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Oh wow, that looks amazing. Overall I'm not a fan of most of their kits, but this one looks great.

Duuuuude I love the base mode stickers. I love how teeny windows make that whole other play scale.

Damn that set looks good! I can't imagine how long it took and must patience was needed to add all of those

Omega certainly benefits a lot more from his sticker set than the Rainmakers do theirs, which doesn't even correct the robot mode wing stripes to red.

Speaking of the Rainmakers, I'm enjoying having them in all their day-glow glory. I got Thundercracker for Christmas, the Rainmakers with recycling money in between, and Starscream for my birthday. I quite like the SIEGE Seeker mold, it does a decent job at having an F-15 based robot mode and a pyramid-ish jet mode. The weapon sockets on the shoulders did need some tightening, but that was easy enough.

It was also easy enough to swap Starscream and Thundercracker's faces with the screws removed. A good thing, since the smirk works better for the smug, scheming Starscream than it does for the dour Thundercracker.

Tempted to get another Thundercracker to turn into Skywarp, because of the actual Skywarp being hard to get a hold of, pricy when he does show up, and Greenlight being higher priority for me as far as the online exclusives go.
Because since I got Lancer and Novastar (still debating whether to turn her into a truck or treat her as a separate character to Firestar) with Christmas money, she's the only piece of Orthia I'm missing.

I also got Ratchet, he's fun. It'd be nice if someone made his dual pistols from the movie (that would be more fun than pointless filler panels). Also if someone repro'd his laser and launcher/box-on-an-arm so that Ironhide could have one at the same time.

My local Targets seem to have had a hard time getting the later-wave stuff in. I have yet to see Astrotrain, Apeface, Spinister, or Refraktor in stores, and I've seen Brunt and Barricade only once (and on the trip I saw Brunt on, Springer was higher priority). Seen plenty of lingering earlier-wave Deluxes (quite possibly restocks in the case of the Wave 1-ers), as well as plenty of lingering Megatrons (I think Hasbro should have skimped on the battle damage in order to use the paint budget for his silver chest decal, make him less bland looking), Starscreams (possibly because of PotP having already given us a Voyager Starscream), and Shockwaves. Kinda has me wanting Earthrise to be delayed so that stores can actually finish getting SIEGE stuff in.

I transformed my crosshairs...what a lazy transformation on it. If they had forgoed the ankle tilt or actually put in some transformation so the the feet could fold down on the rear of the van and possibly maybe have had some integration with a micromaster with the hands able to fold in (seeing as it has money saving arm hollows anyways) or even if it was just a rear turret for a micromaster to stand on. A friend took half an hour to transform TR Kup with a visual aid, I reckon he can do this one in 10 mins. Still think I'm happier this being drosshairs than the Kup mold just for variety and to keep it looking different from Orion Pax.

Transformed Spinister. Copters back heavy on a flat surface (extra landing gear might have helped) but seeing it has a display stand port no reason for it to be flat when it can be displayed in the air. The unsightly hole on one side of the cockpit kind of spoils it a little bit. the hands might be on display but at least the fore arms arent hollow so there would be no place for them to hide. The two holes behind the rotor dont seem to have a purpose for this use of the mold as nothing can really use them.

Transformed Apeface to Ape mode, not sure if it's worth turning into jet mode. I say transformed, I'm way too lazy to make sure everything is pegged in with it being overly finnicky. The last figure I had problems like this to a lesser extent was TR Repugnus. The wings seem like they could get a lot of stress on them/banding the plastic if not pulled out to avoid bending when tabbed in. Kind of wish Ape mode was taller but that's my own prefferences more than anything else. Side note, robot mode doesnt suffer from not having the TR spring pop ups to make heads look wider as some of the TR voyagers display fine with the pop ups up anyways so he doesnt look out of place other than the glitter he has been rolling in.

This is going to sound very weird, but has anyone measured the ball joint on Spinister's neck? I got 5mm but I'm going to need a second opinion.

Decepticon Stryker wrote:This is going to sound very weird, but has anyone measured the ball joint on Spinister's neck? I got 5mm but I'm going to need a second opinion.

That is a weird question. You'd need a caliper with metric settings to know for sure or just try and shove his neck into a known 5mm hole.

Follow up question:

carytheone wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:This is going to sound very weird, but has anyone measured the ball joint on Spinister's neck? I got 5mm but I'm going to need a second opinion.

That is a weird question. You'd need a caliper with metric settings to know for sure or just try and shove his neck into a known 5mm hole.

Follow up question:

Custom idea, want to swap out heads. I did use a caliper, which is how I got my 5mm measurement, but now I'm starting to think it's actually a different size.

Decepticon Stryker wrote:

carytheone wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:This is going to sound very weird, but has anyone measured the ball joint on Spinister's neck? I got 5mm but I'm going to need a second opinion.

That is a weird question. You'd need a caliper with metric settings to know for sure or just try and shove his neck into a known 5mm hole.

Follow up question:

Custom idea, want to swap out heads. I did use a caliper, which is how I got my 5mm measurement, but now I'm starting to think it's actually a different size.

Have you tried sticking the ball into a 5mm port for another figure or accessory? That would at least tell you how close the diameter is to a 5mm post.

TF-fan kev777 wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:

carytheone wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:This is going to sound very weird, but has anyone measured the ball joint on Spinister's neck? I got 5mm but I'm going to need a second opinion.

That is a weird question. You'd need a caliper with metric settings to know for sure or just try and shove his neck into a known 5mm hole.

Follow up question:

Custom idea, want to swap out heads. I did use a caliper, which is how I got my 5mm measurement, but now I'm starting to think it's actually a different size.

Have you tried sticking the ball into a 5mm port for another figure or accessory? That would at least tell you how close the diameter is to a 5mm post.

I tried with a 5mm fist, and it didnt go in smoothly, I stopped out of fear that forcing it would break the neck. I'll have to check again later tonight.


EDIT: Finally was able to check it, turns out it's about 5 1/2 mm. Finding a head is going to be very difficult.

It's really disappointing that they didn't use the same size for the blast effects as the titanmaster pegs

Rainmaker wrote:It's really disappointing that they didn't use the same size for the blast effects as the titanmaster pegs

Eh, not really. That would have been a bit too tiny to work with the soft plastic reliably, I think.

What I think is a shame is that they never made grab bags of the blast effects. Especially when combined with the fact that the Decepticon Battle Masters largely came with orange and red blast effects rather than purple.

My order from collecticontoys.com showed up and I finally have Rumble and Ratbat. I won't have time to open the actual package until after work but their scarcity has made these two almost mythical in existence, I just had to post.

I got Brunt this week. It's a shame his turret can't connect to Trypticon's chest as-is, but he's still pretty cool.

There's still so many figures I need... Including three Refraktors (never seen him in a store even once), Spinister, etc... I wonder if T30 Springer for a SIEGE Deluxe would be a fair trade.

And I hope Hasbro reissues Greenlight.

DNA kit on him, with Reprolabels, and DR. Wu fillers.

I find the DNA kit for Magnus utterly uninteresting. Now, if they were to do make a whole new trailer that could fit 4 deluxes and turned him from Leader-class to Commander-class, that would be something. But since they can't even be arsed to do a new foot upgrade for Fort Max that accounts for Cog, I shouldn't be surprised. HasTak will probably make such a trailer themselves before any of the 3P layabouts get to it.

The kit for Galaxy Upgrade Optimus, on the other hand.. That's making me actually kinda want the figure. Galaxy Upgrade's still not a patch on the real deal, but... Would be more fun with something that made him feel like less of a cheesy knockoff of it.

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:I find the DNA kit for Magnus utterly uninteresting. Now, if they were to do make a whole new trailer that could fit 4 deluxes and turned him from Leader-class to Commander-class, that would be something. But since they can't even be arsed to do a new foot upgrade for Fort Max that accounts for Cog, I shouldn't be surprised. HasTak will probably make such a trailer themselves before any of the 3P layabouts get to it.

I don't understand the agro...

It's $20 for two accessories and wholly new transforming legs. In the kit world, that's like a Swiss army knife.

Counterpunch wrote:DNA kit on him, with Reprolabels, and DR. Wu fillers.

I'm avoiding labels, only because I know I would screw up the application so ain't gonna bother, but the DNA kits intrigue me. How hard was swapping the legs?

Because I don't find the longer legs to add all that much to Ultra Magnus on their own, and I find the two accessories to be just kinda "there". I mean, the kit isn't bad, it's just... it doesn't add enough to Magnus to excite me, and it's frustrating that they seem to have developed that baseline kit and then said "Meh, good enough" rather than also creating an advanced kit to take things even further by replacing the trailer (especially since nobody else has taken up that task either).
And it's frustrating that they still haven't refined their Fort Max foot upgrade kit to account for Cog.

What does the foot upgrade have to do with Cog?

Kinda think Jetfire's chesplate is a subtle homage to Macross' Armored Valkyrie and now wish there's a 3p add on made to complete the look. Utilizing C.O.M.B.A.T. feels inadequate...

Ebonsaber wrote:Kinda think Jetfire's chesplate is a subtle homage to Macross' Armored Valkyrie and now wish there's a 3p add on made to complete the look. Utilizing C.O.M.B.A.T. feels inadequate...

We live in a dark world where that many guns on one giant robot is inadequate

Rainmaker wrote:What does the foot upgrade have to do with Cog?

Right now? Nothing, because there wasn't a new Cog around, official or otherwise, until SIEGE happened. But with SIEGE having given us a Cog to go with Fort Max, it would be nice to see the foot upgrade receive a deluxe update that adds whole new feet, because...

Ebonsaber wrote:Kinda think Jetfire's chesplate is a subtle homage to Macross' Armored Valkyrie and now wish there's a 3p add on made to complete the look.

Eh, I think you're wrong there.

Because it's about as subtle as getting Fort Max dropped on your head.

Ebonsaber wrote:Kinda think Jetfire's chesplate is a subtle homage to Macross' Armored Valkyrie and now wish there's a 3p add on made to complete the look. Utilizing C.O.M.B.A.T. feels inadequate...

Damn you made that Jetfire look good. I still sort of regret passing on him, especially when pictures like yours come up

Ebonsaber wrote:Kinda think Jetfire's chesplate is a subtle homage to Macross' Armored Valkyrie and now wish there's a 3p add on made to complete the look. Utilizing C.O.M.B.A.T. feels inadequate...

Looks pretty adequate to me hot damn! My Jetfire’s mask still won’t stay on but dang is he a beaut. It’s like having a cell of the animation on my desk.