FansProject Intimidator: Down Force

Apparently, Down Force is the second member of the Intimidator group to be released, not Last Chance, to correct a previous mistake. No matter; regardless of release order, Down Force is the FansProject stand-in for Dragstrip, the loveable psychotic six-wheeled race car member of the Stunticons.

Ju-Jiang Jet Commander JJ-02B: Jet Harrier

Jet Harrier, or “Harrier,” as he will be known hereafter, is the second member of the “Third Party”/upsized KO Combiner Wars Aerialbot team, known as Slingshot or “Quickslinger” in Hasbro parlance, and the first of the limb figures of the set. Roughly Masterpiece size, Harrier is the same height as MP Sideswipe.

Unique Toys Ordin: O-01 Troll

 Back in October, I had decided that my TFCon 2018 hunt list would include members of the Unique Toys Abominus team, named Ordin. Mere days before the convention, I found and won an eBay auction for the entire set. So, that was pretty easy. Let’s take a look at the first figure in the set, Troll, a Third Party version of Terrorcon Blot.

Viewing Hours: Bumblebee (2018)

To say that I have a complicated relationship with the live-action Transformers movies would be something of an understatement. Quite literally exploding on to the scene in 2007, the movies started out acceptably before taking a very sharp, very fast nose dive into the trash, culminating, for now, kind of, with 2017’s abysmal The Last Knight, a movie that took an already exceptionally loose narrative and tossed it on top of some totally nonsensical pabulum, creating a movie that I honestly do hate. Bumblebee is the first spin off/reboot/recalibration for the franchise, depending on what Hasbro is thinking this week, and in full disclosure, I had no interest in seeing it at all. I know, as my wife will be quick to point out, that I’ve said that about the last three live action movies, and yet we have seen them all, The Last Knight at my wife’s urgings, as it was a summer afternoon and we had nothing else to do. How does Bumblebee fair? I guess the first main difference is that we saw it on a winter afternoon where we had nothing else to do.

Perfect Effect: Beast Gorira

 

This figure represents a couple of Coffin firsts. It is the first figure from Perfect Effect that we’ve ever looked at; and, it is the first Third Party Beast * era figure to make its way into the Coffin collection. And let me tell you, it’s just a prime example of how good such a piece can be.

Beast Gorira is a pretty gigantic Third Party version of Optimal Optimus, or Transmetal II Optimus Primal, from beloved Transformers series Beast Wars. An updated official figure for the character was released in the Power of the Primes line last year, but even photos of that toy prove that it can’t compete with this. Beast Gorira is exceptionally screen accurate, and is also very accurate to the original Hasbro toy from the late 90’s, as well. A quad changer, the figure can convert between robot, gorilla, car/tank/truck thing, and jet-type vehicle. It comes with one accessory, a nicely molded and painted blaster, and has no other removable parts, which basically means that it lacks the missiles and removable forearm armor that the Hasbro original has. That is absolutely fine, as 3P figures rarely come with missiles and the arm armor was basically just partsforming kibble anyway.

Transformers: Masterpiece MP-17+ Prowl (Anime Colors)

 

Long, long ago, we covered Masterpiece Bluestreak, then a Toys R Us exclusive in the US. That figure was a repaint of Masterpiece Prowl, who recently received the Takara Cartoon Accurate repaint itself, and is here rereleased as MP-17+, another in a growing sequence of Masterpiece figures getting a touch up, conceivably so as to allow them to mesh with the new direction of the line being more cartoon accurate without needing to be redesigned.

MakeToys: MTRM-12 Skycrow and MTRM-13 Lightning

 

The second and third of the MakeToys Seekers, Skycrow is a straight up black and purple repaint of the excellent Meteor, and Lightning is a light blue version of the same. You know who they are supposed to be.

MakeToys: Wrestle

 MakeToys has slowly but steadily become a real Coffin favorite company, thanks to fantastic figures like Contact Shot, Quantron, Despotron and others, and as a result have earned a place on the permanent shopping list around these parts. TFCon 2018 offered a chance at Wrestle, a Masterpiece Grapple-alike, and thus it was added to the collection. 

Ju-Jiang Jet Commander JJ-02A: Jet Concorde

 Preface: I’m super excited to talk about these figures.

This is going to be the first entry on a real exciting batch of figures, the oversized Combiner Wars Aerialbot KOs from Ju-Jiang, a (sorta) Third Party company that makes upsized knock off versions of official Hasbro Transformers. My overall knowledge of the company is very limited, but up for review here is Jet Concorde, the upsized version of Combiner Wars Voyager Silverbolt, Aerialbot commander and eventual Superion torso. But to call these KOs and leave it at that would do a massive disservice to the figures themselves, as they are so, so much more than KOs and, as we’ll see as we progress through the set, are in many facets greatly improved versions of their original inspirations.

Iron Factory: Tyrant’s Wings Amethyst

 A few weeks ago there was a huge reveal of future Iron Factory releases, and once again, they seemed to catch some part of my interest in a way that probably does need to be addressed. Sure, I’ve pondered changing collection gears to more of these Legends scaled figures, already owning a couple and honestly liking pretty much every one that I see. But we’ve talked about this before, you and I, and something about making such a huge (lol) shift in my collecting slightly frightens me; I don’t want to add another line, for lack of a better word here, to my shopping list, but I am growing more and more of an interest in these figures. This is certain to be a thing that will drag out for quite some time until it is finally resolved, and in the meantime, here’s Iron Factory’s Amethyst, a purple repaint of Clone, which is itself a repaint of their Starscream.

FansProject Intimidator: Last Chance

Last Chance is the second installment in the very first set of Third Party Stunticons, now that apparently they and their Aerialbot nemesis are the hot 3P focus, and is the Dead End stand in. We covered the basics of this figure, in terms of size and build and all of that, a few months back with Car Crash, before shelving the set until the new year in order to try and finish off a bunch of other Coffin articles.

Last Chance, right away, is a gorgeous figure, with that Dead End maroon color just bursting out at you. The robot mode is very interesting, unconventional in places, and it and vehicle mode are nicely stylized in a way that makes the Intimidator team similar to the Warbotron team in that three of the figures are realistic and accurate, while the other two take some risks and wind up being cooler for it. The transformation is real simple, not unusual for a figure of this size, or from this particular set of figures.

Warbotron: Warbotron

Happy New Year everyone, and here’s to the hopes that 2019 will be a good, healthy, stable year for all of us. Let’s start the Coffin’s New Year with a real challenging question, that being what the combined mode of the Warbotron Combaticons is called? We’re going to go with “Warbotron,” as it sounds good and sensible, but really, you could most likely call this monstrosity anything you like.

And I meant ‘monstrosity’ in a good way.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.