MP-02 Ultra Magnus
For most collectors, there’s a trend toward more and more expensive things. For kids who collect Hot Wheels, there are RCs when they hit the big time, and then once they’re filthy rich, real cars. For guys who collect action figures, the push is usually towards the 1/6th scale, and then, high-end statues. For Transformers geeks, we have the Masterpiece line.
I resisted as long as I could, but I too gave into the Dark Side. Thanks to a fellow collector, I was able to score a Takara-Tomy MP-02 reissue at a fair price of about p5000. Nowadays, these guys fetch about P6000. MP-01 (Optimus Prime) can go as high as P10-12000. You can see how being a collector of this line can really ruin your credit standing.
Unfortunately, owning a hulking metal replica of a Generation One Transformer isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Of the two “Masterpiece” toys I purchased at the same time, this was the one that disappointed. It’s not that it’s bad. Far from it. It is possibly the most faithful reproduction of Prime from the original cartoons that has ever been released. Both vehicle and robot modes are dead accurate portrayals of the Autobot leader (or in this case, his “brother”), but there’s something lacking. It took me awhile to figure it out, but I finally put my finger on it.
He’s not FUN.
Yes, he looks good. Yes, he’s got diecast metal up the wazoo. Yes, he’s got alot of cool gadgetry and gear. But he’s not fun at all.
The main reason is that all that metal… wel, it’s heavy. It makes him a bitch to set in any position for any length of time. Though he’s got very poseble feet and legs to give him a nice footprint, the joints are too weak to hold the prodigious weight of his boots. You don’t want to display him in any dynamic poses because he will wait for you to leave the room, then promptly fall down and split into tiny little pieces. Not good.
Secondly, because his chest is made of diecast parts, there are no solid locks on it. The panels are supposed to snap to the plastic wheelwells, but the metal and plastic parts don’t match up perfectly, which means every time he bends over (or falls), he flashes you. If they had been cast in plastic, I’m sure a rachet could have been included somewhere, or at the very least some kind of snap-lock.
I know a lot you collectors out there love die cast, and I’m sure you have your reasons, but let’s face it, it was left behind because of the limits of the material. And this is my review, so *raspberry*.
There are still alot of great things about this toy, many of them good enough to justify his purchase if you’re more an open and display guy than a pose and play guy. He’s got two guns, something you just don’t see these days. One is a black version of Optimus Prime’s rifle. It’s really nice, but Magnus had his own rifle that was very nice too. I figure Takara-Tomy got lazy. The gun features a nifty green reflective lens in the barrel and if you look directly at it it looks like he’s about to blow your head off.
The other gun is a replica of Megatron’s rifle form. the silencer, scope and stock all detach, so you can have Magnus as Bond with his Walther if you wanted.
Problem with both of them is that they don’t fit snugly in his hand. Like his posing problems, the accessories tend to fall out right after you turn around to get your camera. Talk about aggravating.
He also comes with an energon axe (that thankfully fits) and a small matrix that fits in his chest.
The matrix lights up if you fit it into his chest cavity, which is a nice touch. Another nice touch is the inclusion of a cardboard trailer to display him with. With a little glue, some tape, and a nice collection of swear words, you can make your very own car carrier in about half a day. You’ll need to be careful with the thing. The cardboard is soft as paper and folds at the slightest pressure. Nice touch or no, I’d rather they included workable armor that diffrentiated him from the MP-01. Some hard-working fans have tried to create add-on armor for the MP-02, but none of the custom jobs I’ve seen are particularly good.
He does have a few other good qualities. His fingers are individually articulated, He has really great detail all around (check out those hydralics!), and he has a movable mouthgaurd if you want to make him “talk”. The biggest rant about the MP line is scale. Because the Primes are so huge, they’re out of scale with everyone else. Or everyone else is out of scale with them. Depends on who you ask I guess. There is also a concern about the re-issued figures. If you’ll look closely, the hoods over the headlights are on backwards. I didn’t even noticed until someone told me that ALL the re-issues had the same problem.
If you want to spend P5000 on a nice Magnus figure, I suggest you find a Classics base figure and the Fans Project City Commander armor set. It’ll cost you the same and be alot more enjoyable. I’d only recommend this one to collectors who are more into statues and display figures than they are into action figures.
Autobot Salvage
I’m not looking forward to Michael Bay’s new Transformers movie. He took my favorite toy line as a kid and made it something vapid and insipid. Instead of robot explorers discovering Earth and befriending humans, we got posturing CG contructions and an annoying human “lead”. His movie was devoid of any of the indelible imagery of the 1986 animated film.
Ok, ok. I’ll give him Megan Fox.
But other than that, there wasn’t anything that really put Bay’s Transformers in league with other great sci-fi films. Even the toys based on the movie characters disappointed. I’ve sold most of my core Movie characters, even the in-demand Ironhide. In my opinion, the toys of the characters that were actually IN the movie were the weakest ones of the series.
The really good toys from the line were the ones that weren’t slated to be in the film and just released to fill out the line. Wreckage was a great toy. As was Landmine. You could argue that Stockade made an appearance in the film as the S5 vehicles, but the robot form is all new mold. These are the ones that I kept from my days toy hunting back in 2007. Unfortunately, there were a few I missed out on back then.
Salvage is one of the molds that didn’t make it into my shopping cart. He shares the same body as Dropkick who was released in an earlier wave, but is Autobot red instead of the evilicious Decepticon purplish-blue. Since the original was pretty scarce and getting pricey at the specialty shops, and since Salvage was going for p300.00 in the recent Toy Kingdom clearance sales, the choice was pretty obvious.
I don’t know if it’s the fact that I picked him up at such a ridiculous price (locally anyway), or because he really is a good toy, but he grew on me rather fast. As soon as I took him out of the package, I was wowed at how much articulation they worked into him. He shares an overabundance of ball-joints, much like Landmine, so you can pose him in almost any position.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. He comes packaged as a lowrider pickup truck with a cover for the truck bed. This might be an odd choice for a salvage truck, but remember that he’s a repaint of an existing mold. It’s weird, but I can overlook that. The bed cover can be removed if you want him to look a little more realistic as a junk dealer.
The transformation scheme is rather good. At first glance, he looks like a shell-former, but opening him up shows you how much is actually going on. The process isn’t simple, but it’s not overly complicated like the Movie Ironhide. You can even pull out his legs and have him run around as a chicken-bot.
Once transformed, the bot is pretty unique. He’s got twin, twin-barreled guns that flip out of his arms (which is all kinds of awsome), but his arm movement is somewhat reduced because of his lack of any cut joints to allow them to swing out. He doens’t have any articulated hand joints, but they’re not missed. Especially since he manages to have peg holes for Energon weapons.
His legs take it or leave it. I like the whole double jointed chicken-leg look, so it’s a win for me. It gives him something that not alot of the other robots have and gives joint junkies another few points of articulation to wow over.
I’ve only got two problems with Salvage. The first is his “backpack”. Remember I said he looked like a shell-former? well it’s partly true. He’s got a buttload of crap hanging off him. It looks good from the front, but turn him around and you can see all sorts of things that don’t really have a place to snap to. A relatively minor complaint, but something that can be annoying.
The other thing that I hate is the stupid “claw” gimmick. His bed cover comes off and becomes this idiotic looking contraption. I threw it out as soon as took the pictures. It really is worthless. Hasbro would have been better served splitting the thing in two and giving him extra blasters. I guess it’s for the kids.
Overall, I like this figure more that most collectors would (as evidenced by his stature as the only “butaw” figure left on shelves after the clearance sale). Though he’s not an outstanding toy, he’s got a good mix of things going for him. I would recommend him as a good figure to add to your Autobot ranks, especially if you can still catch him at the discounted price.
Stealth & Burning Lockdown
There are some characters in cartoons that are iconic and only get released once a line. In the usual scheme of things, Optimus Prime is one of those. Once you’ve made an Optimus figure, you’re pretty much done. You can add battle damage, or paint him white, or on the rare occation, maybe paint him white and call him Ultra Magnus, but for the most part, toy manufacturers don’t get a whole lot of re-use from him
Then there are some characters in cartoons that just beg to have extra figures made of them. Take Snake Eyes from GI Joe. He is just one of those characters that Hasbro loves. They don’t have to hire some writer to create a whole ‘nother backstory for some character. They just have to take the old one and slap it on the back of a card. They don’t even need to hire anyone to re-design the toy. They can take the original color, and just paint on a camoflage design and just like that, they’ve filled another spot in the next case assortment.
Lockdown seems to be one of those characters for the Transformers Animated line. He’s a new character (to me anyway - I’ve got no idea if they had a “Lockdown” in the Cybertron/Robots in Disguise era), but he’s already got three iterations. I don’t really mind since the figure is a Deluxe Class figure that is relatively (I said RELATIVELY) inexpensive and has alot of playability. It’s got good posebility, a mean look, stature among the other toys in the line, and some nice accessories.
The first repaint was the “Stealth” Lockdown.
The figure is essentially the same as the original release, it’s just cast from translucent plastic this time around. To lay it out for you plain and simple, if you’ve already got the first one and you’re not a big fan of re-paints, don’t get this one. There really is no change from the plain and simple Lockdown.
That being said, the reason I went ahead and bought these two re-colors is because like the Transformers Classic Mirage, Lockdown is one of those toys that is just genius.
As you can see, he’s the same muscle car as the first release, just translucent. The plastic isn’t as clear as you see it on the prototype in the product pictures on the back of the box, but backlit by sunlight, it looks awesome. Without the light, it’s looks more like crystal than a see-thorugh ghost.
The “Burning” version isn’t really that much different in vehicle form than the first Lockdown. Instead of the green highlights, it has gold flames painted on the hood. The Electro-magnetic whachamacallit is also a more bronzed color, rather than the blah gray of the original. A little thing really, but he looks a hell of a lot more bad ass.
In robot mode, it’s more of the same. Whatever the first one has, these also have. You get the EM doohickey, you get the weird hands that don’t go all the way out, you get the almost the height of a Deluxe Class figure, and you get the hook. Well, on the Burning version, you get a chainsaw, which is welcome. It doesn’t flip out like the hook does so you need to be careful not to lose it. It also doesn’t fold away when he’s in vehicle mode, you need to take it off. Well, it’s something new.
I really like the Stealth version of Lockdown when in robot mode. While he doesn’t really look like he’s transparent enough to pass through security (which when you think about it would be a total waste of money - why buy a toy you can’t see?), he does take the fun factor to a whole new level. They gimick wins over the silly chainsaw.
The Burning Lockdown figure comes in the plain TFA blistercard pack, but Stealthy comes in a “Value-added” pack with two Legends class figures. I don’t know how much value is actually added, since a Deluxe is p700, and a Legends is p300. That makes the set worth p1300, which is about what it retails for. Go figure.
If you want the two Legends figures, I would recommend them. They’re a nice bonus with some good articulation, interesting transforming schemes, and alot of playability. I keep ‘em on my desk at work all the time since they really are fun to roll around. They’re also available separately, or in a 3-pack with a Legends Prowl, but he doesn’t really look that great compared to these two.
So bottom line? No, neither the Stealth nor the Burning Lockdown are worth the price if you already have the original and aren’t a fan of either the character or the new colors. p700 (or p1200 for the boxset) is a lot to pay for a character you already have. However, right now, TFA deluxe toys are marked down to p400, which is a steal if you ask me.
If I had to choose just 1 version, I’d pick the Burning Lockdown. The black and gold just screams I’m-gonna-catch-you-and-turn-you-in-for-a-hella-lotta-money.
Kain from NECA
Let me get this out of the way right now; This is easily one of the worst action figures I’ve ever bought.
Whew. Glad that’s off my shoulders. Truth to tell I was really exited when I saw this availble on the PTK boards selling for a really sweet price. Sure it was loose, but it had the original packaging (which I promptly threw away). Sure it was one of those “will-not-break-set” sales, but the other figure was the NECA Raziel figure which was really easy to sell (helped largely by my glowing review of it apparently). Considering it’s a pretty obscure character that was never really easy to find here, the price was nothing to complain about and this review is in no way a reflection on the seller (thanks again, dude). I should have known what I was buying.
The reason it’s so bad is that it’s not an ACTION figure at all. It is one of those dreaded “McStatues”; a derogatory term action figure collectors apply to toys whose only claim to the term “action” are basic swivel joints cut into the sculpt. These joints add absolutely nothing to the figure and are almost always useless because the sculpt demands you leave them in one pose anyway. The sub-category was made famous by McFarlane Toys which has made a niche for itself by making products like these. I probably should have known this effort by NECA wasn’t going to be anywhere near as impressive as their Raziel was since it was released years earlier when they were still known for making “in-action” figures.
For the most part, these types of figures have other things going for them to keep the rants from us joint junkies down. In the case of the Hitman figure that came out at the same time, there was a plethora of accessories that gave gearheads wood. In the case of the Lara Croft Anniversary figure, it was the gorgeous likeness of everyone’s favorite buxom English treasure hunter that impressed the horndogs. With most actual McFarlane statues, it’s the sculpt that wins people over since a really great pose can make anyone forget that the thing is a glorified paperweight.
Sadly, old Kain here has none of those things.I’ll start with accessories. He’s got two; a sword and an extra hand. The sword is welcome. It’s a rather good looking rendition of the Soul Reaver, the weapon that both Kain and Raziel share (you’re going to have to Wiki Soul Reaver if you don’t know the story). This is the material version of the sword, so it’s a metal blade instead of the coil of energy Raziel packs. It looks great by itself, but he can’t do much with it.
His other accessory is a swappable hand with some funky, spiky, off-the-wall, stuff going on. I guess it’s supposed to be an energy effect, but there is not one angle in which this hand looks good. It really is a terrible piece. It’s easy enough to exchange the normal hand with this one, but it’s hardly worth it. I’d just as soon throw it in my bits box of toy parts that will never again see the light of day.
So… likeness. Yeah, I will give it to NECA that he does look like the in-game design. Still, he doesn’t seem to be a good representation of, forgive my artsy-fartsiness, the soul of the character.. In the game, Kain is the Godfather of all vampires, the architect of the end of his world, the root of all evil on Nosgoth.Why then does he look like a goofy guy who took his grandma’s curtain and a green Freddy Krueger mask and went out on the town in his jammies?
There’s detail in the sculpt, but it feels rather phoned in. Maybe my first impressions are coloring my thoughts on the figure, but the pants, the face, the cape, the gauntlets, it all feels rather bare. As if they took the old Filipino adage of “Pwede na ‘yan” (That’s good enough) and stopped at the first iteration of the design process.
The pose itself is rather… well it’s crap. There’s no two ways about it. I’m assuming his intended pose is something like one arm raised to zap Raziel, while the other is drawn back to slice him to peices. Unfortunately, that looks odd, while other variations look downright ridiculous. In fact, there is not one position that you can put him in that makes you go, “Whoa! This guy is the guy you turned an entire world into blood sucking vampires!”.
As I said, his articulation is crap as well, so there’s only so much you can do with him. He’s got ball-jointed shoulders, but the lack of any other articulation in his arms means they’re pointless. Same thing with his ball-jointed ankles and wrists. If I’m not mistaken, the neck and waist joint are also ball-jointed, but there’s no real point other than to brag about points-of-articulation on the package.
If you have a Raziel… well, you COULD pose him with his lieutenant. If you wanted to. I don’t. It looks awful.
If you want a Kain for your collection, I’d suggest making friends with someone who frequents eBay and asking them to look for the old BBI Kain. While I don’t think the sculpt on that one is any better, he had more height, and his articulation was alot more impressive. Me, I’m thinking the only way I’m going to get a nice Soul Reaver line up is to learn how to make custom action figures.
Unless NECA wants to play nice and give us the rest of the vampire lieutenants. Pretty please?
Star Trek
I’ve been a trekkie long before I was a SciFi nut. My dad, having been a fan of the original series, watched The Next Generation (TNG) every week when I was growing up and me and my sister would thrill at the exploits of the Federation officers of the Enterprise-D. As a fan brought up on Picard and the NCC-1701-D, I never felt the same way about the crew of the Enterprise as I did about Picard, Riker, and Data. To me they were just some old farts puttering about in some tuna with rockets. The original series (TOS) was really pretty boring to anyone fed on action blockbusters from Scharwarzenneger and Stallone. We wanted stories about Klingons, the Borg, those annoying Ferengi… not episodes about Tribbles.
However, I wasn’t introduced to the original cast of characters until my family got a VHS player and we started renting all these great movies to watch at home (yes, enough with the “did they have electricity back then, granpa?” jokes). It was during this time that I first saw “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” and finally, finally got the idea that all the TOS fans had all along. Where Star Trek TNG focused on fun (for a geek anyway) psuedo-science and singular character arcs, Star Trek TOS was all about the holy trinity; Kirk, Spock, and Bones. Their interactions with each other and their reactions to the amazing stimuli around them.
The scene between Kirk and Nimoy when they’re asked if they like Italian… classic. Later, I was able to watch the other Star Trek movies, including “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”, where McCoy and Spock get into a heated argument about the ethical dilemma posed by a weapon that can potentially overwrite all life on a world with all new lifeforms. None of these actors have had any real success by themselves (I just saw Sulu as sensei to 3 ninja cheerleaders), but TOGETHER, they work.
So how does the new movie stack up to the old one?
Surprisingly, it’s stacks up very well. Great in fact. I mean really, really entertaining. It has all the hallmarks of a great blockbuster action movie (big budget, big explosions, big green breasts, big ships, big name director) so the action junkies are covered. It’s a “re-imagining” so you don’t need to know 40 years of continuity to understand it, so you youngsters are covered. And us old farts will still enjoy it because it gives long-time fans the nods to characters they know and love as well as a few in-jokes that only we can understand. They give us an excuse to scoff at new fans, don’t-you-know?
I don’t hide the fact that I detested Michael Bay’s Transformers, but I was able to put my distaste for his adaptation into words after seeing J.J. Abrams vision of Star Trek. While both are “re-imaginings”, Bay took “Transformers” and did more than modernize it. He emptied out everything fans loved about the characters and caricatured them for his movie. What can you tell me about any of the Autobots other than they turn into cool cars? Did any of you feel devastated when you saw Jazz ripped in half? No. You didn’t. Because he was nothing more than a token transforming robot, a big excuse to get you to “ooo” and “ahh”. As if Megan Fox wasn’t enough to make us do that. Pft.
J.J. Abrahms didn’t make the same mistake here. The characters are all there and intact in his adaptation of Star Trek. Bones is still the Grumpy Gus with the atrocious bedside manner (Urban’s impression is scary, by the way), Spock is still the emotionless powder keg ready to blow, and Kirk is still the confident, rebellious upstart who belongs in the Captain’s chair no matter what he thinks. The others are all there too. Overachieving but sexy-as-hell Uhura, bumbling but eager Checkov, kinda dorky but smooth Sulu (now with kung-fu action!), and the funny Scotsman, Simon Pegg as the ever-loving Scotty. Granted they don’t get as much screen time as the other three, but their little bits are just icing on the cake that is this film.
Casting is spot on, as is the acting effort by the cast. Like Lord of the Rings, you can really believe that these fantastic events are part of a real universe. Not only do they convey the iconic personalities of their respective characters, they still manage to make it fresh. I really can’t say enough about Karl Urban’s portrayal of the abrasive cynic McCoy. Watching him inject things into people with abandon is hilarious. Pine is a gem whose arrogant composure during the Kobayashi Maru excercise (yes, Trek fans, the historic taking of the test!) is just absolute fun to watch. Thankfully, I stopped watching Heroes before this Sylar guy showed up so I don’t have to suffer through the associations others go through when they see Quinto’s Spock. I just get to enjoy seeing him wail on Kirk. What a hoot.
Storywise, I don’t think fans will be dissapointed. I’d say it’s part “Star Trek: Generations” (but without Shatner cheesing things up), and part “Star Trek: Nemesis” with a pinch of string theory and alot of summer spectaculariffic scenes. Yes, I had to make up a word for how good they are.
The writers took a few liberties with the main Star Trek continuity (Star Trek’s Earth 616, if you will) so that they could write about another one where the Star Fleet Academy is populated by hot Orion Slave Girls in lingerie. A little time-hopping and a token vengeful villian and BOOM! new Star Trek universe. Retcon means never having to say you fucked up, but in this case I think it works, especially since this franchise badly needed the re-launch. The re-worked reality means that Abrams is free to do just about anything he wants for the sequel and not get flamed by the fan boy collective.
Effects… what can I say? Abrams knows his shit. Things look sleek and futuristic (they did away with alot of the retro dials and crap you found on the old set), but sufficiently low tech to diffrentiate it from the TNG timeline. The ships are something. The Romulan mining ship looks like a behemoth porcupine (but a really cool one), while the new Enterprise looks like a souped up roadster (I can imagine Kirk alone on the bridge, after serriptiously looking to see if any people are there, quietly going “vroom, vroom, vroooooom!”). They’ve gone for the if-the-camera-is-shaking-then-its-gots-to-be-real! look that Battlestar Galactica beat into the ground, but honestly, it doesn’t detract from your enjoyment. I would not recommend watching it in an IMAX theatre, though. There’s a ridiculous amount of stuff on screen at any given time and trying to keep track of it all on a screen 6 stories high is a real pain.
Aside from the visual effects, there’s also a ton of practical stuff, from set design to fight choreography that’ll stun you. My jaw dropped at the first look at the bridge. Watching Sulu kick ass 22,500 miles above the surface of Vulcan is awsome. The shipyards, academy, Vulcan, the Ice planet, all of them are great environments. Digital matte paintings or not, they really went all out. The whole thing is pure eye candy for scifi nuts, action junkies, and film geeks alike.
The only real drawback in this whole thing was Eric Bana. It was surprising, since I’ve got a lot of man love for this guy and have enjoyed every one of his movies to this point (well, I enjoyed this one too actually, but I’m sure you get my drift). The thing is, he doesn’t make a very convincing villian. Nero seems kind of like me-has-big-ship-badguy-will-smash! So very boring compared to Khan or Shinzon. Now those bastards were scary! These gangsta Romulans are kind of like an after thought of the movie and don’t inspire any real dread in the audience. Sure you’re agog at their actions, but the aliens themselves could have been the dude you met yesterday. While that’s scary in real life, it doesn’t fly in a sci-fi thrill ride.
My opinion, though, is that this is the movie to watch this year. Forget Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, or X-men Origns: Wolverine or G.I. Joe or Watchmen. This is the one to beat in ‘09 and the studios are gonna be hard pressed to do it. So far, I don’t see a contender among any of the movies set for release this year.
Live Long and Prosper, dudes. And buy some Red Shirt Cologne. Because tomorrow may never come.
If you're looking for biased, one-sided views of toys and other assorted geekery, then you're in the right place. If you want objective, you'll need a blog written by someone who isn't an obsessive geek.
These are my views on various toys, movies, places, and things, along with assorted pictures and the the occasional link to stuff I find sufficiently geeky.
Enjoy your stay and leave a comment.
Slangards
I may give you a half-way serious answer.
