Soundwave turns into a guy who used to live down the street from me

My word, it's majestic

News broke while I was sitting at my desk working of even more Energon Igniters toys on the way. The news post gives new looks at the Ratchet I talked about earlier as well as the Nitro series Blitzwing and Dropkick that's been shown on news sites already (and look fabulous). That's not what's exciting, what's mind blowing is the Power Series Plus Soundwave and Ironhide that just melted my brain.

MAJESTIC

Soundwave just might be the best toy of the year and it's the first week of January. That is amazing. Turning into a radical rocker dude van with a freaking mural of Ravage and Laserbeak, Soundwave is literal perfection. I can only hope for a Shattered Glass and Soundblaster version. Man, a standard Power Series Soundblaster would be nuts. He could have a mural of Ratbat and Overkill and be a metal dude. OMG HE SHOULD HAVE A MURAL OF RATBAT AND OVERKILL AND BE A METAL DUDE. I might just shit my pants.

rock you like a hurricane

Ironhide decided to show up, and clearly he's made friends with a dude named Chet who blasts Motley Crue in the Circle K parking lot while crushing beer cans on his forehead. Just look at that badass truck, you know it smells like a carton of cigarettes. But wait, there's more!

plays with madness

Whoa, Ironhide is the most directly out of G2 dude yet. In fact, I demand the repaint be Turbofire. IT HAS TO HAPPEN. Good lord Energon Igniters is just the best thing to happen in in a long time. Simple, inexpensive, fun little Transformers toys with a TON of charm that take a page out of the book of what made older robot toys so great. I'm not crying, you're crying.

They're wonderful.

Happy New Year Bumblebee Japanese trailer

I'm a few days behind on this one, but Happy New Year everybody! The Bumblebee movie was just such a great movie it's hard not to enjoy this simple little trailer wishing fans out there the sentiment. Man, just a great movie.

Broots/Mighty Orbots pilot

I've been on a bit of a Mighty Orbots kick the past few days. It was one of my first robot shows and something I've always held on a high pedestal. One of the things my wife got me for Christmas was a DVD set of the show which I was most grateful for. There's plenty of unlicensed episodes available (and usually streaming), but having a legit release was something I'd rather have. I spent quite a bit of time watching the set on New Years Day (I did plan on taking some pictures of toys for the site, but that got postponed for this weekend... taking a break sure was nice). Man, it could be just me, but the show is just as good now as it was then. One of my favorite parts is and was the announcer with the occasional funny line.

While thinking back on watching the show Saturday mornings with my older brother, I remembered this clip of the show pilot when it was to be called Broots. Since recent viewings are fresh in my mind, it's kind of neat just how similar the show worked out to the pilot. Sure some of the designs got refined and you just can't convince me that Broots is a better name (because it's not). Though I do like the idea of them being a band.

I really wish fate would have went another way with Mighty Orbots as the toys never came out and the show got canceled. I don't know if it would have had the same longevity as Transformers, but I'd like to think it deserves to be more well known.

Great Value BotCon 2019 Soundwave

News floated out this morning of a Soundwave seemingly joining Optimus in this years Walmart vintage Transformers selection. So far this years selection of G1 reissues is pretty fun and well suited for the 35th anniversary of Transformers (despite the lack of hoopla being made for the occasion). If I'm going to speculate the selection based on the 2018 batch, that's 2 average sized figures (one a little bigger), a larger figure or gift set, and 4 basic sized figures. Optimus seems to be taking Hot Rods spot in that with the omission of his trailer and Soundwave seemingly taking Starscream's place.

These would be similar sized boxes on that store shelf and hopefully for around the same price (there's been a lot of throwing numbers around, but I'm waiting for the actual price). So wondering who the larger figure/set would be and going by the reissues Takara has put out in more recent years as a guideline of what molds are most likely available. I'm wondering if maybe a Bruticus box set isn't too much of a stretch to expect for a gift set or maybe a Skylinx for a larger figure. Kinda hope more cassettes get released for the smaller sized guys to match up with Soundwave. Though I'd not be surprised if there's more Minicars as they'd probably try to keep the numbers of good guys/bad guys somewhat equal. I kinda hope they'd shoot for something a little bigger, but not too bigfor the larger figure to keep the price down. Something like Sixshot would be awesome.

I always see a lot of folks hope they wish for ~insert random slightly obscure or rare character~, but I don't see that really happening. I'd love to, but realistically they're going for the nostalgia crowd. Sure Transformers fans are a sure thing, but the more mainstream crowd that's likely to buy a G1 Transformer in retro packaging is going for Optimus, Starscream, or any of the other generally recognizable bots. I'd love something like Turbomasters... but that's a stretch.

I had a bunch of fun buying the last batch at Walmart and even though I've got multiple of some of these guys, look forward to walking into a Walmart after work and finding Soundwave sitting there on the shelf. That's a lot of fun for me. I don't look forward to explaining the term Great Value BotCon though, but will continue to use it. It's not my fault some people are oblivious to an obvious joke.