First up, with an assist from Zob, is COSMOS.

When I originally saw pictures of this toy, I thought he looked a little cheap because of the giant gaps in his forearms. Having him in hand, I can honestly say he feels a little cheap because of the giant gaps in the forearms -- but only a little cheap, and only in comparison to the rather stellar WFC toys we had been getting. He's really quite good.

Transformation is very different than anything else on the shelves lately, because he has such a weird alt-mode and there really aren't a lot of good precedents for what parts go where. It's always a lot of fun when they have to try different techniques rather than a toy like Earthrise Inferno where everything is basically where it was 30 years ago (not that the Inferno/Grapple mold is bad, it's a great implementation of a previous design).

There were a couple of points where slightly excessive force is required, at least on my copy, and where I went and looked at the instructions to make sure I wasn't about to break a rare and hard to find toy. The green heel spurs don't want to go nicely past a yellow tab, which might require trimming the tab slightly. And locking the shoulders in place requires putting a bit too much pressure on the plastic for my anxiety problems.

The yellow plastic for the legs is a bit oranger than the yellow paint on the arms -- it's close, but completely leaps out at me. I want to say that the yellow plastic in the shoulder assembly is a better match, but that might be a trick of the light.

There's a flap on the back of the vehicle mode that could have used a small tab to keep it in place better.

He's also absolutely adorable in both modes. And has great poseability.

Robot mode is COMBAT/FOSSIL ready, and there are multiple weapon tips which accept the blast effects, which makes me wonder how long this toy has been in the works.

Mine has two manufacturing defects. His right shoulder has a loose joint (with metal pin!) and cannot hold position if he was posed doing jumping jacks -- it drops back mostly to the side, which is not really a problem (the other rotation of that shoulder, for walking like a zombie or whatever is properly tight, and that's the joint that gets used more, plus Cosmos is left handed anyway). The other defect is a bit of plastic flashing in his back COMBAT/FOSSIL port, which would be trivial to cut away.

But, again, he is absolutely adorable in both modes, and lots of fun, and this is all nitpicking. For a toy designed on a remold budget, he is amazing, and just for a deluxe he is very good.

****

Next up, OVERRIDE, who arrived from Hasbro Pulse today.

The original Cybertron Override toy is deeply disappointing in nearly every way. A blocky, spring-loaded mess with an awkward robot mode and an ok vehicle mode that wants to autotransform on contact with anything. The toy was clearly an experiment, and not all experiments are going to be successful.

This new Override is better.

The vehicle mode might be worse, actually, but it stays in that mode happily.

I don't love the trend of female Autobots having their heads visible in vehicle mode (Elita-1 will do the same, and Minerva I believe), but it is correct to the original character model. I think this is something they should have changed about the character model way back then, and even now when they were G1ifying the toy (if Bulkhead can be so radically changed, the Override could at least hide her head).

The windshield is less streamlined on this version, which makes her look less like the speed demon that we know she is.

I honestly don't remember whether she was able to deploy her missiles in vehicle mode on the original toy. (She kind of shares a gimmick with Cybertron Clocker -- a rear engine-like thing that has missile/guns pop out, but she did it worse as they don't flip up to make a more compact handheld weapon) Again, even if they didn't work on the original, they could have improved it here.

She's also missing some gold paint for her toes/headlights, and on the engine block.

But, on the positives, she holds together really well, she rolls, and there is a 5mm port (hex!) on the engine for attaching other weapons in vehicle mode. There's a little bit of a Speed Racer vibe to her with the colors.

I don't think her mode is meant to be a disguise. She has a very functional vehicle mode, with styling borrowed from "real" vehicles, rather than transforming into a "real" vehicle. There are gaps on the sides where there could have been an effort to fill out the vehicle mode, but no effort was made.. I'm ok with this here, as there was no one to disguise oneself from on Velocitron.

The engine block is held in place with a 5mm post/port, but the 5mm part is inside a larger hole. It doesn't cause any problems, but it means that the 5mm port isn't very available for plopping on COMBAT/FOSSIL things and loading out her vehicle mode. That's a little disappointing, and didn't have to be that way. (You also cannot put the engine on backwards, if you wanted her to extend missiles back...)

It's not a great vehicle mode. It's an acceptable vehicle mode.

Transformation has one of my favorite details in a transformation -- the robot hands hold onto something in vehicle mode. No, I cannot explain why I love that detail so much every time it happens. It's not even that the arms don't have to be designed to hide a hand -- although that is the case, and leads to nice solid forearms here. I think I just like the idea of the Transformer doing yoga and holding car pose.

Transformation has a few tricks we haven't seen in a while, to compress the shoulders in, so Override no longer looks like a linebacker.

This is a toy where any time there was a sacrifice between robot and vehicle, robot won. I generally think that's a mistake, as I prefer the "vehicle came alive" look, but she does look very nice in robot mode.

She looks like she comes from some other transforming robot toyline out of Japan. I want to say Brave, based on the amount of gold paint picking out details on black shoulders and arms, and the design of the head.

She has most of the expected articulation -- the waist is very limited (she can shift her weight rather than really bend... it looks more natural than no waist), but she has wrist swivels. Head just spins, no useful up and down.

She is fully FOSSIL/COMBAT compatible, kind of. The foot ports are on the very tips of her toes, and the shoulder ports are on the back of the shoulders. And the back port is either too deep (it's where that engine block connects) or a little off center if you leave the engine on. An effort was made, as none of these ports are used in transformation, and the raised lips on the shoulder ports meant other parts had to be adjusted for clearance. Also, all ports are hexes, so things grip very well.

The engine block becomes a missile launcher thing with non-firing missiles. They might be guns that look like missiles, as they accept fireblasts on the tips. The guns don't have anything stopping them from swinging in slightly too far, so you have to use a little care to make sure they are parallel.. They will stay parallel if you pose them that way, but the natural spot when transforming would have them pointing at the same spot a few inches past their barrels.

The gun/missile thing can either be held like a too-large handgun, or attach to the side of her arm using a FOSSIL/COMBAT port.

She has a great robot mode.

I cannot recommend this toy to anyone not already inclined, though, because the vehicle mode really is a bit weak. But, she is an improvement over the original Cybertron toy, and she adds another fembot to the collection.

****

Also from Pulse, we have ROAD HAULER.

This is just Grapple in green. It's a nice color on Grapple. The artwork shows him with the nozzle hand, while the toy photography uses the big claw hand. I think the claw should be his default choice, to make him a little different.

It would have been nice to get rid of the claw and nozzle and give him another rifle, so he could have been a two-gun construction bot, which would have given him a bit of character.

But there's not a lot to say about Green Grapple. He's Grapple in Green.

Oh, except for one little detail. His face is molded into a perpetual scream of horror, as if he gazed upon an Elder God, and will never stop screaming for the rest of his life. I suppose that fills out his character a little bit.

Motto: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGH!"

****

And as an extra added bonus, because I saw him in a box while cleaning, we have TF:Prime SHARKTICON MEGATRON.

In the cartoon, Megatron spent his days snorting the dessicated remains of an Elder God (fine, they called it the Blood of Unicron, and it really was the remains of Unicron), and chasing his next high looking for more. He even had meth teeth.

So, it is no surprise that his entire body would be twisted from a silver space plane thing to a horrific assembly of random sea creature details as the Elder God changed him. The only surprise is that this never happened on the show, and that he has no tenticles.

http://www.tfu.info/2013/Decepticon/SharkticonMegatron/megatron.htm

Weird fucking freak of nature at this point in his life. Totally fitting for the TF:Prime Megatron, and absolutely the definitive toy of that character, despite never being depicted in the cartoon in that form.

He's great. I love him.

Fine, he never actually snorted the Blood of Unicron ... he injected it. If he had a nose he would have snorted it though.

On Saturday, September 3, 2022 at 2:00:31 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> There's a flap on the back of the vehicle mode that could have used a small tab to keep it in place better.

Mine pops off frequently. I'm considering doing something with metal pins.

> He's also absolutely adorable in both modes. And has great poseability.

I find him quite delightful. I think Floro Dery did us all a service by giving us a year's worth of short, fat, dumpy robots to counter the visual look of all the superheroes-wearing-boxes from season one. After buying hundreds of neo-G1 toys who all follow the same basic body design, I absolutely love Cosmos as an unabashed chonkerbot.
> The original Cybertron Override toy is deeply disappointing in nearly every way. A blocky, spring-loaded mess with an awkward robot mode and an ok vehicle mode that wants to autotransform on contact with anything. The toy was clearly an experiment, and not all experiments are going to be successful.

I have the toy, because the store had some ten-dollar bonus two-packs, and five bucks seemed like a fine price to pay for a Deluxe toy. I think Thundercracker might have been the other Deluxe. Anyway, I think Override is interesting, and the vehicle styling is fun. But, and I ask this in earnest, is she really an iconic character who needs to be revisited? The only Cybertron character I really ever see anybody talk about is Thunderblast, and that's only because she had visible nipples under her armor in the cartoon series.

My box of Cybertron toys almost invariably ends up at the very bottom of the stack, or the back corner of the closet. So I guess it must me my least favorite Transformers toy line by default.

> This is just Grapple in green. It's a nice color on Grapple. The artwork shows him with the nozzle hand, while the toy photography uses the big claw hand. I think the claw should be his default choice, to make him a little different.

Hmm, see, I had thought two hands would be the way to go, since both Grapple and Inferno always had one gun-arm in the cartoon. But a claw-hand is an interesting idea.
> It would have been nice to get rid of the claw and nozzle and give him another rifle, so he could have been a two-gun construction bot, which would have given him a bit of character.

I like how they had changed it up with Sideswipe and his brothers. Sometimes you got the handheld rifle. Sometimes you got the shoulder cannon. Sometimes you got police lights. I think we're at a point now where you always get all three, if for no other reason than we've already gotten like seventeen iterations of this mold and they've already made back all their development costs and then some.

So, yes, a different set of accessories would have been interesting. Or even finding a way to mold his rifle in green, just to make him a little more Constructicon-ish.
> And as an extra added bonus, because I saw him in a box while cleaning, we have TF:Prime SHARKTICON MEGATRON.

I always loved his colors, and at one point I even considered buying him based on his aesthetics alone. But, I must have found something better to spend money on that week. But, his alternate mode really does look like... what's the female version of phallic? A quick Google check reveals that the word is yonic. It's a very yonic-looking alternate mode.

Zob (like, a picture of Sharkticon Megatron belongs on the "She Comes First" how-to book that Judy Witwicky was carrying)

Zobovor <zmfts@aol.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, September 3, 2022 at 2:00:31 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of
> the Seattle Wombats wrote:
>
>> There's a flap on the back of the vehicle mode that could have used a
>> small tab to keep it in place better.
>
> Mine pops off frequently. I'm considering doing something with metal pins.
>
>> He's also absolutely adorable in both modes. And has great poseability.
>
> I find him quite delightful. I think Floro Dery did us all a service by
> giving us a year's worth of short, fat, dumpy robots to counter the
> visual look of all the superheroes-wearing-boxes from season one. After
> buying hundreds of neo-G1 toys who all follow the same basic body design,
> I absolutely love Cosmos as an unabashed chonkerbot.

If they redeco him into Pathfinder, we will have a unabashed chonker
fembot. Which wouldn’t be as cool as a mold designed to be a plus sized
woman, but still a bit of variety in the shapes of female transformers.

>> The original Cybertron Override toy is deeply disappointing in nearly
>> every way. A blocky, spring-loaded mess with an awkward robot mode and
>> an ok vehicle mode that wants to autotransform on contact with anything.
>> The toy was clearly an experiment, and not all experiments are going to be successful.
>
> I have the toy, because the store had some ten-dollar bonus two-packs,
> and five bucks seemed like a fine price to pay for a Deluxe toy. I think
> Thundercracker might have been the other Deluxe. Anyway, I think
> Override is interesting, and the vehicle styling is fun. But, and I ask
> this in earnest, is she really an iconic character who needs to be
> revisited? The only Cybertron character I really ever see anybody talk
> about is Thunderblast, and that's only because she had visible nipples
> under her armor in the cartoon series.

You got two of the worst toys in the line in that two-pack!

Override was the leader of Velocitron, and presumably important. The
cartoon sort of stagnated on Velocitron for a while and that part drags, so
my memory has basically evaporated. It was not a great cartoon — better
than most of Energon, and better executed than Armada.

Override is probably the planet leader with the worst original toy. And
with so few fembots in Transformers at the time, notable for not being
overtly sexualized (because she was male in Japan, and that’s where all the
animation came from)

I’d honestly rather have seen Scourge get a new toy, as he had a very
memorable character arc, and his toy had a few problems (poor hand
articulation or position, with respect to the elbows). Or Vector Prime, but
that’s just because they could remold him into a Republic Venator class
Star Destroyer for a crossover character (since Vector Prime is already
white, I think going with something with more deco would be good)

> My box of Cybertron toys almost invariably ends up at the very bottom of
> the stack, or the back corner of the closet. So I guess it must me my
> least favorite Transformers toy line by default.

The toys are generally great. 75% great, with the rest split into “good,
but flawed” and “oh, this sucks”. That’s a really good ratio of good to bad
for a Transformers toyline.

If you come at it from the fiction though… a lot of it isn’t memorable.

I do think the Optimus toy is one of the best Optimus toys ever, though,
pulling influences from pretty much every major Optimus up to that point —
a best-of smorgasbord Optimus. Something about him even reminds me of
Primal, although I can’t place it.

I find it hard to believe that you go into your Energon toys more though.

>> This is just Grapple in green. It's a nice color on Grapple. The artwork
>> shows him with the nozzle hand, while the toy photography uses the big
>> claw hand. I think the claw should be his default choice, to make him a little different.
>
> Hmm, see, I had thought two hands would be the way to go, since both
> Grapple and Inferno always had one gun-arm in the cartoon. But a
> claw-hand is an interesting idea.

A claw-hand he has difficulty controlling, leading to terrifying accidents
and him screaming a lot? Or borrow Grapple’s claw and give him two claw
hands!

>> It would have been nice to get rid of the claw and nozzle and give him
>> another rifle, so he could have been a two-gun construction bot, which
>> would have given him a bit of character.
>
> I like how they had changed it up with Sideswipe and his brothers.
> Sometimes you got the handheld rifle. Sometimes you got the shoulder
> cannon. Sometimes you got police lights. I think we're at a point now
> where you always get all three, if for no other reason than we've already
> gotten like seventeen iterations of this mold and they've already made
> back all their development costs and then some.
>
> So, yes, a different set of accessories would have been interesting. Or
> even finding a way to mold his rifle in green, just to make him a little
> more Constructicon-ish.

I would have liked the Inferno Ear Flaps, perhaps remolded to a distinctive
shape. We know his vehicle mode looks like Grapple, but there’s no reason
to limit his robot mode. I suppose there are a few stories in comics that
depict him some way.

I was surprised when I was looking him up on tfwiki that the head sculpt
wasn’t a reference to Shattered Glass Grapple or something like that. It’s
just random.

>> And as an extra added bonus, because I saw him in a box while cleaning,
>> we have TF:Prime SHARKTICON MEGATRON.
>
> I always loved his colors, and at one point I even considered buying him
> based on his aesthetics alone. But, I must have found something better
> to spend money on that week. But, his alternate mode really does look
> like... what's the female version of phallic? A quick Google check
> reveals that the word is yonic. It's a very yonic-looking alternate mode.

I was baffled at first, because of all the teeth. And then I realized I was
looking at the wrong part. Leaping labia!

I wonder if Depth Charge’s clit-face head would fit on the toy. Probably
way too big.

It was a very odd remold of a pretty weird Megatron toy — the original
capturing too much of the Movieverse Megatron in the design so he never
really felt distinctive, and having a flight mode that was a bit too
abstract. Optimus has a similar retread vibe, both in toy and show (the
Studio Series Optimus even borrows the transformation from a TF:Prime
Optimus toy).

A great show, though, as the focus was almost never on the big two for
long, and all the other characters were well done.

> Zob (like, a picture of Sharkticon Megatron belongs on the "She Comes
> First" how-to book that Judy Witwicky was carrying)

Ron and Judy remain the only thing I really love about those movies.

On Sunday, September 4, 2022 at 2:57:09 AM UTC-5, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> Zobovor <zm...@aol.com> wrote:
> > On Saturday, September 3, 2022 at 2:00:31 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of
> > the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> >
> >> There's a flap on the back of the vehicle mode that could have used a
> >> small tab to keep it in place better.
> >
> > Mine pops off frequently. I'm considering doing something with metal pins.
> >
> >> He's also absolutely adorable in both modes. And has great poseability..
> >
> > I find him quite delightful. I think Floro Dery did us all a service by
> > giving us a year's worth of short, fat, dumpy robots to counter the
> > visual look of all the superheroes-wearing-boxes from season one. After
> > buying hundreds of neo-G1 toys who all follow the same basic body design,
> > I absolutely love Cosmos as an unabashed chonkerbot.
> If they redeco him into Pathfinder, we will have a unabashed chonker
> fembot. Which wouldn’t be as cool as a mold designed to be a plus sized
> woman, but still a bit of variety in the shapes of female transformers.
> >> The original Cybertron Override toy is deeply disappointing in nearly
> >> every way. A blocky, spring-loaded mess with an awkward robot mode and
> >> an ok vehicle mode that wants to autotransform on contact with anything.
> >> The toy was clearly an experiment, and not all experiments are going to be successful.
> >
> > I have the toy, because the store had some ten-dollar bonus two-packs,
> > and five bucks seemed like a fine price to pay for a Deluxe toy. I think
> > Thundercracker might have been the other Deluxe. Anyway, I think
> > Override is interesting, and the vehicle styling is fun. But, and I ask
> > this in earnest, is she really an iconic character who needs to be
> > revisited? The only Cybertron character I really ever see anybody talk
> > about is Thunderblast, and that's only because she had visible nipples
> > under her armor in the cartoon series.
> You got two of the worst toys in the line in that two-pack!
>
> Override was the leader of Velocitron, and presumably important. The
> cartoon sort of stagnated on Velocitron for a while and that part drags, so
> my memory has basically evaporated. It was not a great cartoon — better
> than most of Energon, and better executed than Armada.
>
> Override is probably the planet leader with the worst original toy. And
> with so few fembots in Transformers at the time, notable for not being
> overtly sexualized (because she was male in Japan, and that’s where all the
> animation came from)
>

It's really trippy when you watch Cybertron online and 1 Japanese series episode is mislabeled as English.

> I’d honestly rather have seen Scourge get a new toy, as he had a very
> memorable character arc, and his toy had a few problems (poor hand
> articulation or position, with respect to the elbows). Or Vector Prime, but
> that’s just because they could remold him into a Republic Venator class
> Star Destroyer for a crossover character (since Vector Prime is already
> white, I think going with something with more deco would be good)

I don't know many who wish for more Crossover characters

> > My box of Cybertron toys almost invariably ends up at the very bottom of
> > the stack, or the back corner of the closet. So I guess it must me my
> > least favorite Transformers toy line by default.
> The toys are generally great. 75% great, with the rest split into “good,
> but flawed” and “oh, this sucks”. That’s a really good ratio of good to bad
> for a Transformers toyline.
>
> If you come at it from the fiction though… a lot of it isn’t memorable.
>
> I do think the Optimus toy is one of the best Optimus toys ever, though,
> pulling influences from pretty much every major Optimus up to that point —
> a best-of smorgasbord Optimus. Something about him even reminds me of
> Primal, although I can’t place it.
>
> I find it hard to believe that you go into your Energon toys more though.
> >> This is just Grapple in green. It's a nice color on Grapple. The artwork
> >> shows him with the nozzle hand, while the toy photography uses the big
> >> claw hand. I think the claw should be his default choice, to make him a little different.
> >
> > Hmm, see, I had thought two hands would be the way to go, since both
> > Grapple and Inferno always had one gun-arm in the cartoon. But a
> > claw-hand is an interesting idea.
> A claw-hand he has difficulty controlling, leading to terrifying accidents
> and him screaming a lot? Or borrow Grapple’s claw and give him two claw
> hands!

They pretend he's a unique character but what they won't tell you is that he's really dead-universe Grapple after becoming a Zombie. His open mouth is him preparng to ump forward and attack fellow bots for their processors.

> >> It would have been nice to get rid of the claw and nozzle and give him
> >> another rifle, so he could have been a two-gun construction bot, which
> >> would have given him a bit of character.
> >
> > I like how they had changed it up with Sideswipe and his brothers.
> > Sometimes you got the handheld rifle. Sometimes you got the shoulder
> > cannon. Sometimes you got police lights. I think we're at a point now
> > where you always get all three, if for no other reason than we've already
> > gotten like seventeen iterations of this mold and they've already made
> > back all their development costs and then some.
> >
> > So, yes, a different set of accessories would have been interesting. Or
> > even finding a way to mold his rifle in green, just to make him a little
> > more Constructicon-ish.
> I would have liked the Inferno Ear Flaps, perhaps remolded to a distinctive
> shape. We know his vehicle mode looks like Grapple, but there’s no reason
> to limit his robot mode. I suppose there are a few stories in comics that
> depict him some way.
>
> I was surprised when I was looking him up on tfwiki that the head sculpt
> wasn’t a reference to Shattered Glass Grapple or something like that. It’s
> just random.
> >> And as an extra added bonus, because I saw him in a box while cleaning,
> >> we have TF:Prime SHARKTICON MEGATRON.
> >
> > I always loved his colors, and at one point I even considered buying him
> > based on his aesthetics alone. But, I must have found something better
> > to spend money on that week. But, his alternate mode really does look
> > like... what's the female version of phallic? A quick Google check
> > reveals that the word is yonic. It's a very yonic-looking alternate mode.
> I was baffled at first, because of all the teeth. And then I realized I was
> looking at the wrong part. Leaping labia!
>

Megan Fox's movie Teeth says these aren't mutually exclusive.

> I wonder if Depth Charge’s clit-face head would fit on the toy. Probably
> way too big.
>

You'll just have to settle for the TFCC Rampage clit face they used on this toy

> It was a very odd remold of a pretty weird Megatron toy — the original
> capturing too much of the Movieverse Megatron in the design so he never
> really felt distinctive, and having a flight mode that was a bit too
> abstract. Optimus has a similar retread vibe, both in toy and show (the
> Studio Series Optimus even borrows the transformation from a TF:Prime
> Optimus toy).
>
> A great show, though, as the focus was almost never on the big two for
> long, and all the other characters were well done.
> > Zob (like, a picture of Sharkticon Megatron belongs on the "She Comes
> > First" how-to book that Judy Witwicky was carrying)
> Ron and Judy remain the only thing I really love about those movies.

On Sunday, September 4, 2022 at 1:57:09 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> If they redeco him into Pathfinder, we will have a unabashed chonker
> fembot. Which wouldn’t be as cool as a mold designed to be a plus sized
> woman, but still a bit of variety in the shapes of female transformers.

We've already gotten two of the X-Dimension GoBots, so it makes sense to just do them all eventually. (Given how pricey the eHobby set is, this is probably the only way most of us will ever own toys of those characters.) So, sure, blue Cosmos. Bring it on.

> You got two of the worst toys in the line in that two-pack!

My favorite Cybertron toy is probably Crosswise. He's really cool.

> If you come at it from the fiction though… a lot of it isn’t memorable.

I don't think I ever sat through a full episode of Cybertron. I'm thinking I own a DVD or two, that might have come free with a toy, or in a cereal box, or something like that. So, I might have started to watch it at one point. The CGI just seemed so lifeless, like robot puppets being dragged across a screen. I didn't find it engaging.

> I do think the Optimus toy is one of the best Optimus toys ever, though,

I never bought that one. I was at a point when I was buying Transformers just to buy Transformers, without enjoying any of them. I'd actually returned Cybertron Megatron to the store because he was so awful. I think I did the same thing with the Mirage boat.

It's actually a good thing that Classics came along when it did, because in 2005 I was seriously ready to just give up on collecting Transformers altogether.
> I find it hard to believe that you go into your Energon toys more though.

I don't dig through the box too often, but I have fond memories of some of those toys. I liked that they were paying tribute to elements of G1 even if they weren't directly homaging characters. Energon Rodimus was sort of a weird mix between Rodimus Prime and G2 Combat Hero Prime, but I didn't hate it. I actually had some Energon toys on shelves for a while. Inferno, Roadblock (who is "really" Grapple), Downshift ("really" Wheeljack), Starscream... sort of an almost-neo-G1 toy line, and the closest thing I believed we'd ever get to a true G1 tribute.

> A claw-hand he has difficulty controlling, leading to terrifying accidents
> and him screaming a lot? Or borrow Grapple’s claw and give him two claw
> hands!

Well, at that point you'd have to tuck the robot head away, pretend the truck windshield is his face, and turn him into a Super GoBot.
> I was surprised when I was looking him up on tfwiki that the head sculpt
> wasn’t a reference to Shattered Glass Grapple or something like that. It’s
> just random.

It would have been funny if they'd given him a Hook head sculpt. It could be a reference to the Big Looker storybook where the story features Grapple but they draw him like Hook, because somebody got their crane Transformers confused.

> It was a very odd remold of a pretty weird Megatron toy — the original
> capturing too much of the Movieverse Megatron in the design so he never
> really felt distinctive, and having a flight mode that was a bit too
> abstract.

They could have done a whole series of Megatrons decked out like different canonical sub-groups. Insecticon Megatron! Firecon Megatron! Terrorcon Megatron!

Zob (Firecon Megatron would turn into a short, fat dinosaur who could spit sparks)

Irrellius Spamticon <Ob1kenoby@att.net> wrote:
> On Sunday, September 4, 2022 at 2:57:09 AM UTC-5, Gustavo Wombat, of the
> Seattle Wombats wrote:
>> Or Vector Prime, but
>> that’s just because they could remold him into a Republic Venator class
>> Star Destroyer for a crossover character (since Vector Prime is already
>> white, I think going with something with more deco would be good)
>
> I don't know many who wish for more Crossover characters

There were a lot of terrible crossover characters. The old Star Wars ones,
for instance. Shitty, shitty toys.

But, I really like Gigawatt and Ecto-1. They’re great.

(I do assume that these are transformers from the g1 universe who have
taken alt modes of fictional vehicles, rather than existing in their own
universes. No more absurd than Red Alert, really)

And Vector Prime’s alt mode is so close to Star Destroyer shape anyway,
that he should be reshellable to change all the details.

On Sunday, September 4, 2022 at 12:23:17 PM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> But, I really like Gigawatt and Ecto-1. They’re great.
>
> (I do assume that these are transformers from the g1 universe who have
> taken alt modes of fictional vehicles, rather than existing in their own
> universes. No more absurd than Red Alert, really)

In a world where the Transformers came to Earth and awakened in 1984, Doc Brown and Marty McFly would have at least heard early stories or news reports about gigantic alien robots in Oregon by the time they were time-traveling in California in 1985. After the Decepticon threat becomes prominent, and Marty and Doc do some research and realize all the Transformers came to Earth aboard a spaceship four million years ago, they realize the only way to save the planet is to go back in time to 4,000,000 B.C. and find a way to divert the Ark so that it never crashes on Earth. But, first they need to know the precise calendar date the ship crashes, and for that they realize they need to visit the Transformers' homeworld and find the computer records of when the Ark actually launched.

The Ghostbusters, meanwhile, are convinced that the Transformers aren't alive at all, but are in fact lifeless machines who are possessed by the spirits of their former human owners. Egon Speingler actually showed up at the site of an Autobot-Decepticon battle (probably during the events of "City of Steel," which takes place in New York) to take some PKE readings, and he confirmed that there was definitely some spectral activity. The Ghostbusters grow concerned about the sheer number of haunted machines on Earth, and look for a way to remove the spirits from the machines, as Cybertronic metals effectively shield the Transformers from the plasma streams from their proton packs.

What Egon didn't know is that every Transformer is actually "haunted" by a piece of the AllSpark, which of course is imbued to them when Vector Sigma grants them life, channeling a fragment of the AllSpark through the Matrix dimension that in effect becomes their soul. So, it becomes a race against time as both the Ghostbusters aboard the Ecto-1, and Doc and Marty aboard the Delorean, both sneak aboard the Decepticon space bridge and travel to Cybertron with the goal of finding Vector Sigma, each for different reasons.

Both teams reach the center of Cybertron and Vector Sigma at exactly the same time. The Ghostbusters use their neutrona wands in an attempt to destroy the computer, but the energy surge activates Vector Sigma instead. It brings both the Ecto-1 and the Delorean to life, granting them the ability to transform into robots. In this splintered reality, the Autobots form an uneasy alliance with the Ghostbusters, while Doc Brown and Marty McFly unwittingly spend some time acting as Decepticon agents, who have tricked them in order to gain access to the time machine.

Zob (doesn't own either of the toys but kind of wants them now)