I didn't get to go to San Diego Comic-Con last year 'cuz I was Moving with a capital M, which was Terrible with a capital T, which meant I didn't get to see this toy for the first time in person. I only had photos to go off of. But I was in love from first sight all the same. And so I counted down the days.  I counted down the days until I'd receive my Transformers: Prime "First Edition" Optimus Prime.

And counted. And counted and counted and counted. And, oh, hey, I guess these aren't ever gonna show up in the United States! WONDERFUL. Well, I'm getting him, dammit, and thanks to Magnus from Allspark.com, I got one shipped from Canada at cost. That cost was still not a good one considering US retail, but I was not gonna not own this guy.

Sure, there's another Voyager ("Robots in Disguise") Optimus Prime in stores that I could readily grab out of the back of any of the fifty billion Targets in the Columbus area, but that's not the Optimus Prime I fell in love with. And I'm sure the RID one's better in some ways. The RID one is better in some ways, in fact! His shoulders actually become the air foil junk on top of the truck. The robot mode windows actually become the truck mode windows. And he's electronic. Those are all very good improvements over the more expensive one I chose. But--

I'd miss the very-important red on the chest. I'd miss the way the truck kibble folds up better on the robot mode back. I'd miss the sword and the gun that mount properly on the arms. I'd miss the general proportions. And I'd miss the toy I fell in love with.

So here I am with the "First Edition" Optimus Prime!  And I do love him.  I don't think I have any complaints.  He is at his core a sized-up version of the Deluxe, the one that came in a wearable Matrix at SDCC.  He transforms nigh-identically.  The hood of the truck folds up over the back of his arms.  His shoulders attach to a pair of fake windows that cover up the real windows.  The air foil splits up to become his heels and folds down over his legs.  Everything else crams onto his torso.  But the Voyager does it so much better, undoubtedly because of his size.  The front wheels don't have to hang uselessly off of his back, instead they fold into his shoulders snugly.  The leftover truck panels can collapse into a smaller space on his back.  The hood halves are more snug against his forearms.  Everything comes out looking way better at this scale.

I will probably put some silver paint on him, however.  Parts of him call out for it.

He comes with two weapons!  One is the gun from the show, but annoyingly in black.  Well, black with obvious silver specks all over it.  He also has his sword, which is equally important.  The sword is cast in very rubbery plastic.  I'm not used to 5mm pegs being so rubbery.  But oh well.  He has the sword, which, again, is important.  And they plug into his hands so they look like they popped out of his wrists, which is, again, important.  The toy readily available in stores just gives him a sword he holds like a sword.  I don't want that crap!

Anyway, now that I overspent on this guy, I fully expect him to show up in Marshall's and TJ Maxx everywhere tomorrow for $15.  Which, really, would be fine by me in the long run, because I want to be able to share my joy with others.

But with this guy, I was leaving nothing to chance.

And I still need to figure out what I'm gonna do about Bulkhead.

"Soundwave is absolutely devoted to Megatron. He uses his ability to intercept any electronic transmission to ensure the supremacy of his leader, and the eventual victory of the Decepticons over the Autobots."

Let's start off this post by making sure everyone knows that Soundwave and Megatron, according to Soundwave's package bio, are basically married.  We got that?  Okay, we can move on now.

Soundwave was the guy from wave 1 that I was looking forward to the most.  He comes with a little guy!  And he was in more than one episode.  In the show, he's basically Shortpacked!'s Mike, if Mike were mute, and also if Mike only hated Starscream.  Okay, so not very much like Mike.  But his function on the show so far is to be a jerk to Starscream without saying a word.  And Soundwave is very good at it.  It's very entertaining.  I hope he never speaks.  It would diminish him.

Prime Soundwave turns into some sort of unmanned drone jet.  His toy looks more like a convoluted knob of transformation joints, but the wings and nose of the plane remain smooth and alt-modey.  The obvious robot mode greebles and hinges everywhere make the jet mode less satisfying than it should be, but like Voyager Megatron they at least are in service of creating a great robot mode.

For all Soundwave's convoluted knob of joints, he transforms pretty simply.  The nose splits up to make legs.  The rear opens to reveal the head.  The wings unfold into arms.  Those joints are there mostly for articulation, like the knees and balljointed hips that sit between the wings and the fuselage.

Soundwave's robot mode, also like Megatron, is amazingly faithful to the show's design.  I never would have thought you'd get that robot mode out of anything, even a ball of joints with wings.  The backs of Soundwave's legs are kind of messy, but that's my only complaint.  He has all the articulation you'd need, plus a little extra joint in his tummy to help him hunch over properly.

Speaking of all the articulation you need, Soundwave has his little buddy Laserbeak.  You can peg Laserbeak into Soundwave's arm and have Soundwave talk to him all you like.  And when Laserbeak's work is finished, you can fit Laserbeak right back onto his resting place on Soundwave's chest.  He can remain there in jet mode or plug into the top of the jet mode and look conspicuous there.

I kind of wish Laserbeak had, y'know, a beak.  Also I think Laserbeak should talk.  That's something Dark of the Moon got right.

Soundwave's only one per case in wave one, unlike everyone else in the assortment.  He's shortpacked!  So have fun with that.  When Graham and I found these guys on Wednesday, we had to go to more than one store to make sure we had one for both of us.  Let me tell you, it's much easier to ask an employee to get a box out of the back if you're buying most of the case than it is to ask an employee to get a box out of the back to get the shortpacked guy.  Even if I know I'm not doing this to scalp them, it makes me feel a little guilty for no reason.

I got some United toys today from Japan!  One of them was Windcharger versus Wipe-Out.  I already have a Windcharger, so the United one went immediately on eBay.  Go bid on him!  I kept the Reveal the Shield one I already had 'cuz I like rub signs.  Bidding started at $5 and the auction lasts five days.

Wipe-Out was the real prize!  He's so awesome I'd buy Windcharger twice.  I talked about Wipe-Out's origins in a previous blog post, which is totally linked right here.  Suffice to say, he was a character made up for the Marvel stories.  Why Japan-the-land-of-no-Marvel-Transformers-comics is doing him I have no idea, but I'm incredibly grateful all the same.

It may amaze you, but Wipe-Out is Windcharger in black and blue.  To my eye he has two fewer paint apps than Windcharger, missing the paint around his grill and the vent on his hood.  (Neither of those are necessary here, so I don't miss them or anything.) Instead of the flat black painted windows Windcharger has, Wipe-Out has glittery blue painted windows which look very nice.

But mostly I'm stoked that this is a friggin' Wipe-Out toy.  And suddenly I neeeeeeeeeeeeeeed an original Trypticon.  Man, Metroplex got reissued, so I demand Trypticon be next.   It's kind of weird having Wipe-Out be sycophantic to some dude that's shorter than him.

This is Wheeljack!

...

Man, we just got a Generations Wheeljack last year in the Deluxe Class scale, and so this feels kind of deja vu-y.  And I like that Wheeljack a lot.  It was a Wheeljack that I spent a lot of time with as a character.  This Wheeljack was in one episode and he wasn't even himself for 95% of that, since it was an Evil Imposter episode.

So what to say about Prime Wheeljack.

He's more interesting to transform than I expected.  Yeah, he's one of those guys whose hood becomes his feet and the roof becomes  his chest and the rear becomes his arms.  There are lots of those guys.  Like G1 Wheeljack.  But there's some surprises, like how his shins transform.  Both his forearms and the "bones" of his shins are on these long pieces that rotate between modes.  Starting out in car mode, you split the legs, and then split the legs again, rotating the inner half that has the feet attached.  Then you have to slide up the rest of the hood and fold it over.  I'm doing a terrible job of describing it.

Wheeljack also has swords.  Wheeljack can hold them in his hands, peg them into his shoulders, or in vehicle mode he can stow them underneath or attach them to the front bumper like big... sword things on the front of a car.

He looks like a good recreation of the show model, best I can tell from images.  So that's another plus.

Wheeljack's not bad.  He's just not a pleasant surprise like Cliffjumper was.

First of all, Prime "Robots in Disguise" deluxes are hitting Targets.  Plug your zip code into this link to see if there are any in your area.  You'll probably have to ask them to get some out of the back.  That's what Graham and I did this morning, anyway.

There's very little chance the "First Edition" Cliffjumper's gonna make his way into American stores any time soon, if ever, and there's an even remoter chance of the later-wave totally awesome zombie version, so I decided to get the "RID" version today.  I don't care that much about Cliffjumper, so I'll take the cheapest option when it comes to him.  We're talking a cool $13 instead of the $30-40 it'd cost to import him.

I was more enamored with the "First Edition" mold, which is different from this one.  FE Cliffjumper had a completely different transformation that resulted in less fake vehicle mode parts in robot mode.   The car roof on his chest actually became the car's roof.  The rear bumpers on his shoulders actually became the car's rear bumpers.  That's the sort of thing I generally prefer.  Cliffjumper, on the other hand, takes a different approach.  The car's roof folds up on Cliffjumper's back and the car's rear bumpers become his ankles.  Meanwhile, there's a fake sculpted car roof chest and fake sculpted car bumper shoulders.   There's even fake sculpted wheels on the backs of his thighs, even though his four real wheels are plainly visible.

I don't think there's any obvious car kibble in his robot mode's character model that becomes actual car parts.  There's some real car parts in robot mode, of course, since it can't aaaalll pile onto his back, but none of that stuff exists on the cartoon's character model.

That said, it's not a bad toy.  There's a lot of twists and turns, but none of them make me want to murder anyone, and it's surprisingly unfrustating and expedient to get him from robot mode back into car mode.  It's almost kind of fun, really.  That makes up for a lot.  Other than his odd elbows, he's fun to pose in robot mode, as well.

He is, however, pretty tiny by Deluxe Class standards.  Of all of the Prime deluxes I have so far, he's the shortest.  That may have to do with the large axe he comes with, I dunno.  (The axe can plug into his car roof or the side of his car as a cannon.)  It's a little unfortunate because Cliffjumper's partner was Arcee, who's the second-tallest Deluxe (after Starscream).  And so Arcee is taller than him by a large margin.  These are definitely not their relative heights on the cartoon.

To sum up, if you don't care about fake kibble or relative scale, he's a fantastic toy.  I'm pleasantly surprised by him.

We'd sort of guessed that there'd eventually be a Voyager Class-scale Megatron toy of his Transformers: Prime design. Hasbro probably wasn't going to leave his only representation a Deluxe inside of a multipack. But we had no news of such a toy, no catalog listings or stolen test shots or anything. Until, that is, he suddenly showed up for sale across the ocean at Argos. Usually when we hear news of a toy, it's six months in advance. The lead time between learning about Voyager Megatron and him being for sale was no more than a few hours.

And since I've been anticipating a larger Megatron toy for basically forever, and the multipacked Deluxe still being a no-show, I was willing to ship one from over there to here. I'm mad like that. I asked my Twitter followers for assistance, and a dude named Tricky ended up being my very awesome helper. He's part of a podcast called The Nerdsphere Network, by the way. Go check it out.

Because the leadtime was so short, hopefully nobody  had it in their heads too long that he was going to be gloriously shiny silver like the usually-airbrushed stock photography.  No, Megatron is mostly a matte french gray.  Some of his plastic is caramelly, like his feet, knees, hands, and fusion cannon.  The difference between the gray and the caramel seems a little too pronounced in some photographs, but in person the effect comes off a lot better.  It varies his colors up a bit without requiring paint or using a color too divergent from what he's supposed to be.

The reason I love this Megatron design is his robot mode, and this is where the toy shines.  He's wide yet slick, a balance of monstrous and sophistication.  Other than a lack of a waist joint, there's enough articulation present to get him into most poses that I'd want.  Some Megatrons look kind of dippy while raising their arm up in the air to aim their fusion cannon, but not this guy.  The open palm helps a bit, but I'll let you in on the real reason.  The tops of his shoulders are actually separate from his biceps, and are suspended above them on struts.  This not only helps him look better when his arms are going every which way, but they also help keep his pointy shoulder kibble from clipping his back kibble as you move his arms around.  That would be a real problem otherwise.

The vehicle mode is... sufficient.  It's a little bulkier than I'd like, but I'm not sure any better could be done.  Megatron is a big bulky dude, and he somehow extrudes himself out into a thin, sleek jet.  The toy renders the jet much more thickly, with the legs obviously hanging underneath, and his shoulder spikes tufting out from under his wings like armpit hair.  He's 80% fuselage and 20% wingspan.  It's unfortunate.  But it gives me a great robot mode, so at least the better mode is the one I wanted most.

The Voyager Class toys in this line are called Powerizers.  This is because they have electronic lights.  Megatron's fusion cannon is where Megatron keeps his electronics, and there's a Mechtech-like gimmickry engineered into it as well.  If you push in the plunger in the back, segments of his sword swing forward and into place, in theory becoming a single blade.  In practice, it's tough to get the sword parts to align properly in both configurations.  You can force the sword into a good configuration one end-point or the other, but never so it's at a satisfactory alignment in both.    When the plunger is pushed all the way in, a light inside the cannon turns on and shines into the back of the blade, lighting it up.

Megatron also comes with a handheld blade weapon that pegs into the top of his wrist while a grip slips into his palm.   I think this is just an extra accessory for funsies.  I can't find anything like it on his character model in either modes.

Long story short, major digs for Megatron.  His toy has gravitas, which is what was important to me.  His vehicle mode has less gravitas, what with the whole stubby wings deal, but it's not a dealbreaker to me.  Plus, hey, light-up fusion cannon!  And it doesn't make horrible sounds like the original Galvatron toy!

Oh man, those sounds.

This year's "get free with your membership" toy is Runamuck, and the Beavis to Runamuck's Butthead, Runabout, is one of this year's Transformers Club "you pay for this one" exclusives.  Runabout (renamed "Over-Run" because of trademark reasons) is gonna be on sale very soon!  And the sweet part is, Runabout comes with a box that fits both him and Runamuck, since the freeish Runamuck is a bagged exclusive.

My favorite of the two is Runamuck, the membership-included one.  The orange and white and gold makes me happy.  Runabout intrigues me less, since  he's black and red, which isn't as uncommon a color scheme, but you can't have one without the other.

So if you want the Battlechargers, I'd sign up for the Club to get Runabout and then keep your eyes on the web for Runabout/Over-Run to go up for order.  I'm pretty excited for them.  And for their box art!  It's Marvel-tastic!

Oh, and I guess there's a Shattered Glass Drift going up for order, too.   If you like both, uh, Drift and Deadpool, you'll like SG Drift.

One more thing: With your Club membership, you get a Recordicons strip by me in all six issues of the magazine.  I may show off a sweet panel from the first strip tomorrow or the next day.  I am super excited about it. Actually, my copy of the magazine just arrived, so I'm gonna blather about it now.

Simon Furman's not the only guy revisiting a branch of the original Marvel Transformers universe this year, 'cuz BotCon (and Shattered Glass) are Marvel-bound this year as well!  This gives me the opportunity to feature all sorts of new little tape dudes I didn't previously have access to.  And so in the first Recordicons of the year, I pit Ravage against Ravage.  And in subsequent installments, I have some similar ideas I plan to attend to.

Anyway, I'm just super stoked, because I just wrote my first canon-for-thea-Marvel-Comics-continuity bit of fiction.  That old stuff was my best friend when I was a kid.  I am not joking.

So, dudes, if you want a year of Collectors' Club magazines featuring my Recordicons strips, plus the Runamuck toy included in the subscription price, that'd be pretty swell.  If you dig Transformers, I recommend it!  Here's the website.

Remember, the one with the "b" in the name is the black one.  ...except for in this case, because Runabout's name is now Over-Run.  Dammit, FP, you broke my mnemonic device!

I don't need these Alternators anymore!  You can have them.

I suppose I should talk about those last two BotCon 2012 exclusive reveals.

One of them was Shattered Glass Ultra Magnus.  He doesn't excite me too much.  I do like that he has a translucent skull for a face, but the Diaclone Magnus colors don't look very striking to me.  He may be my least favorite of the six.  It is nice that we get to own the yet-to-be-used-in-retail alternate head for the toy.

The second was Metalhawk.  He was a Japan-only Pretender dude, and so under most circumstances he wouldn't be very high on my AW YEAH list.  However, BotCon knew exactly how to draw me in.  They not only did a toy of his Pretender shell mode instead of his robot, but they actually gave him a human face.  That's something Transformers proper hasn't seen since the late 80s.  It's also something you'd never see at retail these days, so it makes a perfect BotCon exclusive idea.  It's definitely a "you are a hardcore Transformers fan" thing.  It in particular calls back to the Mega Pretenders, who had shells that transformed into vehicles.  Some were random monsters, like Thunderwing, but some were humans!  Seems like Metalhawk gets to join their ranks.

A few days ago, case assortment information for the upcoming Transformers Prime: Robots in Disguise toyline revealed that we were getting a new Deluxe (now redubbed "Revealer") Hot Shot toy.  Despite my super obvious love for all things Hot Shot, I wasn't all that excited.  See, we learned previously that "Hot Shot" is a name that had been reassigned to Hot Rod for trademark ownership reasons.  Screw a Hot Rod!  Anyway, I figgered it'd just be a Hot Rod toy.  Meh!

But then the Argos catalog over in the great United Kingdom gave us photos, and there was this blue Bumblebee with a new head.  This head has a visor that is lowered over the eyes.  Now, this image had no label of any sort, so it could still be anybody, but I'm laying odds it's a friggin' real Hot Shot.  Not the  Hot Roddy kind, but a genuine JaAm-loving Hot Shot.  He's in his Cybertron colors since, well, y'know, he can't be yellow for obvious reasons, but it's definitely looking like a Hot Shot.

So I made sure I was the first guy to do fan art of him.