Masterpiece Rodimus Prime was revealed (in color) at this weekend's C3X Hobby in Japan.  Okay, woo, so he transforms from  Hot Rod to Rodimus Prime to Hot Rod's car to Rodimus Prime's truck, which is sort of neat, I guess, if you like awesome things.  But it all pales in comparison to him finally being the right color.

Oh, yes, he's magenta, folks.

He's gonna be about $200 to import, so I think I'm going to pass on him.  I do that kind of money for Grimlock, but not Hot Rod.  If he comes out in the states, I'll probably pick him up, but there's no promises that he'll remain that purply color, so it's a bittersweet decision.  Though, as I was reminded by AllSpark dude Powered Convoy, a large-ass Rodimus toy would go perfect in a Wreckers display.  Now that's tempting!

The last of two scheduled Transformers Animated toys are hitting Toys "R" Uses now.  (In the states, anyway.)  There are a few others that Hasbro let us know might happen, but we don't know anything about their release, so these might as well be the last two.

One of them is the awesome Rodimus Prime.  (Well, Rodimus Minor, if you go by his packaging.  Hasbro thought there were too many Primes in the toyline, and he's definitely Rodimus Prime in the fiction.)  I wasn't super-anticipating his toy versus the others.  I mean, he looked awesome, but I was looking forward more to the upgrades of existing characters because I am a retarded doofus like that.  I like characters, and Rodimus didn't do very much.  What he did was mostly awesome, but it was within the span of a few minutes.  The most noteworthy thing is that he's voiced by Judd Nelson again, the voice of Hot Rod/Rodimus from the 1986 movie.  (Nelson was too rich for the third season's blood, and they got the talented Dick Gautier to replace him.)

But, let me tell you, this toy is pretty damn neat.  And, after riding the crest of my recent Hot Rod character model nerdgasm over-analyzation, it was good mental timing.  Remember how I was going on about how Hot Rod is pink?  Well, this toy still isn't pink (though the Japanese release is metallic purple), but it's definitely more purple than Hot Rod or Rodimus toys usually are.  The photos show him next to the Challenge at Cybertron Rodimus I recently got, which is a very vibrant watermelon red, which does make Rodimus look purpler.  I also compared him to the darker red of the original Classics Rodimus, just to see if he was indeed purpler, and he is.  Not quite as much to be as accurate as I was pining for previously, but definitely an improvent.

Animated Rodimus also transforms differently from every other Hot Rod toy.  His arms are formed from the back of the vehicle rather than tucking under either side of the hood.  This frees up his legs to be relatively kibbleless, and those tuck up underneath the car.  It's a welcome diversion from the usual approach.

The only annoying part of the transformation is entirely my own fault -- I always forget to flip the hot rod engine panel over to the Autobot symbol side during transformation, and I never realize my mistake until I get to the point where I have to take everything apart again to give it room to rotate.

I guess another annoying part is how rough it is to get the crossbow plugged into the top of the roof of the vehicle.  There's not much clearance for the back ends of the missiles, and since the connection is pretty shallow, you're more often than not likely to shoot missiles everywhere rather than attach anything.

That said, he's pretty, dynamic, and fun to play with.  If you spot him, I'd recommend picking him up.  He shows what wonders Hasbro and Takara were able to do in translating the Animated aesthetic into plastic form, especially after much practice.

No toys today, but, here, have an image I put together for the Transformers Wiki.  Considering how frequently the animation studios mixed up their Hot Rods and Rodimuses, a visual guide to their differences seems like it'd be a good idea.  Monzo provided me some scans of some colored character models from old Japanese magazines, but I wanted something a little less grainy and a little more, uh, accurate.  So I took their character model lineart and colored it myself by eyedropping colors from select episodes.  Some episodes were by crappy animation companies, so I avoided those, as they had different color palettes and sometimes colored things wrong.

So, hey, Hot Rod is pretty pink.  It's kinda funny that, as he gets older, he gets more desaturated.  I say it's funny because when you die in Transformers, you turn gray.  So this is like a subtle commentary on aging.   You're halfway dead!  Kup also desaturated with age, so it's not just Hot Rod who has his mortality written all over him in Prismacolor.

(The ancient, bearded sage Alpha Trion, even in modern times, is bright purple and red.  When he was a kid, I bet you couldn't look at him without burning your retinas.  He was a walking lense flare.)

I scaled the models to each other according to how they're depicted in the animation materials.  (I've got a lot of this crazy stuff on my hard drive.)  So their relative heights are accurate, at least to that one height chart.

My favorite detail is the crotch.  Why?  Because it's their windshield and roof.  That's where the passenger cabin is intended to go during the transformation to robot mode.  If any toy ever attempted it, it'd basically look like Hot Rod or Rodimus is wearing a huge diaper, so I can understand why their toys shy away from that.

Hope you enjoyed character-design geeking with me.

So there's this exclusive three-pack of Classics Rodimus, Galvatron, and Cyclonus that's been released in Southeast Asia with no sign so far of release anywhere else.  Sometimes I get paid in toys for art, so I figgered I might as well check them out since Big Bad Toy Store had the set in stock.

This here is "Challenge at Cybertron" Rodimus in front of his regular American retail self.  He's an attempt at doing the toy in pure cartoon colors, taste be damned.  I was super-interested in this toy when a few stolen samples of him showed up online just before BotCon.  I was interested because it looked like he was pinkish purple.  Hasbro and Takara try their damnedest to pretend that in the 1986 Animated Movie that Hot Rod is totally red and orange and yellow.  Ha!  It is to laugh.  He's frigging pink. Magenta-ish, even.  Early in the toy's design stage, Hasbro was gonna release him in pink, before they realized that holy crap no this is a boy's toy that would be financial suicide.  The production version was dark red, and every Hot Rod or Rodimus since then has been too.

And so photos showed up online of this Rodimus who looked pretty damn pink.  So pink the plastic had a translucent quality.   Hot damn, I said!  That'll be mine!

The actual toy is not pink.  In person it is a very brilliant red which that is pretty damn opaque.  Think of the color of, say, raw meat.  Or maybe watermelon.  Vaguely orangey, very vaguely pinkish, but definitely red.  Denied once again!

As a result the toy is a different kind of eyesore.  I think I kind of like it, but it's definitely an acquired taste.  This toy is the Eighties punching you in the face.  Other than the missed opportunity to do the first pink Hot Rod ever, it's a valiant effort to make the toy look like the cartoon model.  The fists are painted entirely over in light gray, as are the spoiler in a drab yellow and the fronts of the legs in dark gray.  Most noticeable is the canopy area which is no longer a translucent blue, but the same solid raw meat red as everything else but with painted light-blue windows.

Contrast it with the original Classics Rodimus toy, with its attempt to update and subdue Hot Rod's original look into something more palatable.

The "Challenge at Cybertron" Rodimus is both horrible and great, in comparison, and I waver on whether I prefer the cartoony one or not.  It certainly stands out more on a shelf, good or bad.

And one of them has to go.  I don't need two Classics Rodimuses.  We'll hafta see which one it is.