The rebellious teen of Giant Planet and the cricket on his shoulder… or rather, in his chest. Cybertron Menasor and Heavy Load!

The series Cybertron was full of little oddities. It also had its share of very large oddities.

Menasor, the hotheaded young rebel-with-a-cause turned Decepticon lackey, who is then relatively easily converted back to the Autobot side of things partially thanks to his Mini-con conscience, Heavy Load, falls squarely into both categories.

Like Metroplex and the other inhabitants of Giant planet, Menasor also has a shorter “work mode”. Though his “work mode” transformation isn’t as involved as Metroplex’s.

Then there is Menasor’s alt mode.

Also like Metroplex, he transforms into a Gigantion-based construction vehicle. Unlike Metroplex, Menasor’s “excavation vehicle” doesn’t really correlate to any Earthen-based vehicles. By splitting the front plow in half, you can insert Heavy Load in alt mode to form a wider blade in his alt mode’s “Assault Mode”.

Unfortunately, not even the addition of Heavy Load can add sense to his alt mode. Heavy Load puts the “mini” in Mini-con, taking the title of “shortest Mini-con” in robot mode.

He’s not heavy, he’s my Mini-con.

All that being said, Menasor, and to a slightly lesser extent, Heavy Load, have wonderful paintjobs. With a high degree of detail and some translucent pieces, the brushed silver effect on his drill arms and the two-tone blue mixed with gold and beige is all quite dynamic.

His headsculpt reminds me of a Tokusatsu or possibly Anime character. Maybe it’s his chin that makes me think of the Guyver?

Make one, stupid decision in your youth and you’re branded a Decepticon for life.

He remains an oddity, but at least he’s a well-articulated oddity that’s cool to look at.

I don’t know if it’s art, but I like it. Transformers Prime Optimus Maximus!

Beyond stocking my work desk by continuing the Legends class toys, the Cyberverse line also introduced the new playsets that I am definitely a big fan of. With the Dark of the Moon line came first Bumblebee and the Mobile Battle Bunker and Starscream with his Orbital Assault Carrier. They were cool, high on play value, but nothing too mind-blowing for display.

Then the next wave consisted of Megatron and Optimus Prime, both of which actually integrated with their action sets as trailers in alt mode and armor/flight suits in robot mode. Upping the ante for display, especially in alt mode.

In the following wave, Ratchet and Shockwave continued the integration with alt mode, but lose any real integration with robot mode.

Then came the brilliant Dark of the Moon release of The Ark. Rather than a made up (other than Optimus’ trailer, I guess) accessory, here we had an attempt to deliver a show-accurate representation of a piece of Transformers fiction that wasn’t actually a Transformer. My thoughts on the subject were pretty straightforward:

More, please!

And Hasbro obliged. Not just once, but twice within the Prime Cybververse line we get Wheeljack’s spaceship, the Star Hammer (or Jackhammer if you prefer the show’s name) and a Decepticon Energon Driller.

However, they also decided to go in a completely different, larger-scale direction.

Optimus Maximus is intended to be a battle platform with two modes; the mech-like robot mode and a seated robot mode rolling battle station mode.

The intention, of course is to populate the battle platform with Cyberverse Legion and Commander Class ‘bots.

Run, Steve, run!

With missles and sounds and lights (even though, like most Cyberverse, the light-piping gimmick doesn’t work at all), Optimus Maximus provides plenty in the way of play value for the kids. With no fictional appearance, or for that matter basis for existing outside of his box text, I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with him.

Then I saw him in person and… don’t laugh… was drawn to how much he resembled a piece of “exploded view” art.

Especially when set against a single-coloured background, Optimus Maximus looks a lot like a deconstructive study of an Optimus.

And that’s not including the fact that at his scale, I can populate him solely by incarnations of Optimus just for the heck of it.

Hyper-Pan-Dimensional-Super-God-Optimus-Mega Force Roll Out!

Even with how much I like the look of Optimus Maximus and despite having see the Bumblebee Battle Suit in person as Botcon, I am still on the fence as to whether or not I am going to get that one when it comes out.

Unfortunately, he looks a little less Deconstructive art and a little more Dadaism…

The fine line between protection and oppression.Cybertron Scourge!

Apparently by “random” in my last post, I meant “back-to-back Cybertron posts”. As I was packing Cybertron Dirt Boss away again I saw this guy and was reminded of something; I freaking love transforming dragons.

As the leader of the violent and dangerous Beast Planet, Animatron, Scourge proved a surprisingly deep character. Much like Dirt Boss, Scourge starts out a bad guy and makes the journey over to the role of good guy. Unlike Dirt Boss, Scourge does it in part due to the intervention of a little girl.

Lori, one of the three children of the show, forces the brute to recognize that no matter how far you are from the path of good or how pure your intentions were when you left it; it is never too late to turn your back on oppression and use your strength to fight for those that don’t have the power to fight for themselves.

Meanwhile, Scourge’s toy is one of the best molds of the entire series; though I might be biased because I am quite partial to dragons. The paintjob, with its red, gold, and black with purple highlights, is wonderful. The sculpt is highly detailed and his cyber-key gimmick causes two additional heads to pop up from his shoulders; making him even more menacing looking.

Thanks to his toy’s design, these additional heads can also be presented in robot mode.

His weapon, a massive axe formed from his alt mode’s tail, is pretty impressive as well.

Surprisingly Scourge received a repaint the year after his initial release loosely based on another Transformer dragon, Cryotek. Himself a slight remold of Beast Wars Transmetal 2 Megatron, Cryotek was done in icy shades of blue.

I did say “loosely based”.

To match his new blue hue, Cryo Scourge was given a bio which states that,

“Long exposure to the freezing waste of deep space has irreversibly mutated SCOURGE®. No longer a flame-spewing monster consumed by his passions, he is now a creature of ice and cold.”

Unfortunately, it goes on to add that he is now “calculating, cruel, and without mercy”, effectively wiping out all that wonderful character growth from the show. I personally think it would have been preferable to have just renamed him as the Cyberton incarnation of Cryotek.

Very loosely based…

He retains the original mold’s less impressive lights and sounds, as well as the cyber-key gimmick.

Scourge would get a legends class release but what was more interesting was the repaint of his legends class toy done as Classics Trypticon. The once massive “Grim Decepticon Destroyer” reduced to an adorable little baby dragon. Now, I realize that legends class toys are meant to represent normal sized Transformers in a smaller toy scale, but in this case I prefer to think of it as his actual scale next to the other deluxes and voyagers. The story of how Trypticon went from transforming city to practically minicon sized has to be a good one.

Whatever the story, you can never have too many transforming dragons.

From low-down, dirty racer to even lower-down, dirty racer. Cybertron Dirt Boss!

Because you can never have too many life up-ending things going at the same time, we have decided to move (to a bigger place which means more room for the display!) Basically that means that as I start packing away the Transformers on display and pulling the boxes of the others from the closet, the posts are going to get even more random for the next couple weeks. For example: the Velocitronian, Cybertron Dirt Boss.

Though I was mentally unable to watch Cybertron due to the remarkably poor dub, I was able to watch — and quite enjoy — Galaxy Force, the Japanese version of the series, thanks to a fan subtitled upload. If you have an aversion to the U.S. releases of the “Unicron Trilogy”, I would highly recommend downloading the fan-subbed versions of at least Galaxy Force, it is well worth it.

One of my favourite things about the series is that unlike most Transformers series before it, it wasn’t restricted to Earth and/or Cybertron. I really like the idea of four ships sent out to form a massive, colony-based Space Bridge network that ultimately failed, with the three successful colonies moving on to evolve into unique societies over so long that they become unaware of their own origins as Cybertronians.

Though I do like smaller-focused shows like Transformers Prime as well, galaxy-spanning adventures and multiple space colonies is a far more interesting idea to me than a lot of what has been offered in the way of Transformers fiction. The savage Jungle Planet of Animatron, the Giant Planet of Gigantion, and the Speed Planet of Velocitron each developed their own societal intricacies; a concept I could easily see sustaining far more fiction than we ended up receiving (mostly no thanks to Pat Lee, a.k.a. the worst thing to ever happen to Transformers comic books).

Hailing from Velocitron, the unwilling, part-time Decepticon Dirt Boss was one of my favourite characters from the series.

Despite his bad nature and angry attitude, we was initially unwilling to work with the Decepticons and even eventually ended up defecting over to the Autobot cause in the end. One more reason I like him is his “Cyber-key” gimmick actually makes sense for his planet of origin.

With all the rest of the Velocitronians, their Cyber-keys unlock weaponry in both robot or alt mode. With Dirt Boss, his Cyber-key unlocks weapons in robot mode.

But in alt mode, allows him to convert from an off-road capable monster truck into a lower, faster on-road racing mode.

There are times that I miss Transformers series that don’t take themselves too seriously, like Cybertron and Robots in Disguise, and the imaginative toys that came along with them.

‘Til All Are Displayed! The Collection… well most of it.

I was just looking at the pictures on my “‘Til All Are What Now?” page and thought it was just about time for an updated shot of my Transformers display.

As I sit at my computer typing this out a turn to the left reveals three shelves, each roughly six and a half feet tall, as well as an assortment of smaller satellite shelves. To my immediate right is display shelf 1. Topped by three (soon to be three and a half) shelves of the star of Transformers — no, despite what they would have you believe recently, not Bumblebee: Optimus Primes and Convoys of all shapes and sizes.

Working our way counter-clockwise, shelf-by-shelf from there we have:

• Half a shelf of Hot Rod/Rodimus Primes.
• Ultra Magnus’ (Magni?) and Blaster and his tapes.
• Smaller Constructicons and a slew of Micromasters.
• Constructicons (old and new) and other combiners.
• Scorponok, SkyLynx, and Omega Supreme.
• In the middle is the Dark of the Moon shelf and Kre-O Optimus, which is a bit of a mess at the moment.
• My wife’s “girl Transformers that could kick your tailpipe” shelf.
•  The multiple incarnations of Mirage, Prowl, and Jazz.
• The Targetmasters.
• Finally, the Headmasters and Wheeljack.

On the wall opposite display shelf 1, there are shelves 2 and 3 and two more ancillary shelves.

For this one, I’ll do each shelving unit individually, starting on the top left:

• Various incarnations of Star Saber (except an actual Star Saber, sadly) and Dai Atlas (with an actual Dai Atlas, happily.)
• Two shelves of Minibots and their updates.
• An entire shelf of Grimlocks.
• The rest of the Dinobots, as well as Grimstone and his Dinobot drones.
• The G1 repaints from the newest movies; such as red Ironhide, white and blue Jazz, and Revenge of the FallenSkywarp (look! I finally found my G1 repaint Movie (2007) Starscream!)

Display shelf 3, starting at the tippy top:

• AssortedGods, Monsters, Primes, and one tiny Fortress Maximus.
• The Animated Shelf, including the full 2011 Botcon set and TFCC Exclusive Animated Cheetor.
• The G2 and G2 Classics with all the glorious colours of the rainbow.
• The first section of G1 and G1 Classics Autobots.
• Shattered Glass and the second section of G1 and G1 Classics Autobots.
• The Movie (2007), RotF, and DotM Leader and Human Alliance class toys.
• More Combiners! Predaking!

Display shelf 2, from top to bottom:

• Shockwaves, The Fallen, and movie Megatrons.
• G1, G2, Masterpiece, Classics… just a whole bunch of Megatrons as well as Classics Galvatron, Cyclonus and Scourge and their updates.
• TheshelfoftheSeekers.
• Soundwavesgalore and mini-cassettes (and updates) galore.
• G1 and G1 Classics Decepticons.
• Japanese Beast Wars, including my beloved Tako Tank.
• Another shelf full of combiners.

The last little shelf is a mishmash of stuff:

• Smokescreens G1, Classics, and Alternators (soon to be joined by RotF and Cybertron Smokescreens once I dig them out.)
• The Generations Junkions.
• Scan series Bumblebee, Sideswipe…
• …Ratchet and Ironhide.
• The Power Core Combiner Autobots.
• The Power Core Combiner Decepticons.

Oh yeah, also Supreme class Beast Machines Cheetor standing to the side.

With the exception of G1 Metroplex and Cybertron Metroplex that stand ever vigilant above my computer (which is itself named Metroplex) and an extra Micromaster Tailwind, that is the entirety of my current display.

However, though admittedly a lot of floorspace is taken up by the display (and yes, I am aware that I am very, very lucky to have a wife that is not only ok with, but actually encourages my collecting and displaying), it only amounts to a little under half of my total collection. The rest are in plastic bins in a closet.

One day I will have an entire room devoted to the collection, until then, I’ll keep enjoying them by occasionally pulling them out of their bins to take pictures of them for this blog. That way I get to share the joy this collection brings me (and yes, a little showing off too.)

Who needs height when you have a direct line to god? Jolt! Six-Speed! Reverb! The Cybertron Recon Mini-con Team!

Usually this stuff is completely random, but Tuesday’s Vector Prime post lead to me playing around with a couple of Mini-cons, which in turn lead to today’s post.

Given how much I like Micromasters, it was natural that I would love the Mini-cons when they were first introduced as the main gimmick of the Transformers Armada line. I was happy to see them carried over into the subsequent “Unicron Trilogy” lines of Energon and Cybertron. Of course, I am not a completionist, I can imagine Mini-cons (and especially the quantity of Japanese-exclusive Mini-cons) must be an absolute nightmare for the “Must Own Them All” folks.

With Cybertron we were introduced to the Recon Team, made up of three Mini-cons, these guys pretty much became the kid-appeal Transformers of the series, hanging out most of the time with the Cybertron kids, Bud, Lori, and Coby. Despite that, I like them anyway.

Mostly I like them because of their online bios, they’re kinda cute. Cybertron had a pretty cool feature where the Cyber Keys that came with the toys included a code that could be input on Hasbro’s website to unlock bios or more information about the character. Oddly enough, the Recon Team didn’t have a Cyber key but they had their own code, sh26, that was never printed anywhere associated with the toys.

There’s Jolt, the only one of the three that speaks in English (on the show the other two speak in the custom Mini-con language of beeps and other electronic sounds).

“Jolt is a TV junkie! That’s how he learned to speak English! He would work at home on the Giant Planet to try and pick up Earth TV signals on his computer and he would watch everything from cartoons, to sitcoms to dramas and movies. Don’t tell Bud, Coby, or Lori, but he really loves to watch soap operas!”

His toy’s most notable feature is that he is a bit of a bubble boy. When you transform him, you rotate his cockpit around to reveal his head inside. His most notable power in the cartoon is that he can teleport by spinning the rotors of his alt mode.

Oh yeah, and sometimes Primus, the Transformers god himself, speaks through Jolt.

In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have lead off with that tidbit, it kind of makes his teammates looks less cool by comparison. Reverb even has the least clever of the online bios:

“Reverb is the youngest of the three Minicons that travel with Vector Prime through time and space – so he is also the most impatient when Vector Prime tries to teach them to use time travel powers. Once, Reverb ended up stuck in the year 1955 and he had to hide as a hot rod car for three weeks before Vector Prime was able to rescue him!”

What definitely doesn’t pale in comparison is Reverb’s toy. He’s actually my favourite of the three toys in the set.

Transforming into a somewhat adorable pickup, he definitely shares at least one trait with Jolt. Neither Reverb nor Jolt’s name really makes any sense.

Last, we have Six-Speed.

“When Six-Speed first met Bud, Lori and Coby he was confused about their clothing. Why did they need to wear outer shells? Autobots didn’t need to wear protective shells – why did humans? One day, Coby came to the hidden Autobot base and found that Six-Speed had snuck into his closet and “borrowed” some of his clothes to try and fit in! Six-Speed was wearing swim shorts, a clip-on tie; sweat pants on his head and socks on his hands!”

With the most standard “Mini-con with a car alt-mode” transformation possible, he’s kind of boring and not nearly as articulated as the other two.

But at least “Six-Speed”, as a type of manual transmission, makes some vague sense for a race car.

As I stated, I’m am not a completionist at all, but with Mini-cons I will definitely buy repaints if they are relatively easy to get — basically as long as they are available at retail in the U.S. This was made extra levels of awesome when the “repaints” of the Recon Team were actually done in translucent plastics.

As a sort of “stealth mode”, the Shadow Recon Mini-con team look great, especially my favourite of the three once again, Reverb.

My favourite of the three and the most see-through of the three.

Like tiny little ninjas.

Zen and the Art of Transformer Maintenance. Vector Prime!

Unlike most posts where I get about three fourths the way in before I stop slobbering praise over a toy long enough to say, “Oh yeah, here’s what I don’t like about it,” I am just going straight to my one nitpick about Vector Prime.

Floppy bits.

No, not some sort of euphemism for robot genitalia, parts of the toy made of flexible plastic that are way too easy to bend out of shape. Usually it’s done for safety, such as Drift or Bludgeon, and Banzaitron’s swords, which is most likely also the reason for Vector Prime’s sword and his wings. I do like having his wings cast in the translucent blue, but unfortunately it can lead to this.

Just disgraceful. He’ll never fly with those wonky, misshapen wings. So, how do we get them back to this,

Step one: Get water very, very, very hot.

Step two: Stick the offending piece into the hot water until it becomes flexible.

Careful of any sensitive electronics and/or sensitive human fingertips.

Step three: A lot of time, the plastic will automatically return to the correct, straight position it was originally manufactured into. If not, simply bend the now malleable plastic into the correct position and keep it there until it cools.

Step four: PROFIT!!!

Even Primus himself isn’t as Cybertronian as Vector Prime. Just look at him. Seriously, from his helmeted head with that protruding chin and sunken eyes to his cape wearing, knight-like armor, he is every single Ancient Cybertronian stereotype rolled into one beautifully brown, white, gold, silver, and teal robot. Then you attach his mini-con, Safeguard, to his arm and equip him with his sword and he’s ready to disabuse you of any preconceived notions that “ancient” somehow means “fragile”.

"Safeguard" apparently means "really big gun" in Ancient Cybertronian.

Add in his status as one of the Original Thirteen Primes,  guardian of time and space itself, capable of existing outside of time, and you begin to understand that he is actually immensely powerful. His sword alone is so powerful — able to open dimensional gates — that it gets its own name, Rhisling. He is accompanied by his mini-con, Safeguard — whom I liked so much that when Vector Prime was repainted into a hideously gaudy bronze colour, I hunted down the accompanying repaint of Safeguard, but not bronze Vector Prime himself. I’m also trying to get my hands on the third Safeguard, a brown and silver repaint that came with the equally hideous Universe re-repaint of Vector Prime.

I'm actually surprised that this repaint of Safeguard hasn't already been claimed as Shattered Glass Safeguard.

Safeguard essentially transforms into a huge (by Mini-con standards at least) winged cannon. Being a Cybertron toy, Vector Prime has his very own Cyber Key, mimicing the geared clock motif that is also predominant on Vector Prime’s body.

Inserting the Cyber Key into his chest turns his electronic blaster sounds into electronic sword slashing sounds (yaaaaaawn!). A nice touch is that his key has the symbols of the other planets, Gigantion, Earth, Velocitron, and Jungle Planet, as well as a tiny little Autobot symbol on the front of it.

I can imagine Vector Prime is the kind of toy that designers love to have as assignments. They get to make this tremendously cool robot mode and aren’t restricted too much by the alt mode because it is “Cybertronian” rather than a normal Earthen alt mode.

One Cybertronian Space Cruiser coming right up.

Looking closely at the surface of this mode, you can see they just went to town with the molded details and paint applications. Note the clockwork gears on the top and along the front edges. You can see an inset area with a Mini-con port behind the cockpit where you can attach Safeguard. Also, just in front of the cockpit you can see the trigger that fires a missile from the front of the ship. The depth of detail doesn’t stop there either, it continues onto the bottom side as well.

There are a lot of Transformers that I absolutely adore that I can completely understand if others do not like, but honestly I don’t understand anyone that doesn’t have this noble guardian and his little Mini-con companion in their collection.

A pink gargoyle, a two-headed dragon with furry arms and legs, and a bug-man coloured like a hotdog stand, Monsterbots!

As I have said before, I really like the weirder Transformers. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a good real-life vehicle or animal mode, but it’s the oddities that keep the franchise from getting stale.

Amongst the oddest of the G1 oddities are the Monsterbots.

All three possess rather normal-looking robot modes, with only the occasional wing or mandible peeking out to hint at their strange alt modes. Also, they have three of my absolute favourite headsculpts of G1. Due to their transformation, Grotusque and Doublecross have no leg articulation at all and somewhat limited arm articulation. Repugnus has the opposite problem, he has legs that bend at both hip and knee as well as a waist pivot, but the positioning of his alt mode “arms” severely restrict the articulation of his robot mode arms.

All three earn their membership in the Monsterbots sub-group through “monstrous” creatures for alt modes. They also share a gimmick beyond just their wild alt modes. All three have buttons that can be rapidly pushed to generate sparks.

Oof, that's one bad case of heartburn.

Doublecross is a two-headed dragon with two distinct ‘bots living in his head and oddly organic arms and legs.

Grotusque, the gargoyle, is my favourite of the creature alt modes. He’s also my favourite character-wise, Grotusque is “goofy, irreverent, sometimes annoying” but his “razor sharp mind makes him a foe to be reckoned with.” Also, he is not afraid to rock the bright pink.

I’m not sure what’s the more confusing part of Repugnus, his bug-man creature alt mode or his bright red and yellow, hotdog stand colours.

Also, he has a great name. Repugnus was such a great name that it earned him not just one, but two homages. Both Autobots like their namesake, his Cybertron mold is nice but the repaint of the Beast Wars Fuzor Buzzclaw done for the Universe line is easily one of the most perfect mold reuses of all time, of course the use of translucent plastics doesn’t hurt.

Of course, any family resemblance stops there, as both homages have pretty monstrous (in a good way) robot modes.

Despite their strangeness, these guys did get some play in the fiction, but none as unexpected and as much fun as their relatively recent appearance in the Maximum Dinobots mini-series done by IDW.

Just goes to show that I’m not the only one that appreciates some weirdness in their Transformers.

And these are the good guys...

The construction addict, Cybertron Metroplex!

Somewhere around the planning stages of Transformers Cybertron, the powers-that-be decided it was high time that the not-so-gentle giant Metroplex got an homage. At the time of his release, G1 Metroplex was the embodiment of the concept of “Rightfully Huge”, so where better to reveal this lumbering colossus of a Transformer than on the planet of Gigantion, the Giant Planet.

A suitably huge weapon for a suitably huge warrior, Cybertron Metroplex carries his shovel weapon that can transform into the deadly axe “Sparkdrinker” using his Cyberkey adorned with the Giant planet’s symbol.

Despite the Cyberkey gimmick, I liked the concept behind Cybertron a lot. Basically colonizing ships of Transformers were sent out into the universe millions of year ago, but found themselves stranded on their individual worlds when the space bridge project they were all working towards failed. On their different worlds they evolved thematically over eons. The inhabitants of what would become known as Velocitron, the Speed planet, would come to prize speed over all else and covered their world in endless roads for racing. Animatron, the Jungle or Beast planet, saw the rise of a race of Transformers that were animalistic in both alt mode as well as attitude. Lastly was Gigantion, the Giant planet. Wildly obsessed with construction, these Transformers had appropriately equipped alt modes and spent their time building uninhabited city upon uninhabited city. Their leader was Metroplex, or Megalo Convoy as he was called in the Japanese version of the cartoon, Transformers Galaxy Force.

The reason I bring up Galaxy Force is that is the version I watched. Hasbro insisted on tying Cybertron to the previous two shows Energon and Armada, widely considered to be the two worst Transformers series of all time, lackluster animation was compounded by astoundingly flawed dubbing on the American release. I was about three episodes in on Cybertron when I declared it likewise unwatchable and switched to watching a fan subtitled Galaxy Force instead. Boy was I glad I did, because I actually like Galaxy Force quite a bit. In fact, it wasn’t until today that I even learned that they gave the Gigantions Scottish freaking accents. Out of morbid curiosity, moments ago I looked up some of Cybertron on Youtube to check out these accents. I am sad that I did. It hurt my ears. A lot.

I will now pretend I did not do that and thus have no knowledge of this planet of Scotty impersonators.

Much better.

Anywho, one of the quirks of the Giant planet’s inhabitants is that they are all triple changers, but rather than the standard two alt modes, they each have a secondary robot mode instead. This mode is their “Work Mode”, a sturdier, more compact robot mode. In his Work Mode, Cybertron Metroplex is brought down to G1 Metroplex’s size.

Just like G1 has his entourage of robots, Cybertron Metroplex has his little helper. The Gigantions all have minicons that help them out with their construction work, and Metroplex has Drill Bit.

Drill Bit transforms into a drilling vehicle… thing.

Most people’s complaint with Cybertron Metroplex is his alt mode. He is meant to be a Gigantion Bucket Shovel Excavator, basically a Cybertonian version of this thing,

A good portion of Transfans dislike the rather simplistic way he manages to recreate this vehicle.

I, however, have no problems with it. I actually like that there are even two sets of plugs to allow the shovel device to be placed where the wheel or the shovel can be used. Additionally, Drill Bit can be attached to the end of the shovel, which is a nice touch.

Besides, who cares what his alt mode looks like, the best part about Cybertron Metroplex is his grand full-sized robot mode anyway.

Have a faceful of sawblade.

A rightfully huge post for a rightfully huge villain, Unicron!

Dislike for the more “religious” aspects of Transformers is understandable. Somehow, Transformers made it all the way to 2005 without any apparent knowledge of the following:

• All life on Cybertron — in fact Cyberton itself — was created by Primus, Lord of the Light Gods.
• Primus had a twin, a sibling known as Unicron, a Dark God, and last of the Lords of Chaos.
• Contained within the chest of Optimus Prime was “The Matrix”, a housing for the power of Primus himself.

The biggest reason for this is prior to the 1986 movie (set in the year 2005), none of this existed. The makers of the movie needed a big bad guy. They invented the planet-eater, Unicron. They needed a device to allow the seemingly insignificant Transformers to fight back against said big bad guy. They invented the Matrix. They then provided absolutely no explanation for why Unicron was aware of the Matrix, or why it was the only thing he feared in the universe.

In the intervening years, many attempts have been made to resolve this, including one remarkably misguided attempt in Season 3 in which Unicron was actually built by a hyper-intelligent monkey alien spaceman creature… thing.

Setting all that aside (as Hasbro has apparently done) we are left with the Aligned Continuity. Basically attempting to unify the various Transformers continuity into one, it picks and chooses its way through the entirety of Transformers franchise history.

What we are left with is: Primus is the incarnation of good; his creations, the Transformers, all carry a piece of him within themselves; the Autobot Matrix of Leadership carries a very large piece of him; and Unicron is the incarnation of evil bent on the destruction of literally everything.

Biggest bad guy in Transformers history? Check. Toy?

…

There had been a prototype for a toy version after his appearance in the movie but it would never see the light of day… thankfully. As I have typed before, this thing ain’t pretty, falling in the “better to have nothing than to have that” category.

"Does this robot mode make my gut look fat?" "No, but your fat gut does."

Preposterously not intimidating for a Dark-God-Lord-of-Chaos-Devourer-of-Worlds-Destroyer-of-Realities. There was another prototype in 1999 when Unicron showed up in the anime and manga for the Japanese-only Beast Wars Neo. Though, thanks to advancements in toy engineering, Beast Wars Neo Unicron was much better than the G1 prototype, he suffered from much too much “shellformer” syndrome.

The fact that literally half of his planet mode hangs off his back has not dissuaded the fandom from clammering for this to be made.

It looked like Unicron would continue to suffer the indignity of no retail release. This was rectified in 2003 when Transformers Armada introduced Unicron none-too-suprisingly to their storyline and subsequently, and quite surprisingly, to retail toy shelves.

At over a foot tall, this is just an amazing toy. With the exception of two shell pieces that hang somewhat loosely off his back, very little of his planet mode is apparent in robot mode. Of course, this is Armada Unicron and therefore is not meant to be G1 Unicron, but this didn’t stop the fanboys at the time from whining about the differences. For me, just like with many other Transformers updates, it was a case of “close enough, this thing is awesome!” So much so that I was not overly tempted to purchase the 2010 Takara version of Unicron. Luckily for me, my friend Michael doesn’t have the Armada release and used Takara’s 2010 release to add Unicron to his collection.

Now with a brand new, more cartoon accurate headsculpt and completely new, more detailed paintjob, Takara has added panel lining, to enhance the details along his arms, torso, and legs and removed the translucent parts from the Armada mold.

In truth, my desire to own the Takara version of Unicron was heavily influenced by price. Though I really, reaaaaaaally liked the new headsculpt, I couldn’t justify spending the money when I already had the Armada version. Hasbro was apparently listening, because they responded by announcing the Amazon.com exclusive reissue of the Takara mold. Released to coincide with this year being the 25th anniversary of The Transformers: The Movie, he was again give a completely new paintjob.

Regardless of which of the three you get (or in my case, which two of the three), he’s such an imposingly grand collection piece.

As close to scale as Transformers toys gets.

So the question stands: which Unicron toy is most Unicron-like? Starting with the head, of course, the Armada mold is disqualified off the bat seeing as he is meant to specifically be Armada Unicron.

He looks more disgusted than anything else.

So, we have the Takara version,

versus the 25th Anniversary version.

As a literal interpretation of the cartoon, I would have to say the Takara version’s white face looks like what was shown in the cartoon. The issue with the Takara one is the “helmet” sections. The orange is far too bright. The 25th anniversary’s more yellowish gold with blue coloured panels fits what was on screen. At this point this one becomes a tie. An easy winner would be a white face with gold and blue surrounding headpiece. However, 25th Anniversary squeaks out a win thanks to an unlikely added detail.

Unicron’s eyes — a very well documented facial feature in the movie when they became points of both entrance and egress for entire spaceships — were green. Both Armada and Takara Unicron use red, to coincide with the red light effect gimmick. 25th Anniversary has the red light gimmick, as evidenced above, but uses green plastic for the eyes themselves.

Though he does, indeed have green eyes, his box kind of fibs outright lies when depicting his various features by showing glowing green eyes.

So, on to the rest of the robot body.

Once again, Armada Unicron, with a bevy of wonderfully transclucent plastics,  is out of the running for most G1. In this case the blue on the 25th Anniversary works against it. In full body shots of Unicron, the bluish tinge is far, far more subdued, looking more like the colour on the legs of the Takara one. Granted, the orange is still way too bright, but the overall effect is more coherent and therefore more like the movie than the stark blue, silver, and gold of the 25th Anniversary.

Which leaves us with alt mode. The planet-eating planet.

Or planetS, as it were.

This mode is where Takara’s Unicron really shines, the panel lining and extra painted details, like the orange applied on the surface detailing. Just look at all that detail (go ahead, click on the image, I’ll wait.) Even with that, 25th Anniversary is the clear winner in the most accurate here. Though the blue could be more subdued and the grey detailing along the top edge could be lighter, this time it’s thanks to the band of gold that bisects the planet like his movie appearance that he pulls out a win.

So, who wins in the most cartoon accurate contest? Armada Unicron. Seriously, he is most like his cartoon incarnation. Okay, okay. Who wins the most G1 cartoon accurate?

Sorry, but it remains a tie with Takara taking the robot mode and 25th Anniversary taking the alt mode.

Basically, regardless of the mode, we have three wonderfully detailed, respectably large toys of the ultimate Transformers bad guy.

I think the overall winner here is the fans.

But we’re not done! See, Unicron may be a big bad guy but he’s still a bad guy and that means he must ultimately face defeat. Who wants to watch something where evil wins in the end?

Primus wanted to reinforce this notion, so some packaging of the release of his Cybertron toy included…

the half-destroyed, decapitated head of Armada Unicron. Creepy.

But you can’t keep a good evil Lord of Chaos down, and Unicron was able to use his greatly diminished energies to create a new body for himself. Complete with Cyberkey gimmick, he now transformed into a tank-like vehicle.

Though he had a new robot mode to go with it, his head still depicts some of the damage received in his previous form.

"I have arms and legs again! I will once again try to destroy the universe!"

However, this new form mirrors his greatly diminished energies.

"What was that, pipsqueak?"

So as of right now, he is running around unchecked but severely restricted in his destructive capacity.

As for my collection, I got the new 25th Anniversary for the new head, so he’ll be displayed in robot mode, while Armada Unicron will be displayed in planet mode.

So pretty much the opposite of this.

Thanks again to Michael for lugging his Takara Unicron over for the photo shoot! Did I mention this guy is a freaking big toy? Unicron, that is, not Michael