October Hauls!

[Tigermegatron]

Thought the Dinosaur mode looked okay on Slog, Sadly the Robot sculpt looked like something out of a badly done 1980's horror movie.

Honestly don't like any of the TF4 Dinobots, I think they are all more miss than hit. none of them are passable G-1 homage toys. All of the robot heads are super ugly and looked deformed.

Slug looks too much like a organic Beastwars toy. Strafe with 2 dino heads looks silly and thus bad as pteradons only had one dino head. Slog's robot mode looks like a cheesy 1980's horror movie villian.

Man, I'm not sure what old horror movies you're watching, but if they've got villains that look as badass as Slog here, I need to know now.

I guess I'm mostly confused as to why you bought the toy in the first place at all, given that your primary problem with it (its design/aesthetic) could easily have been gleamed from looking at pictures of it online, or the ones on the box, or, y'know, *looking at the toy while it was in the box before you bought it*. Unless, I guess, you somehow thought pulling the figure out of the packaging would cause it to magically reform into a sexy beautiful curvy beautiful conventional robot that turned into a panther or whatever, but then I'll also admit that I'm not the king of easily understood personal logic myself. *shrug*

I really dig the look of Slog's dino mode quite a bit. I get a strong Dino-Riders kind of vibe off of it.

The AoE Dinobots in general really remind me of DinoZone, and I love them for it. These are some of the best new TFs since the Beast Hunters Predacons.

The majority of the online fans hated the Beast Hunters Predacons toys.

I bought and liked the $50 Beast Hunters Leader scale Predaking toy because I thought it was the most decent of the lot. I hated the other BH Predacons toys.

Years ago, I easily predicted that any Micheal Bay Movie Verse TF dinobots would look like DinoZone toys.

As far as Hasbro's attempts at making good Dinobots toys for AOE, I think they failed. Think the only AOE Dinobot toy worth getting is the AOE Generations Leader scale Grimlock toy, The rest are epic failures.

[Onslaught Six]

How relevant, I just bought Slog. Will try to open him later today and post some thoughts. Having a job and some stable income is great.

(And before anyone asks, yes, I'm taking care of all my bills and responsibilities first. Between Randi and myself, we're making pretty decent cash, and on top of that, all our bills are super low because we've been trying to figure out how to survive on less than $600 a month, so.)

[andersonh1]

Today's comics: Multiversity The Just #1, Batman 66 #16, Future's End #25 and Robots in DIsguise #34.

[BWprowl]

My copy of Transformers Legacy arrived yesterday (Damn Amazon, you said it wouldn’t be here ‘til Saturday)! As a toy-focused guy, the packaging art has always appealed to me, and having (almost) all of it collected here, in beautiful, full-size, restored status, is wonderful. The sheer size of the book is impressive, and oversized coffee table tome that lets a lot of the art be as huge and pretty as possible. They include a ton of the legendary box battles, including some obscure Japanese and unused conceptual ones (the absolute best one being for a “Diaclone VS Miro Change” pre-TF proposal, which is just bananas to see). Some of the lesser-seen character art is great, the Micromaster SixCombiners in particular get art that is way cooler than those toys could reasonably expect (Sixtrain especially just looks incredible). Also love the art for the Pretender Monsters (and there was an unproduced G2 Monstructor WHAAAAAT?!). Indeed, the section towards the end, with lots of art for unproduced toys and decos, is probably the most fascinating part. We’ve all seen the orange-and-teal G2 Grimlock and the Sandstorm Seeker, but art for other alternate Seekers, like one showing that Ramjet was at some point going to have a scheme more like G2 Starscream? Art for some of the unproduced Go-Bots (the ones that finally got released in RiD)? Just great stuff. The Diaclone and early-proposal TF stuff is great too, including bizarre stuff like Jazz apparently involved in a hit-and-run. My only gripe is that the early US box battles aren’t reproduced in full-page-spread size the way some of the other ones are, but those images have been reproduced plenty elsewhere and are easily findable online, so it’s hardly that big a deal. This is handily one of the best releases of the year.

[andersonh1]

I seriously want that book. Time to put it on my Christmas list.

[Dominic]

"Transformers: Legacy" is worth it. The art is organized thematically, which is jarring. But, the sheer volume of art is amazing. Some pieces suffer at larger scales, others are enhanced, while still more actually put an accent on the stuff that is missing.

[BWprowl]

Power Rangers Super Megaforce In Space Red Ranger – I’m still not crazy about how beefed up these American Rangers look, and they could do with a touch more articulation (bicep swivels and a waist would go a long way), but In Space is probably the last season I can look back and enjoy AS a Power Rangers series (as opposed to my current transition into Super Sentai fanboyism), and the suits from that are nice enough besides. So at Ninja Turtles pricing, and with Megaranger SH Figuarts probably still a long ways off, I didn’t mind going in for this. The proportions on this one are actually okay, way better than the Gokai Red I got a while back. Posability’s okay, and the weapons, if monocolor, look nice enough. Hard to argue with a decent 5-inch Red Space Ranger for eight bucks.

Only other one of these I’d be tempted to get would be the Titanium Ranger, for sheer novelty value.

[Onslaught Six]

and having (almost) all of it collected here

What's missing, really? Do they have all of the weirder variants, like the two Shockwave arts and Japanese Megatrons?

I got:
-Generations Rudebastard. Thoughts in thread.
-Some new work clothes (alright I guess)
-Brutal Legend for 360
-GTA: San Andreas rerelease on XBLA for $4 (if you have a 360, go get it now, totally worth it)
-Ordered a pack of rubsigns from Reprolabels, but they have not arrived yet

[BWprowl]

What's missing, really? Do they have all of the weirder variants, like the two Shockwave arts and Japanese Megatrons?

There are *four* variations on G1 Megatron: The US version, then the Japanese version and the giftset variant, the former in both red and blue. They only have the regular US version of Shockwave.

One thing I do dislike about how the book is arranged is that there are a few arts that are used around the introductory pages (Omega Supreme, Shockwave, and Victory Saber) that, as such, don't get repeated when their section turns up in the actual content. It's just very odd and uneven.

[BWprowl]

AmiAmi box! This one actually had something relevant!

Transformers Black Convoy Pen: We all saw the Optimus Prime Pen when it was announced, right? One of the more interesting novelties that’s been released since TF really started whoring itself out, I went for the Black Convoy version since I already own about a bajillionty different Optimus Primes, so a less common color scheme appealed. It’s impressive just how nice an action figure of the Optimus design the robot itself is: just a super-posable, 4-inch Optimus Prime toy that looks great and holds a pose like a boss (seriously, the joints on this thing are rock-solid, but never feel like they’re TOO tight or might break when I move them, it’s amazing). The pen mode is a well-executed novelty. The transformation to it is surprisingly involved, with a number of small, almost Masterpiece-esque steps (the fold-out peg-panel on rear being the most notable detail), all designed around stretching and slimming this thing out into something actually holdable as a pen and locked into place so all the various articulation points don’t crumple in your hands when you try to write with it. It’s exceedingly well thought-out as a concept. And while early pictures made this pen mode look rather clunky, in practice it’s surprisingly decent, I can hold it pretty well and it doesn’t feel horrible. I don’t know what possessed Sentinel to make this thing in the first place, but it turned out really good!

Love Live! Maki Nishikino mobile pouch and Velcro patch: Because I might as well get some decorative airsofting gear with the only character I really liked from Love Live on it. The show itself was Just Okay, but I’d watch a whole series of Maki writing music, playing piano, being tsundere to people, and wearing tiny hats.