Awww, it's new toys of my favorite early Aughts BotCon characters!  Well, okay, Primal Prime was a retail exclusive, but BotCon used the damn toy so much in their stories he's kind of considered an honorary BotCon guy, I guess.  But Apelinq was definitely a BotCon 2000 dude, same year as Shokaract!  And this is his... third toy!  (He was also the head-and-chest of Sentinel Maximus.)  Whoof!  

Primal Prime was this year's Customization Class toy, which means I assembled and painted him myself from off the plastic sprues.  That was my early Thursday of the show, removing parts from the sprue, shaving off the excess plastic, screwing and pinning things together, and eventually painting the dude.  I did mine according to the directions (because TFwiki needs pictures and I'm also a super nerd that way anyway) but he was free to paint however you wanted.  

Oh, right, he's a redeco of the Beast Wars 10th Anniversary Optimus Primal toy, which they decided to give a Cyber Key gimmick to in case the BWX line didn't work out and they had to shove him into the then-current Cybertron toy line.  They ended up doing both, releasing him as Optimus Primal AND as a "Jungle Planet" version of Optimus Prime.  I've always had trouble transforming this guy, because you have to transform his robot mode chest in a certain order or it won't move between robot and beast mode positions.  But now that I've assembled the damn thing myself and transformed both Primal Prime and Apeline like a billion times (plus I brought my BWX Primal with me as an assembly reference), I think I've finally got the hang of it.  Phew!  

Primal Prime is probably one of the prettiest customization class guys we've gotten.  I'm not usually super-up for translucent plastic, but it really works for him.  The whole thing is very striking once all completed, so I mind not so much that this is kind of a super body downgrade from his original form.  Whatevs!  It's pretty, I like it.  

Apelinq was one of the at-show souvenir exclusives, and so he could only be purchased in a bagged set along with Alpha Trizer and Flareup.  I have some pretty strong nostalgia for the guy, so I'm happy to see him again.  Plus I strongly associate the character with Glen Hallit, so he helps make the year's set feel like a more inclusive celebration of BotCon history, despite the retrospective panel totally skipping the OTFCC years.  

Both come with that obnoxiously large surfboard accessory which "transforms" into a giant missile launcher.  Oof.

I like them both a lot.

 

This BotCon's set had a few things I wouldn't have thought I wanted but once presented with them I was all OH YEAH.  Like, say, "Hey, do you want another Classics Optimus Prime redeco?"  If that was said to me?  Naw.  No thanks.  I've got like four versions of that guy already, and one of them from BotCon.  But no no no let them clarify:  "Hey, do you want Classics Optimus Prime in FRIGGIN' SUNSTORM ORANGE as FIRE GUTS GINRAI?"

Oh, yes.  Yes, I do.

I've said before that Powermaster Optimus Prime is still probably up there at the top of my list of favorite Optimus Prime toys.  Yeah, it's a placement fueled in nonnegligible amounts of nostalgia.  It was my first Optimus Prime toy as a kid.  It combines with its trailer to make a bigger robot.  It's a cool toy.  Well, once Japan did that sucker up in friggin' orange (and red) and that was their Fire Guts God Ginrai toy.  (Powermaster Prime was a human trucker named Ginrai in a mech suit in Japan, not Optimus Prime.)  I own this, because it's friggin' Powermaster Prime in orange.  It's beautiful.

Well, BotCon apparently decided to homage that version of that guy as a redeco of Classics Optimus Prime, for reasons I can't imagine other than to please specifically me.  Let me tell you about this guy.  The photography is worthless.  Whatever color orange he is (same goes with the original), it doesn't photograph.  It's close to that creamsicle Sunstorm orange I love the best, but I can't get Photoshop to make my photos approximate it.  Regardless, it's astoundingly pretty.  There's some chrome involved too, on the truck grill.  It's a fantastic-looking thing.

Ginrai is supposed to be a Knight Commander.  He comes with two guns!  So apparently BotCon wants you to use one of his guns, untransformed, as a shield.  You half-transform his arm so it can peg into the handhole, and then the "shield" points forward from his wrist.  It's clever, and makes him feel a little more Knightish.  Albeit, y'know, a knight with a giant rifle.  

I just want it to be on the record: BotCon, you can redeco anything in these colors and I will buy it.

In a world where Arcee is basically the only girl Transformer who ever gets toys on the regular, while the powers that be are reluctant to redeco toys that aren't originally female into more females, female Transformers sure always look exactly like Arcee, huh?  Heck, just in the past month or so, Fun Publications has given us three female Transformer toys all based on three different versions of Transformers Prime Arcee.  Whoof!

It's BotCon's 20th year, and so BotCon gave us a bunch of toys that reimagined some of the toys of years past (like Shokaract).  Flareup and Flamewar were from Fun Publications' first BotCon in 2005, and both were toys based on Energon Arcee.  (Though Flareup got a new head.)  So here they are again, now as redecoes of two different versions of Transformers Prime Arcee.  

Of the two, Flareup is my favorite, I think.  But then, she's exactly the colors of my luau shirt I wear to conventions (orange, black, orange, and yellow), so I may be a little biased.  She's a straight redeco of Transformers Prime "Robots in Disguise" Arcee, the second version of Prime Arcee that followed the brief "First Edition" toyline.  I prefer this version of Prime Arcee the most, I think.  It's a little simpler than the First Edition and easier to transform, and so it's a little less unwieldy.  And so I'm happy to get it in orange.  

Flamewar is a straight redeco of "Robots in Disguise" Arcee's heavily-retooled Beast Hunters iteration, with lots of wings and sharp edges.  I don't have the retail version of this Arcee, partially in the hopes that we'd get a redeco of her as a different character later for BotCon, and my hedging has obviously paid off.  The Beast Hunters version of the mold also has a giant crossbow weapon which feels about as large as the rest of the toy.  It's kind of ungainly.  It's the reason I prefer the earlier version of the mold.  I mean, I like the wings and talons and what have you, but that huge-ass weapon is often annoying to deal with.  

If you've been following BotCon news, you've probably heard about these two in the convention comic book.  Yeah, they, uh, get pretty objectified in there.  It's kind of distracting.  The comic pushes forward with the plot, as per normal, with pretty excellent art, because everyone else is all dudes, and then suddenly BAM, boobs and contorted torsos and panty-shots.  Oof.  Well, um.

Yeah.

 

A G1-redeco of Energon Scorponok was not something I thought I wanted until this thing was presented to me.  The original Energon use of the mold was G1y enough for me already.  It had enough green for me to think of it as passably G1 Scorponok and I didn't figure the-same-thing-but-with-purple would be interestingly different enough for me to care.

WHOOPS.

 

I guess I didn't count on the unforeseen insanity of giving the guy a new transforming Headmaster head in addition to the tweaked colors.  Honestly, that kind of stuff doesn't happen at this level.  We get a new head occasionally, sure, but the weird extra mile taken here took me aback.  Here's how it works: Encore Fortress Maximus came out recently, a reissue of the original Fortress Maximus.  That means tooling for the little Headmaster guy, Spike Witwicky, is viable.   So what Fun Publications did was retool Spike Witwicky a new Scorponok face to go on his back, then retool a new neck connector piece for the combined robot mode.  That piece just flips down into the chest cavity where the original head used to go in the other two modes.  So in the end you've got two separate toys being combined unnaturally into this new entity, using a multiple of new pieces.  

Energon Scorponok is one of my favorite Transformers toys ever, and so even though I kind of shrug at the idea of doing a G1-style version, I'm happy to have another in general.  There's something delightfully monstrous about him.  Some folks don't like his proportions or the way his torso looks, but for me that's part of the appeal.  He's dwarfed by his own massive claws.  He looks like he could grab planets out of the air.  The whole damn thing projects this feeling of menace.  And, so, sure, I'll take another one of those with a new transforming head, why not.

The retooling does solve a few minor problems with the toy, as well.  It ditches the original head's visor, which in latter releases was getting loose and having trouble staying on.  That's entirely gone, so problem dissolved.  Also the new neck connector piece makes the head sit up higher on the torso, so that looks a little better to me for the character, bridging the monstrous Energon Scorponok's feel with the slightly more housebroken G1 Scorponok.  

The toy is, however, assembled wrong.  The green and orange panels on either side of the purple torso (along with the panels' purple backings) are swapped left-to-right.  This doesn't impede transformation, but it does keep his shoulders from sitting properly in robot mode by a fraction of an inch.  Just unscrew the two screws behind the panels on either side, remove the arms, swap the panels-and-backings, re-attach the arms, and rescrew.  Huzzah.  

Scorponok still transforms into three modes -- robot, scorpion, and jet.  The new Headmaster can kind of stand in the small gap remaining inside the cockpit, in between the new neck piece and the wall of the torso, but it looks a little awkward.  The scorpion mode, as always, is great.  It's really just a pile of construction equipment - shovels and hooks and treads - assembled into the shape of a scorpion.  That's always really done it for me.  The jet mode is still that surprisingly awesome thing as well.  You wouldn't think you'd get a great jet out of a scorpion made of construction parts, but you do.  The electronics are gutted, however, as BotCon electronics tend to be. 

The box set sold out, so the only place to get this guy now is on the secondary market.    Good luck with that.

Way back in 2000, my third BotCon, we got two exclusive toys.  The first was Apelinq, Wrecker Commander, and the second was Shokaract, cruel lord of all time and space.  Once a lowly near-nameless Predacon grunt, the Hunter found the Dark Essence of Unicron buried on Earth and was awarded the Matrix of Conquest.  Now he was Shokaract, rule of Cybertron's future, powerful beyond measure, speaker of hilariously over-the-top Simon Furman villain dialog.  But since time travel exists, he guarded the Dark Essence zealously.  Of course, his own paranoia led to his downfall, and Shokaract's reign was erased from existence. 

There's no way there'd ever be a toy of the Hunter!  That'd be just crazy!

Well, sometimes crazy works, and here we are fourteen years later with a danged Hunter toy.   Very recently we got a new toy of Beast Wars Rampage as this year's club membership exclusive toy, which mounted a very very very tiny new head on the body of Deluxe Transformers Prime Megatron.  A great idea with a kind of hilarious noggin.  Don't get me wrong, the thing is beautiful.  Absolutely gorgeous.  But that tiny, tiny head.  (It has to be, to fit in vehicle mode.)  Since Shokaract was originally a redeco of Rampage, folks clamored for a Shokaract redeco of him.  I did not.  I didn't think it'd be what I wanted.  Shokaract should be huge, not a deluxe.  Why would I want a tiny Shokaract?  It's not like they'd designate him his pre-Shokaract Hunter form.  And once we learned Club Rampage had a tiny head, that was another nail in the coffin as far as I was concerned.  Did not want!

Well, old me was dumb.  I love this thing.  It's probably my favorite toy of the whole set.  Somehow, amazingly, in these different, darker colors, Shokaract's head doesn't look so puny.  I'm not sure how.  Maybe it's just the color scheme creating an optical illusion.  But it's surpisingly okay.  And the toy itself is astoundingly pretty.  Shokaract was always pretty, so it shouldn't be that surprising, but still here we are.  And, yes, the goddamned thing is officially the Hunter, pre-finding-the-Dark-Essence.  It's like a toy just for me! 

Plus it comes at a pretty opportune time, since the original Shokaract is covered in blue chrome that does not survive well decades past his production.  The chrome on mine was falling off like autumn leaves just by picking him up and moving around -- and that's without all the dusting I had to do to make him presentable.  I was dabbing lightly with a cloth to keep from scraping his surface off too much.  Oof.  Some day I will just have to bite the bullet and send the thing to Cheetimus to scrape and repaint the blue.  It won't be chrome, but it'll be something I can friggin' transform again.  It sucks when you can't handle one of your favorite toys which is super expensive to replace.  

Anyway, the new one doesn't have chrome and so it's something that can actually be played with.  It's very, very welcome.  As of this writing, he's still available (with his fellow pirate Brimstone) on the Collectors' Club website and on Big Bad Toy Store.  

Transmutate is a heroic character.  She has trouble reading facial expressions, but that doesn't mean she lacks compassion.   She has a strong sense of right and wrong, and she believes in justice and making things equal for all.  But her lack of empathy makes achieving her goals difficult, and it gets her into trouble.  Yet she perseveres despite all odds.  

And it's unlikely that this time she's going to die at the end of her story so that everyone else learns an Important Lesson.  

Transmutate is a redeco of First Edition Transformers Prime Arcee.  She's in teal and a silvery gold plastic color that really likes to photograph an ugly brown.  (I have done some color nudging in Photoshop.)   The colors look pretty nice in person, especially with the translucent red accents to set off the neutralness of the teal and gold.  The toy's face has a smile sculpted on it, which is pleasant, but Transmutate's face is usually expressionless, so that feels a little odd in context with the character.  She's exclusive to the Transformers' Collectors Club, and so she comes in a medium-sized presentation box with cut-outs in the foam inside for both her and Rampage, who is the club's free-with-subscription figure this year and arrives separately.

I like the toy a lot for what it represents -- a kind of character we don't get much of, in Transformers or otherwise.  At least not the nondisposable kind.  She makes me happy.  

G1-style Breakdown was the toy I was least excited about in this year's Transformers Figure Subscription Service.  I mean, I've already got a BotCon toy of that guy, and in way better colors!  I know at the time, when we were getting this teal-and-magenta G2 Breakdown toy, some folks were clamoring for a white-and-blue G1 version to be one of the at-show surprises, but I do not understand those people.  I do not understand them at all.  Did they not realize that G2 Breakdown has, like, nonsensical splattered blood on his roof?  How is that not the best possible already?  Where is the room for improvement?

But those people yet exist, and so I guess this G1-style Breakdown is for them.  That's okay.  He's the sort of thing these Subscription Service toys should have -- y'know, stuff not everyone wants, so wouldn't have been done otherwise except under cover of a larger spread of toys.  Some folks can get their G1 Breakdown if I can get my Circuit.  That's how these things work.

Anyway, huge yawn.

UNTIL YOU READ THE FRIGGIN' BIO.  Sure, he's the most pointless toy in the world in my eyes, but he's apparently from the best universe.  This Breakdown hails from the third issue of Blackthorne's 3D Transformers comics.  You know, the "Part one of three" story which never got its second and third parts because Blackthorne quit, in which the Autobots and Decepticons discover an enigmatic third faction called the Detructons, led by Lord Imperious Delirious.  

(Well, best universe spin-off, to be precise.  The story clearly takes place in original cartoon continuity post-The Rebirth.) 

Anyway, that's super awesome.  And now I begrudgingly appreciate this lump of otherwise boring plastic.  Good show.  

Here's one last Beast Machines guy from this year's BotCon set.  The customization class was provided a tan and red Strika as Blastcharge to assemble and paint, and for the first time ever, BotCon sold assembled and unpainted versions of this customization class guy to anyone who wanted one.  I opted for the assembled painted one, since it cost half as much as the class, and I didn't have to get there a day earlier and pay an extra hotel night, plus that frees up a spot for one more dude who hasn't done the customization class before.   I can paint this guy on my own time, after all.  And I did!

I wasn't in the actual class, so I didn't get the stickers that were intended for the toy, but I tried to make do anyway.  I'm also still waiting for a specific color of green to arrive in the mail so I can paint the middle of the crotch, but I'm gonna be on an airplane in a day or so, so I figgered I'd take a picture and show you now anyway.  Another difference between mine and the official instructions is I put a Decepticon logo on mine instead of an Autobot one.  In my day, Vehicon Blastcharge was a former Decepticon who worked for the original Megatron, and I've been hankering for a toy of him in that hinted-at Decepticon form since then.  And I'm not feeling terribly beholden to this year's storyline about clones and whatnot, so I have managed to break free of my MUST ADHERE TO CANON neurosis and change up his faction symbol to one that makes me happier.

All that said, this is a pretty great idea for a redeco, and I'm glad that it exists and that I can have it.

So, hey, who wants more Seekers?  Everybody?  All right, let's sell these out in record time.

These three dudes (purple, orange, and teal dudes seen in front) are based on the flame-throwin' Seekers seen in the first episode of the original Transformers cartoon, who fire on the Autobots on Cybertron as they drive by.  Sunstorm got a toy long ago, but his two pals (and a very obscured fourth dude nobody ever notices or talks about) had never achieved that same status -- until now!  They are Bitstream and Hotlink, and they are nerds.  Like, they script programs and play MPORGs.  They get their names from characters from the Transformers: Exodus book, where they were cast as Starscream's IT dudes before the war.

For the past few years, the BotCon troop builder three-pack has been three of the same toy (though last year split up the three across the produced mold's three included heads) , and this is the first year BotCon has done the troop builders in three different color schemes.  The way this was possible -- or at least more financially viable -- is that only one plastic color is changed across all three.  All other plastic colors and deco are the same.

I'm happy with them, but I do wish they'd swapped the black and the white plastics to make Sunstorm more accurate.  It wouldn't have made the other two any less accurate, really, and we have a more concrete idea of what Sunstorm looks like.  Also, don't worry about how old and reused this mold is, because Hasbro and Takara have spent a lot of time keeping this tooling fresh as a daisy.  These guys feel good as new and nice and tight.  The only bit of oddness is the white parts seem a smidge too large, and so it's a little rough to get their torso parts compressed together in robot mode.  But I'd rather things be a little too tight rather than too loose.

The "Rainmaker" label is an error.  They were meant to be "Air Warriors," but the Rainmaker thing sort of slipped into internal use by accident and made its way to the polybags and comic book program.

Here's all of the non-Beast Machinesy Autobots.  From left to right we got Mirage, Hoist, Sandstorm, and Electro.

Hoist and especially Sandstorm are victims of some of the absolute worst timing.  We're getting "Classics" versions of both of them this summer/fall, and I think that kind of puts these two iterations of their characters out of the limelight.  Hell, it was just  week or so ago when I got the Prettiest Fucking Sandstorm Toy Ever for $25, and about three days later I was paying twice that for this olive green and caramel thing.  Admittedly, Pretty Sandstorm is a retool of a toy I already had and BotCon Sandstorm is a redeco of a movie toy that I'd never owned, so at least the latter was a new experience to me, but pretty goes a long, long way, man.  (Also, Sandstorm is the only toy from the original Machine Wars I never bought.)

And while Hoist is getting a G1y version of himself sold in stores for $15, I don't think that's the worst news about the BotCon version.  Both he and Electro, who share Kup's Generations body and a new head, suffer at least one if not two misassembly errors, depending on your specimen.  The first, an interior misassembly that keeps you from transforming the torso all the way, is fairly easy to fix, and I have.  The second, a bicep misassembly which keeps their arms from being able to fold all the way down, is not easy to fix, if not impossible.  So many pins.  My Hoist suffers from this, but not my Electro.  I don't think I care that much.  Hoist is probably going back in the box soon anyway.  (Also, I didn't notice this until I got home because I only took out Hoist out of the box long enough to look at his shoulders, but man is the black stripe down the middle of his torso so not actually in the middle.  Oof.)

Electro I appreciate if only for his cyan and magenta paint apps.  He is super 90s.  I never owned an original Electro, and I recommend that none of you try to own an original Electro, as that guy will crumble to dust.  He suffers from Gold Plastic Syndrome, you see.  He's the GPS poster boy.  And so I'm happy to have this newer version that hopefully will not suffer the same fate.  He's gold plastic, but it's not the swirly glittery kind that chemically falls apart after a few years.  He's the only guy in today's group of folks who I don't have any sort of toy of, so it's nice to have a guy I hadn't owned previously.

On the flipside, that Mirage tho.  I can't believe how much I dig this Mirage.  I've got a lot of Mirages, including the original Machine Wars Mirage, and BotCon MW Mirage is so so so so so damn pretty.  He's not the dark teal of the original, instead being more of a sea foam, and goddamn do I love him.  He may replace my Classics Mirage on my shelf, because aw hell yeah, this guy.  He was worth buying Thundercracker for.  I just want to put him in my mouth.