Saturday's Joyce and Walky! is updated!

Remember those dreary, melancholy days back when Energon Sharkticon had never been redecoed?  What a desolate world that was.  Because God does love us, even if He's slow about it, this void has been finally been filled, and we've certainly made up for lost time.

Sky-Byte is definitely one of the best BotCon exclusives ever produced.  He's just sharp and beautiful and perfect and covered in paint applications.  And I'm so so happy that he exists because the original Sky-Byte toy was pretty terrible.  So terrible I sold it along with the rest of my RID stuff back in the day, even though Sky-Byte is a great character.  Sometimes a great character can overwhelm a bad mold, but it didn't in that case.  Meanwhile, the Energon Sharkticon mold is everything the Transmetals II Cybershark mold is not, so I finally have a great toy to match the great character.

I'm also amazed at how well the other new use of the mold, the Sharkticon 3-pack, succeed at being G1 Sharkticons.  The G1 Sharkticons were dumpy and round, while their new toys certainly are not!  But with the right paint, it really works.  Like the Sweeps last year, each of the three gets their own tech spec card.  There's Land Shark, Air Shark, and... Sea Shark.  Whose bio notes that he was "given the sea upgrade."  Ahahahaha.

Aheh.

Everything broke this last week.  I swear, everything!

The morning of BotCon, my glasses broke.  The legs of one of my lighting studio lamps broke off.  On the way home, my laptop stopped recognizing its wireless card.  Leader Starscream tore a hinge.   That same lighting studio lamp burst a bulb.  One of the legs of our bed frame snapped.  (woo hoo)  We had to take Pirate Ham to the vet.

Clearly I buy insurance for all the wrong things.

Well, Starscream's glued.  The lamp bulb is replaced (but still can't stand).  Pirate Ham has some medicine to control his eye inflammation.  This morning I got new glasses.

This stuff should not happen all at once.

Anyway, back to toys.  I now have five versions of the Universe not-a-Nissan-Z mold.  I already had Prowl, Silverstreak, and Smokescreen, and BotCon gave us two more.  Thankfully, one of them is the best version of the mold yet!  That guy is Rapido!

Rapido was rank 10 the year he came out.  Funny story, an Optimus Prime came out that year, too, and he was rank 9!  Ha ha ha.  Wonder what the story behind that is.  In honor of Rapido's enviable rank, this new toy's tech spec card gives him a rank of 10+.  See, he's not usually in charge, but is authorized to take charge in emergencies.  That's the sort of guy he is.  (Also, his tech spec card is written entirely in Spanish.  This is awesome.)

Another odd quirk about the original Rapido is that due to the engineering, you couldn't see his head over the top of the hood.  Kind of comical.  Well, new Rapido fixes that!  Rapido's head, since it's the Prowl/Silverstreak/Smokescreen mold, is up on a big ol' neck plank!  You can see it fine!  And what an awesome head it is.  I think it's one of the best heads BotCon has ever done.  It's nice and sharp and distinctive, and the teal face really works.

The head works in great concert with the rest of the body.  The red, teal, silver, and black is "loud" but in a fairly classy way.  And he is the only version of the mold which doesn't throw its door kibble at me as I try to transform it.  It stays on the whole way through.  That is impressive.

Color wise, head wise, and tolerance wise, I think he's a winner.

Plus, dudes, he's friggin' Rapido.  Represent.

(And there's some left over from the convention!)

I have wanted this exact toy for the past six years.

Back when Transformers ended in North America in 1990ish, Europe still kept cranking out robots.  One of them was a redeco of Action Master Wheeljack as a new Decepticon named Slicer.  I didn't learn about this guy until about a decade later, after immersion in the Internets, but once I did I needed on.  Not the toy itself, really, but I really really wanted a transformable Wheeljack toy in Slicer's colors.  It seemed easy enough!  Well, sort of, since Generation 1 stuff was pretty dead at the time.

My desire gathered steam when Energon Downshift, Wheeljack's doppelganger, showed up in 2004.  Well, hell yes!  They could easily redeco that sucker into Slicer!  Easy buck for Hasbro, super love for me.  But it didn't happen for some reason probably related to nobody knowing/caring about Slicer.  (Also, whoops, there's an Autobot symbol molded onto his collarbone.)  But when Fun Publications got the convention/fan club  license in 2005, I had new people to pester for Slicer.  I photoshopped up a "fake convention set" with an Action Master theme which included Slicer from Energon Downshift.  I must have put Slicer-from-Energon-Downshift on my BotCon feedback form every year for five years.

Some time in 2008, when the Shattered Glass text stories were in full swing, Shattered Glass Wheeljack made an appearance, and, woo, he was Energon Downshift in Slicer colors!  So close!  So close I could taste it!  But I worried that we might get a Shattered Glass Wheeljack toy instead of a Slicer one.  The name on the profile card is a technicality, but a technicality that my brain would always register in the back of my cranium, even on pleasant days.  On the other hand, this deco-sharing might be the most practical way to get what I wanted in spirit, if not the letter?  Hmm.

And sweet hot damnation, 2010 is Hallelujah Time.  And "Decepticon Slice" is just as glorious as I have dreamed.  As I mentioned, he does have that Autobot logo sculpted into his collarbone, but it's painted purple like the Shattered Glass Autobot logo so you can use your Slicer toy as a Shattered Wheeljack if you wanted.  But he's nominally Slicer, which was my initial preference.

Over the course of BotCon weekend, I kept telling folks "Slicer was made just for me!"   To which they reminded me that if any of this year's set was "just for me," it was Shattered Ravage.  Well, fuck it, both are.  Also, most of the rest of the set.  They're all for me.  But Slicer is especially for me, because Slicer is my pipe dream come to life.  His vibrant blue and warm gray and copper warm up all the right neurons.  I do kind of think his translucents should have been orange to "match" his copper, but dark red will do.  It's what color  his windows are supposed to be, so I understand.  I love Slicer so much that I carried him around with me most of the weekend.  He rarely left my side.

On the other hand, they had to go and make him French.  Which means I've been pronouncing his name wrong all these years.  Hmm.

If there's anything unfortunate about him, it's that he was the Attendee Exclusive.  If you bought the full Primus box set and showed up at the convention, you got one.  To get a second one, you have to get another Primus box set.  So if you want both a Slicer and a Shattered Wheeljack, you're looking at eBay!  And since he's given one per person, no extras, he's gonna be an expensive find.

Ah well.  After he's done his rounds on my BotCon shelf, I'm gonna sit him next to his other Action Masters-who-got-transformable-toys brethren.  Hello, Axer!  Hello, Banzai-Tron and Gutcruncher!  Hello, this year's Double Punch!

(I have decided, incidentally, that the running boards kibble along Slicer's forearms are actually blades, like the ones on movie Sideswipe.  See, that's why they call him Slicer!)

After musing over which of my BotCon 2010 exclusives I had given the least love, I realized the answer was Scorch, otherwise known as SG Ravage's accessory.  And with good reason, too, because he didn't hold together very well and so I left him up in my hotel room to make sure I didn't lose any of him.  I'm happy to report that only some of this was an actual problem.  His arm, for example, that kept falling off was actually just a matter of improper assembly, meaning I needed to pop it fully onto the balljoint.  So that's fixed!  However, he is still a little too floppy overall and his chest/bumper/cowcatcher thing still likes to fall out.  I might try to glue that in later or something.  At least only one piece is falling out of him now instead of two.

I also don't have much attachment to Scorch.  Hell, I didn't even really know he existed before this set! He is a yellow/orange redeco of a toy I really really like, though, so I certainly don't mind him.  And after seeing him in this year's comic book, I do have an attachment to him now that I know what he's like.  Or, well, now that he's been written to be like something.  He was one of those blank slates, y'know.  But now I picture him as the Kup of the group, the curmudgeonly mentor to the young Second Generation of Transformers on Earth.  I like Kup, so I like Scorch.

But the thing everyone's talking about regarding Scorch is his hood's flame deco.  It points backwards!  Like you know how flame deco is always blowing towards the back of the car?  Well, here it's blowing towards the front.  Ooookay.  I think what happened is that on the original Scorch, there was this block of unpainted hood where the head popped out through or whatever, and the flames sprouted outwards from there.  And so they tried to duplicate this exactly, but the problem was the block was on the opposite end of the hood and so the flames go the wrong direction!  And then nobody noticed this and it stayed. Whoops.

(Because of this, in the comic Scorch always kinda looks like he's wearing this orange feathered boa.)

So anyway, I guess Scorch just drives that fast.  He's got a speed of 8, right?  That's almost 10!

I do wish the gray was a little bluer and his flame deco was a little redder.  The flame deco just doesn't stand out enough on the hood, since it's orange-on-yellow.  And a bluer gray, I feel, might have been a little more visually attractive.  (The photos of the toy on BotCon's tall standee display thing had a much bluer gray, and it looked fantastic.)  A bluer gray also might have looked nicer on Ravage's tail, since that's where they share plastic.

Overall, he's a yellow/orange version of a toy I love (as I said), and he (technically) comes with my biggest canonical contribution to the Transformers mythos.  Plus I've grown to like his characterization.  It's just too bad about the small things.

I warn you, in the coming days I am going to gush over every single other toy in this set.  Multiple boners.

I've been complaining (sort of) about the lack of Transformers to buy over the past few months.  Well, that's certainly over.  Between the ten new guys I got at BotCon and the buttload of stuff that's starting to show up at Toys "R" Us, I officially have Too Much.  So much that I probably should have started blogging these guys days ago, or I'll never ever get through them!  I have to be at a convention in just about a week!

(Speaking of which, come see me at ConnectiCon!)

But first, lemme remind you to pick up the AllSpark Almanac II, which came out yesterday.  The first volume was like a veritable Transformers orgasm, and the second one is like a whole sexy evening of Transformers orgasms.  Even better, I have some contributions within it!  The back cover illustration is mine, plus I'm the guy who put together the Ninja Gladiator game sprites.  A few of the character selections were my own, and you can probably tell.  You'll know what I'm talking about.  Also, co-author Jim Sorenson kept me around to make sure he wasn't going too far off the edge on some things.  He does kinda need to be reigned in sometimes!  Unchecked, he's a monster!

Anyway, BotCon toys.  I think I'll talk about Cindersaur first, because conceptually I think he's the most high-concept BotCon figure in a while.  Back in Generation 2, they put out redecoes of both Flamefeather and Sparkstalker, but not the third and final dude Cindersaur.  Well, let's fix that!  And so BotCon gives us a G2 Cindersaur 15 years after the fact.  That's only really part of it.

I also like how they arrived at Cindersaur's color scheme.  They extrapolated it from the other two dudes!  See, both G2 Flamefeather and Sparkstalker had bright green and purple robot parts, but were mostly a third translucent color.  Flamefeather was green, purple, and translucent orange, while Sparkstalker was green, purple, and translucent red.  Well, clearly Cindersaur has to have green and purple robot parts, plus they gotta choose a third, dominant color.  And that's just what we got.

Unfortunately, plastic tolerance issues being what they were, BotCon Cindersaur was unable to make all of its blue translucent.  But it's the thought that counts.  And, hey, the toy won't split into pieces in a few years, so that's good.

I really like him 'cuz at this point anybody can throw an existing character's colors on a toy and call it a day.  That's done all the time!  It's old hat.  But how often do we see potential color schemes extrapolated from other toys?  Plus, hey, it's the Beast Wars 10th Anniversary Megatron mold, which is like the best Tyrannosaurus rex Transformer ever.  Hot damn.

Hmm.  Who should I do next?  Who from this set haven't I given enough love?  ... on the other hand, I also just got Leader Starscream today, so...

Howdy folks!  We decided to push on through the night on our way back instead of staying the night half-way, so we're all home again a bit early.  Since this morning, I've been trying to get back into the swing of things, especially with tomorrow's book signing event!

Throughout the con, I got the same two questions from folks a number of times, so I thought I'd take the time to answer them here:

1) Did you know about the Shattered Ravage toy?

I'm not one of the dudes who decides on BotCon figures, so it was those folks who put the set together and realized that the little jaguar that comes with the Hound mold should be SG Ravage.  They didn't ask permission or anything, nor should they have to - I don't own Transformers, Ravage, or the Shattered Glass concept!  Only the character conceit is mine.  But apparently my little Twitter character had endeared himself to lots of folks, so BotCon jumped at the chance to do him.  (And eBay seems to be favoring him at the moment over most of the others, so woo!)  I'm honored and humbled that I own a little Transformer that I created.  It's a new feeling for me!

But no bio card.  I may have to fix that somehow.

2) How do you feel about Dinobot winning the Hall of Fame?

I still don't believe that it happened!  This should not be real.  When they announced he was the winner at the dinner, there was some very happy swearing, and, as I had been filling myself with alcohol the whole night, I stood up on my chair and put my fists up into the air.  I was off in the corner so hopefully nobody saw.

People attribute the victory to me, but I don't believe that.  If I could order you folks around so easily, I'd be a heck of a lot richer!  No, folks voted for Dinobot because he strikes an emotional chord.  My linking and pleading wouldn't have worked unless there was a pull for Dinobot to begin with.

Not that I won't take credit if it suits my purposes.  Ha ha ha.

No, seriously, he did!  He won the Transformers Hall of Fame!  Even though there was Soundwave involved!  Holy mother of crap!  It's insane!

I take full credit.

(Hey, Bob Forward, if you read this, you totally rule.)

EDiT: The first thing I did after writing this blog was email Beast Wars co-editor (and "Code of Hero" director) Bob Forward was email him about Dinobot's deserved win.  I got this response from Bob Forward, which he wrote for public dissemination:

I think it's fairly well known that Dinobot was my favorite character.  He wasn't perfect, he had some very human failings, but he never stopped trying. He had ideals that he tried to live up to, and when he didn't, no one could give him more grief than he gave himself.  From the very beginning, his greatest ambition was to to die nobly in battle and have a glorious funeral.  That the battle would be one of atonement for his own betrayal, and the saving of innocents that he had unwittingly helped place in harm's way, was something he could never have anticipated and certainly would not have chosen.  But when the die was cast and his duty lay before him, he faced it without flinching and did what had to be done.  Even writing about him changed me, made me examine my own everyday choices in a new light, and I believe I became a better person because of it.  Others who watched the show have told me that they still hold themselves to a higher standard than they might have otherwise, simply because of Dinobot.  He lived a warrior, he died a hero, and to those who now honor his memory by electing him to the Transformers Hall of Fame, I'm sure he would extend his humble gratitude.

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The Hall of Fame dinner is in about an hour.  I can't wait to find out about Soundwave winning!

EDIT: Argh.  I have added captions to these photos two times already, and they're still not showing!  Well, I'm not doing it again.  Make up your own!