I disagree. The design is good, the engineering is horrific. Those knees! Those shoulders! The one nonsensical moving wrist, the flimsy backpack and ugly feet, the static head! There are so many things wrong with that toy. The first Hot Shot was a better piece of work. But the design is fantastic."Armada" Wheeljack is not a bad toy. The problem is that the engineering is uninspired, despite being well executed.
Uh. They've been plastering obscure references on toys for years. We're only noticing these now because they're LESS obscure. Example - Armada Hoist has "SD [some date]" tampo'd on his arm. This is a reference to something the designers did in San Diego on that date, I forget if we ever found out which.I was thinking "obscure" in the sense that "nobody *outside* the fandom, (most people buying toys at most stores), knows or cares about obscure fandom in-jokes".
They plaster seemingly random numbers and letters on the toys because real vehicles also have identification marks. For those in the know, hey, injoke. For those who aren't in the know, it just seems a random designation. Did you have an issue with Hoist before you knew it was a reference? Do you have an issue with it now?
How about the numbers on the Universe Combaticons that reference their names?
Not to mention how much it was popularised by Ben!Obscure? jAaM is not obscure--at least, not to anyone who was actually 'around' for Armada, which is likely the kind of collector 25th Hot Shot is attracting.
I dunno, the Whirl repaint of Evac has Ovelon on his tail assembly - upside down and in numbers, but still.in the summer, we have The Movie again, with its big-budget mainstreamy goodness. You can bet there won't be any jAaM references *there,* since that's the exact opposite of Hasbro's MO there.
Well, I heart Weirdwolf because he's D-86, so..subtle reference to me!Why haven't I seen pics of ClaWeirdwolf asking ClaSlaught about this yet?