Since I love my The Fallens, I was predictably gung-ho about the "Victory of The Fallen" Legends Class five-pack.  It's exclusive to Kmart and it has a tiny adorable version of my favorite The Fallen deco.  You know, the bright orange and black one.  (La Porte Slicers colors.)  It's also nice that the other four guys he comes with -- Prime, Jetfire, Starscream, and Megatron -- are all Legends Class figures that I don't own.

But what I was especially excited for, stupidly, was the "Most-Wanted Decepticons" collectors card that comes in the package.  There's a code on the back that you plug into the official website, promising you the completion to the story which was set up on the back of the packaging.  C'mon, the set's literally named "The Victory of the Fallen!"  There's got to be an awesome finale described where he totally succeeds at killing the Solar System and getting his titular revenge.  Maybe this time it's Optimus Prime who gets his face taken!

Of course not.  Once you register for the site and input your code, all it tells you is the ending to the live-action film.  Laaaaaaaaaaaaaame.  This is not the victory I was promised!  Curse you,  Hasbro.  Your lies sting my gullible soul.

How does this keep happening to a dude who has like two or three Tech Spec stats that are rated infinite?

I'm back from Philly!  Have comic link.

One of our pals is getting married on Sunday, so we're hitting the road for Philly.  (It's McFly, one of TFWiki's Guys Who Know How To Make The Website Work.)  My website(s) should run smoothly while I'm gone; I got SP! queued up through the next few days and Dumbing of Age queued up through... November...

The only reason I bother mentioning it is because I will not be here to tell you to read the Toy News International strip when it goes up tomorrow.  So remember to do that!  I'm counting on you.

Also I guess Hasbro's new cable network The Hub starts airing tomorrow.  But there's no new Transformers on it for months yet, so who cares.  (Plus our cable package doesn't include it anyway.  Should probably try to fix that before, like, December.)

Bill Barnes is the creator of Unshelved, a webcomic about librarians.  Don't laugh, it's true.  A regular feature is the Unshelved Book Club, where characters talk about a book they've read.  Sometimes Bill invites other webcomics to get into the act, and probably, what, a billion months ago he asked me to.

I originally planned to do something with Robin and Leslie from Shortpacked! about The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs, but then convention season happened and I became Worst Guest Comic Contributor Ever.  But a few weeks ago Bill reminded me that he could totally end me, and I got back to it.  Not because of any threats of bodily harm he may or may not have threatened, but because we're really good friends and I didn't want to let him down.

Between the original solicitation for a guest strip and the actual creation, I had started Dumbing of Age, so I did a little... shift in my guest strip's execution.  Enjoy.

I always love the "Upgrade" sticker sets that Reprolabels.com offers for Animated figures.  Since Animated toys are cartoony to begin with, stickers on them that recreate unpainted detail stick out less than, say, trying to smoosh old G1 sticker detail across Classics Hot Rod's legs.  And more often than not, Reprolabels manages to provide stickers for stuff I wasn't able to duplicate myself with paint.

Case in point: The "Upgrade" set for Animated Arcee!  Sure, I managed to put in the black under her eyes and color in her lips and chin, but there were lots of little things that are out of the jurisdiction of my ability.  (Basically, anything that isn't black is pretty rough.)  For example, those white areas on the tops of her feet.  Those stickers make me happy.  The ones that cover up the fronts of her behind-the-head shoulder kibble with the proper magenta/white layouts are also much appreciated.  The smaller things aren't so bad, either, like the white and black circles for her shoulders and knees.  And stuff for her back, even though you can't see it usually?  Why not.  Oh, and woo, a colored Autobot logo.

There's always extra stuff on these sets that I don't want or stuff I was able to do better myself.  The set offers a battlemask if you want one, or you can make her head look like it's being opened and probed like in "TransWarped."  A sticker to cover her face with a "normal" face is provided, but I liked my paint better.

Reprolabels has been a long-time sponsor of the Transformers Wiki, so they're awesome in that way, too.  Currently, they have a  special offer running where you get a free faction symbol sticker sheet for every $10 you spend.  Go check them out!

Andrew Sorohan's done a number of guest comics for Shortpacked! over the years, and so I'm letting you folks know that his own webcomic, A Townsville Fairytale, is a year old at 52 weekly installments.  If you like Australia and mustaches, you should go check it out.

Unicron may not fit into my lighting studio, but the lighting ain't so bad on top of our white table against our white wall at about... noon.  With fill-in lights.  And heavy use of Photoshop.

So, hooray!  I was sad because the normal-room-light photos didn't give you a good appraisal of his colors.  Now to transform this guy so I have photos for TFwiki.

I've always had a fascination with the cosmic portion of the Transformers mythos.  It's weird, because I'm not like that with, say, Marvel.  When it comes to Marvel, I'm more about Spider-Man.  I couldn't care less about Galactus and Thanos.  I want to see the mundane.  Same with DC, where I prefer the "street-level" Batman stuff to the grander scale stories.

This isn't to say that I don't care about the smaller Transformers stories.  That's very far from the truth.  The smaller stuff is easily the most important.  But the weird part is that I care at all about the cosmic Transformers stuff.  I like the "Original Thirteen" crap and the Covenant and anything pertaining to The Fallen.  So, of course, I like Unicron.

Mind, for the first few years of Unicron's existence in my childhood, he was just that big planet guy the Transformers fought in the movie.  He was big, he ate things, and he was created by a space monkey.  The only thing that could destroy him was some doodad in Optimus Prime's chest.  For no reason.  There wasn't much to him.  He was neat, I guess, but ultimately one-dimensional.  It was Simon Furman, the Marvel UK writer, that made me super-interested in Unicron.  He retconned Unicron as the ultimate enemy of the Transformers, the Satan to their Creator God, Primus.  The Matrix was the only thing that could stop him because it contained a portion of Primus' life force.  This was the context that made Unicron compelling to me.

Unicron continues to be compelling partly because, to me, he's the one thing that ties all Transformers stories together.  There are so many different and crazy continuities out there.  Transformers has been rebooted no fewer than a hojillion times.  But whenever Unicron shows up, it's the same guy.  There's only one Unicron, shared by an infinite number of universes.  He makes me feel like the Transformers multiverse isn't so fragmented.  There's something that holds it all together, that it's just one huge story with smaller parts.  Parts that Unicron wants to eat.

And so that's why I would pay a lot of money to own a special Unicron.

Behold my special Unicron!  Takara's been celebrating 2010 with toy releases that harken back to the third season of the original cartoon, and this gussied-up Unicron is one of its biggest attractions.  It's largely the original Armada Unicron that I already have, but with many small differences.

The biggest of the small differences is the new head.  The Mini-Con-symbol-foreheaded Armada head was actually pretty awesome in its own right, but it took a few liberties that are "corrected" here.  Takara basically grabbed the 1986 animated movie's head and made it three-dee.

The rest of the differences are in the deco.  2010 Unicron is a much darker, saturated orange than the Armada version.  His dark gray legs skew teal ever so very, very slightly, so you end up with a giant vibrant poster child for the "orange and teal" color treatment every single movie gets these days.  He's amazingly pretty in person because of this.  Almost all of him is paint-washed, as well, so his tiny sculpted detail all over his body pops out.  But, thankfully, not so much that he looks dirty or muddy.  Too much paint wash can just make things look small, rather than large.

2010 keeps all of his original electronics and gimmickry.  The missile still fires out of his giant chest doors when you activate it with his Mini-Con.  He still comes with his Mini-Con!  His eyes and right fist still light up, too.  Oh, and there's those Mini-Con activated missiles on his legs.  And he comes in a gorgeous box.

If I have any complaint with him, it's this:  I can't imagine how they budgeted for him to be covered in this much paint, with all this paint wash and attention to detail, yet they neglect to paint the gray on the outside of his helmet so that it wraps all the way around his head.

How does this happen?  Seriously, what in the Hell?  They even took the time to paint stuff on his back silver, even though that's going to be covered up with kibble 99% of the time and facing the wall.  But not the sides of his face.

Man.

Other than that glaring oversight, he's absolutely great.  I can sell my old Armada Unicron, now!  Not that it'll go for much, as that version of him was released at least three times to retail, and can sell on eBay for about $20.  But mine has Reprolabel upgrade stickers!  That's got to be worth something, right?

Dammit.