Mini toy review: Grimlock

I've been trying not to buy any of the Transformers Animated line. I love the look, and knowing me, if I buy one I'll want to buy them all. My resistance has finally caved though, with the arrival of Grimlock!

Dinobots are awesome, I had to. Plus he's so cute. Err, in a manly dinosaur kind of way...

He's part of the "Activator" line, so he can jump to robot mode at the push of a button, which I'm sure would've kept me amused for hours as a little kid. Hell, I've already played with the function enough as it is.

His T-rex form is also really cool. It creates a bit of a problem though. Afterall, in robot mode, that head's gotta go somewhere...

Yeah, standing up on his own is not really going to happen. Not falling over aside, his articulation and poseability is excellent. Hey Grimlock, how big was that Decepticon you caught?

Groovy. As with most smaller scale Transformers these days, his joints are of the plastic ball/socket variety, designed to pop apart if you put even a fraction too much strain on them, which even with my casual 'play' to see how it moved, had this result a bit too often for my taste:

Overall, a really cool looking figure, but a little lacking in a few key areas (Standing up and not falling apart). Not a problem for me, since it's just going to sit on a shelf for the rest of it's life, but something to consider if you're planning on taking the fight to Megatron.

The week in review

More week-late thoughts on a few comics, thanks to shipping times and living on the other side of the world from the publishers. Yikes, I actually bought more Marvel than DC this week. Plus, the new Transformers Movie game.

The Immortal Iron Fist #6
Yay, I've been wanting to try an issue, and my shop finally had a copy left over. Being the final part of a 6-parter it's probably not the best jumping on point, but it was fun. Really powerfully drawn fights, and some cool dialogue. Didn't understand the ending, but then I'm new to the character. Not 100% sold on it yet, but will definately pick up any other issues I can.

Silver Surfer - Requiem #2
I thought issue #1 was weak. This was much better. It summed up the Surfer's concern for humanity nicely. Spidey sending MJ into space was touching.

I'm not entirely sold on the Surfer being able to connect to every person on earth at the end, but whatever. The art seemed better overall too (except for MJ).

Ultimate Fantastic Four #43
This was ok, a touch drawn out with too much time spent on various SHIELD people telling Reid off, but atleast it answered the major question I had, namely how the Surfer(s) we saw in Ultimate Extinction were different from the Surfer in this story. There's some kid called Enid that was used for supposed comic effect, but it failed horribly.

The Thing was funny though.


Blue Beetle #16
Another solid and enjoyable issue in both the writing and art departments. I REALLY liked that the story had an explanation of Eclipso's origin, because I had never heard it before. All I knew was 'magic entity trapped in a crystal'. The interplay between Jaime and Tracey13 was great, hope she sticks around for a bit. No Brenda was a minor bummer, but hopefully she'll be back next issue.

After writing last week's thoughts on Moon Knight and Aquaman, I thought about it some more and ended up dropping both titles. My shop always has extra copies so I can still get them off the shelf if I feel the need, but I don't want to be tied to them anymore. I ordered all the Annihilation: Conquest related mini's instead.

Transformers The Game (PS2)
This game is a dog. OK, so it's my own fault for expecting a movie-based gamed to be any good, but with the excellent Transformers game that came out a couple of years ago, well, they pretty much had the template of how to make a cool game right there. But no.

So, we're stuck with a game that kinda follows the general plot of the movie, only ultra fleshed-out, but in a bad way. It's all disjointed thanks to the over-use of cut scenes which break up the flow. For instance, as Bumblebee you have to drive to the highschool to protect the two kids from Barricade. You drive there, cue cut scene. Back to the game, you have a brief fight with Barricade. Cut scene. Back to the game, you have to race Barricade to a different part of town, which takes about 60 seconds. Cut scene. Another short fight with Barricade. Cut scene. Then there's another race, another fight, and more cut scenes. The cuts are short, and basically Bumblebee and Barricade driving somewhere, transforming, and then squaring off, but they serve to break up the flow of the game, and each time you go back to actually play something, you essentially repeat what you just did, only in a different place.

There's also an over-abundance of decepticons that you can only hurt by punching, they have shields for your guns. Great. The most fun thing in the game so far has been searching the city for all the hidden items (there's over 100...), since the entire city can be trashed, you can climb buildings, get chased by police, and there are random decepticons to fight. The actual hidden items unlock a bunch of pictures you can view, not particularly exciting.

I don't like giving up on a game, but I'm pretty close to listing this for sale online, and it only came out 3 days ago.

Transformers

I had been planning to go to the movie on Saturday, but I was kindof late getting in to the city, so just missed the 1:45 screening, and didn't feel like hanging around until the 3:20 show. Weird times, I had been expecting it to screen every hour, like F4 had. My fault for not looking it up first.

Sunday rolls around, and I decided to aim for 1:45. Arrived around midday, since I like to get in early and get allocated a good seat. Almost 2 hours to kill though, which presented problems.

First up was a visit to McDonalds for lunch. At a nearby table was a girl that used to be in my class through most of high school. She saw me, but we were never friendly, so I ignored her (if you never spoke to me in highschool, don't expect me to talk to you now). What took me though, was that she had three little kids with her, all the same age, and all looked pretty much the same. Guess she had triplets, which is stunning since she was (and still is) tiny- rake thin and no more than 5'. I wanted to go and ask her how she fitted them all in.

Then it was time for surprise #2. Looking to kill time, I went in to a video game arcade. The games all have these swipe card things, plus what looked like a coin slot. It wasn't though, because it wouldn't accept any of my change. I asked the guy on the counter, to see if there were tokens or something, but apparently they only use pre-pay swipe cards now. WTF? When did this happen? I was only looking to spend a couple of dollars, so I flagged it and walked out. Which sucks, because they had my old favourite, Bubble Bobble, which I can play for 20 minutes on one credit on a good day (well, many years ago now). So instead, I stood outside the theater watching people walk past the stripclub/brothel directly across the street. A couple of people even went in, which was amusing.

Anyway, movie time. They screened it in one of the small rooms, half the size of the main ones, which kinda sucked seeing as it's a new release. I remember when plans for a live-action Transformers movie were first announced, and I thought there was no way it was going to be any good. Glad to see I was wrong- it was awesome. Was a fraction too long, but that's a minor complaint. It had everything I want in a movie- genuine unforced humor, awesome visual effects, cool fights, and a couple of main characters that were interesting and easy to relate to.

Going home, it was pouring and I got soaked, now I have a cold. I think it was worth it though.

Captain Consumer Man

Yeah, the new Transformers movie line of toys got released here yesterday. I've had this statue of Bumblebee on my desk at work for the last week, though I've been unable to actually buy it since they were embargoed until June 2 (I work in a department store, with a large toy section. I even used to run the toy department, oh those were cool times. I always had the comic toys in prominent places).


I pretty much despise the section of the collector market that insists on leaving figures mint in packaging, but this one will be staying in the box, for the simple reason that the box is almost as cool-looking as the figure. I took it out of the box and removed the extra packaging holding it in place though. I hope they make more statues like this, so far it's the only one.

Got a couple more art pages from eBay, this time from Vigilante.



The second page has one of comics great lines:

What guy hasn't said that to themselves at some point?