No, seriously, I have no idea where they are.  They were in an odd spot in the old house before the move, since they didn't really go with any existing display and there were just four of them, and so now I have no idea where in my basement of bins they would be.  Hrn.

This came up today because I got the new Fall of Cybertron Optimus Prime today, and he's a replacement for my old War for Cybertron Prime.  I thought maybe I'd photograph them together or something.  Nope!

If I never find that WFC Prime, it's not a HUGE loss.  I mean, first of all, obviously, he's been replaced.  He's now nonessential.  And gaddangit, I prefer his replacement.  WFC Prime was a mess of parts and it always kinda annoyed me.  It wasn't nearly as aggravating as his contemporary WFC Bumblebee, but Jesus, man.  The new HOC Prime is delightfully simple.  I enjoy him.

He's pretty straightforward to transform.  Like a stereotypical Prime, he folds his arms up against the sides of his chest and his legs fold back behind him.  No surprises.

FOC Prime is the size of a modern Deluxe Class toy.  He's Prime RID Bumblebee's height.  Taller than Cliffjumper, shorter than Wheeljack.  (He's also the same height and mass as Beast Wars Dinobot, if we want a more historical comparison.) But those of you yearning for the sizes of Deluxes of Armada through Cybertron, I think oil prices have kind of ruined that for the mo'.

I'm bringing this guy with me to San Diego Comic-Con.  When I (god willing) get my Bruticus, he'll need someone to stomp into the ground.  At least then his relative smallness will be a feature.

The number of paint applications aren't just budgeted per figure, but also across a single wave.  Paint can be sacrificed from one toy to give to another and it still adds up for the bookkeepers, since toys are sold to stores by case and not by individual toy.

Which probably explains vibrant Dead End here and his naked pal Airachnid, dontcha think???

Don't get me wrong.  Dead End looks like he has more paint than he has, due to how cleverly his plastic colors are broken up.  Wheeljack, from whom he was retooled, was an all-white dude, while Dead End splits up that white into dark gray and yellow.  (With Wheeljack's grays becoming orange.)  It gives the appearance of more color because, well, there IS more color.  And Airachnid's plastic was required to be almost entirely black.

But he still has a lot of paint.  For example, those painted hubcaps are usually a luxury on Deluxe Class mainline toys.  Many Transformers have them left unpainted, because, hey, that's probably the easiest thing to cut, saving you four paint applications and leaving you with, oh no, black hubcaps.  But Dead End gets to have glorious bright green hubcaps. Which are glorious.  Did I mention they're glorious?

Dead End doesn't actually have any brown, but the combination of yellow, orange, and green sure makes his dark grays look brown.  It results in him looking like a big radioactive cornucopia.  Like he's in Thanksgiving Colors, from the Nineties.  It's pretty damn striking.

Oh, and apparently he's some sort of borderline zombie vampire thing.  He didn't use to be, but whoops.

TL;DR: Way better than Wheeljack

Airachnid is one of those toys that will test show-characters-only completists.  She's not a very good toy!  And so show-characters-only completists will end up owning toys like this instead of toys that are pretty sweet (Hot Shot, Dead End) but never made a fictional appearance.  It is a joke we play on ourselves.

Seriously, Airachnid's not that great.  It's not that she's nearly immobile in robot mode, it's not that she looks devoid of paint, it's not that she can't make that sweet third spideresque mode she has on the cartoon, it's not that her robot arms are kind of hilariously gimpy, it's ... well, it's all of those things, combined.

Airachnid has very little poseability.  She has joints, sure, but everything on her that isn't a joint works together to keep those joints from having any real range of movement.  She can't turn her head because even though the neck is balljointed, the helicopter mode's cockpit seat is attached to the back of her head and that kind of keeps it from doing anything.  She has knees and hips, but those are similarly useless joints.  To make matters worse, she doesn't stand well.  If she's not holding her weapons, she's incredibly backheavy and will topple... unless she's kind of bending forward a bit.  Which, again, isn't very practical since her movement's so restricted.

I said she "looks" devoid of paint.  She does have paint.  It's just that so much of her is black and what paint she has isn't used in the best way that it could be.  She's got paint outlining the windows of her cockpit, on the insides of both of her thighs, on her stomach, two paint applications flanking her hips, a good number on her face, and a tiny bit of paint on the Decepticon symbol on her sternum.   Oh, and her two "electro-stinger" accessories (designed after the "Null Rays" Knock Out suggested to Starscream as weapon replacements in one episode) are both extensively painted.  She has her knees painted gold and purple in her stock photography, and those must have been costed out, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather they had sacrificed the paint on her hips.  Those are supposed to be black and not purple anyway!

She's not a very fun toy.  It's not a great transformation.  And she looks kinda dull and substandard.  I think part of the problem is her design is too ambitious for the Deluxe size class.  She woulda been a great Voyager, I'm sure, but of course that'd make her too huge.  And so we have this thing.

I've already painted my Airachnid up a bunch.  It makes her look better, but she still ain't any funner.  The most hilarious part was painting black over the unnecessary purple on her hips.  Oh, you.

I've been realizing that in these past few months that, hey, I have toys of Soundwave in his briefly-appearing satellite form from Revenge of the Fallen, but I don't have one of him in his Earth mode in which he did stuff with other characters. The tiny Legends Class toy reached the United States, but not the two larger toys.  I'd have to import them from Asia.

And so I did.  I had to choose one over the other, and that took a bit of research and photo-staring.  The "normal" DOTM Soundwave is likely considered the Deluxe Class toy, but it didn't come with a Laserbeak and would likely be smaller than I'd want versus most other characters.  I don't want Bumblebee to tower over Soundwave, after all, and worse than that is having a Laserbeak be as big as he is.  Placing Deluxe Laserbeak on Deluxe Soundwave's shoulder seems like it would be an impossibility.

On the other hand, the Human Alliance version of Soundwave, which comes with its own Laserbeak, might be too big!  The biggest Megatron that came out for DOTM was the Voyager, and the Human Alliance toy would likely dwarf that toy in mass.  Plus it costs more!  And so I had to determine my priorities.

Eventually, I decided I prioritized Soundwave's scale versus Laserbeak and (secondarily) Bumblebee over his scale with Megatron.  So Human Alliance it is!  Plus, dudes, I have been seriously craving a McDreamy Dylan Gould toy.  How can you say no to that.  Since Transformers toys have been shrinking a little over the years, the Human Alliance version of Soundwave is actually not too badly scaled next to Deluxe Bumblebee.  He's bigger than Bumblebee by a little bit, which is fine, because that's how I prefer my villains.  (It probably helps that most of his mass goes to kibble behind his arms, which doesn't add to his height.)  And, obviously, the Laserbeak he comes with isn't too big for him.  Laserbeak clips to his forearm or can transform into a hilarious missile-launching vehicle for McDreamy to ride.

Soundwave himself is... intimidating.  If you don't like complicated toys, stay far away from him.  He's a bit of a mess.  Just orchestrating the layers of car parts on the backs of his arms is work enough.  He's seriously a chore to transform.  It's not that there's any terrible parts, it's just that there's so damn much of it.  Fortunately, he looks nice in both modes.  And I'm amazed at how efficient his... leg transformation is?  The entirety of both his legs fit into his rear bumper.  They unfold out of an area the size of a Chicken McNugget.  His legs are admittedly stumpy, but I recall DOTM Soundwave's robot mode was pretty gorilla-like in proportion anyhow, so.

Plus, again, he comes with McDreamy.

Apparently Canada is lousy with the "Bumblebee vs. Starscream" entertainment pack.  Which is too bad, 'cuz the United States sure could use some!  Adekii heard my pleas and graciously grabbed me one from the plethora in his neck of the woods, and now I have one and his stores have one fewer.

The set is called "Bumblebee vs. Starscream," and it does come with both a Bumblebee and a Starscream, but screw those toys.  It's the humans I'm after.  Silas, the commander of the terrorist organization MECH, plus a MECH trooper are included in this set, and this is the only way to get 'em.

Unlike the Miko/Jack/Raf figurines, Silas and his buddy are all one molded piece.  Their stands aren't removable, nor are their heads articulated.  Dang!  But at least they exist.  Human villain figures are among my favorite Transformers things.

Yeah, there's a slightly-redecoed Bumblebee and Starscream.  Whee, I guess.  They can go in the pile.  ...along with the DVD that also comes in the set, once/if I remove it from the packaging.  I have this series on blu-ray!

So Cheetimus made me a yellow Hot Shot, because he loves me or something.  Sorry, Cheets, I already have a bromance going!

At some point Cheetimus realized that he can paint, and so recently he's been doing piles of modifications to Transformers toys to either make them look more like their media appearances or just for fun.  For example, he's done buttloads of Ratchets and Knock Outs and such.  Definitely stuff above my particular skill level, for sure.  For example, just by looking at this Hot Shot he sent me, I notice he can actually paint straight.  (Rulers and straight lines have always been my natural enemy.  I mean, check out these old It's Walky! strips... these panel borderss were drawn with a straight edge.  I kid you not.)

The Hot Shot he sent me is the offspring of two toys.  Cheets took a PRID Bumblebee and gave him PRID Hot Shot's head.  After all, that gives you a yellow Hot Shot, correct, without nearly as  much painting?  Then it was a simple(?) matter of detailing him to look more like a classic Hot Shot deco.  He seems to have gone for the Armada animation colors route, with the grays instead of navy blues.  Bumblebee's stripes were painted over in red and his gut and thighs were done in red also, with some silver accents to call back to his Armada seatbelt chest details.

He's perfectly transformable, though Cheets warned me not to fuss with his visor.  The paint there means it can't be moved anymore without scraping.

This toy reminds me of the early Armada Hot Shot prototype, the broadshouldered one.  Aaron Archer said one of the reasons for the change was that he didn't think the "football player" look worked for the character, and the transformation made him too wide.  And yet,  here we are.

To sum up, Cheetimus is good at painting.  If you think your Knock Out needs more yellow, I'd check him out.

Okay, so I make a cameo in this thing that has puppets and Vangelus and Derrick Wyatt and Transformers.  It's The Isle of Rangoon's video review of the Eighties Transformers series episode, "B.O.T."  I am way super glad I only have a cameo, because "B.O.T." is something I really wish to never experience again.  It's not a good episode.  Hence,  you know, the "review."  I'm sure the subject matter takes a beating and that the exercise is vicariously satisfying.

Me, I still have PTSD.

Man, you guys are super awesome.  We had an original goal of $11,000 to print DoA Book 1, passed that in a few days, passed our stretch goal of $20k to reprint Shortpacked! Book 1, and within a second of the end of the Kickstarter, we'd hit $30k.

Originally I'd set another stretch goal for $30k, promising to print Roomies! Book 2 if that happened, but a few days ago I realized I'd gotten soooo many pledges I needed to print more books, and would have to cannibalize some of those funds to print more.  But since we passed $30 anyway, I'll see how much money I have after the dust settles (you know, Kickstarter fees, Amazon payment fees, taxes) and see if we can't do it anyway.  I'll keep you posted.

There was a very sweet moment, like 4 minutes until the end of the Kickstarter period, where we had 666 backers.  And then some jerks had to ruin it by giving me more money!  Oh well.

But wow.  670 backers.  Last year's Kickstarter for Shortpacked! Book 4 only had about 250 backers.  This, uh, kind of triples the amount of books I've ever sent out, ever.  This will be daunting.  Please have patience with me once these books arrive in my possession, for I am but one dude, and you are legion.

Time to gather your names and submit the final DoA book PDF for printing!  We have done good.

At some point retailers were all, yeah, okay, we get it, there's lots of Transformers toys.  Turns out we like them, we just don't like-like them.  And so Wheeljack/Que's wave never came out in the United States.  And a bunch of other stuff.  But Asia got them!  And so, after the fact, I got a Wheeljack/Que sent from Asia for myself and Graham, doubled up to save on shipping.

(Man, how bad is "Que" as a name?  It's like Michael Bay just flat-out plagiarizes a James Bond character, but then they realize, uh, I don't think we can call him that, for real, so why don't we... spell it badly...?)

Wheeljack is your typical movie-style Transformer.  He's all panels and greebles.  He's not too counter-intuitive to transform, though, and the only thing that bugs me about him is how the bright blue parts on the front of his shins like to pop off at a moment's notice.  Also, his legs are shades of TFPrime Vehicon, since they're formed from the entire roof.  (But not the hood.)  I was afraid he was gonna be a monster to get back into car mode, but he wasn't too bad.

He comes with a MechTech weapon, same as the other DOTM Deluxes.  It's a saw!  A saw with a bipid, and he can carry it like a Ghostbuster containment unit.  Kinda sweet.  He also comes with three clip-on weapons.  These do not store in vehicle mode.  They do clip onto him kind of awkwardly in robot mode, like he's got extra limbs on his ribcage which happen to be blowtorches.  But Wheeljack's supposed to be a gadgety guy, so it makes sense.  (I have to say, a spear is pretty much the least Wheeljack-esque weapon ever.)

SPOILERS: He's dead.  And so it feels weird to buy a guy who's already offed.  But then I catch myself, and realize, hey, that's the situation with everyone in that movie.  And the new guy who lived, Mirage, doesn't get a toy, 'cuz Ferrari hates you.

You might say I have a passing interest in Batman.  But I hadn't been paying attention to the upcoming Dark Knight Rises toyline, and so one day it was just there, in all stores everywhere.  I saw the "Movie Masters" stuff, a bunch of 6" Batmen and Banes, and I considered them.  Maybe get one, come back later.  And so I picked them up, looked at them, and put them back on the pegs.

And then I realized, oh, shit naw, if you buy all six figures across two waves, you can put together a friggin' working BAT SIGNAL?  Friggin' sold, man!  I walked out with Bane and Batman, and later that evening I scoured the city for Alfred, finally finding him at a Meijer after having no luck at half a dozen Targets and Walmarts.   Otherwise just Banes and Batmen as far as the eye could see.

But I have my Alfred now.  It's weird.  I'm certain he was available off MattyCollector.com or something before.  It wasn't worth it then.  I just really want that bat signal projector.  Guy's just gotta have some motive to drop some coin, y'know?  Sometimes I'm on the precipice of consumerism, and I just need a push.

(For what it's worth, Bane is a pretty awesome figure.  He's meticulously painted, especially for a retail release.  Dude's got the faintest hint of stubble on his bald head.  Sweet ass.)

Now the wait for Wave 2 and its final three bat signal pieces.