So, hey, who wants more Seekers?  Everybody?  All right, let's sell these out in record time.

These three dudes (purple, orange, and teal dudes seen in front) are based on the flame-throwin' Seekers seen in the first episode of the original Transformers cartoon, who fire on the Autobots on Cybertron as they drive by.  Sunstorm got a toy long ago, but his two pals (and a very obscured fourth dude nobody ever notices or talks about) had never achieved that same status -- until now!  They are Bitstream and Hotlink, and they are nerds.  Like, they script programs and play MPORGs.  They get their names from characters from the Transformers: Exodus book, where they were cast as Starscream's IT dudes before the war.

For the past few years, the BotCon troop builder three-pack has been three of the same toy (though last year split up the three across the produced mold's three included heads) , and this is the first year BotCon has done the troop builders in three different color schemes.  The way this was possible -- or at least more financially viable -- is that only one plastic color is changed across all three.  All other plastic colors and deco are the same.

I'm happy with them, but I do wish they'd swapped the black and the white plastics to make Sunstorm more accurate.  It wouldn't have made the other two any less accurate, really, and we have a more concrete idea of what Sunstorm looks like.  Also, don't worry about how old and reused this mold is, because Hasbro and Takara have spent a lot of time keeping this tooling fresh as a daisy.  These guys feel good as new and nice and tight.  The only bit of oddness is the white parts seem a smidge too large, and so it's a little rough to get their torso parts compressed together in robot mode.  But I'd rather things be a little too tight rather than too loose.

The "Rainmaker" label is an error.  They were meant to be "Air Warriors," but the Rainmaker thing sort of slipped into internal use by accident and made its way to the polybags and comic book program.

Who's got two thumbs and loves things that are horribly orange?  This guy!

Sunstorm's a little less orange than I'd prefer.  The original e-Hobby toy was orange creamsicle, a gloriously obnoxious shade not entirely possible in RGB photography, but Masterpiece Sunstorm runs a range from yellow to a yellowy orange.  The jet mode gradients between those two colors from nose to tail, and so when it transforms, you end up with a robot that's sort of yellow-orange with yellow boots.  The e-Hobby toy had a limited plastic breakdown, too, and so this more-complex toy tries to more accurately match the generic who appeared briefly in the cartoon, with white shoulder intakes, thighs, biceps, and fists.

As I said, not quite the orange I was hoping for.  However, it's still a friggin' stark-bright day-glow Playskool fighter jet, and that still touches me in all the right places.

Which is why I was happy to sell my MP Starscream to better afford buying this guy.  Yes, I liked Starscream because he was a more realistic desaturated hue, skewing towards realism, and the many alterations to the mold emphasizes animation-model accuracy over jet mode realism, but orange always trumps realism for me.  Now you know my hierarchy.

Included in the cosmetic mold alterations is a new head.  The old one was kind of narrow, partly because it had to fit through a narrow gap in the fuselage during transformation, but the new one is wider.  The vents on the side of his head compress into the sides of his helmet so you can still squeeze the head through.  I like the new head better, so that works out for me.

Since the retooled version of this toy was released as a "Coronation Starscream," Sunstorm comes with those parts as well, even though Sunstorm hasn't ever worn a crown, shoulder pads, and a cape.  Maybe it's his formal wear.  He does think he's a god, after all, what with the accident-of-birth radiation powers, so I guess it's not a stretch that he'd dress the part.

Though the Masterpiece toy's orange is inferior to the original toy's, the articulation helps fill the gap for me.  Because of Sunstorm's well-articulated hands and arms and his balljointed neck, he can assume poses that aren't limited to "raise arms."  He can stretch out his arms and open his palms, as if he believes he's controlling the cosmos.  He can look up into the heavens.  In short, he can have personality.

One real disappointment is that he doesn't have the stand that the first MP Starscream did.  I kinda wanna do floating-in-the-air poses.  I guess maybe I could buy a MP Thundercracker at Toys"R"Us to get one?  Though that'd be a $70 stand with somebody else's name tampographed on it.  Gnngh.

(Hey, during which iteration of this mold was the Dr. Arkeville pilot figurine replaced with the pilot pilot figurine?)

Finally, this toy came with a limited Sunstorm collectible coin.

Not sure what I'm gonna do with that, but I ain't gonna turn it down.

If there's one thing I didn't like about the various Voyager Class Animated Starscreams I'd accumulated, it's that they all had the same face!  (If there were two things I didn't like about them, the second would be that they take up so much shelf space.)  All these Starscream clones had different personalities, some whose facial expression really shouldn't be the Classic Starscream smirk.

So it was about damn time Reprolabels gave us a sheet of stickers to remedy that.  It's not perfect, since all of the faces on the sheet are colored in Starscream gray, rather than in the colors of the clones' faces, but weighed against them all having the same smirk I'd say it was a fair trade.

There were a few other stickers for the nominal Starscream as well, such as the colored logos.

If you're attending the Second Annual Webcomics Rampage in Austin, TX, be sure to RSVP!  It's required for getting in to see the panel with myself, Jeph Jacques, Danielle Corsetto, Randy Milholland, Joel Watson, Josh Lesnick, and Bill Williams. The panel has limited seats, so RSVP so you don't miss it!  Plus, it's helpful to know how many folks are gonna be around for the signing that happens afterwards.

Hey hey, what's new?  Thought I'd throw some images together that I'd taken recently.

Here's a new photo of Nexus Prime, aka "Nexus Maximus," aka "the guy who used to share a name with a dildo." (NSFW) My original Breakaway, Nexus Prime's arm, always had a little problem with the combiner connector plug.  There was a warp in the plastic or something that kept it from securely fastening to the combiner's torso.  At best it could loosely hang on the connector stub via gravity.  I've been meaning to replace him for years, and finally bit the bullet when the Transformers Collectors' Club store had him on sale a week ago.  $5 off!  Hooray!

Man, you can imagine how dusty and dirty the rest of my old Nexus Prime looks when he's got a new shiny arm.

Once I had a working Breakaway, I could finally do interesting stuff with that arm, and so I took a new photo for the Transformers Wiki.  The old photo was kinda washed out anyway, and I'm better at photographing these things now.

Next up is a photograph of e-Hobby Sunstorm.  Years ago while moving I lost one of his orange tailfins, which was really infuriating, what with his secondary market price being like $500.  That's a lot of money to drop for a replacement tailfin!  But not too long after my dilemma, they reissued him, and I got a new Sunstorm for (relatively) cheap.  Well, heh heh, that new Sunstorm had been sitting in its box, untouched, for over two years.  Finally I got the inspiration to take him out; I had noticed that his Tfwiki page needed a proper photograph of the original toy.  The Sunstorm in the photo here is a Frankenstein of my first Sunstorm and my new one.  Basically I stole one of the tailfins and also grabbed the landing gear and the jet-mode missiles for the jet-mode photo.  And, yeah, lots more dusting.  Yay, dusting.

He's so orange.  So deliciously creamsicle orange.

Hmm.  I also got some new Reprolabels in yesterday, but I think I'll save photos of those for a future blogpost.