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britesparc · 1 year

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Weekend Top Ten #577

Top Ten Transformers to Turn into Lego

I'm back! All the complicated “Best Years for Whatever” are done and dusted (for now? For ever?) and I'm retreating into the safe, warm, yet metallic embrace of those lovely Robots in Disguise. And hopefully the use of the word “embrace” won’t have me slapped with a “mature content” warning like last week’s list did; I've absolutely no idea why, unless Tumblr’s bizarro algorithm look umbrage with the title of the second single the Divine Comedy released in 1998, or maybe the name of the band who sang One Week in the same year. Anyway, I'm sure nothing about Transformers can ever be filthy, so we should be okay.

Another reason – well, okay, the main reason – for talking about Transformers this week is because I'm attending a convention again. When you read this, the TF Nation “Mini-Con” is taking place in Manchester, which is lovely because I don’t need to drive for two hours or book a hotel room. It's always nice to chat to like-minded Transformers fans, browse old toys, or even possibly get a drawing or two done. So it’ll be a fun time, I would imagine.

But having written about those ruddy great warmongers from Cybertron approximately a million times in the eleven years I’ve been doing this daft blog, what else could I possibly have to say? Well, amazingly, I found quite a few things I’ve not talked about! And for today I've narrowed it down to Lego. Because for Christmas I received the frankly rather marvellous Lego Optimus Prime set, a glorious (and quite massive) kit that lets you not only build everyone’s favourite sacrificial mecha-daddy but then transform him from a robot into a truck and back again. A great big brilliant-looking rendition of Prime that is also an actual working Transformer. It's an incredible, exciting, beautiful bit of engineering. It's a great toy – or building set, whatever you wanna call Lego. And as far as I can gather, it’s been quite popular too.

And that got me thinking – surely they’re gonna try to replicate this, yeah? They're going to want to return to that well (of Allsparks) and make another Transformer out of Lego? And if they do – and I'm fairly convinced they will – then who will they pick? See, it’s not quite as easy as you might think, because there are a lot of variables to consider. And so, to celebrate TF Nation parking its Bumblebehind in my own personal stomping ground, I'm going to suggest to both Hasbro and Lego which Transformers characters would be best to turn into yet another fantastic Christmas present for me at some point in the future. Till all are one (thousand bricks)!

Starscream: Optimus Prime is a robot that turns into a vehicle, so the most sensible thing to do – one assumes – is to make another Lego kit that’s also a robot that turns into a vehicle. And if that’s the way to go, then Starscream is a perfect candidate for a number of reasons. Well, at least two: one, picking a jet instead of a truck is a nice differential; and secondly, he’s a Decepticon where Prime is an Autobot. The traditional transformation of Starscream should be (he says as someone most assuredly not any kind of engineer) relatively straightforward to replicate? Maybe? Just as Lego Prime’s transformation is very similar to how it ever was, I think probably Starscream’s could be the same. And like Prime came with some fan-favourite accoutrements, maybe Starscream could come with his cape and crown from The Transformers: The Movie?

Soundwave: another genius move would be to go for one of the other iconic TF characters. Sticking with the Decepticons – to contrast Prime once more – then Soundwave benefits from visually being a good contrast, blue to red. They share similar faces, they’re both quite boxy; it’s a good look, them stood next to each other. And again, Soundwave’s old-school transformation should be more-or-less replicable in Lego form. Except here we have the opportunity for a tremendous gimmick, because Soundwave of course has his cassettes he keeps in his chest; so maybe Lego Soundwave could come with a Lego Ravage and Lego Lazerbeak who turn into little Lego Cassettes and fit in his Lego chest! And maybe a nice big Lego energon cube too.

Grimlock: if you’re gonna pick another Autobot, you need to do something a bit different. Grimlock is, again, one of the most iconic Transformers around. He’s a big grumpy dinosaur and everybody loves him. His historic method of transformation – which has remained mostly consistent across nearly forty years’ worth of toys – is pretty straightforward once again (I guess these eighties toys had to have fairly straightforward methods of transformation, thinking about it), and I think is replicable in Lego. And, I mean, he’s a chuffing robot T-Rex, what more do you want? Oh, okay, his little accessories can be his crown from the comic and his tea tray from that one episode of the cartoon. And maybe – just maybe – we could sneak in Wheelie as an extra bonus.

Bumblebee: one thing I’ve been sort of trying to avoid is just picking a Transformer who turns into a car. I feel like it’s kind of been done already to a certain degree with Optimus, and I think that there are so many big, famous Transformers who this could apply to – Jazz, Prowl, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker; or even the likes of Ratchet and Ironhide, or Hound, or Brawn – that it would basically boil down to “here’s a robot, here’s the car, it’s like the Optimus set but a bit smaller”. However, if you’re gonna do that, then I think Bumblebee is the best choice really. He's super-iconic, almost the face of the franchise at times, so he’d be popular no doubt; and there are quite a few possibilities you could go with for his design. Personally I think it’d be really cool if they gave you slightly different parts so you could either make him a VW Beetle or a Camaro, but I doubt that’d be possible licencing-wise.

Megatron: Megatron, in a lot of respects, would be the obvious choice. After all, he’s the other guy, the rival to Optimus, the big bad of the franchise. Surely if you were going to have two, you’d pick Ops and Megs? Like you’d have Batman and the Joker, right? Well, it’s complicated. I think one of the things that’s so successful with Optimus Prime – which I imagine is a deliberate choice – is how closely it hews to the original 1984 toy. There are lots of references to it, even in the instructions and stuff. With Megatron that’s really hard for a few reasons. I mean, he’s a gun; it’d just be a lot more difficult to engineer it so he turned into a gun but also looked good as a robot. Arguably, they didn’t achieve that in 1984 (or earlier, when the toy was first designed in Japan, etc, etc, etc…). Plus there’s the fact that no one wants Megatron to be a gun anymore; it’s just not the done thing for major characters in children’s properties to actually be firearms. Plus Lego wouldn’t want you running around brandishing a prop gun; think of the headlines. So the solution would surely be to make him a tank; after all, that’s what he usually turns into nowadays anyway. Megatron is a tank now and we have to accept that. So what do you do? Turn him into a tank in a way that reflects contemporary toys? Or do you make him in effect a Lego version of the classic G2 Megatron figure? I’m not sure, but whatever choice you make is intelligent compared to the Optimus Prime figure and is full of compromises. Hence he’s lower in the list. But: I still really want a Lego Megatron.

Optimus Primal: I’m nothing if not magnanimous. Y’see, I was never massively into Beast Wars; it sort of happened after I thought the franchise had “ended” (I should have known it never ends), and when I saw it I felt “that’s not my Transformers”. But I know that loads of people love it, so they deserve some Lego fun too. And – hey! – it would tie into this summer’s Rise of the Beasts movie! So yeah: we’ve got our standard Optimus-adjacent leader-figure, except he turns into a monkey not a truck. That’s all there is to it. I’ll be honest, having never had an Optimus Primal figure, I don’t really know how he actually transforms, so I don’t know if it’s something that’s even doable in Lego, but what the hell.

Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime: Hot Rod was one of the ‘bots I was considering as “let’s just think of one that’s relatively simple and just turns into a car”. But then I thought: can we go bigger? After all, we’ve had Optimus Prime; why not feature his futuristic successor? So you have a smaller Hot Rod figure you can build, which turns into a sexy magenta racing car. But! It also comes with additional bits and bobs, so you can change his legs and arms and – lo and behold – turn li’l ol’ Hot Rod into big, strapping Rodimus Prime. Who, yes indeedy, would transform into a sexy futuristic camper van.

Scorponok: one of the cool things I thought about Grimlock and Optimus Primal is that they don’t turn into vehicles (or “stuff”) but animals. And here we have Scorponok, another much-beloved character from the history of the franchise, who likewise turns into something cool and weird. Namely a dirty great robot scorpion. And that’s more or less that; he’s another one with a fairly simple transformation scheme that’s probably replicable in Lego. However, he does have a gimmick in that he’s a Headmaster; his head turns into a little bloke called Lord Zarak. I think what would be cool here is if his head could unfold into a smaller robotic figure reminiscent of the old toy, but inside that there sits a for-real Lego minifig that looks just like Zarak as he appeared in the cartoon.

Ultra Magnus: now we’re going crazy, but just imagine it. Ultra Magnus is a huge Lego set, the Transformers equivalent of that Rivendell set they released this year, or the really big Millennium Falcon. And, like the 1986 toy, he’s comprised of an entirely-white Optimus Prime – literally the same Prime from the existing set. So you have to build that, but then! He also has his car transporter trailer, just like the old toy. And just like the old toy this trailer combines with his cab (maybe there’s a little bit more Lego jiggery-pokery to make it attach properly), and bob’s your robot-uncle, you’ve got yourself a ruddy great Ultra Magnus figure. It’d be huge, sure. But it’d be so cool.

Devastator: talking about big… I was wondering about doing a Triple Changer like Blitzwing, but this would be much cooler. It’d be a massive set once again but just incredible if they could pull it off. Yes, it would indeed feature six smaller Constructicons – I figure each one about half the size of Optimus Prime, to make this thing in any way feasible – but as well as turning from cement mixers and bulldozers and the like into robots, they also combine to form Devastator. I’m not entirely sure how this would be possible; hopefully, even if you had to remove the odd piece here and there, it could be achieved without entirely disassembling and reassembling the Constructicons, so their shapes were recognisable when Devastator was built. And there you’d have it; one of the most iconic and impressive toys of the eighties rendered in Lego form.

I am now insanely excited about made-up toys that will almost certainly never exist.

#top ten #toys #transformers #lego #hasbro #optimus prime #tf nation #tfn #minicon #manchester

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britesparc · 2 years

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Weekend Top Ten #545

Top Ten Transformer Alternate Modes

This weekend is TF Nation, a big Transformers convention that takes place in Birmingham. By the time you read this, I should be there, unless something shit has happened, so let’s not tempt fate.

This is the first time I’ve been to an event of this scale since Before, and as it happens the first time I’ve been to TF Nation since 2018. Four years without hearing creatives talk about which beloved bots they’ve chosen to kill! Four years without browsing seemingly infinite isles of wonderful toys! Four years without getting exclusive artwork! Four years without the Hilton’s expensive beers!

Last time I went, something rather bonkers happened. I’m very fortunate that I’ve gotten to know legendary Transformers writer Simon Furman a little bit – certainly enough to say hi in a bar and have a drink with him. So back then, I did just that; sat down, had a beer, asked him if he had any dinner plans as I did not. It turned out that he did have plans, with equally legendary writer Bob Budiansky, the fella who’d written the bible on Transformers back in 1984, along with the Razorclaw’s share* of the original US comic book; however, Simon graciously invited me to join his party. As such I accidentally ended up having dinner with probably the two most famous Transformers writers. Top blokes, too!

Anyway, I’m very excited to be going back. This time I might buy a lovely big toy, too.

So! To celebrate this momentous occasion, I’m writing about Transformers again, for the first time in what seems like ages (but I’ve not checked so maybe it was more recently than all that). When More Than Meets the Eye was at its peak about five years ago, it felt like I was writing about Transformers all the time, but that has certainly abated – I probably write the most about the MCU nowadays. So it’s fun to go back and write about them again, because I just love Transformers.

The big thing about Transformers, right, is they change shape. So that’s what I’m celebrating here: my favourite Things That They Turn Into. I was going to make it more generic but it ended up being about specific Transformers and their specific alternate modes. Whilst I’m looking at the totality of the experience here – toys, comics, cartoons, etc – I think the coolness of the toy has swayed it in a few places.

Not much more to say, so please enjoy this list of things that are actually robots in disguise. TTFN TFN!

*This is a legitimately great gag, I promise, although you probably have to be a TF nerd to get it.

Bumblebee’s VW Beetle: he’s the yellow kid-friendly Autobot with the cute alt mode. In a time before Micromasters were legit small, Bee was barely bigger than a boy, and turned into the cutest, dinkiest, roundest little bug imaginable. Sure, fidelity to the source material makes a VW bug retro-kitsch stylish, but it was the squat proportions of the original toy that I fell in love with.

Cosmos’ UFO: many Transformers are space-faring, and turn into some variety of rocket or shuttle or just freaky-ass jet thing. Cosmos – as far as I know, and I may be wrong – is the only one that turns into an actual flying saucer. Green, round, and funny-looking, he’s a supremely silly but also amazingly awesome ‘bot.

Grimlock’s Tyrannosaurus Rex: not as cute and cuddly but all the more awesome for it, Grimlock is the answer to the question, “what’s more badass than a robot that turns into a car or a weapon?” Taking all the badassery of a grumpy tough-bot with a double-barrelled gun AND a sword, and the badassery of a robot dinosaur, and smushing them together. No wonder he’s king.

Megatron’s gun mode: back when basically a Transformer was a car or a plane, there were a scant number of outliers. The result of American Hasbro merging disparate Japanese toylines, the scale made no sense, but that didn’t matter in the eighties. He was the leader of the Decepticons but also an actual toy gun that you could hold in your hand, with all manner of sniper accessories and a silencer and stuff. It’s a pity he was so brittle his legs fell off if you blew on him, but apart from that: magnificent.

Rodimus Prime’s camper van: Hot Rod was custom-built to be the coolest Autobot ever, and you knew this for a fact because he turned into a sweet futuristic car with flames on the bonnet and an exposed engine block. When he grows up into Rodimus, obviously his alt mode has to get bigger too, and so it becomes… well, an RV. A bright red and yellow RV with exterior exhausts and flames up the side. Yes, the coolest ‘bot on ‘bertron turns into a caravette. Presumably he exchanges all his Stan Bush CDs for a box set of Gardener’s Question Time.

Soundwave’s tape deck: another one of those “life-sized” Transformers – like Megatron – it’s entirely ridiculous for Soundwave to become a tape deck, yet here we are; arguably the second or third most iconic Transformer. What good is a tape deck to warring robots from deep space? He stores his troops inside his chest and they only come out of him when he needs them. I mean, come on. It’s creepy as all get out. And it’s for this utterly bananas reason that he secures a place in my list.

Powerglide’s seaplane: on one hand it’s a bit weird that a Transformer is a sea plane. You get people like Starscream turning into fighter jets, or Springer being an attack helicopter from the future, but a seaplane? That’s like what the drug dealer is trying to escape on at the end of an episode of Magnum P.I. Yet Powerglide carries it off, partly because he looks so cute, with his fat little Popeye arms, and partly because being a relatively small Autobot who turns into – presumably – a fairly large aircraft is always funny.

Ultra Magnus’ car transporter: updating Optimus for the new millennium (well, in-fiction at least) required more than just another truck; so we go the Ultimate Badass route and get… a car transporter. With missiles. No, look, it makes sense; the other Autobots can be stored on his back! It’s cool, honest! And you can combine your inexplicable White Optimus Prime bit with the car transporter bit to make Proper Ultra Magnus. It totally works.

Wideload’s garbage truck: turning into a garbage truck at the best of times is weird and amusing enough, but Wideload – like Bumblebee and Powerglide – is a small Transformer toy whose vehicle mode ends up being all squashed and cute-looking. So you have this supposedly burly ‘bot – kind of like The Thing But A Robot – who turns into this supremely adorable chibi bin wagon. What’s not to love?

Scourge’s hovercraft: I never had a Scourge and always wanted one, because he just looked so damn cool. What the hell was he? Cyclonus was a futuristic space-jet-thing. Scourge looks like an iron with a hat. A bizarre hovercraft-cum-doorstop design, with his head essentially poking out the top like you’re playing Mario Kart or something. Weird and crazy and, like I say, cool.

God, I could go on. I’ve always had a soft spot for city-bots that have weird car/tank/spaceship modes. Then you’ve got Scorponok, Galvatron, Shockwave… or I could have picked a classic, like Jazz and his sweet Porsche. Ah, Transformers…

#top ten #transformers #tf nation #tfn #comics #cartoons #toys #hasbro

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