'I' On Malaysia

Universe Legends turns up with their first new molds of the series of Jazz, Hound and ‘G2′ Megatron.

So in the last review, Animated Jazz was present and now we get Universe Jazz – seems someone has a thing for Jazz at the moment doesn’t it?  Well, whatever the reason for having so many Jazzes turning up, I’m not about to complain.  Animated Jazz was a great piece and Universe Legends Jazz doesn’t disappoint either.  He couldn’t be more faithful to the original G1 version if he tried and if you place this guy alongside the recent re-release of Encore Jazz then you will find a lot of similarities.  The size doesn’t allow for an exact miniaturisation but the distinctive Jazz head is there, the door ‘wings’, and the racing stripes (albeit without the number 4 again).  Give it feet made out of spoiler and he’d be a perfect ‘mini-me’!

I’m not going to say too much on these little guys as they aren’t Transformers in the real sense but are quite nice little additions to have sat on your shelves next to their bigger companions.

These ‘Robot Heroes’ are very well detailed and, if you compare Sunstreaker with the Deluxe that also came out at the same time, Hasbro has done a very good job of making something so small look just like their bigger counterparts.  Galvatron even reminds me quite well of his original laser cannon incarnation (not the later tanks that Universe has adopted).  Even Blitzwing shows how closely the Animated version of him recreates the G1 edition.

More advanced deliveries came my way this week with Animated Leader Class Bulkhead and Megatron coming in from Singapore.  Having seen the loose Bulkhead leader during my last visit and being asked to pay much higher than retail price for it, I figured I’d wait a few weeks to get a boxed version at retail price.  In the end, it took less than 2 weeks to get them and they didn’t come from one of the specialist toy shops – they came from Takashimaya, one of the big department stores there, even beating Toys’R'Us to the punch.

The missing piece to the Wave 1 puzzle was the Battle Begins Twin Pack which contains Earth Mode Optimus Prime and Cybertron Mode Megatron.  Having obtained the rest of Wave 1 either via early shipments from America or by picking them up on shopping trips to Singapore.

Convoy and Megatron do battle again in their original names courtesy of the TakaraTomy Transformation! Henkei! Transformers range which was released this week.  Six of the new Cybertrons and Destrons came out, but the local shops have only received the two commanders as yet so expect the other four in the next week or so…

The wait is over!  Transformers Animated are finally here in their boxes and you no longer need to pay 2 or 3 times their retail values to get them out of box with no instructions.  The first wave of Voyager class are here in the form of Cybertron Mode Megatron, Starscream and Bulkhead and whilst they are based on cartoon vehicles as opposed to real world machines that we have been used to recently, they still look as good as if not better than their Movie counterparts and exhibit the same amount of engineering and gimmicks that we have seen on the Movie lines; namely automorph in these cases being Voyager class.