Beast Hunters: Closing Thoughts and Loose Ends

Firstly I wanted to say that I am loving the fact that Hasbro has made my pickiness much much more easy. I think it is currently hilarious that the simplified deluxe wave is commanding such a high premium on eBay. I am not as surprised that the Terrorcons are doing as well, however its the Bumblebee and Smokescreen that are completely surprising me. These two figures received the most hideous response and when the figures were not available, everybody runs to the eBay. I have to say that these are two figures that I am definitely not missing. I would have enjoyed to have a larger Abominus, however my Target and standard versions are a nice fit, even though I stray away from the cyberverse figures. The real miss on Hasbro's part was to release Predaking and Optimus again in the voyager price point. One of those two slots would have been perfect for the Insecticon mold from Beast Hunters. I picked up two of these at the incorrect color scheme, and would have loved to have the correct in scale insecticons to my army, but hindsight is 20 20, and at least I am not involved in the crazy ebaying. I am however happy to say that my Beast Hunters and generally Prime is now a closed book in my collection. Thanks to some deep Target clearance discounts, I picked up the last few figures that I had my eye on. I must say that the Beast Fire Predaking is an impressive figure at the 12 dollar price point I scored it for, however I deeply regret those who dropped 60 on this bad boy. I feel like it is incredibly simplified, and though it is nicely in scale, could have used a bit more complex design. This past weekend I also picked up the final Predacons that I had my eye on. For the original price of a Darksteel, I scored Mr. Darky, Sky-Linx, as well as the Cryo-Fire Predaking... a great throw-back to Cryotek, especially both of them being Target Exclusives. All three of them have yet to be released from their plastic prions, but will be, soon enough. I will hopefully have some more on these three soon, as well as more on the blog, so please keep checking back!

RID was Rad

I have noticed that there is a lot of hate toward Robots in Disguise in the fan community.  Personally I have a soft spot in my heart for this series.  It was the first full line of Transformers that were available in stores when I started to collect ten years ago now!  Thinking about how its been so long since I have looked at this series I decided to try to post a Pro-RID blog for those who are on the fence, or those who are open minded enough to continue to read the blog.

The first thing that deserves to be mentioned is that RID was the fist show to take us back to a primarily vehicle based Transformer line up as opposed to the Beast Era.  This was the first thing that attracted me to the line.  My cousin had always had Formers, and I was always fascinated by them.  When he got me into the hobby, all that was available in stores was Beast Machines, and honestly they did not appeal.  I did pick up the deluxe Primal, and the Deluxe Jetstorm, but those ended up being nothing more than filler for what was on the way. So reason RID was Rad #1- a return the Prime as a truck.

Hasbro had decided to return to the Prime as a truck model of doing things, and scrapped their idea for the Transtech which would have been a connection from the Beast era to Gen 1, and needed more time in order to completely write the story and get what would be the Unicron Trilogy developed and ready for stores.  To make sure that Formers still had a shelf presence, Hasbro decided to take what was known as Transformers 2000, or Car Robots and release it state side.  They redubbed the show in English and released the show onto Fox Kids.  When it aired, the series was cut a little short because of the events of 9/11 though.  There were a few shows that depicted the destruction of a few buildings and it was felt that they would not be a good PC idea after the tragic destruction of the twin towers. 

The storyline of RID somewhat hearkened back to the original G1 story line in my mind.  However, there was almost no talk of Cybertron, nor any extra-terrestrial action.  This did not detract from the show however, although there are a few episodes that are a bit kiddy, the show was very much action packed, and full of awesome battles.  The first few episodes, the battle was between the Autobots and the Predicons... WHAT?!?! In just a few episodes, Megatron hijacks some protoforms, and injects part of his spark and BAM! The Decepticons were once again born.  Reason RID was Rad 2- Return of the Decepticons.

The story also added a huge group of Autobots.  The good guys started with Optimus Prime, and the Autobot Brothers (Sideburn, Prowl, and X-Brawn) and within the next few episodes the Autobots ranks had skyrocketed.  Not only did it include individual Autobots, the within the first five episodes, RailRacer was introduced, the first time that we had seen a Gestalt in a cartoon stateside since Computron and Abominus in G1.  Reason RID was Rad #3- Gestalts come back to the silver screen.

On that same note, five of the Decepticons took a stroll down memory lane back to the eighties, and early nineties.  The special five that I speak of are of course BRUTI..... ummm RUINATION.  There were a total of six Decepts in all, five of which provided the evil doers with their own gestalt, who was no other than a repaint/reissue of the original Combaticons.  so Reason RID was Rad #4- Scramble City Bots Came Home!

The sixth Decepticon was Scourge, no other than a straight black and white repaint of G2 Laser Rod Optimus Prime.  Let me tell you... for a toy developed in the early nineties, it is an amazing figure.  I know it is a hard one to come by, but if you only get a single figure from this line... I recommend the TRU Scourge.  The black and white paint scheme was simple and beautifully captured on plastic.  Reason RID was RAD #4-  Back in Black, Scourge the Adam of Black Paints.

Also this line brought us a first.  Ultra Magnus... with is OWN mold.  Ulntra Magnus was introduced a kind of the Wolverine bad ass of the team.  He was his own bot.  Also i think that he gave us the only glimpse of Cybertron as he explained why he was doing what he was doing.  This was one of my favorite figures of the line, and actually I got Ultra Magnus before I even got my Optimus Prime!  Reason RID was Rad #5- Ultra Magnus got is Ball Bearings Back.

The major thing that this line brougt back (in a way) was BIG.  I mean that in the most real meaning.  RID brought back the biggest Transformer ever made... and one of my favorites... Fortress Maximus.  Fort Max was actually the figure that got me into Transformers.  When I saw my cousin's Brave Max I was like... Josh.. what is this... this is soo cool.  Then he took off the head.  Dude... you brok.... wait its a robot!  Awesome.  Dude... you pulled off his hea.... wait a third robot... that is a major bad ass sandwich!  I had to have it, but $120 for a Japanese toy and a minimum wage job... it just wasn't in the cards... if only I knew then what I know now.  I had to wait to get my Brave Max until the Korean issue, with upside down Bot symbol.  but I have him.... totally awesome.  Reason RID was Rad #6- Fort Maximus Is in the HOUSE!!!

I hope this gave a little bit of insight on why I really love this cartoon and line of toys.  Hopefully some time soon I will be able to get my collection up on shelves and share it with everyone and I will be sure to include my complete RID line up. 

HEAD ON!!!

Recently there has been an announcement that for the fist time we are going to receive a stateside release of the Japanese Headmasters series.   Personally I am a bit excited, not just because for the first time in my life I can buy a movie called Headmasters off of Amazon and bring it into the house during the daytime, but because I have always wanted a good quality version of this series.  The first time that I got a chance to watch the series was off a set of VHS tapes (anyone remember those magical "video cartridges?") that my cousin let me borrow and of course make my own, more degraded copy.  I then later scored a copy of Headmasters with the rest of the Japanese series on VCD which had a bit better quality, but I am still excited for a stateside NTSC DVD copy.
Headmasters takes place following Season 3 for the Japanese story line.  It completely replaces the story line laid out in the Rebirth series.  The story takes a  completely different route than Rebirth did as well, but I would expect since stateside we had 3 episodes, while Headmasters had a full season.  The season does have some fairly large events that occur... like the complete destruction of C... Seibertron.  Also they tend to let Fort Max build slowly, instead of showing everything all at once.  They also have amazing character development for Sixshot.  He is one of my favorite TF characters, and in Rebirth all I get to see is what a "one man army can do."  That was it, where in Headmasters, he is a main stay player, and a key player at that...
Headmasters does have some slow points, but all things considered it is an amazing storyline, and I am excited about this set.  If for no other reason, I would recommend purchasing it just so we can get Masterforce and Victory stateside.  I would love to have good quality versions of these great series on my TF DVD shelf.