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2017, A Year In Review (Mega-Review #1) - Part 1: Playing Pretend!

Nightstrike
Jan 4, 2018
3 min read

[NOTE: To see image captions, hover your cursor over the image.]

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2017 has been quite the wild ride for some of us: new novels, Transformers releases and countless custom creations have all been coming "rapid-fire" at us this year. With all the interesting content out there in the Transformers community, like me, you may have found yourself completely overwhelmed. And if you're anything like me, you too may have pushed the pause button on all your accounts.

Luckily, most of us have made it through 2017 with minimal scars, and have managed to continue with life despite the holidays. As you may know, I've been quite busy with both designs on Tinkercad (Under the username, HTCTFM), as well as developing papercraft models. And the enforced holiday slow-down provided ample time to hone my 3D designing skills.

But, as with all good things, the holidays ended and it was back to reality in all of its cluttered, overscheduled glory. I resigned myself to, once again, not having nearly enough time for my many projects, when like a gift from Primus himself...

Snowpocalypse 2018!

Since I suddenly had plenty of freetime on my hands, I decided today would be a good time to review and discuss last year's offerings. Let's first start with some recent acquisitions and additions to the collection.

First off, I'd like to show off the first wave of Prime Masters, from the new Transformers line, Power Of The Primes.

MI...DG? (Men in Dark Gray? Doesn't really have the same ring to it...)

While I'm hazy on the specifics, I managed to piece this together from the sparse amount of information on them:

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The Thirteen Primes have returned, but find themselves in new forms. Needing to hide their immense power from outsiders and enemies, they utilize Decoy Shell Armor.

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I'm probably way off on my description, but to my understanding, the Prime Masters are designed to be direct homages to the Pretenders from G1, with minor details that refer to the corresponding Primes.(i.e. the Sides of Skullgrin's backplate resemble Liege Maximo's horns) There will most likely be 12 Prime Masters in the whole line, seeing as Optimus Prime is referred to as The Arisen, in both IDW and the toy continuity.

The three figures in this wave are Liege Maximo, Micronus Prime, and Vector Prime, who are homages to Skullgrin, Cloudburst, and Metalhawk, respectively.

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Each Prime Master figure is held into the Armor by the tab on the back of the legs, and the backplate.

Just a quick pic displaying the tread detail on Skullgrin's legs.

To scale with a Titanmaster.(Specifically Gatorface)

Closeup of the trio. The only color-inaccurate one is Metalhawk, who used to be gold, but was made blue for some reason.

Each of these Prime Master figures becomes a weapon, with Autobots as some form of gun, and Decepticons as melee weapons. It should also be noted that these guys are retools of the Titanmaster Concept, except, they become Power Cores. For those of us who customize, it was quite a disappointment to find out that the backplates are bolted in, rather than being held in with screws. It requires some heavy modding, in order to try and slap a faceplate on one. However, these can also be used as Functionist Council member heads.

Core mode for the trio. I'm not sure on the other two, but Vector's backplate is based off of the Aligned Vector Prime artwork background.

Overall, I'd rate these guys a 4 out 5, due to the fact that they were designed to work with the gimmick Hasbro had in mind. They are accurate representations, though, and that partially contributes to their score. The other part, would be the fact that I've been waiting for Pretenders for a while, as they're one of my favorite concepts. It would've been ideal, though if they became vehicles, or at the least, headmasters. Bare minimum, might've been having a vehicle mode for the shell instead.

Stay tuned for more reviewing, in the next post!(Mainly because I was nearing the word limit...)

Oh, and here's the whole gallery:

------------------------------------------------ (For the full review, other reviews, or just to hang out on our forums, go to: nightstrike.wixsite.com/terminus-industries) ------------------------------------------------

Part 1 of a MegaReview!

Review Author: Nightstrike (Identity to be revealed in Tokyo Ghoul Prequel: A Shadowed Dawn)

"Publisher": Terminus Industries

Source: nightstrike.wixsite.com/terminus-industries

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