Archive

Archive for September, 2016

Transformers Purchased in November 2015

September 15th, 2016 Comments off

November 2015 is back to buying only a handful of Transformers. The 3 figures appear below.

  • Age of Extinction Chainsaw Thrash Vehicon, Ross, $5.99

  • Combiner Wars Battle Core Optimus Prime, Target, $24.99

  • Combiner Wars Motormaster, Target, $24.99

Chainsaw Thrash Vehicon is yet another budget impulse buy. I was semi-impressed with Spinning Grinder Galvatron, and at $5.99 there’s no real reason to be conservative. The TF Movie universe took a cue from TF Prime and adopted the concept of a drone robot army made up of Vehicons. In AoE, Vehicons are man-made Transformers used by Cemetery Wind, as opposed to the non-sentient but self-operating drones in TF Prime. As far as I know, there is not a Generations version of Vehicon in the AoE toys, so this Chainsaw Thrash Vehicon will have to do. I like this figure. His alt mode is unique. I don’t know of any other TF (official or otherwise) that transforms into a Rally Fighter. In robot mode, the chainsaw gimmick is semi entertaining, but adds only marginal value for the adult collector. Kids of today would probably enjoy the gimmick for a good 10 minutes before their super short attention span turns them elsewhere. Transformation is painfully simple. Overall, this Vehicon is a nice distraction on a dry TF month, but not a required purchase by any means.

Battle Core Optimus Prime and Motormaster are repaints of each other. In fact, they are repaints of my purchases from January and March of 2015, respectively. By now, most fans are aware of the hip problems that earlier versions of these figures have. This is why I bought Motormaster again. As for Battle Core Optimus, I got him only because I like his head mold so much more over the standard Optimus fig. So the million dollar question is: are the new figs better than the old ones? Yes and no. In robot mode, the figure now looks better when standing in a neutral pose. And in combined form, the fixed ratchets help to stabilize the gestalt in the legs and hips. This is the biggest improvement in the new figures. However, the truck mode does not come together as nicely. This figure compacts itself quite a bit when going to alt mode, and the slight ratchet tweak somehow made it much more difficult to collapse all the pieces and panels properly. This is the case with both Battle Core OP and Motormaster, so I’m convinced this phenomenon is present on all the new figures (I did not detect this on the older figures). Also, they still did not fix the poorly fitted connection pegs located on the chest (for Rodimus or Blackjack). So is it worth it to buy these figs again? I dunno. If you really must have a more stable combined mode, then go for it. Otherwise, I would suggest you save your money if you already have the older figures.

We are almost at the end of 2015. One more month to go, then onto 2016.

Transform and Roll Out.

Categories: On The Hunt, Pics