Toy Review: Transformers Generations Fall of Cybertron Kickback

Review:  #126
Name:  Kickback
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Decepticon
Line:  Generations - Fall of Cybertron
Year of Release:  2012
Size Class:  Deluxe (Wave 3)
Variations:  none as of date

INSECT MODE:

Kickback transforms into a Cybertronian insect that resembles a grasshopper or a wasp.  He features six legs and clear purple wings.

While he rests solidly on the table, there has been instances where the friction for his insect leg joints is too weak such that he cannot stand on those legs (i.e. he can sag depending on your luck).

Kickback has a well defined abdomen although you can see his hands underneath.

Kickback is quite large but he lacks the solidness of vehicle Transformers.  One of his flaws is that his legs doesn't peg into the body so they can flail about.

His legs are also a sore point.  They seem lazy since there's minimal effort to distinguish them from the robot feet, and they do NOT look like insect legs (this seem to be a common complaint about this figure).

Surprisingly, the insect head works.  It's basically the back of his head.  The lower jaw (the grey bit) hides this fact quite well, I'm quite impressed.

The wings are on balljoints so you can adjust them according to your preference.  You can also store his weapon but sliding it into slots that are on his wings.

The weapon is big and bulky and doesn't suit Kickback's insect mode at all but at least it stores somewhere. The shade of purple used is excellent.

While it's far from the best insect/beast mode ever, I think it does a decent job.  It's supposed to be Cybertronian anyway, so it should be vague and disappointing, :P.  Anyway, I for one am a fan of this mode and I think the designer had done a good job.

TRANSFORMATION:

A complex and convoluted mess.  It's not elegant and going from robot to insect, it can be confusing even after you have done it a few times.  The transformation is a mess of limbs, basically, Kickback unfolds and all of his limbs flip to the other side.  Personally, I didn't think it was fun and it felt unnecessary.

ROBOT MODE:

Pretty much universally agreed upon is that his robot mode is awesome, or at least, it looks awesome.  From the shoulder pads to his extra arms hanging over his head, Kickback oozes awesomeness.

He's relatively free of kibble, the most obvious would be the insect legs that just hangs from his back.  It feels awkward and this also means you cannot pick him up by holding the back since these insect legs get in the way.

The headsculpt is good, and he looks suitably evil (he is a Decepticon after all).  Despite having clear plastic for lightpiping, it doesn't work at all.  The antenna is made of soft rubbery plastic and is adjustable.

Kickback has big feet that makes sure he's standing up and stable in a huge variety of poses.

Kickback stature can mislead you, he isn't that tall at all.  He's shorter than most Deluxes and some of the Scout sized figures (such as the PowerCore Combiners and pre-2011 Scouts) are almost as tall as him.

His wings are detached for transformation and he can hold them in his hands as swords.

Frankly, they're not too convincing since it's too short and wide.

His other weapon, and you can't miss it, is his disc launcher.  It has a pressure launch mechanism, thus the distance it launches the disc will vary from toy to toy (on my one, it doesn't fly very far at all).  Apparently, this weapon bears a resemblance to the Gear Shredder weapon from the Fall of Cybertron game.

You can also plug in the wing pieces onto the ports on the weapon.  The default is to attach it so the weapon looks like a crossbow, while if you plug them on the other end, you can imagine it's some sort of drone insect (takes a lot of imagination though).

However, you may also leave the wings where they were in insect mode, and let Kickback sport a pair of wings.

It does look quite good from a number of angles.

Obviously, Kickback can hold the weapon, however, it's too big and unwieldy for him.  It's also too heavy so his arm tends to sag.

The other option is to attach the weapon onto his back and now he sports a jetpack.  Kickback's feet are large enough to sustain the heavy weight on his back.

Kickback has a lot of articulation, sporting even rotating wrists.  His extra arms are also balljointed at the ends and have a hinge joint in the middle.

His feet can be limited depending on how much spread you need while posing, but it is on a balljoint.

As mentioned Kickback has a great stature, and the paint applications highlight the figure well.  He features gold paint in various areas.

There are some 5mm pegs on his extra arms if you wish to use those as well.

Hardly any complaints for this robot mode.  It displays very well and is an impressive addition to your collection if you so desire.

OVERALL:

An excellent toy, although it may be an acquired taste.  The insect mode is clearly the weaker mode here, but the robot mode is exceptionally strong.  Don't worry about him being too small, since he still feels hefty in your hands (although that might be due to how big his weapon is).  He poses well and is a pleasure to the eye.  Highly recommended!

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Book Review: Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants

Review:  #309
Title:  Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants
Series:  Captain Underpants - 4th book
Author:  Dav Pilkey
Read Before:  no
My Comments:  In regards to the rating, it’s just to mean that I enjoyed the book and laughed at it.  For what it is (a stupid pointless book with the sole purpose of presenting stupid humour and jokes), it was interesting and worked well within its genre.  The plot of this one felt more imaginative and more fun.  It didn't feel stupid or forced, the jokes were genuinely funny.  There aren’t as many cliché moments as you’d expect.  The illustrations add to the story, if it was just text, it would have been a bore-fest.

Rating:  6/10

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

While Order of the Phoenix was my least favorite book in the Harry Potter series, the movie turned out better than I expected.  Granted, it's still wasn't too amazing, and there were many liberties taken to cut the content down to fit it within the time limit.  Personally, I liked the first half of the movie, but then it went downhill, with how the events were portrayed.  It was odd sometimes when there was a scene and you thought, they could have cut that out, and then when they missed something, you're thinking, the should have included that instead.  Everything was sped up, and as such, it didn't leave as much of an impact as it should have.  For example, the character Umbridge, in the book, she is extremely annoying and you feel an unfairness in the world, while in the movie, because her punishments and actions are truncated, you might not even develop that feeling and hatred towards her (that said, the actor was pretty good).  *spoiler alert*  Another event that comes up would be Sirius, his death was so quick that there was no shock.  You didn't realize what had happened until many seconds after, by which you don't really care about the character anyway.  *end spoiler*  The climax of the film was very truncated, that is, the time Harry and co spent in the Department of Mysteries.  The special effects were... kinda lame, especially the way the Death Eaters (and later, the Aurors) warped around.  While the fight between Voldemort and Dumbledore wasn't anything spectacular, again, too reliant on the spectacle of special effects and not on the strain, wit and cunning of each participant (and when Voldemort took over Harry, I didn't realize what had happened until much later).  There was also an overuse of flashbacks, which seemed like wasting time.  So once again, like many movies, if you've read the book, prepare to be disappointed, and if you haven't, prepared to be confused in a few areas.  Nevertheless, the movie turned out to be better than I expected, but still boring in some parts.

Book Review: The Third Door

Review:  #308
Title:  The Third Door
Series:  The Three Doors Trilogy - 3rd and final book
Author:  Emily Rodda
Read Before:  no
My Comments:  It felt boring and plain from the beginning of the book until to around two thirds of the way in.  It lacked some of the more interesting features that made the previous two books such a joy to read.  The events were dull and normal, without any mysteriousness or exciting bits to really make you want to keep reading.  Rye goes through the third and final door that has been calling out to him since the very beginning, the Wooden Door.  You would have thought it’ll be the most interesting world out of the three, but it wasn't.  What happened during the middle of the book ended up in a huge mess, you think to yourself, has this finally gone overboard?  However, the plot picks up a lot near the end, where the author throws revelation after revelation at you.  It makes chugging through the beginning worthwhile just to get to this point.  It was not disappointing, and it was amazing as you realise what had truly happened in the previous two books.  It takes a while to get you head around it and you’re thinking, the author must have planned it all along but it does feel like a sort of awkwardly placed retcon, because it doesn't slide naturally into place.  Deltora gets an explicit mention here, as well as the Shadow Lord and his plans intertwining the islands of Deltora and Dorne, it was nicely done and explains some things in The Silver Door.  A good ending to a spectacular series, it’s just that it takes a while to get through the beginning.

Rating:  7/10

Toy Review: Transformers Prime Beast Hunters Bumblebee

Review:  #125
Name:  Bumblebee
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Autobot
Line:  Prime - Beast Hunters
Year of Release:  2013
Size Class:  Deluxe (Wave 1)
Variations:  a remold off the RiD Deluxe mold (which has been repainted and remolded HEAPS of times)

VEHICLE MODE:

Bumblebee transforms into the standard yellow sports car, but this time with a twist, he's completely decked out, there are added spikes, missiles and more 'aggressive' sculpting.

The vehicle shell is completely resculpted, everything (even the roof).  The downside to this is that he loses any sort of paint application for the rear of the car.

As you'd expect, the wheels roll but that's not all for it's play value.

You can plug in his bow weapon on the top of the car and his double blasters.  There are a couple of different configurations on how you want the bow weapon to look like.

Obviously, the size won't change much as this is only a remold.  However, even though the core vehicle is small, the extra weapons, spikes and the like add a lot and it's not too bad.

I'm going to make this clear, I love this vehicle mode.  I think it adds a great aggressive look to Bumblebee (kinda sick of how he always transforms into a sleek sports car now), and the play value is above average.

TRANSFORMATION:

The transformation is largely the same as the original toy with two exceptions, the first is the missile racks on each of the doors rotate up, and the second is that the wheel shaped pieces on his shoulders click into place (due to the new spikes).  The transformation is simple but quite fun, and the auto-transforming feature that activates when you pull out the arms (which causes the whole upper body to shift into place) is quite cool and actually works here.  I think they fixed the gearing issue that was prevalent on the original release and now the head sits more flush against the body.  Overall, you could transform this guy again and again and again, coz he is a pleasure to go from each mode.

ROBOT MODE:

Just like his vehicle mode, Bumblebee takes on a vastly different look here, and it's not a bad result, quite the opposite in fact.

The spikes give him a "don't mess with me" look, and the black breaks up all the yellow very well.

The chest is also shorted and this is good in that it doesn't make his upper body seem way too big out of proportion.  I like to interpret he missiles on his door wings as jet packs (why not?).

Bumblebee also sports a new head sculpt, and not very coincidentally, it bears more than a slight resemblance to his previous head.  Anyway, Bumblebee looks way more angry now and his eyes are quite freaky.  They seemed to look like an eagle's and glow even though there is no lightpiping.

Putting him next to FE Bumblebee, you realize that this toy gives off a very different feel.

He is a bit shorter than the average Deluxe, which he makes up for with all his extras.

Off to the weapons, he retains his original twin blasters, which can combine into a double blaster.

However, the star of the show would have to be his bow weapon, officially named the Eagleshot Bow (getting into the beast theme I see).  The sides can fold up for storage and it has two slots to hold spare missiles.

The bow is also a fully working spring loaded launcher (although mine launchers far too easily).  Bumblebee comes with SIX (!!!!) missiles.  The launcher only uses one, so talk about overkill.

There are two missiles stored on each door, and two on the bow itself.

The blasters can either attach on the outside of his forearms or he can hold them in his hands.

The same goes for his bow (since it has a 5mm peg itself), although I found that it attaches a bit more loosely than I would like.

The articulation is pretty good, although it seems that his shoulders are limiting (not by much though), thanks to the automatic transformation.  He has a a swivel joint in both planes of motion in the shoulders anyway.

All the aesthetic flaws of the original toy it gone.  One of my complaints of the mold though would be how his torso is just a thin panel.  It just doesn't feel like that area have enough substance.

Bumblebee is pose-friendly, he's easy to balance and have many joints that makes posing quite a joy.  The joints are tight and unlikely to give way to gravity.

If you wish, Bumblebee can hold his missiles as a sort of club/spear/stick.  His bow weapon looks wicked on his arm, Bumblebee does look ready to annihilate his foe.

A wonderful robot mode that strikes all the right chords in refresh of the line.  This robot mode is fun, stable and looks great.

OVERALL:

An unexpected surprise to me, I could never imagine how great this toy turned out.  It transformed and remolded a mediocre toy into a great one.  Beast Hunters Bumblebee has a ton of play value what with his weapons, and he looks amazing in both modes.  I'd say, give this Bumblebee toy a chance (especially if you haven't had this mold yet), he's just so fun to fiddle around with!

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Book Review: Operation Trinity

Review:  #307
Title:  Operation Trinity
Series:  The 39 Clues:  The Cahill Files - 1st book
Author:  Clifford Riley
Read Before:  no
My Comments:  This is basically a collection of three short stories, but they share a similar theme.  All three stories focus upon this painting, and each covers a different timeline.  Even though each is around 50 pages, they stand up well, creating enough tension to be exciting and let you want to find out more.  The most disappointing thing though is that you don’t know what the secret message/meaning of that painting is (and that was the whole aim in the three stories).  I still have issues how the book retcons that everyone of importance is part of this Cahill family, there’s an improbable elitist feel to it.  This feels like a companion book, and the purpose is as of yet unclear.

Rating:  6/10

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Prince Caspian was a less boring movie than it's predecessor.  Although the last time I have read the book was some years ago, I have a feeling that they had changed a number of things for the movie.  For one, many more fighting sequences, to spice up the movie.  This did make the movie much more interesting and fun to watch, but the structure of the movie and the odd pacing at times still doesn't make it awesome.  To be honest, there are too many battle scenes, it feels the whole movie is just that, with a little story to go along with it, such that it feels shallow.  The darker tone was noticeable, as was the increase in violence.  I didn't like how they changed the characters, adding in cheesy subplots like Peter's arrogance and his differences with Prince Caspian (who is portrayed as a sort of useless person now, and it even positioned me to feel that he didn't deserve the throne).  The additional scenes not in the book didn't add much (please don't force the White Witch to appear again -_-), and extended the length, which is already too long.  It's once again over two hours long, and it feels such a drag to be able to sit through the whole movie.  And this one puts me off, why did they have to force in the romance between Susan and Caspian?  That was awkward and it did not have enough time to be developed properly.  Best to watch this before you read the book as you'll enjoy it a whole lot more.