Mass Burial: Immortal, Blizzard Beasts

Blizzard Beasts is another somewhat strange entry in the Immortal discography. The follow up to Battles in the North, Blizzard Beasts is an almost identical listening experience that cleans up that maddening issue its predecessor had with just cutting songs off after three minutes. That adds a whole lot to Blizzard Beasts in terms of listenability, but the album suffers from a different issue.

Marvel Legends: Silver Surfer

 

 

Let me tell you a story: once, not that many years ago, there was a young girl who would play with her cousins. One of her cousins had action figures of Spider-man and the Silver Surfer; this little girl always wanted to play with the Silver Surfer, but found perpetual denial, constantly being forced to play with Spider-man instead.

Some years later, Legends Silver Surfer would be released as a Walgreens exclusive, most likely the fairy godmother equivalent in this story, as that very phrase, “Walgreens exclusive,” is still so odd to hear. A man would purchase this Surfer for that young girl, now all grown up, in a gesture so romantic an entire group text worth of friends cheered it, only to have the woman not be that impressed by the figure that was now hers after all those years of wanting. Fortunately for her, she is married to the guy who runs Child Sized Coffin, so nothing went to waste.

Grave Considerations: Does Size Really Matter?

A few days ago I tried to get my thoughts together on this, and failed, producing a rambling and strange thinkpiece on why I keep this blog. In pursuit of a do-over, here’s what I was actually wanting to talk about: the future of my Third Party collecting, in terms of scale.

It seems that the era of 3P figures being essentially Voyager or Masterpiece scaled toys is reaching its end, to be replaced with figures that will either come in the Legends scale (like Iron Factory and DX9 figures) or continue in the Masterpiece scale (which has essentially come to mean Voyager, but there’s a twist). There are issues for me with both of these directions. If the scene goes Legends scaled, it would mean that I’d to some extent be starting my collecting all over again, as the Coffin shelves are very light on figures of that size. If the scene were to go full Masterpiece scale, that would present an issue when it comes to one of my favorite things about Transformers: combiner teams.

Grave Considerations: Where We Are Going, and Where We Have Been

Well, it’s that time of the year again, the ending time, where we sit back after the conclusion of another long and punishing semester and get some well-earned rest. Additionally, with this posting, the Coffin will break its record for number of posts in a calendar year, set just last year. I often do this, but I wanted to take a bit of time and look back at where this year has taken us, and what directions we think we might be going in once 2019 starts up.

Marvel Legends: Mysterio

 

 Illusionist/hypnotist/special effects wiz Mysterio is one of those figures that sent a shiver through the Coffin from first photo reveal to finally having one in-hand, and was highly sought after. Looked for everywhere, and found nowhere, this copy came to me thanks to eBay, and remains the single physical sighting of the figure that I have had. All of that to say that Mysterio here is highly desired and hard to come by, but man, what a cool figure.

MakeToys: MTRM-08 Despotron

G1 Megatron is one of those characters that toys never seem to get quite right. MP-05 was an admirable but flawed effort, and the recent MP-36 is apparently terrific yet fraught with paint issues and fiddly parts. There have been several Third Party attempts as well, of various degrees of success. The Coffin found its Masterpiece-like G1 Megatron in MakeToys’ excellent Despotron.

MakeToys: Quantron

 I have been ranting and raving about Quantron to anyone who will listen to me for the last seven months, so it’s time, as this year winds down and I try to finish half-written articles that have been languishing on my flash drive since the summer, to give this figure some attention.

Mass Burial: Immortal, Battles in the North

The third Immortal album, Battles in the North may contain some of the bands’ best songs in the title track and “Cursed Realms of the Winterdemons,” but it suffers from one incredible and persistent flaw. And no, it’s not the cover photo.

Or any of the terrible photos in the liner notes, either.

Grave Considerations: Final Fantasy XV

Some of this article may be unfair, as I never finished playing Final Fantasy XV, and had only progressed as far as Leviathan. So my understanding and knowledge of the game, as well as, some may say, my ability to really assess it, are admittedly limited. But, I do feel qualified to make some evaluative statements on the game.

Tamashii Nations Movie Realization Series: Taiko Stormtrooper

 

As the end of this year lurches closer, thoughts begin to turn to upcoming figure releases, and it seems that perhaps no other line that the Coffin collects is set to be more prolific in 2019 than this one. A number of Star Wars characters have been revealed, including New Trilogy characters and most recently, a totally cool looking IG-88, as well as some others from the concurrent Marvel line, which is not on my radar, aside from the just-revealed and STUNNING Black Panther. But, there is a backlog of Tamashii Nations Star Wars figures around here, so let’s try to do something about that with this, the taiko drummer Stormtrooper.

Warbotron WB-01E: Fierce Attack

 The final member of the Warbotron team, Fierce Attack is a Third Party Onslaught, and represents somewhat of a mixture of the entire team aesthetic of sticking to the original inspiration, and trying to doing something stylized and different. I’m not sure it’s too successful, but I’m also not sure that it’s Fierce Attack’s fault.

Transformers: Masterpiece Shockwave

 While we try to curb the high levels of various emotions that inevitably swirl in endless maelstrom at the end of another semester, it is only logical that we take time out to talk about Masterpiece Shockwave, or Laserwave, his Japanese name.

But not really. It's Shockwave.

Star Wars: The Black Series Kylos Ren (The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi)

 Here’s an opportunity to get another multiple figures all handled in one article, so let’s take advantage. Let’s take a look at both of the Black Series Kylo Ren figures, one from The Force Awakens, and the other from The Last Jedi.

 By now, we all should know Kylo Ren; and unless we’re just being difficult, we should also all know that he’s a pretty good antagonist for the New Trilogy. He was a whiney emo kid in Episode VII, but in Episode VIII, he’d rounded out into a pretty developed character, and seems to be the actual tortured soul in the Star Wars universe that Anakin Skywalker was meant to be in his extra poor appearances in the heinous Prequel Trilogy. The former Ben Solo, like the other members of the new cast, has gotten a new 6” figure for each movie, and they are two very different figures.

Grave Considerations: MP-44 Optimus Prime (version 3)

This is being written half in laughter, and half in a rage.

Just this week, Takara released images, at first of a grey prototype and then soon after in color, of MP-44, the third verison of Masterpiece Optimus Prime. This time, again, intended to get Prime in scale and aesthetic with the next iteration of the Masterpiece line, the idea is apparently that this Prime looks the most like Prime in the G1 cartoon, so Masterpieces’ next focus is going to be cartoon accuracy over all. The changes, in my opinion, are mostly cosmetic and rather subtle, although if you sift through enough hot takes online you can find people saying that this Prime is vastly different, and generally for the better, than both MP-01 and MP-10. But to find those, you’re going to have to sift through a lot of takes on this Primes’ greatest feature: his absolutely, totally, 100% ludicrous price tag.

Preorders are up across the etail landscape, and the price for this figure is $450 American dollars.

Mass Burial: Immortal, Pure Holocaust

Pure Holocaust is where Immortal really got started. Solid in their version of Norwegian Black Metal and ready to pursue it, Abbath and Daemonez here took full control of their direction and charged forward with confidence and resolve, crafting what is an absolutely criminally underrated album, a crime which besmirches the entire genre. The result is one of the best offerings of the Norwegian scene, a Black Metal classic, and still one of Immortals’ top three records.

Mass Burial: Immortal, Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism

Immortal is a name that is surprisingly polarizing in the Black metal scene. Formed in 1991 as part of the blossoming Second Wave of Black metal, and absolutely one of the Norwegian scenes’ mainstays, Immortal developed its own lyrical direction around fantasy and mythology, somewhat akin to a band like Enslaved, as opposed to religion and Satan, akin to practically everyone else. Immortal’s members also managed to stay relatively out of trouble, putting them on a different plane of ‘realness’ than guys like Vikernes, and then later being viewed by some as something of a novelty, like a band playing Black metal instead of being a Black metal band. I imagine that that concept will be clarified as this Mass Burial rolls onward. Long, long, long a foundational band in the whole Norwegian/90’s Black metal evolution, a deep dive into the Immortal catalogue is certainly a task, the band having ten proper records, one official live record, and then three Immortal-adjacent albums that are mostly Immortal albums released under different names. (see here –mr).

Star Wars: The Black Series Imperial Stormtrooper with Blast Effects (Disney Store exclusive)

That’s an alright title, right? The figure is just called “Imperial Stormtrooper,” so my title should be ok, yeah? Sorry, it’s one of those kinds of mornings here at the Coffin, as the five day Thanksgiving Break enters its final day and we begin to steel ourselves for the last ten days of the Fall semester. Over the last few days I’ve been able to get some more stuff photographed, and thought I’d take advantage of the time between laundry to get something looked at quickly.

And believe me, this will not take long.

Mastermind Creations: Magna

 

 Let’s just be honest here to start this read: Magna is the bottom half of Mastermind Creations’ Magna Inventa, a Third Party SkyLynx. And it is the least part of SkyLynx as well. With that said, Magna is actually a pretty good figure all on its own.

You would be totally forgiven for not being terribly impressed with ol’ Magna here, given what it is: a flat cat that transforms into a shuttle gantry. That’s actually being pretty kind in my description: Magna transforms into a rectangle that has some sculpted details on it. Released as the first part of the eventual SkyLynx, Magna offers a whole lot of good fun packed into its totally unassuming package.

MakeToys MTCM-03E: Sonicdrill

 Again, AGAIN, TFSource is advertising the entire MakeToys Quantron set for super cheap, $110 this time for Black Friday, and AGAIN this set me on a rant in the presence of my poor, beleaguered wife about how excellent a set of figures these guys are, and how everyone should buy them. That made me realize that I hadn’t finished writing them up, and had in fact been neglecting Sonicdrill. So, let’s rectify that, shall we?

Star Wars: The Black Series Imperial Officers

One of the current existential crisis we’ve been going through here at the Coffin is whether or not we’d be able to produce articles on four different Star Wars figures that really only differ from each other in minor ways. The answer was always going to be “no,” but how to proceed was something that took some time to figure out. Ultimately, we decided to just talk about them all at once. So, here are The Black Series Director Orsen Krennic, Grand Moff Tarkin, Admiral Piett, and General Veers.

As a summary, each of these four Imperial Officers have the standard range of Black Series motion, and the standard allotment of joints. They are differentiated only by their heads and accessories. Each of them look as if they just stepped off of the screen, as their sculpts are real clear and accurate. There’s just not a whole lot to say about each of them individually.

TFC Toys: Poseidon

 A full Third Party combiner team reviewed in a single calendar year? Seems kinda amazing, but it’s about to be true. Mentarazor debuted the TFC Toys Seacons back in March, and Thousandkills rounded out the individual figures in August, and after a hiatus, the great god of the seas himself is here in November to finish out the series.  Poseidon is the mammoth combined form of Mentarazor, Cyberjaw, Big Bite, Iron Shell, Deathclaw, and Thousandkills, and it is a combined mode that literally dwarfs other figures.

Star Wars: The Black Series Obi-Wan Kenobi (Force Ghost)

 

Practically the total opposite of the Mimban Stormtrooper, Force Ghost Obi-Wan is an excellently rendered store exclusive. This time native to Walgreens, this figure takes the base Black Series Obi-Wan Kenobi and fancies him up into his Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi look, and the results are excellent.

Star Wars: The Black Series Mimban Stormtrooper (Solo: A Star Wars Story)

 Ha ha! The great Star Wars tradition of making figures of characters who got less than three seconds of screen time strikes again, this time in the form of the ever so briefly depicted Stormtroopers deployed to the muddy surface of Mimban in this springs’ spin off movie, Solo. Even my loving wife couldn’t play along and pretend that she noticed this guy in the movie: when I showed it to her, all she could ask was “who?”

RIP Stan Lee

Grave Considerations: Butters

 

Here’s something a little bit different. Not really a review per say, not a thinkpiece-y entry that the things that usually fall under this category are, but something different. I’m going to review our beloved cat, Butters.

Grave Considerations: TFCon Chicago 2018

This past weekend was TFCon Chicago 2018, the American version of the wildly popular Canadian Transformers fan convention. Havingattended a few years ago, my wife and I went this year as well, and had a great couple of hours. Our first excursion to the convention was one made out of curiosity and marked my initial participation in the Third Party scene; this year, we both returned as grizzled veterans with vaster knowledge and more critical eyes. Let’s take a look back at the afternoon that was, shall we?

FansProject Intimidator: Car Crash

 It’s time to start looking at a new Third Party combiner team, one of two new ones before 2018 comes to a close, in the midst of Warbotron and Quantron and at the end of the Poseidon articles. But, you know, it’s Coffin style to dive in to a new thing when there are still old things in progress. So, let’s look at Car Crash, first of the FansProject Stunticons.

Happy Halloween!

Warbotron WB-01D Whirlwind

In celebration of TFCon Chicago 2018, let’s spend some time with a Third Party Transformer, since we haven’t done that for almost two months at this point. Let’s get back on the Warbotron Wagon and talk about the massive letdown that is Whirlwind.

Tamashii Nations Movie Realization Series: Ronin Boba Fett

 

Super behind on these awesome figures, let’s take a look at one my wife got me for my birthday over the summer: Ronin Boba Fett. As was detailed several months ago with Samurai General Darth Vader, this line of roughly 8” figures takes Star Wars characters and reimagines them in the aesthetic of feudal Japan. Ronin were unattached samurai that traveled around seeking employment, which sounds pretty bounty hunterish to me.

Marvel Legends: Carnage

 Holy shit everyone, work. Work has been such a total pain in the ass these last few weeks. There were such high hopes for posting several articles this month, and they all got ruined by the constant, unrelenting onslaught of work. But, now there’s a quiet moment, fresh off finishing another class of essays (one that I started grading two days ago, and feel like an utter failure for needing two days to complete. –mr) so let’s celebrate that with some time spent on action figures.

Carnage is the super villain persona of serial murderer Cletus Kasady, and is the first symbiotic offspring of Venom. First appearing in the Maximum Carnage arc of The Amazing Spider-man way back in the early 90’s, Carnage has been an occasional Spider-man villain, as well as periodically menacing other Marvel characters, and even on occasion getting his own title. (More on solo comics later, specifically the most recent one, as I’ve got feelings about it.—mr)

Transformers: Masterpiece Sideswipe

Sideswipe is the first of the entries in what could be considered the “modern era” of Masterpiece figures, identified as MP-12. The previous two figures numerically are MP-10 Optimus Prime, a smaller and slightly reengineered MP-01 Optimus Prime, and MP-11 Starscream, a slightly reengineered MP-03 Starscream. Sideswipe is the first in the now-long line of new and unique molds, and would usher in the official brave new Masterpiece world. Like many Masterpiece figures since Sideswipe, this had been on the shopping list for quite a while, but for a variety of reasons both financial and of personal motivation, was never actively sought after. The early 2018 release of Sunstreaker solidified the need for Sideswipe, and a TFSource Summer Sale deal made for a great chance to cross Sideswipe off that list.

SOTA Nightmares of Lovecraft: Dagon

Over a year ago, I posted an article on the Ghoul, the first and least entry in the Nightmares of Lovecraft line by now-defunct State of the Art Toys. Now, in honor of October and Halloween, I thought I’d do some work on some more monstrous figures, and thought Dagon would be a good place to start.

MakeToys MTRM-11 Meteor

It has been mentioned before that MakeToys may be my new favorite Third Party company, and it has been mentioned a number of times that Starscream is my favorite Transformers character. So, how will a MakeToys version of Starscream, that came with a fair amount of hype, fare?

The short answer is “pretty damn well.”

Grave Considerations: Bloodborne

I spent a lot of time this summer playing video games. While this is not an unusual pursuit for me, I feel like I played A LOT of video games this summer. I worked my way through all three games in the Dark Souls series, and the new God of War, which I really, really enjoyed while playing and then promptly forgot about once it was finished. I started Monster Hunter World and Breath of the Wild, the latter of which I’ve really been enjoying, and I also was about halfway through my fourth playthrough of one of the best games I’ve ever played: the Dark Souls-adjacent gothic cosmic horror fest Bloodborne.

Grave Considerations: Upgrading the Collection

Previously on Child Sized Coffin:

                “But now, what does my complete G1 Menasor really mean, seeing as right over there is a modern-age Menasor, and its G2 horror of a paintjob version in my closet? G1 Predaking is among the best of the G1 toys, both as a combiner and as individual members. But what does it really mean, seeing as all five Ares figures are posed on my desk at this very moment? What do I do with my G1 Quake, now that I have a newer, better version, and the original just sits in a plastic box?”  “What Shall We Do With Widows?” Sept. 22, 2017

That previous statement was made in the context of my having found a Titans Return Quake, and reaching an understanding that a G1 Quake may no longer be necessary. I’ve gotten back to thinking about this topic the last few months, largely framed by my thoughts of combining TFC Toys Poseidon for the first time during July. 

Grave Considerations: Windy City Comics

A lifetime ago, I was a high school student in Chicago. Across the street, in a strip mall that generally held no other businesses than an Army recruiting station, was a store front that was a staple of my high school life: Windy City Comics, a comic book store, predictably. Friends and I would spend hours there after school, and it is one of the more important locales of my teenage years and one of the more formative in my life in general.

Marvel Legends: Darkhawk

 Strange to think nowadays, when each Marvel movie breaks box office records set by the previous Marvel movie, but in the early portion of the 1990’s, comics were hitting something of a low point in terms of general public interest. Large, earth-shaking events were happening, new characters were being introduced in runs like Maximum Carnage, and legacy characters from companies like DC and Marvel were being pushed in all kinds of relatively unheard of situations, like The Death of Superman. Publishers like DC and Marvel did what almost always works during times of slumping: they introduced a slew of new characters with their own books and cool, xtreme 90’s appearances. Some of them stuck around, some of them did not. Some of them were kinda dumb, and some were pretty cool. An example of the latter is Darkhawk.

Grave Considerations: I Don’t Know, General Thoughts??

Greetings, Loyal Reader,

Star Wars: The Black Series Imperial Range Trooper (Solo: A Star Wars Story)

 

 Making their debut in this years’ Solo: A Star Wars Story, the Imperial Range Trooper appeared in a bunch of promotional material for the movie and looked like the newly revealed unit would feature in the movie.

LOL.

Star Wars: The Black Series Clone Commander Wolffe

 

 

Yay, another Clone Commander. (seriously. It’s a good thing. –mr) The Clone Wars veteran Wolffe joins Cody, Gree, and Rex in the 6” collection, and like Gree is a store exclusive. This time specific to GameStop, Wolffe is a totally excellent looking figure, and a real welcome addition.

Star Wars: The Black Series 4-LOM

 

“If a character appears on screen it will eventually get a figure” strikes again, as The Black Series wheels out beloved bounty hunter 4-LOM, first, last, and only seen during that one scene on a Star Destroyer in The Empire Strikes Back where Vader has assembled a bunch of bounty hunters to chase after the Millennium Falcon. There is probably some allotment of EU stories for 4-LOM, but they are foreign to me.

Star Wars: The Black Series Gamorrean Guard

 

The 6” Gamorrean Guard is a Target exclusive entry into the Black Series, and is a terrific figure for the cost. Slightly more expensive than a regular Black Series figures, the Gamorrean is big and bulky and solid, and comes with several accessories.

MakeToys MTCM-03D: Overheat

 

Overheat is the MakeToys take on Afterburner, and is, along with Celeritas, the most radical departure from the original G1 Technobots in terms of appearance. Afterburner turns into a futuristic motorcycle, while Overheat transforms into a light bike from Tron. But the alt mode isn’t the only grand departure from the original: the robot mode is also very different looking.

TFC Toys Poseidon: Thousandkills

 

 Thousandkills is the last of the TFC Toys Seacons, and for quite a while was thought to not be a real figure. Most of the promotional images of Poseidon in his combined mode omitted this unofficial Tentakill, and there truly was a sense that this combiner masterpiece would finish without one of its members. Images and teases began appearing, one of which showed a pot on a stove with Thousandkills’ tentacles hanging over the sides. Then Thousandkills was released, Poseidon was complete, and all was well.

Warbotron WB01-C Sly Strike

 

 

It feels like this is written a lot around here, but it’s time to pick up the pace on some figures that have been sitting around, as new things have been coming in, and more new things will be arriving this week and next. So, the backlog needs to be addressed.

Sly Strike is the third member of the Warbotron Bruticus ( feel like it needs a better name. . . –mr) team, an unofficial version of beloved Combaticon Swindle. Like his immediate predecessor Heavy Noisey, Sly Strike is a very realistic, real world-looking vehicle as well as an accurate to the original robot. He’s also probably the best toy in the set, mostly for his competency, and not for any mind blowing or exceptional reasons. He’s great because he’s really basic, essentially, also like Heavy Noisey.

Star Wars: The Black Series Lando Calrissian (The Empire Strikes Back)

 

Quite a while ago now this figure came into my possession; at the time a rare example of actually finding a new figure from a new(ish) Wave in a retail store. Just when Black Series Lando was released as a member of whichever Wave is lost on me. I’m pretty sure Lando was in the Wave after the Revan Wave, the Imperial Guard one, and I think he was included in a Wave after that as well. Whatever; I’d never seen one in a store, and wasn’t enthused enough to buy one online by itself, so I grabbed him. Shortly thereafter, my feelings of wanting to backtrack through Black Series figures I’d skipped began to solidify, and I was glad that I found this Lando when I did.

Star Wars: The Black Series Han Solo (Solo: A Star Wars Story)

 

 The standalone Han Solo movie is reportedly the biggest box office flop in the Star Wars franchise. That is an entirely relative statement, as I’m not sure many people would label $265 million dollars in ticket sales a bad thing. But, the movie had a $400 million budget apparently, so in industry terms, it flopped. There are multiple theories as to why this happened, but as is the case with all things Star Wars these days, only a few of them are rational, while many more are fueled by a truly impotent rage coming from the more delicate corners of the fan community.

MakeToys MTCM-03C: Metalstorm

 

 

Ok, so. It’s been a while since we’ve spent some time on a converting robot action figure, and it feels like that should change.

Metalstorm is the MakeToys Scattershot, the largest figure in their excellent Quantron set. He is by far the largest figure of the team, something which at first makes the other four figures seem much too small, until one looks at it from the G1 perspective, after which point all is just fine. Metalstorm will have a lot of work to do, as he converts from robot to spacecraft to armored spacecraft to armored robot to torso; but not, as the G1 version did, that strange cannon tower, although certainly with enough applied creativity, said additional conversion could be fan moded. Initially, he seems to be the least impressive figure of the five, but given time ends up being really satisfying and fun.

Grave Considerations: TFCon Toronto 2018 and SDCC 2018 Reveals

Hi everyone. I know that this month has been a less than active one around the Coffin, and I don’t really know the reason why. I have been busy with summer classes, and Life has been busy with conventions and new toy reveals and movies and stuff, I just have not been able to find the time or motivation to do much blog-related work. Sure, I have posted a pair of articles this month, and have begun three or four more, but for some unknown reason I’m having a real hard time mustering up the energy to dedicate myself to Coffin business. So I figured I’d take a little time and talk about some toy reveals we’ve gotten this past week, between TFCon Toronto and San Diego Comic Con.

Grave Considerations/Coffin Shaker/Mass Burial: Coal Chamber

This piece sorta just happened out of the blue, inspired by a story I read yesterday online wherein Dez Farfara, vocalist of the generally meh DevilDriver and formerly of the generally rad Coal Chamber, has publicly stated, again, that Coal Chamber is forever broken up, and is not coming back. Apparently, the greater purpose of this interview was to announce that DevilDriver is going to start playing Coal Chamber songs live, which is sort of an interesting possibility, and that this was preceded by another round of Dez calling the old band members and everyone swearing at each other. I kinda just wanted to take a few minutes and talk about this. Part thinkpiece, part album review, part discography dive, it’s hard to really say where this fits, but here it is regardless.

TFC Toys Poseidon: Deathclaw

 It’s time to end the Poseidon hiatus, an unofficial thing that basically happened because I got caught up writing on some other things, but was never intended. Our last entry looked at the really good Iron Shell, and now, it’s time for the best figure in the set (or at least the one that blew my mind all those months ago –mr), Deathclaw, the Nautilator stand-in.

Star Wars: The Black Series Jaina Solo

 

The Star Wars Expanded Universe holds (or ‘held,’ depending on whether or not you allow Disney to control what Star Wars is for you . . . –mr) an enoromous cast of characters, many of whom approach Mary Sue territory pretty quickly. In the times before the New Trilogy brought us the continuing adventures of Luke, Leia, and Han, the EU told us what would happen to them after the events of Return of the Jedi. It turns out that Luke opened a Jedi training school, and Leia and Han had children. You know, before Disney wiped that out and the New Trilogy ignored the lore and did whatever it felt like doing.

Warbotron WB01-B Heavy Noisey

An absolute runaway winner for worst third party figure name, Heavy Noisey is the Warbotron version of Brawl, and is a stunning looking version at that. It’s just, man, that name is so bad.

Heavy Noisey is the slightest of the Warbotron team, establishing early on that it would perpetuate the trend of Brawl being the worst served Combaticon. The Fall of Cybertron line did it; Combiner Wars did it. Now, the third parties are doing it.

Fanshobby Master Builder MB-03B Red Dragon

 Red Dragon is a special version of MB-03 Fei Long, the Fanshobby Masterpiece scaled Doublecross. A general release version of a limited edition figure, Red Dragon is an odd mix up of Beast Wars Transmetal II dragon Megatron, Beast Machines Megatron, and Robots in Disguise/Car Robots Megatron. It's also a special edition figure, a detail which may be hard to determine considering it comes packaged in a literal cardboard box.

Star Wars: The Black Series Chewbacca (Solo: A Star Wars Story)

 

Apparently certified as a flop based on box office returns, this springs’ Solo gives us younger versions of some beloved Star Wars characters, and shows us how they met. Long standing in the EU is the story of how Han and Chewie came to be such a pair, and we get a version of it in the Han origin story. For some reason, Chewbacca was sent to Target as an exclusive while Han and Lando went to general retail, Han at least almost destined to warm the shelves.

Star Wars: The Black Series Grand Admiral Thrawn

 

 Mitth'raw'nuruodo, or Thrawn, is a Chiss who climbs the Imperial ranks, breezing through the various officer levels before eventually becoming the Grand Admiral of the Imperial Navy, taking the reins of a splintered military following the Imperial defeat at Endor. A fan favorite character, the only thing that can be said about his Black Series figure is, “it’s about time.”

Mastermind Creations Airborne Squadron

In 2006, the third party scene was just beginning to turn into blossom into its current form. Around that time, most third party offerings were things like add on sets for official figures. Very slowly, original pieces were beginning to surface from a smattering of ambitious companies, and the modern day market as we know it, consisting of established characters and full toys, as opposed to the more accurate accessories or embellishment kits, was born.

TFC Toys: Hades

Took way too long to get to this, but finally, let’s take a look at the combined form of TFC Toys’ Hades team, the third party version of Victory’s Liokaiser, composed of Rhadamanthus, Thanatos, Cerberus, Aiakos, Minos, and Hypnos.

The Hades figures show a change in the aesthetics of TFC Toys combiners, moving away from the more cartoonish, Armada/Energon/Cybertron look of teams like Hercules and Ares, towards a more realistic vibe, commensurate with lines like Classics or Generations, or whatever they call that general style of official Transformers at any given time, or, dare I say it, even the live action movie toy lines. Alt modes of the Hades squad would fit in with a movieverse collection, but not the robot modes, as Hades’ members robot modes actually make sense and are pleasing visually, unlike the twisted mass of cans and hoses that the live action movie figures peddle.