The Energon Pub

william-james88 wrote:Am i the only one who finds Voltron's power level to be really inconsistent on the current show. At some point in the series, it became a given that voltron could wipe out an entire fleet of galra no problem, in a practically anticlimactic kind of way. But in season 7, thwy cant just wipe out Sendak? Who cares if he holds earth ransom, they can pulverize this guys entire fleet into oblivion without breaking a sweat! And plus they have that super speed and super recharge capability so nothing is really stopping them.

Old post, I realize, but thought-provoking. Here are my questions in response:
1. How quickly can they pulverize a Galra fleet, even with the super speed?
2. What defenses does Earth have on its own?
3. Is Voltron able to generate a barrier protecting the whole planet?

And now to my main reason for posting this thread. Voltron has been on my mental radar for a while, albeit low-key. When I saw the Legendary Defender stuff in stores, I thought it was cool and wanted to buy the toys, but other stuff wound up taking priority. I also saw some of the posting on Twitter and Tumblr at the time. I was aware of people's disappointment at the queerbaiting & the finale, but I had no idea about the epic soap opera that was/is the Klance vs. Sheith shipping war until watching a video about the VLD fanbase's toxicity.

Watching that made Voltron start pulsing more strongly on my mental radar and I started actively looking it. I found a place to watch the original 1984 show, and paused partway through the first episode because some of the edits made me want to check out GoLion. Found a way to watch that, have seen episodes one through four so far. Most recently I started on watching Legendary Defender, have seen the first episode.

I also started seriously looking at toys on eBay. I stumbled across an auction - a rather tempting auction, which I won on Saturday for $4.99 plus ~$20 for shipping and in doing so plunged fully down this new rabbit hole. If you've seen the hauls thread, you know what I won. If not, well...














The Legendary Defender version of Voltron. The big 16" combining one. Missing the discs and missiles, the right tine of the Blue Lion's Ice Ray, and the Paladin micro-figurines. But it was still one hell of a steal and I love it. Want to get my hands on Playmates' take on the classic version too, as well as the Paladin action figures... at least, the ones that actually got released.

Voltron was amongy 80s favorites. Oddly enough, I wasine of the outliers that preferred Vehicle Voltron to Lion Force. So much so that before the DVDs came out so many people forgot about it, my peers thought I was crazy talking about 2 Viltrons. But I have all the original series on DVD as well as Thor source series Golion and Dairugger XV.

I watched 3rd dimension in 1998/1999. Having some of the original cast was cool, but the CG was way inferior to Mainframe shows like Beast Wars and War Planets airing at the same time. Then in 2010 Nickelodeon had Voltron Force. The novelty of "Every Lion can be the body" wore off quick, especially since it was impractical and impossible to translate into toy form, and the show was cancelled on a cliffhanger after one season.

I loved Voltron Legendary Defender on Netflix. I love how it reinvented the mythology and borrowed from both the Westernization of the original series, but kept some original Golion concepts and names as well. I love that they were planning to make this series go several years as well. After52 episodes however and with Lotor Defeated they should have switched gears to Vehicle Voltron. Those last 2 "seasons" ( episodes 53-78)were just unnecessary padding as the series didn't know where to go and inevitably gave in to the contagion effecting most media lately . They had a ton of good material to draw from,they just failed to do so. I find it quite telling that even now. While the first 2 batches of that series were released on DVD quickly, the last run of 26 episodes still have no physical media release. It is not an oversight. It's just sad that an amazing series crashed and burned at the end.

The toys seemed cool for what they were. When TRU was closing, I was hoping to get the bigger Voltron set on sale, but as was stated, other priorities happened at the time.

Has anyone here actually seen the allegedly-available 40th Anniversary lions at retail? Or, like me, have you only ever seen them at scalper prices on eBay (and very thin on the ground at that)?

Once or twice at the local Target, but I got them when the were first released so I didn't see the point of picking them up a second time.

I missed that party, so I've been looking forward to the reissues. Especially since the 2017 release has Combiner Wars Syndrome (the limbs being harder to find than the body and waaay more expensive) on eBay. And I have been incredibly frustrated at them being no-shows at my local Targets. And, uh, judging by the comments on Playmates' Facebook post from May about the Red Lion being available at Target? I'm far from the only one with this problem.

The distribution on them seems even more FUBAR than Transformers' distribution, and that's saying something! It's so bad that they may as well be unreleased toys.

Yeah, I already have the ones from the previous release, though even back then I had trouble finding a Yellow Lion and had to snag one off eBay for a slight markup. Oddly enough it was the one that seemed the most plentiful everywhere else because it was far cheaper than the others on the aftermarket at the time.

Anyway, for the new release I only saw Black Lion once and it was in the collectibles section, not the regular toy aisle. I had considered getting a second set but it was definitely not meant to be.

Emerje

I'm waiting for the box set.

I only saw the "legendary defenders" ones in stores back when the show was current, never saw the classic ones. I didn't even know another 40th anniversary release was happening. I just got a S7 ReAction, and called it a day. Any decent combining version of Voltron is going to be too expensive for me to obtain. Back in 1998 for "The 3rd Dimension" I did get the box set that was a mostly faithful reproduction of the original Matchbox Toy. Soul of Chogokin looks awesome, but are way too expensive. Id love to have a nice modern take of all 3 Voltrons (heck even throw in Daltanious (The 2nd Voltron that never was) for good measure) . But that probably not going to happen.

My Target this morning after nothing for months:



So keep checking if you need them, they're still shipping.

Emerje