#third party transformers

Shunpatsu-teki ni koi shiyou 👏🏼👏🏼

Our latest find in the wonderful world of I Can't Believe It's Not Hasbro on Amazon...

I call it...

The Pangean Kerfuffle.

It's a fun toy, and a solid figure. There's a lot of play value. But it is a geographical nightmare. It's very posable, we love how the base for the globe is incorporated as a sword and shield for the robot figure, dad likes how the individual pieces fold neatly into the back of the robot, so that they're not just two halves clapped together. We like how detailed the robot itself is, including the alternately colored pieces of plastic instead of paint for the torso.

As far as a geographical nightmare, buy one yourself for a good laugh:

•There is no Antarctica.

•There is no North Pole.

•What we think is supposed to be Japan is in the wrong location and rotated 190 degrees.

•New Zealand doesn't exist.

•Africa and South America are proportioned wrong.

•Mexico has sunk into the ocean.

•The United States is on the border of what would be the Arctic Circle.

•Something horrible has happened to Canada.

•The land bridge to Asia seems to be very well intact and much wider than it would have been.

•The Philippines are now a major world power in size and way too close to Australia.

•If you think the geography of the Middle East has contributed to warfare over there, what's actually pictured would have made things a lot worse.

This is just for starters, there's too many things to list in full. Buy yourself one for fun, for the amusement, and good look finding Hawaii.

It is a fun toy, but it's JUST a toy. It DOES NOT qualify as an educational aid or accessory.

Finally continuing their Legends scale Raiden after nearly a year between releases, SY-02 sees the second set of Trainbots from third party company SiYang Culture. Seizan and Suiken, respectively dubbed “Mountain Serial” and “Greenland” on the back of the box (yes, really), see a good number of improvements from the previous set, showing that the extra time in the oven was well worth the wait.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Seizan and Suiken follow a similar design philosophy to Getsuei and Yukikaze (you can check out their review here!), generally styled after the anime but not slavishly so and with some liberties taken. The most notable departures, visually, are the added colors on both their shoulder… stacks, which I think looks nice. Regardless of any changes made they’re a very handsome set of robots. They also follow the standard set by the previous pair in that they are all but the same toy. A fair few parts are shared between them, and the engineering is identical save for a final step in train mode. Though, there’s plenty that’s not shared, with lots of sculpted detail differing in things as simple as a single piece on the torso or those shoulder details (though the sides of the train modes are exactly the same up until the front and the thighs are quite visibly the same). The fact they essentially needed to be mirrors of each other ensured plenty of discrepancies between the two. They’re being efficient with it, not lazy.

Compared to the duo of SY-03, Seizan and Suiken handle a fair few things better. One element I noticed right out of the box was their plastic. Getsuei and Yukikaze had plastic that was slightly on the softer side, where as Seizan and Suiken are a lot firmer, especially in comparison. It’s a much more solid material, and they’re better off for it, I’d say. It is… slightly weird to shift plastic partway through what is supposed to be a cohesive, combining set, but I’m not going to complain that it’s better. It feels like they’ve got a bit more paint, as well, at least in their robot modes, and that also feels like an improvement. The front of the shins are painted instead of being cast that color, as an example, though that specifically could be a detraction since there’s more room for paint to chip. There’s no real color bleeding either, an unfortunate effect seen on Yukikaze, though Suiken has a small splotch of missing paint on his right leg. It looks like something touched it while it was still wet.

As far as articulation is concerned, they’ve got 90° ankle tilts, double jointed knees, and a waist swivel that gets blocked by the backpack fairly quickly. The whole hip “skirt” is one piece that swivels, handling forward movement, and then the leg itself is attached to that via hinge that lets it move out. The legs can come quite far forward, but they can’t go back at all, and they don’t spread quite flat. The shoulders are on ball joints, which come up to 90° and can turn around mostly freely. They can bump into the wheel bits on the backpack, but it’s just a minor obstacle, it doesn’t block them completely. They have a bicep swivel, a single 90° bend at the elbow, and wrist swivels. Their heads are on ball joints that let them look up a little as well as side to side, but it can be a bit of a pain to manipulate since their heads are effectively encased. They were also a bit tight at first but that’s loosened up with play. There are some reductions and improvements compared to what SY-03 offered, the changes balancing out.

The backpacks feel like they’re less obviously just the front of the trains. They still mostly are, but there’s a bit more going on with the additional panels that helps distract from that fact. They were probably partially done like that out of a necessity to hide the combined mode hand, which I’d say was successful. I didn’t even realize they had the hands built in until I opened up the backpack. Despite the improved “feel”, the whole assembly does still stick out about the same as it does on Getsuei and Yukikaze, but again, that’s the Trainbots. They’re actually a little bit bigger, proportionally, coming down a touch further and coming up much more so, but they overall come across as more purposeful. It’s not just the front of a train stapled to their backs.

For accessories, they get a fair few extra parts. They’re packed with guns in hand, much like Getsuei and Yukikaze, though these are cast in different colors this time around, matching their owner. This time there’s also the leg… guns… for combined mode, which was missing from the legs themselves. Those are packed in the plastic clam shell. Also included are the combined mode gun and ten pieces of track, which are handled... less, gracefully. They’re merely stuffed under the clam shell, not given any sort of dedicated storage. I guess it works… A single piece of track isn’t quite long enough to hold a single train, but the sheer number of them should be plenty to fit the whole team. Also included is a pair of instructions, which might not sound like a big deal, but that was a critical component missing from SY-03, which merely had a QR code on the side of the box. These come with photos, written directions underneath those photos that are also translated into english, and have the steps for both train and arm mode, for both bots, even though they transform nigh identically. Quite the step up, I’d say!

Since there’s an actual instruction sheet this time, I feel less of a requirement to explain the trains-formation in detail, though I will still cover the broad strokes cause- cause this is a review and I need to talk about the- As a whole, the transformations sees a few improvements in terms of like, flow. There’s less tiny little grievances and not as much flexing. Getting the back panel in place is still a little odd, and the torso is fairly dependent on order of operations going back to robot mode, but it’s still a step up over all. Things like the rear train wheels folding out from inside the feet is really clever, and bringing down the side panels to close things up is a satisfying final step.

The resultant trains are as delightful as before. They’re slightly shorter than Getsuei and Yukikaze, thanks to their legs collapsing, but they feel a bit tidier, with the paneling being less apparent. The hinges are somewhat unavoidable, but the colors are broken up a lot less compared to, say, Yukikaze. Sadly, it doesn’t look like they get weapon storage for their guns. Not as far as I’ve found, at least. Not as much clearance, either, with both the arms and the combiner hand running real close to the edges of the wheels. Not sure if it’s more or less of a concern when they’re sitting on the rails.

Mastermind Creations REFORMATTED R52 Symphony

Rosanna is here to save G1!

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