Eryn's Place For Stuff And Things

Toa Pohatu (2023)

why?

"you rap about the skeletons from undertale everytime, it's embarrassing"

ok

[after one beer]

Taking his place as the 11th/12th/7th member of the Thirteen, Nexus Prime comes gliding onto the scene with some fabulous colors and immaculate handfeel.

Nexus falls into the same “fairly regular robot” camp that a good chunk of the Primes do, with his colors doing a lot more work than any sculpting. Though, that sculpt is still quite nice. He’s still got some Generations greebling, though not tons. Overall form factor and shape are bigger players than a wealth of surface detailing. He’s overall styled after his (limited) ONE appearance, with a more blocky build and a flight helmet-esque head. Intentionally or otherwise, Nexus’ head has played an odd game of telephone over the past 17 odd years, but I quite like what we’ve ended up with. The mouth plate and visor are a delightfully painted pairing, and they’re framed quite well by his helmet. I can’t help but feel he comes off as a cocky pilot, which I love.

His colors hearken back to his Fun Pub roots, with most of him cast in lightly sparkling (but opaque) red and blue, with a bit of gray to keep those two tones separated. Paint is maybe a bit minimal, with highlights appearing in silver, gold, and black, alongside some additional red and blue for his head(s) and the fins on his guns. What is there still looks great, however. He’s overall very pretty, especially in person, and he feels even better. He’s very dense and chunky, with some hefty plastic that gives him a lot of weight. He’s just a solid bot in general.

Accessories are fairly simple, being a pair of finned blasters and his artifact, the combiner story deus ex machina Enigma of Combination, an item that has both appeared more often and been more relevant than the bot it belongs to. It’s painted up in silver, with a yellow core matching his chest and emblazoned with his personal emblem, which, cutely, consists of 5 parts. All three items can be equipped and stowed via a single 5mm peg each, though he’s a bit lacking in ports. A bit ironic that he’s not particularly fit for weaponizer shenanigans. The Enigma can stow away under the nosecone, while the blasters can be equipped in his hands or mounted on his back, giving him a moderately more distinct profile. The fins hinge, as well, providing additional options to style him.

In keeping with his somewhat standard silhouette, Nexus isn’t the most outstanding when it comes to articulation. He meets all your bases, but with a little extra flair to put him a step or two above. His head is on a usable ball joint that lets him look up a bit and down a lot more. The back panel can block combinations of these angles, but that’s easily solved by unpegging it a tiny bit. His elbows come forward 90° and go back just as far, alongside some wrist swivels. You’d think the thrusters next to his hands would mean they’re either totally locked or basically useless if they did move, but they don’t present much of a problem. While his hands can’t turn all the way around, you still get enough leverage to manipulate them and bring them in a bit, albeit not out. His waist swivels pretty far if you’ve got the Enigma stowed, and almost entirely unimpeded if you don’t, his thighs only barely bumping against a tab. Speaking of, his thigh swivel is cleanly cut, but his crotch juts down far enough that, if he’s standing straight, his legs will bump into it when you try and turn them. His knees only go back 90°, but they go forward a touch, which plays nicely with the bends in his feet.

Technically speaking, he’s not all that much more limber than the likes of Alchemist, whom I had gripes with for feeling a bit stiff, but smaller things like the knees and being able to cross his arms in front of his torso, if even only a little bit, do a lot for me. That’s the thing that ends up splitting the difference, even if it’s a purely vibes based assessment to begin with. Wrists are always nice, as well.

Transformation into jet mode is a delightfully buttery smooth affair. No awkward angles, no bending, no flexing, no weird clips, no pressure put on clear plastic, just clean, smooth motions the whole way through. Now, granted, that’s most definitely strongly in part thanks to what he actually turns into, but we’re not there yet. We’ll take a tidy transformation. However, there is a bit of MANDATORY PARTSFORMING. Or, well. Mandatory is maybe a strong word. The Enigma can stay in place in the nose cone no problem, but the blasters need to be moved around. They can’t stay pegged into his backpack going to jet mode, as those ports get covered up, and they can’t stay on the sides in jet mode as those are his feet. But like. The end result doesn’t change that much regardless of their presence.

The result of that delightful conversion is… a brick. A slab. A rectangle with some bullshit on it. The cockpit is putting in a lot of work, yeah… That said, I definitely don’t hate it. Far from it. It does work, though exactly how well it might read will vary on a person to person basis. The dip between the arms and the hips works weirdly well for me? It helps break things up, if nothing else. Though it is more noticeable from certain angles. Which, there’s no flight stand port. That on its own is already disappointing, but since the… awkward, form factor of his alt mode is eased by more interesting angles it’s even more of a shame. It’s not very dynamic, aero or otherwise. There aren’t any landing gear, of any sort, but there is a quartet of nubs on the bottom that keep it off the ground.

While he may not be the most exciting figure ever produced, Nexus is still a very solid time. He plays great and looks even better, so even if he’s not especially exciting when it comes down to things like engineering, how he handles more than makes up for that. No matter what, he is NOT worth all the fuss people made back when he was first revealed.

This is very much a rant but. I want to get my thoughts out and none of this was fitting in the review proper, so.

Further filling out the ranks of the Thirteen, Quintus Prime sticks out as one of the more visually interesting members, which is good because he doesn’t have a whole lot else going for him.

As far as physical design is concerned, Quintus easily proves to be one of the more striking parts of Cyberton’s ancient pantheon. While the general concept of the character is built around the quintessons (if you couldn’t guess from the name), here he takes on a much more ethereal look, his ancient visage almost floating above the ground as a never ending sea of tentacles and tendrils propels him forward.

The effect of “mass of tentacles instead of legs” that’s kinda his whole selling point by and large works pretty well. His toes sticking out the bottom throw it off a little, and while his legs are cast in translucent plastic, they’re still faintly visible through the skirt. Not clearly, but they are. I occasionally find myself sort of mentally filling in his legs, due to the human brain being weird and like. Knowing how the toy works. But I can still find the magic just as easily as it’s lost.

He’s painted very elegantly, with the somewhat muted, murky green he’s cast in complimented by a lighter, more metallic tone. He’s highlighted with a few dots of a similarly pearlescent purple, and a darker shade of green for some of the ship bits. The skirt carries a nice gradient, the softer translucent plastic it’s comprised of helping sell the effect further as the color fades. I really can’t praise the visuals enough, Quintus is a very pretty toy. I recognize that this is because they’re both based on ethereal, otherworldly, lovecraftian squid stuff, but he does scream “The Cosmic Realm” from Doom: The Dark Ages. Which is like half the reason I got him, so.

He’s really lucky that he’s pretty, though, as he’s unfortunately a bit lacking as both an action figure and as a transformer. While not exactly overly stiff, he’s maybe not as expressive as he could or even should be given other constraints. It should come as no surprise that most of the posing action happens in the upper body, given that his legs are fairly locked up by his skirt, but then the upper body can’t do a whole lot more than the average figure.

The draping mass of tendrils is, functionally, a skirt. Or maybe a whole dress. Iunno. It drapes down over a regular set of legs, and as such those legs struggle to actually do much with the way the plastic encasing them is handled. The skirt is comprised of five pieces, one in the back and on each side, and then two up front, split down the middle. They each connect via a hinge at the waist, but there are no other points of movement along those lengths, it’s static the rest of the way down. So while it can move out of the way, each segment has to come increasingly far out the further you want his legs splayed as there are no points where it bends or breaks. Which, when the skirt is more than half his height, that poses a pretty big problem. He runs into the same issue his sister Solus did, only now on a much greater scale. It’s on all four sides and it goes all the way to the ground. Solus at least had a little wiggle room before her skirt started getting in the way. Even fairly simple stances on Quintus require you to blow the thing apart.

So, in practice, he doesn’t really have legs. They’re perfectly functional and it’s not like it’s hard to move the skirt out of the way, but getting it to look good while it’s splayed out even a little takes more than a bit of effort. If you want to maintain the illusion, you can’t do anything with them, and if you do want to use them and have him in a more dynamic stance, you shatter that illusion almost entirely.

So, with all that said, what can he do? Nnnot… a ton. The head is on a ball joint which lets it look up a lot and down a little, but not very far side to side. His collar gets in the way pretty quickly. The back panel makes things a bit tricky, as well. Bit hard to get a good grip on his noggin, though it’s not completely boxed in. His arms are mostly pretty standard. Shoulder swivel and hinge, arms come out flat, bicep swivel, 90° forward for the elbow as well as a little bit of a backwards bend, and some wrists. His arms can’t cross over his torso, though they can come up more than most can manage thanks to a second hinge deeper into the chest. He also has his second set of squid arms midway down his midriff, with the only point of movement consisting of a hinge and a swivel at the body. Not unlike the skirt. The tips are blast effect compatible, however.

He has a waist, with the swivel point being just above the skirt hinges, and despite my grumblings about his lower half being all but useless he does get some pretty decent legs. He has universal hips, a thigh swivel just above the knee, a 90° knee bend, and maybe the deepest ankle tilt. Like, ever. As stated earlier, his legs are comprised mostly of clear plastic, a nice LEGO grade trans neon green that catches the light very well and almost glows in the right circumstances. Or maybe it’s just fluorescent. It’s very pretty and really adds to the vibe. Thankfully, the actual knee and hip joints are solid plastic, so if you want to give things a whirl you don’t need to worry too much. His shins are essentially a shell.

By and large, the articulation feels a bit lacking. Even ignoring the fact that his legs are all but locked up, the arms are almost entirely average. They don’t offer much outside of the norm, and while they do get an extra bit of flare with the added joint in the shoulders, it’s not much. The extra set of arms are a unique extra point, but they’re not all that substantial and don’t really salvage the situation. He doesn’t even have a weapon to hold to spice things up or anything. Then you remember that his upper body is the primary point of interest for posing and things get worse. You aren’t left with a lot to work with. Though, even with all that said, I… don’t mind? I don’t necessarily see these as problems and I’m still quite liking him. They’re odd points, absolutely, but I am not all too bothered. Figures have a wide range of what they can be, and there’s nothing wrong with a simpler toy. But like. Boy is he simple. That is an objective fact. One that extends into the transformation.

Getting Quintus into vehicle mode amounts to little more than bringing his arms up over his head and spinning his waist around. No hyperbole, that’s the bulk of it. There are some steps with the legs so that the front and back skirt flaps sit a bit flayed out, but that really is the extent of it. To his credit, it does prove satisfyingly simple, as opposed to boring. There’s not much to do but none of what you do have to do is fiddly or annoying. The resultant squidcraft certainly fits the bill, as well. While it is largely just him laying on his stomach, the fuselage comes together nicely, and the tentacles sufficiently serve for space faring propulsion. I can totally see it jetting its way through the endless cosmos.

The canopy does open up, revealing the Emberstone and some delightful control panel detailing. Which. Oh, yeah, the Emberstone. It’s fine. It is a green rock. It’s on the same level as other “look I’m holding my thing” artifacts and has the same issue as Amalgamous’ T-Cog where removing it from the figure affects how they look since it provides some sort of central detail, in this instance being the core of Quintus’ torso. He’s equipped with a flight stand port that’s accessible in both modes, and the skirt even has a gap just for it, but the peg on my stand is too short to actually make use of it. Ah well.

Titans Return Windblade sure is a weird little release, isn't she? It was the characters first new toy that wasn't just "Thrilling 30 again", but despite that she still follows the same basic format as that original figure. The Legacy toy falls into much the same trappings... but like. Windblade just hasn't changed that much between her different incarnations. G1 Windblade isn't all that different from RID Windblade, who isn't all that different from Cyberverse Windblade, at least visually.

She's also weird in that she's a heavy retool of TR Highbrow, who himself was a retool of Scourge. There's still some parts from that original figure in her (mostly internals), which makes her almost a retool of thesis. We've seen similar such phenomena in modern lines, but oh wow did the Prime Wars Trilogy really get a run for its money out of its molds.

Lineage aside, she stands well on her own. Well, figuratively speaking at least. She has small feet (which are Highbrow's heels, yes, really) and a looot of backpack, so it's easy for her to end up tipping over unless you've got things set up right. Outside of that though, she looks great. I really like her proportions, which help set her apart from other incarnations.

Milfblade I mean Milfblade I MEAN- Windblade gets your Titans return standard of a dual set of weapons that combine to form a bigger weapon that can also seat a Titan Master, but like... that gimmick was already stupid, it's always been stupid, but I think it really comes to a head (heh) here. Because it's a sword. There is no reason nor advantage to sit on a sword. The big ass buster sword esque blade looks decent, only being brought down a bit by no centered handle, but it just looks so dumb with a Titan Master on there. How's that supposed to work? Are they just getting flung around willy-nilly?

The transformation is astoundingly simple, but I think that's in her favor. It's fun to flip back and forth, and doesn't take much thought. I like how her legs put a spin on the classic conversion by simply flipping over instead of folding up. It's nothing crazy but I think it's neat. The result is her traditional VTOL jet, with the only real difference being that it's maybe a tad chonkier than usual.

After taking a look at her fellow fembot headmaster Windblade, we return to the titans with Arcee!

A proposed concept for an Arcee figure during G1 was as a repaint of Chromedome, turning him pink and presumably shifting the headmaster to Daniel, so as to align with the cartoon. This... didn't happen, obviously, but with a new Chromedome popping up in Titans Return, it was the perfect opportunity to realize that concept. And we did in fact receive an Arcee figure in Titans Return! As a.... Blurr recolor? A-alright, I guess. It makes about as much sense as anyone else, in all honesty...

She wears the mold quite well, taking on a bright bubblegum grade shade for her pink and a clean, starchy white. The two tones play as well together as always, and the sculpted details inherited from Blurr are picked out wonderfully. Her face sculpt feels a bit pointy? But I like it.

As an actual figure, she's very... alright. Like, there are plenty of points of articulation but it feels awkward and clunky to try and use them. Balance is a concern. It was the Prime Wars trilogy, you were rarely ever going to get anything amazing. She does get wrists, though. Also, the headmaster connection, it uh... it sucks! It's always been a bit wobbly, but the exosuit design doesn't secure anywhere near as neatly, and even just turning her head will see the headmaster head move in the socket before the intended neck joint does.

As a small note, I got my copy for dirt cheap because she was pretty heavily yellowed. Not-Daniel was especially egregious. Nothing paint can't fix!

The transformation has a fairly standard leg fold alongside the trademark TR "We don't have to care about the head", but the way the arms hinge down and spin around is neat. The resultant car mode is a cute affair, with some new tooling to make it feel more like Arcee. Honestly Blurr doesn't translate too poorly, with the tail fin and open canopy.

the prettiest princess ✨️