The Energon Pub

I like how their faces are considered "gimmicks."

megatronus wrote:I like how their faces are considered "gimmicks."

Light-piping, dear

Wolfman Jake wrote:I must say, I love everything about these boxes. I stopped "collecting" the packaging for most of my figures years ago, but these are among the few worth keeping in around, or better yet, putting on display!

It reminds me of VHS and manga sets that have a picture across their spines when you put them in order.

Mirage's spoiler's on backwards.

man, all of these figures, besides hound, are ones that i wish they gave us new molds of sadly.

mirage is too skinny.. and after rewatching the traitor episode on the hub this morning.. this mold really doesn't give off a mirage vibe.. i mean, it's a good mold, i have it, i enjoy it, but just not for an updated G1 mirage.

ironhide.. i think we all know the problems with this figure.. the main one being his head. i don't care how many tutorials are out there to help you fix the head, it's still a problem.. plus, there are other tweaks that i wish were done on this mold.

galvatron.. man, where do i start.. first, he should be a voyager. his robot mode is extremely unstable, the design of his lower legs is very bad especially when you throw in the backpack. the alt mode is nice and i like the transformation.. but the arms are a train-wreck.

astrotrain.. i love this paint job.. and he was in the first iteration of the classics line so, i can cut some slack for that.. but i dislike his legs, and he needs to be a voyager.

octane.. another figure that really should've been a voyager. it's sad displaying astrotrain and octane with blitzwing. i would assume that these characters aren't important enough to get updated molds of.

I love Octane's "Plan" Mode..........

Well, my order has finally arrived. One set each of the Autobots and Decepticons "Specialists." I must say, I am very happy with these figures, almost as much as I was with the Seeker Aces and Elites sets from a while back. The shiny paint makes each figure "pop", the decos are very screen accurate, and the quality control, at least on my sets, is top notch. No chipping or blemishing in the paint (your mileage may vary).

Starting with the Autobots:

Ironhide is very sleek with that deep red coat of metallic paint, plus the G1 yellow stripe on his sides. He's basically the Henkei version with metallic paint swapped out for vacuum metalized chroming. Where there was chrome before is metallic silver paint now.

Hound looks stunning with a dark metallic green. Plus, his legs are now the right color (though an unpainted green plastic, the color of which does not match the rest of the green on the figure), and he's sporting screen-accurate tampographs. I swapped out the translucent plastics for his eyes, which are a translucent blue with the optics painted yellow, with the one from my Universe 2008 version. He's now perfect, with fully-functioning blue light piping eyes! An interesting note: the edges of Specialist Hound's eyes are not painted, so you get a sort of blue halo effect around his yellow, opaque eyes when you shine a light behind him.

Mirage is probably the least improved, but the addition of metallic blue paint and screen accurate paint details make him look quite nice next to his Autobot compatriots. He, of course, lacks the fictional sponsorship decals of the 2006 Classics version and looks very "clean" for it.

Now for the Decepticons:

Galvatron is amazing. They got just about everything right! His metallic purple/indigo paint is spot on. All of the stray orange plastic is now black. This is by far the best deco attempt on this mold. Speaking of the mold, I don't know if this will be true for all, or even most samples, but mine is definitely the least problematic version of the mold I've owned. It snaps together tightly with little fiddling or fuss, and the joints are just a little bit tighter. It's still prone to all the similar issues when you transform it, of course, like the legs falling off at the knee swivel and the left arm popping out of the shoulder socket every two seconds. Regardless, he stands very well and looks like a real leader along side his trusted lieutenants Scourge and Cyclonus, with an army of Sweeps and Cyclonus "Armada" Clones behind him.

Astrotrain is now screen accurate with a medium gray and purple color scheme. Very similar to the Henkei release, but without random chrome pieces. Enough said.

Octane is the least improved of the Decepticon trio. His plastic and paint layouts are exactly the same. The only difference is in the shades used. The purple is darker and now metallic, and the tan-ish gray plastic is now a truer gray (or maybe bluish gray). Still, the small touches do improve his overall look.

Finally, I should have made this connection earlier, because of all the advanced pictures of the packaging, but these are both Hasbro releases. The Seeker sets were definitely Takara-Tomy branded. Yet, these sets seem to fit together very nicely in a series of Classics repaints. So, what's up with that? These are both for the Asian markets, so is this a sort of joint project for the two companies?

Thanks for the play by play!

I think the reason the Seeker sets were Takara branded were because they were released under the United line, whereas the Specialists sets are... not. I recall that the Asia Premium Series Movie Leaders (OP & Brawl) were also Takara, so maybe Takara decided to hand off their Asia exclusive items to Hasbro Asia? I guess we'll see if the continued presence of Hasbro branding is consistent. Good eye!