Of course Anode is my new favorite Transformers character.  She's a snarky lady asshole who's married to another lady Transformer.  I'm pretty sure I write like thirteen varients of this character already.  Her very existence makes me suspect at some point I get thrown back in time and become James Roberts.

Once Titans Return Windblade was announced, I was like, oh, hey, lady jet could maybe be painted into another lady jet (and both use propeller propulsion in some way), and I started making plans.  I asked Trent Troop to make an Anode head for his Shapeways store, and I bought one of those (in frosted extreme detail).  I prepared paints.  And, finally, I got a second Windblade so I could beige her up.  

I have to say, this ended up looking more like Anode than I'd expected.  The translation went pretty well.  I mean, she doesn't turn into a space-biplane, and she doesn't transform the same (legs unwrapping into upper wings), but in robot mode she clearly has the right vibes and all the colors can go in the right places.  

And so I am pleased.

And, obviously, I'm gonna make her wife Lug.  I've got a second TR Rewind on order, and I'm gonna see if Trent can't make a Shapeways Lug head. 

Man, why didn't this head option for the Inferno mold exist back in 2010?  It's perfect for Pyro.  Instead, we got Inferno's head in blue because all of the slots for head retools were used up on other figures in the BotCon 2010 set.  Back then, I figured I'd get home with my set and  immediately tape over the mouth and then paint the tape silver or something.  That mouth had to go, man.  It just did.  But I never got around to doing that.  I'm pretty lazy.

So anyway, now Hot Spot is a thing that exists, and he has a head that's pretty Pyro-y.  It's probably more Pyro-y than Hot Spot-y.  And so I waited until our stores started getting piles of Hot Spots and grabbed an extra one to steal a head from.  I got some Cobalt Blue and mixed in a bit of Napoleonic Violet, and apparently that matches Pyro's blue pretty damn well.

I could have made his faceplate gold or yellow, to match the head this head's replacing, but I have never ever ever painted yellow or gold without it looking like utter crap.  And so I left him with a silver faceplate, which happily matches the original Pyro toy.  Huzzah.

Generally I take a few photos of my toys before slaughtering them with paint.  But not Ironhide, apparently.  He's had good photos of him up on TFWiki from another user for a while now, so half my impetus to photograph him was gone.  And, really, I got Ironhide for the express purpose of painting him.  It was why he was in my hands.  So he went on the kitchen table pretty damn quickly.

I wanted to paint him 'cuz we've seen Ken Christiansen's concept art of Ironhide and he's a mostly black guy with a splash of red, while the toy is mostly red with a splash of black.  And I know black paint goes on reeeeally easy, especially for a shaky-handed and impatient painting novice such as myself, so I became obsessed with getting this guy so I could "fix" him.

And I did!  His arms and legs are black now, as God and/or Christiansen intended.  Those guns he's sporting are Kup's, of course.  The Mini-Con that comes with Ironhide (and transforms into one of his cannons) is giving me trouble with assembly, so he's sitting around somewhere.  The purple crystal thing won't snap in.  It pops out.  It's annoying.  I have the plastic flash sanded and everything.  It's gone.  The piece just won't stay.  I hate it.

I have but one photo of Ironhide without paint or his stickers applied.  There it is on the right, with his buddy Unicron The Face Volcano.

Oh, and if Kup's review taught me anything, it's that I should mention that this is not the Cyberverse toy you can find in America.  It's a Deluxe and it's from Japan.  It's unknown whether he's ever coming over here at the moment.

Hey, guys!  It's a custom Alternators-style Shattered Glass Ravage, painted expertly by Rod!  He was kind enough to show us his work in the forums, so come check out his image gallery.  Dude, he painted a black toy white.  Do you know how hard that is?  It's friggin' hard core, is what it is!

Seeing this gallery makes me want to dig out my Alternators Ravage again.  That was one fine-ass toy. (Well, the second one was.)

UPDATE: Vote HERE

Today (Monday), Transformers fans are called to flock to transformers.com to vote on five nominees for the new Transformers Hall of Fame.  Hasbro automatically inducted Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, and Starscream, because, really, let's get those guys out of the way, and they left the fifth inductee this year up to us.  The winner will be announced at BotCon.

Last month, a bunch of participating websites, including the Transformers Wiki, held separate polls to get their own lists of five worthy Transformers.  The results were sent in, and Hasbro used these results to create a list of five final nominees, the ones we'll be voting on today.  The first five were pretty obvious:  Soundwave, Grimlock, Jazz, and Shockwave.  The fifth I imagine was a surprise, as this week's TNI strip addresses.  It's Dinobot!  Some guy from friggin' Beast Wars who hasn't appeared in any other series!  He showed up on almost everybody's lists, and was the #1 choice from the Transformers Wiki.

This is because Dinobot is awesome.

(Though not everybody thinks so.  Some folks from TFW2005 were very adamant that Dinobot was shoved into the Nominee list by Hasbro, as part of some underhanded coup, because Hasbro hates the fans, because nobody would vote for Dinobot!  Nobody!)

Of course, I don't think he's going to win.  He doesn't have a chance in hell against Soundwave.  Dinobot may win some local polls at certain websites, but we're talking general transformers.com traffic here.  Soundwave's got it locked.  But a man can still dream, and I'm still voting Dinobot.  (Well, when the poll on transformers.com goes up sometime today.)

I've, uh, probably exhausted my well of Dinobot toy photos, especially recently, what with me trying to get every use of his mold ever together in one spot.  But there is one thing I know I definitely haven't photographed for this blog, or photographed period for about 15 years.  In 1997, disappointed with Dinobot's toy (what was wrong with me???), I bought a blue 5" Iron Man figure, covered him with sculpey and paint and called it a day.  His rigid grill structure's kinda broken off and he's been at the bottom of  a toy bin for a decade, but other than the paint wear that resulted, he's still in surprisingly good condition.

So enjoy this little bit of personal action figure history.  In 1997, Dinobot was a big part of my world.  In 2010, even though he hasn't appeared in a television series since then, he still is.  That's why I'm voting for him.