Vehicon Off-Road Commander

With all the chatter about TF: Prime killing off one of their main characters, I figure I may as well weigh in on the issue as well. Personally, as much as I kind of enjoy Bulkhead, I think the biggest blow to the show and best chance of making Miko something other than unbearably obnoxious is to kill him off. More importantly, have his death come as a direct result of Miko running off and getting him into the predicament. In fact, go the Arcee route to make things even more terrible for the team, have Megatron convert Bulkhead's remains into a Vehicon Commander.

Not only do I think it'd look neat, but it's a nice morbid call back to Animated-getting his head lobbed off and replaced. Can you imagine what a great moment it'd be for the team to be confronted with Bulkhead's newly converted body-and what a traumatic experience it'd be for Miko? Especially if he still had Bulkhead's voice? More importantly though, is the great toy possibilities. I would buy this in a heartbeat:
Of course, I'm also a huge advocate of head swapping just about all the cars in TF: Prime with Vehicon heads and giving t hem that nice dark purple color scheme. In this particular case though, I like the potential story. I have the RID version of Bulkhead in hand, but honestly it just makes me want the First Edition version even more, so once I get my hands on that bad boy, I'm going to see if I can make this repaint a reality.

Generations Vamp

I've been ignoring the "Gobots" portion of this site for waaaay too long. I actually have a big list of GoBots from TF ideas that I've been meaning to digibash.
My favorite group within GoBots were the Renegade Mutants. Not only did they have an amazingly tense, touch-n-go relationship with Cy-Kill and the Renegades, but their designs are some of my all-time favorites.

Vamp.


One of the premiere bad girls of the GoBots series, Vamp led a subset of Renegades referred to as the Renegade Mutants. As the name implied, they were a little more animalistic/insectile in appearance compared to your average Renegade. What always fascinated me the most about Vamp, was the fact that she seemed perfectly content following Cy-Kill until the Master Renegade came into the picture, then all bets were off. And oddly enough, Cy-Kill seemed just as content with this arrangement. Oh sure he was upset when she'd turn on him, but after everything blew over he seemed fine having her around. A very weird dynamic that was probably a result of shoddy writing, but I loved it anyway.

Onto the digibashing...
As with any GoBot, the ideal would be a 100% new, updated version of the character, but I'm not that delusional. If we get Gobots, they're probably going to be a repaint of an existing TF, and I've come to terms with that. BUT, I'd want the perfect form for a character I love as much as Vamp, so when I initially began trying to figure out who would be the best base, I settled on Beast Machine Blackarachnia. Trying to keep in line with Hasbro's budgetary concerns, I thought she would work as a simple repaint with a remolded head. At first I was happy with this-and then Cybertron came along and introduced that delightful Noisemaze mold!

If ever there was a perfect mold for Vamp, it would be this. Considering Vamp's original form was none too feminine to begin with, this actually gives her a bit of a curvy shape without making her a waif. On top of this, the flying form is preserved, which was my biggest gripe about using Beast Machine Blackarachnia originally.


I think there is no better mold for Vamp than this.

I originally digibashed this as close to Vamp's all green color scheme as possible, but just for kicks I decided to break up the color a bit with some black.



And lest we forget about her larger scaled figure, we use Cybertron Soundwave as a base for Super Gobot Vamp! What what?!


(Credit for base toy photos goes to Seibertron.com.)

POW!

I got Generations Warpath today!
Quit happy with this guy, they managed to perfectly capture the essence of G1 and added that Generations flavor.



We've already seen the instruction scans showing the new head (presumably giving us Hardhead), but so help me there better be a little something like *this* in the works.


C'mon Hasbro, make me happier!

Generations Jazz, Tracks, and Lugnut

Tracks and Jazz from the TF:Reveal the Shield arrived tonight courtesy of Hasbrotoyshop!I also received an advanced copy (so to speak) of Lugnut.


They are awesome. Tracks I have to give some extra credit to because it's not often I need to refer to the instructions to get those last few steps when changing a TF back from robot to car.
Tracks-overall a solid toy I think. Would I like larger wings? Sure, but considering the 'flight mode' of the G1 toy looked like a silly afterthought anyway, I'm not going to complain. The web feet are only really noticeable if you stare at them, but they serve their purpose-keeping the figure upright. If I have any complaint about this figure, it would be that I wish the arms could shift down a little more at the shoulder. Right now his shoulder joints are almost above the neckline, which bugs me. Shaving off a little plastic should do the trick though.
Of course what really excites me about Tracks is my plan to repaint him into Road Rage-and the inevitable repaint/release from Takara, Hasbro, or FunPub. But until then, the next Tracks I get is slated to go on the slab for the the operation.

Jazz
The first thing I noticed about Jazz is that the boy's got the proportions of a body builder! He completely SHAMES the placeholder Jazz custom I made out of Prowl back in 2008... which by proxy means that he shames Prowl.


Great sculpt, a transformation that takes a little bit of thought, and great poseability. I'm really loving the new open hand design the designers have been implementing. Not everyone needs to be clench-fisted and ready for some fisticuffs.
I am looking forward to seeing this guy repainted into Stepper. Yes indeed.

If your nitpick senses are tingling, it's probably because of what I think is the only noticeable flaw on Jazz. The center strip of plastic that his head rests on rotates up as you move his chest piece down. Unfortunately, there's nothing that pegs into place on the torso or this strip which means the whole setup relies on friction. This could lead to some droopy noggin syndrome down the line as the plastic wears, something that could be avoided if there was a peg or notch that secured the parts into place.
But that's something easy to overlook when you have Jazz in all his robotic glory.


Lugnut.
An amazing leap from Animated to the more modernized Generations look. Though I do have a bit of an issue with his noggin looking like an egg on a stick, I've modified his robot mode a bit to leave more of the canopy leaning forward. It may look silly to some, but I wanted *some* semblance of a thick neck, which is what I always thought Lugnut should have.
I'm looking forward to the more purple-hued TF: United version that's coming out in Japan.

Generations Breakdown

I know Hasbro's giving us all kinds of awesome and amazing things, and I love it.... but...I'm just sayin'... is this too much to ask?


Give us Generations Breakdown dangit!

New Finds

I just found Generations Red Alert and WFC Soundwave at Toys R Us!

I’m not surprised by this, having JUST ordered them both from TFSource because I didn’t think I’d see them until October. Arg. But I did find Banzaitron as well, so that was a neat little surprise. Sadly they won’t be opened until sometime next week after I’m done moving. Then they can join their robotic brethren.

More customs for my Generation 2 shelf

Oops, forgot to post these bad boys.

Combat Convoy!
This actually turned out better than I hoped!

I varied the color placement a bit from my initial digibash (see earlier posts) and kept a little more blue to make him look more like his G2 counterpart.

Decepticon Rage

Leader of the Decepticon Stormtroopers (no, I’m not making that up), Rage is one bad mofo. So bad in fact, he seems to have that Motormaster relationship with his teammates. The funny thing about not only Rage, but his comrades, is that their stats are ridiculously high. Of the four, Rage is technically outranked by two his own troops, and I think all of them have stats that rival Megatron… very interesting. It almost makes me want to see something done with Rage that made him into more of a headliner.

Scram
Scram really seemed the prefect repaint for the Classics Silverstreak mold!

There really wasn’t a whole heck of a lot that needed to go into this aside from laying the base coat, adding lots of blue, silver and orange. The hardest part was laying out those dang pink squiggles! I puzzled over how to create them and wound up just doing it manually. Not as clean as I would have liked, but I’m happy with the way they came out overall.

Generation 2 Ramjet
Way back in 2007, I thought it would be a good idea to try to create my own Dirge and Thrust. Things didn’t turn out too well, so I wound up stuffing the failed attempts in my duplicates bins until I could figure out a worthwhile use. Cue this year’s Botcon theme! Now what was once a failed attempt to create Botcon Thrust is remade into Generation 2 Ramjet! Of course, this will wind up just being a placeholder, as the TF Club announced at Botcon that one of the upcoming club exclusives will be none other than, wait for it, Generation 2 Ramjet. Arg.