Pretty Mayhem 5- A New Beginning

 

From Memorial Day to Independence Day is fireworks season here in the States. It's a highly dangerous yet beautiful way to celebrate during the summer. Another festive yet scary summer tradition is the big budget summer movie. Which aside from Bumblebee, is the live action Transformers movies. With them is our last look at sparking Transformers toys. This time though, there's no monsters to be found. Instead another scary summer movie tradition, dinosaurs! In 2014 Age of Extinction brought us the live action movie's version of the Dinobots and a slew of toys with it. 

Being a big budget movie with a bunch of toys and merchandise is a different animal all together than the standard Transformers toy line. There tends to be more odd gimmicky simple toys out in force than usual. The Dino Sparkers are exactly just that! Translucent versions of Dinobots rode by figurines of Autobot characters. Pulling the toys back on a solid surface will make them roll toward and fire sparks! The character selection was- Optimus Prime and Grimlock, Bumblebee and Strafe, Drift and Slug. There was allegedly Lockdown with Wolf listed at one point, but nothing ever came of that. I wish there was more to say about these toys, but they 100% were what they were. I had a good time with this movie line with the various Dinobots and then new One Step Changers. It was a fun summer of chasing down neat toys. 

And that brings our look at sparking Transformers to a close. Summer is a Spooky Season, partially due to the various dangers that lurk between all the fun in the sun. We've got another month of Spooky Summer to go before Halloween starts... but as of this weekend, firework season is over. It's Independence Day and another long holiday weekend. I certainly need the break and will be enjoying napping between grilling. Regular posting will resume Tuesday as I'll be taking Monday off. Thanks everyone for reading Zone Base and please don't forget to share with your friends!

Pretty Mayhem 4 -The Spark Master

 

Summer fireworks season is still going on and with it our look at monster sparking Transformers. This week, we're taking a look at some monsters who aren't here to hurt you... unless you're a Decepticon. The Monsterbots! The Monsterbots are Autobots who turn into big scary fire breathing monsters. Released in 1987, these are some seriously cool toys. In Headmasters, they're mainly stationed on Planet Beast helping the Beastformers.

In more recent times they got new updated toys. Now with with the Titanmaster and Primemaster gimmicks that are modern updates of Headmasters and Powermasters, they fit more into the timeline that they were introduced in. Some of the Titanmasters are Beastformers even! Repugnus seemingly gets the most new toys over the years (it's impossible to ignore his excellent Cyberverse figure). However Doublecross/Twinferno has been getting some extra attention in more recent years. 

Summer is a fun time that can also be pretty scary sometimes. We've got one more look at sparking Transformers until the fireworks season is over. But don't worry, Spooky Summer won't be over for a while and we've got some more scary themed Transformers to help with the creepiness of the season. After all, we're getting into ghost story time.

Pretty Mayhem DASH'

 

Somewhere between the running in the sun, shooting fireworks, and pool parties is some unfortunate tragedies. Summer is fun... and scary. Continuing our ongoing look at fireworks and monster Transformers this week is Sparkdash. Those lovable Firecons and Sparkabots we've been talking about also were featured in the Japanese Transformers in Masterforce. The Decepticon Sparkdash were drone foot soldiers similar to the Seacons in this series. The Autobot Sparkdash were toy only, not appearing in cartoon or manga. 

Unlike the G2 versions, the full teams were released in different colors (some characters more than others) and with different names. The Firecons are the only Sparkdash to appear in the fiction. Manga was of course black and white, but on the cartoon, they had the same colors as the Hasbro versions and not their Takara toys. Like other toys of the time, the Masterforce releases came out around the same time as the G1 versions. All the neat monsters in Masterforce help add to it's more unique spot in Transformers history. It's got more in common with more traditional super robot or tokusatsu productions. All those scary monsters  and fireworks sure make for a fun and spooky summer.

Pretty Mayhem Redux

 

To be completely honest, I've always associated bright neon colors with summer. Probably from various water gun fights, pool floats, and various summer time stuff. Weirdly enough, despite being so bright and colorful, there's always been something threatening about neon colors. Probably thanks to their use in various cyber punk, post apocalyptic media, and Halloween costumes.

Following up on our fireworks themed post from last week is a look at the Sparkabots! Sparkabots are one of those weird areas of Transformers that are somewhere between obscurity and urban legend. I've seen a person or two dismiss their existence or disregard them as bootlegs. They are real however, and absolutely fantastic.

European Generation 2 is an extremely interesting time. G1 didn't really end. It just stopped in the States while continuing in other parts of the world. This time of Transformers in Europe is often referred to by some fans as G1.5. In the States, G2 was the relaunch of Transformers after pausing in 1990. During that two year gap in US Transformers, the G2 symbols and branding were used on those European toys... but sold as just Transformers without the additional branding until 1994. Many of these were sold in G2 later on. 

Of course you can't talk about G2 without mentioning the bright neon colors and the reuse of G1 molds in them. That brings us here today. A European market only version of the Sparkabots was released in 1994. In G1, the Autobot Sparkabots were matched up against the scary Decepticon Firecons. However this odd new version of the Sparkabots combined members of those teams to form a new group of Sparkabots. 

Blaze and Sizzle were joined by Flamefeather and Sparkstalker. However this union only existed in name only as the Firecons were still Decepticons. The two different teams were sold under the shared banner with only two members each. Cindersaur did later join his teammates in 2010 though. The toys use the same molds, however now in some amazingly eye searing neon translucent colors. They're quite nice looking, though thanks to the unfortunate issue with translucent plastic aging... finding them in decent shape for a decent price now is a bit of a challenge.  

Art provided with permission by Draconis130

Pretty Mayhem

 

People tend to shoot a lot of fireworks in the summer. They do here anyway. Between Memorial Day and Independence Day, there's a good chunk of the planet getting blown up in some festive displays. I'm not complaining, it's fun to shoot them off and they're pretty to look at. But summer is a spooky season. Remember Silver Bullet?

It's pretty common on Cybertron as well. The Sparkabots, whom shoot festive sparks are often at odds with the Firecons. Decepticon monsters who breathe sparking fire. It's a true yin and yang on the battlefield.  The heroic Autobots vs the evil Decepticons. Valor versus venom... and the prettiest fireworks display.