November Hauls!

[Onslaught Six]

I finally scored a Guzzle at Wal-Mart! Maybe I hyped myself up about him too much, or just didn’t check out pics and stuff of him enough beforehand, but I’m slightly underwhelmed. I thought he would turn out to be more Basic-ish, but he’s a pretty standard Cyberverse Commander (Though unlike most of those, his head CAN turn, it’s just paintlocked to hell and mostly blocked by surrounding parts). I appreciate the various panels that fold up in robot mode to expose things and make it more robot-ish, and an homage to a Last Stand of the Wreckers character is nothing to be unhappy about, but then there’s stuff like his weapons seeming king of puny, or the way that hinge sticking up from the turret in vehicle mode forces you to mount his otherwise Gundam-licious missile pod backwards. I also wish his eyes were actually painted distinctly from his face. I’m nitpicking, but like I said, I think it’s because he turned out to just be a *good* toy when for some reason I was expecting a *great* one. At least he goes really well with Flak, I’d like to see more additions to this little Cyberverse military team.

I haven't opened mine yet.

While the moulding seems to be uniform on all of the Steel Brigade figures that I have seen, they are packaged with 3 rifles, a tripod and two backpacks, which allows for some customizing. Definitely worth picking up.

They *were* all uniform, until the most recent wave--now they're using the PoC "ultimate" Snake Eyes as their base figure. It's similar enough, but you can tell. (As an aside, I'm a little sick of Hasbro continually reusing the Shock Trooper and Cobra Trooper mould parts lately, especially the legs. It seems like EVERYBODY has the Snake Eyes legs now.) I plan on getting one of these to go with my regular Steel Brigade so they can be variants, and might name them after the DTC-exclusive Steel Brigade figures from 2006ish.

The other day I got Drag Strip! She's okay. She's not the Worst Toy Ever like JT said but Prowl's assessment is pretty spot-on. I like her bladey weapons though.

[Dominic]

My mistake. I have only seen 3 Brigadiers, and only actually have one. They all looked pretty similar. (Aside: It would have been nice if they had SB patches painted on to the arms or something.)


Dom
-Dragstrip is a chicbot?

[BWprowl]

The other day I got Drag Strip! She's okay. She's not the Worst Toy Ever like JT said but Prowl's assessment is pretty spot-on. I like her bladey weapons though.

Don’t do that.

It’s stupid that people have been doing it with Icepick, and it makes equally no sense with Drag Strip. His bio note explicitly labels him as male, let’s leave it at that.

(And really, Reverb has a better chance at passing for female than either Icepick or Drag Strip, and his bio has him as male too. Maybe a repaint or something.)

[Onslaught Six]

My mistake. I have only seen 3 Brigadiers, and only actually have one. They all looked pretty similar. (Aside: It would have been nice if they had SB patches painted on to the arms or something.)

Some think it's a cost-cutting thing, but I don't see how. I agree on the latter.

It’s stupid that people have been doing it with Icepick, and it makes equally no sense with Drag Strip. His bio note explicitly labels him as male, let’s leave it at that.

(And really, Reverb has a better chance at passing for female than either Icepick or Drag Strip, and his bio has him as male too. Maybe a repaint or something.)

Eh. Whatever! I should just make him/her into Mirage GT.

[Dominic]

TFs with credible gender confusion:

-Oval (Street Speed Team)
-Sureshock (Perceptor Combiner)
-red Tracks/Roadrage (depending on the name you prefer)

If the bio card says "he", the character is male.


Dom
-why, just....why?

[BWprowl]

TFs with credible gender confusion:

-Oval (Street Speed Team)
-Sureshock (Perceptor Combiner)
-red Tracks/Roadrage (depending on the name you prefer)

If the bio card says "he", the character is male.


Dom
-why, just....why?

You left out BW Sonar and BM Geckobot. <_<

[Dominic]

Okay, you got me on Geckobot.

Sonar, however, is unambiguously female. The file card avoids specifying a gender for one reason or another. But, every appearance of the character that I can think of has specified Sonar as female. There is no more ambiguity for Sonar than there is for Tigatron or Waspinator.


Dom

[Gomess]

Godzilla vs Biollante. One of the few Godzilla films I'd never previously seen, and the only Heisei era Godzilla film I didn't already own. Two birds with one stone! And a gigantic mutant rose created using Godzilla's self-regenerative cells. Possibly containing the soul of a dead girl.

It's actually a really good giant monster movie, and excels particularly in restrained use of giant monster action; there's really only two fights, and they're well coordinated and occasionally exciting. The human drama's fun too. Lots of 'politics' and 'English'.

And next... Godzilla's Revenge. Yyyyeah. My collection's finally reached the point where I can't put it off any longer. Only Godzilla fans will understand my hesitation. ...Ah, shit, it looks like a laugh.

[BWprowl]

Picked up a Steel Brigade guy myself, yesterday. I was neither around for the original promotion, nor was I ever into GI Joe enough as a kid that it would have mattered, but now there is something appealing about being able to own a toy that’s a representation of every kid’s overpowered fan-character. The bio (which actually has a Name field that’s just left blank, a nice touch)kinda goes the other way with this, describing the Steel Brigade as Joe’s entry-level foot soldiers. Which I think is kinda messed up, that the team takes all these ten-year-olds with starry-eyed dreams of joining GI Joe and shoves them out to act as cannon fodder. I like this guy in that respect though, since the Joes need more generics. If I was into the sort of thing, I might even troop build this one, since it’s a nice toy anyway, giving you lots of options as far as weapons and even a couple of backpacks to choose from, a nice nod to the nature of the character. I didn’t even notice right away that he has these really nice up-and-down wrist swivels, don’t think I’ve encountered that on a Joe yet. Those missiles on his backpack would be lost in an instant if a kid got their hands on this, and I don’t even fully trust myself to keep track of them.

Anyway, while it is a nice toy, my Steel Brigade guy is currently not as cool as most other people’s, since I don’t have a classic version that I invented back in the day for this to serve as an upgrade of. Mine’s just a blank slate, he doesn’t even have a name! I need to come up with this guy’s story, and it needs to be a good one.

[Shockwave]

Damn Dom, that's pretty impressive that you remember all that about your SB guy. I sure heck don't remember any of those details for mine.

Anyway: Hauls! Harry Potter 7 part II and a corkscrew. Both courtesy of the 'Rents because we were grocery shopping today and they were getting a copy of Potter for themselves and I wanted one too. And the Corkscrew because I still have 5 bottles of wine from my housewarming party. Now I can finally open them and start "celebrating".