of a huge mark in Trypticon's favor.  And being a spaceship instead of a city is a huge plus, too.  Three solid modes, all distinct from the other.  And one of them's a friggin' dinosaur.

I've always been kinda lukewarm on Seaspray.  Had his toy as a child (I think), but he never made a strong impression on me.  I mean, I don't dislike him.  It's just that also I'm not in love with him or anything. 

But I am actually pretty taken with this new Titans Return Seaspray!  And I'll be blunt with you as to why: dude's FAT.  He's short and stout and he's got a tum and his feet are enormous.  He's a cute little dude.  His rotundity adds a bit of character in a world where nearly all of your robots are either Bruce Timmy He-Man chests or skinny stickmen.  

(The He-Man chest look was Seaspray's previous toy, by the way.  He was a real broadshouldered V-torsoed dynamo.  He was Star-Lord Chris Pratt instead of the more traditional, cuddlier Parks and Recreation Chris Pratt.)

However, his tummy detaches and becomes a... weapon?  Some sort of missle-launching pod.  And under his tummy, he's got flat abs.  And we older fans, we know that his tum-tum should be there.  It's drawn right into his cartoon animation model.  But I guess it's detachable now, and he can wave his gut around at you, while looking all svelt and buff for the kiddos following the instructions insert.  But we older fans know.  We know the truth.

(I mean, like, generally, if you're going to make a detachable weapon out of something on Seaspray, you think you'd go for the thing behind his head, with the spinny fans?  And not his intestines?  But no, clip that chub chub right off and put it in his hand, sure.  This pizza-box-shaped thing is a weapon and not the blades beyind his head.)

Seaspray transforms standardly enough, as you'd expect.  Feet extend out, arms pull from sides, yadda yadda.  The only truly disappointing bit is the head just hides behind a little flip-up panel.  It's not even really very hidden.  It's more like Seaspray was wearing a bib, like at a crabshack or whatever, and the wind blew it up in his face.  You can definitely still see the head itself from most angles.  There's just a small little nub there covering his face.  

There's also a compartment you can open up in the back where you can fit a Titan Master head-dude figure.  If you want.  

And he's got the name of his mermaid girlfriend tattooed on his arm.

You heard me.

I don't have a LOT to say about Quickswitch.  He's Titans Returns Sixshot with a new face and better colors.  That's what really matters.

He's also Sixshot's son.  What this even friggin' means has never been explored by Transformers fiction of any kind, but that familiar relation has been stated.  It's canon, somehow.  He's Sixshot's kid who's trying to make up for all the evil his daddy did.  Does.  Whatever.   I mean, we have Transformers siblings of various kinds, Transformers cousins, Transformers spouses, but we have no idea what being a Transformers dad means outside of the job title existing.  Could it be merely adoptive and not biological?  Who knows!

The original Quickswitch had a few different modes than his dad.  He could become a boat, a drilltank, and a different kind of four-legged animal other than a wolf.  I want to say a puma?  Regardless, this new Quickswitch is just Sixshot again in teal and red, so he doesn't get any of those unique modes.  

Also, the promotional renders gave him a new helmet, but the actual toy just gives him Sixshot's.  

If you have to choose between only Sixshot or Quickswitch, I'd go Quickswitch.  Teal and red is just neat, plus he comes in a box set with Nautica, so.  

I had been taken for a fool!  I never studied Titans Return Legends Class Brawn's stock renders very closely, but I did note that he had his spare tire on his arm.  Aha!  He must transform asymmetrically!  That is interesting, I said!  

Ah-heh, actually, no, the spare tire section just pops off during transformation and pegs onto his arm.  He otherwise transforms exactly like you'd expect Brawn to:  Arms pull out from sides, legs fold out from back.  Done!  He is not a complicated guy.  Even if you remember to flip out his heels, he's still not a complicated guy.  This is somewhat of a relief, given how much more fiddly the other Titans Return car guys like him are, such as Bumblebee and Wheelie.  

The main difference between them and Brawn is Brawn's passenger compartment for little Titan Master guys doesn't compact.  It's left alone during transformation, meaning you can keep your Titan Master Brawn inside him if you want and never remove him again.  It also means his torso is a little long, but whatcha gonna do.  

If you don't like Brawn keeping his spare tire on his arm, you can also choose to peg it on his ass.  

Brawn is versatile.

As was my singleminded plan from the start, I customized my Masterpiece Megatron to appear more like his color scheme in the original Marvel comics.  I mean, that's why I bought this guy, really, so my customized Masterpiece Marvel Ratchet would have a sparring buddy.

First I cracked open his faces to paint his eyes yellow.  ... Well, gold.  I was leaving most of Megatron's colors unaltered, and he's a very rich and sparkly gray, so I figured gold would mesh with that better than primary yellow.  Thankfully, on each of Megatron's swappable faces, Megatron's eyes are on a separate piece from the rest of his face.  This piece is a real doozy to remove.  It pulls out like a slotted battery cover, if that battery cover were also pegged in and not meant to ever be removed.  And so I had to violently crowbar it out with the smallest flathead screwdriver I had.  The back of these faces is a hacked-up mess.  A mess you'll never see since it's behind the face and inside the head when assembled, but a mess nonetheless.  And the gold paint would often scrape off the eyes as I squeezed the eye-piece back in, and so sometimes I'd have to crowbar it back out again and repaint and retry.  

Compared to that, the rest of my customizations were a breeze.  I got a big flat brush and painted Megatron's helmet gunmetal.  The gunmetal acrylic I used is a little shinier than the dark gray on the rest of the toy, but I'd never be able to match that in a million years -- it's speckly and textured paint.  It's close enough at a glance, however.  This process was relatively easy because you could remove the face to paint most of the helmet, which considerably lowers your chances of accidentally getting paint on the face.  You still have to paint each face's forehead, but that's way less surface area to need to be exceedingly careful with.

And finally, I painted his outward ab sections red.  Just red. There doesn't seem to be any gloss (non-transparent) acrylic reds from brands I recognize, so I just got a regular red off Amazon.  I have a flat red, but I wanted it as shiny as possible.  While painting, I transformed Megatron's many torso shards out of the way so I could have as unobscured a view of the parts I wanted to paint as possible.  

The comics also painted his gun barrel a medium blue, which was probably supposed to be a medium gray, but 1) this was never colored consistently and 2) I'd DEFINITELY never get the silencer attachment on again with fucking everything up, so no thanks.  Another detail I didn't bother with is moving his Decepticon chest symbol over a little to his right.  I'd never be able to match the gray, and they'd stopped off-centering his logo eventually anyway, as it was based on a bad perspective error on his model sheet which the artists seem to have eventually figured out.

He still transforms.  I checked.  And, really, the parts I painted seem to be more safe from scraping than the factory applied paint he came with.  There's more clearance around his helmet and his ab slabs than on, say, his barrel and silencer.  My modifications just mean there's a strange black area just in front of the trigger guard.

Look, I gotta crank out this Masterpiece Megatron (the second one) review so I can paint the head of mine dark gray like in the comics.  I've taken billions of photographs of him in his various modes and all the various stuff he comes with, and I've processed them, and they're all friggin' accessories from the friggin' cartoon, and I've just gotta de-cartoonify this guy.  I bought this dude to face off against my Masterpiece Ratchet, dangit, Marvel comic style -- I don't need no Giant Purple Griffin doofus.  

(I do like his Prime Problem mind-control helmet because it is hilariously ridiculous.)

The original Megatron toy was awkward.  Its robot mode looked awkward, it transformed awkwardly using tiny struts that easily broke, and the little curly-q scribble across his chest probably said "awkward" in some alien script.  The comic and cartoon strongly anthropomorphized the robot design further, essentially ending up with a robot mode that didn't really have a lot of recognizeable gun kibble on him.  They altered the shape of the chest so it didn't look so much like a gun chamber, his legs were thickened up, his head shape rounded away from looking like part of the grip, and maybe the halves of the hammer were left on top of his shoulders.  And, yeah, there was a relatively unaltered scope on his arm, but now it was a cannon!  

There was an attempt at a Masterpiece version of Megatron early on in the line.  It was number five, if I recall, after some stuff that was easier to retranslate animation models into toys, but eventually you gotta do the Decepticon leader.  Even if he transforms awkwardly into a handgun.  And, man, this first Masterpiece Megatron was awkward.  I think we learned recently that it was designed in a rush, like over a weekend, and I guess that explains a lot?  It just didn't look good, it was thin and gangly, stuff popped off it if you looked at it wrong, and it was a chore to transform.  Oh, and its metal parts rusted on you overnight.

WELL GOOD NEWS, at Masterpiece Number 36, there's a new Megatron.  Since the first MP Megs came out, there was an adjustment of scale, and not only was the original Masterpiece Megatron an ugly piece of crap, but he was also excessively oversized.  But, again, the source material is awkward, and so I feel like TakaraTomy kind of pushed this one off for as long as they could.  They redid Optimus Prime at MP 10, but Megatron?  Ehhh, 36.  After, you know, Cheetor.  

Where was I?  Oh, right.  GOOD NEWS.  Because this guy is... way more complicated.  Waaaaaaaay more complicated.  He's half the size and probably has twice as many parts.  But!  He's not an ugly piece of crap.  He is goddamned fucking beautiful.  See, that's the secret -- you can make a handgun transform into Megatron's animation model if you essentially sculpt the thing from one form into the other like clay.  That's how many parts this guy is made of.  Transforming him feels like you're changing his shape on a molecular level.  At that point, anything can be anything else.  

Much like Masterpiece Cheetor before him, Megatron's chest is fake.  It's a fake gun chamber.  Because, as I mentioned above, the animation model's chest wasn't really that gun chamber shape anymore.  They angled it up all to hell and ended up with something new.  Instead, the gun chamber is the entire rest of his torso, which was split up into shards and crumpled up behind the fake gun chamber chest.  To transform him, you unwrap the shards and essentially form the gun chamber around the fake chest as if you're wrapping it up in aluminum foil.  It takes a while.  

Meanwhile, the legs have to go from being thick cartoony Megatron legs into much thinner, less-stylized gun grip halves.  You basically unwrap them, squeeze them skinnier, and then reattach all the ends elsewhere.  It is impressive.  It's not fun, but it's impressive.

And that, I think, is my take-away from this toy.  I think I hate transforming it, but I RESPECT it.  There was a goddamn lot of engineering work put into making one thing magically morph into another thing.  This toy is amazing.  I am in awe of it.  But, also, I'm probably never going to transform it again because goddamn.

I am surprised at the amount of charisma this toy has!  Like several other recent Masterpieces, Megatron comes with a few extra faces with different expressions.  And his laughing face?  It is the best.  My MP Megatron with his laughing face is the most I have ever liked G1 cartoon Megatron.  He's just so happy.  So happy and evil.  I want to be the friend of this dope.  

Also, his articulation is far and away the most extensive of any Masterpiece so far, I think.  Which for a Megatron is weird, because I don't think one's had even a rotating waist before.  Usually the transformation gets in the way of that.  But no, his waist rotates, he's got an ab crunch, both his elbows and knees are doublejointed so his limbs can bend back on themselves, he's got small amounts of finger articulation, and his neck has some good range of movement.  You can get this guy to do a shitload of stuff.

(there's more photos on my tumblr)

Okay, have I talked enough?  Can I go try to start paintmatching the gunmetally grayblack he has?  Good.