Special Delivery!

The shooting in Colorado

As most everyone has heard there was a tragedy last night in Aurora, Colorado. A young man went on a shooting spree at a Dark Knight Rises premiere killing at least twelve and wounding many others. If you need the details feel free to Google it. I just wanted to express how very sad I am to hear of this. It's heart breaking to not only hear of those that died needlessly but to think of their families suffering and the nightmarish experience it was for all those that were there.

At the moment I do feel anger toward the shooter and toward the sociopathic political jackholes using this event to spew their hateful garbage. This is not the time for this.

My heart goes out to all those involved. What a horrible, tragic event...

Weak Week...

I've been quiet on the blogging front. It's been a long and stressful week. I have been running my mouth on the Allspark but I think more than a bit of that has been due to sleep deprivation.
Anywho, I hope to have more for you guys shortly. I'll probably talk about these guys...

FoC Op Ed

That image is Generations Fall of Cybertron Optimus Prime. As everyone already knows he is on the smaller side due to rising oil prices. However I think it's clear that there is more to it than that.
Take note of the number of screws shown. Ten screws. Two in each shin, two in each forearm and two in the torso. There is also a metal pin in each shoulder. Aside from the pins the screws don't play a role in the figure's articulation. The entire toy, except the shoulder pipes, is articulated entirely using the friction from plastic on plastic joints. This is a huge difference from the War for Cybertron figure which has a lot more parts and more pins and screws than I care to count.
This works rather well as Hasbro seems to have perfected mold tolerances. FoC Jazzes knees and elbows are ratchet joints yet each joint consists entirely of two pieces of plastic gripping each other. Hasbro has found new ways to cut back the number of parts on these figures thereby saving on the overall production. This would be great if the savings were passed on to us.

I don't mean for this to be some Hasbro bashing thread as they've treated this fandom too well over the years. I will always hold up Dispensor whenever anyone tries to claim Hasbro doesn't care about us. What I am getting at is the state of the toy industry and what it will mean for us going forward. $15 deluxe figures hurts more and more. I'm concerned with this trend. Will it continue? Will it stabilize where it currently is? Will it improve as Hasbro adjusts to the new price point?
I'm hoping for the latter.

Pre-Earth Jazz

Time to make my titles make more sense so things are easier to find.

Below you'll see pics of my Pre-Earth Jazz. Not Fall of Cybertron because it's not game accurate. Instead it's much more G1 influenced. I felt I had to get creative with the stripes.
 He's shown next to the previous game accurate repaint for comparison.

Heads up

If you were waiting to receive anything from me you may not get it for a bit longer. I had a crapload of shipment returned to me because USPS sucks ass.
I am grumpy. I'll resend everything int he next couple of days after I fix all the packing.

And no, nothing was damaged.

Another Precious

I have a sickness. And the only prescription. Is more Jazz.

In case you haven't noticed I LOVE Jazz. Hell, I'm getting that Asia Exclusive Wheelie simply because of the Jazz mold it uses. Even with all the Ratchets and Knock Outs I've made I think I've done more scustoms on the RtS Jazz mold than anything else.

So here we are with a new Jazz mold from the new Generations line front loaded with characters from the new Transformers game Fall of Cybertron. I'll have my thoughts on that upcoming gem on VGConfab sooner than later. I'm pretty excited for this toy line even though the Optimus is disappointing due to his size.

Before I go off on a tangent about other toys *coughIwantBruticusNowcough* lemme dig into My new Jazz.
I poster a couple of pics already but I wanted to get more details done on him so I could share a bit more of this guy with you.

BEHOLD!!!

I gotta say I probably like the vehicle mode better than the robot mode, which isn't something I say often about any TF toy. It has this greebly sleekness that feels right at home on a Cybertron mode Jazz. It just feels fun! I can already see him zipping around the battle field in the mode, weaving through the enemies before transforming...

So yeah, not the best Jazz but not the worst, by far. I'm honestly justhappy to add another to the Jazz shrine so your mileage may vary.
I'll also keep him with the WfC Optimus instead of the new one for... reasons.