Okay, so my Dumbing of Age buffer is at 8 months and 8 days today, a lifetime best, so maybe I have a moment to blather on about a new toy I got today.  Usually I expend all my new toy thoughts on Twitter and then don't have much of a reason to repeat them here in paragraph form!  And paragraph form is dumb.  If I liked long-form prose, I wouldn't be doing a daily comic strip.  

So here's Core Class Studio Series '86 Steeljaw.  The Transformers team introduced Core Class to Studio Series just long enough to get like two cassettes out of it (and a few Bumblebee Movie cubes) and then murder Studio Series Core Class in its crib.  But one of the last gasps seems to be Steeljaw!  

People really don't seem to like Steeljaw.  I think people expect.... a lot out of a toy that can't be any larger than your thumb.  Look, it's gotta fit into Blaster's chest compartment, even if barely.  That's kind of a built-in limitation.  You're not gonna get a great cat out of that.  Remember Stege Ravage?  A terrible cat.  As far as Cats In This Scale go, Steeljaw wins the Best Cat race by thirty billion miles.  

And yeah, that's even without adding the cat spine/wing attachment they give you to complete Steeljaw's cat mode.  Stege Ravage didn't have a tail, and he barely had a spine, and he didn't require wings, and measured up against an accessoryless Steeljaw he falls short.  Accessoryless Steeljaw doesn't have a tail, doesn't have wings, but he still looks like a competent, functioning three-dimensional cat, which is something Stege Ravage never really managed.

So if you hate adding parts onto a tape guy to complete it -- first of all, how are you even still here in Transformers -- you don't actually have to add it on.  It's as good as if not better than all the other tape guys without it.  But for those who want the wings and tail, it's there to complete the look.

Also there's a giant speaker accessory that's larger than Steeljaw himself, and it attaches to Steeljaw, sure (using an adapter that replaces the cat spine/wing attachment), but really it's to attach to Blaster's hand because he had that accessory in some episode.  Well, he had two of them, one on each hand.  Guess you gotta buy another Steeljaw.

Core Class toys are only budgeted three molds, and Steeljaw's all kind of have to be some manner of yellow or gold, so accessories are basically limited to things that are those colors.  (Steeljaw's three plastics are yellow ABS, yellow unpaintable PA/nylon, and gold unpaintable PA/nylon, btw.  That's why only one of his tape spools is painted -- one of them's on the unpaintable nylon half of his tape mode.)

Anyway he's a tiny little kitty.  Hasbro needs to redo Ravage.

Look, nobody liked Strongarm in 2015's Robots in Disguise cartoon because she was a cop, they liked her because she used the strict following of rules and procedure to help her cope with a universe she otherwise had trouble socially engaging with!  Let's just focus on that second part instead of the part about how the Autobots' whole deal in that cartoon was incarcerating various wayward individuals who all shared the visual coding of being subhuman animals.  

and with that out of the way

I am super into this Transformers: Legacy: Evolution toy of Strongarm!  She's a retool of Legacy Elita One, who was already a favorite toy of mine, so of course Strongarm is already going to be up my alley.  To tell the truth, she's an entirely new sculpt from the waist up, sharing only some transformation similarities.  (And some parts in her shins are new.)  Her new shoulders are sculpted in a way that lets the front hood/wheel pieces sit cleanly over them, plus the're on hinged arms that let them maneuver to and fro to accommodate different poses.  Though this is ignored by the instructions, she now has the ability to fan out her truck mode's doors into little wings.  

Legacy Elita One was a good choice for retooling into Strongarm because she was basically already Strongarm-shaped, with her big boxy boot shins and general un-Arcee-like proportions.  Even so, Strongarm's new parts widen her torso and give her bigger, boxier forearms.  She's literally got stronger arms.  Strongarm's head is even a little smaller than Elita One and Minerva's, but not too much smaller -- you want Strongarm to fit in amongst the rest of the Legacy toys, while acknowleding that every single humanoid character on Robots in Disguise was kind of goofily pinheaded.  

But by far the best thing about Legacy Strongarm is how much of the paint budget is dedicated to decoing her head.  Like, luxurious numbers of paint operations.  I wonder how much paint her case assortment mates don't have just to make this possible.  I mean, usually a Transformer's head has only the face and eyes painted, plus maybe a token bit of forehead decoration, but Strongarm also has the line of blue that traces around her face and chin, the extra blue lines on the tips of her ears, the additional six lighter-blue marks on the front of her ears, the three blue lines that travel over the top of her noggin, her lips... it's a lot.  And yet the rest of her doesn't feel underpainted.  A lot of care was put in here.  

Definitely several steps up from the original Warrior Class toy, which kind of felt like it fell halfway into blue paint once and they felt it was done.  

Strangely satisfying for a toy that has somebody else's legs.  

This is it, the realest Devcon that's ever been made!  Back in the early BotCon days, they flirted with at least two potential Devcons -- one from Machine Wars Mirage (which I made a custom of) and one from Energon Slugslinger, and then in Later BotCon days they actually did make one from Generations 2011 Scourge.  I mean, it had a new weird-lookin' duckface but it was made.  And then there was that bizarre Platinum Series Sweep with the retooled Devcon face??? what

But now Hasbro has actually gone and done it and made a regular retail looks-like-the-character-model Devcon!  Legacy Devcon is a heavy partial of Studio Series 86 Blurr, and when I mean "heavy" I mean he only keeps the feet, thighs, and some minor interior joints. Everything else is new.  He even transforms a little differently, in that his arms don't switch positions on the torso anymore, and the only kibble now hanging off his forearms are some tiny wings.  

He comes with three accessories: his arm-mounted blaster and two vehicle mode thrusters.  The instructions show you stowing them on his back in robot mode or plugging into his blaster, but they're perfectly sized to fit inside his leg cavities.  Keep those suckers there.  

The Transformers Generations lines continue their adherence to animation scale, keeping Devcon at Smokescreen height.  He's actually a fraction shorter than Blurr due to the retooling, and that's good.  Being taller than Smokescreen would be *adjusts glasses and pocket protector* less accurate.  I know your brain tells you that Devcon's a bigger guy but your brain is wrong.

Amazon has an exclusive Transformers subline this year (called a "capsule" by Industry Insiders and also toy nerds) that's got some pretty inside-baseball stuff!  We don't know about most of the line officially yet, but the first two sets of toys are starting to ship from Hasbro Pulse.

The first to get to me is the Senator Shockwave and Data Clerk Orion Pax two-pack!  Yeah, that's right, before he was a one-eyed gun-armed logic lord, before he was cosplaying as a centaur, and before he was a one-eyed gun-armed logic lord again, he was just a regular-ass senator on pre-war Cybertron.  But (spoilers!) he ran afoul of the deep state or whatever and they punished him as an example by setting his brain to Logic Always All The Time and removing his face and a hand.  Would Hasbro ever make a toy of Shockwave from before he looked anything like Shockwave?  Apparently they would!

Senator Shockwave is a retooled (called "a partial" by Industry Insiders and also toy nerds) Siege Seeker/Starscream, with his shellformering wings removed and replaced with a pair of boxy thrusters.  Also he's got a new head (obviously), a new chest panel, and new little wings to plug into his arms.  The changes do help evoke Senator Shockwave pretty well, but there's a style clash between his rounded new parts and the boxy Siege robot they retooled him from.  He's no longer a shellformer, though, so that's pretty cool!

Data Clerk Orion Pax is a retool of Seige Hound into an early IDW Orion Pax design by Guido Guidi that was sort of the basis for the Thrilling 30 Orion Pax of... ten years ago.  Dang, I'm old.  That Orion Pax design was partially inspired by Don Figueroa's Stormbringer pre-Earth Optimus Prime design, and so through a happy little accident the toy also looks like pre-Earth IDW Orion Pax.  I mean, a little.  He's smaller and doesn't have the little double-barreled guns on his forearms and he doesn't have a mouth, but there's a correlation there.  

The set also de-cops IDW Orion Pax, because, yeah, in that version of the story, Optimus Prime started out as a police officer who eventually realized... hey, this is a corrupt system I'm working for!  Instead, this set establishes Orion Pax as his Aligned/Transformers Prime pre-war occupation, that of a data clerk.  

Anyway, this Hound-derived Orion Pax has a bunch of new parts (chest, head, windshield, feet, shins) and comes with an axe and Hound's rifle and "spare tire" piece.  Pax transforms the same way as Hound did, so he's not like Senator Shockwave's escape from land.

A NOTE: If you order this from Amazon, they seem to have mixed up the Shockwave/Pax and the corresponding Ratbat/Megatron sets?  The item numbers and prices are switched, and folks who ordered Shockwave/Pax from Amazon are receiving Ratbat/Megatron instead?  So, uh, look out for that.  I mean, if you order both, you'll be fine, but if you only wanted one set, there might be some imminent returning about to happen.

Every other couple years, they make a slightly larger Beachcomber.  There was the original, then a pair of Beachcombers done at "we make toys as big as the current smallest size class" size, and now we're in the age of "we make all our Transformers to strict cartoon robot mode scale!" And so enjoy your newer, larger Beachcomber who's Deluxe Class but a bit small for a Deluxe Class car.

There's not a lot new to do with a Beachcomber.  They all transform roughly the same.  This time, his seats and the front of his roll cage folds up into his heels.  Some panels open and then collapse back around the rear of his legs.  The arms just peg onto the sides of the car mode, like always.  

Beachcomber gets a rifle made out of his vehicle mode's front stuff.  Just peg that behind his arm so you can't see it.  

The biggest attraction here is the PVC.  Beachcomber's wheels are rubberized PVC (with ABS hubcaps), so he rolls pretty well.  Beachcomber also comes with a little bird that's also sculpted out of the PVC.  The bird sits on a 5mm peg that can fit into a 5mm port, or it can use the 3mm port sculpted into the bottom of the 5mm peg to sit atop a 3mm peg.  

Most modern TFs have 3mm pegs or 5mm ports, so you can have fun with that.  Attach a bird to Unicron.  

Anyway, he's Beachcomber, and he's at scale.  

It's been 20 years, and we've yet to get a good Lio Convoy toy.  The original was awkward and cumbersome and transformed into a lion with the worst rear legs, and was also extremely popular in the North American fandom at the time because it looked more like Optimus Prime than that dumb Optimus Primal who turned into a dumb monkey instead of a way cooler lion the way an Optimus Prime should.  And it was a tragedy, because for all Lio Convoy's faults, it was Beast Wars II Galvatron who was the true MVP of the two new toys Takara had created at the time.  But Lio Convoy righted all the horrendous wrongs Optimus Primal had perpetrated on the newly-adult fandom, so that dude was all the rage.

The Robot Masters adaptation of the Lio Convoy toy into a smaller form was reportedly an improvement on the design, I've heard.  And then there were roughly 30 billion redecoes of other lion toys like Leobreaker into Lio Convoy colors (which is the first time we got the "Leo Prime" moniker for the character), which were all of varying success.  And then there was Masterpiece Lio Convoy, which... honestly, I'm not sure how, but it's the worst one.  (Okay, I know how.  In the BWII cartoon, Lio Convoy's beast mode fleshy cartoon anime lion head shifted into an angular robotic head in robot mode, and since Masterpiece tries to be Faithful At All Costs, MP Lio Convoy became this clusterfuck of trying to fit two whole lion heads into that poor dude's right shoulder.)  It was so bad and we haven't gotten a new Beast Wars Masterpiece in the years since, that I've kind of assumed that it killed that portion of the line.  We might have a Rhinox by now if that thing hadn't happened.

Anyway, Transformers: Legacy: Evolution Beast Wars Universe Maximal Leo Prime (phew) has brought us a new attempt at the character!  And it's... good????  I mean, it's a low friggin' bar, but even judging it against Transformers toys in general, not just the Lio Convoys, it stacks up admirably.  It's got a lion mode without garbage hind legs and with existing forelimb biceps, it's got an interesting transformation that cleverly reconfigures that lion shape into an anime-styled robot mode, and it has a few gimmicks tucked in as well. 

The toy comes with four small little barrels which you can plug into various ports in his mane.  The two top ones can remain plugged in there while those panels fold back in for lion mode (or be unplugged and be used as handguns), and the two side ones can stow inside his back.  Additionally, as with the original toy, long X-Men Wolverine-esque claws can fold out of the lion forepaws and augment the robot mode's arms.  And, hey, the left chest panel still opens to reveal an Energon Matrix.  And it's painted!

Leo Prime is honestly painted pretty well.  The detail-less lion face can give you a false impression, but you get pretty much everything else detailed perfectly.  After taking photos of the guy stock, I added some black paint to the lion face and he's basically perfect.  (The eyes themselves are nylon and so couldn't be painted by the factory anyway.)  

I adore the more realistic lion face.  The cartoony anime face never did it for me, and the more realistic portrayal helps Leo Prime fit in better with, say, Kingdom Tigatron or any of the other Beast Wars guys in Legacy.  Admittedly the giant paws remain cartoonish.

While this is clearly the Best Lio Convoy Toy Ever, there are still some things that fall short.  The lion mode is useless in anything other than a standing pose, really.  It's not jointed well enough to do a believable attack pose.  I do miss the original's "push the forehead button in and his jaw puppets" action.  And, yeah, the lion face could have used the black lines, even if the eyes themselves couldn't have taken factory paint.  

But it's a toy that's excellent enough that I'm actually excited about it, despite my lukewarm feelings for the character itself.  It's just a nice lion toy!  We've had lions before, but, like, they're rarely any good.  And most of them are the worse toys of this guy.  A solid recommendation from me.

Hello!  This is attempt #2 at Modern Poseable Hot Shot!  Let's see how this guy does.

See, there's an integral problem with making Armada Hot Shot, But With Joints.  Armada Hot Shot transformed in a certain way that doesn't really.... allow for real arms?  Like, he's a sports car, and his arms are layered on top of his torso, and they really only swung out to the sides because, like... there's no room for additional jointing, and this also means his torso is absolutely flat.  So if you want to give him real arms and a real torso so that he doesn't look like Pancake The Robot Man, you have to... change things?  A lot?  And the more you change things, the less he looks like Hot Shot.  

The first attempt at Armada Hot Shot But With Joints, Universe (2009) Hot Shot, tried to reinvent him pretty hard.  It gave him a vehicle mode that was shaped more like an actual car (an Audi TT to be precise) and it did all sorts of crazy shellformer stuff that resulted in him having arms, sort of.  I mean, sure, he had arms, and those arms articulated... but not with the amount of panels piled on them from every direction.  The toy, despite all its joints, was immobile.  (also the feet were extremely loose, making it difficult to stand the thing, but that's a separate issue)  

And so attempt #2, in all honesty, has a pretty low hurdle to succumb.  Legacy Evolution Armada Hot Shot comes back to do Armada Hot Shot Again.  But good this time, we hope!  And for the most part, it succeeds!  The good news is, its arms are finally absolutely free to move about.  Nothing is attached to them.  If there's panel-y backpack stuff, it's tucked away.  And he's got a waist rotation joint, at long last, which honestly seems like heresy in connection to an Armada Hot Shot toy.  Also unlike the previous new Hot Shot, he's got his axelzooka again (but not geared to a Mini-Con nor does it fire anything).  He's also stolen Jolt's gun one more time, but that's really the cartoon's fault for stealing it first.  His feet do fold out like the original toy's, but there's no chainsaw stuff sculpted on there.  Driving claws?  Sort of.

The downsides are his forearms are a little anemic.  They have to be, because so much is being crammed into that middle section of the car, but the result is a Hot Shot that's not quite his expected silhouette.  He had big punchy arms, and now he doesn't.  The roof of the car, instead of hanging off the underside of his forearms, is now on the back of his legs.  This is out of the way of his arms!  It's not out of the way of his knees, though, and in order to bend those knees more than 30 degrees, you gotta fold those car roof halves out of the way.  (The car windows are still sculpted on the insides of Hot Shot's forearms.)  

But otherwise, hey, yeah, it's finally an Armada Hot Shot that functions well as an action figure.  It's an odd existence, since his entire appearance was originally wholly dependent on being a platform for various gimmickry.  He looks the way he does because the play pattern came first.  But now here's that design but with ankle tilts. 

Something gained, something lost.  

It's funny how long Transformers has been circling the drain of Doing Just The Cartoon Style Ironhide Goddammit.   Sure, it was a major milestone when we first got an Ironhide with an actual head, and there was that obligatory Masterpiece, but there was an entire War for Cybertron toyline trilogy of Faithfully Approximating Cartoon Appearances which gave him two toys and neither went Full Cartoon.  Stege Ironhide, the first one, was one of the few "Cybertronian" versions that actually went for a distinct space-y vehicle, rather than Recognizeable Earth Car With A Different Roof Or Something.  And then Earthrise Ironhide tried to retool that into an Earth vehicle with mixed success.  But even that effort fell short of attempting to match the animation model.  

And so we start from scratch!  It's Studio Series '86 Ironhide, who's gonna cartoon at you super hard!  He's a robot made out of boxes wearing a minivan windshield on his chest!  AS GOD INTENDED.

The previous two Ironhides were both Deluxe Class-ish.  Well, the first one was solidly Deluxe Class, but as tall as Deluxe Class could manage to keep him in scale, and the next one was... half of an exclusive set but given a very gigantic Roof Piece that was 20% of his new altmode, so who knows whether that budgets into a retail pricepoint.  But clearly the upper limit of Large-ish Deluxe had been hit, and if you want a better toy at that size, you gotta pump him up to Voyager Class.

SS86 Ironhide is no bigger than the previous two Ironhides, but by handling and transforming him you can see the difference.  He's... a lot of parts.  His roof doesn't get yanked off and set aside, the whole mini-van becomes the robot.  (RIP battle sled)  And so there's a lot of folding.  It's not bad folding?  It's actually fairly interesting folding.  Like, the rear section of the minivan collapses into his feet.  Just his feet!  The rest, up to the front cab, origamis into his legs.  There's a lot of engineering here.  There kind of has to be, if the toy must meet its mandate.  

When you finally get him narrowed into mini-van mode, he clips together pretty solidly.  So solidly you kind of wonder how you get him out of that mode again.  There's no obvious staring point, since what's holding the van together is buried inside.  But you can kind of wriggle him out of vehicle mode again, and yanking the arm clips out of the front roof section is really the only leap-of-faith do-or-die will-I-break-this moment.  And you won't.  Ironhide's pretty robust, true to his name.  Yeah, he's got clear plastic.  He's still robust.  

Ironhide comes with two pistols.  They're based on the pistol (singular) that Ironhide wields in his death scene in The Transformers: The Movie.  He comes with two because Ratchet had two, and Ratchet's getting retooled out of this guy later, obviously.  The pistols can store in multiple places -- in vehicle mode there's two nubs on the roof (which for Ratchet will undoubtedly house the siren/flashers) which you can fit the pistols on.  There's also two more nubs on the underside of the rear, where the pistol barrels can kind of double as dual exhaust pipes.  In robot mode, there's two more nubs on the back behind his head, in case you need robot mode storage.

It's a very good Ironhide!  I can't imagine them doing better at the pricepoint.  

Last time, we talked about Override, and today we're talking about Legacy Deluxe Class Elita One (spelled "Elita-1" on the packaging because Hasbro doesn't care about parsing Transformers names correctly the way I do), so we're going from Lady Transformer With Head Hat On Car Roof to Lady Transformer to Head Hat On Car Roof!  Those lady Transformers sure like putting their head hats on car roofs!  Elita's is removeable (and isn't her actual forehead, unlike Override's) and can plug into anything with a 5mm port.  It's just there to make her vehicle mode look more like her animation model.

Though technically it makes her vehicle mode look more like... fan art of her animation model?  For decades, we didn't have access to Elita One's actual animation model (and we only see the front of it in her one episode), so at least one enterprising fan artist took a crack at it, and arrived at a very short car mode that... this toy seems to be based on?  It was only in the past year or so that we've been blessed with an actual animation model and the... much more elongated actual car mode Elita One was designed to have.   I mean, both the fan art and the actual model have the head hat on the roof, but, like, dang.  Hasbro.  Check your sources.  

This is the first Elita One toy to be based on her animation model while also transforming into a car!  We've got a retool of Starscream from back in Power of the Primes, and that became a jet, and I still adore that toy, but this Elita One is getting back to basics.  She's a car!  She's a car with her forehead on the roof.  The forehead on the roof is important.  Did her Power of the Primes jet mode have her forehead on the fuselage?  No!  

After that weird half-step of Netflix's Elita One, it's also nice to have an Elita One who, like, looks like Elita One.  Her torso's actually got sculpted detail that looks like her!  She's got her collar and the T on her tummy, and the crotch fangs... it's all well-appreciated.  She does borrow Netflix Elita One's shoulders, but that's fine.  And also her legs ... become the actual back of the vehicle, rather than being slim lady legs that tuck underneath somewhere?  That's more than fine!  It's off-model, but it's way preferable.  I love some good stomping boots.  One Arcee is more than enough, we don't need a second lady Transformer that piles the entire vehicle mode on their ass just so that they can have shapely calves.

Elita One comes with two rifles: one that's based on her pistol from the cartoon, but elongated into a more substantial weapon, and one that's Minerva's.  Elita One is going to be retooled later as Minerva, with a new headsculpt and presumably released as a Walgreens exclusive.  (they like their medic Transformer exclusives)  So that Minerva weapon's built in.  Elita One's backpack also has two configurations for this reason.  You can bunch it all that car hood stuff up behind her, out of sight, or you can extend the outer thirds into taller shoulders that kinda-sorta-mostly remind one of Minerva's taller car door shoulders.  A similar silhouette, if you will.  I'll use that configuration on Minerva, while keeping Elita One's backpack compact.  

My only real complaint about this toy is... it's not tall enough?  Elita One is, like, Ironhide height, while this toy is regular Autobot car height.  A weird misstep after years of hitting scale at any cost.  And it's not like she's smaller to synchronize with Minerva -- Minerva's Ironhide height, too!  She stood next to Perceptor once.  Anyway.  I dunno.  

A very satisfying Transformer, regardless.  She's a female Transformer but, like, with vehicle mode parts that become her limbs.  whaaaaaaaaaat?????

Legacy Velocitron Override has an interesting conceptual history.  Always a Walmart exclusive, originally she started out as a retool of Studio Series '86 Hot Rod.  Basically, everything above the waist would be new.  It would be Override with Hot Rod legs.  For this Walmart-exclusive toy, four new molds were budgeted, replacing four of Hot Rod's presumed 9 or 10.  

But what if, Hasbro/TakaraTomy designers dared to dream, what if: Rather than giving Hot Rod four new molds to make him half-way Override, would it be... possible...?  to get an entire Override figure out of those four new molds?  Four plastic colors.  Fewer than a Deluxe (6-7 molds).  Could an entire be toy be somehow extracted from retool budget?

And the answer is: apparently!  Legacy Velocitron Override is just four plastic colors: White ABS, black ABS, red nylon (unpaintable), and translucent red!  Just four!  And despite this, is she still a good toy?

The answer is: surprisingly so!  It's a very satisfying toy of Override, whose original Transformers: Cybertron toy is probably the line's lowest point.  She didn't hold together very well!  Her torso, which was a zigzag of springloaded hinges, would just flop open.  And the toy couldn't stand.  It was back heavy, and had very little heel to speak of, and so she'd just pitch backwards if you looked at her funny. 

The new Legacy Override takes very strong notice of these two massive weakpoints and spends lots of engineering capital addressing them.  First, the torso is held together by a number of slots and tabs, enough to keep things in place.  And secondly: they put some dang heels on this thing to keep the toy stabilized.  It's not gonna fall over.  

All of the Cyber Key-activated gimmickry is gone.  (though there's still a sculpted slot for one in the back of her gun)  But that's fine, because it didn't really work well for Override in the first place, and this toy addresses everything wrong and fixes it.  It's no longer key-activated or spring-loaded, but it... works?  It's not annoying?  That's a win.

There's also some neat tricks to make the robot mode look better.  The torso compresses using some levers and sliders to make sure Override compacts into a more slim humanoid racing shape (and more closely matches her media appearance).  The middle portion of her hood folds across the back of her legs instead of adding to her backpack.  And there's also the expected level of articulation -- waist rotation, wrist rotation, those fabled ankle tilts, the works.  

It's an attractive, engaging toy!  

I mean, it's a 4-mold Deluxe sold for Voyager price, but I like it more than I would have the original retooled Hot Rod intent, so I suppose that's still a win.

Override is exclusive to Walmart!  And she's not shortpacked (there's even some full cases of her), so she shouldn't be that hard to get ahold of.