W.A.R. # 42 : Ultimate Bumblebee

I haven't done a review on a Transformer toy for some time. The main reason is I've decided to stop collecting them for now. I MIGHT pick up a leader class every now and then but only if the price is right. Such was a case when I picked this up a couple of months ago. Normal retail price is about AUD 120. I picked it up for AUD 70. This was before the release of the ROTF figures.

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W.A.R. Contents:

• Packaging
• Detail/Sculpt
• Features/Articulation
• Pricing

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Packaging

Not your usual leader class Transformer figure. Well, actually they don't state that this is a leader class but it sure is as big as as one. This U.B. is supposed to be more than that too. It's got lots of gimmicks like voice activated actions and an array of soundtrack to rival the Ministry of Sound - well, not really.

On the front of the box it says "The Movie Hero 'Comes to Life' at the Push of a Button". How I wished it was as simple as that. One push of the button and it transforms itself. Now that would be a real gimmick.

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Detail/Sculpt

Even though I've had it for a couple of months I've only transformed him once and have kept him in car mode ever since to save space on my shelves.

The detail in car mode is impressive. Forget the seams that are apparent. I'm talking about it from an overall glance. A lot of effort went into this and I wished just a little bit more was put in. You know how when your figure is in vehicle mode and you can see the interior seats, steering wheel and all the tiny details that makes you go "niceeeee". There was none here.

Still, as I said, it is impressive. This figure was meant to entertain in terms of the fun factor. That's why when you press the Autobot emblem the car starts revving its engine and as you push the car along, the engine sound continues until you abruptly puts it to a halt and braking sounds can be heard accompanied by brake lights. Now, what 30 year old kid wouldn't enjoy that? LoL.

As I transformed U.B. into Robot Mode, it all starts coming back to me as to why I decided to stop collecting Transformer figures. The transformation annoys the hell out of me. Especially this one! Some parts were easy to convert but some I feel are just there to taunt me.

Almost 15mins later...I finally managed to convert U.B. without throwing it against the wall.

Eyes light up when UB is activated

Excellent sculpt in both car and robot mode. They even made an effort to sculpt the hidden panels.

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Features/Articulation

Not a lot of articulation so chances of you posing this guy in your favourite yoga position are out of the question. Plus once you switch him on, the arms will move and do their own poses. The few articulations that it does have is somewhat obstructed by all the other loose parts of the U.B. So basically you have these:

-Hinged elbow(left)
-Swivel & Hinged hand(left)
-Hinged fingers(left)
-Swivel waist(very minimal)
-Swivel hips
-Hinged knees
-Hinged ankles

The right hand is the cannon and fires automatically by pushing a button(I couldn't find the 'missile').

The Features in Robot Mode:
-Eyes will light up.
-He will play portions of three songs. I only know one of them which is Devo's 'Whip It'. These are activated automatically when he responds to the noises in the environment.
-He will also say phrases like;"Megatron will stop at nothing!" "You're my first human friend." "We must protect the Allspark!" "Be Careful, Decepticons could be anywhere!" "Eat Plasma!" "Permission to speak sir" And..."That will teach them to mess with an Autobot!"
-If you hold down the Autobot emblem he will sing portions of the Transformer song. Leave him alone for about 2 mins or more he will say; "Hello?" and "Anyone there?" If there is no respond he will say "This completes our radio broadcast" and powers down to save battery life.

The Features in Car Mode:
-Same as the above plus extras.
-Pressing the Autobot emblem will enable the car horn.
-Pushing the car and stopping it will have sound effects.
-Head & Tail lights are switched on.

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Pricing

I've already mentioned about the price earlier but I'm curious if you can find this in Brunei. If yes, how much are they selling it for? I'd appreciate it if you could drop by the chatbox with the info or leave a comment.

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At the moment this is what U.B. is reduced to, something for my lil' Princess Lobo to play with while watching her cartoons. But whether your a Transformer fan or not, this is a very nice figure to add to your collection. He might not make you a pot of coffee in the morning but he'll sure entertain you for a month or so depending on who you are. Storage issues? He will take up a lot of space but it'll be a space that is well used up.

Related Posts:

• W.A.R. # 41: Star Wars, Anakin Skywalker's Modified Jedi Starfighter
  
• W.A.R. # 40: Spider-Man Classic Heroes, Juggernaut
  
• W.A.R. # 39: Marvel Select, Thor
  
• W.A.R. # 38: Star Wars, ARC-170 Starfighter

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Pic of the Day : Ultraman Zoffy

Ultraman Zoffy by boh_muse

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Marvel Legends : 2 Pack

Marvel Legends is BACK!!!
The new 2-Pack consists of:

• Maria Hill and Iron Man
• Kree and Skrull
• Hand Ninja and Nick Fury

The Maria Hill & Nick Fury figures looks very interesting. It's about time collectors get to build their S.H.I.E.L.D agents.

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Pic of the Day : Serves you right!!

Serves you right!! by Lobo
"This is what you get for wearing pink"

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Custom Wolverine & Iron Man Mark 02

Wolverine:

Finally I got to finish the Wolverine custom that I had previously attempted. This time around I swapped the claws with packing needles instead of bobby pins. I'm happy with how it turned out. I won't deny that this could have been even better in the hands of a professional customizer. But I'll let you decide if I made a decent job out of it.

Iron Man Mark 02:

This figure is from the Iron Man Movie line by Hasbro. In all honesty I HATED the figure. I only got it because I already had Mark 01 and 03 in my collection. I'm sure you've all seen the figure on the shelves before or maybe even own one. All that grey color was just bad and to top it off we had two shades of grey. One ugly grey and another more silverish/grey. Luckily I wanted to practice my painting skills so I had it hand painted.

This was suppose to be Iron Man with the sky in the background. Wouldn't you know it, not a single cloud when I took this pic. LoL.

I still hate the figure...but not as much.

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Pic of the Day : Ecto-1

Ecto-1 by Rocko™

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Voltron : 25 years of Defending the Universe

"Megathrusters are go! Let's go, Voltron Force!" *drool*

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T-Shirts : For Sale

It has finally come to this. Mrs. Lobo has made me clear out my wardrobe. Before you get to your own conclusions, let me clear out the air first.
Ever since we've been in Canberra I've made it a habit of mine to pick up a minimum of 2 shirts each month. It has of course accumulated to a certain point where I don't even know when I'll get a chance to wear them. So Mrs. Lobo has had enough of my unused shirts invading her sacred wardrobe space(here I thought she'd be thrilled that I was following what she does all the time with the clothes she buys - I'm so in trouble if she ever reads this blog).
So I'm offering my readers in Brunei the chance to get these unique shirts that I'm 110% sure I will never get to wear. I'd also like to mention that since I bought these shirts with the intention of getting them for me, the sizes are only 'M' size. All shirts are original merchandise.

So far I've 'isolated' these two. If they are a lot of interest I'll put up more for sale. Each are BND 35 or BND 63 for both. First come first serve basis. So if there are any interested buyers, e-mail me at: stoosh666@yahoo.com. Payment options are either bank deposit into my HSBC account or paypal. All prices are inclusive of delivery cost.

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Seeing Green

The Turtles are here! They were delivered yesterday morning. I'm just thrilled to finally have these guys in my collection. Now, before you go reminiscing and start singing "heroes in a half shell", these aren't the garden varieties TMNT that we're used to watching back in the late 1980's. These are the original TMNT that spawned the phenomenon who made their first appearance on paper in 1984 by creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.

This was the cover of the first issue.

Source: Wikipedia

The main differences between these turtles and the animated are the tails(the cartoons did not have tails), bandanna - the animated used different colors for each turtle. It also turns out the originals really kicked ass while its animated counterparts had a more PG rated violence(e.g. Leonardo never used his Katana sword to cut the bad guys). There are also two variations of these figures. The first are the same but each figure comes with a base. The other is a box set and all the figures are in black in white to reflect the original characters.

The Four Horsemen name is enough to win over any doubtful collector...well me at least.

LeonardoRaphael

Donatello

Michelangelo

I'll post up some more pics in the future of these figures. Until then, they'll have to stay in their respective plastic cages.

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Pic of the Day : Rex

Rex by Lobo

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Short Car on a Short Card

Four-1 from Hot Wheels 2009 collection.

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Pic of the Day : 'X' is for X-Games

'X' is for X-Games by Lobo

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I'm buying it for ME!!

Warning: There are NO pics is the following post...*evil laugh*.

This recently happened to me when I was browsing the toy aisle at TRU. In particular ,the Star Wars section. I was there with the missus and our daughter. As usual I would slowly drift away after a few mins of head nodding at the latest baby clothes and what-not.

Anyway, I was there admiring the new Star Wars Clone Turbo Tank. Totally immersed with the pics on the back of the box, reading it(aloud I think) when a kid, aged 6-8, came up to me. For the next bit I'll do a bit of dialogue because let's face it, I have too much free time today.

Kid: "Cool isn't it? Who are buying it for?"
Me: "Yeah, it's the coolest! I'm thinking of getting it for me"
Kid: (giving me the once-over from head to toe)"Are you going to play with it?"
Me: "Oh no, I don't do that anymore. I just collect them and display them"
Kid: "That's silly. How many Star Wars toys do you have?"
Me: "Quite a lot I think"
Kid: "That's silly because I like Star Wars and my Daddy never lets me get them. Well, maybe a few but not a lot. If I had a lot, I would play with them every day"
Me: "Well it's my money. So, get out of my face before I drop this box on your head"

Ok. I made up the last bit. Actually I just smiled and went off to another aisle. Then it got me thinking, the kid was right. Collectible or not it's a toy after all. Hasbro and other companies are Toy Makers. Their target audience are kids. Not us. Sure there are certain companies that cater to us so-called collectors. But for fans of the likes of Star Wars, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Marvel, just to name a few, their collections are basically toys made for the sole purpose of having a 6 year old running around the house or in the sand box making 'BOOM', 'SWOOSH', 'POW' noises. I sure did when I was 6.

So the dilemma in being a collector is that we are actually sharing the market niche with kids, not owning our own piece of the pie. No matter how much you complain, yours truly included, on your website regarding sculpt or articulation or paint app, do you really think it really matters to toy companies? While it seems through the existence of toy sites like OAFE, Toybender and Poe Ghostal that our numbers(collectors) are many, think again. Kids are still winning in numbers. Why do you think action figures consist of mainly the good guys(sometimes the same one in different 'forms') and not as balanced as we all hoped. Sure kids need a bad guy or two for their good guy to battle but its the good guy that excites them the most. Collectors on the other hand has a different perspective. We need more bad guys in our collection because we want to complete the set or at least balance out the forces of good vs. evil which has been at war on our shelves.

So how exactly do we justify collecting toys for the sole purpose of displaying it? There are and will always people who criticizes us. Mrs. Lobo sure did when I started and thankfully she has given up and have now on occasions been known to say "I think you don't have that in your collection". *GASP*. Moving on to the subject of justification it all depends on what age group you are. If you're like me, around 30-ish, I could always use the reason that 'I have always been an action figure collector, I just didn't have the disposable income back then'. If you're younger you could use the 'It's better I spend my allowance money on this than buying drugs' reason. LoL. Whatever your reason is, nothing will beat the 'It's my money, it's not illegal and what do you care?' in-your-face response. But if you think about it., why should we justify our hobby? They don't ask people who would...say collect stamps, fridge magnets or currency.

On a lighter note, I'm glad this trend is slowly growing in Brunei. Especially for those who have been in the game for a long time, they can now look for action figures IN Brunei instead of having to order it from abroad. To those who have started, I hope they can make use of local toy bloggers like Toyzstation, Marvel-Less Talk, Shewsbery Land, House of El and dozen others. Awareness of the existence of toy collectors has already been established thanks to the sites I've mentioned. The next step is to create a pool of resources where we can share information. Who knows one day we could have our very own Brunei Toy Con or Comic Con?

I apologize if my ranting has gotten somewhat sidetracked. My point to this whole story, of course there's a point, is the next time you come across an annoying kid like that, just lie and say it's for someone. A gift for a kid of his age perhaps. It'll drive them nuts.

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Pic of the Day : Commander Blue

Commander Blue by See El Photo
I remembered I only had Max Ray back in the day. Man I miss these retro action figures. Gotta find me some on ebay. LoL.

POWER EXTREME!! - couldn't help myself.

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Custom Choppers are Priceless

Another post about motorcycles? Sorry about that guys. It's like I'm on a deadline today. Tomorrow starts the fasting month which means no more buying action figures for now(trying to save for something big...hehe). But hey, I got this today:

A 1:12 Custom Choppers bike. Die cast and customizable in certain parts. The quality is not the best but the prospect of what it can be used for was enough to win me over.

Immediately I imagined the Main Man sitting on this beast. That was before I realised just how crappy Lobo's articulation is. I tried my best and so did the Main Man to look as if he belonged in the picture. So we both gave up and I moved on to the next best thing. And you know what? I ended up with another 'Pic of the Day'...

Wanna mess with me, bub? by Lobo

For a $16 bike...it was worth it!!

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Hot Wheels : Steet Power, 1:18 Motorcycles

Picked these up last night at TRU. There are six in this series. I only choose 3 design which I thought are unique and would look great with my other 1:18. I honestly don't know why I'm starting to collect 1:18 bikes. It must be one of those middle age phases. Heck if I know. But I'm liking it.

There's not much detail about the bikes on the boxes except for their names. Also for the life of me I couldn't find any details for this series on the net and I'm usually good at doing research...usually. Anyway, I've open only one box to take close up pics. For each of the bikes they have different color variants. I opted for whatever was left on the shelves(it's my way of saying I saw it before but waited too long to buy it and these were the only ones left).

Rollin' Thunder

Twin Flame

Ferenzo

I bet Wolvie or Cap will look good on these bikes - right Spidey?

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