It was a pretty empty Hasbro presentation yesterday due to snowstorms, but the folks who managed to make it got to see a lot of crazy-ass stuff.

Of course, Beast Hunters is ongoing this year.  The highlight for me, beyond the usual "yay, Shockwaves and dragons and Ultra Magnuses" is the retooled Beast Hunters Ratchet.  I was already excited for a possible retool of Ratchet in the style of the other retooled toys, but I didn't imagine they'd make him friggin' Dinobot.  Hasbro's (inadvertently?) made him a mix of two of my favorite characters, and my brain doesn't know what to do with this.  (In a positive way.)  It's a Ratchet/Dinobot Fuzor, complete with a rotate blade.  Maybe next year they can take things further and throw some Hot Shot in there too, and we'd have the perfect center of my Favorite Transformers Characters Venn Diagram.

Link: Beast Hunters Deluxes

Link: Beast Hunters Voyagers

Kre-O's also giving us two more waves of blindpacked Micro-Changers.  That's 24 more guys!  And there's folks like Arcee and Cheetor and Guzzle and Lugnut in there.  There's three more Kreon Combiners as well, with Defensor, Abominus, and Piranacon in wave 2.  I am so glad these guys are so cheap 'cuz I wannem all.

Link: Kre-O Micro-Changers 1

Link: Kre-O Micro-Changers 2

Link: Kre-O Micro-Changers 3

Later this year,  Hasbro's beginning to celebrate Transformers' 30th Anniversary.  The centerpiece of all this is holy cow the largest Transformers toy ever made, no joke.  A new toy of Metroplex clocks in at a few inches taller than 1987's Fortress Maximus, which was already nearly two feet tall.  The new Metroplex still has both battlestation and city modes, and I really like the direction the new toy has taken these ideas.  The battle station pushes more of an aircraft carrier vibe with a sizable pair of airstrips running down the legs.  That's way cooler to me than covering up those flat surfaces with giant guns.  And the city mode deals with what I thought was the most annoying thing about Metroplex's original city mode, which was all of the obstructed street paths.  You can send a car from the garage in Metroplex's chest all the way out to the tips of his feet.  No big obstructions in the way.  And, of course, the helipad is still there, and Metroplex has electronic lights and speech, and apparently his pupils can look around???  Metroplex is intended to work with Legends Class toys (he comes with a Legends Class Scamper), and in that vein Hasbro is giving us new Legends versions of Optimus, Bumblebee, Megatron, and Starscream.  There's obviously a whole catalog of older Legends Class and Cyberverse toys as well to fill those ranks.

Link: Metroplex

Link: Generations Legends

In the smaller end of the 30th Anniversary line are a series of Deluxes that are based on the IDW comics.  You know those Spotlight issues that are coming out now?  Those are the issues that will be backed in with these toys, and the titular character gets a toy in the body that's seen in that issue.  So Orion Pax, Thundercracker, Megatron, Bumblebee, Trailcutter (Trailbreaker), and more are getting this treatment.  And, oh, hey, two new Voyager Triple Changers, Blitzwing and Springer.  Blitzwing's okay, but Springer is my Best Possible Springer.  He's based directly on Nick Roche's design from Last Stand of the Wreckers.  Seriously, dudes!  That's like the only thing that would make me excited about a new Springer toy, Triple Changer or no.  That shoots him up to the top of my list.  Sorry, Chinese Springer I just bought.  Your helicopter mode is a pretty toy-y gray, but this new guy is friggin' Nick Roche Springer.

Link: Generations Deluxes

Link: Generations Voyagers

It's just.... this guy is so toyetic, you know???

He's a giant red and blue and silver robot who has a big green translucent sword and like four wings and there are boosters back there too but they can be guns if you want and oh look he also transforms into a friggin' snarled monster of a semi with friggin' bumper claws.  It's the kind of Transformers stuff we'd get before the Movies, when it was decided that everything must look like realistic vehicles.  This toy says eff you, I'm gonna be a claw truck.  Oh, you don't like that my arms just fold behind the cab and are barely covered up by wings barely pretending to be the surface of a trailer?  Well, that's too bad, because I just impaled you.  Honey Optimus don't care.

I dunno.  He's just bulky and extravagant in all the ways I think I needed right now.  He looks like a toy, not carefully-maintained-flagship-character-for-a-toy-franchise-desperate-for-mainstream-legitimacy, and he doesn't apologize for it.  Screw you, my windows are friggin' green.  Yeah, that's right.  Take a picture, it'll last longer.  

(I took several.)

There's gonna be a bigger and more insane version coming out later this year, and we'll probably see photos of it today at Toy Fair if anyone can master the snow, but I couldn't wait.  I wanted this guy, this particular one.  I might want the bigger one, too, I dunno yet.  But I do know that this one was always meant to be mine, and finally is.  He is the one I have been waiting for.  Him and his Beast Wars Transmetally grimace.  He's mad as hell, and he's not gonna faceplate up anymore.

Beasts, you've been warned.

Hasbro is spreading their Beast Hunters stuff into the Kre-O line as well.  This set based around Optimus is the only set that's out so far, and it's only been spotted at Meijer.  But I had to have it for Reasons.

Well, Reason.  Finally Hasbro's started giving names to the little human dudes who come with the bigger sets.  Usually they're just "driver" or "pilot" or whatever, but this time the human's named and designed after the kid from Transformers: Energon, Chad "Kicker" Jones.  As were his toys in that toyline, his name is better trademarkable as "Energon Kicker," so there y'go.  Another set that's not out yet comes with "Col. Daniel Witwicky," which is Sparkplug Witwicky's full name and rank in IDW comics.  If they keep on throwing awesome pre-existing human dudes into these sets, I am going to be very pleased and also very poorer.

The rest of the set didn't disappoint, either.  I really feel like these later Kre-O sets are hitting a groove.  The sets from the first year annoyed me as they got more complex.  Even the mid-sized sets built its robots from many strata of thin tiles, and as a result they weren't that fun to put together.  This Beast Hunters Optimus Prime set avoids that without being a pile of specialized bricks.  It feels more efficient and creative.

There was another pleasant surprise: there are two different choices for hands on each wrist.  On older sets, there was just a generic fist-block for hands.  But here, we get slightly rubberized hands molded into various poses.  There's  a sword-holding hand and an open-palm-fingers-splayed hand for the right arm and a clenched fist and pointing finger for the left arm.  This is the damn coolest thing.  I was going to build the truck mode first (it looked cooler) until I saw I had all these hand options.

Even forgetting the hands, the robot mode is a satisfying completed build.  Lots of articulation is built into the robot mode, and not just on the limbs and ball-jointed waist.  Prime's knee-kibble points foward, you can play with his shoulder stuffs similarly, and the winged backpack with working missile launchers can raise up from his back to position over his shoulders.  There's a lot to do.  His sword doesn't come with a scabbard, but that's okay, because this is construction block stuff, so just peg it on his thigh.

His truck mode is neat-looking, too, but it sort of sits in the shadow of the awesome robot mode build.  It was interesting to discover that the trailer is actually mounted on an articulated ball-jointed arm that comes out of the hitch.  The roof is more lightly pegged-in so you can remove it easily to fit a Kreon inside.  And, again, missile launchers and deployable wings.

There's an unnamed dragon dude, too.  He looks kind of like Lazerback, but not quite.

The only thing that bugged me about the set was the stickers.  The sticker boundaries weren't cut very precisely, and so if you have two stickers which are supposed to have symmetric deco, one of them is sometimes a little offset.  It can be a little annoying, especially with the dragon's eyes.  You can line up the boundaries of the stickers themselves so they're symmetrical, but one eye will still look a little dippy as it's wandered across the surface of the sticker.

The current New Big Line is Transformers Prime: Beast Hunters, which means some motherfriggin' beasts, dude!  All of the titular beasts appear to be  dragons, but while I am not super fond of dragons, beggars can't be choosers, y'know?  It's been a dry season for beasts for quite a few years!  I mean, sure, you get your occasional Grimlock or Laserbeak or Ravage -- which I am thankful for because those are awesome guys or at least guys who can be redecoed into Buzzsaw -- but never an actual semi-flood of beasts.  A beast buffet.  And the most recent two beasts like Thundertron ... some... other guy... I forget... were kind of bleh, so hopefully these Beast Hunters beasts will amend my disappointment!

Beasts beasts beasts beasts... yeah, now the word has no meaning.

Anyhow, in the first wave of Deluxe Beast Hunters is Lazerback.  Oh man, that name.  Did you know that the packaging mock-up in the presentation slide at New York Comic Con had it spelled "Laserback," as is right and holy?  And everyone online kept on spelling it Lazerback, with a Z, and I was all "NO YOU DUDES IT HAD AN S OH MY GOD LEARN TO SPELL LASER" but ahahahaha no, the packaging mockup was a dirty well-spelled lie and we got it with the Z for reals.

"LASER" IS AN ACRONYM THAT STANDS FOR SOMETHING GOD DAMMIT

Anyway.

Lazerback is pretty cool!  And... hefty.  His card bubble is way deeper than the rest of his wave, and he feels about twice as heavy.  He's dense.   He is also the Beastiest Beast.  His forelimbs become arms and his hindlimbs become legs.  His tail comes off and becomes a weapon.  These are all things that beast toys like to do a lot.  And y'know, I don't think I really care.  If I can get 30 billion car toys where the hood becomes the chest and the trunk becomes the legs and there's some door wings or something, then I can enjoy Lazerback.

And truth be told, he's a solid toy. He doesn't do a lot of innovative things, but he does old things well.  He's a great dragonbeast thing.  He's meaty.  His jaws open and he has a missile launcher that comes out of his spine.  And while the tail does become his weapon, the way it closes up around his fist makes me think it's supposed to be just an extension of his arm in one mode, like the tail IS his arm.  He's got a tail-arm.  And that's pretty cool.  Definitely Beast Warsy.  And those colors of his -- red, purple, and yellow -- they're really grabbing me.  I like him.

I want more.

Can't find my Frenzy! So pushing back talking about the Data Disk guys once again.

Here's Beast Hunters Bumblebee. I found him and nobody but him when I was out looking for his wave, and as I am weak, I snatched him up. He wasn't on my list or anything, since my place is kind of lousy with Bumblebees already, but after seeing some photos of him in-hand on the Internet, I saw that he was pretty neat-looking. And, hey, Bumblebee with spikes all over him. He reminds me of Johnny Five at the end of Short Circuit 2 where he covers himself in random spikey punk rock shit and then uses his last five minutes alive for spiteful vengeance, as you do.

As you might notice, he is heavily retooled! Not much of the original toy survives, though the engineering and transformation is the same. Let's see, the middle of his upper torso, all of the gray of his middle torso and thighs, and the non-vehicle-y parts of his lower legs, plus his arms from the biceps on down... those are all old parts. The head and pretty much the entirety of the vehicle mode (other than that middle hood section) are new.

He still comes with the two arm-mounted blasters of the original tooling, plus a crossbow-like weapon that mounts on his hood or his arm or in his hand. He comes with a whoppin' six dang missiles, which the crossbow-thing can fire with a spring-loaded mechanism. This dude is armed. He will murder you. If you're a beast, anyway. Or so I think the story goes.

He's pretty hard core.