Rainbow Shield/Shining R.A. Arms Microns (2012)

This time of year, I often try to find something to feature that can tie in to the holiday in some way. I'm not always successful, but I do think it's worth the effort. There's nothing specifically "Christmas-y" about the toys I'm featuring today, but they're among the more colorful Transformers out there, and when I looked at them, it put me in the mind of colorful lights around a Christmas tree. It's not a lot of justification, but I'm going with it.

Legends Missfire (2017)

From the first appearance of the gimmick, the Targetmasters have been closely related to the Headmasters. Besides the fact that the two appeared practically simultaneously in 1987, the gimmicks are obviously similar. Headmasters included tiny partners that became the robot's head, while Targetmasters included tiny partners that became the robot's weaponry. This added play value to the toys, even if the actual implications of such partners never made much practical sense (efforts in the contemporary fiction notwithstanding). It was inevitable that these play features would eventually return to modern Transformers lines, especially with Generation One nostalgia forming such an important role in these lines. In America, the Titans Return line was designed such that the vast majority of toys released had the Headmaster (now renamed "Titan Master") gimmick. This uniformity extended even to characters that were never Headmasters back in Generation One, including several Targetmaster characters. When TakaraTomy released their versions of these toys, they opted to more fully homage the characters as they originally appeared, which typically meant that characters such as Misfire (sadly misspelled on both the package and in the instructions with an extra "s") became both Headmaster and Targetmaster!

Coming Soon - Not Your Father's Autobot: A Transformers: Generation 2 Comic Book Podcast

Coming in early 2021!

Not Your Father's Autobot: A Transformers: Generation 2 Comic Book Podcast. Hosted by Mark "G.B. Blackrock" Baker-Wright and Nick Wright (co-host of The BitGeek Podcast).

Listen to the podcast promo here!

Background music is "Untamed Land" by Electronic-Senses, and may be found on Pixabay, which provides royalty free music, free for commercial and non-commercial use.

Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Transformers: Prime - Dark Energon Optimus Prime (2012)

Ten years ago, on November 26th, 2010, the first episode of Transformers: Prime aired. It was the centerpiece of what came to be called the "aligned continuity family," stemming from comments by Hasbro at the time that suggested they were attempting to "align" all of the disparate representations of the past then-quarter century of Transformers fiction into a single continuity. Almost immediately after this announcement was made, it became clear that it didn't extend as far as such a statement would seem to have suggested. The live-action movies, still in their heyday at the time, were clearly separate, and however much the character depictions in Prime drew inspiration from Generation One counterparts of the past, they were clearly not the same characters, either (despite Generation One voice actors Peter Cullen and Frank Welker returning to voice the new versions of Optimus Prime and Megatron, respectively). Also, although there were a couple of non-G1 influences on Prime (most notably the character of Bulkhead, who came from Transformers Animated), they were fairly minimal, with Generation One being the obvious primary influence (which ultimately made Prime similar in this regard to all other non-G1 continuities before it). For better or worse, the "aligned" name stuck.

Trailbreaker (1984)

Back when I did 30th anniversary entries on all of the original series of Transformers characters, I covered Trailbreaker, but used a more modern toy rather than his original, and find myself surprised to not have covered the original toy at all before now. Since I discussed the (relatively few) distinctives of Trailbreaker's character in my previous entry, I'll focus instead on the story of how I came upon the specific toy and brought it to its current state.

BotCon 2015 Parasite w/Ripper

Whenever possible, the folks behind the creation of BotCon exclusives liked to do homages to obscure characters or concepts, often layering on several in a single figure if they could get away with it. Such was the case with Parasite, one of the BotCon 2015 exclusives.

Transformers Tribute Evolution Pack Orion Pax (2017)

Oddly enough, the version of Optimus Prime featured in the 2017 "Evolution Pack," which contains just two toys, was not the earliest version of the character depicted in the set, despite already coming from a point in time before the Transformers came to Earth. That honor goes to the "Orion Pax" figure, who represents Prime from a point in his life before he even became Optimus Prime.