I was pretty damn satisfied with my 2006 Classics Megatron.  He was gray and black and green and orange and purple and he transformed into a motherfuckin' Nerf gun.  The green and orange and purple was really only there to help him pass toy gun regulations, but it really made me love him.  Plus, you know, Nerf gun.  Bonus.  

And so when we were first introduced to the new, bigger Leader Class Megatron, I was initially a little meh.  The new toy was in classic colors, meaning the purple and orange and green were gone, and he was back to being silver and black and red.  Silver and black and red are fine colors, it's just, y'know, not as interesting to me.  Plus the toy fell into the body proportion aesthetic a lot of the new Transformers team's stuff seemed to find itself in -- wide body with thin legs.  It's a good set of proportions for Animated Batman, but I prefer my bots to be more stompy.  

But, well, Stuff is happening in the comics.  Megatron's an Autobot now.  He's joined the cast of my favorite Transformers fiction, and it's phenomenal.  And this new Leader Class Megatron toy would include a change of Autobot faction stickers to represent that development.  Suddenly the toy became Lost Light Megatron, and I had to have it.  Sure, the rest of him's not specifically designed after the body he has in the comics now -- it's more of a generic "G1 Megatron as a silver tank" thing -- but it's close enough and that's its official intent and that's how my brain works.  Plus he's a big enough toy to actually fit in with my Lost Light display.  Slapping an Autobot symbol on my Classics Megatron would result in a guy who stands eye-to-eye with my Rodimus and Brainstorm, and that just won't do.  

Original misgivings aside, he's a great toy in person.  His skinny legs aren't bothersome when he's actually in front of you in 3D, and they ratchet to and fro with satisfying clicks.  Plus his legs are shaped that way to accommodate his real working rubber treads.  He's got a set of real working rubber treads on his back and a set in his legs.  They don't combine into one single pair of working treads in tank mode, but that's fine.  

That the toy is mostly covered in silver paint also helps.  He's this giant shiny attractive thing, and there aren't huge spots of unpaintable nylon plastic breaking up his silver like some metallic-painted Transformers have.  Sure, there are a handful of unpainted silver spots, but they're not conspicuous or incongruous.  Despite not having purple or green, he's an attractive chunk of plastic.  He does have some orange detail, though.  I'm sure it helps.

In tank mode he's got a rotating turret... if you leave him half-transformed.  The proper instructions have you close his pelvis onto the back of the turret, locking it in place, but if you don't connect that piece,  he's engineered so that the whole turret rotates.  He's got springloaded missile launcher in his barrel/arm cannon, and also both of his secondary tank weapons combine into a longer rifile for him to carry in robot mode.  When you lift up his chestplate during transformation, there's a sculpted spark casing under there, with details borrowed from its appearance in Beast Wars.  

This toy is also available in Armada Megatron flavor, if you so choose.  That version has a new head (with the antlers) and is mostly green, gray, purple, and florescent orange instead of mostly silver and black.  But that dude isn't in my comics and I like my original one better, with the real working wrist-shiv deployment, so screw it.  

The only huge disappointment with this guy is the sticker sheet.  Sure, I like the Autobot logos, and they work well enough on him, but Hasbro also put his original toy's chest deco on there.  You know, the little swirly loops that look like chest hair.  The problem is, they printed them on a white background, like his symbols, instead of a clear background, so they look pretty terrible on his chest.  Reprolabels better solve this one for us.  I need those chest swirlies.  I'll keep the real swirlie stickers on him until then, because my love for the chest swirlies slightly edges out how terrible I think these stickers look.  

Lookit me, I got another Arcee.   The one on the right is Japan's deco.  She's the new one.

There are things I like about the plain ol' domestic version on the left.  I like the use of black, for example.  I think it adds a nice contrast color to her that gives her some visual interest beyond the kind of value-samey white, pink, and gray.  I like that the larger rifle is painted, which if you think about it is a bizarre choice, since why would Hasbro waste paint applications on the rifle?  99% of the time they leave weapons unpainted, since using up your paint budget on the actual figure seems preferable, but both of Hasbro Arcee's weapons have paint.  The smaller gun has just the sliver of gray, while everything that isn't a handle or a peg is painted on the larger gun.  And it's both black and gray paint, too.  (Okay, the larger rifle is pink if you don't paint it, and maybe Hasbro didn't want a pink gun, I dunno.)  Also the Hasbro one's like $15 domestic instead of $30 imported, so,  you know, half as expensive.

But those positives aside, and even though I thought that I'd always prefer the Hasbro deco, I changed my mind a bit once we got to see the TakaraTomy deco.  Since Finally Arcee's First Toy The Way Most People Would Define As Such is kind of a big 30th Anniversary event, I thought it might be worth it to splurge for the "deco the way the designers intended," aka slavishly adherent to the original cartoon colors.  And while import Arcee's larger rifle remains unpainted, there's a lot of stuff I like about the robot's deco that's a fair trade to me.  For example, the paint wraps all the way around her torso instead of ending abruptly at the seams.  And Hasbro's version looks like it was trying to avoid the whole "pink bikini" look by not painting the crotch of the pink bikini, but honestly it just looks like a crotchless pink bikini without that deco there, so, um, whoops.  The gray lower midsection is more cartoon accurate AND its relative darkerness obscures the uncanny-valley organic round tummy-with-a-bellybutton the sculpt has.  So that's nice.  

Anyway, I felt okay splurging because this toy was surprisingly fun to own.  When I preordered her and Chromia, I expected Arcee to be kinda whatevs and Chromia to be the fuckin' bomb, but in person Chromia's remolding makes her a chore to deal with and Arcee's fun.  Shellformery fun, but fun nonetheless.  And so I'm happy to get the more expensive version.  Her toy's a milestone, after all.

Plus now I can steal the painted larger rifle from the Hasbro one to give to the other!  Best of both worlds!   (And eventually scrape out the support struts from inside the new one's palms so she can hold her weapons non-ridiculously, to match what I did with the Hasbro one.)  

look i only said the comics were stopping

When this new Voyager Class Optimus Prime was first introduced to us, we didn't know he was going to be a super robot's torso in some new subline imprint called Combiner Wars.  And so we were all sort of staring at him, scratching our heads, wondering what was up.  New Optimus was lookin' kinda weird.  Photography of him cleverly obscured the combined-robot crotch hanging off his back, and his limb connection points and super robot head were likewise obscured.  Knowing that certain elements were being compromised to incorporate a torso mode, not to mention existing mostly to be the eingineering groundwork for another toy, made everything fall into place.  

Combiner Wars Motormaster is a pretty damn extensive retool of Combiner Wars Optimus Prime.  They look like they share a bunch of parts, but it's always fewer parts than you think.  Yeah, from the thighs down, they're the same toy, but nearly everything from there up is new.  I'm talking like nothing but the fists, the backs of the biceps, and some structural parts of the torso.  The entire front of the cab on either is different, as are the arms and chest and heads.  Functionally, they are the same toy, but their sculpt differs. 

CW Prime is a beefy friggin' Optimus Prime.  He's a little pinheaded, but that's partly due to his transformation -- his neck sits on a rotating panel that obscures his head in truck or torso mode, and there's not a lot of clearance for it otherwise.  The super robot head hides inside his giant backpack.  His chest windows are fake kibble, with the real truck windows placed on the backs of his arms.  His legs transform like basically any Optimus Prime ever.  Motormaster is the same except he gets different sculpted details other than fake chest windows.

Both these guys are meant to be the torso of a combined super robot, so some key joints ratchet very toughly.  The hips in particular are very solid, and their ratcheting resting points are pretty far from each other, which makes the sculpted slant at the bottom of the toes feel silly.  There's no ratcheting point that lines up with how his toes are sculpted against the ground.  

Optimus gets two guns that combine into a larger gun and Motormaster gets a gun and a sword that combine into a larger sword.  The combined weapons are intended for their combiner robot forms.  In torso mode, you can keep their chest clamshell closed, or open it up to place Legends Class Blackjack (or his future retool, Rodimus) inside as armor.  

Optimus Prime's a beefy Prime, very wide and boxy, which are traits we don't get in an Optimus Prime toy much anymore, so I like him for that.  Most, if given a choice between the two, would choose Motormaster.  Motormaster gets far, far fewer toys, and other than the obvious Optimus legs the base toy seems geared more towards Motormaster than Optimus.  

This is Shouki!  You probably don't know who he is.  I'm a living Transformers encyclopedia and I barely know who he is.  This is because he shows up in the Japanese-only series Headmasters, which is dull-as-rocks -- the Headmasters anime was that awkward growing pains period when Takara was seemingly trying to tell Transformers stories our way, but failing, before they say "screw it" and go full-on "this is stuff we know how to do well" the next year with Masterforce.  Anyway, this is Shouki, the leader of theTrainbots.  In the terrible English dub that aired in Southeast Asia at the time, his name was Grimlock.  Yup.

This exclusive toy from Japan interested me because it's finally a toy of Classics Astrotrain as a new character.  Everyone else except Classics Megatron got one of those, and for the past nine years I've been hankering for that Astrotrain toy to be shoehorned as some other character.   I mean, I know why that hasn't happened -- he's a Triple Changing space shuttle/bullet train, and there aren't any other Triple Changing shuttle/trains in Transformers.  But that's why I wanted to see it done.  Like with the Cloud Rodimus I talked about a while back, I like seeing characters get new altmodes via redecoes of other half-appropriate toys.  Shouki transformed into a bullet train, and he does so now.  He now also transforms into a space shuttle.

Now here's where it gets wacky.  It was decided that Shouki's shuttle mode is actually Shouki disguising himself as Micromaster Skystalker's shuttle base, the Thunder Arrow.  To that end, he comes with a Mini-Con partner who transforms into a bow, recolored as Skystalker.  Get it?  Thunder Arrow?  A bow?  And this Skystalker decoy is actually Daniel Witwicky in an Exo-Suit.  WHAT.

Daniel has a little trouble being Shouki's bow, though.  Shouki has some forearm kibble that doesn't really want any wide weapons with 5mm pegs to attach there.  You can force it to make it work, but it's not fun or intuitive.  The whole convoluted idea was that close to being perfect, if not for that detail.  But don't worry, it makes up for itself in other areas.  While Shouki is in bullet train mode, Daniel can be contorted into a new configuration and attach to the top of the train to complete a "Pantograph Mode."  In other words, he becomes the TV-antenna-like contraption you see on top of electric trains that connect them to the power lines above.  This is both ingenius and hilarious to me.  I really like this.  

Shouki himself is very well painted.  The stripe that runs down the side of his vehicle modes even has a gradient.  He's a pretty toy.  However, his colors are pretty close to the colors Astrotrain got over here in the United States back in 2006.  Our Astrotrain was white, like Shouki.  Japan's was dark gray and purple, and so there's no conflict over there.  I lucked out, though, since I'd replaced my Hasbro Astrotrain with a Takara one a few months ago because my white one had yellowed due to age.   And so I have no color scheme overlap.  If you still have an original Astrotrain, though, owning this guy might be harder to justify.  

NOTE!!!!: People keep asking me where I'm going to put my reviews after the Shortpacked! comic ends.  The answer is here, still.  This website ain't goin' no where!  And when I get new toys I wanna talk about, I'll still talk about them here, same as I always have been.  

The Masterpiece line to me was pretty blah back a few years ago when all the toys were mostly the same height in robot mode.  Optimus, Grimlock, Megatron, Rodimus, Optimus a few more dozen times... But these days, they're doing more than just Big Guys and they're trying to scale them according to how they appeared in the cartoon, which means you've got tall guys like Optimus, slightly less tall guys like Soundwave and the jets, medium-sized guys like Prowl and Wheeljack, and tiny guys like Bumblebee.  Stretching out in the other direction is Ultra Magnus.

Ultra Magnus might be the first guy in this new paradigm that isn't scaled perfectly to how tall he is in the cartoon -- he's just a head or so taller than Optimus Prime, but this toy he's a few heads taller.  This is because they seem to have wanted MP Magnus and MP Prime's truck cabs to be the same size.  And when your entire body is the trailer of a car carrier, you're probably going to be way taller than the guy who's just a truck cab.

Speaking of which, unlike the original Ultra Magnus toy, which was really just a redecoed super robot trailer combiney thing for the original Optimus Prime, this new Ultra Magnus doesn't have an Optimus Prime robot inside him anywhere.  The truck cab splits up completely differently to help complete the torso.  It can remain attached during transformation or detach from the trailer hitch as needed.  There being no white Optimus Prime involved makes me a little sad, but I guess engineering challenges may have gotten in the way of that.  It probably would have involved taking the trailer apart, at any rate, if there was to be any leg articulation, while this toy manages to not need anything to separate during transformation.  Even the missile launchers are on little arms so you don't have to unplug and plug them where they need to go in either mode.  

Speaking of missile launchers, Masterpiece Ultra Magnus is also unique in Masterpiece in that his vehicle mode, at least from the back of the truck cab, is really obviously a bunch of Ultra Magnus robot parts rather than being based on any real-life car carrier trailer.  It's accurate to the original toy and the cartoon, but it's still conspicious next to the Real Life Licensed Cars that have been the staple of the line for a while.

That said, it's a fun and hefty toy.  It's not annoying to transform, and it's a fun process throughout.  When I see him, I actively want to transform him -- even the part where you replace the real rubber tires in his feet with smaller fake plastic molded tires that match the animation model better.   It's ridiculous and you don't really need to do it except for aesthetic reasons, but the change itself is fun to operate.  

He comes with two faces which are interchangeable.  One's a stoic face and one's a shouting face that's supposed to accompany use of his extra pair of Matrix-holding hands.  (Matrix not included.)  I love the shouting face, and interpret him as being angry at people for flouting technicalities of law.  If you leave both faces off, there's a white Optimus Prime head sculpted underneath which harkens back to the original toy.

Magnus also comes with little figurines of Spike and Daniel Witwicky.  They can ride inside his cab mode, if you want.  More likely, you will lose them.  

Masterpiece Ultra Magnus is a good purchase if you want a giant, hefty Magnus.  He's really good at that.  It may be the thing he's best at.  It's not that he's bad at other things, it's just that he's... a really huge Magnus.  It is a quality that overwhelms all the others.

The Transformers action figure toyline theme this coming year is Combiner Wars, which means most everything combines with other things.  Everything in the Deluxe and Voyager size classes become limbs and torsos, respectively, and a few things in the Legends size class become weapons or armor for the combined robot.

Which is super great if you have more than just four Deluxes!  I got too clever for myself this past week or so.  Amazon.com got in the Combiner Wars Voyagers, and so I ordered them and got them shipped to myself... in California.  It's Christmas, y'see, and so we visit the in-laws down in San Diego most every year.  Maggie goes out there earlier, while I stay behind a few extra days to finish up work.  And so I thought I was being super crafty, getting those toys to myself on the other side of the continent.  Until I got super sick and couldn't fly out to California.  It was just me and the cat this year.  Well, me, the cat, a turkey, and the Combiner Wars Deluxes I had preordered from Big Bad Toy Store, which arrived here while I was stuck in Ohio as the torsos arrived in California.  

So I have some limbs.

No torsos.  But some limbs.

There's three aircraft (which belong to Superion) and one car (which belongs to Menasor), and they all transform basically the same.  You fold the arms up alongside the vehicle, collapse the shins around the thighs, and cover the head with the front of the vehicle.  The legs of the aircraft sort of accordion into themselves after opening up the shins, rather than the literal collapsing of the car's legs, but it's all the same formula.  No actual shared pieces, but very similar engineering.  And it sort of makes sense -- these are all based on guys from 1986, who all transformed fairly similarly then for the same reason they do now: they all have to become limbs that are exactly the same size and proportion.  You can't have a combiner robot guy with one leg longer than the other.  And each guy can become any of the four limbs, so there has to be a common pattern between them at some denominator.  

Each guy also comes with a rifle and a second much bulkier double-barreled weapon that also transforms into either a foot or a fist.  It's a step up over the original versions of these guys, who came with extra foot or fist pieces you just sort of set aside when not in use.  Here at least the feet/fists have something they can do when they're not being feet or fists.  

My favorite of the four is Alpha Bravo.  He's a replacement for Slingshot (who was the only Aerialbot I owned as a child), partly because "Slingshot" isn't a trademark Hasbro owns anymore and partly because four Deluxe-sized jets who all transform nigh-identically is kind of overkill.  Three (Air Raid is in wave 2) is kind of pushing it already.  Alpha Bravo's a helicopter and so he's also super obviously just the Combaticon Vortex in Slingshot's colors.  I like Alpha Bravo best because he's a new character who's a little orange and also because he makes a better helicopter than the two other aircraft are jets.  Jets are flat things and don't lend themselves well to robots (unless you open up like a cootie catcher akin to live-action Starscream) or combiner robot limbs.  Helicopters are taller and rounder and can contain robot parts better.  ...even if Alpha Bravo's arms just peg onto the sides and hope they hide themselves behind those missiles sculpted on his arms.

Drag Strip's a pretty good car, sure, but Alpha Bravo's weapons integrate better into his vehicle mode than Drag Strip's.  And maybe Drag Strip also needs to get drawn by Sarah Stone before I pay attention to him.

So Hasbro's all "FINE, here's your goddamned cartoon-style Arcee toy who transforms into a futuristic sportscar convertible, GAWD."   Twenty-eight years later and probably just as many offbrand third-party Arcee toys later, here she is.  The one you wanted in the way you wanted her.  Probably.

She even shares a case assortment with Chromia, another lady Transformer (who herself is a retool of a previous Arcee toy).  It's a case assortment that can potentially pass the Bechdel test!  And importantly, Arcee is gloriously pink.  They said it couldn't be done in the dude aisle, but here she is.  She's not a rosey red or rusty brown, she's legimately hot pink and white.  Hasbro's all "fuck y'all, we're doin' it."  

The design of this toy was spearheaded by a guy over in Japan who fandom-famously homebuilt an Arcee back in 1998.  Additional design work was contributed from another guy who draws Arcee like this, with a broken Escher Girl spine and cheated-in cleavage.  There were some design drawings for this toy printed in a magazine that echo these choices, and, uh, I am kind of amazingly thankful that not much of it got into the final toy.  There's no sculpted cleavage and the spine isn't as broken.  That weirdly organic-looking tummy's still there, though, and if you look at Arcee's toy from the side, you can still see some of those vague shapes, particularly in the boobal area.  They, like, point up.  Look, for some people Arcee was their sexual awakening, okay???  And now those people make Transformers.

Because of the adherance to the original Arcee robot and car designs, she's kinda backpacky.  90% of the car mode folds up on her back, leaving only the very tip of the hood and some of the rear wheel hubs to serve as the chest and thighs, respectively.  The car parts fold up reasonably well, though since the back bumper kind of juts into the small of her arched back at an angle, she can't really keep her arms straight down at her sides.  It's arms akimbo or action for Arcee!  Other than that, she's a pretty good robot mode.  She'd have to be, considering she's just a humanoid robot person with a car on her back.  Good robot mode, good car mode, not so great Transformer.  

My Arcee is a version of the toy before a running change.  Later versions of Arcee have remolded fists that better hold her weapons.  In my earlier version, there's a small ledge of plastic that prevents the weapon tabs from sliding all the way through, presumably for structural purposes.  The later version removes this ledge but accommodates for structural integrity by closing her fist sculpt.  (The fingers and thumb touch each other now, is what I mean.)  The open palms look better, but they look terrible holding stuff.  And lord does she come with stuff!  It's like Hasbro was crossing their fingers that little boys love weapons more than they hate pink girls, or at least pink-girl-hating parents of less culturally-contaminated little boys.  

There's two guns and two swords, all sculpted to work with Arcee and only Arcee through a tab system rather than the usual 5mm pegs.... probably because Arcee's arms are so damn thin that a 5mm pegholed fist would look conspicuous.  There's slots for these tabs everywhere on her, so there's lots of placement choices.  There's even some tabs on the underside of her front bumper (or the top of her robot shoulder kibble) that I'm not really sure are useful in either mode for space reasons.  In vehicle mode you can tab her guns in any of the many slots, or store them underneath.  The swords hafta remain plugged in visibly, though.  They're too big to hide underneath somewhere.  (the smaller gun plugs in between her arms, and her fists plug into either side of it)

At the end of the day, it's probably the best toy of the original Arcee design that you could get for $15.  There have been some better Arcee toys and there will be better Arcee toys, but if you want one of this particular design, it's actually pretty good for that.  

Good luck waiting for a Headmaster version.

Me, I just want one in the preproduction colors.

Just like Batman in "Heart of Ice," I have the sniffles, so let's talk about Mr. Freeze.  SYNERGY!

Behold, it's hyperposeable Mr. Freeze!  ...which seems kind of oxymoronic.  Of all the folks who need the possibility of dynamic poseability, he's kind of low on the list, if not off it completely.  The old Mission Masters Mr. Freeze based on the same design seemed sufficient enough with shoulders, neck, and hips.  I mean, dude is dead to emotion.  He doesn't move much.  

But hey, good news, sort of!  Mr. Freeze does have a lot of articulation, but some of it's pretty shallow.  We're talking, like, his elbows move maybe 20 degrees.  So you can get a little bit of subtle movement to him, but he's never going to be dynamic.  His legs are way too long for him to look anything but doofy anyway.  I do appreciate his universal shoulders and his articulated ankles, though.  You wouldn't think thick boots like his could integrate ankle articulation, yet they do.

Like the other toys in the line, Mr. Freeze comes with an assortmant of alternate hands.  Be careful yanking them out and pushing new ones in.  I broke my Batman that way, and I ain't gonna let it happen to one of these toys again.  He also comes with his freeze gun, and there's a hand that's sculpted to hold it, so I'd recommend getting that hand gripped around the gun while the hand isn't attached to the wrist.  It's gonna take some shoving, and you don't wanna accidentally shove something wrong and break the peg.

Mr. Freeze also comes with those sweet-ass insect legs that he had in "Cold Comfort" because his body disintegrated and he was just a head on a robot body.  They are tall and sleek and they attach via balljoints to the bottom of his collar.  This will also require excessive force.  Those balljoint sockets are friggin' tight.  Be careful to only push on the balljoint itself, because those legs may show plastic stress at other areas.  

And, of course, he comes with a stand.  Mr. Freeze has the largest feet of any of these guys so far, but he's so tall and lean that he needs the stand anyway.  As with the others, his character model turnarounds are printed on the surface of it. 

Mr. Freeze is friggin' beautiful, but fragile.  The former wins out with me, and so I adore him, but you still wanna keep your mind on the latter.  

Thrilling 30 Springer is amazing.  I've said it before, but it's relevant again.  It's a fantastic robot who somehow also becomes a good car and a good helicopter.  Triple Changers are rarely great in all three modes, and yet here we are.  But on top of that, the dang thing's versatile.  With some retooling, it also became a great Sandstorm.  It's also been custom fodder for most Transformers under the sun -- Drift, other Drift, Alpha Trion, Obsidian, Dinobot -- and that's just stuff Cheetimus has done.  (The Dinobot is mine, seen in the photo.)  And it always turns out well.  

So here's friggin' Cloud Rodimus.  And it's a great Rodimus.  It might be the best Rodimus -- though it helps that the competition isn't terribly stiff.  Who knew that a redeco of Springer would make the best Rodimus?  

Mind, there were some steps along the way that smoothed this over.  The More Than Meets The Eye comic book ongoing series presented a Rodimus design that's more spikey and pointy than usual, including a departure from Rodimus' usual simple dome head.  That prescendent is admittedly part of what makes this Rodimus easier to swallow as Rodimus.  But, hey, I am friggin' okay with it.  I wanted a Rodimus that would pass for the MTMTE guy, and none of the previous Rodimuses really stepped up to the plate.  This guy definitely approximates MTMTE Rodimus without actually being that design.  He's got the yellow forehead, the spikey helmet in general, the red feet, the yellow hands, the orange abs... all designs I wouldn't have expected in the otherwise dogmatically-original-cartoon coloration of the rest of Rodimus's fancy-pants Transformers Cloud line.  And so I'm pretty sure he is supposed to take after MTMTE Rodimus.  Those comics seem to be pretty popular in Japan among Transformers fans, so I wouldn't be surprised.

And in person, the toy is glorious to behold.  Its red has this vague magenta to it that isn't seen on enough Rodimus toys.  That combined with the orange and yellow makes the damned thing glow.  And it's painted meticulously -- it kind of has to be if it's gonna turn Springer's color layout into Rodimus's.  

Summing up, Cloud Rodimus was pretty, one of the best Transformers toys, and vaguely modeled after some of the best Transformers fiction.  The only downside is he's an import and an exclusive, so as such he's gonna run ya.  Sell all your other Rodimus toys and get this one.

I'm not sure there's a lot to say about this purchase.  I got it for three reasons:

       1. I like Transformers

       2. I like Evangelion

       3. I like purple, orange, and green on things that shouldn't be

Or, wait, four reasons:

        4. Mad porn monies

If you've handled Masterpiece Optimus Prime The Second, you'll know this guy's deal, but Convoy Mode "EVA" is in crazy secondary colors instead of the usual primary colors.  There's a little Spike painted up in NERV uniform, an intricately-decoed trailer, plus an ax and a Matrix crystal done up in blood red.  It's insane crosspromotional zealotry between two of my favorite properties, against all reason, and I had to have it.  

Anyway, now TFWiki has a Misato Katsuragi article, the end.