The Energon Pub

Seibertron.com is pleased to add Takara's latest Encores, Soundblaster and Twincast, to our ever expanding galleries. Each figure comes with two all new cassette repaints. Twincast comes with Nightstalker, a black Steeljaw reapaint, and Stripes, an orange and black stripe repaint of Ravage. Soundblaster comes with Enemy, a red repaint of the Frenzy/Rumble mold, and Wingthing, a repaint of Ratbat. In addition to the new cassettes each figure has underwent some slight changes. Twincast now has a smooth tapedeck, gold face with blue eyes, and tampographed Autobot symbol. Soundblaster also features a tampographed faction symbol along with a silver face and red eyes. Check out the various tweaks in the galleries below.

Soundblaster (Communications, Reissues)
Encore








Twincast (Communications, Reissues)
Encore








Wingthing (Communications)
Encore








Enemy (Communications)
Encore








Nightstalker (Communications)
Encore






Stripes (Communications)
Encore

Wow, those cassettes are pretty...

Glad to see Soundblaster DOES have a volume-wheel; one of the first Soundblasters out there in hand was noted to lack that volume button, but that must have been a QC problem...

These pics make it very tempting to hit that BBTS PoL (where my Soundblaster and Twin cast currently reside) shipping button.

BTW, I never owned a Blaster or a Twincast, so I'm pretty surprised to see such a big size difference between Twincast and Soundblaster.

Makes me think I migh need to pick up Soundblaster while I'm here in Singapore. Those tapes are kickass!

Dang, I was gonna try and avoid getting these, but they look so dang nice. I'm at least going to have to pick up Soundblaster.

No shots of Nightstalker with his former comrade Ravage?

These guys look great. Especially the cassettes. I wish Takara would make new G1-style cassettes, though. New molds, not just recolors.

I'm very greatful I ditched the Prime Line in favour of these guys.

Great shots boss!

In my opinion, the quality of these toys is sub-par. Honesty not worth the money you're going to have to dish out. The pictures are nice, but once it's in hand it's another story altogether. I'll be making a full post/mini-review later today on the forum as to why I feel that way.

XenoStryker wrote:In my opinion, the quality of these toys is sub-par. Honesty not worth the money you're going to have to dish out. The pictures are nice, but once it's in hand it's another story altogether. I'll be making a full post/mini-review later today on the forum as to why I feel that way.

That's unfortunate, look forward to your review.

El Duque wrote:

XenoStryker wrote:In my opinion, the quality of these toys is sub-par. Honesty not worth the money you're going to have to dish out. The pictures are nice, but once it's in hand it's another story altogether. I'll be making a full post/mini-review later today on the forum as to why I feel that way.

That's unfortunate, look forward to your review.

XenoStryker, do you own other versions of these molds? I'm curious to read your review as well. I own 5 different versions of the Blaster/Twincast mold and 7 versions of the Soundwave/Soundblaster mold, and every single Transformers cassette mold ever made, I don't see how this release is any different than previous releases. Quality is the same as with other releases.

On a personal note, I think these two sets are ingenious. I love that someone at Takara Tomy took the time to find such obscure characters in the Transformers Universe. Wingthing was long overdue, Enemy ... well, it's about time, Nightstalker and Stripes are pure genius uses of existing molds and the weapon swap was really awesome. They even took the time to update the box artwork accordingly, which I think went far beyond the call of duty.

Got mine in the post this morning and I love both of them

not buying these, but those cassettes look really nice. I'll second the call for new mold Cassetticons, even if they're PE-effect style/upscaled mini-cons.

soundblaster will have to be something I think about. The price is just, not very agreeable though.

To me, this set picks up the ball and then drops it. Enemy you can let slide, but the fact that they went with Wingthing and then didn't continue it screams out missed opportunity.

Just using the Cassette molds that have been released there was so much scope to cover Action Master partners in addition to Wingthing. Here are some possibilities which come to mind:

Ramhorn: Firebeast (Charger), Top Heavy (Skyfall)
Steeljaw: Lionizer (Rad)
Lazerbeak: Sights (Jackpot), Screech (Take-Off)
Ravage: Catgut (Treadshot)
Overkill: Tyrannitron (Snarl)

Yet this seems to have been completely ignored with Cassette choices for Twincast. Hopefully we get another Encore Cassette set or 2 that gives us these figures.

Just got both of these guys in today. Ain't gonna lie: I bought the sets just for the casettes ... especially since I already have Twincast.

I don't know why they use those terrible looking tape spools on NightStalker. A lot of HATE for that choice. But, that's nitpicking terribly on such a great addition to the casettte cast! He's definately my favorite of them all. He has a great connnection both visially and fictionally with Ravage and shares his awsome color scheme.

Still ... I wish Takara would make some new casette molds for any new characters. As neat as it is to have "wacky" colors for these well known molds, I'd have liked it better had they made Nightstalker and Striped entirely new molds instead of repaints. Although, considering the job they did on Universe Ravage .... maybe they've lost their touch.