From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Timelines Rant: Age of Samurai wave 2

Megatron (boar demon)
Bumblebee (ninja flying squirrel)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Misc/AoS2

In "if I had a nickel" territory, once again the Optimus/Starscream Timelines set was put up for preorder well in advance, while the Megatron/ Bumblebee set just showed up in stock on Hasbro Pulse one day.


CAPSULES

Set is $67.99, same as the other Age of Samurai set. As with the first set, we're probably not seeing these molds again any time soon, so they had
to recoup the design and tooling cost all in one go. (I suppose we could get redecos as Beast Wars Razorback and Nightglider/Dark Scream, but I don't see that as terribly likely, even as deep as the Generations line is digging lately.)

Megatron: Kinda weird transformation and the boar head keeps popping
off, but it's an okay robot and okay demon pig. If it were sold separately, I'd call it mildly recommended.

Bumblebee: Bonus points for having both a flying mode and a standing in
a tree mode for the flying squirrel (it's more a short transformation than simply having the articulation to assume both poses), although the design really could've used furry leggings in robot mode so that the squirrel tail
was floofy. A good Deluxe, slightly better than Megatron.

Set overall: These are both the sort of toy that would be the cheap one
in a "Voyager and a Deluxe" sort of two-pack, which is a bit of a problem
since there is not expensive one, just an elaborate box and the expectation
of no mold reuse. If you have to fit toys into a budget at all, this set is probably pricing itself out of your range, even in a hobby that is rapidly approaching the "if you had the money for a boat but no interest in a boat" level of expense.


RANTS

Packaging: Same design as the first set. If they used blister trays instead of strapping the figures to a flat backdrop it might be nice for display, but it really only works for that purpose if you never remove the
toys in the first place...which, I suppose, is what the primary audience Hasbro's aiming at here will do. I normally treat packaging as disposable,
but when they put so much into making it look nice for display I'd appreciate the option of putting the toy back in for display, y'know? (And without needing to wire it back onto the card or something.)
The instructions are on Bumblebee's side of the box.


DECEPTICON: MEGATRON
Assortment: G2269
Altmode: Demon Boar
Transformation Difficulty: 24 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: Age of Samurai (Timelines)

Packaging: 9 ties hold the robot to the inner card, with a rubber band around the left shoulderpad as well. Two ties hold the cannon/mace in the lower right corner.
The heel spurs are folded in, but this seems less intentional and more "they just tend to do that on their own."

Robot Mode: Okay, so 90% or more of being identifiable Megatron consists of (in descending order of importance) the colors, the helmet, and the big cannon mounted somewhere on the arm. This does check all those boxes. The helmet is modified to be more Oni-like, with a pair of upside-down-kite-
shaped horns on the front, and curved fangs on the upper and lower teeth.
The teeth would stand out better if they hadn't stuck with the very light
gray face, but like I said, the colors are the important part of Looking Like Megatron. The shoulderpads are the top of the demon boar head (left) and the jaw (right), and there's a lot of conical spikes all over the body
(shoulderpad fronts and backs, two on each pec, several on the forearms and shins). There's a cloth belt motif on the waist, and the boots are patterned after feudal-era Japanese armor boots, with the feet splitting the difference between sandals and trotters. There's double-claw heel spurs that are purely decorative, as they don't actually touch the ground in their default position (and the joint is too loose for them to offer support if you did fold them down). The hands have two big fingers and two thumbs, again going for the
pig trotter look. There's red zigzag lines on the chest and abdomen, and something that looks like an abandoned spark crystal on the belly (it
would've been painted shiny rather than done in clear plastic, it's not a separate piece). The arm cannon has a flared barrel (archaic cannon look)
and a bunch of spikes, so that it can also be held as a big iron club
(tetsubo) of the sort oni are noted to wield (it'd need a haft extender to really play the part properly, though). Overall proportions are a little weird, mainly because the torso is short and deep.
Brief aside: oni are Japanese spirits generally translated as ogres (in fact, the old AD&D Ogre Mage is basically an oni), they're big and strong and have horns and fangs and big iron clubs, and they're not always evil per se, but they're usually trouble. They tend to be tied into a particular legend, and make those around them participate in the story...which can be pretty
rough on bystander types. They aren't necessarily associated with evil boar spirits, which are their own sort of supernatural critter similar in
toughness and "unpleasant to be around"-ness.
5.25" (13cm) tall in mostly medium-light gray, almost-black, and gloss red, with some dark silver and very light gray accents. Medium-light gray plastic is used for the head, shoulderpads, torso, forearms, hips and upper thighs. A very dark slightly shiny gray that's almost black is used for the cannon, upper arms, pelvis front, lower thighs, kneepads, shinpads, feet (except for the spurs), and cannon. A duller very dark gray is used for the hinge inside the left shoulderpad, the shoulders under the shoulderpads,
hands, pelvis back, some of the struts in the complicated knees, backs of the boots, and heel spurs. I may have misattributed one of the dark gray parts, but generally if it's part of a joint it's likely to be the duller type.
As noted earlier, the face is painted very light gray, which is also
used on the helmet horns, and the tusks on both shoulderpads. The underside
of the unibrow thing is painted black, but that seems to be it for black
paint. The eyes and the beast eyes are gloss red, which is also used for the toros zigzags, most of the abdomen front and sides (leaving the not-a-spark- crystal blank), the wrist cuffs, and the outlines of the shin pads. Medium-light gloss gray paint (so-so match to the plastic, a little too dark) covers much of the cannon, the lower thigh fronts, the belt knot, and parts
of the feet. A dark silver paint is on the top of the left shoulderpad snout and the bottom front and sides of the abdomen. There's a no-outline light purple Decepticon symbol on the center of the chest.
The neck is a ball joint with the socket in the head and a decent amount of wiggle room, the waist is a smooth swivel. The shoulders are pinned hinge and swivel joints, while the shoulderpads have hinges to let them lift out of the way (as well as other joints for transformation). There's swivels just above the hinge elbows. The wrists are swivels, and the fingers open on a mitten hinge. Pinned hinge and swivel hips, upper thigh swivels, hinge
knees, tilt hinge ankles. There's also a bunch of hinge stuff on the outer face of each knee, used for the somewhat weird transformation. Note, the
heel spurs offer no support, so the feet are effectively pretty small and
have no forwards/backwards articulation, so it can be difficult to keep this figure standing up.
The hands can hold 5mm pegs regardless of whether the fingers are open
or closed (the joint isn't really stiff enough to help hold anything anyway), there's 5mm sockets on the outer faces of both forearms, and on the
undersides of the toes. There's a raised hexagonal 3mm socket in the butt.
If you fold down the boar butt panel on the back, you can just get enough of the non-standard slot in it accessible to store the cannon on the back, at
the cost of locking down the waist.
The cannon/tetsubo is a little over 2.5" (6.5cm) long with a side 5mm
peg for use as a cannon and a 5mm peg at the back so it can be held as a
club. The cannon barrel opening is 7-8mm wide depending on how deeply you shove something, and the old "Christmas light" Fire Blast I keep around from Siege for testing purposes will wedge firmly inside. The barrel itself has four rows of blunted conical spikes along the sides, three per row, and the back end is expanded outwards by the "tech wrapper" that justifies it
attaching to Megatron's forearm. In addition to arm cannon and tetsubo configurations, the side peg can be held in the hand, if a bit loosely,
without too much impairment of the elbow range.

Transformation: It took me a while to figure out the upper body, I kept expecting the seams to be from hinges, but all that happens is that the upper right and left torso pieces slide together. In theory, the shoulderpads
rotate to fold around the robot head and become the boar head, but good luck with the left shoulderpad (top of boar head). It has a stiff rotation joint, and a VERY weak clip-on hinge. I eventually just gave up trying to keep it attached and simply remove it, fold out the relevant bit, and clip it back in place. Sometimes a toy is partformer because not being a partformer failed
the drop test. The arms become forelegs in a pretty straightforwards way, although it's less obvious that the tabs on the torso sides are supposed to
go into the elbow pin sockets (which have a little extra bit carved out of
the hollow forearms to accomodate them).
This is probably the weirdest way I've seen robot legs become rear beast legs. The front of the pelvis is turned to the left 90 degrees and the
little panel inside the back folds down to lock onto a tab on the waist (it'd have been more obvious if only one side had that tab, I spent a bit of time with it rotated to the right before determining that the legs only worked the other way). It reminds me of someone twisting up their legs because they really have to pee.
Going back to robot mode is pretty easy, although the left shoulderpad still just wants to pop off rather than bending the transformation joint.

Altmode: A demonic (the two sets of tusks are the giveaway) mecha boar with a cannon on its back. The rear legs are straight because they're just
the robot boots and they didn't add a mid-shin joint. The heel spurs are supposed to be folded in for this mode, but there's no snapping or other
solid connection and the hinges are floppy, so they tend to hand down a bit when you pick up the toy. There is no attempt at a tail.
4.5" (11.5cm) long from snout to heels, 2.5" (6.5cm) tall at the
shoulder, and 3.5" (9cm) tall in total with the cannon attached. The colors are basically the same as robot mode...really everything from robot mode is still visible except the robot head, which got covered up by the
shoulderpads. The pig snout is painted gunmetal along its top, all four
tusks are very light gray, and the eyes are red. There is no Decepticon
symbol topside in this mode, and the robot chest is now the boar belly. So,
I guess no one can tell that this metal pig demon is a Decepticon until it's
on top of them. (The next year of the metal pig will be 2031, the previous
one was the year after I was born.)
Neglible articulation. The jaw sort of opens on a transformation hinge, but if you open it too far it looks more like a snake dislocating its jaw.
The forelimbs technically retain all their robot arm articulation, but the upper arms are tabbed in place and the finger-hooves need to be all the way
out and stay that way. No meaningful articulation rearward of the front shoulders...the rear ankles still tilt, but since everything else is
basically tabbed in place this isn't useful.
The forearm 5mm sockets remain accessible on the forelegs, and the 5mm sockets from the soles of the feet are now on the trotters of the hindlegs.
The cannon attaches to the back via a nonstandard tab and slot arrangement.

Overall: It lacks the sheer WTF-ery of oxcart Optimus Prime, but I
suppose partially makes up for that with the weird leg transformation.
Still, while it might be a mildly recommended toy on its own, it's not good enough to carry the set, leaving that job on Bumblebee's shoulders. Will he measure up?


AUTOBOT: BUMBLEBEE
Assortment: G2269
Altmode: Flying Squirrel
Transformation Difficulty: 18 steps (robot to beast), +8 steps (standing
mode to flying mode for beast)
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: Age of Samurai (Timelines)

Packaging: The robot, with wings folded to the sides and toes pointed down, is held to the inner tray by four ties. Rubber bands hold the arms
onto the wings (or vice versa, I suppose). A plastic bag taped to the lower right corner holds the sword and dagger (pointy sai?).
The instructions do not include the steps required to get from in-box
mode to proper robot mode, the wings need to be folded up a bit at their tops in addition to the toes being unpointed.

Robot Mode: Well, it's Bumblebee as a "ninja," complete with random mesh patterns and a metal headband (interrupted by his usual forehead crest, so
you can't just draw a leaf on it). The head design has more of a clothlike shape to the back and sides, and the traditional horns are slightly tweaked
to look more like a Naruto character's horned hat. Seriously, this could've shipped as part of the Naruto Collaborative set and fit right in. The wings are present, but not too intrusive. There's three shades of yellow (two plastics and one paint) that do not particularly match or even go well together. I suppose the paint mismatch is inevitable, especially when yellow is painted over a dark plastic, but they could've done a better job of making the two different shades of yellow plastic a little less different.
4.25" (11cm) tall and mostly yellow and almost-black (very dark gunmetal under some lights) with some dark silver. The more golden yellow is used for the head, the torso front and back plates, the pelvis skirt, the forearms,
and most of each cloak wing panel. (Okay, they're not wings, they're
patagia, but in robot mode they're not connected and look more like wings.)
A less golden (still not quite canary yellow) plastic is used for the torso core and sides, the pelvis, the ankle joints, and wing plates folded up
between the main golden yellow piece and the squirrel forelimb bits in this mode (they're more visible in beast mode, but still somewhat visible here). Glossy almost-black plastic is used for those squirrel forearms, the robot thighs, shins, and feet. The paw bits at the ends of the squirrel forelimbs and all the rest of the figure (including the neck root/top of torso) and
both weapons are a duller almost-black plastic.
The outer edges and front-facint sides of the main wing cloak pieces are pained dull silver, as is the sword blade. The headband (except for the unpainted forehead tablet) and the mesh patterns at the collar, waist, and pelvis skirt are painted gunmetal. While there's some molded mesh details on the back too, they're unpainted. The kneecaps, pants cuffs, and toes are painted a slightly dull yellow that doesn't even remotely match eitherof the other two yellows on the toy. The standard G1 animation model face is
painted very light gray with bright blue eyes, and there's a red on pale metallic gold outline Autobot symbol on the belly. (I'm not entirely sure
the outline was meant to be pale gold, or if it's supposed to be silver but
the print was thin enough for some yellow to show through.)
The neck is a ball joint with the socket in the head and reasonable
wiggle room, the waist is a smooth swivel. The shoulders are pinned hinge
and swivel joints, with upper arm swivels just above the hinge elbows. The wrists are swivels, and there's squirrel paws on the backs of the fist that
can be folded out as punching spikes. The skirt front is hinged to get out
of the way of the hip motion, which is on pinned hinge and swivel joints. There's upper thigh swivels, hinge knees, and the ankles have hinges in two directions for the "stay flat feet" joint as well as the toes pointing down
for transformation. Note, the hips and ankles don't have enough range for a decent "Naruto Run" pose, plus the wings keep the arms from extending
straight back. It can manage to stay up on a single foot, though.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there are 5mm pegs on the wings that the fists grab in beast mode, and there's 5mm sockets in the soles of the feet. There's a 3mm socket in the back of the pelvis, plus a rather odd extended section with a rectangular slot that feels like it's for attaching to a
flight base, but might just be a side effect of wanting to keep the flying squirrel mode horizontal. There's nonstandard trapezoidal pegs on the backs
of the wings as well as one tilted one on the back, used for storing the weapons. These are 5mm tall, a little over 3mm wide at the top, tapering
down to 2.5mm, and they're a little too big to fit into round 5mm sockets. I can almost get a hexagonal 5mm socket onto one, but it pops back off from stress.
The two weapons are a short straight-bladed sword, likely inspired by
the (likely fantasy-only) ninja-to sword, and the other is a dagger with a triangular blade and a thick crosspiece. Both have grips that are 5mm near
the crosspiece, but taper down to slightly less than 3mm, which means they
can only be placed in through-holes, not other sockets. Maybe the idea is to make the pommels look like blaster tips when they're stored on the patagia in beast mode? The sword is 2.5" (6cm) long with a silver-painted blade, the dagger is 1.75" (4.5cm) long with no paint. Both are wide above the crosspieces, with trapezoidal sockets on both sides.

Transformation: Technically there's two altmodes, standing and flying, separated by the fact some of the tabs and slots aren't connected in standing mode. If you're careful, you can smoothly go from standing to flying without disconnecting the robot arms from the wings, but going the other way it's
just easier to disconnect and reconnect. You can technically leave the
bladed weapons stored on the back or wings during transformation, but I just removed them to avoid the possibility of one launching across the room in an application of Murphy's Law.
The basics are pretty straightforwards either way. Rotate the lighter yellow shoulder root blocks down to free up the chest and back panels. Open those panels to swap in the squirrel head, then close them. The waist turns 180 degrees and the legs tab together (back to back and sole to sole) to make the tail. For flying mode, straighten the wing panels out and bend the robot arms so that various tabs go into slots and the fists grab onto the 5mm pegs
on the wings. The claws on the backs of the robot fists fold out to become
the hind feet.
For standing mode, you instead bend the wings into a sort of Z shape so that the front paws can be folded to rest on the surface when the wings are bent downward (leaving the wings straight when you do this not only blocks
the paws, it doesn't leave room in back for the robot arms). You can
carefully bend the tail down to touch the surface as well, or fold it up a
bit, if you want. I prefer to move the tail for this mode to further
separate it from flying mode...I find it helps sell the tail as a tail.

Altmodes: Okay, whether it's standing or flying it's a flying squirrel with a long tail (the robot legs) and a Naruto-style metal plate headband.
Of course, it's abstracted enough that flying mode also kind of looks like a space fighter with the head at the back, with only the little paws sticking
out from the corners of the wings to suggest otherwise. Standing mode is clearly a critter of some sort, though. The new head is vaguely
squirrel-like, but with robotic flattened planes, plus the headband. There's
a molded nose and mouth, but they're kinda lost in the usual "yellow plastic washes out details" situation. The standing mode has the forepaws folded
down to be flat, and the hind paws in a semi-stable position between folded back in robot mode and all the way forwards in flying mode.
Either way, it's 5" (12.5cm) from snout to tail tip, in the same colors
as robot mode (although the Autobot symbol is on the belly and slightly
hidden, I might put a tiny Reprolabel Autobot symbol on the headband in this mode). In flying mode, the "wingspan" is a little over 4" (10.5cm) wide.
The only new plastic is the squirrel head, which is golden yellow with bright blue eyes, gunmetal on the headband plate, and white paint across the top of the snout (which further draws attention away from the molded
details). The gunmetal paint on the vents on the tops of the forelimbs and
on the outer edges of the patagia is more prominent in this mode, and the
lack of it on the mesh bits on the small of the back is also more apparent.
The only real articulation in this mode is a hinge to let the head look down, and the combined hips letting the tail wag up and down a bit. The paws are on hinges so they can switch positions between standing and flying
modes. Everything else from robot mode is locked down by transformation.
With the sword stored on one wing and the dagger on the other, the
pointy hilts can give the impression of blaster barrels. While there's no "landing gear" for flying mode, that weird butt shape as well as the raised trapezoids on the chest act to stabilize it on a flat surface. Standing more just stands on the four paws.

Overall: It's priced almost as high as a pre-tariff Voyager, and is a smallish Deluxe, for reasons covered above. Is it a good enough design to merit the price hike? Nope. It's okay, and at least they didn't just rip
off Nightglider's engineering, but it feels like the sort of thing that'd be paired with an oversized Voyager in a set like this...rather than with
another Deluxe.


Set Overall: Sigh. Hasbro's really going hard into "The adult
collectors will buy anything for whatever price we set" territory, I suppose
I should be glad they're not also doing the Mattycollector thing of making it impossible to get the toys if you're not on the store page within seconds of
it opening. These are some interesting designs, if not brilliant ones, and it's a pity they got saddled with obnoxious pricetags.


Dave Van Domelen, watching lots of people give up on Transformers
entirely lately, or shift to pure 3P buying.

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