Itsy Bitsy Teen Weeny Transforming fun! Optimus! Bumblebee! Barricade! Starscream! Megatron! Sentinel Prime! Bot Shots!

I didn’t imagine in a million years I would be writing this post. When I saw the first images of this new line called Bot Shots, I immediately equated them to the previous younger age range targeted lines like Cyber Slammers. Granted, that’s mostly because Cyber Slammers and Bot Shots share the run-them-into-things-to-transform-them play mechanic. As a *ahem* Serious Adult Collector, I tend to ignore the younger targetted lines for the most part. There are some exceptions, I bought Go-Bots Cheetor because he was essentially an adorable “chibi” version of the Beast Wars character. I also bought Rescue Bots Optimus when he was released last year. I bought him for my son, Wesley… despite the fact that he hadn’t actually been born at the time Optimus was released and even now isn’t old enough to play with him.

Yes, Serious Adult Collector. I initially became intrigued when the official Bot Shots website went up. First, it’s not just toys with simplistic auto-transformations, it’s based around a “Rock, Paper, Scissors” style game using fist, sword, and blaster.

Fist beats sword, sword beats blaster, blaster beats fist. A lot of the other “Serious Adult Collector” fans have gotten into “serious adult” conversations about how this is ridiculous. I say they are just overthinking it. After all, how could paper beat rock anyway? My favourite part is “NOTE: if neither figure converts, crash again!” That has to be the most fun sentence I have ever read on a piece of Transformers packaging.

Like I said, Serious Adult Collector. What small piece that was left of that facade of adulthood broke the moment I saw them in person.

Adorable. How do you even make Barricade adorable?

Even his alt mode is adorable. Pretty much all of them are adorable and all of them are tiny even the tiny, adorable Decepticons

Look! Airplane on wheels!

Starscream’s an airplane car and people are fussing over how fist could possibly beat sword? You know who couldn’t possibly be made adorable? Megatron.

Grrrrrr, widdle angwy warlord. So cute.

Both Megatron and Optimus came with trailers that combine with their alt modes.

These trailers then transform into bases and, more importantly, launchers which come in very handy while playing.

Optimus’ alt mode reminds me of the equally adorable alt mode of the Mickey Mouse Prime.

There are actually two Optimus Prime Bot Shots out right now, the darker shaded one that comes by itself and then a brighter coloured one that comes with the trailer. Though I own both — they have different attack strengths so they can actually play against each other — I took the brighter coloured one to sit on my shelves at work and forgot to bring him home for the shoot. They look exactly the same except for the difference in coloration. Due to his lack of a nose and mouth, Optimus is the least cute of all of them.

Then, of course, there’s the requisite Bumblebee, though with a wonderfully G1-esque headsculpt.

His alt mode is based on Movie Bumblebee’s Camaro, though the “super deformed” or compressed dimensions of the Bot Shot alt modes remind me a lot of the original G1 Minibot “Penny Racer” molds.

I still need to pick up the two box sets, which have three Bots in each, but so far my favourite of the first wave has to be Sentinel Prime. As the “Super Bot” of Wave 1, his single release has slightly higher stats and is done in beautiful translucent red plastic.

Here's hoping he not a jerk in this line.

With no G1 head to work with, they went with the same headsculpt basis as Sentinel Prime’s Kre-O release, that of Animated Sentinel Prime. He does has Movie Sentinel Prime’s crash truck or airport fire truck alt mode.

Just in case you couldn’t tell, I’m hooked. They got me good with this line. These guys are wonderfully collectible and tons o’ fun.

I’ve already had two sessions in the floor with friends and family launching these little dudes at each other. In this case one shall rise…

...everyone else shall fall.

 From what has been shown, there’s supposed to be 44 Bot Shots planned for 2012. Good thing these little guys are also pretty cheap.