Plamo: The ZEU-6S Zeus (BattleTech, Catalyst Game Labs)

Probably the most odd thing about the Zeus is how normal it looks in the context of its lance box. It's an assault mech and so by definition its a bruiser, but it's Mr Average when standing near the Trebuchet. Or the mechs coming in future posts. The reason is that of the four it's the one with the most conventional body plan, at least until we talk about the missile rack you can punch people with. It leans towards the generalist role I suppose, as while mostly long ranged, it's a "light assault" meaning it can move relatively quickly and doesn't fear a melee. I feel its possibly a bit under-gunned, but then my frame of reference is the Orion and a later-era Banshee, so what do I know? 

 

Painting was relatively straightforward, with the design offering an opportunity to switch around the placement of colours. One thing I keep doing with these is forgetting about the bases, neglecting them until I was already doing major colours. I still like to use a thin layer of green stuff for texture, and that is something I should do before undercoating. No harm done, it gives a reasonable "soft ground" effect, I just need to get a better finish on the black around the base. The cockpit area took me a little by surprise though; there's a collar segment obscuring glass segments. This required a certain level of care and correction, but it pops.

 

Up next: something bigger.

Transformers: Earthrise & Me

I used to sell toys on the side. It was my hobby, and my attempt to run my own business. I can't honestly say it was a success, because we are talking in the past tense, but I gave it a good go over five years. I tend to be stubborn about these things, but I think I learned something from the experience. Skills, understanding of the fandom, understanding of Hasbro, and possibly of myself. The last Transformers line I dealt with was Earthrise, by which point the fun was going out of it. What follows is a discussion of that toy line, the impression it made, what worked, and what didn’t, from my point of view.

Context

Following on from Siege, War for Cybertron: Earthrise was the middle of the trilogy. Continuing the same trends as it's forebear, Earthrise promised G1 characters, this time in their Earth modes, with an almost "mini-Masterpiece" design. The initial response to it could be summed up as "yeah, those look really cool... wait...wait, you guys are doing the seekers AGAIN? Why did I buy that Prime then!?”. As I outlined in my Siege article, Hasbro had already done those characters the year before, so people got annoyed. It felt to some like they'd been duped into buying something when Hasbro had a better version on standby, which often was a limited release. Often, it was not the merely the same character, so much as the same engineering, but to be fair to Hasbro though, it might not be entirely their fault. Siege was seemingly hurried to market following the short-lived Power of the Primes, and then the other thing happened. Let us acknowledge the elephant in the room, Earthrise suffered a nine month delay due to the pandemic, a completely reasonable and understandable thing under the circumstances, which may explain a few decisions that Hasbro made. The line only did a year in general retail too, meaning that it just didn't last as long as Siege either. That said, there is a lot of inertia in toy manufacturing, so it's hard to say the extent to which Hasbro course corrected. The thing is though, if we take off our tinfoil hats, and put aside terms like "distribution woes" and "obsolescence", Earthrise does have an issue with consistency. When it's good, it's really good. Earthrise has a solid claim to having the best Optimus Prime, and the best Titan class, and does build on Siege's good points. When it's not, well, you get things like Arcee and what happened to the smaller price-points. If you can even find the toys...

The 2020 Earthrise Smokescreen Toy

Didn’t I buy this last year?

Something which is very notable in Earthrise is the ratio of 32 regular releases to 29 exclusives, including Generations Selects, significantly more than either Siege and Kingdom, and nearly as much as both together. As a majority of these multipacks covering characters like the Seekers, Earthrise technically has more contemporary exclusives than mass market versions of its toys, although Generations does tend to overlap, so it depends on how you count to an extent. There’s just less of it to go around, and its being reused on the same scale as Siege, which makes me wonder about last minute changes. Did a wave or two get reworked as Amazon fodder? Maybe not, this is possibly just a matter of stop-gapping, but it really wouldn't be a shock. The Modulator retools look like a wave 4 thing to me. Earthrise also does the same Generations Grab-bag thing Siege did, and as a result we get a lot of late G1 and 86-movie toys filling out the ranks. Its doing a better job than its predecessor did, if only because Earth modes are the norm, but the characters selected for the exclusives have to be some of the more desirable characters around, and notably, a lot of the ones with strongly defined Earth modes. It feels wrong that its easier to find a Quintesson than say, Prowl, Bluestreak, Ironhide, Ratchet, Ramjet, Dirge, Thrust and Runabout. Earth mode Bumblebee and Soundwave were also off being Netflix/Siege exclusives around this time, Siege having not actually gone away, thus ensuring comparisons would be ever present. Perhaps Hasbro thought that these toys may not sell as well immediately after their Siege iterations, as reused engineering was prevalent here, and so they scaled back, or just decided to maximise sales by making a big name a limited release? Whatever happened, the main line suffered as a result. The theme was undermined, the type of people who’d want the 1984 big names were now being frustrated by limited releases, and/or really annoyed at their Siege purchases, and assuming you were in a position to see Earthrise toys in person, the odds were it would be a less-desirable mass-market release. Obviously, I wasn’t Amazon, so this situation wasn’t great for my business at the time, but its not about me. Even if we hadn’t been dealing with a global plague at the time, all the while desperately looking for some escapism, this was a massive PR misstep, and I can’t stress that enough.

The 2020 Earthrise Arcee Toy

More Speculation

So, why might it have played out like that? I mean, yeah, the pandemic must have had some effect, and we must cut everybody some slack on that, but its not a blank cheque. Why did Hasbro arrange things like they did? Well, speaking as someone whom has sold toys as a business and dealt with wholesalers and such, I feel there is a point that I should stress for the unfamiliar. There is no internal difference between the assorted collector-aimed Transformers lines. Generations has been running since 2010 and its banner includes Studio Series and most exclusives; this is what things like product codes and shipping boxes tell us. It all bleeds together after a certain point, regardless of branding, so saying Earthrise followed Siege, or is better/worse than Siege is a little misleading. Siege and Earthrise are two peas from the same pod. Earthrise is functionally waves 6 to 8 of Siege, and if you view it like that, things start to make more sense. The two share so much in play patterns, engineering and price-points that they might as well be one thing, the only difference being packaging. For the record, Kingdom is a similar-if-nuanced situation, as while that continues the same thing, its hard to argue that beastformers aren’t a meaningful change. Furthermore, Hasbro is also a famously difficult company to source from, as their distribution tends run off a random number generator, and their thought processes can be a little inscrutable. So, the matters discussed in the preceding paragraph aren’t really out of character for them. They are, from a dispassionate point of view, trying to fill price-points. This viewpoint also explains the issues with theme I keep bringing up, as unrelated ideas get brought in to round out the numbers, and the habit of reusing stuff to save money. If anything can be said about Earthrise, its that it makes Hasbro’s business practices more noticeable, by giving the G1 fans exactly what they wanted, and then making it hard to buy. The difficulties I had in the basic area of having toys to sell, along with general pandemic uncertainty, were a large part of my decision to close my business. Not the only thing, and I’m certainly not blaming them, but it is what it is.

The 2020 Earthrise Exclusive Ironhide Toy

Engineering Heaven, and Engineering Hell

A few paragraphs ago, I used the words "mini-Masterpiece" in reference to Earthrise, and many of them were. We’re talking a high level of cartoon fidelity here, and often involved transformations. The poster boy for this is undoubtedly Earthrise Prime, but Cliffjumper was also an early leader in this trend. There’s definitely a lot of good in Earthrise, but there’s also more mediocre and outright bad. And with so many things, its often easier to write about the bad, than to highlight the good. As I’ve written previously, this “cartoon model” design approach would have a few unfortunate downsides, notably resulting in an Arcee so overtly flawed I almost can’t believe its from the same line. I really didn’t like the idea of ordering that one, especially in solid cases. New mould Earthrise toys often have a bit of a problem with partsforming, faux kibble bits, Q.C issues, troubling uses of translucent plastic, and prematurely ageing plastic from what I’ve heard. Moulds re-using engineering from Siege were largely OK if over-familiar at this point, but that didn’t stop some of them coming out worse in the process. You know how Earth mode Ironhide was an exclusive? Well, his earth mode was mainly a removable roof segment that went over his siege alt form, which still left his feet exposed, ruining the effect. Oh, and unpainted windows, and varying shades of red. Maybe some of these were exclusives because Hasbro knew it would be a harder sell otherwise…

The 2020 Airwave toy

Play Pattern Woes

Of course, while the partsforming and such were often merely minor annoyances, the real design failing was probably the A.I.R Lock system, which was a big part of smaller price-points, and is largely forgotten now. When I asked my twitter followers what Earthrise was like, this went totally unremarked upon, maybe I should have mentioned it? The basic idea here was to create base modes for Micromasters, with larger toys having connection points, the Weaponizer concept being reworked into Modulators which could form playsets, and Battlemasters playing a supporting role. Unfortunately, Micromasters in Earthrise were not a significant improvement over the Siege version, they didn’t quite commit, and this ended up spoiling two otherwise excellent play patterns. We only really got two Modulator moulds, and they were OK, but there wasn’t enough of them to really explore the concept, nor did they have the sheer mass required for a good base mode. We needed more and bigger. The Battlemasters were similarly limited in scope, and had the misfortune to be largely made of translucent plastic while turning into bits of road/shields. No matter how you spin it, that’s a worse idea than the weapon types they followed. As a result, the few new toys Earthrise had that weren’t heavily 1980’s, end up feeling like compromised curios. Definitely interesting, but it didn’t quite work. And I’d say this, as much as anything, took the shine off Earthrise for me as a collector, rather than a business man. I can take or leave G1 accuracy, what matters more to me is fun, and the edge cases. Siege had plenty of fun and edge cases. Earthrise had a bunch of G1 characters with very vanilla interpretations, and fumbled the bits I’m usually interested in.

Having dealt with the big picture stuff, let’s now look at the toys by price-point.

The 2020 Earthrise Slitherfang Toy

Battlemasters

Now, you can make the case here that the best toy here is one repackaged from Siege, Smackdown, although as retailer I wasn’t too fond of repacks. He’s a little robot minotaur hammer, whom serves as the Wreckers’ mascot, and he’s pretty great. Meanwhile, Rung is fine, and the three original moulds feature a lot of translucent plastic, while transforming into bits of road/shields. As noted, its a little hard to recommend those, but Slitherfang is interesting. Give him to Siege Barricade, he makes for a good colour match.

The 2020 Earthrise Daddy-O Toy

Micromasters

These followed on the same pattern as Siege Micromasters, I.e. half a team, an unconvincing weapon mode, and no real improvement over the original toys. If you’re not already onboard with Micromasters this is a hard sell for me. These were relatively easy for me to source wholesale, perhaps for that reason. Possibly the Hot Rod Patrol is your best choice here overall, given their relative competency, vehicle forms, and Daddy-O’s name. 

 

 

 

The 2020 Earthrise Cliffjumper Toy

Deluxes

Things begin to pick up a bit in the deluxe slot, but its not great, especially around wave 2. Arcee is there, as is the rather simplistic Allicon, and Smokescreen is standing around like some lesser-known member of the Jackson 5. That’s a dated reference, I know, but this is an 80’s tribute line. Overall, wave 1 probably offers the best selection of toys, and probably the best Cliffjumper ever made, faults included, although if you have a certain big boy, your mandatory purchase is Fasttrack. Meanwhile, Airwave is a personal fave of mine, and Runabout’s fake heelie-wheels are dumb. Seriously, they stick out in car mode.

The 2020 Earthrise Starscream Toy

Voyager

Another weak showing, the main attraction here is Starscream, whom is a pretty good, but clearly Classics inspired, iteration of the character. He’s very much in the Goldilocks Zone of mass-market toys, yeah, there’s improvements that could be made, but there’s only so many before you go over budget or make things less fun. The rest of the slot is decidedly less brilliant. Grapple had a problem where his pegs would break during transformation. Snapdragon had a similar issue with cockpit doors. The Megatron retool has more partforming than the Siege version and suffers from photodegradation. Meanwhile, the Quintesson Judge is modulator-adjacent, partsforming into a prison playset. Its…. Okay?

The 2020 Earthrise Optimus Prime Toy

Leader

Let’s not mince words, if this Optimus Prime toy hadn’t been a thing, the discourse around Earthrise would have been completely different. On the upside, it has many upsides. Its a mass-market, mini-masterpiece; it does an awful lot well, too many to mention. On the downside, it shares parts with the Siege version, and basically is a voyager with a box trailer that does very little. Its both a shining example of the positives in Earthrise, while appealing deeply to collectors, and of Hasbro’s business practices, while frustrating collectors. Otherwise, this slot ends up a bit thin. Astrotrain is back, and making actual sense this time if that’s your thing? Sadly, I just didn’t like Doubledealer in hand. He’s big, but feels off, like it needed another design pass.

The 2020 Earthrise Sky Lynx Toy

Big Boys

Possibly the area that Earthrise unashamedly wins, we have two toys whom definitely fall under the heading of Generations Grab-bag, but are just as definitely welcome. Sky Lynx is a quality update of the frankly bonkers original, which throws an actually good base mode into the mix. Scorponok is something I regret passing on, another quality update that makes him a double-headmaster. Both have reasonable claim to be the best toys in their respective, and immense, size classes. Part of that is probably the source material, and the lack of other versions, but generally I’d say these were more fun-oriented than some of the smaller toys. I mean, Sky Lynx is a cat-bird-dinosaur-robot sponsored by NASA. And Scorponok takes design elements from Japanese media, not just the G1 cartoon, while stealing Fort Max’s gimmick. That's genius.

The 2020 Earthrise Exclusive Deluxe Centurion Drone Toy

Exclusives

Sorry, we still have to talk a bit more about exclusives. Don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about the seekers etc. again, because aside from plonking big names into this category, there are a few more interesting choices. The Centurion Drone set serves as a vessel for all the accessories which didn’t make the budget on other toys, which is good, but to the point were the actual toy is secondary, which is a shame. A few moulds from earlier lines come back, such as Punch/Counter-Punch, whom didn’t get a wide release before, so that’s nice. There’s also some G2 stuff, such as Sandstorm, a Gobot in the form of Bug Bite, an “Alternate Universe Optimus Prime”. Or, more accurately, Dead Prime from the 1986 movie. Because we needed a toy of a corpse, apparently. Of course, you’re gonna have a hard time finding them for a sane price.

Conclusion

Earthrise is endlessly frustrating to me as a toy line, due to what might have been. We can chalk some of this up to highly unusual circumstances, but generally it feels mismanaged. The ratio of exclusives to mass releases is borked, there’s varying issues with quality control, everything near the Micromasters suffered, and there was a general lack of wow factor. But then again, it might just me associating it with some past disappointments. It got some things very right, much more right than the series average. Overall, Earthrise is the awkward middle child of its series, and while that’s not the same as saying its bad, it doesn’t look that great with its siblings on either side.

Plamo: The TBT-5N Trebuchet (BattleTech, Catalyst Game Labs)

This article is dedicated to the memory of Jean-Pierre Jean, A CHEF, and force of nature, as played by a RPG friend of mine. This is not because the character is dead, more that he cannot be forgotten. And this battlemech looks like something he'd pilot.

So, having finished up the bits and pieces, I decided to do another lance box, and work on it over a month. A legitimate one this time, I feel I've done the "dubious" dance enough, and I'm in two minds about 3D prints, but this left me with somewhat minimal options. I ended up getting the "Inner Sphere Fire Lance" which continues the trend of somewhat bland, non-indicative names. There are some notable chonkers in this set, which yes, do fire a lot, but it's a name that suggests deliberate understatement. And because this is me, I'm starting with the mech that's the smallest, the 50 ton Trebuchet. Intended to do similar work to the Catapult, see the naming theme, the Trebuchet is a medium mech specifically designed to operate in a Lance of 4 similarly equipped robots. Specifically, it was meant to be paired with the Centurion, a purpose built escort with a different but complementary naming scheme. Its noted for having modest ammo stores, but being easy to reload. Less noted is its status as victim of technological decline, loosing the benefits of double heatsinks and C.A.S.E during the Succession Wars. Maybe that's why it is so mismatched and asymmetric in appearance. One arm has an LRM-15, a medium laser, and a hand. The other has two medium lasers, offset from each other diagonally. Meanwhile, one LRM-15 takes up the right side torso. This strikes me as a somewhat confused setup, or a compromise in the boardroom.

As you may have suspected from the amount of text above, I don't too much to say about the paint process this time. I did this in my usual manner, with colour variations arising from the sculpt and my mood at the time. I will however highlight the Iyanden Yellow though. Its weird how it behaves, golden here, but often orangey on bigger surfaces. It works either way though, and the model as a whole came out quite nicely.

Up next: something bigger.

Transformers: The Legacy of Siege

So, after Legacy Impactor was announced, and the discourse that followed, I found myself thinking about War for Cybertron: Siege again. It was something I've thought about writing on before, what that toy line was, and what it proved to be. So, today, I talk about Siege’s legacy. Which, of course, isn’t the same as Transformers: Legacy, but does include the new Legacy line. Don’t worry, it will make sense.

Context

Coming under the Generations banner, War for Cybertron: Siege was advertised at the time, as well, a War For Cybertron, the first of a 3 part franchise set on the home-world of the Transformers. This wasn’t the first time they did this, but you might ask why not? Its fun. This was coming after the disappointing and truncated Power of the Primes line, too, it looked promising. Seemingly hurried to the US market in late 2018, early 2019 elsewhere, there was barely a gap between the two. Siege got a lot of respect for its play features, but also criticism for its muddy battle-damage look, and also a bit of a heavy focus on G1 characters. There was a lot of that happening at the time, with the Bumblebee movie going quite G1, and Cyberverse using similar cast. This was then shortly followed by Earthrise, and Kingdom, whom did many of the same characters again, often with iterative retools, reused engineering, and old toys in new boxes. The specifically Siege toys became repaint fodder, which happened in bulk for the Netflix cartoon, as well as more recent examples like TakaraTomy’s Premium Finish line and the aforementioned Impactor. As a result: Siege is reasonably described as a stopgap and a repaint mine. How many repaints, you ask? Well, I went and ran the numbers. I got out a spreadsheet, and trawled the wiki. Here are my findings.

Distinct Siege moulds: 49

Uses so far/pending: 161

Not counting: blast effects, unchanged TakaraTomy releases.

Assuming: ER Prime is a retool, but ER Smokescreen is not.

The 2019 Seeker 3 pack

The Generations Grab-bag

The thing about Generations and similar collector lines is that it can lack a strong theme. It's a melange of homage and updates, and the extent which there is a solid unified theme has varied over the years, even when going back further into the old C.H.U.G days. In the time of Combiner Wars and Titans Return it was notably strong, but more typically Generations operates as a grab-bag, usually a few big names, but with obscure stuff around the edges, and maybe some new stuff if we’re lucky. The thing about Siege is that it talks a big game about its theme, but when you actually look at, its all set dressing. Its actually a Generations Grab-Bag. We must ask ourselves the following: which toys in Siege explicitly and unambiguously have a Cybertronian vehicle form? And is this vehicle form distinct from their Earth form, or what might be considered their "iconic" appearance? I put it to you that only three-maybe-four moulds of the forty-nine actually started out as purpose built pre-earth designs. The rest were either late-G1 characters that were sci-fi vehicles in the first place, and/or characters fated to be released again in Earthrise 18 months later with a face-lift. The Starscream and Soundwave moulds are the only toys that actually tried to have new & alien vehicle modes, and not an especially good one in 'wave's case. You could argue Shockwave, but that gets a little muddy as shockers largely doesn't have an earth mode and isn't allowed to be a gun any more. The aforementioned Impactor is a similar case, he’s never had an Earth mode as a comic original, but then he does have that odd habit now of being repeatedly retooled into himself. Overall, Siege doesn't hit the same visual style as the conceptually identical War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron video game toys, which had gone hard on the alien-ness, so almost everything could fit unobtrusively into a "neo-G1" collection and truthfully many would not look that out of place as an Earth mode. And then Earthrise came along with functionally the same toys, but with a better defined cartoon look, and made a whole whack of stuff obsolete, often via exclusives which were hard to get. This understandably annoyed people. And then we got the Netflix branded Siege stuff, which cost a little bit more and tried to be more cartoon accurate…why? So, even if you liked the Siege moulds, they got obsoleted again, and if you missed them the first time, there’s now a confused market with a bunch of overlapping toys. Did the cartoon get delayed or something? Because this is an inelegant way to do things.

The 2019 Siege Sideswipe toy

The New Autobot Seeker

To illustrate my point of how generic a lot of Siege moulds are, I'm going to talk about possibly the most aggressively re-used toy of Siege, Sideswipe. It's a perfectly fine toy in most ways, and actually a favourite of mine. I am not especially a car fan, but that is not a Cybertronian altmode. That looks more like a legally distinct Lamborghini. Or any super car stand-in. Car modes such as these are the bread & butter of Transformers in general. The thing is, we already had a pre-earth Sideswipe, and that wasn't a great toy, but that a least that made an attempt to be alien. Siege Sideswipe fits in everywhere, because a specific style is harder to reuse. And then it got retooled into something more specifically G1 for an exclusive, as well as nine other things. The whole Cybertronian theme never was a serious effort. It was a stopgap. Siege exists mainly as a reset point for Generations, lessons learned from Combiner Wars etc, setting a new design standard and laying the groundwork for a repaint-based business model. Because if you didn't like the battle damage paintjobs in Siege, almost immediately you'd be able to get a cleaner version, and it would likely be a limited release too. And if you liked the dirt, well, there’s Netflix, innit? Why does Hasbro do this? Well, its basically a cost saving measure, and you can see similar things in their action figure lines. For example, with their Marvel stuff they get away with base moulds for the varying body types, call ‘em “Brawny”, “Skinny”, and so on. It makes a lot of sense, especially when certain characters recur. And since a lot of people like the G1 guys and try to have a complete seeker team, we were easy marks for it. Just look at Kingdom if you need more examples. The downside is that Transformers are inherently more involved as toys, so its more obvious, and you end up with a self-confirming loop. Only only certain characters sell, because that’s only what is sold most of the time.

Eh, that’s capitalism for you. However...

 

 

The 2012 FOC Sideswipe toy

The Legacy of Siege is not Just Repaints

So, if Siege failed to deliver on its theme, what did it deliver on? Play value, posability, and general quality. Siege toys were legitimate fun to play with, and added entirely news concepts to the brand. It popularised the use of 5mm ports for accessories, and while the basic idea wasn't new, the execution and standardisation was praiseworthy. Factoring into that was a revolutionary new style of Transformers, the Weaponizer, who made full use of those ports, and the toys were robust enough to take the added weight. These embraced partsforming to provide a toy whose job it was to be made of guns, and if you don't think that's fun, I can't help you. Finally, there the Battlemasters whom brought their beloved blast effects to the table. So, while the words Cybertron & Siege in the title were questionable, at least the word War made sense. And because I don’t want this article to be just about repaints, I’m going to talk about each price-point a bit.

 

The 2019 Siege Rung Toy

BattleMasters

Famous for the blast effects mentioned above, these were inexpensive little dudes that turned into weapons, and came with little translucent explosions. They were a joy. While this price-point would see a lot of variety with new characters, melee weapons and Rung getting his first toy, it was front-loaded with orphaned targetmasters to go with toys from Titans Return, in another example of the Generations Grab-Bag. Its a tragedy that Earthrise replaced them with ramps, and Kingdom dumped the idea entirely.

 

The 2019 Storm Cloud & Visper toys

Micromasters

There's no delicate way to put this, but these failed. The teams were cut down from four members to two, and given a largely unconvincing combined weapon mode. The individual toys meanwhile offered little posability or visual improvement over the late-G1 originals, and largely didn’t commit to the theme. Soundwave's menagerie also ended up here, and I don't know hard I should be on those as they just had to turn into a slab, but I'd say Laserbeak did alright, while Ravage was overfed. If you’re into Micromasters, they aren’t bad, but if you aren’t? Stick to Storm Cloud & Visper.

 

The 2019 Siege Cog toy

Deluxes

All killer, no filler. The toys featured here are notably consistent performers across the board, with the possible exception of Chromia, only marked by distribution woes and the occasional QC fault. Pick your fave, then pick a weaponizer, and you’ll have a good time. Add a Battlemaster for a fantastic time. Its mostly Autobots, but the Deceptions are a good bunch of chaps too.

 

 

The 2019 Siege Soundwave toy

Voyagers

This price-point is probably the one going the hardest on the whole “Cybertron is supposed to be a messy warzone” thing, featuring some big names, and most of them looking pretty sci-fi. Unfortunately, as characters like Optimus Prime and Starscream live here, successive re-releases and over-exposure makes the toys of this slot less appealing. They aren’t bad, but don’t pay too much. Notable exceptions include Apeface, whom has not be re-released, and the Megatron which I feel came out better than the Earthrise version. There’s also a Springer with the misfortune of following arguably the best voyager of all time. He’s OK though.

 

The 2019 Siege Galaxy Upgrade Optimus Prime toy

Leaders

At the time, many people felt that these were merely voyagers with more accessories, something typified by the Shockwave and later Astrotrain releases. Its not an unreasonable view, given overall design, and the general vibe of “biggish dude armouring up into bigger dude”. That overshadows the actual merits of the price-point though. The Ultra Magnus brought back the long-absent inner robot gimmick, and paid tribute to the 2001 RID version at the same time. Its nicer than all the subsequent versions, TBH. Galaxy Upgrade Optimus Prime brought a welcome bit of Unicron Trilogy to events, and you’d have to very grumpy not to appreciate the four-arms-but-only-one-hand super mode of Shockwave. And to bring up the matter of theme again, Astrotrain is a steam engine with a coal tender. On Cybertron. Just saying.

 

The 2019 Omega Supreme toy

Big Boys: Commander & Titan

This is a slot that I regret my own inexperience with. Jetfire and Omega Supreme where however well-received, so I assume they’re good if you can find them. Omega is currently unique, too.

 

The 2019 "Final Strike Figure Series" artwork

Concurrent Exclusives

Sorry, gotta talk about repaints again. There were 12 concurrent exclusive releases, of which 7 were multipacks, usually if 3 or 4 toys of the straight repaint variety. Generations Select had a further 9 solo releases, and TakaraTomy did a Nemesis Prime. As Starscream was present, this group included the seekers, and similar common repaint candidates and army builders. This trend would continue into Earthrise, and would generate much of the general annoyance discussed earlier. There was also more oddball stuff though, like the Powerdashers, a well-regarded toy-style Refraktor set. The Hot Shot repaint/retool is another personal fave here, but maybe don’t get Slamdance. He breaks.

Conclusion

Transformers in the modern sense largely starts with Siege, and its legacy is that of a bunch of good toys, basically ran into the ground. There’s not much actually bad in the line, as everything is fun to play with and holds up well. The problem is that it was immediately followed by Earthrise. Earthrise was certainly more pleasing to certain sets of the fanbase, and a worthy sequel, but it made people regret buying into Siege like an early adopter. More so after the Netflix business. The extensive use and reuse of Siege moulds, either as repaints or retools or suspiciously similar engineering, has devalued them. This is a real shame, as Siege is generally excellent outside of the Micromasters, and even they have an appeal. I actually kinda miss it, and hope Legacy can live up to it in every sense of the word.

Plamo: The WVR-6M Wolverine (BattleTech, Catalyst Game Labs, “dubious”)

I have three of these now. Da fuq?

What can I say about the Wolverine then? Well, throughout my Battletech experience, I've been trying to get a handle on what counts as a mass-produced generalist everyman in the setting. To an extent, BattleTech doesn't work like that. While things vary with era, your average battlemech is more a long-term investment, like a family estate with a leaky roof, or a naval asset refitted endlessly. Unless you go way back to the Star League, or an especially favoured unit, things are are bit piecemeal with mixed units everywhere. Furthermore, the rules are sufficiently granular that a mech chassis can be specialised in numerous ways, and then there's the easily forgotten non-mecha stuff you get in Total Warfare. The Wolverine does however edge closer than most to my idea of a grunt. The reason for this is a mix of weaponry with solid performance and no heat issues. It's relatively quick, durable, and can fire everything without stressing the heat sinks. It's a got an answer to most things, and the benefits of a humanoid body plan. It's main weaknesses though are it's reliance on physical ammunition and the circumstances where those weapons don't compliment each other. If the optional quirks are in play, of which it has 7, the Wolverine takes a command role but becomes tricky to pilot.

 

Having done two of these previously, and several in the same basic colours, this Wolverine was a fairly simple project. To a point. It came in the same “dubious” auction as the Catapult, so the flash and mould lines were similarly not ideal, but no great problem. I seem to have found my grove so far as table-worthy mechs go, and as it seems that colour scheme is going to be on a book cover, I feel less inclined to vary it. It works, if a little dark on this one, and I spent a lot of time figuring it out, so why not? Things went extremely well, until a point late in the process where I dropped the figure and the left arm detached at the shoulder in the manner of brittle resin. I was was more bewildered than annoyed. I don’t think I’ve ever had a plastic figure break like this before, if it is plastic, like I said, its dubious, so do let me know in the comments if this has happened to you. This prompted some careful gluing and repainting which will no doubt haunt me for sometime to come. Otherwise? He’s looking good, and I’m happy to call this 60 ton lance a success.

 

 

Up next? A boxed lance over a month or so.

Plamo: The CPLT-C1 Catapult (BattleTech, Catalyst Game Labs, “dubious”)

 

Along with the Blackjack, the Catapult is a battlemech I know mainly from the Tex Talks Battletech series of sweary-but-raises-cash-for-charity video essays. It's a little hard to top that summary, but it did endear the Catapult to me. It's almost iconic really, a platonic ideal of the whole "chicken walker" Concept. Sometimes, you just need missiles in an uncomplicated delivery system that can run if it needs to. In related news, I now want a Warhammer or two. 

 

This model is categorised as "dubious" as it comes from another eBay auction that had the look of the grey market about it, although this had a more professional listing this time. This, and a Wolverine I'll be talking about next, came with their own bases, which was a plus, but also a bit of flash. The basic design seems I'll-suited to a plastic this malleable, so I had to use hot water to correct things, but otherwise this was no worse than my first one.

I’ll get to the point: I'm really pleased with this one. Its at the point where I could go further to correct some imperfections, but I don’t want to risk spoiling it. I stepped back from the two-tone green idea and instead went for the olive drab I used on the Heavy Lance. Citadel Moot Green is prominently used on the launcher doors, but otherwise its Vallejo dark grey and leather brown for detailing. Meanwhile, a liberal application of the Citadel Contrast Iyanden Yellow came out good with the cockpit glass. Its fine. Possibly the best I’ve done so far.

Up next: the Wolverine.

Plamo: The CRD-3R Crusader (BattleTech, Catalyst Game Labs, “dubious”)

I know I talk about the Unseen a lot here, but it's kinda unavoidable. It was a big rolling legal battle that featured one of my favourite animes. So, I was very pleased when a mixed lot of "dubious" figures presented me with one from SDF Macross, the Crusader. Like the Orion, this ended up being used as a paint scheme testee, before I decided to give it its due as a proper playing piece. It joins the Griffin in a 60 ton lance.

Even by the standards of the Unseen, the situation with the Crusader and its kin is somewhat convoluted. Its based off a specific equipment load-out for a transforming jet fighter, namely the VF-1A with armour add-ons. Yes, someone thought the best thing you could do with a plane was to turn it into a tank, just go with it. Its a highly toyetic concept which only really mattered in one episode. Subsequently, early BattleTech split what was one machine into several, and largely walked back from the transformation aspect. The armour would of course obscure such things, as would the legally distinct reinvention, but the proportions give it away. There's a lean frame that has been over-built. As a weapon of war, it leans towards the heavy support bracket, but has some oddities befitting is origins. Its got a lot of missiles and armour, some literally shooting from the hip. The forearms feature the most missiles, as well as welcome secondary armament like medium lasers and less-welcome accessories in the form of machine guns. While supposedly a good melee combatant, the design lacks jump jets & has heat issues. I think I may field this as the CRD-3L version, which addresses these issues to an extent. In either case, the contrast to the Catapult is an interesting one. A Crusader does not lack for dakka, and is certainly versatile in its base form, but I’d say the Catapult was more optimised for the “shoot and scoot” tactic.

 

Painting this one posed a few minor problems, some of which I probably created for myself. Through some combination of dettol and manufacturing fault, this model didn’t have an especially good finish when I came to paint it seriously. And I didn't notice the mould line on the head until I'd finished, arrgghghgh. While well-suited to drybrushing, I made things difficult for myself by attempting a two tone green, which didn’t come out especially well. You see, I wanted to highlight the exaggerated proportions by having the biceps in a lighter green, but the contrast wasn’t enough. I ended up using Citadel Moot Green, and possibly when too far in the other direction, but it don’t look bad. The main innovation here was the use of “Gamer Grass”, which I regret to inform you that it is not some kind of cannabinoid energy drink. Rather, its a range of basing materials for miniatures, taking the form of stick-on static grass. With a bit of PVA glue to secure it, I’m now a huge fan.

Up next: ..and speaking of the Catapult.