Everything’s coming up Decepticons this round, from a couple of different lines.
Titans Return Galvatron
I’ve been kind of hemming and hawing on Titans Return Galvatron. On one hand, he’s a mostly really good update to Galvatron, who has been sorely in need of a decent update since forever. Even the original toy is a pretty mediocre representation. On the other hand, he has a couple of pretty glaring flaws. First is the cannon placement on his arm, which completely negates the elbow. I can mostly live with that.
More of a problem is his ridiculous head. Specifically, the shoddy limited movement crown that flips up and sort of… hovers, in front of the Headmaster head. I don’t really care all that much about the headmaster gimmick in this case, I’m tempted to either paint the appropriate parts of the headmaster purple, and forget the flip up crown, or to simply cut the crown off and permanently glue it to the headmaster face, so things look mostly better, and the neck joint becomes useful again.
Then there are his alt modes. There’s a neat idea in there. The cannon is appropriate, but the cockpit kind of screws it up a lot. The space jet is neat, but it kind of barely holds together. I don’t care much about his alt modes really, so these problems are less of a problem than the robot issues.
Robots in Disguise Scorponok
I have to admit, I have not watched nor do I really care about the Robots in Disguise show. Initially I was pretty convinced I would end up skipping the entire line actually. I ended up picking up every single Decepticon so far however, once they started putting them out. For the first 3 or 4 waves, there was one mediocre Decepticon in the whole line. Which was a real tragedy because the Decepticons of the show had this fun and interesting animal theme going for them.
The latest release is Scorponok. I almost ended up with two Scorponoks but decided to pass on the second. There is a repaint of this Transformer that’s exclusive to Toys R Us. It’s purple with a head that greatly resembles Beast Wars Scorponok. I decided to pass on it. It seemed a little silly to get the same figure twice in a row, I think I’ll hold out hope for an actual “Classics Beast Wars Scorponok”.
Anyway, this guy is pretty neat. I’d say he’s definitely one of the more interesting and fun Decepticons of this line, though I think Fracture is probably a bit cooler. The way his shoulders work is different, but the result is that his claws are essentially static, which kind of sucks. He makes up for it a lot with his awesome tail.
Then there is the Black Panther. Black Panther is quickly becoming one of my favorite Marvel characters. I’d read up on him before, King of his own country, yet also a hero. He’s kind of got this Iron Man thing going on with his panther armor. His position as royalty and a world leader gives him an interesting dynamic in the whole scheme of things.
Ok, so, researching a bit on these guys, as I like to do, it seems there are two different people named Cottonmouth in the Marvel universe. One is a Luke Cage villain, which could be fun, since Luke Cage is getting a Netflix series and that little corner of the Marvel-verse in general is getting a lot of light lately. The other is this joker, Burchell Clemens.
Whirlwind is slightly more interesting than Cottonmouth (though not much). His design makes me think “Iron Man Villain” but he’s not, he’s actually mostly a Pym Ant-Man and Wasp villain but he’s gotten around the Marvel Universe a lot. His power also isn’t quite what i expected just looking at him, he basically spins and moves really fast, and becomes a tornado (hence Whirlwind). He’s palled around with several other villains, including some other recent lower tier villains like Tiger Shark and Blizzard. He’s also got a thing for Wasp. The point is, while he’s not Red Skull or Doctor Octopus, he’s also several levels above Cottonmouth on the who’s who list of villains.
Also while checking into who this guy is, I found a ton of pictures with “Tornado legs” which really makes me wish he had come with some sort of sap out parts accessory. I found something similar in my parts box but the best I could do is fake it since I’m not going to break the waist apart on this guy just for some pictures.
Still need more? Have a bonus face of evil, in the form of Rocksteady here from TMNT. I’m not exactly sure what this line is called, TMNT Classics? These are larger 6″ Turtles figures with fancier articulation than their normal counterparts. I’ve been keeping an eye on the listings for Rocksteady and Bebop over on Amazon hoping to catch a deal, and eventually Rocksteady did drop down below the ridiculous $50-$60 price these seem to go for these days. Frankly, probably not worth that. He lacks any ankle joints, his accessories have no paint (including his helmet which needs it), the packaging is a lame bubble which isn’t reusable. All of this is kind of excusable for the original $20-$25 price, not so much as an after market premium.
In continuing with my current round of picking up X-Men, I got Cable. There was also a Jean and Iceman, the last two I’m looking for but I’ve got a pre order coming in soon (potentially) so I passed. I feel like, of the entire wave, those two will be easyish to find later. Deadpool, Wolverine, and Cable here are definitely the most popular of the wave. It’s pretty solid, I may have been wrong about Deadpools odd weapons belonging to Cable though. His shoulders kind of look odd due to his armored flack jacked thing.
One of the pretty major holes in the Lost Light crew (see IDW’s More than Meets the Eye) is a decent Rewind. We got a disk based one a few years ago, but it’s a spring loaded gimmick with no real joints that doesn’t look like much. Titants Returns is revisiting Soundwave and Blaster again, along with their cassette bots, this time in a less gimmick hindered format.
Two weeks ago, when I was broke, I came across Havok at the Walgreen’s in town and was sure that he’d be gone by the time I got paid again. I wasn’t super worried, he’s not anything special and feels like one of the “He’ll be $15 on Amazon eventually after all of the $50 Deadpools and $30 Cables and Wolverines are sold out”. Surprisingly, he was still there, with his Namor buddies.
Ok, Frank Castle isn’t a member of the X-men, nor is he even a mutant. He’s a Walgreens elusive though, just being released, and when I came across him, I figured why not. These Walgreens exclusives actually tend to clog shelves though, which kind of sucks because they all tend to be pretty alright.
I’ll go into more details over on 
Earlier this week, I noticed my local Wal-Mart had the DC Multiverse figures on clearance for $9. I’m not hugely into the line, but I have been kind of eying the TV versions of Green Arrow and Flash. They didn’t have any Green Arrows unfortunately, mostly just Batman variants, but they did have one Flash. The sculpt and paint are both pretty nice, but I really dislike the articulation. Those nasty swing out hips Mattel uses are a lot of the reason I have little interest in this line. If I was going to collect DC character I’d spend a little more for the DC Icons which all look like much nicer figures.
