Misinformation Debunked

This article is a little old, but apparently I missed it the first time around so I thought I would throw it up here in case anyone else hasn't had a chance to see it. Personally I found this a very refreshing and informative read.

Back to the Future Myths Debunked by Producer Bob Gale

Tower Run

This weekend for the very first time in my life I actually competed in a race in which I wasn't forced to participate.

When I was younger I absolutely abhorred sports and exercise despite my parents' best efforts to encourage me to try out for baseball, soccer, judo and a host of other physical activities. I never felt like it was something I had to do, exercise and sports were for other people. I absolutely hated everything I was forced to do and purposely failed at every sport, no matter what. However as I got older (and heavier) I realized that I would probably need to start doing some sort of physical exercise as time went on because my body just couldn't function as well with me sitting on the couch eating Doritos all the time. I started exercising regularly when I went to college, nothing hard core, just enough so that I didn't gain the freshman 15 or whatever they call it.

Omega Spreem is NOT the last line of Defense

No matter what fiction you're talking about, Omega Supreme is always a massive, nearly unstoppable robot that usually transforms in to a rocket capable of carrying all of the Autobots pretty much anywhere they want to go. So it is with dismay that his Action Master counterpart (the annoyingly named Omega Spreem) is quite small and underwhelming. He is part of the very short lived Action Master Elite line that was exclusive to Europe in the early 1990's. However as an Action Master Elite he is considerably larger than any of the regular Action Master figures, and is heftier than I had imagined. But he is no longer the Autobots' Last Line of Defense. He's been reduced to more of a foot soldier (much like Devastator). And his colors have been, shall we say, altered.

小型トランスはとてもかわいいです！

It really doesn't get any more Japanese than Choro-Q. These are basically a (very-short) line of small, super-deformed Transformers characters that actually transformed in to similarly deformed alt modes. I'm not really sure why things like this are so popular in Japan, but since they were never sold in America I can say pretty safely that it isn't something that would be very popular over here. But then again I could be wrong, after all we do have Bot-Shots.

Happy St. Patrick's Day from Mostly Transformers!

A very Happy St. Patrick's Day to you and yours! Don't forget to wear your green!

Orion Pax is getting a lot of attention lately, why not a little more?

Ever since Transformers: Prime has been on the air it has been exploiting a new refined and updated continuity that Hasbro has decided to use to unify its different Transformers properties instead of having a bunch of different aspects of the same property in different 'Universes". In effect what this means is that every fiction to come from Hasbro since 2010 or so has been with this new continuity line. Fortunately for fans who enjoy G1 this continuity borrows heavily from it, and that means before Optimus Prime there was Orion Pax. This was showcased heavily in the recent three-part TF: Prime serial, the aptly named "Orion Pax: Parts 1, 2 & 3".

European Exclusive Ironfist

In my ongoing and seemingly endless European G1 quest Ironfist was a name that was eventually going to come up. Thrust into the limelight by both The Last Stand of the Wreckers and the Botcon 2011 attendee exclusive figure, Ironfist was one tough mother to find at a reasonable price. However I came upon a MIB sample with stickers unapplied recently and feel like I paid a decent price for him; especially after receiving him I discovered the figure had never been removed from the box! After a quick consultation with Flywheels I decided not to sticker the little guy and thus left him in all his naked glory. With this purchase I have now completed all of the Lightformers and Trakkons (aka small figures with huge mounted weapons that obscure their faces).

Ironfist with his weapons platform, unnecessarily large.

Alongside his Animated Counterpart: Fisitron

Is it any coincidence that both Ironfist and Swindle are weapons experts and tan military road vehicles? Seems a little too convenient to be pure chance. Perhaps Ironfist is Swindle's nemesis!

My Generation 2 Drench Dilemma

During the release of Generation 2 I was in my early teens so it was a very on/off period for me. What I mean by that is one week I would be very into buying Transformers and spend all of my money there while the next I was 'over' Transformers and wanted to focus on things like friends, girls and other useless crap like that. At any rate it was a very confusing time (as puberty tends to be) and thus I missed a lot of good stuff that came out at retail during those years. Somehow I managed to pick up most of the '93 stuff but completely missed all the color changers. So in my quest to obtain all of the Generation 2 figures I missed I happened upon Drench here, Em. Oh. Cee. (MOC or mint on card).

When I purchased him off eBay I thought to myself: "Great, this Drench is cheaper than any of the loose versions out there and he is mint! I'll just open him up when I get him and add him to the shelf". However when I finally got him in the mail I couldn't bring myself to do it. Maybe it is the residual AFA collector in me, or maybe it is just not wanting to ruin a beautiful piece of sealed artwork (and by this I mean the entire package with toy, not just the art printed on the card) but I was very conflicted about opening him. It also doesn't help that I have another sealed G2 color changer: Go-Bots. And of course they look great together.

So ultimately I decided that it was best to keep him sealed and I could always find a loose version without too much trouble and that way I can add this sealed one to my carded G2 collection which seems to be growing despite my best efforts. This also reminds me I need to still find a loose Go-Bots. And a loose Superion (yeah right!). And a loose Jolt. And a loose Beachcomber.

Hmmm. I'm seeing a trend here.

Unicron's Four Horsemen

Back in 2004 a little over a year after the Transformers: Armada toyline had debuted something very interesting happened; apparently the line was such a success Hasbro had underestimated the demand and needed a few extra toys in order to fill out the line before the next incarnation, Transformers: Energon, was released. As a solution they decided to re-paint five molds that were used for Beast Wars, remold them slightly and then release them under the Armada banner. As a result the transmetal incarnations of Cheetor, Rhinox, Airrazor, Terrorsaur and Megatron started showing up in stores with Mini-con partners. Now I don't usually talk about anything from the Unicron Trilogy because it is something that I have absolutely no love for, however I feel these five figures are a special case.

Not long after they were released a few fans came up with (what I feel) was an inherently ingenious idea that Cheetor, Rhinox, Airrazor and Terrorsaur were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding their transmetal tyrannosaur steeds of the underword: Megatron. Eventually this idea gained such popularity that the then-current owners of the Transformers comic book tie-in license, Dreamwave, incorporated it into their story with the four figures being the Horsemen of Unicron (basically the Transformers version of the devil or ultimate evil). Unfortunately Megatron (he was re-named Predacon for his Armada release) was cut from the story. Personally I thought Predacon worked better as a 'horse' than the non-toy characters in the comic. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) the comic story was never finished because Dreamwave folded, but that is an entirely different story.

At any rate, I purchased these five figures back in 2004 and they have been part of my collection ever since. The odd thing is: their new color schemes seem to accurately reflect their new personalities. I mean Airrazor was released in an almost completely black color scheme that just screams 'Death'. Currently they are perched on the very top shelf in my room, casting their demonic gazes below to all the Transformer underlings. Even though they are minor characters in what some would consider a mediocre storyline (and I would probably tend to agree), I feel like they represent an important part of the mythos nonetheless. By establishing that Unicron's heralds are often harbingers of doom it speaks volumes to the creation of Galvatron, Cyclonus, Scourge and the Sweeps 18 years earlier. Could they have been potential 'Horsemen' as well? Something to consider.

Pestilence

Famine

Death

War

...and the Horse

After writing this post and pondering the matter more carefully, I feel like I need to go out and purchase three more Predacons in order to complete my Horsemen collection. And then maybe some saddles. Yes, definitely need saddles.