Transformers Power of the Primes Lege... um... "Deluxe Class" (?) Battletrap: Can this be considered an upgrade?

While nowadays Hasbro and Takara tend to dedicate an entire year's worth of toys to a gimmick, back in Generation 1 and Generation 2 (it could be said that it was phased out in the Beast Era), gimmicks were given to select few characters, and those could be considered teams for either faction. One of those was the Duocons, two Decepticons that have two alternate modes that combine together to form a robot. The best way to describe them is something like one of the old Power Core Combiners, where once the two pieces are together, spring connections move around to form the "robot". A toy gimmick that limits movement in the toy combined with G1 toy design not letting anything that doesn't need to move to have any movement at all, you can imagine how well G1 Flywheels and Battletrap looked. The thing is though that there isn't a huge amount of love for the Duocons, and many expected Battletrap to get the same treatment Flywheels got, a Titan Master toy by the name of Skytread in Titans Return. Two Legends class toys of two new characters that combine into a new Battletrap? No one was expecting that. Allow me to introduce Battleslash and Roadtrap, today's review subjects.

San Diego Comic-Con 2018 Roundup Part 1 (maybe): Bots, Bricks, Cars, Intergalactic Wars, and a mashup of things because I'm not splitting this between the two sites

Don't worry, I plan on getting back into reviews soon. I just need to get through this dump of news first. While this will not, I repeat, WILL NOT, cover everything from San Diego Comic-Con this year (trust me, its better this way because most of the content won't be "This is a thing... moving on"), I will be looking at some large parts of it, including more Transformers news, this time on the official side of the spectrum, Lego news, the return of The Clone Wars, and Hot Wheels of all things. Shall we get started?

TFCon 2018 Roundup Part 2: The Show floor

And now onto Part 2 of TFCon before all of this becomes completely outdated! For Part 1, you can find it here: https://mediaholicstoybox.blogspot.com/2018/07/tfcon-2018-roundup-part-1-slideshow.html as I won't be repeating things that I've already covered. I will admit that there will be a mix of already released, about to be released, and work in progress figures not ready for release here. I don't know which is which, I'm just looking at the figures themselves. Anyway, shall we get started?

TFCon 2018 Roundup Part 1: The Slideshow

The Northern Hemisphere Summer, a time when it feels like everyone wants to get all their news stories out on what they're working on. While San Diego Comic-Con is on this weekend to talk about more official new releases, I thought I might dabble in the Third Party scene, see what those companies are up to, seeing as TF Con was last weekend. Do not expect reviews of these to happen. I am not made of money, and these figures are not cheap! Also, heads up, this is a text dump with not a lot of images. There is a link to the site where I got my news from though, and it is in the order of those images.

Amiibo Round up; Splatoon series: Paintball, Fashion, and Selfies, this really is a hodge podge of generations

While I have reviewed Amiibo as a whole on the main site a while ago, to act as a comparison between them and a few other items in the Toys to Life market, I haven't really given them an individual review, a proper analysis where they can stand up on their own right. I'd like to change that here and now, and to show that I do actually review more things than just Transformers and Lego, I'll start to review the many amiibo that have been released over the years. I'll be doing them in either their series or potentially, later on, the waves they are released in. While I will try to do them as close to release as possible (for future ones) that might be easier said than done considering how much stock Australia is getting and where it's going. Seriously, I almost had to delay this because it was hard to find on the shelf stock for Pearl and Marina. Really hope that sorts itself out come December, otherwise we'll be seeing another Ness situation. Enough looking to the future though, let's take a look at what we have now.

Lego UFO 6975; Alien Avenger: *Insert War of the Worlds joke here*

Light bricks? Giant single pieces? Magnets? Packaging and marketing that promotes breaking the sets and building what you want without it being implied?! What kind of world have we walked into? Welcome to Lego UFO, a subline of what many now call Classic Space, adding an evil alien faction to that world. This was right before Star Wars took the throne of the main Space theme, and ushered in an era where space sets were focused more on combat rather than exploration. This was a time where sets didn't need to have something actually fire, and that time where children having greater access to technology wasn't at a point where they're born with a phone in their hand, so companies could afford adding more gimmicks to their toys. It's time for us to see some of the dangers the great unknown has for us.

Transformers Beast Wars Transmetal Mega class Optimus Primal: ... the heck is Mega class?

What do you do when your repeat visit with Transformers Generation 2 fails spectacularly? You use your new assets in the form of Kenner, tell them to go nuts, and as a result, they turn everyone into robots with biological animal bits, then robot animals with biological robots, then a fusion of the two while also deciding to throw animals together... along with implementing franchise wide improvements like ball joints, the move from Die-cast metal to plastic, size classes, having a show that isn't all about selling new toys (ok not everyone adopted that one but there have been some great shows that have), helping to pioneer 3D animation for television... basically there isn't much to mock Beast wars of. While I wait patiently for my foot to heal so that I don't need to roll the dice with select stores and how they handle stock cataloging on their sites, I figured I would go back and review the one Beast Wars figure I personally own, before I eventually review Power of the Primes Optimal Optimus... and maybe one day that Masterpiece Primal if I can find one, that just looks great. Anyway, come and take a trip with me to the distant past of 1998, as we tackle a Transmetal gorilla.