Magnificus is a new character based on the pre-Transformers version of Perceptor, who was, well, a black version of Perceptor.  He was established as his own guy by e-Hobby in 2005, when they released a black version of the original Perceptor (with a Micronauts partner named Ga'mede).  

I don't have that guy.

But e-Hobby (and Fun Publications?) just did a black version of the most recent Perceptor toy as Magnificus, and now I have that!  Built into the original tooling was a toy-accurate alternate head for the toy, which basically works as a Magnificus head and few other things, so that's pretty fortunate.  He's, well, a black Perceptor.  Not terribly exciting on the face of it, but I do like being able to see/own the tooling's alternate head.  Also, it's a character I didn't already have around, so he's not doubling up on any guy I already have.  

What's super-great is the comic this dude comes with.  It's only six pages, but it's got art by the great Hidetsugu Yoshioka and it features Magnificus (and his still-tiny pal Ga'mede)  fighting one of the unreleased Double Pretender guys -- specifically the gorilla.  He's got a name now and he's drawn pretty radly.  I like him a lot.  All toys should come with fiction!

The toy itself is still Perceptor, which is not exactly a beloved pile of engineering, but I never disliked it as much as some other people did.  However, I do have more trouble getting Magnificus's shoulder/backpack arrangement to consolidate into the torso than I did Perceptor's, so he requires a bit extra fiddling.  

He's available from either the Transformers Collectors' Club store or from other online places like Big Bad Toy Store.

There comes a time in a man's life when he's willing to buy limited-edition Linkin Park crossbranded Transformers robots.  Generally that time comes after he's drawn a bunch of official comics about tape cassette guys and these new gold tape cassette guys either fill in some blanks or offer potential for the future!  See that gold Laserbeak/Buzzsaw?  Totally SG Buzzsaw.  Collection hole filled. See that gold Ratbat?  Totally civilian-mode SG Ratbat. Collection hole filled.  See those other guys, including the duplicate Laserbeak/Buzzsaw?  I have the ability to make them new characters, though the magic of of a certain corner of canon which I uniquely wield.  

Of course, no matter way you slice it, I still have this group of expensive butterscotch-colored Transformers.

Man, what a weird thing this is.  Linkin Park got the chance to design their own color scheme for Soundwave and four of his friends, and they went for solid gold plastic.  I will never understand them.  And because this set comes with both Buzzsaw and Laserbeak, and because everyone is solid gold plastic, it means you get two identical guys.  Who's Buzzsaw?  Who's Laserbeak?  WHO KNOWS!

The whole thing comes in a special packaging that looks like a larger black Soundwave with a cassette player inside that says "LINKIN PARK/TRANSFORMERS MIX" on it.  Inside the packaging is the usual plastic tray that the toys sit in, but this plastic tray is flocked in purple so it looks like velvet.  Yes, this is that ridiculous.

There's a fold-out instructions booklet that features recolored Soundwave's box art in gold and simple instructions for everybody, because everyone's pretty simple, because these are 1984 and 1986 dudes.  I'm guessing the many, many stock image photographers did not get a copy of these instructions, because there is a myriad of hilariously mismatched guys-and-accessories image sets.

My Ratbat came misassembled, with his tippy-toes pointed inside his own cassette mode torso in such a way that you can't flip them out for bat mode.  And so I spent the first few minutes of opening this guy unscrewing him open so I could set things right and then screw him back together again.  Man, no wonder everyone loses this guy's ears.  They are held in by nothing more than teensy-tiny bumps and friction.

Anyway, I already have identities figured out for the non SG Buzzsaw/SG Ratbat guys in this set, so I guess look forward to those, if you're a Transformers Collectors' Club subscriber.  

(Can I just unilaterally declare this toy is SG Buzzsaw and have it officially be so, or so I have to do a new strip where he's a little golder than he was previously?)

You might recall from a few months ago my happiness at getting what by all appearances seemed to be some strange Ratchet/Dinobot cyborg fusion as part of the Beast Hunters line.  Well, TakaraTomy over in Japan took one look at this mold and apparently thought, okay, no way this is a good guy.  Just look at this dude.  And they made him a Decepticon.

All the other Japanese releases of the Beast Hunters guys were just done up in colors similar to their appearances on the show, despite their heavily-retooled appearances, but not Ratchet.  Ratchet gets to be green like in the movie and a Decepticon and super evil.  This is awesome, and so I had to have it.

According to some guy on the Internet, the packaging bio for Hunter Ratchet is about how he tried to sneak into a Decepticon/Predacon/whatevs lab to steal some technology and whatnot, but he got captured and infused with Dark Energon and turned into this green monocled thing.  The Autobots managed to bring him back eventually, but Ratchet still struggles with the vestiges of his time as a Decepticon.  

Hunter Ratchet is literally the American toy in other colors, so there's nothing new there, but the plastic tolerances on him seem to be a bit more sturdy.  So that's nice.  Also the green is kind of a glittery plastic, which reminds me of Best Buy's Premium Movie Ratchet a little.  That coupled with the white and black and red is a pretty attractive look for him.  

Plus, you know, evil Decepticon Ratchet.

G1-style Breakdown was the toy I was least excited about in this year's Transformers Figure Subscription Service.  I mean, I've already got a BotCon toy of that guy, and in way better colors!  I know at the time, when we were getting this teal-and-magenta G2 Breakdown toy, some folks were clamoring for a white-and-blue G1 version to be one of the at-show surprises, but I do not understand those people.  I do not understand them at all.  Did they not realize that G2 Breakdown has, like, nonsensical splattered blood on his roof?  How is that not the best possible already?  Where is the room for improvement?

But those people yet exist, and so I guess this G1-style Breakdown is for them.  That's okay.  He's the sort of thing these Subscription Service toys should have -- y'know, stuff not everyone wants, so wouldn't have been done otherwise except under cover of a larger spread of toys.  Some folks can get their G1 Breakdown if I can get my Circuit.  That's how these things work.

Anyway, huge yawn.

UNTIL YOU READ THE FRIGGIN' BIO.  Sure, he's the most pointless toy in the world in my eyes, but he's apparently from the best universe.  This Breakdown hails from the third issue of Blackthorne's 3D Transformers comics.  You know, the "Part one of three" story which never got its second and third parts because Blackthorne quit, in which the Autobots and Decepticons discover an enigmatic third faction called the Detructons, led by Lord Imperious Delirious.  

(Well, best universe spin-off, to be precise.  The story clearly takes place in original cartoon continuity post-The Rebirth.) 

Anyway, that's super awesome.  And now I begrudgingly appreciate this lump of otherwise boring plastic.  Good show.  

Orion Pax toy Number Two!  The first one was a redeco of the original Kup, but this new one is his own mold.  It's based on a design for Orion Pax seen in the IDW comics.  It first appeared in just one story, Spotlight: Blurr, and it was designed by Guido Guidi though illustrated by Casey Coller.  However, subsequent appearances of Orion Pax used Optimus Prime's usual pre-Earth design, which is kind of annoying.  It's cool when Optimus Prime gets to have a separate Orion Pax body!  

And so when it came time to release this toy with a comic book, a new story was commissioned featuring Orion Pax receiving this body for a limited time for the sake of a specific mission.  It's kind of hamfisted, but at least some continuity was smoothed out, I guess.  In all honesty, I just wish he was always drawn with this Orion Pax body when he while he was Orion Pax to begin with.

The toy itself is fun -- as fun as an Optimus Prime toy gets to be, anyway.  The windows become the windows, the long-nose part of the cab is formed from somewhere else, this time piling up on his shins, and his arms sort of poke out the back, but are obscured enough that it doesn't look all Energon Optimus Primey.  He comes with both a giant axe and a gun, because why not.  They don't integrate into the vehicle mode, but instead peg in whichever 5mm peghole you choose.  

The toy has a different altmode than Guido originally designed for the robot mode, but that altmode didn't ever  feature in the comic, so I guess that's fine.  

The comic story included is the first of two of these new "Spotlight" issues that feature a very conspicuous Nightbeat.  PRETTY WEIRD HOW HE'S SHOWING UP IN A LOT OF THESE STORIES SUDDENLY, I WONDER ABOUT THAT

Hold onto your butts.  We're about to get painfully nerdy in here.  We kind of have to, because I don't know if I have enough words otherwise to bury two photos of a simple and predictable Seeker redeco in.   It's Thundercracker.  He's a blue and silver Starscream again.  Let's move on.

War For Cybertron Starscream is technically a toy of Aligned Starscream, right?  Sure, the War for Cybertron aesthetic is blocky and having-a-nose-y enough that he can pass for other version of Starscream, and sure enough a bunch of the WFC designs were borrowed for the ongoing Robots in Disguise comic which is a Generation 1 book.  Some folks don't cotton to the idea of stylistic choices varying so widely within a continuity, and so they're happy to ignore the whole Aligned angle and just consider him G1 since he looks G1y enough to them.  

There was also a Thundercracker in War for Cybertron, and now there's a toy basically in those colors as Thundercracker.  He's being released in the same line as WFC Starscream, but only after the focus of the line shifted from WFC to a G1/Classics approach.  And since these toys are being packaged with comics, specifically comics which were written to these toys, thus placing the WFC Thundercracker design in this G1 world as G1 Thundercracker, he isn't even ambiguously a WFC toy, even though he's still sort of repurposed.

OR IS HE???

Here's the wrinkle that I've been mentally picking at.  While the Deluxe Class toys in this portion of the Generations line come with IDW comics featuring those characters, the packaging bios mostly ignore the IDW comics' specific interpration of these characters, content instead to rehash the original tech spec bios from the eighties.  Swerve is a guy who doesn't drive so good instead of being a insecure bar owner, for example.  The packaging presents the "original" version of the character rather than the version currently-appearing-in-fiction.  We're getting a new Armada Starscream toy and the Generation 1 comic books are gong to use that design for its G1 Starscream character.  However, if the pattern holds, the bio on the package will still talk about Armada Starscream rather than G1 Starscream.  The packaging will claim the toy is a different iteration of the character versus the comic inside.   

What I wonder is, does this hold true for Thundercracker?  And even if this is a question to ask, is it possible to know?  WFC Thundercracker's characterization is likely indistinguishable from G1 Thundercracker's.  So of course this Thundercracker's bio is just every Thundercracker bio you've ever read before.  And it'd be written this way whether it were WFC Thundercracker or G1 Thundercracker being described.

(I wouldn't expect the writer of this bio to know that Takara's Prime Thundercracker toy's bio takes the character in a different direction, nor would I expect him to feel bound by it.)  

What I'm getting at is that this is likely a toy that comes in packaging which claims it's two different versions of the same character, much like everything else in the line, but with Thundercracker there's no outward way for us to know that, because of things.  

And that fascinates me.  

Because I'm a weirdo.  

Yeah, I know, I haven't talked about the first two guys from this year's Subscription Service round-up, and yet here's the third guy, Circuit.  Well, there's reasons!  The first is I don't care that much about Scourge.  (Don't ask for him, if I decide he leaves my possession, I already have a friend who'll take him.)  The second is I really wanna talk about Slipstream, but I also want to take a photo of her and the other three Prime Seekers I have, and Starscream eludes me.  There's no other place he could be than in this box of Aligned guys I brushed off my shelves back when I got a new desk for my Cintiq months ago, but he sure ain't in it.  What the eff.

But, yeah, here's Circuit!  All I wanted to do with him was take a photo of him next to the lone other redone Action Master Autobot.  There's lots of redone Action Master Decepticons, but the Autobots have been slower to the reimagining arena.  

Also he's super gorgeous.  I know I'm not accompanied by many in that camp -- you know, the "aw man, yellow and teal and red and orange" camp -- but I am firmly inside its perimeter.  This is one of those toys that I feel was made just for me.

Circuit is a redeco of Movie Axor, just as the original Circuit was a redeco of the original Axer.  Just like Axor, this Circuit hails from the movie universes, specifically the splinter timeline from the UK movie comics where the Autobots lost the final battle of the first live-action film.  Despite that and despite his pretty movie-y sculpt, I have a very hard time seeing him as a citizen of any of those universes.  Not a lot of dudes in the Bayverse who are, y'know, yellow and teal and red and orange, specifically with teal tires with yellow spikes for hubcaps.  If there were, I'd like the movies a good percentage more.  

If you like him, he'll probably be the cheapest of the subscription guys on the secondary market, so congrats.  

His real name is "Sharkticon Megatron," but I just like calling him Fish Megatron.  FISH MEGATRON!  WITH HIS TARTARSAUCE SWORD.

Tartarex Sword?  Whatever.

Beast Hunters gave us a bunch of extensively-remolded guys I already had as crazy-armored beasty versions of themselves, and while that appeals to me on a toyetic level, I didn't want to end up with a double set of the cast.  But some of these guys I just couldn't resist.  Like Fish Megatron here.  

I mean, look at him.

He's fantastic.

I'm also happy to report that his plastic tolerances feel a little more satisfying and he clicks together more securely than the original version.  If you don't care that Megatron doesn't look like this on the teevee show, this is an objectively better toy.  

He does have big fins on his arms, which means his usually-arm-mounted cannon has a longer connection peg so it reaches past them, but that's not what you want to do with the weapon.  You want to transform it into the monstrous sword mode.  You really do.  It completes him.  Screw arm cannons.  Giant heavy fish sword, dudes.

FISH MEGATRON

(Megatrout?)

Part of me wanted to just drop that blog post title bomb, throw these photos at you, and then back away slowly before running away in shame.  But no, I guess I'll actually, like, do my job and talk about these guys a little.

Man, Megatron Origin.  There was a point in time in IDW's recent history where the powers that be were like, "hey, would anybody care if we ignored this?"  Megatron Origin is one of those.  For a long while it was this isolated piece of weirdness buried deep in the IDW continuity's past.  I'm not sure where it went wrong, whether it was the story, the art, the coloring, or a perfect storm combination of all three.  It was really hard to tell what was going on in that miniseries, artwise, and when you got through the gray art down to the story, maybe it was for the best?  

Artwise, though, those folks have gone on to do some really awesome things very well.  Alex Milne is now the the very readable penciler of More Than Meets The Eye, and Josh Perez is now the very readable colorist for Robots in Disguise.  Those two are now seriously among my favorite creative people.  Eric Holmes hasn't written anything Transformers since, so who knows if today he'd likewise be amazing. 

So I'm just gonna blame Megatron Origin, the entity.  Maybe it was cursed.  The story was repurposed from an abandoned Dreamwave idea, so maybe reanimating the story for IDW was akin to building over sacred burial ground, with like Pat Lee ghosts seeping up into the story's foundation and haunting the shit out of it and also probably not paying anyone.   Either way, I believe we shouldn't let its memories soil the talented people involved.  

Regardless, here are these two Megatron Origin toys.  The first is a retool of Generations Scourge with a new head as Senator Ratbat.  It's a Japanese release, so I'll forgive it for not having a "REPUBLIC SENATOR!!!" call-out starburst on the front of the packaging.  In Megatron Origin, Ratbat was a pre-war Senator with like a real humanoid body and everything, and he wore a bat-head-shaped helmet on his head.  And then at the end SPOILERS Soundwave extracts his spark and shoves it into this tiny bat Recordicon body and there you go.  This toy does its best to replicate that first body by translating Senator Ratbat's color scheme onto Generations Scourge's toy.  It does a pretty good job.  Like the other Japanese Generations toys, he's in shiny plastic and shiny paint.  This would visually clash with my other Generations toys in usual circumstances, but this is a Senator, so I'll let him be exceptionally shiny.  

The tiny Megatron is an entirely new Legends Class toy of Megatron in his original miner body, when he was a revolutionary for social reform before he got a taste for violence that drove him evil.  And so he's got the hazard stripes painted on him that he and his fellow miners had.  He's a pretty amazing Legion Class toy, considering some of the others!  His turret can rotate all the way around, and his head turns.  Both of those are kind of crazy for a toy his size.  He transforms from robot to tank by folding his arms in front of him to form the turret and then opening up his legs so they can fit around the rest of him to form a shell.  

He also comes with a tiny Chop Shop, but I don't know where he is now.  I need to clean up the office.

Megatron is available in American stores now.  Ratbat is available in Japanese stores as of a few months ago.

COMPLETE LAZERBACK MOLD POWER

Ahem.

Man, I hate the name "Lazerback."  Can I just not say that anymore?  That Z is like nails on a chalkboard.  From now on he's "Dingus," which is less embarrassing.

But now Dingus has two dragon brother buddies, and at least one of their names is incredibly awesome.  The yellow dude is Vertebreak, and he's showing up in American stores now.  The green dude is... *looks up on the wiki* Gaidora, which apparently means something like "Supernatural Dragon."  I don't know Japanese, so I am no judge on how great that wordplay is.  But it's probably better than Lazerback unless there's some misspelled acronym in there that I'm unaware of.

I really think there's some sort of name-awesomeness balance that's being kept, like they can't do a really awesome name without first throwing a terrible one out there, because a leap from Lazerback to Vertebreak is pretty stark.  There's whiplash.  

Vertebreak is a standard redeco of Dingus, going from red and purple and yellow to yellow and orange and brown.  The redeco is very autumn.  He's like if a dragon were disguising himself as a horn of plenty.  

... *looks up name again* Gaidora is in sparkly green and red and black, and he has a new head.  It's a very nice-looking head, but I think it's a little too standardly-detailed for the very stylized TF Prime body it sits on.  Over in Japan, he features in a series of direct-to-CD-in-your-toy-purchase anime adventures.  They take place in Transformers Prime continuity (mostly in the far past, I think), but are rendered in a generic cel-shaded-CGI-robots-with-cel-animated-people anime style.

Toy-wise they're the same solid beastformer as Dingus was.  It's forelegs to arms and hindlegs to legs, transformation-wise, but the simplicity results in two satisfying modes.  

This is how starved I am for beast Transformers, that I own all three of these guys.  Waspinator and Rhinox (and maybe Rattrap????) need to come sooner.