Tamagotchi Mini: Unnecessarily simplifying for the modern day before it was cool

Yes, this is the best tie into Digimon that I can do at the moment. In my defence, this is basically what Digimon started off as. It wasn't a Pokemon rip off, it was a Tamagotchi rip off.

It's somewhat surprising what things just won't die. I don't know if it's a testament to how beloved Tamagotchi's are, or that people really don't want real pets. While the original Tamagotchi's were released just before my time (I was alive, but you don't give small electronics to a one-year-old), they did get a small resurgence when I was in Primary School with the "Tamagotchi Connection" line around the mid-2000's. Now in 2018, they're back again with a re-release of the Tamagotchi Mini's, and the originals apparently getting a re-release in a few months (at least in the US according to a Wiki I'm using to make sure I get some dates roughly right). Aimed purely at nostalgic fans of the original toys, I figured it would be somewhat interesting to see how well these things hold up by today's standards. Will this appeal to kids nowadays? One way to find out.

Sixshot Showdown: Hasbro's Titans Return Leader Class Sixshot vs Iron Factory Legends Scaled Shadow Tengu

Yes, I know, this should be a review of a Tamagotchi, but I got one of the Iron Factory one in recently, and wanted an excuse to review it and the official one from last year. Two bots, six modes each, I'm sure it'll be fun, right? Want to see who the better Phase Sixer is?

I'll start off with one flaw they share. They share it with each other, they share it with the G1 toy, it will be a problem Sixshots will have so long as they look anything like this and do the six-changer gimmick (the one exception I can think of was that one time in Energon he was a Shockblast repaint, "Who in itself was totally not meant to be Shockwave, totally different character, ignore the similarities!"... it was something Hasbro did back then if they couldn't get the name rights again. At least it's better than Shockwaveblast). The problem is a problem the gimmick has built into it. See, Sixshot's whole gimmick is that he is a Six changer, a toy that officially has six modes. In the case of Sixshot, we have a robot, a car, a tank, a gun, a jet, and a wolf mode. The problem is that with any Transformer, the more modes you have in a toy, the worse each mode gets. Generally, a Sixshot's best mode is his robot mode, with any others being hit or miss at best. On the plus side, this means that this character is far more playable than any other Transformer toy, and the multiple modes encourage fan mode finding like the now infamous flying wolf mode, but if you're looking for a feasible looking car, or tank, or jet, or gun, or wolf, you might want to go get a Transformer that only turns into one of them.

Who here better lives up to the legacy of this guy?

Transformers Combiner Wars Leader Class Armada Megatron: And people thought Optimus was stretching the definition of a combiner...

The move away from Generation 1 into Generation 2 was not kind to Megatron, was it? Well, that depends on how you look at it honestly as he was one of a few characters that got new toys in Generation 2, mostly because he wasn't allowed to be a gun anymore. Since then Megs has bounced around between alt mode, but the one he always comes back to after he's done being weird by being a space car, or a dragon, or a hand, or a Nerf gun in order to try and please both fans and people that have real power, is a Tank. Why? Your main villain is a gun, what else are you going to turn him into when you need to change him other than a giant gun on tracks? Normally that would be the end of it, make a new Tank Megs, make it a Voyager or a Leader, shove it out in a wave in a new toy line and be done with it. Combiner Wars Wave 1 though did actually try to keep the Combiner label for its Leader class figures. There was just one small problem... Megatron doesn't really do combining, does he? There are only two that I recall, being the Cybertron one where he combined with an evil Lion (cause they needed some excuse to keep the Nemesis name), and Armada, where he combined with Tidal Wave. To Hasbro though, connecting Minicons is close enough to combining so a few additions to the mould, a new head and a new colour scheme later and you've got yourself a Combiner Wars Armada Megatron!

Lego Star Wars; The Clone Wars set number 7675; AT-TE: Six legs are better then four!

I, like many others, enjoyed Star Wars The Clone Wars when it was originally airing. I enjoyed the character interpretations, the story ideas, the story structure, to me, it is the best thing set in the Prequel era, the second being Revenge of the Sith. The pilot movie was honestly the first Star Wars film I saw at cinemas. Like many others, I am looking forward to the final season finally being made, even if it's for a streaming service. Do I think it's going to live up to the hype? No, mostly because we know they're sticking to the original plans for the season, and some of those episodes have already been released (albeit in a very, very unfinished state). Unlike some people, I'm not calling for Lucasarts management to be sent to the internet equivalent of the Gallows, and am not believing the "management's going to ruin Clone Wars". To take a stab at that fandom, it's hard to believe anything's "the worst thing to happen to Star Wars" now when the same thing has been said about a lot of things. Do I need to bring up the joke I made when I was reviewing the Flash animation version of Clone Wars where the "let's look at the version of Star Wars fans love to forget exists" could be said about Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 7, The Clone Wars, something I can't remember because this was when I was using linked imaged rather than uploading them so its now a dead link, the Christmas Special and Clone Wars? (Before anyone brings it up, the inclusion of Clone Wars and Episode 7 was a stab at the "Star Wars is only the original trilogy" crowd, and the review was actually done before Episode 7 came out, back in September 2015).

Back on topic, ever since 1999, Lego has been making Lego sets based on Star Wars and its films, original expanded universe, current expanded universe, shows, games, Lego made spin-offs, basically if you can name a vehicle in Star Wars that is somewhat recognizable to general audiences, there's a good chance Lego has made at least one set based on it and the more well known the vehicle is, the more versions of it Lego has made (on Brickpedia under Star Wars, there are 16 results of sets that have X-Wing in the name, just as an example). With the 20th anniversary next year, it's a safe bet Lego is going to keep this IP as long as possible and will try to renew the licence in 2022. For now though, let's look at the Prequel Walker five years in the making (the one before this one came out in 2003 for Attack of the Clones), let's look at The Clone Wars AT-TE.

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?