Botcon Digibash: Combat Hero Prime

There was also an unreleased variant of Hero Prime that was just blue, black and red.


Personally I loved the way it looked, so I decided to throw him into the mix as well.




His story? I dunno, maybe he was charged with the task of tracking down and putting a stop the murderous actions of General Convoy and Sgt. Hound.
Anyway, I know, I know, too many Primes! Not to worry, I’ve got some other ideas coming down the pike. Now that I’m actually registered for Botcon my creative juices are flowing big time.

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

Botcon is in the air

Botcon is getting closer, you can tell from all the interweb buzzings of "This is AWESOME!" and "That's HIDEOUS!" as FunPub begins unveiling the upcoming Botcon exclusives.

For the last few years, I've enjoyed making my own customs to fill out my Botcon ranks depending on whatever the theme happens to be. For '07's more 'Classicsverse' focused bunch, I made a custom Skullcruncher, Apeface, and Snapdragon to join the Botcon Weirdwolf. A Shattered Glass Galvatron leads my '08 'Heroic Decepticons,' and the '09 Wings of Honor set grew a bit with a custom Boss and Snare.

This year the announced theme has been Generation 2. It's as good as any, a niche corner of the TF Universe that collectors love that also have a slim to none chance of being released at retail. We've seen Pyro on the TFCC club's page, so now my head's been racing to figure out which character from G2 would make for an interesting custom. I am, of course going to aim a little outside the box for my first few, just to ensure there's little chance for an overlap.

First up:

I stumbled across these guys on the TF wiki. Apparently in the '95 Sears catalogue, there was a picture of some Unreleased prototypes, including recolored autorollers made into characters that were going to be called General Optimus Prime and Sgt. Hound. I LIKE that idea a lot.


I figured General Prime would work well as Classics Onslaught with some chamo and a new head.
Sgt. Hound? Recolor classics Hound, white with gray chamo, new head. Ravage could just be Ravage carried over from G1.


Maybe change Ravage's eyes to a different color and have the story be something like:
The Decepticons have only heard whispers of the name General Prime and his right hand, Sgt. Hound. In truth they have no idea what the duo look like, because when a Decepticon does see them, it means he's seconds away from being killed.
The Autobots don't know who the duo answer to, and with each unspeakable act of violence, the Autobots begin to wonder if they answer to anyone at all.


General Prime:
General Prime has been immersed in the Great War for so long he rarely acknowledges that there are even sides anymore. His focus has become more about ending the war, with little regard as to which side deserves to win. Though he has stated that his allegiance is with the Autobots, many of them wonder… if it meant bringing the war to an end, would he turn his fury upon them?

Sgt. Hound:
"Sgt. Hound is a relentless tracker and an unrelenting warrior. His loyalty to General Prime is topped only by his eagerness to inflict unnecessary damage upon anyone who refuses to cooperate.
He takes great pride in Ravage, whom he captured and reprogrammed to obey his commands. Ravage, though forced to follow Sgt. Hound's orders, has never stopped trying to figure how to override his captor's program. He dreams of the day he can break free of Sgt. Hound's control so he can exact revenge and return to his true master."

I’ve been eyeballing a few other characters within G2 that I think would be a nice addition to the Botcon set; I’ll post more digibashes as they’re completed.

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

Shattered Glass Galvatron

The latest exclusive Trasnformer being offered by FunPub is Shattered Glass Cyclonus. Not bad, I'll be getting him, but I would LOVE to have seen Shattered Glass Galvatron offered. Aside from SG Prime, Soundwave, and Omega Doom, this version of Galvatron has been the only member of the SG universe that made me do a double take. Pete Sinclair's posted on one of the TF message boards that there was a larger figure they wanted to offer, but Hasbro put the kibosh on the idea. I'm all but convinced it was supposed to be SG Galvatron, considering his bio was in the latest issue of the magazine, one that concluded the storyline. Considering they already made Megatron's SG form for Botcon, it would make a lot of sense to round out the line with his ressurrection as SG Galvatron.
So, to fix this travesty of justice (as much as one who's not working for Hasbro or FunPub can) I customized one of my own. Should one of a more official nature appear sometime down the road, I'll be more than happy to toss mine aside. But until then:







If you'd like to see larger versions of these pics, I also have a thread in the Radicons section of the TFW2005 messageboards.

That's just Super Couper

By now I'm sure you've seen the pictures of Toy Fair 2010 showing off some of the upcoming Transformers, including a new Scout named Hubcap. Pretty neat, a little couper.

Know what else would be neat? I'll be shocked if they don't repaint that little guy into a certain Guardian named Super Couper.

They've already hit Crasher, Dart, and Spoons, why not keep the streak alive? C'mon Hasbro, you know you want to!


Super Couper Gobot images taken from Counter-X, one of THE best GoBot sites I've ever seen.

Overloaded

Remember Overload?

He was a nifty little MicroMaster with a minibase.

He was also in Armada.

How can you deny that's little Overload toting around a big 'ole box of destruction?

And yes, the name was applied to a Green Universe Scattorshot repaint... which should have been called Flak.. but that was used for the Botcon repaint... ugh, anyway...

I'd love to see Overload pulled into the Classics-verse line in yet another Two-Pack idea. With Hasbro's trend of scaling up Minibots (i.e Countdown, Movie repainted yellow Mudflap, who's a dead ringer for the Micromaster Erector) I think it'd be pretty neat.

Real quick...

The eHobby Skids and Screech exclusives...
This is what we got:


























 
This is what I wanted:

Bought some lime spraypaint yesterday >:)
Dammit eHobby, you could have saved me some time and effort if you'd have just repainted the Classics mold! Oh, and you would have been guaranteed my moolah.

Edit: My God, why is it a battle to insert images and text in Blogger without it freaking out and shifting things all over the place? I shouldn't have to type in direct html to make sure the damn thing doesn't spaz out. Too bad, I'm not in a rush to move this back to Livejournal, but at least their setup doesn't punish you for wanting to post pictures. Arg.

Cy-Kill

So... Cy-Kill.
Why exactly does the majority of people I see mentioning him have an unhealthy need for him to be a motorcycle?  Notice how Megatron doesn't have to be a hand-held weapon anymore? He's a tank, a car, a dragon, a giant hand, a jet, a chopper, a pile of plastic, a flying tank... I'm trying to figure out how he's avoided being a horse-drawn carriage... But you get my point, if Megatron doesn't have to be a pistol anymore, why should Cy-Kill have to be a motorcycle?

Okay, the whole Cy-Kill being a play on Cycle, I get it, but is it possible to move beyond that? I'd love it if that happened. Would it kill anyone to spell it PsyKill? SyKill? Or heck, even if it remains Cy-Kill I'm willing to accept the fact that if Bumblebee doesn't have to be a VW Bug or an actual bee, then I'd be fine with Cy-Kill upgraded into a vehicle that the engineers can successfully turn into a robot that doesn't look ridiculous.
But I know change stirs some of the most unpleasant things in some people, so for this update, I used Dark Crumplezone to ease the conversion. I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this mold, it's great! It's got the perfect three wheeled vehicle alt mode so people can still cling to the 'cycle' aspect of Cy-Kill for just a bit longer, and the beefy body I think suits Cy-Kill perfectly. Even though (as far as I'm concerned) Cy-Kill was more of a schemer, I always thought that he would be absolutely elated to be in a larger, bulkier body to match the power he possessed.

For this, I swapped the head out for Astrotrain and did some tweaking. I do like Astrotrain's general look, but unfortunately the actual toy head is a little too small to look like it belongs on Dark Crumplezone's body. I had to scale it up for this digibash. I also kinf of like a simple recolor of Dark Crumplezone's face if you wanted to go for a Cy-Kill that was a little more savage.

I can't stand seeing Oil Slick repainted into Cy-Kill. I guess if you need him to be a motorcycle it's okay, I just hope above hope that Hasbro never decides to go in that direction. Besides, if anyone from Animated resembled Cy-Kill, it's Lockdown.
In my personal collection, I like using Lockdown as a stand-in for an advanced, updated Cy-Kill until I can get my hands on the movieverse version.
I know, WTF? Right? he's like, a car and stuff and junk!
Hear me out. Take a look at the color scheme that was originally intended for Cy-Kill (the Red, white and blue we got was only used because the recolor didn't reach the animators in time, the same reason Leader-1 is gray and not blue like his recolor), and look at how similar they are. Now look at the face and the distinctive wraparound chin strap.

By tinting the face and head gem, Lockdown becomes a pretty convincing Cy-Kill upgrade right down to the body proportions and color layout. Lockdown does sport a little more black, but I like that. Him being a muscle car that looks like it smashed out of a Mad Max film just makes it that much more of a perfect evolution of Cy-Kill.
Now granted, he is a bit gangly, and I do like the bulkier Dark Crumplezone, but I think Lockdown's appearance still exudes power. He still works great as an upgrade for Cy-Kill and fits right in with the updated Crasher/Fracture, Dart, Spoons and BugBite.

Disagree if you like, but I think it would be fantastic to see a little more thought be given to the leader of the Renegades. Would it really be such a bad thing for Cy-Kill to progress and evolve past the whole motorcycle bit and branch out into more accommodating modes? I certainly don't think so.