TFC Toys Hades: Rhadamanthus

 So behind are we here at the Coffin that we still have figures to review that were Christmas gifts. Here we are in August, and finally we’re going to get to a toy that we got in December??? Perhaps more shocking is that parts of my TFCon 2016 haul are still unevaluated. Well, we do have two weeks off between Summer and Fall semesters, so maybe we can close that gap a bit. I also need to hurry up with the Hades figures in general, because thanks to a Big Bad Toy Store sale in June, I’m expecting the last two figures to arrive at my door within the next week or two, so I’ll have the entire set.

Rhadamanthus is the Leozack analog for the TFC Toys Hades team, and oh man is he gorgeous. A really detailed and intricate mold, Rhadamanthus wears the teal and white color scheme of Leozack, and it really does look great. The head sculpt is also terrific, with a lion helmet surrounding a smirking, characterful face. Rhadamanthus is the group leader, as is Leozack, and that comes through in the figure. He looks like the leader of a combiner team, thanks to that face, which oozes confidence and ability.

Coffin Shaker: Katatonia, The Great Cold Distance

If there has been one album that has to this point defined my 2017, it would be Katatonia’s The Great Cold Distance. Another one of those albums that I heard long, long ago and mostly brushed off, something with this album clicked for me early in the year, and has not left me since. Katatonia began life as a doomy Death metal outfit from Sweden, the band morphed over time to a more moody, depressive rock, Gothic metal group, where they’ve done largely excellent work since. 2006 brought this album. I heard it back then and really liked a few of the songs, “My Twin” being the one that I truly remember, but ultimately panned the rest of the album without giving it too much thought.

Years later, in a fairly sullen mood, the wheel of my iPod stopped first on Katatonia, and then on this album. What happened next was really nothing short of magic.

Transformers: Titans Return Kup

 

 By early August, I think I’m about as caught up on Wave 4 of Titans Return as I’m going to be. Classic poor distribution means I’ve seen figures from the wave like three times, and never all at once. I am really starting to worry about what this means for my prospects of ever finding a Misfire and Twintwist from the next wave. But, I did manage to find all three of the original molds from the wave, so let’s look at them, beginning with Kup.

Grave Considerations: Music Hoarding

There has been an issue in my life for the longest of times, and I have tried to parse some sense out of it for years; I’ve never really been successful, or at best, I’ve never found any of my conclusions to be satisfactory in the long run. So, once more we will try it again.

Grave Considerations: Music Out of Time

Confession time: I am a hoarder of music.

It may not be as noticeable as it was back in the yesteryear of physical media, and maybe two years ago my wife and I went full hipster and only bought physical music on vinyl. But this in no way sated my appetite for new music, and I continued with my stockpiling and constant iPod syncing.

But I don’t necessarily want to talk about that terrible, terrible habit of mine today. The hoarding is something that’s gone on for years and years, and I often believe is a part of a larger issue that I’ve never made myself confront.

What I want to talk about here is this strange phenomena that I’ve recently stumbled upon, that I can only seem to name “music out of time.” I am using this to refer to music that was released at some point in the past and was consumed, but for some reason disliked, only to be rediscovered years later and be really enjoyed. I’m not talking about something like “I heard this song once or twice and didn’t like it, but now I do.” I’m talking about “I heard this when it was brand new and didn’t like it, but can’t really say why, but now I do.”

Transformers: Masterpiece Loud Pedal and Road Rage

 

  I’ve gone back and forth about whether or not I was going to write on both of these figures together, or separately. I would like to think that my ultimate decision is obvious now.

Both Loud Pedal and Road Rage are repaints of the Masterpiece Tracks figure, which is an entry in the series that I skipped, and don’t have much of an interest in going back to find. Tracks, while a fine G1 character, never did that much for me, and my Masterpiece buying is pretty much limited to characters I love or figures that I feel I really need to have or find interesting. Not that long ago, I paid some attention to Exhuast, a repaint of a good mold of a character who I’ve no sustained interest in, but as a repaint interested the hell out of me. Tracks had, as many G1 characters did, his one staring episode, and then he’d show up on occasion, as most of the original Autobots did. These two figures are not characters at all, but rather like Exhaust, Masterpiece versions of G1 Tracks variants, neither of which were widely available, or at least, not available in the US. A strange inclusion in a line like Masterpiece, then, these figures that aren’t really characters.

Transformers: Titans Return Octane

 

 

For starters, I understand that copyrighted names are a thing, and that is a legal issue. But there is no way on earth I will refer to this figure by the name on its package, which is a nonsensical “Octone”. This is not a matter of adding the faction prefix, which became a thing during the 2007 live action movie toy line; this is not a kneejerk response to something like “Decepticon Octane”. The box says “Octone,” and we know it’s not a typo but rather what Hasbro named this figure, mainly because of a copyright issue. But I’m not saying “Octone”.