Grave Considerations: Quickly and Angrily, Back to the Transformers Live Action Movies.

A little while back, I wrote a piece on my dislike of thelive action Transformers movies. I wanted to revisit the topic, as I keep boring my wife with a shorter form of the following diatribe. As with most things in life, fans of the Transformers live action movies will point to certain metrics or values as proof of the quality and success of the five movie franchise: elements such as their being financially successful, or enjoyed in markets globally. They will defend the movies’ shortcomings with a set of formulaic yet not untrue qualities, all of which they will claim validate the poor or lacking qualities of the movies.

Transformers: Masterpiece Dirge

At this point, there have been so many Masterpiece Seekers released that it is difficult to find anything to say that could even give the appearance of being new, and the shame of that is that this condition accompanies Dirge, arguably the best looking of the Masterpiece Coneheads. Another repaint of the MP-11 Starscream mold with different wings and a cone head, Dirge, like Ramjet and Thrust, simultaneously offers excitement for being something new and a sense of fatigue and completion, having now finally reached the end (for now . . . ) of the molds’ tenure in the line. No other mold has given as much as this one, from the beginnings of the Masterpiece line until the present day. So, in a way, I’ve come here not to praise Masterpiece Dirge, but to bury him.

Grave Considerations: What Shall We Do With Widows?

I just picked up Titans Return Quake at a Walgreens. Yes, Walgreens. Because distribution for this line in Chicago has turned into absolute garbage. I have actually bought a number of Titans Return figures at Walgreens stores: Quake, Krok, Chromedome, Highbrow, Weirdwolf, and Brainstorm obviously, although that may not count, seeing as Brainstorm was only available at Walgreens. I’ve begun to wonder if I should even keep checking Targets and such for Misfire and Twin Twist. Anyway, that’s not the point of this: driving home after picking up Quake, the only Quake I have ever seen in a store, I got to thinking: with all of the Combiner Wars and Titans Return upgrades of G1 figures, what should I do with the actual G1  versions that I own? Do they still have that much value to me as a collector?

Mass Burial: The Black Dahlia Murder, Unhallowed

I have a friend who loves this band, but they’ve never really made much of an impression on me. In the early 2000s, The Black Dahlia Murder gained attention for being comprised of teenagers and playing what sounded like a fairly competent version of Swedeath, which, during those same early 2000s, was the sexy subgenre of Metal of the day. This was back in the day, those good old days, when a band full of younger people was viewed more often as being the future of a scene, or a sign that the scene was alive and communicating with the younger generation, or that the seeds of the future were beginning to sprout. You know, generally good things, unlike today, where a similar youthful band would be greeted with skepticism or scorn, cast off as sell outs or a corporate creation meant to capitalize and cash in. I heard this album back in the day, and saw the band open for Suffocation in early 2005, but was never all that impressed. My only real memory from the show was that they had to finish their set a song or two early because they had to be on their bus by curfew, because they were all underage at the time. The album never made an impression on me, and I’m not entirely sure why: during those years, Swedish melodeath was all the rage, and the titans of the form at the time (In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, ) were releasing good material; the corpse of At the Gates was still reasonably fresh, or at least, was in that stage of decomposition where mourners had at least seen it, unlike today, when recent album notwithstanding, most people talk about At the Gates as a band they’ve heard, and not one that was active not that long ago.

TFC Toys Ares: Nemean

 

Ares is the TFC Toys version of Predaking and the Predacons. The third G1 combiner from the company, Ares is a five member team, unlike the six members of Hercules. Each figure comes in a fairly standard window box, similar to those of the Hercules team members, and generally shares that Hercules aesthetic of the Cybertron-era of Hasbro figures.

Nemean is team leader and Ares torso third party analog of Razorclaw, named after the famous lion of Greek mythology with the impenetrable flesh that Hercules was tasked with taming. Transforming from robot to lion, Nemean is a lot larger than the other four Ares team members, and provides an interesting evolutionary step between figures that comprise Hercules and Hades, examples of TFC’s early and more modern offerings. There are a number of things to talk about, so where to start.

Star Wars: The Black Series First Order Executioner

  

Force Friday was last Friday, and that means that the official kickoff of new Star Wars merchandise season is upon us. New waves of Black Series figures, new waves of 3.75” figures and vehicles, and all the marvelous The Last Jedi plot details we can glean from them.

FansProject Saurus: Dinosan

 

 Dinosan is actually the very first third party figure I purchased. He is the Ryu-Oh version of Rairyu, or Birdbrain, if you prefer the American Pretender Monsters to the Japanese Dinoforce.

While he was a great introduction to the third party world, Dinosan is a less than great individual figure. He serves as the crotch for the combined Ryu-Oh, and as such, both robot and monster modes suffer a bit. Primarily the robot mode.