The Energon Pub

We're scant days away from the Canadian Transformers Convention TFCon that'll be running this weekend, July 17-18. In anticipation of the event, they're releasing the first images of this year's exclusive figure, Night-bird!

This figure is an extensive remold of Impossible Toys' TRNS 01: Valkyre, featuring a new head, new weapons, and new wrist mounts to hold the sais when she isn't using them to bludgeon robots into pieces. Click here to see all the images.

Not able to get to the convention this year? Not to worry! Several sites have this figure up for preorder, including TFSource, BigBadToyStore and for those in Europe, Kapow-Toys.





Seibertron.com will keep you informed throughout the convention. Stay tuned for more news from around the world!

I ain't gonna lie, that head is kind of off-putting.

Already got it coming my way though, so I'm going to say that anything off-putting is outweighed by the fact that she can dual-wield sais.

Kinda plain, but so was Nightbird. If I had the money to spend, I'd get her. But, as it stands, even Arcee is a maybe.

If I had the extra $150+ shipping for her I'd buy her to go along with the Arcee & Medic figures I ordered. But I got other buys lined up so I'll have to pass unless she was free or something.

Facts are facts..$150 for a deluxe figure is not happenening with me....

Hmm. It looks like she has better construction quality than the TRNS figure does. And she better, considering she's a convention exclusive. I know if I was running the show at TFCon and I received a batch of figures with the quality of TRNS, I'd be demanding my money back, immediately.

But, if they focused heavily on Nightbird, that might explain why TRNS suffered such set backs, and that future productions might have higher quality.

Though, I do see where her bicep has a gap and it makes me think it's of the same rough quality as TRNS.

Is she unpainted? There's a lot of grey there.
If you're going to make a figure that's predominantly grey you need to paint ALL the little details, add in bits of silver, black and white on all the little moulded detail. Otherwise it just looks unfinished. Though I guess that'd up production costs, and this figure's already far too expensive for me.

Also, as a side note: can you bludgeon people with Sai? I thought bludgeoning was for big club type weapons?

Glad this one turned out well. Money Ordered this as a 'non-attendee.' (Wouldn't have done so if Mkall hadn't expressed a lot of trust in the organizers)

The Arcee/Paradron versions are very disappointing. After that review that was posted on Seibertron, I cancelled my order on those. Looking forward to this one.

$150 are too much.
I prefer to wait for the $49 regular NightBird figure, preordered more than two years ago (...). After all, NightBird was not a transformer, there is no reason to pay the difference for this senseless addition, also considering that I already get Arcee.

I...God, she's not so great either. Sheesh, I've kinda already bitten the bullet here. Heh.

I think the mold looks better as Night-bird than it does Arcee, either way, both are a pass.

Flux Convoy wrote:I...God, she's not so great either. Sheesh, I've kinda already bitten the bullet here. Heh.

I think the problem is that she certainly doesn't look $150 great.

This seems to be a reminder to the fandom that 3rd party stuff used to suck. It used to be sketchy and random in terms of quality. Fans Project really turned over the apple cart with their outstanding product and we've been relatively lucky since then.

Well, I like this better than the Valkyrie and Medic...but not by much. Committed to this as well. Maybe I can use this head on Animated Arcee and use that body mold and this head...

Counterpunch wrote:I think the problem is that she certainly doesn't look $150 great.

What would you pay for it?

Justicity wrote:Is she unpainted? There's a lot of grey there.
If you're going to make a figure that's predominantly grey you need to paint ALL the little details, add in bits of silver, black and white on all the little moulded detail. Otherwise it just looks unfinished. Though I guess that'd up production costs, and this figure's already far too expensive for me.

Also, as a side note: can you bludgeon people with Sai? I thought bludgeoning was for big club type weapons?

Sais are traditionally blunt, used primaraly for blocking bladed weapons. Since they can't slice or stab, bludgeon is the proper term for a sai strike.

That said, Night-Bird's appear to be stylized 'bladed' sais capable of slashing and stabbing

PS: seeing the figure, that paintjob makes her look like a female Megatron.

Counterpunch wrote:

Flux Convoy wrote:I...God, she's not so great either. Sheesh, I've kinda already bitten the bullet here. Heh.

I think the problem is that she certainly doesn't look $150 great.

This seems to be a reminder to the fandom that 3rd party stuff used to suck. It used to be sketchy and random in terms of quality. Fans Project really turned over the apple cart with their outstanding product and we've been relatively lucky since then.

I agree. A bunch of the third party stuff still is bad and normally we seem to catch the garbage before paying the big money for it. It's why I still don't own a CJ head kit. Being critical contributed to me losing out on something that turned out to be possibly the first good to great fan made item. The problem with this one in particular is A: There were no actual working samples of this in hand when I wanted to pull the trigger and B: The promo art is ridiculously exciting to me. Lastly, I'm normally justified in my skepticism about fan stuff, this time I went out on a limb. I admit to feeling a bit suckered. We'll see how I feel about it once I've got it.

This is one of those figures that shouldnt even transform as her character was a robot created by humans with no transformation. Those Arcee fenders on her shoulders should have been eliminated with the car mode alltogether. I still hate the weapons being glued to her fists and now it appears they have permanantly attached a pair of sai to her wrists. I doubt they are removable because where would you put them with a gun and sword permanantly attached to her fists. But I could be wrong...

The sword and gun ARE removable. Arcee's weapons are removable.

I'd rather buy this transformable Nightbird rather than the non transformable on they are planning to release, even if the show model didn't transform. Mainly because I like my Transformers to transform. But it's just too expencive.

joevill wrote:

Counterpunch wrote:I think the problem is that she certainly doesn't look $150 great.

What would you pay for it?

$80. Tops. That's my price with full realization that it's a convention exclusive.

Having the TRNS versions 1 and 2 in hand as of today, there are serious problems with the mold. Rather, the production process is problematic. I should do something to complement what Pascal posted on these already.

Counterpunch wrote:

joevill wrote:

Counterpunch wrote:I think the problem is that she certainly doesn't look $150 great.

What would you pay for it?

$80. Tops. That's my price with full realization that it's a convention exclusive.

Having the TRNS versions 1 and 2 in hand as of today, there are serious problems with the mold. Rather, the production process is problematic. I should do something to complement what Pascal posted on these already.

Agreed!

With $85 I bought KM-01 Knight Morpher Commander and I am very satisfied with this toy.

Personally, I think you guys are being a little rough in your criticism of these figures. These are 3rd party products. FansProject has gone beyond the call of duty with the items they're producing, especially for the money and ingenuity. FansProject is NOT the norm. Their quality and designs almost rival Hasbro themselves. Impossible Toys has some great ideas but their quality is not the best. I think Arcee is actually a step in the right direction for them. It is a better quality product than most of the Quintessons and the Transformers Animated humans.

It is not on par with the level of quality we've come to expect from fan favorite FansProject. It is however, the first ever accessible G1 Arcee toy. Ever. For those of you that can't or don't appreciate this, it's something for which I've been waiting 25 years. I'll take it. My only hope is that this gets Hasbro off their butts to finally give us Arcee after all these years. TFA Arcee is not a substitute. Nor is Energon Arcee. I basically want the toy Impossible toys made but at the price and quality we know Hasbro will give us. and maybe a little bigger wouldn't hurt.

I'm currently knee deep in galleries for Munitioner, Explorer, TRNS-01, TRNS-02, and Warbot. I'm not a fan of 3rd party products yet I'm amazed at these products at the same time. Warbot has die-cast on him? Seriously? Wow. They're all fun guilty additions to my official Transformers collection.

it's a shame how much Fans Project has come to "spoil" us as a third party company. Everyone who sees the CC armor upgrade is amazed, even the ones who used to watch Transformers but stopped playing with the toys. They say "wow that's Ultra Magnus?", and I tell them in a sense, "yes!". When I drop the bomb that it's not Hasbro, then the conversation goes into who, what and how.

FansProject has done so much to wow us, that we expect all the other third party companies to follow. That's ok, but in the end we need to do like we have done before the third party boom, be skeptical and cautious as hell because the prices for the figures are expensive.

I got the PE-01 toy. I paid $35 for a figure that is smaller than a minicon, and feels quite hollow. I have to admit, I was expecting a bit more, and I don't think I got what I paid for.

As for the Valkyrie toy, I knew it wasn't FansProject quaity, but agreeing with Seibs on thisone, I may still get one. None of Animated fits well in my Neo-G1 collection. Animated Arceee looks like her G1 Counterpart, but it's just not what Arcee should look like. I hate the head, it's so large.

I will get the Impossible toys Arcee...but not the medic or this exclusive because I want more female TF's. I'm hoping enough people bite the dust and we can get a real Elita-One and not a burgundy or all-pink repaint of xyz mold.