Yay, it's Rotorbolt!  You might be thinking, meh, why should I care about Rotorbolt?  Well, let me tell you.

The premise of the Beast Wars was that there were two camps of Transformers stranded on prehistoric Earth, the Maximals and the Predacons.  But the thing is, the Predacons seen on the show weren't your normal everyday Predacons.  They were criminal outcast Predacons, even among their own kind.  So you really got the impression from the cartoon that all Predacons were all scheming thugs, even if they're not.  Also, that they transform into animals by default.

Enter Rotorbolt.  He's just a normal Predacon!  He's not a criminal or a thug or a warlord or a mad scientist.  He's just a Predacon.  And, as fate would permit,  he's one of the handful of Cybertronians that escaped Megatron's virus.  So he gets to hang around with the Wreckers.  He's got a problem, though, you see.  He's hung up on his reputation that he's stealthy.  And he is!  His rotors are as quiet as a sigh... in vehicle mode.  In robot mode, however, you can't even hear him talking (constantly, about how stealthy he is) over the roar of his rotors.  Why the decibel change?  I don't know, and I don't care.  It's just endearing.

And of course since Rotorbolt was never in the Beast Wars, he doesn't have a beast mode.  He's just a helicopter.

The original plan way way back was that Rotorbolt was gonna be made from the show-accurate Beast Machines Deluxe Class Obsidian.  However, that toy never got close to completion before the line fizzled out, so we're stuck with him being the original slightly-less-show-accurate Basic Class Obsidian.  Later, Obsidian was redecoed for the Universe line in indigo and brown with red rotors, which was veerrrrry close to Rotorbolt's colors.  Close enough that people used Universe Obsidian for their Rotorbolt, anyway, and certainly close enough that it guaranteed a real Rotorbolt would never be made.  Why would you pay buttloads of convention-exclusive cash for something that's 30% different from what you can buy in stores?

So this is my Rotorbolt.  I started with a Universe Obsidian, of course, expecting that I'd just strip the "energon surge" deco from him, paint his brown purple, and be done.  Ha ha ha ha ha no.  Stripping the paint took about 36 hours of soaking the toy in alcohol.  And even then I had to sort of sand what was left away.  Finally, I started painting the guy's legs, but it was then I realized that, wow, U-Obsidian is waaaayyy bluer than I thought he was.  It's hard to tell when he's got silver-and-purple energon surge deco all over his torso, but with that gone, and his legs painted a more vibrant purple, it's way more obvious that the guy's just dark blue.

And so, after having spent 36 hours stripping paint deco from him, I ended up just painting over all that anyway.  Rats.

I'm less satisfied with him than with Devcon.  Devcon's paint application is pretty even, but Rotorbolt looks kind of sloppy to me.  Plus those legs of his just do not want to keep their paint.  And, yikes, a good portion of the front of Rotorbolt's torso is just gearing for his transformation, and painting gearing is just kind of a no-no but it's right in front and a not-small area, so you kind of have to do it.

This is what I was gonna do with that extra Beast Machines Mirage I wanted.  I ordered one off eBay shortly after getting home from Sunday's toy convention, and I realized the next day that, hey, I could proooobably paint the one I have while I wait for the new one to get here.  Plus, well, the roommate who owns the table is getting her own place tomorrow, so it might be a good idea to get him done before then.

So here he is!  Devcon!  Renowned Autobot bounty hunter, temporarily inhabiting a Vehicon body.  I'm going to say an unpopular thing and say that I liked Wreckers Devcon.  Yeah, he was a jerk, and people say he wasn't that jerky in his original cartoon appearances, but if I have to choose between watching The Gambler or reading the 3H Wreckers comic books, I'm gonna choose the latter every time.  The Gambler is a terrible episode.  Terrible.  If I had to live through that episode, like Devcon did, I'd be kind of a jerk, too.  (And I am.)

And, frankly, the common wisdom that Devcon wasn't as big a jerk in The Gambler versus Wreckers is a bit overinflated.  That episode's so uneven, and original Devcon is indeed a  jerk at moments while he's nicer in a sparingly few other moments.  Watch as much as you can stand some time, and you'll see what I mean.

I am not a good painter.  In fact, I'm a terrible painter.  But sometimes I luck out.  I think I lucked out as much as I'm able to with Devcon.  He looks pretty okay!  And he's all the right colors, as far as I can discern.  I tell you, the red was a bitch, since it goes over black plastic.  I put a coat of, ahem, silver Sharpie marker on the legs first before painting red over them.  There was kind of a weird chemical reaction in places between the two kinds of coloring, but after going over the bad parts a few times, I was able to get a good smooth, bright red on the black plastic without having to put like fifty layers over everything and burying too much detail.

The ball joints are silver Sharpie, too, though the attached limbs are the proper light gray paint color.  Silver Sharpie coats pretty thinly and fuses almost immediately to the plastic, so I figgered it'd withstand wear and tear better.  And without painting the balljoints, they're kind of obviously Mirage's yellow.  I'd hate to look at the thing.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the results.  And now he can go in my Wreckers display.

Today I went to the Columbus Toy & Collectible Show here in town.  I was alerted to its existence by my pal Robowang, who had a table there.  So off I went.  I kinda wanted to find an extra Beast Machines Mirage to make myself a Devcon, which I didn't find, but I still came home with some stuff.

EDIT: I got one off eBay not long after writing this, so thanks everyone who's offering me a Mirage, but it's been taken care of.

It was a much larger show than I was expecting.  (Heck, it was bigger than some of the earlier BotCons I've been to.)  I was also pleased with how many Transformers were about.  Robowang's friend Rich was there adjoining his booth space, and from him I got this Henkei! Mirage.  It's a, what, magazine-exclusive toy from Japan?  Something like that.  Anyway, the reason I care about it is because he was repurposed as evil Shattered Glass Mirage a few years ago.  And the reason I really care about it is because I put SG Mirage in a Recordicons strip I drew a year ago.  He's the only guy in that particular strip who actually exists as a toy that I don't already own.

So Rich sold him to me and I put an SG Autobot symbol Reprolabel on him.

And then on the way home, I found the next wave of Young Justice figures for my wife!  So, like, score.

Courtesy of a back-and-forth between Skyjammer and Rikonius, here's what a good portion of Internet memes thinks about Mike and Amber:



And by popular request, here's a Robin to Photoshop into other things.   I had fun with it.

Very rarely do my DC Comics toy wants eclipse my Transformers toy wants.  I mean, I like me some Batman, but Batmen are Batmen.  I have a dozen, and they all do basically the same thing.  They articulate.  But Transformers at the top of my list are usually both characters that I adore and constructs which convert into other things.  I am spoiled by them.  Other toys seem dull.

But screw a Transformer when Catman is concerned.  Catman is just that awesome.  I hit every Kmart in the area once I heard he was showing up at them, and that's no small investment of time.  (Of course, I found this one unexpectedly at Walmart this morning.)

It's bizarre to think that Catman is that important to me.  I mean, dude.  He's Catman.  For the longest time he was most famous for being the guy who looks just like Batman but is evil and does cat-related crimes.  ...you know.  Catwoman with pecs.  And then he got fat and became a Green Arrow punchline and eaten by a gorilla.  When Green Arrow mocks you,  you know you're at the bottomest of your rope.

That's when Gail Simone put her boundless talent to work on him.  Catman somehow escaped being eaten and instead left America to go find himself in Africa.  He got back in shape and hung around naked with some lions he'd adopted.  Through a convoluted series of events (at least for this write-up) he joined the Secret Six and became more than a Silver Age-style cat-themed villain.   Catman sees himself as a good guy.  Mostly.  His problem is the heroes.  For some reason, he sees Batman as a privileged rich white dude who beats up poor people.  (I know, I know, that's crazytalk!)  Catman doesn't want to blow up the city, but he kind of resents it when Batman saves it.  He sees superheroes as incredibly self-righteous douchebags who think they're hot shit just 'cuz they can beat people up and get praised for it.

Oh, and he has some daddy issues, but that kind of goes with the territory.

His hard-to-define place in the hero/villain hierarchy is what makes him an important part of the Secret Six.  They're all would-be villains or anti-heroes who are pretty fine with doing good deeds even if (or especially if) there's a high body count and money involved.  And their roster includes Deadshot, who's Catman's hetero lifemate.  It's not quite guy love between two guys, but imagine two Dr. Coxes instead of Turk and J.D.

The toy itself is beyond anything I could have hoped for.  I'd been cheering for the possibility of a Catman for years, and mostly figgered it would happen only on the strength of being an easy Batman redeco.  That would have been super efficient, close enough, and it'd be hard to complain about.  I mean, it's just Catman.  But Mattel really surprised me.  A lot of Catman is new!  His head is new, of course.  It has sculpted stubble!  Ha ha ha.  Sweet.  But he also has a new cape with those straps that wrap around his shoulders, new gloves, and a new belt.  I am not sure if his boots are new.  He also comes with his claw-knuckles or whatever you call them.  That's also unexpected and totally welcome.

Mattel is totally rocking this Catman.

He also comes with a little poster.  Mine was ripped when I unrolled it.  That was kind of lame.  It's of Catman fighting Batman, probably the cover to an issue of Secret Six.  Oh well.  And finally, he comes with a stand.  Meh!

When "he comes with a stand I don't care for" and "his poster I was probably going to toss anyway was ripped" are absolutely the only complaints, I consider that a solid win.

This is what I miss about Transformers comics.

So there's a four-page Transformers comic in the latest "Generations" volume of Transformers infobooks.  It's a Japanese publication, despite the comic being by Simon Furman and Guido Guido.  Which I'm perfectly fine with, because they're two of my favorite people.  (I should scan that art of Ratchet that Guido drew me at last year's SDCC.  And somewhere he has an Amber sketch that is not even 10% as awesome as my Ratchet.)

Anyway, why do I like it?  It just feels like oldschool Transformers comics.  You know, back when they were about selling toys, and the choice in characters determined who was required to appear?  That's right, I'm nostalgic for being sold to.  But there's just something undeniably vintage Transformers about reading a Transformers comic and it focusing on guys in bodies that are currently available for sale.  IDW mostly avoids that with their comics.  They make up their body designs and choose their character roster as they please, with a few exceptions.

But I miss the old Eighties demand for relevant product placement.  Transformers has been graced with many talented creative types, and sometimes you squeeze the best material out of talented folks with some imposed guidelines.  Sometimes restrictions aren't bad.  And sometimes those restrictions force creatives to use folks they wouldn't have used otherwise, or make them consider other story or character alternatives.

Would Thunderwing or Bludgeon have become important characters if Hasbro hadn't mandated Simon Furman to use toys they were currently selling in his late 80s work?  Probably not.

That's why I like this story in the Generations books.  It's about Stepper/Ricochet, of course, since that's the exclusive toy that the magazine is trying to sell, but it's also about a bunch of other guys in the United toyline.   It's nice to see guys like Wheeljack and Kup and Scourge and Lugnut and Wheeljack and Bumblebee all in their most recent toy designs.  We don't see that often enough.  I like when I buy new toys of old characters, but there's something missing when I don't see those new toys in new stories.

And it doesn't hurt that Guido drew and colored his comic pages like the original Marvel comics material, either.

If you guys miss Robin being in politics, then the next several strips over atDumbing of Age should be a gentle breeze of nostalgia.

Yay, alternate universes.

I've been wanting Reprolabels for my Hosehead for forever, and finally they exist.  It's not often I buy Reprolabels to replace missing official stickers.  Usually they're to "enhance" a toy above and beyond the official appearance, like with Perceptor a few days ago.  But my Hosehead has been dreadfully bare for years, and now he is not.  Hurrah!

Hosehead is Nightbeat's friend.  Sort of.  It's hard to discern.  Both he and Nightbeat are Headmasters, which means they musta gotten their Nebulan partners basically around the same time frame, right?  They should know each other from then.

But in their Marvel UK introduction, when Nightbeat and Siren meet Hosehead, they don't recognize each other at all, to the point of confusing each other for Decepticons.  Maybe Hosehead was in another room when all the Headmastering went down, and convenient foliage kept blocking him whenever Nightbeat and Siren passed by?  Who knows.  In the US stories, it's assumed they just hung out together forever.

Anyway.

These are the questions that keep geeks awake at night.

Man, I'm intimidated by writing this thing about Masterpiece Rodimus Prime.  He's a Masterpiece, as just noted like five words ago, and so there's a lot of stuff going on with him.

Let's start at the beginning.  Masterpiece Rodimus Prime was first released over in Japan, where he had a billion more paint apps and he came with the trailer to make Rodimus Prime's altmode.  That version transforms into Hot Rod's robot mode, Hot Rod's car mode, Rodimus Prime's robot mode, and Rodimus Prime's truck mode.  It cost $250.  It was kind of a lot, but it was a big trailer, I guess.  I was happy not to buy it.

Our version drops the trailer.  And so you get Hot Rod and Rodimus Prime's robot modes, but only Hot Rod's car mode.  Really, I don't feel like I'm missing much.  You don't really transform Hot Rod's car mode into Rodimus Prime's truck mode so much as you put the trailer around the whole thing like a shell.  There's not much of Hot Rod's car mode visible.  The car just fills in the bottom, supplying wheels and the spoiler.  Meh, I say.

And so I'm happy to get the American version for $60.  Yeah, it's missing one of its four modes, but that mode was formed dumbly and I'm not a huge Rodimus Prime fan anyway.  No, I'm in this for the idea of having a huge Hot Rod toy.  Back in the 2000s, Hot Rod starred in some BotCon fiction set during the Beast Era as one of the leaders of the Wreckers.  And since Maximals and Predacons are tiny dudes compared to Autobots and Decepticons, Hot Rod was a giant among them.  However, his original toy was not very large, and was in fact smaller than most of the Maximal and Predacon toys.  This was annoying.  WELL NO MORE.  I now have a huge Hot Rod to put with my Beast Era Wreckers.  And because Hasbro is clairvoyant about my desires, they even decoed the domestic version to look like Hot Rod's toy, instead of like Hot Rod's animation model like the Japanese version.

Also, because Hasbro knows I love Targetmasters, only the domestic version of Masterpiece Rodimus Prime comes with a new Masterpiece version of his Targetmaster partner.   His name used to be Firebolt, which apparently Hasbro's lost the trademark to, so now he's "Offshoot."  Whatevs.  He's a Masterpiece Nebulan, which is awesome, because now the ranks of the Masterpiece toys are Optimus Prime, Starscream and his redecoes, Megatron, Grimlock, Hot Rod, and... this Nebulan guy.  Ha ha ha ha.

Hot Rod is not fun to get into vehicle mode.  Some Masterpiece toys aren't so bad about this.  Prime, Grimlock, maybe Starscream it's been so long... but Hot Rod is just difficult enough to drive me wild.  It always starts out easy, and as I start plugging along, I start to think maybe I've finally learned how to get him back and forth easy-cheesy and then BAM I hit his legs and I get things as far as they'll go and I have a car mode that's bent at the middle like it melted in the sun.  And I'm sure I'm doing something really tiny and trivial incorrectly, but do I really care?  I'll just put him back in robot mode.  It's not worth the effort to dissect the process.

Which is part of the reason I applied his shoulder stickers.  They're intended to be optional, because putting his original-toy-accurate shoulder stickers on his shoulders means there's shoulder stickers on his car mode.  But I'm not ever gonna keep him in car mode.  I'm really not.  He's gonna stand at the back of my Wreckers display, looking rightfully huge.  So there you go.

Getting Hot Rod into Rodimus mode is very easy.  You open up the head and swap faces, and then you finagle his hips down a notch, making him taller.  Oh, and you can spread his spoiler out wider, but that's kind of an imperceptible change anyway.  ...Oh, right, and his two Hot Rod guns combine to form his Rodimus Prime rifle.  That's pretty great.  Almost forgot.

He comes with two Matrixes.  (Matrices?)  One is small enough that it can fit into his chest.  It is ridiculously tiny.  The other Matrix, another accessory that's exclusive to the American release, is one that's scaled large enough for him to hold.  It opens, which is neat.  (It's not the same as Masterpiece Optimus Prime's, which also opened.  This appears to be original tooling.)

Hot Rod also has flip-down binocular shades, a wielding torch hand-replacement and a buzzsaw hand replacement, all things which Hot Rod used in the 1986 animated film.  Those I'm not terribly excited about, but I guess it's nice they exist.

The Japanese release of this toy had the trailer, but apparently it also had a bunch of engineering and quality control problems.  Those have been fixed, so I'm told, for this American release.  They've also been fixed for the Japanese versions going forward, I think, so, uh, if you get a Japanese version, make sure you get a new one.

Man, where'd I put my Wreckers symbol Reprolabels...