Monday's on it (and is an asshole)

It's time to start another week of robots, monsters, and misadventure Zone Base readers. I had a great weekend and hope you did too! I spent Saturday with the Mrs enjoying Valentines Day. We did some shopping and enjoyed dinner at Outback Steakhouse (despite one long ass wait). Later that night, I enjoyed more episodes of Kamen Rider Zezt. Sunday we spent the day at home with some fun TV. The Mrs made us a wonderful barbecue dinner that I plan on enjoying leftovers from today. Mom came over and we watched The Super Mario Brothers movie with that excellent food. I built several Blokees, including assembling Defender Version Bruticus. We'll be talking about that in an upcoming post. 

Like many of you, I enjoyed the news from New York Toy Fair 2026. There was SEVERAL exciting products shown off and frankly, I'm excitied. All along the kaiju front was looks at the upcoming Power Rangers x Godzilla figures from Playmates that I'm literally salivating over. In addition, TMNT x Godzilla's second wave was shown off. This is something I've been actually pretty anxious about. I've got the first wave, which does not include Donatello... leaving me feeling a little uneasy. Thankfully Donny is in wave 2 alongside Shredder and Splinter. I plan on covering the series soon after we spend a few Wednesdays finishing up another set started a few months ago. Speaking of Godzilla,  it looks like Godziban will be getting a US release and I about crapped my pants. This is awesome! Speaking of Power Rangers, the Re-Ignition series will also get a version of the Thunder Megazord that I'm looking forward to. There was more looks at the upcoming MOTU movie toys and I'm really excited for the core class toys. Sure, I'll get some Chronicles... but those core class figures look great. 

As far as Transformers go, several were shown off with Studio Series 86 getting more exciting toys to go along with this years 40th anniversary of the 1986 movie. I'm hoping for theatrical showings of the movie this year similar to the Transformers 40th Anniversary Theatrical Event in 2024, I really enjoyed that. Of course Blokees and Yolopark showed off upcoming kits, I'm STOKED for Wheels wave 2. I've been really enjoying building wave 1 and we'll start looking at them soon. Most exciting was the showing of new Cyberworld toys. Outright blowing the prior toys out of the water with exciting and imaginative designs, you can be sure I'll be all over these and covering them here. So far we've covered the complete line here on Zone Base and that's something I plan to continue. The pirate ship Scourge and sea creature Soundwave look amazing and I am VERY excited for more of this awesome and fun Transformers series. 

There was several more cool toys shown off, but that's what's filling my mind as I write this on my tablet while watching a video on Space Godzilla. I got some cool toys this weekend too. While at Five Below, I picked up a new Mutant Monsters ball. There's a few more that so far have only have appeared at Five Below and this was the first time I've seen any. When I get the rest, we'll continue our look at those. I also got a fun pack of Transformers pencils at Five Below that I'll likely never use... but had to have. The newer Authentics were there, but I didn't get them. Maybe one day. Walmart had Quintus Prime and Amalgamous Prime whom I gladly bought. This leaves only Alpha Trion missing in my quest to get all of the Primes in the Age of the Primes line. I left Wreck-Gar behind, though I'll likely get him later. Generations Transformers prices are too high for me to buy that many at once in good conscience. Definitely acquiring them at a slower pace.

Sunday I ordered the Mrs and myself Happy Meals for a quick lunch and got two more Changeables. Unfortunately they were both FR-13S, whom I now have 4 of (dammit). Neatly enough, they came with sticker sheets! So far I haven't gotten any stickers with the new Changeables,  so that was neat. Also we normally get extra fries instead of the apple slices. But since my local McDonald's is a dumpster fire and has a mission statement to screw up every order, every time, we got the apple slices (and a refund... I'm starting to wonder how much money Door Dash makes as they literally refund every order we make). However... the apple slices came in Changeables baggies! Neat! I'll definitely be making some Instagram stories with those when enjoying them as a snack later. 

Well, it's time to get this week started. Household chores and toy picks for upcoming posts need to be done. Thank you all for reading Zone Base. It's extremely flattering to see the thousands of you coming out every day and reading. Please don't forget to share the site with your friends and be excellent to each other!

Get in the damn robot!

Rescue Bot Heatwave [Age of the Primes/Voyager Class]

In Generations, there’s been an attempt to take Transformers from various series and essentially give them a more traditional-looking bot design. Rescue Bots, being a show aimed at preschool-aged kids, originally had some extremely cute and chonky toys—perfectly sized for small hands. Well, just like Chase and Medix (I’ll eventually make a post about him), Heatwave has now found himself worked into mainline Transformers.

Heatwave is one of the more popular Rescue Bots, and he’s popped up in various other Transformers media over the years. I’m particularly fond of his role in Transformers Angry Birds… I really liked that game. I even won a Halloween tournament in it one night while watching a marathon of the various versions of Disney’s Halloween Treat and handing out candy to kids. Good times.

This new figure of Heatwave is pretty great, and it does something I’ve wanted for a few years now. You see, it’s a retool of the Legacy Bulkhead mold from a few years back. That Bulkhead was one of the first examples of characters from series with very specific visual aesthetics being given a more traditional Generations look. I really liked that Bulkhead (don’t think I ever covered him here), and I kept hoping they’d use that mold for other truck-based characters. It just felt like a good, big, utilitarian truck-guy base. I didn’t anticipate Heatwave being made from it, since the previous reuses were all characters from the same Prime series Bulkhead came from-but honestly, it’s perfect for Heatwave.

Now… when Heatwave was first introduced in Rescue Bots, I was a little sad they didn’t call him Rescue Roy. Rescue Roy was another toy aimed at younger kids from the early 2000s that I missed out on due to making “responsible financial decisions” (dammit) and focusing my Transformers budget on Robots in Disguise (2001). Heatwave always kind of looked like Rescue Roy to me, and in this toy that resemblance is even stronger. In a lot of ways, this feels like my spiritual Rescue Roy.

That aside, on its own this is just a really cool Transformers toy. The base mold is pleasantly big and chonky. With the new parts, what was once a military truck is now a genuinely solid fire truck. All of Heatwave’s signature visual cues carry over nicely, resulting in a figure that could almost fool someone into thinking it was an all-new mold.

Heatwave is nicely articulated and transforms fairly easily. There are a few fiddly bits that took me a little extra effort, but nothing major. Thankfully, he’s not one of those Transformers with Lament Configuration–level transformations. I’m pretty sure I summoned the Cenobites more than once during the Revenge of the Fallen toy line. For me, the sticking points were getting the arms to fold correctly into the cab and lining up the legs just right. If you get it wrong, the truck ends up uneven—like the remains after Wile E. Coyote dropped a boulder on it.

There’s a new ladder piece that looks great, but it does need to be removed during transformation. It pegs nicely onto Heatwave’s back in robot mode and attaches to the back of the truck in vehicle mode a bit differently. It looks like it should just rearrange from its backpack position, and technically it can, but it’s not quite an exact fit.

I don’t remember this being an issue with Bulkhead, but it’s very easy to accidentally remove Heatwave’s arms. They’re on simple shoulder pegs, and it’s surprisingly easy to slide them off while transforming, so just be mindful of that. He comes with some neat new weapons too: a water cannon and his Energize Energy Axe, both cast in a really nice translucent blue. I like translucent colors—they just look good. Both weapons can store on the sides of the vehicle mode, which is something I usually appreciate. Not all the time, but there’s just something about a vehicle covered in gear… you know?

It’s actually kind of remarkable how closely the vehicle mode resembles Heatwave’s Rescue Bots alt mode. I’d almost swear this was planned during Bulkhead’s original design process—but even if it wasn’t, it’s really well done. I was genuinely happy to unwrap Heatwave on Christmas morning as one of the presents from the Mrs. He’s a fun, well-executed Transformer, and if you didn’t know better, you’d swear he was an original mold—which says a lot, considering how noticeable retools usually are.

There’s just something deeply satisfying about a big, chonky robot fire truck.

SEGA GENESIS w/Sonic The Hedgehog (Part 1) [Console Heroes/SEGA Genesis]

Our look at the Console Heroes SEGA Genesis line is winding down… but it’s going out with a bang. The final set in the initial series is a BIG box absolutely packed with Genesis goodies. The SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive console itself is here-because of course you need a console to play all these great games-and just like consoles back in the day, it comes with a game!

Since this set is pretty big, I’m splitting it into two parts: this week and next week. We’re starting with the game most people remember coming with their Genesis. I know, I know-some of you got Altered Beast or Streets of Rage… but work with me here-Sonic the Hedgehog. There’s a reason I went a little out of order with the Sonic games.

As you’d expect by now, Sonic in cartridge form is a well-done (and slightly larger) replica of the original cart, complete with reproduced artwork. When opened, it reveals a nicely sculpted recreation of one of the game’s subterranean sections. You’ll have to pardon my brain fart on exactly which specific zone it’s meant to represent. There are some great vines and little spikes included that decorate the background and complete the look. No matter how many Sonic games I play, those damn spikes still get me.

Figure-wise, we get a repeat of the Sonic figure from the Sonic 2 cartridge, which at this point feels fair-and frankly, justified. There’s also one of those clear rod doohickeys… do those even have an official name? The clear rod doohickey is used to suspend the also-included Dr. Robotnik/Eggman in midair as he flies around in his signature Eggmobile. I completely geeked out over this figure, because I’ve always loved the image of Robotnik swooping in at the end of a level in his little pod.

All told, this is a great little diorama that pairs perfectly with the big tamale playset diorama we’ll be getting to next week. It’s been a blast covering this series, and our final item-at least until they hopefully make more-is going to end things with style. The Genesis “Supervillain Bundle” is truly something to behold. Make sure to come back next week for part two of Blast Processing!