Some cartoon with big chins and a little girl that got beloved by fans and taken off TV to make way for a different show on another network. Yeah, that's fair.
Dominic wrote: in contrast to Unicron showing up and drinking lattes.
Dom
-wonders if anybody will get that reference. (Hint: Self-indulgent writer jumping from Marvel to DC circa '95.)
Aw, the clue makes it less fun to know what you're talking about. But, yeah, Darkseid drinking lattes=lame, lame, lame. Morrison does a far better job portraying ol' lord of all that's horrible on Earth.
The Allspark, in the movie and in Animated, is just a piece of technology so far advanced that not even incredibly sophisticated sentient machines don't understand it, so how could dumb ol' humans get it? No problem.
Seriously, if Unicron was portrayed as something more like the Fourth World stuff, he'd be a lot cooler. I always saw the "God" and "Chaos-Bringer" stuff to be hyperbole that the robots that had to deal with him would come up with. He's big and powerful enough, he may as well be a god, y'know?
Even further off-topic. Yay!
I've got two of those McDonald's Starscreams. Should I repaint one of 'em?
Dominic wrote: too many people likely would have enjoyed it as....well a house-elf gang-bang.
I dunno. Why did you even get one of those things? I saw them last night at Lewis's place. ick. The Prime is actually kind of cool though. i work near a McDonalds, so I might snag one.
As for Unicron, I would prefer to see him returned to first principles, in other words, just a big powerful robot. No "chaos", no "god of destruction", no other cosmic gibber-wank. Remember when the franchise was new enough that it could not rely on pre-fabricated events to generate sales? Of course, the comics are not selling at many stores anyway.....
i guess over=powered and over=used God of fanwank Unicron is one more thing to blame Glen Hallit for. He was not the first to use Unicron that way. But, he popularized it.
Why get 'em? I wanted the fi-dolla coupon on the happy meals, and really, that's about as much McDonald's as I can handle. I wound up with two Primes, Bumblebee, and two Starscreams. Jesus, that's a lot of happy meals.
The Bumblebee is awesome, He's kinda like his G1 counterpart.
Dominic wrote: too many people likely would have enjoyed it as....well a house-elf gang-bang.
I generally agree with Dom about animated, at least as far as the look goes. It's a very spare, detail-light aesthetic with massive chins and odd proportions. Someone mentioned that it's like mapping a Batman TAS physique onto the Transformers, and that's not too far off. Some of the figures work despite that, and some do not. Every version of Optimus Prime looks awful, in my opinion.
The cartoon, what little I"ve managed to see of it, is pretty darn good. Looking forward to seeing more.
Good lord. Remember those days when motorcycle-transformers were real hard for Hasbro (or other companies...Hi, Cy-Kill!) to pull off well? Between this guy and Prowl, those days are way, way done.
Vehicle Mode:: Oil Slick's a heavily-stylized kinda space motorbike. The abstractness of the bike could be chalked up to either the line's cartoony style, or the fact that Animated's all futurey. But either way, it's still nice-lookin', and the yellow and green kinda low-saturation colors take this crazy thing and make it somehow more...plausible, I guess. It also dethrones Lockdown as being the most all-out rad vehicle mode in the line, because where Lockdown's a muscle car with spikes, Oil Slick's a motorcycle with spikes and a goat-skull on the front. There is nothing not cool about this. Besides looking so good, the bike locks together well, stays up on it's own easily, thanks to the four-wheeled design, and has a neat little action feature. Toward the back, a "saddlebag" on each side of the thing can open up, and have the character's weapon-barrels store under them. They work aesthetically well either with the weapons or without, and adding the barrels doesn't affect the bike's balance either way. The little details, like the straps and spikes on the saddlebags, or the molded-in gauges between the bike's handlebars, or the Judas Priest logo-esque wings painted on the bike's body. Everything just works together well in this mode, making it a satisfying toy on it's own. Plus, G.I. Joe figures fit on it, provided they don't need both hands on the handlebars.
Transformation: Well, after a long day of work I went at this guy without intstructions or too much thinky and in about twenty seconds I had it done. So, it's not real hard, but it does have an elegance to it, and is what you'd call "intuitive". Also, the robot mode, while it's got it's cues to the alt. mode, does look very different than the cycle.
Robot Mode: Just bad ass. Like a lot of his Animated bretheren, (Prowl and Lockdown spring to mind.) Oil Slick's got the "lanky body, thin limbs, huge hands and feet kinda deal going on, and he makes good use of it. The huge feet give him stability and poseability, and the huge hands are used to give him gigantic friggin' claws, which makes him look kinda terrifying. Oil Slick's got some more detailing than a lot of the Animated toys, it all shows up here to good effect. And man, the domed space helmet/chemical hazard helmet? That just looks great on him, and as an added bonus, it doesn't obstruct his eye's lightpiping at all. The goat skull becomes nifty shoulder armor, and his exhaust pipes become foot-cannons. All in all, very cool look. The barrels of fun here, one remains a barrel, and can be kept in the "saddlebag" to load the foot-cannons, presumably, while the other splits into a sort of mace weapon. Half of this weapon pegs into his hand, between this and how long the chain is, this kinda weapon is a lot more useful than say, Prowl's traffic light.
As for Oil Slick's face...I dunno what the giant nose is about. Interesting design choice, there. Still, I think that if this dude had a handlebar mustache on his face, he'd bear a striking resemblance to some sorta TF Danny Trejo, which would be sorta cool, really.
Bio: Man, I dunno what happened here. It's like, the package designers were like "Eh, he's not on the show? Damn, well...throw ever trait we can on there, call it good. Seriously. Okay, Oil Slick's an "anarchist road warrior" by function, a mechanic, a ninja (trained in Circuit-Su with Prowl), a chemist, and a lunatic fearmonger. Sort of equal parts Mixmaster, Wildrider, and Bludgeon, I guess. Still, I'm thinking this makes him some sort of crazy evil polymath, so that's kinda cool.
Weaknesses: Not many, though it'd have been nice if either side of the barrel-chain weapon could peg into Oil Slick's hands to double as a garotte. Also, this toy's got no waist articulation at all. Not a huge issue, but still.
Overall: Damn, this toy's rad. I recommend highly. A-. Not perfect, sure, but damn close.
Dominic wrote: too many people likely would have enjoyed it as....well a house-elf gang-bang.
It's been a while since I tried writing reviews and am thinking of getting back into it again, since this site is up. I pretty much managed to get all the available figures so far, even ones that aren't officially out on retail yet.
Since the TF:A product line, a lot of thoe loose figures being sold for exhorbitant prices on eBay have made their ways to my local markets, and not only are they available months ahead of the official retail editions, they are actually cheaper.
So, anyway, i'm kinda wondering if there's any specific figure that you guys would like a review on?
Other than Ultra Magnus and the ones announced at SDCC, I've pretyt much got everything save the Activators and Bumper Battlers.
Lugnut and Blitzwing. It'd be hard to stop me buying both together if I ever saw them, but I'd still like to know it'd be worth it in the long run. =/
My biggest worry with them is that Blitzwing is the bigger of the two (I haven't checked). Oh, and that he turns into a jet with tank tracks. And that Lugnut has stability problems. And that either of their transformations are less than fun (but simple).
