Starting off with the three main Masterpiece announcements, another reveal of Masterpiece Hound, a new, looking to be coming soon Masterpiece Bumblebee, and the one that took everyone by surprise, Masterpiece Blackarachnia. While I don't personally have much to say about MP Hound, as I believe it's the same prototype we saw a while ago, MP Bee has... sparked interest in the community... Recent Masterpieces have been aiming to create as cartoon accurate figures as possible, and while that's not a bad thing to many, it is a problem to others, especially when to pull off that accuracy, you get a mess of parts behind the figure. Bumblebee does not look very good from the back, at all, however, to everyone saying that the back automatically ruins the figure, let me ask you this. Why do you care what they look like from the back? I already know you don't display figures with their backs visible. The heals are more of a problem, I'll give you that, though it's still workable, and at least you know he's going to be stable. I'm not a fan of the new head though, because while it looks accurate to the show, it doesn't look good when brought into the real world. If anything, it looks like it belongs in Transformers Animated cause of how much of a chin he has. This new release is also somewhat fitting of the price hike MP's have apparently been getting because the original Masterpiece Bee had to come with a version of Spike in the Exo Suit from the 86 movie to justify the cost. Here? Mini Spike re-release, an effect part for his gun, an extra face and some pieces for car mode... "woo....".
Blackarachnia is more interesting in terms of Masterpieces, partly because this is coming first. To those who know a thing about the Beast Wars toys, you'll know that the original Blackarachnia was a repaint of the other main spider of the first season, Tarantulus, who did play a big role in Beast Wars. serving as the Starscream of the Predacons, while also being as smart as Shockwave. It's surprising that she's coming first over other potential Predacons like Tarantulus and the beloved punching bag, Waspinator. Don't get me wrong, Tarantulus is probably coming. New chest, new head, new colour scheme, done, and the main reason for Blackarachnia getting first dibs is probably because she is one of the go-to female characters now, and one of two go to female Decepticons/ Predacons. It'll be interesting to see what comes next though because many would probably like to display her alongside Beast Wars Silverbolt (assuming they're not picky on the version to display the two together). As for the MP itself, it looks really good for the character, and once again, cartoon accurate (though in this case that could be for the worse depending on your views on anatomy...). I'm curious to see what they're going to do for texture, along with the engineering going into it because unlike Bee, Blackarachnia looks to have a very clean transformation, but the parts need to go somewhere so this could be another MP like Dinobot was.
The final two that I want to talk about here are two reveals for potentially the Takara Legends EX line, Star Convoy (a decent retooling of Power of the Primes Optimus), which looks distinct, but isn't very interesting because I know how that mould works, and we don't know if there is going to be new engineering in it to pull off features unique to the original Star Convoy. While it is interesting to see close to complete looks at the third version of Masterpiece Optimus Prime, the Prime that has me the most excited is a new Armada Prime that was teased. We saw the robot mode, which aside from it being a brand new mould, looks really good for Armada Prime, and a nice update to the original figure. It's very stylized, like an IDW take on Armada Prime, but the engineering improvement is already obvious. Fixed arm guns, working modern shoulders, better-disguised Powerlink hands that combined with the crotch split confirms that there will be a Powerlink mode for either the trailer and hopefully Armada Overload and Jetfire? This Prime does look really good, but what has me the most curious is how they're going to handle the trailer. Might we finally get an Armada Optimus Prime that has a combined mode with working legs?! I wonder how it'll be released though because this is a new mould, it's not a heavy retool. Is it going to be exclusive to Japan, or will Hasbro pick it up and release it to the rest of the world?
Hopefully, that last one will be answered this weekend at New York Toy Fair. Like last year, I'll be covering Transformers news, Lego news, and maybe other things flying around of interest. I'll be breaking the Transformers news up because, if leaks and teases are anything to go by, there's going to be a lot to talk about.
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