20 replies to this topic

[jkaris]

Some KEWL re-issues will be coming our way..

New Toys R Us G1 Reissues! -- Posted by Tony Bacala on Monday 25th November, 2002 @ 05:06
Three new USA G1 Reissues have been found in the TRU computer system:

1. Prowl skn# 175318
2. Red Alert skn# 175310
3. Skywarp skn# 175253

No release date has been confirmed yet. Thanks to Cyclonus for the info!

Meanwhile, Armada comes out with anothe reaaly lame toy...
http://www.transfandom.net/thrust.jpg
http://www.transfandom.net/thrust2.jpg
Whatever happened to kewl looking transformers. not stupid lame ugly one with no hands.

[Tortle]

I kind of like the sculpt... I think it's cool that he has cannons for hands, kinda like Robocop 2. But the paint job is inexcusably bad, and if he had a different color scheme he would look a whole lot better. There's no reason they couldn't paint him something cool like glossy black or camoflague. Well, actually there is a reason: ARMADA SUCKS.

I know the Armada toys are easier to transform than RID, but man, they're horrible. I just got a Scourge this weekend, and even though he's based on an Optimus Prime from 1994, it's a great toy! It looks great and has good articulation (like RID) but it's also easy to transform (like Armada)! And this is a toy from 8 years ago! Why isn't there any progress with Armada?!

-Nathan

[jkaris]

I just posted this rant over at the 2005 boards...
Enjoy!

Whatever happened to TF's with HANDS!!!! I think the guns for hands really blow it for this guy. Other than that, he's pretty sweet. The guns make him almost as lame as demolisher. Demolisher REALLY SUCKS. "Look Ma, no hands!" and he looks like a cracked out TF on stilts.

Is it just me or is Armada the worst TF line so far. Half of the figures I won't buy because they are really lame looking in robot mode.

Air Defense Mini-Cons - The best of all the mIni-Cons. IMO the only ones worthy of the TF name!

Cyclonus - The butt ugly face and pinheaded shoulder joints did it for me. This guy has major suckage problems.

Demolisher - The stilts for legs and gun hands make him the #1 lamer from the Armada series! At least his vehicle mode os kewl!

Destruction Mini-Cons - Nice!

Hot Shot - Oversized Go-Bot. I won't be wasting my $$ on him. Even the vehicle mode is lame.

Land Military Mini-Cons - Decent, I bought them.

Laserbeak - Very kewl. Unique design.

Megatron/Galvatron - Tank mode is kind of iffy, but robot mode would be perfect if he lost the antlers and didn't have his shoulders stick up so high. Great toy nonetheless.

Optimus Prime - Truck mode SUX, ugly as hell. And speaking of ugly, his large robot mode is uglier than my dog's butt. The one redeeming factor is that his basic robot mode is pretty neat. I'll be waiting for the "Basic figure only" packaging to come out.

Race Mini-Cons - Lame! At least the mirage has a decent head.

Red Alert - Suffers from "lame-arm-itis" The same debilatatin shoulder/arn disease as Cyclonus. Ugly face too.

Sideways - Kewl, totally kewl. Only detraction: antlers on the minicon heads.

Smokescreen - Semi decent, but suffers from the lame shoulder joint problem, and his hands/arms are ugly as hell. Face is reminiscent of the toddler TF line. One redeeming factor...his mini con, Liftor, is TOTALLY FREAKING AWESOME!!

Starcream - Damn near perfect! Great sculpt, paint scheme, good articulation. I can't wait for the Skywarp and Thundercracker repaints!

Street Action Mini-Cons- They suck, but I bought them anyways.

I know, I'll get razzed for bagging on Armada like this, but come on! Only 8 sets/figures worthy of the Transformers name! What the hell is going on over there. Whoever designed most of these should be sent to Go-Bot rehab!

That's my rant. I had to get it off my chest.

-Johnny http://www.kinnikuman.com

[Tortle]

Great stuff, Johnny! I agree with what you said! Armada TFs are so bad that the Go-Bots piss on them!

-Nathan

[DoctorKent]

Is it just me or is Armada the worst TF line so far. Half of the figures I won't buy because they are really lame looking in robot mode.

I can understand this. Personally, I'm having a ball with most of the Armada stuff so far. Articulation really doesn't matter to me - I transform em, but I'm not playing with them per se. I really dislike the Optimus - no mode he has is decent, only plus - an awesome Minicon. The Skyboom shield won;t stay together connecting to Mirage, and Hot Shot's arms are bad, and I have the same problem with Cyclonus' joints, but otherwise I've been pleased. Did you guys collect the RID line? I know the fans praised them but I found them...(scared to admit this) a little complicated to transform. Sideburn comes to mind - if the back pieces were off a fraction of an inch...*shudder*. Simple transformations make me happy. Red Alert is a fave - only the fact that he has a huge backpack detracts from him.

About the hand thing - why would every robot have hands? If you are an engine of destruction like Demolishor, why would you need hands? He probably doesn't have much down time. Just blasting Autobots all the live-long day....

There's one thing I can definitely say - the stores around me have sold out of the $10 assortment every time they get them in, down to one Demolishor or Cyclonus, so they are pretty popular. Now if they could just start moving some Minicons so I could get the Space Team!

DoctorKent

[Tortle]

Did you guys collect the RID line? I know the fans praised them but I found them...(scared to admit this) a little complicated to transform.

For transforming RID, I found some of them okay (like the individual trains), some somewhat complicated (like X-Brawn) and some IMPOSSIBLY hard (like combining the three trains). The train combination was unacceptable. There's no way a kid would be able to do that (hell, it took me about an hour to figure out). But I still thought that the line was cool. Armada is easier to transform, but I hate the toys so why would I bother?

Anyway, that's cool that you like them, I just think that they've made so many better TFs in the past. Like I said, Laser Optimus/Scourge was made 8 years ago, and he poops on any of the Armada toys in terms of coolness of the robot, ease of transformation, and realism of the vehicle!

About the hand thing - why would every robot have hands? If you are an engine of destruction like Demolishor, why would you need hands? He probably doesn't have much down time. Just blasting Autobots all the live-long day....

Ha, ha! True!

-Nathan

[jkaris]

I LOVED the RiD line. Yeah, I actually had to use the instructions to transform them, and the joints aren't the tightest , but the sculpts were freakin awesome! I have every RiD released, including the Japanese Brave (Fort) Maximus. Half (my favorite half) are out on display, and the other half are MISB on the shelf below. There were 1 or 2 lamers in the whole line, unlike Armada. That is why I'm SO disappointed in Armada. I went completist on RiD, and it was worthe it. But I just can't get myself to go that route with the crappy Armada line.

G1 Shelf - FULL
RiD Shelf - FULL
Armada Shelf - SPARSE

[Adamantiumwulf]

Did anyone collect any of the beast wars or beast machines. There was quite a few nice figurese in the beast wars. Megatron tm2, Ooptimual Optimus, Tigerhawk.

My favorite Scavanger the ant. looks awsome in all three modes his head is well proportioned (one of my biggest gripes about tf's) Has no hands just drills.

[DoctorKent]

Did anyone collect any of the beast wars or beast machines. There was quite a few nice figurese in the beast wars. Megatron TM2, Optimal Optimus, Tigerhawk.

My favorite Scavanger the ant. looks awsome in all three modes his head is well proportioned (one of my biggest gripes about tf's) Has no hands just drills.

At one time I had all the Beast Wars through the first wave Beast Machines. There were a lot of really nice figures, excluding those that were ruined by gimmicks, like the TM2 Prowl (owl). His entire self was built around this wing spin thing that didn't work. The TM2 Cheetor was pretty bad also.

Scavenger was really nice. I liked a lot of the Transmetal figures. I miss Rampage most of all. I have to get him again...him and Big Convoy. Magmatron was cool.

DoctorKent

[DoctorKent]

Anyway, that's cool that you like them, I just think that they've made so many better TFs in the past. Like I said, Laser Optimus/Scourge was made 8 years ago, and he poops on any of the Armada toys in terms of coolness of the robot, ease of transformation, and realism of the vehicle!

Not many Transformers ever come close to capturing the look and feel of how the animated characters were - since most of the original figures were Diaclone holdovers and "low tech" compared to the articulation they've figure out now - but Laser Optimus is near perfect. He's one of the only original TF's I still have - along with a bootleg Shockwave and Soundwave, but that's a Microman/MicroChange thing and I have almost all of them.


The REALLY cool figure is the mini Scourge from RID, that came in a two pack with X-Brawn. He is so cool - MUSCLE sized as well. One of the best clearance items I've ever bought.

BTW, got an Armada Demolishor on damage TRU clearance for $3.90. Seems somebody stepped on the box, so for a crumpled cardboard, I got a mint toy. I would have liked him for $10, but for $4 he's fantastic. And he does have fingers, if not hands

DoctorKent

[Tortle]

Speaking of Transformer news, there's apparently a Transformers video game being released in Japan soon. You can read about it and check out some pics here:

TFormers.com

As a teaser, check out this pic:


Pretty cool!

-Nathan

[Adamantiumwulf]

If you want a big beast wars collection I have been toseing around the idea of selling mine.

Scourge is the one RiD figure that I wanted.
I got the 2 pack befor ethere was the toys r us exclsuive figure and it has a nice little transformation.


That picture of prime in robot mode is sweet.

[Tortle]

More Transformer news...

Big Bad Toy Store has a preorder page for... UNICRON! Check it out below!

Preorder Page for Unicron

What does this mean? Is this a new toy? Or, is it perhaps the Unicron Prototype that's been floating around for the past few years? I hope so... that's one sweet toy!

-Nathan

[jkaris]

Yes, it's SUPPOSED to be a slightly moded version of that prototype. Hopefully as close to the original as possible. But.....as it will be part of the crapty armada line, I am not very hopeful.

[Adamantiumwulf]

It is for Armada so it is probably a diifferent toy just took the name. Just about like all of the armada toys.

[DoctorKent]

The Unicron announcement is ripping the fans apart over in the Transformers newsgroup - they are really speculat-crazy. One dude thinks it could be a remold of Scorpinok (sp?). Another thread argues if Neo Unicron was hand sculpted or machined. Some days I love the fans, some days I don't.

DoctorKent

[Ramses]

Whatever happened to kewl looking transformers. not stupid lame ugly one with no hands.

2 words "Beast" "Machines"

[Tortle]

Here's a smidgeon more on the Unicron story, in an article from TFormers.com...

ToyFare: The Toy Magazine #68 features a brand-new Transformers Unicron cover! Based on the planet-sized character that first appeared in Transformers: The Movie, this is Hasbro's biggest Transformer ever! Scheduled to ship 02/12/03.

Since it's the "biggest Transformer ever", that would eliminate the possibility that it's a repaint of Scorponok (since Scorponok wasn't as big as Fortress Maximus). It's probably that super-cool prototype that we see all over the place, although that prototype really didn't look larger than two feet tall (the size of Fort Max). However, the fact that Unicron is the biggest Transformer makes me nervous about the price. Fort Max was $100 back in the day... how much will Unicron be now?

-Nathan

[jkaris]

If he's bigger than Fort Max (YES!!!!) I wouldn't mind paying around $150 or less for him.

[Tortle]

I wouldn't pay more than $80 for a Fort Max size toy, and I doubt that many parents and kids would either. What parent would shell out that much for a toy? And what kid can afford that on his allowance?

I think that if Hasbro sells it for $150, they're overestimating the market. On the plus side for us, that will mean that we could probably score a Unicron on clearance.

-Nathan

[DoctorKent]

I wouldn't pay more than $80 for a Fort Max size toy, and I doubt that many parents and kids would either. What parent would shell out that much for a toy? And what kid can afford that on his allowance?

I think that if Hasbro sells it for $150, they're overestimating the market. On the plus side for us, that will mean that we could probably score a Unicron on clearance.

-Nathan

Ah, some people had the USS Flagg back in the day. I know I had two of the large Joe playsets - if we had 7 feet of space we would have had the Flagg too. SOme kids will have it...some will not. Some online retailers are pricing it at $70, which puts it bigger than Supreme Optimus Primal, but maybe smaller than Fort Max. Who cares anyway - its UNICRON!!! I'll be glad to finally get one that I can take out and bash around.


DoctorKent