Like Soundwave was re-released in Japan in new colors as Soundblaster, so too was Blaster re-released in new colors as Twincast.  (Blaster's name in Japan was "Broadcast," and so "Twincast" was a better new name for him in that context.)  But I'm not as fond of Twincast as I am of Soundblaster.  See, in the hilarious Hong Kong dub of the Japanese Headmasters cartoon into English, "Soundwave" was rebuilt into "New Soundwave."  But Blaster started out being called "Billy" and was rebuilt into... "Blaster."  Owning Twincast, then, doesn't mean I own a guy with an awesomely dumb name.  It's just Blaster in wacky colors.

One of my first memories of being part of the online Transformers fandom was learning about the AMAZING and VIOLENT and TO THE DEATH fight between Blaster and Soundwave in the Japanese Headmasters cartoon.  I was told all these things about how those two just friggin' go at each other like crazy people, and how it's super adult and gritty.  And then, you know, of course years later I got to watch what actually happened, and, well...  Let's just say standing and shooting at each other at point blank range for like fifteen minutes without anything happening, before the pair just leap at each other at the same time and punch each other in their respective chests, before both of them randomly explode... eh.  It was oversold.

(The hilarious English dub, of course, made the scene fairly entertaining, but YouTube isn't being handy with it at the moment.)

But these redecoes of Blaster and Soundwave are why it happened!  Blaster was rebuilt into Twincast, and no more would he be called "Billy"!  He was a grown robot.  And you got to buy him!  Again!  Like "New Soundwave," he was retooled to be able to hold two cassettes at once, though this didn't do as much aesthetic damage to Blaster as it did to Soundwave.

And just like New Soundwave, Twincast's stickers have become paint detail instead.  And also like New Soundwave, Twincast's Encore reissue attempts to make his face look more show-accurate.  Instead of being all silver, now his face is yellow with blue eyes.  This is a welcome change to me, not because of the show-accuracy, but because non-silver faces on Transformers are things I enjoy.  Another change, related to the exchange of stickers for paint, is the smoothing over of the tech detail on his cassette-door chest so they could tampograph an Autobot symbol on there.

Of course, getting Twincast was just a symptom of requiring the new Mini-Cassette guys who came with him, who I'll talk about later.

Honestly, I bought New Soundwave just to get these two guys!  Let's talk about them.

Wingthing was Soundwave's Action Master partner.  He transformed from a bat into a concussion blaster.  (aka a folded-up bat with a gun stuck on it)  But now he's been upgraded to a Mini-Cassette!  Well, "upgraded." I'm not sure trading in a weapon form, regardless of how dippy it looks, for a mini-cassette mode is really an upgrade.  Before he was a gun, and now he transforms into a ... rectangle.  Admittedly, it's probably an upgrade in the perception of his peers.  Being "one of Soundwave's tapes" is probably an upward social move from "that gun Soundwave built that time he couldn't transform and then left to collect dust in the closet afterwards."  Now he's Ratbat's equal!  And Ratbat was a Senator!

(His bio, best I can tell from badly Google Translating it, seems to say he's not technically alive, but a sophisticated drone with a personality emulator.  Perhaps this is related to Wingthing having originally been created as an Action Master weapon.)

Enemy, meanwhile, is who I desired the most.  Enemy is awesome.  Until this toy was released last week, Enemy was a merchandise-only character.  There was this red Frenzy/Rumble head back in the Eighties that made you sound all robotty when you spoke into it, and its name was "Enemy."  You may remember it from that one birthday part you had.  The real Transformers were all sold out and thanks to one of your friends you ended up with this thing on the left.

And now, finally, Enemy has a real toy.  I couldn't be more ecstatic.  Best New Soundwave I've ever bought!

Again, my Google Translator-fu is weak, but I think Enemy's bio says that he's, SURPRISE, a jerk to everybody and everyone hates him.  Also maybe he has some sort of psychological effect on those who surround him, making them hate him more, giving him an advantage somehow?  I am not sure.  Maggie tried to translate it on her own, but the damn bio says "he's an asshole" in so many different ways it was kind of like a big soup of repetitive nonsense.

Like the rest of these Encore sets, both Enemy and Wingthing forego stickers entirely in lieu of painted detail.  I am overbearingly thankful for this, because Mini-Cassettes are the enemy (so to speak) of stickers.  One entire side of them is generally covered in stickers to make them look like cassettes, and their toys are equally covered in moving parts and seams.  And so, y'know, that means buttloads of sticker edges.  It's not a fortunate set up.  But it's all paint now, so I'm stoked!

America retired Soundwave's toy around 1986 or so.  But Japan wanted to still get some use out of him, and so they re-released him in black as "Soundblaster."  That sentence of setup only really exists so that I can tell you that in the Hong Kong-produced English dubs of Japan's Headmasters cartoon, in which Soundblaster appears, he is called "New Soundwave."  That is his actual name.  And that hilarious fact is the only reason I'm not completely bored out of my mind owning this toy.  (I bought it nominally to get the new Mini-Cassettes he comes with.)

Soundblaster (aka New Soundwave) is Soundwave with his blues changed to black.  No other deco is changed at all.  No new stickers, nothing.  Let's face it.  That's not a very striking change.  You can achieve the look with a Soundwave toy by just squinting at it in dim lighting.  So colors-wise, he's not a very compelling redeco.

What does make Soundblaster stand out is the one molding change done to him.  Instead of the original flat cassette door, Soundblaster's door is an extruded box, making it possible to fit two Mini-Cassettes into his chest at the same time.  This is neat and it is also ugly.  He's already a giant mini-cassette recorder, but now he's one with a weird-ass bulbous door.

This "Encore" version of Soundblaster (meaning this is at least the second time they're reissued him) has some additional changes done to his deco versus the original reissue, which was a more faithful recreation of the vintage release.  My favorite change is the conversion of nearly all of his stickers into tampographed deco.  It's a little anti-climactic to pull Soundblaster out of the packaging and not get to put stickers on him, but I think it's worth it in the long run to not have stickers drying up and peeling off.  Some of the converted sticker deco works way better as paint, like the tiny analog time stamps on his upper right chest, since you're not covering over sculpted detail with a flat decal.

However, TakaraTomy didn't take the opportunity to "fix" some of  his deco in the conversion from stickers to paint.  See, original Soundblaster's stickers were unchanged Soundwave stickers, meaning there are these areas of blue that are meant to be continuations of Soundwave's blue surfaces.  But even now, those parts still remain blue, even though now they're painted on.  Durp.

Another thing they changed was the paint on Soundwave's face.  It's an attempt at show-accuracy, so not only does he now have red eyes instead of the original yellow, but he also has the rest of his face painted silver, as well as larger portions of his "sideburns."  This makes him more different from Soundwave than before, so I'm in favor of it.

Mostly, I'm in favor of him being New Soundwave.  And coming with the super-exciting two new tape guys who I'll talk about tomorrow.

The second Transformers Collectors' Club exclusive this year was Shattered Glass Drift.  I was not expecting him to sell out nearly as fast as Runabout, but he sure did.  I mean, he's Drift, who most folks seem to hate, and he's Shattered Glass, which is kind of a marginalized universe.  Folks like their a) G1 characters who they b) remember from their childhoods, and Drift was neither of those things.  Yet he went in a couple of days.

It's possible it's because his toy kicks that much ass.  It really does.  Despite your feelings on the character, the toy itself is amazing.  It has all these swords and they can stow everywhere and everything about it feels top notch.  SG Drift even comes with extra weapons, the pair of smaller guns that his retool, Blurr, came with.  They can't fit in the hip storage in the Drift version of the mold, but there they are just the same.

(Some Drifts were packed with two of the same gun rather than one of the "right" guns and one of the "left" guns.  It doesn't really matter if you have a mismatched pair since it's not the Blurr version of the mold, 'cuz there's no large gun for them to attach to and no way to store them, but that's a problem some folks have noticed.  I got a correct set of small guns.)

Drift's colors are striking, but I think I'd find them more striking if he didn't arrive in the same shipment as Runabout, who's also red and black.  Red and black are pretty safe colors to use.  I wish they'd been a little more bold with them.

I also wish they'd been a little less weird with the symbol they put on his hood.  Apparently it's a character that can mean "decided," in that "your fate is already decided," in that "he has already killed you."  They only arrived at this character after wanting to put a character that means "a doom" on his hood, but that didn't exist, and so apparently "decided" was the closest match?  I don't know.  It's just... I dunno.

He also has Arashikage stripes on each of his swords.  You know.  Snake-Eyes stuff.  Huh.

But what really attracts me to him is his function.  I couldn't care less if he's supposed to be "Transformers Deadpool" or not.  I just like that his job is hunting down folks who cross universes.  If you've been paying attention to this blog for any amount of time, you know I'm big into Transformers multiversal stuff.  And so I imagine he's probably out there looking for Cliffjumper, who's a G1 guy stuck in the Shattered Glass universe.  And probably also now SG Ravage, who we know because of certain comics drawn by certain people has been to a Marvel Comics universe, is on his list.  And judging by this year's BotCon box set theme, imminently a buttload of other folks as well!

Yay, more guys for SG Ravage to play with.  And/or avoid being assassinated by.

First off, I feel I should address the Dumb Thing that happened.  Shortly before my Boat Trip, it was discovered that Fun Publications' website was very very likely security breached, credit card-wise.  They've sent out a bunch of emails themselves to their customers over the past few weeks addressing the issue, but I still feel like I should bring it up here, too.  Before the whole Runabout preorder thing, I put up a blog post asking you to join the club and order stuff from them, and if anyone took my advice, did so, and some dude bought $1k worth of stuff from a Walmart in Georgia using your money, I feel kinda like an accomplice in that.  I apologize, for whatever that's worth.

The good news(?) is, they're getting a whole new website soon, with a forum that's from this millennium and everything.  It's something they've badly needed for a long time.  It's something I've made fun of them for a long time, even.  It's disappointing to me that it's taken something like this to get them to do it, but there you have it.  Choose to purchase from them in the future or not, according to your own risk assessments.  I will.  Because I have Transformers Sickness.  But it's important to me to be honest with you about the situation.

ANYWAY THE STUFF I BOUGHT FROM THEM CAME IN THE MAIL.

This is Runabout!  As said earlier, when I was pumping him up, his toy is technically named "Over-Run," for trademark ownership reasons.  But who cares.  He's Runabout.  We know he's Runabout.  Let's not pretend otherwise.

Runabout's a retool of Generations Wheeljack, who is a splendid toy.  (Have I used "splendid" to describe something yet, in all my years of reviews?  I don't think so.  I guess I'll stick with it.)  The head's new, and it's a mix of the designs for Runabout and Runamuck's heads so they can use the one new head for both toys.  (Runamuck is part of the Club membership, and will be arriving in a month or so.)

I don't think there's a way to photograph this guy that does not make him look like a Photoshop.  Really.  His red's just that vibrant, and his blacks and grays that neutral.  Look at him.  I tell you, I did nothing to those reds.  That's just how they come out.  (I did darken his blacks, because they were coming out a little light.)

Otherwise, the toy's the same excellent toy as Wheeljack, but now he's one of my favorite Decepticons.  And Runabout has upgraded to one of the worst toys to one of the best.  I recommend him.  He's sold out, though.  So I recommend... eBay?  Well, less chance of credit card fraud there, probably, anyway.

*sigh*

I'm still sick, but I napped like aalll day and so I have the energy in me to write this.  Huzzah!

Like all of the other "Robots in Disguise" Revealers, Arcee is an entirely new mold apart from her "First Edition" version.  And just like Cliffjumper, she relies more on faux kibble for her transformation.  Instead of the front of the bike splitting apart and folding down to become her upper torso, the entire front of the bike now hangs off her back.  This results in a more "show accurate" chest, but I think I'm preaching to the choir when I say that's not a step in the right direction.

I do not, however, want to give the impression that this is a disappointing or terrible toy.  It is not.  In fact, it's superior to the FE in a few ways.

First of all, all its kibble is further out of the way this time.  FE Arcee had this problem with her shoulders, where the big shoulder kibble was attached to her upper arms and kept getting in the way of all the stuff hanging off her back.  This is not a problem with RID Arcee.  Everything's back and out of the way of her range of movement.

Secondly, I like that she's shorter.  FE Arcee was taller than both Bumblebee and Cliffjumper, which just won't do!  RID Arcee is about a head shorter than FE Arcee, which is loads better, though not perfect.  I will take better over worse any day of the week, however.

Because she was created more recently, RID Arcee manages to be slightly more cartoon accurate than her earlier FE version as well.  The cuffs on her wrist are shaped properly, for example, and they managed to get her forearms blue this time.  Her chest, as mentioned, is more accurate, but that's a function of the different transformation, of course.  (Other than the torso, the rest of the toy transforms basically the same as the older one: The rear wheel splits apart and folds into the back of her shins.)  The head also looks a lot better.  Her eyes are lessbeady and more large and expressive.

Oh, and did you know you can use the FE's weapons on Arcee?  In addition to the 5mm pegholes that remain under her forearms for her blade weapons, there's also two skinny pegs on either side of her motorcycle mode that allow you to mount her blade weapons as you could on the previous toy.  There's no other reason for them.  That's pretty awesome.

There are some downsides, of course.  She only comes with one blade.  It combines with a giant version of the blaster her arms can transform into on the cartoon.  She loses both her waist articulation, her wrist articulation is now a balljoint and keeps her from being able to put her hands on her hips most excellently, plus she lost all of her pink.  I assume the latter is because of Boys, who tend to be strongly sexist at the toy's target age.

I now have all three of Prime Arcee's toys!  How did this happen?

(I may have to sell the FE.  Hey, it has Reprolabels on it!)

this is the new arcee and the old arcee

...

okay you know what,  I'm too sick to do this.  I used up all my energy drawing Thursday's Shortpacked!, announcing Dumbing of Age's second place SLASH CONTEST winner, and eating dinner.  There is no energy left.

sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

When news hit that most of the "First Edition" toys weren't gonna be making it into the United States, I was out a Bulkhead (and some other things).  A day or so later, Big Bad Toy Store put up a preorder for a restock of the Takara figure.  I threw that into my stash, sort of hoping I'd find an alternative in the meantime.  But the preorder got restocked sooner than I thought it might (it's February already???) and now I have a Japanese Bulkhead.

Given the choice, I would have gone for the American version.  I think its lighter, oliver green looks more accurate, and I was afraid the shiny finish would stand out too much from my other figures.  In person, I don't mind the darker, more forest green as much as I'd feared.  It's not ideal, but it's not as conspicuous as the sparkly gold Takara Animated Bumblebee I have.  (Eep.)

The toy itself is crazy, possibly in an awesome way.  Bulkhead transforms from a pretty small SUV for a Voyager Class toy into a huge ball of a robot.  It's like he explodes into something twice his mass.  (So probably exactly what he does in the cartoon.)  Part of this is because the robot mode compresses as much as possible into vehicle mode.  I don't think there's a sizable gap anywhere inside.  And the transformation unwinds the vehicle into this multidirectional ticker tape of plastic which reassembles into the surface area of a torso with limbs.  Bulkhead's got a spine back there, but most of his gut is empty air.  The way the panels form the torso's surface area is amazing.  Everything goes where it should according to the animation, with doors on top of panels on top of other panels, but the animation makes it look implausible.  And yet here we are.

It is not a simple toy.  Its complexity approaches the event horizon of Oh My God Why, but pulls back just short of being an annoying mess.  My awe in its engineering manages to eclipse any potential rage.  I'm not sure exactly where that particular threshold is, but this toy really skirts it.  Well, maybe flirts with it is more accurate.  Its complexity is playful.

Which is all heartbreaking, because I want to recommend the toy, but it's not an easy toy to come by.  I hope it gets released somewhere for cheap so others can share my infatuation.

And hopefully by then there'll be a Miko to buy to hang out with him.

So I bought Legion Class Arcee and Ratchet on Wednesday.  Legion Class toys are the smaller price point in the Cyberverse arena of Transformers toys.  They're tiny and very simple and there are playsets for them.  And I got an Arcee because I was wondering about her scale and I got a Ratchet because I'm weak and I like Ratchet.

Arcee's a motorcycle on the show, but she's a Deluxe Class toy the same as the cars and planes, so of course her scale's a bit wonky. And so I picked up Tiny Arcee to see how she'd compare to the other toys.  Maybe she'd be a better Arcee than my admittedly awesome Deluxe Class version!  And, as expected, she's a way better scale versus the cars in vehicle mode, but about half as short as her cartoon's robot mode.  See, in the show, she grows between modes.  A lot.  Very much a lot.  Her motorcycle mode's as large as her shin.  It's kind of annoying.

Which, as it turns out, puts her Legion motorcycle at perfect television scale with her Deluxe robot.  Huh.

Her transformation is pretty sweet for such a small toy.  It reminds me a lot of Animated Prowl in its elegance.  And like Animated Prowl, one wheel ends on one leg and one wheel on the other, with the arms pointing out the rear of the motorcycle and motorcycle kibble ending up as wings on her back.   It's fun to do and she fits in your pocket.

Ratchet is way more pedestrian.  The back becomes legs and the sides pull out to be arms.  He's basically a Micromaster.

Both Ratchet and Arcee come with rubbery translucent pink weapons.  These weapons are covered in pegs and pegholes so that you can combine them in various ways, and the toys themselves have multiple pegholes.  In theory, if I had more than just these two Cyberverse toys, I could combine my pile of weapons into a superweapon, or many superweapons, or just load up one toy with all of them.

I got United Tank Megatron shipped to me along with my Windcharger/Wipe-Out, but the deluge of Prime toys that happened shortly thereafter kept me from talking about him until now.  Priorities, man!

I got Tank Megatron for a few reasons.  First, I've never owned the Classics-era Deluxe tank Megatron toy.  They kept on redecoing him as Megatron, and I didn't need another Megatron.  So this was a new toy to me.

Secondly, on the tail of the first reason, a character who isn't Megatron shares these colors.  Late in Generation 2 there was a "Hero" Megatron toy that was purple and blue and orange in black camo.  I own it, in fact!  ...even though it's broken in places and missing some accessories.  It was one of my first BotCon purchases.  But in Europe, that toy was released as a different guy called Archforce.  All they did was modify the sticker on the underside of his chest that said "MEGATRON RULES" to say nothing at all.  (I love that sticker, by the way.)  This new Tank Megatron doesn't have any "MEGATRON RULES" on him, so that says Archforce to me!  Sweet, an Archforce toy.

And most importantly, the thing just looks damn pretty.

Reviews of the toy were not very favorable, so I knew I wasn't getting a spectacular figure.  He's not bad or terrible.  He's sort of in the middle there.  Most people seemed to hate that Megatron didn't have two proper hands.  His cannon arm was actually a gimmicked propeller-spinning thing, commonly called a "rotate blade."  You fold out his cannon in front of his wrist and press a lever on the arm, causing the thing to spin.  There's no hand on that arm, so folks got annoyed.   I've got plenty of Megatrons with two hands, and my mental picture of Archforce doesn't demand a number of hands, so the gimmick doesn't bother me.  Besides, I love rotate blades.

He's a pretty toy who I can easily repurpose as an obscure dude I don't own.  I should probably throw a G2 symbol sticker on him.