November Hauls!

[Dominic]

My point here is that you seem to be prioritizing for media-accuracy as relative to a piece of media you have zero interest in partaking of.

It is a question of principle. Screen/page accuracy was standard from the beast years, through the UT and with a respectable effort made early in the Bay years. I consider it to be a standard of the "art". And, by extension, I consider it to be laziness when Hasbro cannot manage to produce toys that look like what shows up on screen/page.

It's a Masterpiece, bro. With a trailer. That's what ya get.
(Mind you, I'm not getting it either, as it's placed out of my price range as well. I could never bring myself to spend over $100 on a single toy. I think the most I ever have was like, seventy, on MP Grimlock.)

Truth be told, were I not so pinched, (with yet another check more or less blown away by bills and regular expenses before it was even in my account), I would at least consider Masterpiece Prime.

Again with the same sort of issue, but in a different direction. Are you...are you seriously knocking points off this toy for not looking like the character (or including a specific accessory) from ONE story arc in the entire history of the character? I mean, the damn thing's just sold as "Marvel Universe Kraven", it's not even like a Marvel Select toy meant to represent the character from that specific story arc. That's like me going out and buying a random Spider-Man toy, then complaining that it isn't orange and blue like he is in Marvel vs. Capcom.

As I said above, my only real gripe with the Kraven figure specifically is the lack of a shotgun. And, in general terms, Hasbro's elimination of the figure stands is bothersome (if economically sensible). The Kraven figure itself is, assuming no issues with quality control, worth getting.

I do not think that Hasbro is selling stands. But, Hasbro has long used a standard peg-hole for their toy lines. It is not hard to find generic figure stands for Hasbro figures. Kraven can stand on a flat and stable surface. But, if you live in a building that shakes when people walk or open doors, it would be good to invest in some figure stands.


Dom
-skipped FoC Swindle and Onslaught over the weekend.

[Tigermegatron]

I bought the DOTM DVD for $3.99 at Target last Thursday/thanksgiving/pre-black friday night.

[BWprowl]

It is a question of principle. Screen/page accuracy was standard from the beast years, through the UT and with a respectable effort made early in the Bay years. I consider it to be a standard of the "art". And, by extension, I consider it to be laziness when Hasbro cannot manage to produce toys that look like what shows up on screen/page.

For one thing, toys and shows were hardly accurate to one another during the Beast years. You ever compared the toys and show models for...pretty much the whole first season of characters (*especially* Blackarachnia and Terrorsaur)? There's discrepancies on par with G1's crap there. Things marginally improved over the next two seasons, but then we were back to square one with Beast Machines.

I also find it funny how you continuously blame Hasbro for toys not being cartoon-accurate, when the point has been made time and time again that it's actually the fault of the respective show-runners for not keeping the characters on-model to the toys. This whole Bruticus situation is actually, I think, the first time this sort of thing has happened in the reverse. And here it's also worth pointing out that almost every single review I see of the Comic-Con set admits that the colors actually are kind of bland, and that the brighter hues on the retail version make more sense from a marketing perspective.

Truth be told, were I not so pinched, (with yet another check more or less blown away by bills and regular expenses before it was even in my account), I would at least consider Masterpiece Prime.

I might have if it was like, only a hundred dollars, but I've got enough crap to spend money on right now. Plus, Masterpieces generally terrify the shit out of me.

As I said above, my only real gripe with the Kraven figure specifically is the lack of a shotgun.

Is Kraven generally supposed to have a shotgun? Keep in mind my experience with the character is almost totally through the 90's Animated Series, and NO ONE had actual guns in that (yes, including The Punisher!), just weird laser-blasty things if they used them at all.

And, in general terms, Hasbro's elimination of the figure stands is bothersome (if economically sensible). The Kraven figure itself is, assuming no issues with quality control, worth getting.

I do not think that Hasbro is selling stands. But, Hasbro has long used a standard peg-hole for their toy lines. It is not hard to find generic figure stands for Hasbro figures. Kraven can stand on a flat and stable surface. But, if you live in a building that shakes when people walk or open doors, it would be good to invest in some figure stands.

Toys didn't come with stands for years, and everyone got along just fine, is all I'm sayin'. This big push for stands has mainly been on Hasbro, since they started with 25A GI Joe, then had them with Marvel Universe, Iron Man...

[BWprowl]

Forgot to report that I actually got a haul yesterday: the SH Figuarts Black Condor that I ordered through my local hobby shop came in. At first I wasn’t gonna worry about getting this one, being an exclusive in Japan, I wouldn’t be able to pre-order it through AmiAmi, and Gai is hardly my favorite Jetman team member, so he didn’t seem worth the trouble. Then I found out Bluefin was actually bringing the figure stateside as a normal release, meaning I could get it fairly easily, and for a reasonable price even! Plus the purchase might encourage A) Bluefin to bring more exclusive SHFs over and B) Bandai/Tamashii to make the remaining three Jetmen as Figuarts. Hence, me ordering Black Condor. It’s a fine figure, Red Hawk was great and this is a straight repaint of that toy in black (though this version made me realize that the color scheme really makes the bird motif on Gai’s helmet end up looking like a penguin). He provides some nice contrast to Red Hawk, so even if we never get the other three members of the team, the two of them look pretty cool together. And given that we’ll probably never see any of the Jetman villains in SHF form (a pity, I’d buy the hell out of Tran), having Ryu and Gai, the two true arch-enemies of the show, will work for impromptu in-character fight scenes.

But yeah, I’d absolutely kill for them to make Blue Swallow.

Also picked up this month's issue of Dengeki Hobby, which I do every month (love that this shop gets it in) but this one's worth noting as it comes with the Claw module for SH Figuarts Kamen Rider Fourze. Claw was one of my favorite modules in the show, and more of these little things for Fourze only improves what was already a great SHF. It also came with a dedicated stand for the recently-released SHF Fourze Cosmic States, so now I *really* want to get that figure (I already wanted it, but I have even more motivation to now).

[Onslaught Six]

Shouldn't Kraven come with a rifle, not a shotgun?

Re: stands, Hasbro doesn't sell stands, but a lot of third-party accessory places do. I think FunPub is doing it, too, actually. Even so, some recent guys don't have pegholes in their feet--I know the recent movie Spiderman I bought doesn't, so even if I had an extra stand, I couldn't use it.

[Dominic]

For one thing, toys and shows were hardly accurate to one another during the Beast years. You ever compared the toys and show models for...pretty much the whole first season of characters (*especially* Blackarachnia and Terrorsaur)? There's discrepancies on par with G1's crap there. Things marginally improved over the next two seasons, but then we were back to square one with Beast Machines.

Admittedly, "Beast Wars" benefitted greatly from low expectations. As a whole, G1 and G2 were terrible about consistent character models and even basic articulation. There were BW toys that I was very impressed by in 1996 or 1997, (such as Inferno), that would be all too easy to find fault with now. But, BW was a step in the right direction and it generally improved over the course of 3 years. "Beast Machines" was a failure in this regard. But, RiD more than made up for "Beast Machines" failings on the toy front.

During the UT, it became standard for Hasbro, Takara and the production companies to work simultaneously on designing characters that worked on screen and as toys. The result was toys that looked like the damned show and vice versa.

Plus, Masterpieces generally terrify the shit out of me.

They are not at all fun to transform. I have to agree there.

Is Kraven generally supposed to have a shotgun? Keep in mind my experience with the character is almost totally through the 90's Animated Series, and NO ONE had actual guns in that (yes, including The Punisher!), just weird laser-blasty things if they used them at all.

Kraven should have a gun of some kind. He did not have any signature weapons. But, his final, and defining, scenes involved a gun (which I read as a shotgun). How the hell did the Punisher not have guns and not kill?


And, a haul:

-WireShark: More forensics freeware for Dom.


Dom
-off to class, and then to do some reading (likely of WireShark's manual).

[BWprowl]

During the UT, it became standard for Hasbro, Takara and the production companies to work simultaneously on designing characters that worked on screen and as toys. The result was toys that looked like the damned show and vice versa.

Yeah, and then stuff like the Movie, TFPrime, and WfC designers went and screwed Hasbro over by going and designing Transformers that flat-out wouldn’t work properly in toy form, the company’s wishes be damned. For one, this speaks to a problem with supporting media taking precedent over the toys in general, and for another, is yet again something you can’t really blame Hasbro for. Hell, they made a couple of tries with some of those TFPrime designs to get them to work in toy form!

How the hell did the Punisher not have guns and not kill?

(Forgive me, I’m recalling most of this from memory). The Punisher shows up in a couple episodes of Spider-Man The Animated Series, the one that ran on FoxKids in the mid-nineties that was notorious for being heavily censored. His first scene in the episode has him busting up a gang meeting using smoke bombs, then walking menacingly towards the one gang member who didn’t run away while saying some vague things about how he’ll get out of prison eventually if he takes him there so… But then he gets interrupted somehow and distracted, and the guy runs off, so Punisher calls up his tech-van-support guy, Otacon or whatever, who gives him his next criminal target: Spider-Man! But Otacon says “Hey Frank, we need to make the general public think better of us vigilante peacekeepers, and I’m going to allude to you killing criminals without actually saying that you kill criminals at any point, but this time I think we should just CAPTURE our guy!” And so Punisher goes “Okay Otacon, we’ll do it your way this time, I’m off to CAPTURE Spider-Man!” and proceeds to chase after him with smoke bombs and net guns.

Remember, this is the same cartoon that tried to have Morbius, but they couldn’t show him biting people or drinking blood or even *talk* about blood, so they had him drain ‘plasma’ from people via holes in his hands.

[Onslaught Six]

Also, this cartoon had an edict that Spiderman must be careful not to harm any pigeons when he lands on rooftops. Seriously. (I am also pretty sure there was an edict against punching.)

[annhell]

That does suck, and I hope you feel better soon, but I'd also like to say that I'm pretty impressed that you've apparently managed to avoid getting chicken pox until now.

Pox has cleared, and the excuse to stay home and just sleep and play video games for 2 weeks was a welcome one after literally months of hectic work without break. Still no idea how I finally got infected though.

I also picked up Dead or Alive 5 for the PS3 on Friday,

I want to pick that up someday too, but the current prices here are too high, imo, for a game that I just wanna kill time with and am not likely to be committed to mastering.


For more serious hauls:
Back from chicken pox with a vengeance, and snagged a good bundle deal yesterday on FOC Soundwave, Soundblaster and 2 FOC twin-packs of Rumble+Ravage and Frenzy+Ratbat. I got them from a local speciality store as these havent'hit the retail shelves of the regular stores yet, and I probably managed to save a good $40 on this bundle compared to waiting to get them later at the regulated pricing.

Haven't really fiddled much with them yet. In any case, my preliminary thoughts:
- The eject-and-auto-transform gimmick rules the design considerations.
- Spring-loaded auto transform is a nice addition to the data discs, which would otherwise be kinda boring to just fold them up into circles. But, the downside is almost zero articulation in all the robot modes.
- There's only 3 molds shared among the dada discs. Ravage is the only unique one so far as a quadraped. Ratbat shares the same mold as Lazerbeak/Buzz Saw, with a modified bat head
- Soundwave's transformation is similar to, yet simpler than, the deluxe class.
- Eject-and-deploy gimmick works in vehicle mode too
- I've managed to store up to 3 dics in Soundwave's chest, but more than one makes the auto-transformation iffy. As in, the discs may not fully transform upon ejecting

Overall a fun toy and a nice "upgrade" to the earlier deluxe that is worth getting a more expensive version of the same character for.
One last thing... the instructions and photo on the packaging show a hand-held weapon in addition to the shoulder rockets, but this second weapon was not included at all.


Oh, and, a late October haul which probably only BWProwl is interested in: LT-06 Tategami Li-Oh.

[BWprowl]

Oh, and, a late October haul which probably only BWProwl is interested in: LT-06 Tategami Li-Oh.

I'd like to at least get the mini-pla of the Go-Busters mecha at some point, especially since the mecha fights in this show have been so top-notch. I am ASTOUNDED that Ace is still seeing action this late in the series, and looking damn good doing it (the fight in the wedding episode with him riding around on LT-06 was incredible).

Target had the new My Little Pony minifigure sets, so I restrained myself and just picked up the 'Spa Pony Set' with Zecora, Lotus Blossom, and another Pinkie Pie. Once again Hasbro surprises me with their decisions to make whole new molds for borderline background characters like Lotus here. My main concern is whether they'll get around to redecoing the mold as her sister, maybe in a blind-bag or something. Zecora seems...a little large, proportionately.