This is Wheeljack!

...

Man, we just got a Generations Wheeljack last year in the Deluxe Class scale, and so this feels kind of deja vu-y.  And I like that Wheeljack a lot.  It was a Wheeljack that I spent a lot of time with as a character.  This Wheeljack was in one episode and he wasn't even himself for 95% of that, since it was an Evil Imposter episode.

So what to say about Prime Wheeljack.

He's more interesting to transform than I expected.  Yeah, he's one of those guys whose hood becomes his feet and the roof becomes  his chest and the rear becomes his arms.  There are lots of those guys.  Like G1 Wheeljack.  But there's some surprises, like how his shins transform.  Both his forearms and the "bones" of his shins are on these long pieces that rotate between modes.  Starting out in car mode, you split the legs, and then split the legs again, rotating the inner half that has the feet attached.  Then you have to slide up the rest of the hood and fold it over.  I'm doing a terrible job of describing it.

Wheeljack also has swords.  Wheeljack can hold them in his hands, peg them into his shoulders, or in vehicle mode he can stow them underneath or attach them to the front bumper like big... sword things on the front of a car.

He looks like a good recreation of the show model, best I can tell from images.  So that's another plus.

Wheeljack's not bad.  He's just not a pleasant surprise like Cliffjumper was.

First of all, Prime "Robots in Disguise" deluxes are hitting Targets.  Plug your zip code into this link to see if there are any in your area.  You'll probably have to ask them to get some out of the back.  That's what Graham and I did this morning, anyway.

There's very little chance the "First Edition" Cliffjumper's gonna make his way into American stores any time soon, if ever, and there's an even remoter chance of the later-wave totally awesome zombie version, so I decided to get the "RID" version today.  I don't care that much about Cliffjumper, so I'll take the cheapest option when it comes to him.  We're talking a cool $13 instead of the $30-40 it'd cost to import him.

I was more enamored with the "First Edition" mold, which is different from this one.  FE Cliffjumper had a completely different transformation that resulted in less fake vehicle mode parts in robot mode.   The car roof on his chest actually became the car's roof.  The rear bumpers on his shoulders actually became the car's rear bumpers.  That's the sort of thing I generally prefer.  Cliffjumper, on the other hand, takes a different approach.  The car's roof folds up on Cliffjumper's back and the car's rear bumpers become his ankles.  Meanwhile, there's a fake sculpted car roof chest and fake sculpted car bumper shoulders.   There's even fake sculpted wheels on the backs of his thighs, even though his four real wheels are plainly visible.

I don't think there's any obvious car kibble in his robot mode's character model that becomes actual car parts.  There's some real car parts in robot mode, of course, since it can't aaaalll pile onto his back, but none of that stuff exists on the cartoon's character model.

That said, it's not a bad toy.  There's a lot of twists and turns, but none of them make me want to murder anyone, and it's surprisingly unfrustating and expedient to get him from robot mode back into car mode.  It's almost kind of fun, really.  That makes up for a lot.  Other than his odd elbows, he's fun to pose in robot mode, as well.

He is, however, pretty tiny by Deluxe Class standards.  Of all of the Prime deluxes I have so far, he's the shortest.  That may have to do with the large axe he comes with, I dunno.  (The axe can plug into his car roof or the side of his car as a cannon.)  It's a little unfortunate because Cliffjumper's partner was Arcee, who's the second-tallest Deluxe (after Starscream).  And so Arcee is taller than him by a large margin.  These are definitely not their relative heights on the cartoon.

To sum up, if you don't care about fake kibble or relative scale, he's a fantastic toy.  I'm pleasantly surprised by him.

We'd sort of guessed that there'd eventually be a Voyager Class-scale Megatron toy of his Transformers: Prime design. Hasbro probably wasn't going to leave his only representation a Deluxe inside of a multipack. But we had no news of such a toy, no catalog listings or stolen test shots or anything. Until, that is, he suddenly showed up for sale across the ocean at Argos. Usually when we hear news of a toy, it's six months in advance. The lead time between learning about Voyager Megatron and him being for sale was no more than a few hours.

And since I've been anticipating a larger Megatron toy for basically forever, and the multipacked Deluxe still being a no-show, I was willing to ship one from over there to here. I'm mad like that. I asked my Twitter followers for assistance, and a dude named Tricky ended up being my very awesome helper. He's part of a podcast called The Nerdsphere Network, by the way. Go check it out.

Because the leadtime was so short, hopefully nobody  had it in their heads too long that he was going to be gloriously shiny silver like the usually-airbrushed stock photography.  No, Megatron is mostly a matte french gray.  Some of his plastic is caramelly, like his feet, knees, hands, and fusion cannon.  The difference between the gray and the caramel seems a little too pronounced in some photographs, but in person the effect comes off a lot better.  It varies his colors up a bit without requiring paint or using a color too divergent from what he's supposed to be.

The reason I love this Megatron design is his robot mode, and this is where the toy shines.  He's wide yet slick, a balance of monstrous and sophistication.  Other than a lack of a waist joint, there's enough articulation present to get him into most poses that I'd want.  Some Megatrons look kind of dippy while raising their arm up in the air to aim their fusion cannon, but not this guy.  The open palm helps a bit, but I'll let you in on the real reason.  The tops of his shoulders are actually separate from his biceps, and are suspended above them on struts.  This not only helps him look better when his arms are going every which way, but they also help keep his pointy shoulder kibble from clipping his back kibble as you move his arms around.  That would be a real problem otherwise.

The vehicle mode is... sufficient.  It's a little bulkier than I'd like, but I'm not sure any better could be done.  Megatron is a big bulky dude, and he somehow extrudes himself out into a thin, sleek jet.  The toy renders the jet much more thickly, with the legs obviously hanging underneath, and his shoulder spikes tufting out from under his wings like armpit hair.  He's 80% fuselage and 20% wingspan.  It's unfortunate.  But it gives me a great robot mode, so at least the better mode is the one I wanted most.

The Voyager Class toys in this line are called Powerizers.  This is because they have electronic lights.  Megatron's fusion cannon is where Megatron keeps his electronics, and there's a Mechtech-like gimmickry engineered into it as well.  If you push in the plunger in the back, segments of his sword swing forward and into place, in theory becoming a single blade.  In practice, it's tough to get the sword parts to align properly in both configurations.  You can force the sword into a good configuration one end-point or the other, but never so it's at a satisfactory alignment in both.    When the plunger is pushed all the way in, a light inside the cannon turns on and shines into the back of the blade, lighting it up.

Megatron also comes with a handheld blade weapon that pegs into the top of his wrist while a grip slips into his palm.   I think this is just an extra accessory for funsies.  I can't find anything like it on his character model in either modes.

Long story short, major digs for Megatron.  His toy has gravitas, which is what was important to me.  His vehicle mode has less gravitas, what with the whole stubby wings deal, but it's not a dealbreaker to me.  Plus, hey, light-up fusion cannon!  And it doesn't make horrible sounds like the original Galvatron toy!

Oh man, those sounds.

A few days ago, case assortment information for the upcoming Transformers Prime: Robots in Disguise toyline revealed that we were getting a new Deluxe (now redubbed "Revealer") Hot Shot toy.  Despite my super obvious love for all things Hot Shot, I wasn't all that excited.  See, we learned previously that "Hot Shot" is a name that had been reassigned to Hot Rod for trademark ownership reasons.  Screw a Hot Rod!  Anyway, I figgered it'd just be a Hot Rod toy.  Meh!

But then the Argos catalog over in the great United Kingdom gave us photos, and there was this blue Bumblebee with a new head.  This head has a visor that is lowered over the eyes.  Now, this image had no label of any sort, so it could still be anybody, but I'm laying odds it's a friggin' real Hot Shot.  Not the  Hot Roddy kind, but a genuine JaAm-loving Hot Shot.  He's in his Cybertron colors since, well, y'know, he can't be yellow for obvious reasons, but it's definitely looking like a Hot Shot.

So I made sure I was the first guy to do fan art of him.

The local Toys"R"Us finally restocked their Prime Deluxes, so I managed to pick up the rest of the wave, Starscream and Arcee.  I already  had Arcee in pink, so Starscream was the toy in which I was most interested.  And people who had him kept on saying he was great, so more reason to be excited.

He is pretty great!  Now, I have to qualify this statement in a number of ways.  He's a Transformers jet, which means you can expect there to be a lot of robot stuff hanging off the underside of his alternate mode.  Half of Starscream's mass in jet form is his legs hangin' off him.  And the middle of the fuselage is clearly his robot mode chest, fake eyes and all.  (If you look closely, you'll notice that Prime Starscream's chest is a swipe of Movie Starscream's face.)  With these two things in mind, his jet mode is pretty strongly compromised.  But it's still a fun little jet mode, and I'll tell you why I don't really mind, all things considered.

The robot mode is where Starscream shines.  It's rare that a toy captures the personality of its subject so ... readily.  That characteristic slump of Starcream's spine is built into his architecture.  It's nearly impossible to get the toy to stand in a way that does not evoke the character's essence.  The worst you can do, really, is align the arc of his legs wrong, which results in a pelvic thrust.  And, let's face it, that's still pretty Starscreamy.  He's kind of a filthy jerk.

There's a larger, Voyager Class-sized Starscream coming out next year which will undoubtedly work out a few of the jet mode's kinks.  I'm probably not interested, though.  This Starscream is scaled better to my other toys.  Who wants a Starscream that's bigger than (the inevitable Voyager Class) Megatron, anyway?  Megatron towers over Starscream in the cartoon, and anything else on my toy shelf would just seem wrong.

LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT IMPULSE-BUY-WEAKNESS CAST THE FIRST STONE.

Look!  You can't judge me!  Why?  THE BIBLE.  Sure, okay, most scholars doubt that passage's authenticity, but BIBLICAL dammit BIBLICAL.

Anyway, this is "First Edition" Bumblebee.  He's starting to show up at Toys"R"Uses.  Arcee and Starscream are also showing up there, but they tend to get grabbed up before you arrive.  This is the version of this Bumblebee mold that's not a taxi.  And, man, does he make the taxi version look orange!

He also makes the taxi version look kind of devoid of paint, relatively.  It's weird.  You'd expect the exclusive version, the version they can charge anything for, to have more.  Yet counter to my expectations, the retail version seems covered in more paint operations.  Lots of small things I would have to otherwise paint myself, were I to attempt show-accuracy, are already done for me, like the swabs of black on his hips and gray on his crotch.

(Though it looks like I may have to add some silver to his inside ankles.  Silver Sharpie here we come!  Matching the gunmetal gray for his wrists may be tougher.)

Speaking of matching colors, the gunmetal gray on both versions of Bumblebee seems identical to me.  That means you can steal Taxibee's weapon with impunity!  "First Edition" Bumblebee can now rock guns on both his forearms just like in the cartoon.

All of the "First Edition" guys come with cardboard stands which are fit into the bottom of the packaging.  I will not be using these.  Nice thought, though.

So we've waxed about NYCC Bumblebee and Arcee, but the figurines of Jack Darby and Raf Esquivel who come with them are enticing to me as well.  I like toys of humans, okay?  I will forever desire toys of Robot-Master, Bomber Bill, and the Mechanic.  I've bought lots of live-action-style Transformers (again) because they were repackaged with human characters!  I imported Kicker.  And I am actually a little angry we never got toys of Sari Sumdac or the Angry Archer.

I like the characters in Transformers stories.  And many of those characters are humans.  It makes sense to me.

Like Arcee and Bumblebee, Jack and Raf here are going to be released later to retail, though of course not in this NY-specific deco.  Jack has a New York t-shirt, which is cool, but Raf seems to have a white New York ... sweater vest.   That sounds especially not real.   I would love to be proved wrong, though.  And then lose however many dollars it takes to get one.  I will totally cosplay at BotCon next year as New York sweater vest Raf.

These figurines aren't to scale with anything.  Which is just as well, because they're not going to succeed at it.  Arcee and Bumblebee aren't in scale with each other, so any attempt to make Jack or Raf in scale with either of them is going to cause failure somewhere else.  So I'm glad they're small-but-not-too-small, and also that they exist.

Really, though, what I want is Miko.  She's awesome.

The toys come in a pretty nice packaging display that you can remove the plastic bubble from without too much trouble.  That leaves you with a city street with a guardrail in front of a row of beveled skyscrapers.  It's pretty great, and I put a T-Rex in it.

I mentioned the New York theme to most of the NYCC-exclusive Transformers set yesterday. Emphasis on the "most," unless being pink and white is some Big Apple-y thing I'm not aware of. (I would not rank this as an impossibility.) Bumblebee gets to be a taxi, and the two humans get to wear New York t-shirts. Arcee gets to be pink and white.

Not that I'm against pink and white. It just stands out as an anomaly.

Obviously Hasbro was going for a Classic G1 Arcee color scheme for her, as Arcee is normally black and blue in the show.  I'm of two minds with this.  The first mind tells me that I don't really care for G1-inspired redecoes on folks who don't appear in them and I'm not particularly fond of G1 Arcee in general.  Mind Number Two reminds me that toys in these colors happen basically never, and I should savor this.  And I do.  The toy is gloriously pink.  Not red or somewhere in between so little boys might be fooled into buying a girl, but out-and-out Barbie Dream Car pink.  It's a novelty.

My friend Sam reminded me that Arcee in War for Cybertron is pink and white, so this could be Arcee in a transitional form in between then and now.  I was happy, frankly, to repurpose this toy as someone else entirely in a recent strip.

There are many things about this toy that I like.  Sometimes motorcycle toys go through insane contortions to get from a passable motorcycle into a passable robot.  Animated Prowl is perhaps still the master at this.  Arcee isn't quite as elegant an execution, but she's not a failure on any scale.  I like  how simple her leg transformation is.  Often this is the annoying part of the motorcycle Transformer, but her legs just sit side-by-side in robot mode, sharing a wheel which splits up during conversion.  The arms kind of messily hang off the sides, but they're hidden well enough.  The only thing that really bothers me is the mess of kibble directly behind her head, and how the handlebars located therein conflict with her shoulders.  Her shoulder kibble and her back kibble are not meant to coexist.  They will be a source of annoyance.

Prime Arcee is one of the Autobots' most agile and formidable warriors, so I'm grateful that the toy has a large range of movement built into her, short the shoulder/back kibble battle.  Her elbows are double-hinged and her hips and knees are versatile.  And she has a rotating waist, plus a neck that's balljointed at one end and hinged at the other!

I really like Arcee, the character.  Despite being the only girl on the Autobot team, she's not characterized as such.  Her personality and individualized pathos are frequently showcased, and she became a quick favorite of mine.  I'm glad I was able to get an early version of her, even if it will eventually be displaced by a more accurately color-schemed variant.   Also I really really really really hope little boys will buy her toys as readily as any other awesome character.  (Obviously, her being blue instead of pink would help facilitate that.)  If any female Transformer could manage that, it's her.

Transformers: Prime toys are yet to debut in stores, but between SDCC and NYCC, I own five of its characters already.  Hasbro should really get on that "TF:Prime in stores" thing.  Unlike SDCC's Optimus Prime, whose biggest deal was the fancy packaging he came in, this box set of toys sold at New York Comic-Con is actually redecoed for the occasion!  They come in a packaged diarama that's done up to look like a New York city street, there's Bumblebee as a New York taxi, there's Jack Darby and Raf Esquivel wearing New York t-shirts, and... Arcee's pink.  ...yeah.  She must have missed a memo.

From that set, today I'm talking about Bumblebee.  There's a bit of deja vu about him.  I am going to blow your mind by reporting that he's basically Yet Another Movie Bumblebee toy.  I've been here before, with the hood chest that splinters apart, the arms that tuck in somewhere/anywhere/pleasegodplease, the door wings, and the rear of the car hanging off the calves at at angle.  If you've ever transformed a Movie Bumblebee toy, this will be a very familiar experience.

There are some cosmetic and engineering differences, of course.  I particularly like the way his hood balls up, starting as a wide block and squishing in on itself to more approximate the big sphere that is Prime Bumblebee's chest.  There is a lot of hidden jointing in that torso.  Don't forget to fold the corners of his bumper down into his ribcage!

His shoulders are weird yet interesting.  The fronts of them fold off and his arms hide away under the car in layers.  The upper arm splits in two and runs along just inside the doors, while the forearms tuck up and over the pelvis just under the roof.  The way they hang in robot mode is not ideal.  They feel at little unstable when they're pulled all the way out, as you'd expect them to.  The instructions ask you to keep them mostly inside the hood, just sort of poking out sideways, in a way that does not resemble his appearances in the cartoon.  I've decided to compromise, and have them stick halfway out of the car at an angle.  This is more stable, but not terribly screen-accurate.  (Group picture shows them all-the-way-out and the solo robot mode picture shows my chosen configuration.)

If you like Movie Bumblebees, you'll like this guy.   Thanks to Letao for picking up this set for me!  He also printed out a huge image of Catman to carry around NYCC, Robin Desanto-style.  Because he's awesome.

How ridiculous is it that I'm gonna have to disambiguate this guy as Prime Prime.  Well, at least there's no Prime Primal Prime yet.

I didn't go to San Diego Comic-Con!  But Emerald Beacon did.  He's a guy who's done some artwork for Fun Publications and he's the mastermind behind those Bat-Con t-shirts.  I have one!  I wore it to the Dark of the Moon premiere.  It's a swank shirt.  And since he's a swank guy,  he picked me up some SDCC swag.  Among them was this FIRST EDITION MATRIX OF LEADERSHIP OPTIMUS PRIME.  I think that's its name, anyway.

It's the first Transformers Prime toy, unless you want to count the War for Cybertron stuff.  And it's gonna be the only Transformers Prime stuff until November or December, so even though I'm gonna be owning this toy again when I get the "Entertainment Pack" that comes with the three PVC human kids, it's worth it to me to have this guy five months early.

Plus, dude, his packaging.  He comes inside a Matrix, which you can wear, which comes inside a box that looks like Optimus Prime's chest, sealed with a magnet.  And  you can remove the toy no problem from the Matrix without wrecking it.  You just pop the plastic part, sort through some layers, and voila.  Removeable, returnable Optimus Prime toy.  So when my next convention comes along (Wizard World Chicago, is it?) I can put him back in and wear him around like a dork.  You know, versus shilling my webcomic at a table like a dork.

The toy is more complicated than I was expecting.  I'm not sure why I was expecting simpler.  It's not, like, insanely complicated, it's just more complicated than I thought it looked, apparently.  The thing explodes to transform from one mode to another.   And I'm increasingly used to Optimus Prime toys having fake robot mode windshields, but it feels a little crazier to have his fake robot mode windshield to fold up and cover his real truck windshield.  That feels like a whole new level of absurdity.  But I understand why.  His robot mode windows don't actually look like his truck mode windows, so whatcha gonna do.  Damn those character designers.

Another thing that weirds me out are his shoulders.  They look for all the world like they're supposed to become the truck's air foil, and it's kind of frustrating that they don't.  In both this Deluxe Class toy and the upcoming Voyager Class toy, the air foil instead becomes the heels.  Again, I understand why, what with the placement of the parts in each mode and the designed hinging in the front of the shins, but it rankles my brain a little.

In conclusion, this guy comes with a wearable Matrix, within which is a toy which won't be out for several months.  How much either of those two details tickle you should determine how dedicated you are to hunting him down.