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I lucked out and saw FOC Shockwave in stock on TRU.com so I ordered him along with FOC Optimus and the new TMNT Raph, Don and Mikey to get free shipping on the order.
I've had very, very little luck with the short packed deluxes this year and so it'll be so great to not have to hunt for Shockwave at retail.
Thanks for those JT. I wish I had not missed the deadline for questions, along the same lines as your last questions in the TFviews interview, I would have thrown out a question about using the subscription service to get some of those unreleased molds out there since they are supposedly made to order. :-/Quote:
Originally Posted by JediTricks
I'm not sure that I understand the answer to your question about Marvel comics characters. I'd assume you were asking about guys like Straxus--Scrounge would be an obvious choice, as would Emirate Xaaron, Master Mouth, or a slew of other comic-only characters. But his answer seems to indicate he thought you were asking about Marvel characters in Transformers. Obviously, there's not going to be a Spider-Man vs Megatron two-pack. But what Marvel characters appeared there? Circuit Breaker is the huge one, and Death's Head would be close behind. There's also the aforementioned Spidey, Nick Fury, an off-hand comment about Godzilla, and the Savage Land factoring into the Dinobot origin. That's it, so far as I can recall (though Robot Master could be a bit iffy, since he's based on real-life Marvel editor Danny Fingeroth). Everything else is owned by Hasbro. Even the Neo-Knights. Heck, I think even G.B. Blackrock would technically be Hasbro property; unlike Circuit Breaker, he didn't first appear in Secret Wars.
If Hasbro really wanted to push it, I believe Circuit Breaker appeared in TF as Josie Beller prior to her superhero appearance in Secret Wars.
Damn, that's another Hasbro Marvel question that would've been good: 3.75" or Legends Death's Head.
Death's Head was already announced for the 3.75" line at Toy Fair though.
Adam, you just made my day and made me decide upon the first Marvel figure I will get for reasons other than custom fodder. (I'm assuming it's the REAL Death's Head, and not one of the characters to take that name later.)
:D
I'm not really sure which Death's Head it was since it was on the panel and I don't think revealed afterwards. One of the tformers.com guys in the crowd yelled "DO CIRCUIT BREAKER!" and the Hasbro guy on stage joked he though someone was going to say that. (All second hand info of course since I wasn't there.)
After a few days of fiddling (and boy do I mean fiddling) with SDCC Bruticus I have come to the conclusion that he's just ok. Instructions don't even show you how you are supposed to convert the limbs for either arm or legs. This is fine as the arm modes that Blast-Off and Vortex are packaged as are pretty terrible and too long. It's seems clear that those are the intended transformations though as it does give them elbows to varying degrees of success. I find the combined mode looks better making the arms shorter. It sacrifices some of the articulation some what but I'll take it over the horrible looking arm modes they come as. Swindle and Brawl look pretty good as the legs although Brawl doesn't succeed as well because the hinge joint on his "toe" cannot support much weight. This limits what you can do with him pose wise. Brawl could really have used a strut to support the "toe." Swapping arms to feet and so forth doesn't really improve or worsen Bruticus's disposition. Blast-Off and Vortex make fine feet although Vortex seems slightly shorter than BO and I can't get Bruticus to really stand straight using that configuration. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong. Swindle is the best looking arm and Brawl can be finagled to look decent. Most pictures I've seen of Brawl as an arm leave him looking shoulder heavy and thin on the arm, but I somewhat solved this by swinging his legs down to make the arms appear a bit thicker. It's not really a great solution but it looks better I think. Onslaught makes a fine and sturdy torso. Don't really care for how his robot mode arms just kinda tuck under the shoulders though. I ended up twisting his legs inward which faces two of his alt-mode tires out. Just looks better that way I think. Probably the worst part of this set are the combiner ports. These things are super tight, which is good, but really feel like its only a matter of time before they snap off while removing the limbs. The first few times, its kinda freaky how hard it is the get the limbs to disconnect.
Individually, I feel like 3 of the 5 are worth owning outside of the combiner aspect. Swindle is the best of the bunch in all three modes. His robot mode is the tallest which is weird as he is traditionally portrayed as being the shortest of the Combaticons. Brawl is second for me as I really like his robot mode, although its a bummer that the combiner kibble just hangs off his rear and there is nothing you can do about it. He's also pretty small comparatively which is the opposite of how he was portrayed in WfC. Vortex ranks third, as I find his limb modes around the same level as Brawl but I like his robot mode less. I would like it more if his helicopter blades could fold flat against the side of his arm or better yet stayed on his back like the actual character model. Blast-Off is close to being good bit his shoulder really kills it. Side-to-side movement is fine but he cant lift his arms enough to adopt a standard point and shoot pose. The shoulders are not integral to arm mode so I can't cut it slack; it should be better. Onslaught is the weakest individually his arms just kinda suck and look awkward and tiny. He's actually similar to Blast-Off in that he would be passable if not for the arms. Since he only has one combiner mode though he *really* doesn't get any slack cut; again there's little reason why he could not have been better.
Overall the set is ok, and if someone really only wanted one I would have suggested the Amazon G2 set as its cheaper than retail especially with free shipping. Since I am a sucker I will probably end up with all four versions. I like Swindle, Brawl and Vortex enough to pick up individually and Onslaught I will get to swap out the SDCC version. Probably will just pick up Blast-Off since I'll have the rest anyway.
So, it looks like I need to actually start looking for these figures. :)
Now that I've had FOC wave 1 for a little over a week I think I would rank them like this
1. Jazz (surprise!)
2. Shockwave
3. (and this is an extremely distant third) Optimus
Optimus' and Shockwave's alt modes are extremely lackluster. Optimus' bot mode is just as bad. Much has been made of Shockwave's puny bot mode but what gets most of the low marks from me are the hollow legs. It's been a pet peeve of mine with the TF Prime deluxes but none of them thus far are hollow on the order of Shockwave. It's as if he doesn't have inner legs at all. So by default, Jazz winds up being the best simply by having an average bot and alt mode.
I've put up a photo review of SDCC Bruticus on my Transformers site, it went through a ton of delays and was a mountain of work to get in order, but is finally done, so check it out and let me know what you think:
http://www.tfviews.com/news/toysandcollectibles/1390
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Sure thing. Yeah, I could have used more firepower, definitely, but I guess that's for next time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam
I didn't entirely understand Archer's answer either, but it could go either way.Quote:
Originally Posted by El Chuxter
You are right about Circuit Breaker/Josie, but I doubt Hasbro wants to fight to get rights to a non-robot old-timey comics character in this line.
No kidding surprise, Jazz is the only one I've passed up so far.Quote:
Originally Posted by figrin bran
I like Optimus and Shockwave's altmodes, and Optimus I don't think is a bad bot, just small and simple for the price. Shockwave's legs don't bother me at all.
Downloaded the FOC demo, but have only had time to play the single player modes (Bumblebee and Vortex, both are truncated segments), and I am not impressed so far. The visuals are muddy, the "store" system for weapons is obnoxious and takes you right out of the game (it's a cute idea to build up weapons bit by bit, but the expression feels all wrong, like a mobile app trying to upsell you), and it just doesn't feel as Transformersy as WFC did. Hopefully that's just the demo being mediocre. I did try out the build-your-own-character system, it's not quite as cool as presented, just mix-n-match parts from existing bots, not all that inspiring, and the color choices available are horribly limited despite a massive palette of choices.
Oh, and Bran, some thoughts on the GI Joe Shockwave HISS Tank set:
- only custom part is a removable Shockwave gun mode emitter which plugs into the tank's main cannon in place of its spring-loaded missile, the set even comes with the missile, the tank is identical in sculpt to the mainline release.
- only custom accessories are Soundwave, his tape minions (all 3 are the same cassette sculpt, Laserbeak/Buzzsaw style from the look of the cassette) and the sled and the 3 Energon blocks. Soundwave is a Joe backpack as well as a huge boombox, but looks pretty good.
- Destro is alright, but the big purple flack jacket covering his lower face is kind of annoying and the huge Decepticon logo on it makes even less sense. There's way too many Decepticon logos in this set actually, his chest, the money briefcase, and at least 5 on Shockwave himself.
- The purple of the tank looks really good.
- The Shockwave emitter piece is cast in milky gray/silver plastic, box art shows the sculpted cut-ins painted purple like the G1 toy, but they went lazy and left them unpainted here.
- box is big and designed like a giant comic on the outside, looks great but feels incomplete since there's only the outside's art to tease you.
- construction BAT comes with an extra pistol.
- both figures and all of their accessories that aren't TF-themed are reuses of previous stuff.
- overall, not worth the price of admission but a cool set for the shelf or for a GI Joe collection I suppose.