I've got a few hours before we gotta head over to the theatre, so I've got a little time to crank out more photos and words about the BotCon exclusives I haven't given specific attention to yet.  I'm in the middle of packing away toys for our move in a few weeks anyway, and I can't box away some of my Animated stuff until I get them photographed with their BotCon redecoes and/or retools!  I can't help it.  It's my compulsion.

So here's Lockdown and his BotCon counterpart, the Stunticon Wildrider.  For being a dark gray redeco of a black toy, they look pretty different, which is nothing short of amazing.  (Note: My Lockdown is a little custom-painted.)  The silver and burgundy definitely distinguish him, and the most recognizable part of of Lockdown, his lantern-shaped head, is replaced by a new one.  Wildrider has a pointier jaw with jagged teeth and a little helmet.

Another nice thing about Wildrider is that he's the "Blazing Lockdown" mold, which means he comes with the chainsaw instead of the hook.  I never got the chainsaw version, so that's an extra bonus for me.

Despite Wildrider's feral appearance, he actually sounds like Dr. Smith from Lost in Space.

Man, I sure own a lot of toys with suggestible names.  But with Peter gone (thanks, bidders!) it's time to put another dude up for auction.  This time it's e-Hobby's clear blue United Rodimus.  He's so so so pretty.  But I don't need him!  He can be yours instead.  Check out his eBay page!

It seemed like just yesterday Hasbro was showing off their new not-LEGO product at Toy Fair, buried in a secret room, banned from all photography and our LEGO employee friend.  Those were the days.  My thoughts at the time were, well, those are kind of neat, I guess.  I'll probably have to try one out.  Probably Ratchet.  Not because Ratchet's set looks the best to me, but because it's Ratchet.  Yay Ratchet.

It's not Hasbro's first attempt at not-LEGO.  Back in 2003 or so, they put out Built to Rule, which featured both Transformers and G.I. Joe to,  uh, no success.  The vehicles were all right, but the robot modes looked like ass on ass.  (That's double ass.)  They didn't hold together very well and they looked like crap.  But this time around, for KRE-O, Hasbro seems to have wisely outsourced to a not-LEGO company in China called Oxford.  And by my first photograph you can see how obviously this was a better way to go.  It's a staggering comparison.

So finally, post BotCon, these KRE-O kits started showing up in Toys"R"Us.  TRU has a ghetto Feature Wall they have to fill with Transformers product while Cars 2 crap continues to take up 30% of the store, so KRE-O has its first day in the sun.  And by golly, these things are priced to sell.  The tinier kits are $8.  Ratchet, who I wanted, and is pretty sizeable, is $20.  Do you have any idea how expensive real LEGO are?  They are super expensive.  So I grabbed the smaller version of Bumblebee along with my Ratchet.

These are building block sets, not Transformers, and so that means you build each mode.  No, they don't transform in the conventional sense, nor would I expect or want them to.  If I wanted a damn transforming Transformer, I'd buy one of the thousands which do just that.  You put together the vehicle mode, disassemble completely, and then put together the robot mode.  Neither mode uses all the pieces, but the robot mode uses more.  The vehicle modes omit most of the robot mode limb and jointing pieces, for example, and the robot mode ends up leaving off one or two random pieces that you could probably peg somewhere on the back were you to be so inclined.

I very much liked my Bumblebee.  I think I like the smaller sets in general.  Once you get to guys at about Ratchet's size, putting them together starts to feel like this tedious chore where you're just layering in the thinnest of pieces for hours, like you're putting back together an onion.  Bumblebee felt more immediately gratifying.  A few days later I went back and got Jazz, who's another of the smaller-sized kits.

Instead of paint applications on the bricks themselves, stickers are involved.  I would recommend not putting stickers on until you're done with the vehicle mode.  The instructions (which are exactly like LEGO's) call for you to put them on as  you assemble the build, but this is a bad idea if we're talking about stickers that represent stripes going across the top of the vehicle mode.  You're gonna want to make sure you're lining up those stripes evenly from piece to piece, rather than here and there one at a time.  Some of the stickers feel like they're too small for the space, like Bumblebee's stripes.  The instructions show the stickers covering up a larger surface than they do in reality.  As a result, his stripes feel more like a suggestion of stripes rather than real stripes.

(The quality of the stickers are not that great, sadly.  Be careful with the corners.  The color part can separate from the sticky part pretty easily.  Reprolabels has spoiled me.)

The Transformers Wiki still hasn't decided how to categorize these things.  Are they Generation 1?  Are they the new "modern continuity" umbrella Hasbro keeps namedropping?  Are they movie?  The mini-figures that come with the bigger sets are straight copies of the Transformers as they appeared in the original cartoon.  Bumblebee's smaller kit looks pretty G1, save for the stripes, considering his hood legs and windshield tummy.  Both Bumblebee and Ratchet have heads that are knocked-off from their Classics toys.  But the largest kits, Prime and Bumblebee and Sentinel Prime and Megatron, obviously take greater cues from the movie designs, though Megatron and Sentinel Prime's heads are strongly Animated style. S'hard to say.  Hasbro cares less about these things than we do.  They just want to sell some friggin' not-LEGO.

And so far they're doing a bang-up job, at least in my household.

I am so bummed out right now that my old Generation 2 Ramjet is up in the attic.  I could do awesome comparison pictures!  Also, because G2 Ramjet is greatness.  He's the first version of the Seeker mold I've ever owned.  Some time in the middle of Beast Machines, I found him and G2 Sideswipe (and a buttload of other G2) at a True-Value hardware store back in my Indiana hometown.  Clearly some toy cases were discovered long past their shelf date.  So,  y'know, I splurged.  It was the right decision.

Also like G2 Sideswipe, I've never sought to replace my G2 Ramjet with an original G1 version as they became reissued or more available to me through BotCons and eBay.  Again, same as Sideswipe, what's the point?  The G2 colors are awesome.  Ramjet's Generation 1 colors... eh, they're all right.  They're not offensive or anything.  They're just kind of dull.  They're not black and purple and turquoise with spots of orangey red.

So when Classics Ramjet came out, I liked him, but he wasn't really my Ramjet.  My Ramjet is gorgeous.  This new Club Exclusive G2 Ramjet... this is my Ramjet.  And while in principle I kind of like to see my Classics molds with updated decoes that are simply evocative of the original rather than slavish recreations... I admit seeing all of Ramjet's stickers recreated millimeter by millimeter does kind of pull at me in the right places.  It is an improvement that nearly all of his stickers are recreated with paint.  The bits on his shoulder-intakes and the tops of his feet are still stickers, but only 'cuz you can't tampograph stuff inside those crevices very easily (as I understand).

And in the past, when Fun Publications has tried to recreate sticker detail that had words, their font recreation has never been very good.  But not here.  The "RAMJET" on the side looks accurate to me.  A big improvement in that regard.   It is kind of weird that they painted black between the legs on the top of Ramjet's jet mode, as if they're trying to recreate the gap that existed there on the original toy.  Not sure how I feel about that.

And thank God his eyes are gold.

There are some downsides, though!  For example, wow, is this mold showing its age.  It's the twentieth use of the mold, if I recall, so no big surprise, even if Hasbro/Tomy has been trying to upkeep its viability bit by bit over the years.  Some folks have reported scary-looking seams in their Ramjet feet.  This does not appear to be a problem with mine.  However, it is kind of a pain to get his torso transformed.  The cockpit part of his chest no longer wants to fit smoothly inside the rest of the torso.  It requires some excessive force to squeeze it into place.

Oh, and the art on Ramjet's box is kind of yikes, like someone hit a drunken Pat Lee over the head.  Here's a hint: the middle finger should not be the shortest finger.  Another hint: This Shortpacked! strip was not a serious how-to, dude.

I kid, mostly.  We got our G2 Breakdown last year, so it's nice to have the first BotCon exclusive of Breakdown which isn't in his G2 colors, as much as I love my cyan and magenta.  It's just... his regular colors are kinda boring.  I never dug the off-white.  And the BotCon exclusives are basically the only reason I know Breakdown exists, so I have no nostalgia for it.  Honestly, out of all five of the Animated Stunticons in the box set, Animated Breakdown is probably my least favorite.

...which is made up by Animated Sideswipe being so awesome.  Sideswipe was one of the at-show souvenir add-ons, bundled with Toxitron.  Unlike Breakdown, Sideswipe IS in his G2 colors, which are his G1 colors (red and black) reversed.  The original G2 Sideswipe toy had a green launcher and a few green stickers, and the Animated version ramps up the green to beautiful effect.  It's really a great combination, the bright green and the black and the red and the white.  It's not a color combination we get much.

Why is Animated Sideswipe in G2 colors?  I imagine it's 'cuz that mold's already been in red as Rodimus.  (It's already been in black as Black Rodimus, but not a lot of people have that, and it's pretty different anyway.)  Plus, well, G2 Sideswipe colors are just objectively better than G1 Sideswipe colors anyway.  There, I said it!  I've never owned a G1 Sideswipe, since I picked up a G2 Sideswipe in my late teens and never saw a reason to pick up any of the G1 reissues as they've been paraded out in the past decade, 'cuz, well, why?  I already had the better version!  Sideswipe didn't really do anything until the Marvel G2 comic anyway.

Another nice thing about this pair is the head.  It strikes a great compromise between both of their head designs.  Breakdown's head looks like Breakdown's (animation model) and Sideswipe's head looks like Sideswipe's.  It's amazing what a little hedging and color differences can do.  And they both kind of deserve the dour expression on their face, what with Breakdown being an unhappy nervous wreck and Sideswipe being a bitter ol' cop.

(Neil Ross did a great voice for him at BotCon 2011's script reading.)

Plus, you know me and mold reuse.  Reuse a mold once, and I shrug.  Reuse it a dozen times and suddenly I'm compelled to own all of them.  That collector mentality kicks in.  It's why I own 30 Dinobots.  And if you think I'm happy with my four Animated Rodimus reuses, wait 'til we get to my Animated Cybertronian Ratchet reuses.

'Cuz folks need to know Duncan's ongoing feelings on all things BotCon Thundercracker!  Equally as important as catching up with Conquest or that black guy.

Once upon a time there was a guy named Thundercracker. He was just a boring ol' redeco of Starscream.  (Or vice versa.  S'hard to tell.)  Starscream was way popular and managed to be one of the first handful of original Transformers toys that got second and third toys.  Starscream got a Classic Pretender toy, an Action Master toy... but Thundercracker was kind of a nobody, so he didn't get that kind of attention.

But when he did get that kind of attention, yikes!  As I said, he was kind of a nobody.  So unlike Starscream, who was important enough to keep his appearance mostly intact during those years, Thundercracker could apparently look damn near like anything!  And so, after Generation 1 ended in North America, and Action Masters continued in Europe, Thundercracker got his second toy.  And, oh lord, it is probably the craziest damn color scheme you'll ever see on a Transformer.  He was purple.  And maroon.  And blue.  And green.  And gold.

It is a color scheme so insane that it crosses the threshold from insane terrible into insane awesome.

Who will dare to homage Action Master Thundercracker?  Certainly not Hasbro!  What retailer would carry this thing?  I mean, look at it.  No, this task would fall to Fun Publications, who could probably target just the very handful of people who'd care about the homage.  And, y'know, hopefully avoid the folks who look at it, go WHAT THE HELL, and then continue on about their day.

Technically, this BotCon toy is Shattered Glass Thundercracker, Thundercracker's mirrorverse counterpart.  You're allowed to be crazy colors in mirrorverses!  And so he  has a red Decepticon symbol on his shoulder.  But, dude, c'mon.  Action Master Thundercracker.  The Holy Grail of insane Transformers callbacks.  The one you thought they'd never do, and by "they" you mean "EVERYONE ON EARTH."  BotCon did an admirable job matching the colors on Action Master Thundercracker's nonstransformable figure to this Classics Seeker mold.  The Action Master didn't have arm-guns or proper wings, so those kind of end up whatever the plastic sprue breakdowns allowed, but otherwise he's spot-for-spot accurate.

But my favorite thing is his jetmode.  Action Master Thundercracker never had a jetmode, because, y'know, he was an Action Master.  And so we finally get to see what kind of cracked-out jet mode Action Master Thundercracker would transform into.  And the answer is... yeah, pretty cracked out.  His wings are purple, his body is maroon, his intakes are randomly green, and then right down the middle of his nose the colors swap from maroon to purple.  That's my favorite part.  I love that there is absolutely no attempt at vehicle mode cohesion.  This toy is all about robot mode accuracy to something that never was really supposed to have a jet mode.

(Oh, hey, stealth homage.  His wings are done up like the wings to Action Master Thundercracker's "Solo Mission Jet Plane," his Action Master transformable exo-suit.  Neat.  That might also be where the green intakes are from, who knows.)

One small flaw in this toy being Shattered Glass Thundercracker and not the original Thundercracker proper is that it negates the awesome and/or tragic story that would involve such a drastic color shift.   I mean, consider Thundercracker, the fictional character.  For millions of years, he's this dark blue and black and silver guy.  Pretty conservative.  But then, out of no where, he's this purple and blue and green and every other color monstrosity.  What's the story behind that?  Did he have a stroke?  Is this a personal visual statement?  Is he attracting a mate?  Did someone paint him up like this as a gag and he's too colorblind to notice?  Did he lose a bet?

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

One of BotCon 2011's add-on sets included Toxitron.  I'm sure most of you are asking, WHO THE HELL IS TOXITRON??  Well, until last weekend, nobody, really.  He is technically a new character.  However, he's one that has his roots.

See, years ago, there was a BotCon panel hosted by Rik Alvarez that showed various Transformers rarities.  One of them was a potential Generation 2 Laser Optimus Prime redeco in purple, gray, and green named "Toxitron."  A few BotCons later Toxitron was on display at the Hasbro Tour.  And so Toxitron, a guy who was never released, and a guy we'd never really know about otherwise, had built up a tiny bit of infamy.

So, hey, guess what.  Here's Animated Toxitron.  The concept of Toxitron fits pretty well into the sometimes (and thankfully) goofy Animated universe.  Toxitron's a tongue-in-cheek parody of Bizarro Superman, speech-pattern and all.  He's a not-so-good clone of Optimus Prime.  He drives backwards.  He's super-strong but not so smart.

And, yeah, he's a sickly green, purple, and gray.

I think my favorite aspect of him is the dripping orange splotches all over him.  There's some on the nozzle of his cannon, too, implying that the orange goop is something he also shoots, not just perspires.  (The gun, by the way, is a functioning water squirter.  Are he and Motor Master the only BotCon toys with water squirters?)

Who can't love Toxitron?  Nobody, that's who!