You can count the number of (Insecticon) Kickbacks on a Ninja Turtle's hand.  I am imbibing the sauce right now, but I'm fairly certain that Fall of Cybertron Kickback is merely transforming grasshopper Kickback #2.   That's not a lot of toys for a dude who was in the first season of the original cartoon!  He was also a toy I had as a kid, and he starred in one of my favorite Transformers children's storybooks.  You know, the one where Grapple looks like an orange Hook.

I am also super-jonesing for new beast Transformers these days, and Thundertron was kind of a butt.  (Which is a funny thing to call him, since his huge problem is he didn't have one.)  WOULD KICKBACK TURN THIS SHIT AROUND????

Yes and no!  His robot mode is pretty friggin' great.  I mean, look at it.  It's crazy and mean and also crazy.  It's a sharp redesign that loosely interprets the original toy.  He has huge stompy boots and giant claws that reach over his shoulders.  If you want a slightly more G1y look, you can clip his insect wings back onto the shoulder claws, but that inhibits their clawyness.

And his insect mode would be perfect if not for two problems, one of them bad and one of them merely annoying!  The merely annoying problem is that his weapon doesn't store anywhere in insect mode.   It just hangs out.  There ain't no place for it to peg in, even off at a dumb clunky angle.  And it's too bad, because it's based on the Gear Shredder weapon from the Fall of Cybertron game, and so it launches a disc.  Grasshopper with a buzzsaw weapon?  Yes.  But it is not so.

EDIT: Apparently it slots in somehow on the claw/wings?  Whaaaaaaaaaaa

The bad one is how notly his grasshopper hind legs peg into the sides of his beast mode.  They just sorta hang out on the sides, flippy floppy, gettin' in all sorts of annoying trouble.  It makes him amazingly fiddly.  This decreases funness!  And it makes me sad.  If there were only a peg or something in there that held it all together, he'd be the bestest.

But at least his robot mode's frickin' sweet.  C'MON HASBRO I NEED A PERFECT NEW BEAST TOY YOU GUYS

WE'RE TALKING IMMACULATE

I don't know what happened.  Back when I had this entire wave preordered at Big Bad Toy Store, I was kinda bummed that ordering the set of five included the Ultra Magnus.  I didn't need the Ultra Magnus.  I'd just gotten a toy of that guy in the Transformers: Prime line, and so this would just be some extra thing I didn't really want.  Magnus doesn't even look like this in the game!  But it cost less to get the whole wave as a set than to order four of the five guys, so oh well.

Then Hasbro Toy Shop got in the wave first, and I could order just the four guys and save money.  And I hesitated.  And I bought Magnus anyway.  I didn't have to.  I coulda just gotten the four other guys.  But... but... I don't know.  Maybe I would need him!  Maybe I could put him in a photo with the other toy of him and be happy for thirty seconds!  So there you have it.  I even swapped their weapons, for funsies.  Ain't I cute.

Fall of Cybertron Magnus is, of course, a retool of Fall of Cybertron Optimus Prime.  He's got a new Magnusy head and a new weapon.  The fun thing about the sword Magnus comes with is that it splits into three parts and can combine around Optimus Prime gun he comes with, resulting in a super sword!  The sword design is based on Optimus Prime's melee sword from the game.  So at least there's that reason to own this toy.  You know, the whole Complete The Armory reason.

A pretty flimsy reason.

You're lucky I like you, Ultra Magnus.

Starscream is one of the entirely new molds in this wave of Fall of Cybertron toys.  He's probably one of the most anticipated of the line, as his absence from the War for Cybertron toyline a few years back caused much despair.  But hey,  everyone's favorite scientist-turned-Seeker-commander is here now.

I am going to blow your mind here:  Starscream's cockpit turns into his chest, there's wings on his back, and his legs turn into the rear thrusters.  Oh, hey, and did I mention that he's got arm-mounted cannons?  Yeah, I know.  Hard to believe.  I'd note how weakly his head hides along the top of the fuselage in jet mode is an innovation, but I think Armada Starscream was the first to debut that technology.  Remember to rotate his head backwards!  That's how you make a face not be there.

Sarcasm aside, he is a pretty solid toy.  He's wide and chunky and nothing in his transformation is annoying.  Having no surprises is sometimes its own reward.  This transformation style was figured out loooong ago, in the days of yore.  And he doesn't have to look like a real jet, so the robot mode can be executed more strongly.

Starscream's arm cannons can combine into a single double-barreled weapon.  When the two cannons peg together, their gearing interlocks so that when you rotate one set of barrels, the other set rotates as well.  When combined, the weapon looks like the Neutron Assault Rifle from Fall of Cybertron.

While this Starscream is primarily the same dude as Prime Starscream (you can tell because ... uh... both their feet are four-pronged thruster heels?), the design is also repurposed as normal ol' G1 Starscream in the current comic books.  It's peacetime in these stories, so you gotta lose the arm cannons.  Further cementing the G1 connection is the black helmeted head, which Starscream has in the comic books; Fall of Cybertron Starscream's helmet is painted blue.

I was about to remark how there's five whole new dudes in this third wave of Fall of Cybertron figures, but there were five new dudes in the previous wave, too, plus five new dudes in the wave following.  So I guess that's actually situation normal, and not some weird aberration.  What is still remarkable is the huge-ass new weapons that this wave's guys have.   Three out of the five are retools of guys from the first wave but with new giant things to tote around.  I presume this is the result of the growing pains the pricepoint has been in for the past tiny bit.  As the pricepoint skips up to $15, Hasbro's able to shove in more.  The first uses of these molds were on the low-end of the bell curve as far as deluxes go, but now they're bulked up in mass a bit.

I can't scoff at the $5 raise.  $15 in Today Money is equal to $10 in Past Money.  Proportionally I'm paying the same amount for these things as I was in 1999.  And in 1999 I was a poor college student who could barely afford Chef Boyardee, so I'm putting this one in the Win column.

It is surprising to me how much I like Sideswipe.  I didn't hate Jazz or anything, but I seem to like Sideswipe (who Jazz was retooled into) so much more.  I don't even like Sideswipe much!  Sideswipe is boring!  And I love Jazz.  But Sideswipe just appeals.  Maybe it's the smoother car mode.  Maybe it's the colors.  Maybe it's the large-ass gun.  I dunno.

It's the exact same transformation as Jazz, but nearly the entire car mode has been reskinned.  I assume all the bumper-to-hood-to-roof-to-spoiler parts were on one moldset, and that's been swapped out for a different moldset that poops out a different car design.  This is awesome.   I hope to see more retools like this. Sideswipe is retooled to look like his car mode from the game, though Jazz's transformation gives him a different robot mode.

Sideswipe's new huge-ass gun is a Path Blaster, a weapon from the game which isn't nearly this huge.  But I don't care that it's oversized, because the Path Blaster is named after the Pathblaster from the Marvel UK stories, which was indeed huge.  And wielded by Roadbuster.  Who's in the next wave.  The design looks nothing like the old Pathblaster, but I'm still totes giving this thing to Roadbuster when I get him.

The only thing I actively dislike about Sideswipe are his eyes.  I like his new head, but his eyes aren't so much eyes as they are black gouges on his face.  He looks as if he has expired.  I might try painting them, if there's anything there to paint and the eyesockets aren't portals to some cruel dimension of pain.

(My Jazz has the Reprolabels upgrade set, so he may not look just like yours.)

This is another one of those cases where I'm absolutely sure I've got somebody's original toy in my basement, but I couldn't manage to locate it.  But I did manage to find someone almost as good.

TF2010 Highbrow was a movieline toy who came out a few years ago and he transformed into a sweet knock-off of a P-38 Lightning.  He also had an alternate head built into the mold that looked like Ransack, a Generation 2 Decepticon who transformed into a Corsair.  Appropriate enough, right, a potential reuse from one World War II plane to another?

So who knows why Hasbro instead named and colored him like Ransack's helicopter buddy Powerdive.

(Nevermind why the helicopter was named "Powerdive" to begin with.)

So I found Ransack's toy, but not Powerdive's original toy.  But hey, as I said, he kinda fits here anyway.   Enjoy my photo of old Ransack next to new Powerdive.

I passed on Highbrow at the time because I figured that at some point his awesome toy would likely be done as a character I liked better.  And that sort of paid off, considering the whole identity issues here.  Those aside, though, I'm pretty damn happy with this toy. It's a dark green crazy WWII-ish plane with a shark painted around the cockpit.  Despite being a movie toy, he transforms pretty cleanly, too.  You can untransform his arms so they end in his rotors instead of fists, which I think is a good approximation of his original Rotor Force gimmick.

There's only two things I don't like about him.  The first are his stubby forearms.  The second is the specific mechanics of his gimmick.  Now, I love myself button-activated spinning rotors, and this guy has two of them.  However, they're the kind where if you don't hold the button down, the rotors stop spinning.  The best spinning rotors you can crank over and over and get them spinning faster, but these are set up to aggravate you.

Other than those two things, I really like him.  If you find him at Toys"R"Us (he's an exclusive there), I'd snatch him up.  He's worth it just for the plane mode.

Forget the rest of the imported Asian exclusives, Hot Spot is the one I really wanted!  I love Hot Spot.  He and his Protectobots were among the first Transformers I owned, and I had all of them.  (Incidentally, I am also pretty big on Defensor.)  Surprise, I am happy to have a new  Hot Spot!

Yeah, there've been a few other Hot Spots through the years, but none of them have been terribly satisfactory to me.  A Mini-Con was colored like him once.   Later, Legends of Cybertron Optimus Prime was redone as Hot Spot, as was Titanium RID Prime.   We would have gotten the best damn Hot Spot ever for OTFCC 2004, but OTFCC 2004 was kind of the Titanic and whatnot, so oops.

But this guy does it for me!  He's big and blocky and made from a toy I like.  (Yes, my Dinobot Syndrome is strong for this mold.  Once Artfire comes out, I'll take a picture of all five uses of it.  Though I still want a Hauler from it as well...)    And he's got a new head!  Hooray for new heads!

My only complaint is that his robot mode needs some red.  Well, more red.  The lights on the roof aren't nearly enough.  This is solved for me, thankfully, by Reprolabels!  (see below left) I already had Hot Spot's "upgrade" sticker sheet waiting around the house for me to find this toy, so they went on him pretty quickly.  The new red and silver hazard stripes not only call back to the original toy, but they add that red I so strongly desire.

He's pretty hard to find at the moment because he's one to a case and he's the guy folks seem to be after the most.  Hopefully he'll saturate!  Once I start spotting more of him, and after all my friends in town have gotten him, I wanna get an extra one to steal the head from.  Spark's Inferno head just won't do.

I could make excuses for buying Wheelie.  He had a new head and weapon!  He was orange!  ... that's about it!

But this G2-style Jazz version of the same toy, I dunno.  I mean, I like myself some G2, but I'm not generally in for same-character redecoes of the same toy unless it's Hot Shot or Dinobot.  But I had this tiny desire to have All The RTS Jazz Mold Uses, and so I got him.

He's nice.

I have no idea what I'm gonna do with him, but he's nice.

Wheelie opens up a lot of questions about the life-cycle of the Transformers species.  He's a child.  A young boy.  In some stories, he has parents.  (Dead, like Batman's.)  So we gotta ask ourselves.... is this typical?  Do Transformers have childhoods?  Generally we see them be built as adults, but Wheelie is an actual diminutive preteen orphan with a slingshot because he's a rhyming Dennis the Menace.  He hangs out with ten-year-old Daniel Witwicky because, hey, they're both kids.

Were Hot Rod and Springer tiny Transformers children at one point?  Did they have parents like Wheelie did?  Is Wheelie gonna stay that size, or is he gonna grow up to be tall like they are?  (And since Bumblebee's the same size, does that mean Bumblebee was a kid, too?)

(Seriously, if I may go off on a tangent here, what we see of Transformers life cycles is insanely depicted.  In Beast Wars, Rattrap whispered to Silverbolt about Transformer strip clubs in front of Cheetor, even though Silverbolt was one year old and Cheetor was about seventy.  But Cheetor is characterized as a teenager and Silverbolt was born characterized as an adult, so.... yyyyeah.)

However, if Wheelie does get to grow up, he might look like my new toy!   At least, I sure hope this toy doesn't represent Kid Wheelie.  RTS Jazz is a pretty tall Deluxe Class figure, and Kid Wheelie should probably not be taller than Generations Springer and Classics Hot Rod.  Hell, he's taller than Classics Grimlock, and Wheelie's generally remembered for being able to ride on top of Grimlock's head like a tiny hat.

Like Springer, I was pretty content to skip this Wheelie back when he was a shortpacked Chinese exclusive.  He's pretty damn skippable for sixty bucks.  But at domestic prices, he was much more tempting.  I didn't need a larger Wheelie.  It wasn't a desire I had.  The recent-ish Legends Class toy was sufficient for me, since Wheelie is a small child.  But, well, you know me and my orange redeco fetish.  Plus, hey, COMPLETE JAZZ POWER, Dinobot Syndrome, etc.  And he has a new head and a new slingshot.  And it's a really good toy, regardless of color.  He's exclusive to Toys"R"Us, so if you find him there, you could buy worse toys.

(Man, do I not currently own an original Wheelie?)

Somehow I have all the Primax Springer toys.  I didn't intend to.  I have the four of them, and I only purposefully bought three.  Over a decade ago (probably 2001), I bought the original Springer 'cuz it was the only game in town, and I wanted the Wreckers' leader.  Then in 2007 BotCon gave us a second Springer, a redeco of Hot Shot.  Shortly after, we got another Springer at retail.  I considered my BotCon Springer sufficient for my requirements, but this New Retail Springer came packaged with a Ratbat I wanted, so.

And now this even newer Generations Springer.  I thought myself satisfied with the BotCon one.  It was a BotCon toy, after all!  And Generations Springer was originally a China-exclusive, which meant he was gonna be $30-$40.  I can pass on that, easy.

...but then Hasbro decided he was gonna get sold over here, too (as Toys"R"Us exclusives), and so now he was suddenly domestic prices.  Impulse-buyable.  And since around that time we were getting our first good photos of him, I started to realize he had things I desired.  I mean, I already knew he had a new head and a new sword.  Those were nice.  But I didn't realize he was going to be so gray-with-yellow-and-blue-hazard-stripes in helicopter mode.  His helicopter mode gives me Original Springer Toy Feels in a way the other new Springers have not.  So, yes, for $15, I would own that.

The new sword does complicate things a little.  It can peg into helicopter mode, but only if you unpeg one of his missile launchers.  His missile launchers do have several other ways to attach several other places, but I liked them best under the helicopter wings.  The sword also is grasped pretty loosely in his hand.  Good thing it's got a hilt guard (double powerlinx ports!), 'cuz that's what keeps it from just slipping down through his palm.

Folks say that the toy is too movie-y for Springer.  I disagree!  Springer's toy is pretty large in my mind when I think of Springer, and one of the things about Springer's toys are his stickers.  They are crazy.  The front of his legs have these stickers where the detail shows all these access panels falling open and hanging open by wiring.  G1 Springer's kind of a messy dude.  And so translating that into lots of crazy movie detailing really works for me.

(Besides that toy has already been another G1 guy, so technically it was a G1 aesthetic already.)

Have I mentioned how much I like those little yellow-and-blue hazard stripes on his gray wings?  I really, really do.

Goddammit, I hate when I can't find a vintage toy to photograph alongside my updated version.  I know my Swerve is SOMEWHERE.

So Asia got these exclusive Transformers and we're getting them later as exclusives blah blah blah, and Swerve was one of them.  I want more than him, but he was what I was able to order, which turned out okay, since I'll be able to get the rest for domestic retail price anyway.  I'm only paying import prices for Swerve.  That news of them coming stateside came just in time.  (I got mine from TFSource, btw, which is one of the big sponsors of TFWiki.)

Long, long ago, Swerve was a truck.  Then he was a car, then another car, and then even more cars. This is the first truck he's been since the original, unless I'm having a brain fart.  He's Generations Kup with a new head, the alternate one featured in Kup's instructions.  And he's, y'know, in Swerve colors.

He's not nearly as awesome as my Kup, not gonna lie.  First of all, Kup has always been one of my favorite characters and his toy here has been on my desk for a year because I love it that much; second, mine has a cigar 'cuz of that third party head I got; and third, he's a glorious combination of brilliantly saturated teals since he's the e-Hobby release.  Swerve's combination of red, white, black, and light gray is very attractive, but it's not friggin' teal, y'know?  Teal is the friggin' bomb.  Swerve's use of this mold isn't bad, not by a long shot, he's just not the best use of this mold.  That'd be hard anyway, so I don't hold it against him.

The weird thing about Asian Swerve (and the rest of his Asian-exclusive toyline) is that while his packaging is completely English... the domestic-release ones displayed at Comic-Con had Chinese all over them.  I guess maybe they think kids will think that's neat?  Maybe!  I really have no idea.