'I' On Malaysia

Continuing to cash in on the action of having ‘Offscreen’ items alongside Target and Walmart is Toys’R'Us, who previously had exclusives in the forms of Ultra Class Wingblade and Jetstorm, now release Voyager Class Inferno and Mudflap.

These two were released way back in June in America and have never appeared in Malaysia to this day.  I managed to pick them up from probably the largest Toys’R'Us store in Hong Kong at Tsim Sha Tsui Ocean Terminal during my recent holiday there.

Two releases which are new to here but have been out in the US since mid February are Overcast and Jungle Bonecrusher.

Overcast is a repaint of the original Movie line’s Dreadwing figure, repainted in a black and yellow colour scheme with the usual Allspark blue added for ‘effect’.

The movie cash cow keeps on churning by releasing more store exclusives. These were exclusive to Walmart in the US but are on general release to all shops everywhere else (except Canada I think). I guess store exclusives don’t work as well in other countries, or there just aren’t any shops big enough elsewhere to make it worth Hasbro’s while to so it – they tried here a few months ago with G1 Masterpiece Starscream but most people ended up disappointed or waited for the TakaraTomy release to come out instead.

And so the Hasbro version of Allspark Power Incinerator finally arrives and I’m now no longer sure if the TakaraTomy black version or this grey version is better…

For me, this one does seem to have more character to it.  Black just looks so… boring now.  The Allspark blue stands out more against the grey than the black and looks better (surprisingly) but the Decepticon air force logo looks better in the grey on black than it does now in grey on grey.  The Hasbro version is also lacking the plane registry number of the TakaraTomy version, and also the Decepticon air force logos that were previously present on the side of the plane have also vanished in the Hasbro release.

The ‘Target Exclusive’ Allspark Power Deluxe range came out here at the tail end of last week.  Still catching up on entries here so it has taken a few days to get around to posting an item on this.

The set consists of four deluxe Transformers and are every bit the same as the original releases except that they now sport a little bit of the mandatory Allspark blue paint.  It seems that if TakaraTomy has an excess of black paint, then Hasbro has an excess of blue paint!

New in this week is another exclusive TakaraTomy repaint, this time of Arcee who becomes Black Arcee giving Arcee more repaints than any other Movie related toy I think with original, Black and the WonderFest G1 version not to mention the battle damage version in last year’s 3 pack and potentially also being sold separately in the coming months.

Just arrived in my hands today are the TakaraTomy versions of Transformers Movie Allspark Power Incinerator and Landmine.

These are the first of the products released by Hasbro under the Allspark Power banner that have also been released by TakaraTomy under the Allspark Power banner as well; Nightwatch Optimus Prime was previously released in the ‘normal’ Movie range by TakaraTomy but as ‘Allspark Power’ by Hasbro.

Last up and largest of the gang is Deep Desert Brawl.

Do Decepticons like the desert or something?  Desert Blackout, Deep Desert Brawl, Scorponok burrowed in to a desert somewhere…

Thankfully, Brawl looks a heck of a lot better after his transition to the desert and practically looks like an Army soldier dressed up in camouflage.  With the exception of the now mandatory blue spots of paint which are supposed to have been inherited from the last remnants of the Allspark destroyed in the movie.  Leader Brawl looks as good as ever though looking as big and menacing as the Devastator character in the movie so if you liked or missed out on ‘Decepticon Brawl’, then pick up a Deep Desert Brawl and you won’t be disappointed.

Skipping over the Deluxe class which didn’t have any new additions this week, we come back to Allspark Power repaint territory.  Two of the repaints are Allspark versions of their movie counterparts with the third being a new character based on old enemy.

‘First’ of the three is First Strike Optimus Prime.

Moving up the pecking order of class size, we get the Scout class, Wave 4.

Again, these are Target exclusives in the US, but are openly available in the rest of the world (or at least this part of the world).  I’ll be brief on these as they are old olds from the previous Cybertron range and have only had a lick of paint applied to bring them in to the Allspark Power range.  The only one of three that is worth a special mention is Storm Surge which looks ok and could be a good baby brother to Evac.