asherv20-blog

[asherv20-blog]

Transformers are about to get weird

It’s the morning of New York Toy Fair 2018 and this is a feeling I’ve had all week, the brand is about to take a turn and pivot away from the direction its been heading down since the release of the first live-action movie a little over a decade ago. Earlier today at Hasbro’s Investor Preview, they announced that there would be no follow-up to 2016’s Transformers: The Last Knight and after the Bumblebee movie slated for release later this year, the live-action movie series is going to be rebooted. Although, I wonder if some hooks won’t be sprinkled into the Bumblebee movie to make it a spring-board for whatever comes next.

The dealings of the movie-verse aside, there’re other factors at work causing me to feel the brand is setting up for a significant shift. I wanna talk about the collector-focused toy-line Transformers Generations and its two latest refreshes, Titans Return and Power of the Primes. Titans Return re-introduced Headmasters writ large to the brand and quickly brought that play pattern’s most relevant characters along with it. But once the likes of Chromedome, Weirdwolf, Brainstorm and Fortress Maximus were rolled out; it seemed to me the back-half of the line turned its attention to filling in the gaps in our respective collections. We were offered a buffet line-up of characters that had little to do with the head-swapping gimmick of Titans Return, but were long-overdue for new toy treatment, including: Brawn, Seaspray, Kickback, Gnaw the Sharkticon, the Autobot and Decepticon clones, Top Spin and Twin Twist, Twinferno and the Decepticon Targetmasters to name a few.

Outside of characters introduced in 1984/1985, most of these dudes don’t have a lot of cache with the fan base at large. So its kind of surprising that so many of them would indeed get new, and in many cases very excellent toys – unless you look at it through the lens of Hasbro aiming to ‘clear out’ the roster of original G1 characters who’d yet to receive new toys.

Then we get to Power of the Primes, the ‘end’ of the Prime Wars Trilogy that began with Combiner Wars. Through the first two waves, this toy line has proven quite curious. Headmasters/Titan Masters have been side-graded into Prime Masters and though they share the same form factor as Titan Masters, the Prime Masters turn into a ‘spark’ rather than the head of another Transformers character and while they can be plugged into the head socket of any Titans Return compatible toy, they’re intended to socket into the accompanying slot of ‘armor pieces’ included with deluxe and larger figures and imbue that larger character with the ‘power’ of the corresponding Prime. In effect, you’re socketing a headmaster into a chunk of plastic and sticking that onto another Transformers figure.

Speaking of the larger figures, Power of the Primes is shuffling combiners back into the toyline using the technology first seen in Combiner Wars – to the point that some POTP figures feature tooling directly linked back to older Combiner Wars toys. I suppose it could be observed that Power of the Primes is celebrating the toys that came before by retaining the Titan Master play pattern and bringing back combiners.

I’ll take the opportunity here to tangent briefly and talk about the Power of the Primes leader-class toys which bring their own ‘evolution’ gimmick of a smaller figure integrating with an included larger set-piece to evolve into a different iteration of the character: Orion Pax merges with his truck trailer to become a very Masterpiece-inspired Optimus Prime, Hot Rod likewise links up with his camper trailer and upgrades into Rodimus Prime. The forth-coming fan-voted Optimus Primal will also incorporate his Optimal Optimus form in some fashion – this toy hasn’t seen full release yet, so I can’t speak to the specifics on how he’ll work exactly.

Let’s take a look at the characters we’re getting in Power of the Primes: Dreadwind, Darkwing (now Blackwing), Beachcomber, Windcharger, Tailgate, the Duocon Battletrap (made through combining two brand new Legends-sized characters!), the Terrorcons, Predacons, an honest-to-goodness full team of Dinobots! (Not just Grimlock for the first time in ages!) Even some of the female Autobot Resistance Fighters first seen in the G1 cartoon are getting toys at long last. Again, you look at that line-up and it seems to me that Hasbro is aggressively trying to fill out as much of the G1 cast as they feasibly can.

The last two years has given us a metric ton of toys based on characters from 1987/88 of the G1 lineup, often surpassing my wildest expectations: a new Krok, or Grotusque, or Overlord? Even five years ago, there’s no way I could see these guys getting new toys that weren’t convention exclusive repaints or expensive unlicensed toys – never mind in the main toy line and being (almost) readily available. So, what comes next?

Power of the Primes is still in its infancy, what with Wave 2 only just starting to see retail presence …and as I mentioned at the top, it’s the day of New York Toy Fair. We’re all eager to see what’s in store for the rest of the line. A lot of folks are hoping for the return of the Seacons and for the Dinobots to be retooled into either the Dinoforce or the Pretender Monsters. Some are hoping for more 84/85 characters to get revisited as combiner limbs. Personally, I’m hoping for more female characters to accompany Elita-1 and Moonracer, more Throttlebots, or maybe a Leader-class Deathsaurus. But what about beyond Power of the Primes?

The first natural assumption is that Hasbro just continues apace with updating G1 characters. But we’re talking 1989 and beyond which contains A LOT of Pretenders, Micromasters, and Action Masters; in short, a whole lot of characters that, beyond those of us in the fandom with extremely long gazes, most of the buying audience will surely struggle to muster any passion for. Of course, one could argue that you pepper in more releases of legacy characters like Optimus, Bumblebee, Starscream, Megatron, and Soundwave and anything released alongside them will continue to sell; but I have a hard time seeing that happening.

I keep coming back to the way Hasbro has used the phrase “The Prime Wars Trilogy,” Power of the Primes is the ‘final chapter’ of “The Prime Wars Trilogy.” Seems to me, you don’t bandy about branding like that if you’re intention is to continue doing the exact same thing; not after the ‘final chapter’ of your ‘trilogy.’ Which leads me to believe that the Generations toy-line as we’ve known it since 2010 is going to sunset with Power of the Primes. I don’t think it’ll stop entirely, I feel there’s way too much money in the collector-oriented market now for Hasbro to give up on, but Generations, or whatever branding it takes after Power of the Primes will definitely shift focus.

Whether that’s something as simple as turning back the dial and we’re back updating the G1 cast starting with 1984 all over again, or something completely different, I couldn’t say. Personally, there’s been quite a few new characters introduced over the last decade through movies and tv series that I’m super invested in, but they got really bunk toys and deserve another pass. I’m talking movie Blackout, Prime Knockout and Airachnid, Robots in Disguise Steeljaw. Like. Almost. Every. Robots in Disguise Decepticon… I’d love to see a toy-line focused on giving these newer characters better toys.

More than that, there’s an unspoken truth amidst the fandom and that’s that we’re aging up. There are way, way more folks in here with us that were kids during the Unicron Trilogy, or for the start of the live action movies and that’s their onboarding point – not G1. Their nostalgia is every bit as legitimate as the older segments of the community and its beyond time that ‘their G1’ got some love. Some of those early-to-mid 2000s toys are in desperate need of an update, the Armada toy line especially. But even the original 2001 Robots in Disguise could use some love and I’m not talking car brothers, I’m talking updated Spy Changers!

…and of course, let’s not forget the IDW comics. Now, there was a lot of belly-aching in the community the last time the comics got any kind of acknowledgement in the toy line (circa 2012) – unfounded belly-aching, I’ll add. Of all those toys, only like, half-a-dozen were *actually* based on or influenced by comic designs. Everything else was back-doored into the comics. I’m looking at you Armada Starscream, Scoop, Waspinator, and Sky-byte.

Anyway! IDW! Since the Phase 2 re-launch that started with Robots in Disguise and More Than Meets the Eye, we’ve been treated to a smorgasbord of delightful new characters that now, to many, are every bit as significant as any legacy character and every last one of them is aching for a toy. More Than Meets the Eye and Lost Light author James Roberts has utterly stuffed his cupboard with brand new characters that’ve resonated with his audience like Nautica (the Titans Return toy …really doesn’t count), Rung, Velocity, Pharma, and Roller just to name a very few …and of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention fandom darlings, the Decepticon Justice Division. Although, the likelihood of a toy being made of a dude who transforms into an electric chair and sold at retail are a little dubious. But the demand is there.

Just off the top of my head, that’s three new directions the future of the Generations toy line could head down once it moves on from updates of G1 characters, which I feel is all but a certainty as we move forward.

I also wanted to take a moment to shine a light on Japan, where it seems the Transformers brand is in a tremendously strange spot at the moment. Takara’s counterpart to Hasbro’s Generations line, Transformers Legends is coming to an end and has recently come to light that for their follow-up, they’re straight importing the Power of the Primes toys with seemingly no changes. This news has been distressing to fans of the Legends line which had become known for heavily modifying Combiner Wars and Titans Return toys for release in Japan – usually to the tune of alternate/additional applications of paint, to changing the visual look of a toy whole cloth, to the addition of completely brand new Targetmaster partners for their releases of Hot Rod, Kup, Blurr (although only included with Doublecross, who’d released after Blurr), Triggerhappy, Misfire, and Slugslinger; even including Targetmasters with their upcoming releases of Windblade, Top Spin, and Twin Twist – seemingly to future proof for any as-of-yet unmade Sureshot, Crosshairs, and Pointblank.

So it has been a bitter pill to swallow for those that were anticipating Dinobots and Optimus/Rodimus with more paint, or the release of Buster and Hydra in place of Dreadwind and Darkwing. Add to that, Takara seems to be doubling down on both Takaratomy Mall exclusives and Masterpiece repaints, and the quiet abandonment of the Transformers Adventure line, I can only wonder if they’re trying to reduce their costs as much as possible while trying to figure out what to do with Transformers in Japan. I have only the barest grasp on the nuances of that market; mostly just a lot of hearsay that Transformers has always struggled in Japan, or the Legends toys simply weren’t selling, or even that the Japanese collector’s market on the whole is shrinking.

Both at home and abroad, I can’t help but feel Transformers is in a weird place and on the cusp of a major shift. After five Michael Bay helmed movies, we’re due for a reboot; which we’ve learned we’re now getting. The current comics feel like they’re all heading towards their own eventual resolution, what with the long-withheld introduction of Unicron to IDW continuity finally taking place later this year; after which, I’m sure there’ll be a reboot of some stripe. Then there’s the Power of the Primes toy-line which as I oft mentioned already is the final chapter in the Prime Wars trilogy. I could wrong, of course, but stands to reason that something different is going to follow on the heels of the Prime Wars period of the Generations toy line.

Through all that though, I’m not preaching doom and gloom. I’m not saying brace for certain disappointment. Just get ready for Transformers to change a little. Wouldn’t be the first time. Heck, we’re not that far removed from a period in the franchise’s life where it was re-inventing itself every 18 months. We’ve just been treated to an exceptionally long period of the films, tv series, comics, and toys all remaining fairly consistent. But all of these facets of the brand need to be shaken up in order to remain viable in the market and it just so happens that shake up might hit each limb of the brand all at once.

I talked earlier about the aging up of the fandom, I’m in my mid-thirties and finally hit a point in my life where I can no longer indiscriminately purchase every single toy I want as soon as it goes up for pre-order and even as a dedicated reader of the comics since the first IDW mini-series, I’m starting to have some difficulty following all the myriad plot threads. Like, I didn’t even catch the part where the introduction of The Visionaries into IDW continuity shut off the Cybertronians from Vector Sigma and now they’re having to import their Energon from Earth? That’s a thing that happened. I didn’t catch it, but it did.

So maybe its time I finally took a break, and if you’ve read all that and you’re finding yourself worried about what’s coming down the pipe for our favorite Robots in Disguise, maybe we take a break together? The Transformers will endure, they’ll be there for us when we come back and there’ll be something awesome that happened for us to get caught up on!

Also. Hey. Its Toy Fair. At the very least, there’s gonna be some cool new toys to look at today!

[asherv20-blog]

I’m not the biggest Miku fan in the world. I haven’t been blown away by the two PAK figures I own. But. I... kind of... want to buy this... I know Nomura designs are kinda played out and its not like its a huge departure from Miku’s normal look. I just. I dunno. Dammit, brain...

[asherv20-blog]

“Buggers! Step on it, Six!”

[asherv20-blog]

A Tale of a Thing I Didn’t Buy

 -- All images courtesy of Joe Moore and The Toyark

I don’t believe in the “hunt” anymore. Going out to brick-and-mortar stores looking for toys, not something I do a whole lot of these days. Especially in the area I live: Walmarts, Targets, and the one Toys R Us generally all have lousy selection and go for months before putting more product on their shelves. About the only thing I have any luck finding in meat space in modern times are Halo/Call of Duty Mega Bloks sets -- and if there was an easier way to purchase those online -- I’d be on that in a heartbeat! I usually only go look for toys in-store if I happened to be in a Walmart/Target already, or if I happen to be near the Toys R Us and feel the need to burn some money ...or, more frustratingly… Toys R Us has an exclusive item I’d like to get my hands on.

I say frustratingly, because I haven’t been able to order from TRU’s website for going on three years now. They keep cancelling my orders. Don’t know why. But it makes buying from TRU all the more challenging.

Couple weeks back, reports of Toys R Us’ exclusive Black-and-Gold Legacy Megazord started to surface online. So when I woke up today, I hedged my bets that maybe by now would’ve been enough time for my local TRU to get some of these on shelves. Like usual, I was wrong. Browsing the rest of the store, I had hopes of finding something interesting to take home with me.

Any new Mega Bloks? Nope. Same old sets they’ve been sitting on for months. Well… not entirely true. They did have one Promethian Warriors set, which I do want. But the box was beat to hell and potentially pilfered of some of its contents; so on the shelf it stayed.

Any new Transformers? lolno

Oh wow. They got A LOT of those Neca Devil May Cry Dante figures… hey whats that Alien 3 box next to it? Oh neat! A heretofore unknown to me, NES-styled Dog Alien. I don’t know Alien from nothin’, but the black and two-tone blue color scheme looked awesome in package and this dude would look great fighting some of my other 6” scale figures!

First I was all <3<3<3

I’ve got this terrible, unfortunate neurosis where I can’t just buy one thing from a store. No, it always makes me feel weird and cheap. I’ve gotta buy something else. So I went to check on the Marvel Legends and that aisle was packed-to-the-brim with parents shopping with their kids, but I did spy a Jessica Drew Spider-Woman, I might check that out, lemme get back to this aisle when it clears out. Back to the Alien!

Well… the tail on the first one I looked at looked a little crooked, hm… let me just check on another one and WAIT THIS ONE IS BROWN! Why is this one brown? Ew. Are there two variants? Oh, wait no. Back of the box highlights the figure’s “game-accurate” two-tone blue and “red” (No son. That is Poop. Brown.) coloration. The dog alien’s paint job is split vertically down the middle, blue on one half, brown on the other.

I just… no.

Then I was all </3</3</3

For a few moments I hemmed and hawed, trying to talk myself into the purchase. The Dog Alien looked so amazing at first glance. But man… MAN… that brown was just so hideous and off-putting. While I appreciate the specific homage they were going for and the application of the paint work looked dope as hell. I tried thinking of how I would feel about the figure in hand and I had a hard time imagining that two-tone paint looking anything but odd -- more so when displayed with other figures.

So I left it. No Dog Alien. No Megazord. No Promethians. Didn’t even go back for the Spider-Woman. Pretty sure that aisle was still clogged with fellow shoppers and feeling as defeated as I was, I wasn’t in the mood for a consolation prize. I’d have much rather left the store not having spent any duckets. It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then I do think better of a potential purchase and leave a thing on the shelf.

Current Mood: Disappointed 

[asherv20-blog]

Full Packrat photo gallery! ...this is my first real shoot with a back drop and proper lighting, so please excuse their dodgy quality, I’m still learning.

Final thought: The best thing about this toy? Unequivocally? The he can stand on his hind legs in rat mode!

[asherv20-blog]

Two decades in the making - A thief with golden paws.

(Preface: A number of times in this piece, I used the term ‘redeco’ where people might be more familiar with the term ‘repaint.’ In observance with TFWiki’s definition of the term, a redeco is a new toy made from the same mold as a previously-released toy but produced with new plastic colors and/or new paint operations.)

Its summertime and another Botcon has come and gone, and with it a swath of new convention exclusive toys. As always I experienced the ‘con from afar thanks to the power of the internet but unlike last year where I purchased damn-near all of the Botcon exclusive figures like a mad-man,  I’ve been somewhat more restrained this year, having acquired only a single piece: “The Thief,” Packrat 

...and while I have my eyes on at least one more figure from this year’s offerings (Battletrap), I’m largely content with my lone purchase.

Packrat holds a special place in my heart, one that goes back… geez… I guess 16, 17 years? For context, I hadn’t found my way online until around 1998-ish, back when I was still in high school and I had just discovered the Transformer-fandom’s online presence. Imagine my shock, to discover there existed people besides myself who remembered what Transformers were and cared just as deeply about them. You probably can’t because in 2015, thanks largely to four live-action movies, Transformers has again become a widely recognized brand and pop-culture phenomenon. ...but there was a hot minute there in the mid-to-late 90s where the Transformers franchise mired in obscurity...

At any rate, amid my fledgling online travels I happened upon the then already established yearly-run Transformers fan convention known as “Botcon” which traveled from location to location around the US and much to my surprise, offered toys exclusive to attendees of the convention. I could scarcely comprehend the idea of Transformers figures that were not available on regular retail shelves; but here they were, factory-produced and factory-quality, original Beast Wars characters complete with their own packaging and fiction. In particular, 1997’s two-pack of Fractyl (a green/bronze redeco of Terrorsaur) and Packrat (blue/gold redeco of Rattrap) caught my attention.

Photo courtesy of Botcon.com

Now, I loved Rattrap on the Beast Wars cartoon series: while a Maximal (good guy), he was a dick with a heart of gold, and as often as he frustrated the other Maximals with his shitty attitude, when push came to shove; you could always count on him in clutch situations. At the time, he was quite unique when it came to our expectations of Autobots/Maximals -- and to then discover another character that was essentially Rattrap, but the knob turned up to 11 and broken off...? I was instantly taken with this guy. In this Convention Microverse where Packrat fought alongside characters from the show like Optimus Primal and Cheetor, you had a character that identified as one of the “good guys” ...but by the slimmest of margins. Packrat was a kleptomaniac of the highest order. He stole from everyone. Anything that wasn’t bolted down, he’d find a way to plunder and the only reason the other Maximals tolerated him was every so often they’d find something in his stash he’d pilfered off the Predacons that would save the day.

He’s basically Bender, without the binge drinking.

So you combined a fun character with a beautiful looking toy? Oh but did I ever want one… sadly even back then ebay prices on a convention exclusive toy, of which only 600 were produced? They were not kind to my jobless, adolescent ass. Thoughts of owning a Packrat figure would long become something of a pipe-dream. At least, that one.

Photo courtesy of TFWiki.net

In 1999, I learned there’d be a Walmart exclusive redeco of Transmetal Rattrap (store exclusive toys were also something new to me.) Sporting a metallic blue color scheme, with swaths of bronze and silver, alongside yellow and green details, this figure was Packrat in everything but name and it could be mine for ten bucks! I was so excited to get my hands on one, by the time I’d found them in store, I bought two; one to keep sealed in package! This was the first time I’d purchased a figure with the intention of keeping it sealed in package -- a condition in which he remains today, proudly displayed on my wall ...albeit covered in a thick layer of dust. The other, I hastily opened and got many years of enjoyment out of as my surrogate Packrat but has long since been confined to the bottom of a box with his other Beast Wars brethren and probably all his chrome flaking off. I should… probably get in there and sort that mess out. Some day.

Fast forward to 2013 and the reveal of a brand new mold, deluxe sized Rattrap for the Generations product line. It took one look at that toy to think to myself, “Packrat when?” ...because these days, it is incredibly rare for a new mold to be used only once and honestly, who the hell else are you gonna do up a Rattrap redeco as? Only question, would this hypothetical new Packrat be a mass market release? Or would Fun Publications (the showrunners of Botcon) lay claim to the character as a part of the show’s heritage?

Now that Combiner Wars is a thing and Rattrap doesn’t have a history as plugging onto another dude as a leg, it was pretty easy to contain my shock earlier this year when Packrat was officially revealed as part of this year’s Botcon Convention Boxset alongside Battletrap (Springer), Shattered Glass Stepper (Jazz), Megatron (Silas Breakdown) and Oilmaster (Swerve with a brand new mold Pretender shell). It was gonna be more expensive than I had initially hoped for, and he was gonna be made from a fairly flawed mold... but I was gonna be damned before I missed out on another Packrat!

Funny then, this quest would come to an unexpectedly quick conclusion!

The weekend of the convention, I’d popped on ebay just to get a look at the prices the convention toys were going for, not looking to buy. This is typically the worst time to go shopping for Botcon figures as the hype for these releases is at its highest and at-show attendees looking to offload the toys are able to command higher-than-usual sums from an audience that is purely demand driven. Much to my surprise however; Packrat was sitting in the range of a modest $40 USD, easily on the low end compared to other figures like Megatron and Oilmaster who’d already broken into triple digits.

To get an idea of my rationalization  behind a purchase like this: Generations Rattrap on his own, cost roughly $18 USD after taxes and I’ve long been accustomed to forking over $30-35 USD for a deluxe figure through importing various Japanese versions over the years. So plunking down $40 for the convention exclusive Packrat wasn’t a decision I had to agonize over. The dust from Botcon had only begun to settle before I had the sneaky blue rat in hand. But purchasing and owning a Botcon figure often isn’t the end of the tale. For the past handful of years, there’s been one if not more of the figures produced for Botcon plagued by either assembly errors or other quality control concerns. Sad as it is to admit, especially when one considers the cost of entry, there comes a certain amount of risk to adding Botcon toys to your collection...

Gorgeous as he is and as much as it means to me to own one, I made mention above that Packrat is made from a flawed mold: Rattrap has a design flaw in his legs where excess plastic in his knees that during transformation, causes undue pressure on the pin that holds his knee and lower leg together and on many copies of the toy, caused the plastic around the pin to crack. To my knowledge, this flaw was never addressed and had carried over to Packrat. This can be corrected by shaving away some of the excess plastic on the knee’s rotation joint, alleviating the pressure on the pin, sparing the plastic from cracking under the strain. I’ve performed this fix on both Rattrap and Packrat. I wasn’t thrilled about having to take a knife to my “rare” toy, but far better that than his knees exploding in the future.

Some of the paint work on Packrat I’m also finding a little troublesome. Most of Packrat’s body is cast in dark blue and any paint applied to him needs multiple coats to properly mask the underlying hue. But the white on his shoulders and bronze on his hands were applied a little excessively, gumming up his shoulder articulation and making it a little scary to peg either of his guns in his hands as that paint adds thickness to his hands that wasn’t present on Rattrap. In contrast, the metallic on his shins and calves may have gone on too lightly -- while fixing his knees, I’d see gold sparkles in my fingers, leading me to worry that gold was going to wear right off.

One last kerfuffle that may or may not be present on other copies of the toy; he’s also got some black smudges on the underside of his rat-mode tail, which I can’t help but wonder if that was a condition of some of the foam material in the box insert transferring to the toy…

Nitpicking aside, I’m beyond thrilled to own a toy of Packrat as he was initially conceived and in a weird way, this brings an end to a decades-long saga for me which spanned the entire length of time I’ve been on the internet. I think some day, I’d still like to own the original two-pack from 1997 for nostalgia and also because I’ve never owned a version of the original Rattrap mold. Though, I do have to wonder how that spring-loaded transformation is holding up after all this time... One or two pop up on ebay from time to time, usually in the $400-450USD range which, to most people is  an utterly inconceivable sum to pay for two toys. But for me, the price of a current generation video game console doesn’t seem all that much when it comes to something I’ve been eyeballing for the better part of two decades.

“Don’t just take the goods, take the credit too.” Packrat overview at TFWiki.net

[asherv20-blog]

We use it to carve up the Cambodian Turkey at Thanksgiving!

Let's talk about Lockdown, yeah?

With a species whose most popular pass time is Millions-Of-Years-of-Bitter-Civil-War, Lockdown is a stand-out, a bounty-hunter that has taken no side and will work for anyone who can pay. His preferred method of payment: upgrades.

Introduced in Transformers: Animated, Lockdown was a badass bounty-hunter voiced by Lance Henriksen who, while often employed by the Decepticons, did not take a direct role in the Autobot/Decepticon conflict and was known primarily for his asymmetrical (almost monsterish) appearance, his penchant for "trophy mods," and his arsenal. Which included,

A hook-arm, and weaponized Electro-Magnetic Pulse emitter:

And... a chainsaw!

By 2009, Lockdown's popularity cemented him a place in the greater Transformers multiverse when he had a figure designed in a more "real-world" aesthetic for inclusion in the then current Revenge of the Fallen line-up. ROTF Lockdown came complete with almost all his unique characteristics translating over from the Animated character, including his muscle-car-straight-from-road-warrior vehicle mode, freakishly-tall asymmetrical detailed robot mode, hook-arm, and a unique keyhole on his right arm for mounting his engine block; or, if you also had one, the EMP Rifle from ROTF Deluxe Ratchet.

About the only thing missing was the chainsaw, but then, the original animated figure was shorted the chainsaw as well -- so its not like precedent didn't exist, and the figure still looked damned impressive even without it. Needless to say, I've enjoyed having him as part of my collection for over two years now and didn't really give the chainsaw thing a second thought.

That all changed the night I saw The Avengers for a third time. While suffering from a extraordinarily hearty case of buttsick that lasted well into the next morning, I found myself browsing AmiAmi to pass the time and stumbled upon this! As part of their Model Support Goods line, Kotobukiya went and made a gigantic freaking chainsaw that can be used by all kinds've models and action figures; and seeing those ports and pegs all over the thing, I got to thinking of my favorite robotic Lance Henriksen and figured there'd be some way I could marry this thing to his arm.

The kit arrived last Thursday in a big box along with a bunch of figmas and revoltechs and at first I was taken aback. The promo photos of the chain look quite shiny and I'd assumed the chain would come prebui-NOPE! All in all, the kit took about twenty minutes to assemble; most of which was assembling the chain which came in a delightful 40 pieces, each piece just small enough to lost forever should it happen to slip from my grasp. But it was still an incredibly fun build, the first model kit I've assembled in... three years I think, and quite easy. If you've got something you feel needs a big-ass chainsaw, then absolutely pick one up. Or... y'know... four.

During construction of the housing, I kept mashing the thing against Lockdown's engine-block keyhole, hoping one of the raised circular ports along the thing would be big enough to friction in there and hold, but nothing took. After I'd finished the model and it lay there (looking quite cool) on the table, and not attached to Lockdown's arm, I was kinda bummed and was worried I wasn't going to have a use for the thing and it would be resigned to sit in a drawer somewhere for the rest of its existence. ...until I remembered that it came with a butt-ton of attachable sword handles so's that figures can actually hold and use the chainsaw.

One of those handles just happened to have the exact right amount of space between the grip and the guard to enable me... in the most low-rent, bottom-tier, discgraceful customization attempt ever ...to clamp the entire unit to Lockdown's arm.

...and the result? Well, I thought it was lens-flare worthy:

I'm really happy with the end result. The saw could no doubt use some paint, but that's not exactly in my wheelhouse. That, and Lockdown here, chainsaw and all, along with most of my other figures is on the verge of being packed up and put into storage while I do some re-arranging.

I done stuck a chainsaw onto a toy. Sure did.

Oh! One thing I didn't know until I got the kit in-hand. Its got a teeny-tiny wind up motor. Check it out!

Video credits: bottdx2002 -figma BRS2035 with chainsaw- / AEONMAGNUS -Animated Lockdown clips-

- What gave it away? Was it the pipes?