[16:25] Manic: ballchin comes to mind

It’s summer, and you know what that means… if you’re an annoying, sociopath of a children’s toy collector. Yes, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen merchandise is leaking into stores, well, the stores who wittingly or unwittingly are breaking Hasbro’s ‘street date’ for the toys. Yes, sometimes even toys have big important street dates, though nobody’s being sued or whatever like with the final Harry Potter book.

So, my store was among one of them, and put out the first wave of Voyagers (the 20 dollar guys) and Leaders (the well, leaders, and other ‘big’ dudes.) They yanked the display today, presumably because Hasbro sent agents armed with guns that fire spring loaded missiles two and a half times the size of the actual gun and painted neon, because god forbid someone be hurt by a lethal weapon. But not before I got my hands on the two pieces from the line I actually give a crap about, and scrutinized the rest of them. So, without further ado:

3/2’s SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER MOVIE TIE-IN-ACTION FIGURE LINE HANDS ON PREVIEW TEASER THING

First, we have the quickie impressions, the ones left behind, now rotting in the back room (as well as plastic rots anyway) of a major retailer.

Ironhide: Straight up repaint of Movie 1’s Ironhide, his black now a medium shade of grey, and an adorable little logo on his door of an Autobot symbol wearing a red beret. Whether you’re in the Special Forces, or need to haul supplies to a Prince concert or pride march, you know you can rely on the giant, robotic GMC Topkick. Topkick, it’s not just for rednecks anymore. He also sports new guns, which are a bit more movie accurate, though I’m not wild about anything that attempts to mold ‘flames’ out of solid plastic. Especially since fire is not normally grey.

Why I’m Skipping It: I already have Premium Ironhide, and the original’s two-guns-into-one-BFG setup is a lot cooler than the truckbed mounted turret they went for in this one. Movie Ironhide is awesome, and black is more awesome than grey, so the decision was easy.

Demolishor: A massive, but underscaled steamshovel, and the first Constructicon to appear in my area. According to his bio, Demolishor rescues poor, lost, smaller Decepticons and takes them back to his ‘village.’ I imagine that’s one of the things that never arises in the film, since the first movie made the bad guys incapable of doing much other than popping up, going BLAH, and getting gruesomely murdered to the cheers of the crowd.  His robot mode is apparently under construction, ironically, since he forgoes legs in favor of kind of a berserk unicycle thing.

Why I’m Skipping Him: He looks like this:

I coulda let this kind of thing slide if he weren’t 1) 20 damn dollars for something that looks like a Mini-Con, and 2) was part of a larger machine, but it’s already been announced that the individual Constructicon toys aren’t going to combine with each other- in other words, they’re not sacrificing something here for engineering’s sake. They actually want him to look like this. Slag.

Voyager Class Optimus Prime: Straight up repaint of the last movie’s figure. Not even a new gun or anything. He’s just a little more roughed up than usual. Same holographic texan in the driver’s seat, same gigantic backpack for those lazy cross country hiking weekends he loves so much.  Faux-outdoorsmanship is the right of all sentient beings.

Why I Skipped It: Transformers collectors frequently shell out dough for various depictions of the same character throughout different continuities. Some even are willing to buy multiple versions of the same toy with slight variations to represent key scenes in a movie. I’m not one of them.

Leader Class Megatron: Hey. Nice. No fake translucent ‘ice’ or inexplicably miscolored horns, no reports on the web of his crucial gimmicks not working (evidentally the first movie’s Megs had problems including the springs for his mace inserted into the wrong arm.) RotF Megatron has put on some bulk and traded in his Pointy Thing alternate form for a tank, which is all well and good except for his face sticking out the front of it, barely if at all disguised. The toy packaging shows the eyes lit up on the tank’s underbelly, though it remains to be seen if the movie rendition’s face will be covered up by armor plating or something, or else he’ll be rolling around talking out of his tank crotch region.

Why I Skipped It: His right arm’s an unposeable BFG, and his left arm is a freak midget birth defect arm. Also, I’m not made of money, and he’s still fugly enough to not be on my MUST HAVE! list. Which, for the record, is pretty short for this movie.

Swag (or I finally had something in my hands before Shortpacked Guy bragged it all over his blag for once. Blog. Bleah.)

RotF Starscream: My friend Re is like, a Starscream enabler. She knows my obsession for the whiny red jet extends to versions of him which aren’t whiny or red, so she got the Fallen version of Screamer. I was expecting a simple arm swap on the chunky first movie figure, but this Starscream was totally re-engineered from the ground up to be closer in line to the CG model. Other than gimpy legs and feet, he’s much sharper looking and proportional. His arms and legs stow together within the fuselage, which sleekens his jet mode to the point that well, he looks like a jet. Unlike the old one, that looked like a jet humping a robot laying on its back. Other than some gaps and his hands sticking out the back of the jet, he’s almost kibble-less. I’m impressed- they took the patently fugly Movieverse and ran with it and it worked.

RotF Leader Optimus Prime- As with Screamer, Optimus has been made more CG-accurate, appearing taller, leaner, and more detailed than the previous movie’s offering, which was already pretty kickass. It’s really almost surreal how close to the technically unachievable virtual Prime he is, so let me state the two bad things and allow you to fill in the blanks with how Fallen Optimus is the second coming of Mecha Jesus.

1) Wonky-ass arms- Prime sports dual heat blades, which is good. Unfortunately, to stow them he also has enormous sheaths on his arms made up of the truck’s hood, that constantly interferes with the plates on the upper arm. It just seems like a letdown how much fiddling it takes to get the blades in a cool position.
2) Complex transformation- Good or bad depending on your mood actually, but this version of Optimus is very intricately designed. In this, I mean his feet alone unspool like an accordian, while his chest unfurls, extends, and tucks itself tightly under the hood formed by the forearms. Even the smokestacks come in two parts that have to line up just so… New Prime is a puzzle, and a rewarding one. I just wish there wasn’t a step that made it feel like you were purposely breaking the damn thing.