Man, I still have a huge-ass backlog of toys from BotCon and SDCC which I haven't talked about.  I remember when weekend updates were unlocked during the Dumbing of Age Kickstarter, and folks worried I wouldn't have time left to do comics.  Oh, I'll have time to do comics!  Just... other non-comic things fall through the cracks, is all.  Like toy reviews.  And so let's try to put a dent in this backlog.

One thing I really really need to talk about is this customized BWX Megatron.  Cheetimus painted one up to look like Transmetal Megatron, which is basically the one thing this universe is sorely missing.  And I know I talk a big game about Dinobot and Ratchet and Hot Shot, but I assure you that Beast Wars Megatron is, in fact, my favorite Transformers character of all time.  And that his Transmetal form is my favorite iteration of him, though I think I like his BWX toy the best.

So obviously, the BWX toy painted up in is Transmetal colors just might be the best thing possible.

My decision was made for me, and now he is mine.  

I bet if you wanted one, too, you could commission one from Cheets.

I really really like Beast Hunters Prowl's robot mode! �And since it comes packaged in it, you can just leave it in robot mode forever and never transform it. �In fact, I recommend that! �Heartily!

There were two reasons why I bothered transforming him. �One, I figured I might need a photograph of his car mode for this blog. �And two, I forgot how much I hated transforming the Smokescreen version of this toy. �Oh, man. �It is really the worst. �You get the legs transformed, and you sort of get the doors in place, and then the rest of the process is about 45 minutes of trying to get his arms and the piles of car panels on them to line up with the rest of everything. �He's like if Beast Wars Neo had cars. �...or, right, that's what Car Robots was, never mind.

But that robot mode! �I love it! �Smokescreen is retooled to have the Prowl head design from Transformers Universe, the online game that used to be an interesting-sounding game until they removed all the things from it anybody would possibly want or were excited about and also will never ever come out ever at this rate I'm pretty sure. �Did you know we "reserved" our in-game names about 30 months ago? �It was coming out in a few months then. �It's always coming out "in a few months," in perpetuity. � It's been coming out soon since Transformers Prime began, but now TF Prime is over, so OH WELL. � But Prowl's a really nice design, and so I'm glad it's become plastic. �The paint applications try to approximate the design as well, best it can. �But the result, regardless, is something I really like.

He's a G1y Prowl in a TF Prime animation style with hints of the TF Animated version of the character, particularly the unified eye-shades. � And boy does his light piping work. �Oh and they dropped the Beast Hunters net and armor that came with the Smokescreen version. �He's only got the missile launcher. �The only thing he's really missing is the "Justice Hammer" the Cyberverse version of Prowl comes with, because, come on, JUSTICE HAMMER.

He's just classy.

Just forget he's a Transformer, please.

People are still scrambling Toys "R" Uses this week to get their hands on Masterpiece Soundwave. He's scarce and tends to be bought up in the first five minutes of whatever store he appears at. It's been a mad dash, and hopefully more will continue to filter into stores. I got mine at Comic-Con, from Entertainment Earth's booth, thanks to some help from Phillip Donnelly and his magical mug. (Brandon Bird also owes PD some thanks, as the mug was not only magical but transferable.)

How is the toy? Well, long story short, it's the best robot toy you'll ever own that folds up into a box. And man, does it fold up into a box! I know there's something in my brain that pumps happy juice through my body when I know a robot can transform into something, but damn if that Box Mode ain't superfluous. It's not like you can't do all the stuff you can do with his box mode in robot mode! That mini-cassette door still opens and everything. And it's not like Box Mode actually looks like a micro-cassette recorder -- he looks like a box with a very tiny window in it. This is entirely because his cassette door is still the same size as the original's to accommodate identically-sized micro-cassette toys, but the robot mode which surrounds that door is a chunk larger, and so you have this ridiculous... thing. Like Soundwave's altmode got elephantiasis.

The door still opens when you press the eject button on the top/shoulder. This time around, there's room inside him for three Recordicons. The back wall of the cassette storage area can slide in by pushing on it, and a button on Soundwave's backside will reset this wall to the usual one-cassette-deep width, so long as he's not full of dudes at the time. The arrow buttons on his crotch also depress, but those don't accomplish anything. There are ridges on both Soundwave's shoulders and his forearms that Buzzsaw or Laserbeak's feet can plug into, all perch-like.

He transforms about as simply as you'd expect -- very similarly to the original toy -- but with a few added wrinkles of some additional fold-out panels to cover up his articulation. His shoulder-mounted missile launcher and hand-held rifle are also included, but this time they don't transform into his batteries and store inside a battery compartment. Mind, they still transform into the same battery shape, but you don't put them inside him like batteries inside his battery compartment anymore (that's where his head goes) and instead they kind of just peg behind him and fill up space easily viewable from behind. D'oh well.

Soundwave also comes with a plethora of additional accessories, other than the five Recordicons and their stuff. He has a little vacuum cleaner attachment for his wrist, he has a digital-readout screen which you can plug into his chest door to make it look like he's computing stuff, he has an energon cube which you can pull the lid off of and plug into his chest door to make it look like he's making energon cubes -- all things he did in the cartoon. I'm not a big cartoon guy, so those won't get much play from me. He also comes with a nontransformable Megatron rifle. I think it's the same one that came with earlier MP toys.