'I' On Malaysia

Taking a breather from the Revenge of The Fallen outbreak for a while, Hasbro have been kind enough to provide us with a little variety this month with a bunch of exclusives including 25th Anniversary Soundwave, Metallic Optimus Prime Mighty Muggs and this, Target Exclusive Leo Prime.

One of the only none-transforming Transformers lines that I am interested in is the Robot Heroes collection has just released Wave 2 here in Malaysia.  It seems to have been a long time coming having read postings from the US that it had already been released there and checking Big Bad Toy Store showed that they have been in stock for some time along with Entertainment Earth; they haven’t been out in retail yet there though so I guess it hasn’t been such a long wait after all.

Releasing alongside the Voyagers Dropshot and Blades is the third in the Universe Ultra Class releases, Silverbolt, which is also a new mold as has been the case with all of the Ultra Class releases so far.

In his original form, Silverbolt was a Concorde passenger jet plane and this version still reminds you of that plane quite a lot even if it is now deignated as a fighter jet.  Potentially, this could make it more of an Avro Vulcan than a Concorde.

The population of Repaintsville grows again as Hasbro rolls out more old molds repainted as other characters under the Universe banner.  Fortunately they are good molds, both of which again originate from the Cybertron line, and both of which were originally Autobot molds.

Dropshot

Taking on the mold from Scattorshot in the Cybertron series, Dropshot changes the colour scheme from grey and blue to brown and green.  In a way, this is a good change in my eyes as this gives the vehicle an air of camouflage to it.  My only concern on the choice of colours is that they’re too bright.  Dark green is fine, brown goes well, but the bright lime green/yellow colouring?  That just looks like it can glow in the dark!

Standing out on his own at the beginning of the post is Onslaught, and with good reason.  This is the best release to have come out of the Universe line in, I think, the entire series!!!

Before reading any further, just accept that you are going to buy Onslaught and say no more.  Between him and Powerglide, there is no contest!

Yet more Cybertron repaints to add to the list of Universe repaints, joining the wave 1 Legends and Wave 2′s Acid Storm.  Almost 50% of the entire line so far has been repaints and once I add Nemesis Prime to the list, then it will be an exact 50/50 split (ignoring the Robot Heroes though).  Kind of a bum steer for long time collectors if you get tired of the same molds over and over again.

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’!

Taking a month to arrive on Malaysian shores, the second wave of Universe releases consists of Acid Storm and Galvatron.  Also arriving in the past two weeks have been the first wave of Voyagers, the first wave of Ultras and the second wave of Legends all of which makes August the month of Universe.

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.

Next on the list of Universe releases was the first wave of Legends class which comprised of “Classics” Onslaught, Red Alert and Starscream.

Unlike the Deluxe class that was just reviewed, none of these are new molds and all are repaints of old molds that have either been used in the Cybertron series or previous Classics series.  Ironically, Onslaught is even a repaint of Cybertron Legends Red Alert whom is now a repaint of Cybertron Legends Hot Shot (which had a re-release here not so long ago).