Snake-O-Mania

I know this is usually for Transformers related digibashes, but I'm also a fan of Masters of the Universe as well and the most recent Snakemen offerings got my creativity abuzz. I'm awaiting the arrival of my Snakemen two-packs and can't wait to start swapping the heck out of those heads and creating even more snakemen for King Hsss to command! Though there are a ton of common swaps I'm going to do right away (you *have* to plunk a snake head on King Hsss's body and do some Kobra Khan swapping), I'm looking to branch out into a more... unique approach. Attach whatever story you like, Serpent's Ring gone haywire, occult arts manufacturing snake clones, Serpos gone haywire, I don't think it really matters because so many of the Masters and Villains look great when they're sporting scales. Snakemen Digibashes ahoy!

It's funny, even though he doesn't go on sale until next month, I'm already chomping at the bit to get some head swapping and repainting going with him as well.

Beast Saga!

If you've been following my twitter feed, you'll notice that about 45% of my tweets have been me yelling about my excitement for this line. Battle Beasts were a fondly remembered part of my childhood, and though I'm disgusted by the tripe MiniMates is going to force on us with their crippled offerings (what else do you expect from a company that's gone on record as stating the line has nothing to do with the original, they just wanted name recognition), Beast Saga has got the nostalgia center of my brain buzzing and my creative juices flowing.
One order of multiple random crystal figures and various single figures later, and I'm 8 years old again yanking Raioga free of his card bubble with as much enthusiasm as Pirate Lion.

If you're a fan of the Glyos Armorvor figures, know that Beast Saga figures are only a little bit shorter than them, so they display pretty well together.

As expected, I couldn't wait to get some shots of these little guys interacting with Transformers.

They look like they're right at home, whether it be commandeering the Shark Ark...

 ...cruising around my desk on Deep Dive..

...or filling up my desk with nostalgic goodness. 

This isn't to say they aren't without their share of problems.

1.I hate the legs being molded in a squatting position and being so short. I get that it's the style, but some proportionate legs would be a Godsend for these guys. I thought the bodies being designed to accommodate the cubes would cause funky body shapes, but overall it works better than I thought it would-it's just the legs that hurt me to look at. The Elephant is particularly distracting, with his gorilla arms and ultra stumpy legs. Yikes.

2.Since the weapons are made with the same material as the figures but are thin, serious bending and droopage is happening. Not the best choice on Takara's end.

3. The Shields are useless. The plate on a stick design makes them look awkward and weird when being held by the Beasts. a simple 'L' shaped handle would have fixed that and allowed them to hold these like actual shields, but as they are, it looks like they're threatening you with spiky metal pies.

4. This is much more of a personal gripe, but I can't say I'm a big fan of how some of the animal sculpts look a little too much like actual animals. Don't get me wrong, I want the shark to look like a shark and the Elephant to look like an elephant, but I've noticed that some of the Beast Saga figures look like someone grabbed an actual animal and cruelly stuffed them into armor. The original Beastformer line managed to balance realistic sculpts with character, so they looked much more like anthropomorphic characters than Beast Saga guys do.

Regardless of these nitpicks though, I love 'em, and can't wait to see what else we'll be getting in the future. I hope to see some repaints that are pleasant throwbacks to the original series.
Like so:

Torca Time!

"I am able! Just ask Bantor! He was all mandrill until I put a tiger in his tank!"
-Ratchet
Transformers Prime: "Operation Bumblebee - Part 2"

The above quote kicked into overdrive what was for awhile just a passing musing in my head that the Beast Wars Fuzors to be made into classics vehicles.
Not to say this thought is anything new, considering we've already seen Quickstrike pop up in the DOTM line as DarkSteel and SkyShadow in the somewhat under the radar DOTM Powerglide repaint, but now I can't stop digibashing!
First and foremost, my favorite of the Fuzors-Torca!

I've always had a soft spot for these mixed mode Beasties. I was was not a fan of the first season of Beast Wars at all, and only tolerated it towards the end. It was the back of the box previews of the Fuzors and later glimpses of Silverbolt and Quickstrike for the show that really turned me around and made me want to give the show a chance. Despite being thoroughly disgusted by Quickstrike being made into an idiotic cowboy of the flimsiest kind, it didn't keep me from loving the toy. When I saw pics of the upcoming Fuzors, I freaked when I saw Torca-that whale-a-phant would be mine!
Beast Wars has come and gone, but I think the brilliance of the Fuzors' basic designs should be preserved and applied to the current lines. I don't care if you want to call them pre-BW bodies or "Classics" whatever, but these guys were made to be fused (no pun intended) with some Classics molds.

Credit to seibertron.com for the original images.

E-Hobby Shattered Glass Blaster

In light of the most recent teasers about E-Hobby tackling some Shattered Glass VS sets, another digibash! Fingers crossed it's still Music Label Soundwave vs Device Label Blaster-for the sake of some kind of scale correctness in our Classics displays. ML Soundwave was the base for FunPub's SG Soundwave's color scheme, so I'd be fine if he either remained as he is in the white deco or tweaked slightly. The main focus for me is SG Blaster, who I'd really like to see created from Device Label Blaster.

I think it works quite well, no?
(Credit for base image goes to seibertron.com)

*UPDATE* a poster on TFW2005.com pointed out that the E-Hobby promotion is just going to be a comic. Suck. Oh well, I had fun digibashing this anyway.

*UPDATE PART 2* Hydra, a poster on TF boards who actually works for eHobby, has stated that these will not only have toy releases, but will be using the G1 molds. I'm glad these will be seeing plastic form, but a little sad that they're not going with the Music and Device label versions. Hydra did hint that eHobby is looking to start branching out to different molds besides the G1 releases, so fingers crossed for some Classics/Generations goodies in the near future!

SlipStream Slip-up

Earlier today the TFCC (Transformers Collectors Club) posted this picture of the upcoming Subscription figure Slipstream. The helmet's looking pretty neat, but the face... not so much.
Bad lighting is blamed for the way it looks. I say the lighting may be obscuring some of the finer details, but I doubt they're hiding what look like very obvious flaws in the general sculpt. I did a quick and dirty digibash doing some nips and tucks that I think would have helped make this seem a little more SlipStream-ish.
 
Of most importance to me was shaving that chin. Yikes, one of Slipstream's defining characteristics was that she didn't have anywhere near the banana stretch of chin her male counterparts did. Just by shearing some of that away I think makes a whole world of difference for her. Secondly: lips. A new fully lit picture of Slipstream popped up on the TFCC's facebook page but was immediately pulled. Though I like the way they've laid put the colors on the TF:Prime Starscream mold. That head is still killing me. Also, it appears she has green lipstick instead of purple. Why is this? You got me, hopefully they'll opt to change that to purple or black. It's not helping that the lips themselves appear to be very badly sculpted. On a character that has a simpler aesthetic like Animated, I think it would have behooved the sculptors to make it a point to get those spot on since it's one of her defining features. Fingers crossed this gets a final sculpting go round before they proceed to mass production.

They've recently posted a new pic on their Facebook page and I see that the green lipstick has been photoshopped to Black, but still hope they tweak the face just a bit more.

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.)