The Energon Pub

As I said earlier, I'm getting at least Starscream. I'm rather surprised at the pricing on these guys (and that BBTS is offering an additional $10 off for early pre-orders). But I certainly can't get behind ordering the full monty at this point. I agree with other commenters here regarding the aesthetics and questioning the quality of the final product. I also think I'd be more on board if the original seekers are planning to be released first, followed by a small gap of time by the coneheads, and somewhere inbetween that time frame for Sunstorm. If the first wave of these figures really do impress buyers, I think there would be stronger interest in ordering the rest. Right now, we can't discern whether they all get released in one fell swoop or if they are spaced out due to the "Q2 2013" release date. There really should be more visibility for the consumer to know these things.

That pic of Starscream looks like s**t. I think these pictures do the mold more justice. Im not saying the heads are perfect, but the conheads look better than the other seekers. Also showing the arms posed makes the figures look better. I hope the knees bend and the wings fold down a bit more. That would help.

These are venturing into the 'you'd have to pay me for me to get them" territory

What I find amusing is many of the people who dont like this mold love the Animated and TF Prime lines. Only Hasbro gets a free pass for making stuff that looks too cartoony.

Rated X wrote:What I find amusing is many of the people who dont like this mold love the Animated and TF Prime lines. Only Hasbro gets a free pass for making stuff that looks too cartoony.

It's just the execution of the seeker robot the alt is excellent but the standards these days and expectations are too high when it comes to third party , the robot is no were near as good as the ship looks and as far as cartoon accuracy the seekers in the 1st episode still used there earth modes when transformed any way so IT could have came up some something so much more unique and hit a home run with this.

Rated X wrote:What I find amusing is many of the people who dont like this mold love the Animated and TF Prime lines. Only Hasbro gets a free pass for making stuff that looks too cartoony.

The Animated and Prime designs are sharp and distinct and the toys reflect the cartoon designs well. Meanwhile the robot mode on this guy does not do a good job of portraying the design it's supposed to represent, especially for a $60 toy.

Being "cartoony" is one thing. Having poor proportions is another.

Autobot Genocide wrote:

Rated X wrote:What I find amusing is many of the people who dont like this mold love the Animated and TF Prime lines. Only Hasbro gets a free pass for making stuff that looks too cartoony.

It's just the execution of the seeker robot the alt is excellent but the standards these days and expectations are too high when it comes to third party , the robot is no were near as good as the ship looks and as far as cartoon accuracy the seekers in the 1st episode still used there earth modes when transformed any way so IT could have came up some something so much more unique and hit a home run with this.

I think people are just holding these to a standard created by the universe seeker mold. If Impossible Toys had decided to somehow re-shell the Hasbro mold into a tetra jet, everyone would have screamed foul play. A lot of people hate Art Feather Bumblebee for this reason. Same thing with the proposed Igear Impactor based off of the Warpath mold. I own all the other transforming Impossible Toys figures and each one is an improvement over the last.

• Exo-Suit Spike and Daniel
• Valkarie/Medic/Nightbird
• Alicon

I think Impossible Toys is a little slavish to the actual animation of the G1 cartoon. The designers haven’t quite figured out how to translate the animation into a 3D figure that looks like it could be real. While some companies take like Fansproject take “neo” to unnecessary extremes, Impossible Toys molds aren’t “neo” enough. But they are getting there, little by little. Maybe Dr. Wu might decide to cash in by making better heads with more serious looking faces. But I do feel that Impossible Toys did accomplish what they intended with this mold. They made a tetra jet that transforms into an Earth mode robot. They were staying true to the animation in both modes. That was the real challenge and they pulled it off.

Gauntlet101010 wrote:Being "cartoony" is one thing. Having poor proportions is another.

Then I take it you must hate Bulkhead. And I wont even get into Genesis proportions.

That Bot wrote:

Rated X wrote:What I find amusing is many of the people who dont like this mold love the Animated and TF Prime lines. Only Hasbro gets a free pass for making stuff that looks too cartoony.

The Animated and Prime designs are sharp and distinct and the toys reflect the cartoon designs well. Meanwhile the robot mode on this guy does not do a good job of portraying the design it's supposed to represent, especially for a $60 toy.

I guess it just comes down to opinion. I think what this figure was supposed to represent is the challenge of turning a robot made of Earth fighter jet parts into a Tetra Jet. And they pulled that off with flying colors.

to clarify, and to be brutally honest here, I'm embarrassed for you all that I have to, I was responding to Rated X's highly unnecessary comment that he was glad to see that Impossible Toys didn't use a "Hasbro-ish fake cockpit".

I replied, mentioning a number of seeker toys by Hasbro which DIDN'T have fake cockpits, in an effort to point out that the more popular seeker molds don't use that. It was an effort to emphasize the self-parody that Rated X has become, by blasting anything vaguely related to any Hasbro product, even when it's not factually accurate.

I don't think Hasbro are perfect. I'd hardly spend as much time on this section of the forums if I did. I do think it's unfair, cruel and downright ignorant to sling insults at a company for doing things that they haven't done. When Rated X raised the point about a number of toys which have had fake pieces included in their transformation, I have admitted that and accepted it, but since those he initially mentioned were not seekers, I made the point of mentioning how his examples were not relevant.

I've not really read many more comments on this topic, because the lack of basic understanding of the english language is somewhat irritating to me. I'm posting this response in the hopes that people realise that not all Transformers fans converse at the level of pre-schoolers. I don't like a lot of Rated X's comments, I find his tone to often be disrespectful and dismissive. But I am starting to appreciate that he tries or at least that, whilst we might not always get on we'd at least be able to understand what each other were saying were we to have a conversation.


and for the record, to keep it on topic: whilst the alt modes are okay, I really hate the proportions of these guys in robot mode. They look like they're wearing banana suits.

A better-sculpted head probably would have saved this figure.

It is okay craggy, humor is hard to detect in written form on the internet. We still love you

Not trying to antagonize you here X, but I find it funny you always seem to take the side that the majority of us aren't supporting. That's fine I guess, someone has to help BBTS out with all of the stock they're going to get with these guys. And I guess when it comes down to it I just hope all that money IT laundered from the fandom off of Valkyrie is atleast put to worth for something.

I guess when it comes down to it, all I have to ask you is have we really gotten to the point where we are relying on third parties to make third party accessories for other third parties' third party toys? These guys aren't rookies anymore, they should be knocking it out of the park for every release they make. If it ever comes down to third parties making third party accessories for other third parties' third party toys, it should be so that us fans have a variety of choices in regards to what we want on our toys, not to fix the problems that a company has failed to access.

Anyways, sorry for the alliteration, I blame this.

Mkall wrote:A better-sculpted head probably would have saved this figure.

it would have helped a lot. the cockpit looking so elongated would have still hurt it though, and definitely the first thing I see that's wrong. the head isn't right by any stretch of the imagination, but I'd probably have missed that if the rest of it was perfect.

Rated X wrote:

Gauntlet101010 wrote:Being "cartoony" is one thing. Having poor proportions is another.

Then I take it you must hate Bulkhead. And I wont even get into Genesis proportions.

Bulkhead's got his own desing going on and it works for him. The proportions on this figure don't work. I guess they work for you, but it doesn't seem like they do for the majority of TF fans.

And I'm rather surprised they do work for you, honestly. Because they do not match the proportions of Starscream's G1 character model. We've seen better from 3rd party companies. With a little more effort I'm sure they could have made this 100% perfect.

As for Genesis, I won't be adding him to my TF collection and the proportions are a big part of that. Game accurate or not, they do nothing for me.

And we have reviews.

By Vangelus

Part A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbXX44aVBUc

Part B

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkIGZ7IgFzg

mooncake623 wrote:And we have reviews.

By Vangelus

Part A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbXX44aVBUc

Part B

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkIGZ7IgFzg

I have to admit, I'm much more impressed than I was before. However the head still stinks out loud so I just can't convince myself to pull the trigger on any of these.

DevastaTTor wrote:

mooncake623 wrote:And we have reviews.

By Vangelus

Part A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbXX44aVBUc

Part B

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkIGZ7IgFzg

I have to admit, I'm much more impressed than I was before. However the head still stinks out loud so I just can't convince myself to pull the trigger on any of these.

yea they're not as bad as I thought they're going to be. The head is gross though. If I were to get these I would have to replace the head with one from a seeker mold... but which one would be the question...

Vangelus' videos sold me into purchasing the other two seekers and a conehead for good measure. Still not sold on the face sculpts, but like the idea of possibly keeping them in tetrajet mode and some flight stands.

Depending on how much I like these once in hand, I might pick up the other two coneheads and Sunstorm down the way. I have a feeling that the "early bird" pricing will come back at some point later in the year.

Responding to the comments about me above, all I can say is I speak what I feel. Im not very picky, and my need to have certain G1 characters and variants in my collection outweighs other factors by a ton. When it comes down to QC, I dont want a figure to be a POS. But at the same time I dont expect million dollar Hasbro style quality. I think people look at IT figures more for what they arent than what they are. Im very impressed with the latest video review seeing how these figures seem to be very durable. I also like the articulation shown. Not perfect, but far from bad. Im not crazy about the heads on the non-conehead seekers, but I would gladly buy new heads if Dr. Wu wanted to churn them out. Of course I would prefer IT to get them right. But sometimes if you want something perfect, you just gotta pay a little bit more. I imagine when people save for a month just to buy an expensive figure, they have higher expectations and become critical. Im not saying Im made of money, but I can afford not to sweat the small stuff.

I'm not sold, every piece of crap I've bought from IT, has broken.
I'll wait till everyone eles get's there's.

still probably won't, even Kreemzik broke, and he hardly moves.

Rated X wrote: Im not very picky, and my need to have certain G1 characters and variants in my collection outweighs other factors by a ton. When it comes down to QC, I dont want a figure to be a POS. But at the same time I dont expect million dollar Hasbro style quality.

I wonder how many people feel the same way. As long as its slavish G1 they can over look a lot of flaws. I think you're probably Impossible toy's target market.

A million dollar Hasbro style of quality? But ... these things are a lot more expensive than Hasbro's fare.

Well, Vestenka (who, apparently, designed these years and years ago for IT before he even started his own business) says they're working on some kind of fix for these guys. So there's hope! Maybe a bonus head or something will come along.

Gauntlet101010 wrote:A million dollar Hasbro style of quality? But ... these things are a lot more expensive than Hasbro's fare.

Well, Vestenka (who, apparently, designed these years and years ago for IT before he even started his own business) says they're working on some kind of fix for these guys. So there's hope! Maybe a bonus head or something will come along.

A fix already? they should have known what to fix by the first prototype starting with that head! i'ts stupid buying these just to know you have to buy a new head or what ever straight after

Yeah, it's not ideal. I guess they get too close to their products, so they can't see the flaws until it's pointed out to them.