Transformers Generations Selects Tigertrack and Rotorstorm, are now up for pre-order!

Transformers Generation Selects Tigertrack

Transformers Generations Selects Rotorstorm

We have the pre-orders up for Transformers Generations Selects War for Cybertron Trilogy Tigertrack and Rotorstorm. Just use the links and reserve yours today. Shop Smart with The Chosen Prime!

Newage Toys H19T Hogan & H20T William Bonney, is now in-stock!

Newage Toys H19T Hogan & H20T William Bonney

We got our stocks in for Newage toys H19T Hogan & H20T William Bonney Set. Pre-orders are currently being processed. Get yours by following the links. Thanks for your continued support of The Chosen Prime!

Newage Toys H19T Hogan & H20T William Bonney (Vanilla Ice Set), is now up for pre-order!

Newage Toys H19T Hogan & H20T William Bonney (Vanilla Ice Set)

We have a new pre-order for Newage Toys H19T Hogan & H20T William Bonney (Vanilla Ice Set). Reserve yours early by following the links. Shop Smart with The Chosen Prime!

Transformers: Earthrise Sunstreaker & Trailbreaker, are now up!

Transformers: Earthrise Sunstreaker

We have pre-orders up for both Transformers: Earthrise Sunstreaker & Trailbreaker. Reserve yours today. Thanks for shopping with The Chosen Prime!

Mastermind Creations R-39 Gravus & Ebrius (2-Pack), is now in-stock!

Mastermind Creations R-39 Gravus & Ebrius (2-Pack)

Got the Mastermind Creations R-39 Gravus & Ebrius (2-Pack), now in-stock! Pre-orders are currently being processed. Order yours today by following the links. Thanks for your continued support of The Chosen Prime!

Transformers G1 Reissue Autobot Girafu & Noizu, and Decepticon Frenzy 3-Pack Cassettes, is now in-stock!

Transformers G1 Reissue Autobot Girafu & Noizu, and Decepticon Frenzy 3-Pack Cassettes

Get your Transformers G1 Reissue Autobot Girafu & Noizu and Decepticon Frenzy 3-Pack Cassettes. We've got them in-stock and ready to ship. Order yours today! Thanks for choosing The Chosen Prime!

Zeta ZB-03 Silver Arrow, is now in-stock!

Zeta ZB-03 Silver Arrow

We finally got our stock in for Zeta ZB-03 Silver Arrow! Thanks for waiting. We're currently processing pre-orders! Get yours by following the links. Big thanks for sticking with us!

GigaPower HQ-03/03R Gigasaur Guttur (Reissue), is now back in-stock!

GigaPower HQ-03/03R Gigasaur Guttur

We just got the reissues for GigaPower HQ-03/03R Guttur. Pre-orders are currently being processed. Get yours by following the links. Shop Smart with The Chosen Prime!

Zeta ZB-05 Downthrust, is now up for pre-order!

Zeta ZB-05 Downthrust

Now up for pre-order is Zeta ZB-05 Downthrust. Use the links to reserve yours. Thank you for your continued support of The Chosen Prime!

GigaPower Graviter - Sludge

GigaPower Graviter - Sludge

The Dinobots are my favorite group of Transformers. It’s great that there are so many options for a complete set of these guys. The GigaPower Dinobots stand out because of their aesthetics and size. Graviter is an excellent display piece that I’m glad to have on my shelf floor.

He is an absolute beast in brontosaurus or brachiosaurus mode. I don’t remember FansToys Stomp being this large. I love all the line work and little details. It’s like a nostalgic blast of my childhood toy, but with a much improved look and design. His tail kind of sticks out weirdly in the back. I wished it angled to the ground. 

His head is on a swivel and hinge. The neck also swivels and hinges at a couple of spots. While he doesn’t have the crazy neck articulation of FansProject Columpio, Graviter can be pretty expressive with his neck and head. His mouth opens pretty wide to reveal independently articulating mouth cannons. While his front legs share his robot shoulder and arm articulation, his rear legs are not of his robot hips. They are only on a swivel so they can not splay outward. They also do not swivel at the thighs. Both sets of legs are single-jointed. All his toes articulate independently. Despite the segments, his tail only waggles at one spot.

Transformation back and forth is not difficult. The legs are the most involved. There are a couple of areas where clearance may be an issue - the wings moving past his shoulders and the two panels on his underbelly moving past his leg panels. So far, I’ve managed to avoid the wings scratching his shoulders, but you have to be cautious. The belly pieces have scraped his leg panels though. I forgot to extend his biceps for robot mode.

Robot mode is suitably large and imposing. The red and gold pieces tie in really well with Gutter. The piston details on the back of his elbows are a nice touch. The head sculpt looks great. It avoids the derpiness that is common with FansToys sculpts. Too bad the dinosaur hind legs don’t collapse. There simply is no more room in the feet and shins.

His head is on a ball joint, but the range of motion is sort of limited. His shoulders are on ratcheted hinges and swivels. He can raise his arms out and up to 90 degrees. His elbows are single-jointed. Strangely, they started out ratcheted, but stopped being clickety-clackety after only a couple of curls. I wonder if I’ve broken both ratchets. He can only curl his arms about 90 degrees. His thumbs are on hinges while the rest of his fingers are on individual joints. All his fingers articulate individually, have two knuckles, and can splay ever so slightly. He swivels at his biceps, wrists, waist, and thighs. His hips are on ratcheted universals. The ratchets are not quite strong enough to hold the weight of his legs. He can perform a full side splits, but not quite a full front splits. His knees are single-jointed and ratcheted. They can’t curl very much. Because of the transformation joint, he can bend his lower legs sideways at his knees. He has no ankle rockers or tilts. His toes are on hinges, but they don’t move very much. They can hinge side ways though. Overall, he isn’t exactly the most posable figure.

His accessories include his large rifle, a sword, a pair of smaller rifles, some flame effects, an alternate head, transparent neck and tail pieces, and a strip of blue sticker. All the weapons are nicely detailed, but have zero lick of paint. At least the sword has a translucent blade. The large rifle and sword feature light-up effects, but I don’t have any of those little batteries. All the weapons sit well in his hands, despite using Masterpiece-styled tabs. The flame effects wrap nicely around the blade. They add a lot of weight. If Gutter is anything to go by, I won’t be leaving the sword, heavy with the flame effects, in his hands for long. The weight seems to have weakened the ratchets in Gutter’s sword arm. His alternate head has an angry expression. It simply pops on and off the ball joint. The transparent pieces are great if you want to achieve that G1 toy look in dinosaur mode. I don’t know what the sticker strip is for.

Graviter will stand on my Masterpiece shelf. It has the aesthetics and size that really sets it apart from Stomp. It will probably take another couple of years, but I can’t wait to complete this set.

Fans Toys Rouge - Arcee

“Dad, why do you have a doll?”

“It’s not a doll. It’s an action figure.”

“Mom, why does Dad have a shelf full of girl robots?”

“Action figures!"

The Movie introduced a slew of new characters in a bid to get kids to beg their parents for new toys. Strangely, Arcee was never offered in the original run. There have been quite a few official and third party offerings in recent years, but only Toyworld Leia is Masterpiece scaled. I wasn’t completely satisfied with how Leia looked on my shelf so was looking forward to Fans Toys Rouge. After the delight of Apache and Koot, Rouge is a bit of a let down.

I usually transform these figures to alt mode and back at least once so I can comment on the process. However, when I was attempting to move one of the backpack armatures past a white panel, cracks started to appear on the white plastic. It’s not visible from the outside, but I don’t want to continue and risk actually breaking something. Fortunately, transforming these things is not so important to me so I’ll just enjoy the figure displayed in robot mode.

For the most part, I like how Rouge looks. The colors are bright and the line work is typical of Fans Toys. Her face sculpt could be little more angular, but otherwise looks great. Her metallic eyes catch the light well. While her shoulder pauldrons look fine, I’m not a fan of how they are attached. The armatures look messy and they don't sit quite right on her back. There is a visible gap in her collar bone and a hole that runs from one side of her chest through to the other. While I appreciate that she does not have high heels like Leia, Rouge could have used some heel spurs. She is very prone to falling over. I can not see displaying her without some sort of stand. Conveniently, there are a couple of ports right on her butt.

Her head is on a ball joint. She has a wide range of motion. Her shoulders are also on ball joints. She can’t quite raise her arms out and up to horizontal. Her elbows are double-jointed. She can perform full curls. Her thumbs are fixed. The rest of her fingers are single pinned and articulate as a single unit. She swivels at her biceps, forearms, thighs, and ankles. Her wrists are hinged. She has a waist waggle so she can perform side to side crunches, but she does not have a waist swivel, limiting are posability. Her hips are on universal joints. During transformation or straight out of the box, make sure to pull her legs out at the hip so she can achieve her full range of motion. She can perform full front and side splits. Her knees are single-jointed, but she can still perform full curls. Her ankles are on rockers and tilts. Her toes are on hinges.

Her accessories include a pistol, a rifle, an alternate chest, a pair of alternate hands, and a slew of alternate faces. Her pistol is gray, with some minimal line work and paint applications. Her rifle is pink. They each have a slot on their handles to receive the tabs on her palms. Although easy to use, the tabs are prone to splitting the handles at the seams. The weapons sit securely in her hands, but her grip looks very dainty. Her alternate chest is more angular and less curvy. Swapping out her chest requires mucking with some screws. Unfortunately, the torso tabs don’t line up properly on the alternative chest so I have to continue using the curvier chest. Her alternate hands do not have the awkward looking tabs, but are otherwise identical. They simply pop on and off their mushroom pegs. She comes with a total of six alternate faces. Two are very similar with neutral expressions, one with her red visor deployed, one with wider eyes than the others, and two with surprised expressions. The face swap mechanism is very simple to use.

Rouge will stand (using the term loosely) on my Fans Toys shelf. I will use her as my Masterpiece stand-in for now because her face sculpt reminds me the most of the source material and because her colors are so much brighter than Leia's. I didn't finish transforming her because I nearly broke a piece in trying. Despite being the second Fans Toys offering (Soveriegn was the other), that I didn’t fully transform, I would have still been excited to complete the Autobot cast of The Movie. Her limited articulation and balance issue killed that for me. Ocular Max has a chance to deliver a knock out blow with their upcoming Arcee figure. Still, I can’t wait for Fans Toys to bring on Hoodlum.

Zeta Toys Air Strike - Air Raid

A Masterpiece Superion has been distinctly missing from my collection. TFC Toys Uranos is passable for a CHUG display, but is obviously too small for a Masterpiece shelf. Although I knew that Fans Toys will be releasing their take on the Aerialbots eventually, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take a look at Zeta Toys Air Strike. It’s a decent take on my favorite Aerialbot.

Air Strike looks great as an F-15 Strike Eagle. Unlike Combiner Wars, his head and arms are not visible. He does not look like a robot with a jet on his back, but he could be sleeker. The panel lines and gaps are not too bad. The stripes on his wings could have used another coat of paint. The canopy opens to reveal a double seater cockpit. His airbrake panel is also functional. His rear landing gears fold down from the sides, but his front landing gear requires disassembling the nose cone to deploy and retract. Despite tiny wheels, he rolls along just fine. I wish he came with two rifles to assuage my OCD for symmetry. MP-06 Skywarp has him beat in overall shape and aesthetics.

Transformation back and forth is not difficult at all. The legs are very reminiscent of Combiner Wars. The front and rear parts of the jet are on textbook Aerialbot armatures. The two parts of the backpack are a bit fiddly and are prone to popping off their hinges so take some care. The front landing gear assembly is obnoxious and the tolerances don't seem to be quite right. In experimenting with his leg mode, I forgot to extract the nose cone for robot mode.

Although he does have some metallic paints, he's mostly colored plastic. The line work is decent. I wish there were more white on his body. Not surprisingly, his legs are a bit kibbly. The missiles, their racks, and the wings can be removed for a cleaner look, which is what I will probably end up doing. As expected, he has a jet backpack, with part of a nose cone sticking up past the top of his head and a bit of the tail sticking down past his butt. If you leave the nose cone out, it sticks up that much more over his head.

His head is on a ball joint. He can't look up or down very far. His shoulders are on swivels and hinges. He can raise his arms up and out parallel to the ground. His elbows are single-jointed and can only perform half curls. His thumbs are on ball joints. The rest of his fingers are single-pinned and articulate individually. They all have a single, articulating knuckle. He swivels at his biceps, wrists, and waist. His backpack gets in the way of his waist swivel. His hips are on universals with ratchets for the side-to-side axis. He doesn’t really have a thigh swivel; it’s just the slight rotation as part of the universal joint. He can perform full side splits, but his front splits is impeded by his backpack. He has ratcheted, single-jointed knees that can only perform half curls. His feet are on ball joints.

His accessories include his rifle and four missiles. The rifle has some decent line work and some paint. It uses the reverse Masterpiece-styled tab found on Toyworld Primorion. It works just about as well as a regular Masterpiece-styled tab - not very well. The missiles and their racks are just black and gray plastic. They pop off very easily.

I will probably keep Air Strike on my Toyworld shelf. I'm not too enamored with the design aesthetic. Maybe it's just the nature of the Aerialbots to be so kibbly. Hopefully this set will make a suitable Superion for my display so I can keep the upcoming Fans Toys release as individual bots. I put my not so considerable investigative reporting skills to use to learn more about Zeta Toys, ie I read a couple of forum posts. It seems that they are comprised of a few breakaway designers from Toyworld. Just based on pictures of their releases of Jazzy, Arc Arcee, and Dinokong, they appear to be putting out the same figures as Toyworld, but with a fresh paint job. If Dinokong were upscaled to match the Toyworld line, then I would be interested. As it is, I'll probably just complete the Aerialbots and Combaticons and save room on my shelves for more favored designs.

TFC Toys Wild Hunter - Blacker

Although I love the idea of combiners, I find them a pain to assemble. Their joints invariably weaken over time even if they weren't a floppy mess to start with. TFC Toys Wild Hunter is the final piece to their Trinity Force. While I love the way Trinity Force looks, only time will tell if I will break him down to his component figures like I have done with most of my other combiners.

His dune buggy mode is surprisingly large. I like the general shape of the vehicle. The view from the front, sides, and top look wonderful. The back, not so much. The transparent plastic and metallic highlights break up the solid reds and blacks. Unfortunately, the silver metallic paint of his spoiler and the orange paint of his headlights were chipped and scratched right out of the box. I like the springs on his shock absorbers and front grill. Although they are real springs, it's too bad they are just decorative. I was surprised to see that he dwarfs the Masterpiece cars and almost rivals MP-10 in size. The cockpit canopy does open to reveal a spot for the Transtector to sit in, but the fit is really tight. Like the previous figures, it's also a pain to open. The undercarriage is fairly clean. He rolls beautifully on four large rubber tires.

Transformation is a fair bit involved. There were a handful of spots where I had to flex plastic to make parts move past one another. Tabbing the chest to the neck plate was annoyingly fiddly because the neck plate kept wanting to swivel away. I'm not sure that I formed his backpack quite correctly. It seems like it should tab down, but it just sits loosely with the wheels providing a bit of friction to keep it in place. Transforming back to vehicle mode is not that difficult.

His robot mode looks alright. He ties in very well to Red Knight and Raging Bull. The metallic silver paint and transparent accents again are needed to break up all that red. He is a bit top heavy, but his heel spurs keep him from toppling. His forearms are large and kibbly. The spoilers on his shins don’t have a specific stopping point, which messes with my OCD.

His head is on a ball joint. Like the others, the Transtector gimmick is not implemented as well as on Masterpiece Star Saber. The face plate locks the head into place, removing all articulation. The ball joint socket on the alternate head doesn't sit quite right, resulting in him always looking slightly upward. His shoulders are on ratcheted swivels and hinges. He can raise his arms out and to the sides parallel to the ground. He swivels at his biceps, wrists, crotch, thighs, and shins. His elbows are single-jointed and can only curl halfway. His thumbs are fixed. The rest of his fingers are single-pinned and articulate as a single unit. His hips are on ratcheted universals. He can perform full front and side splits. His knees are double-jointed and ratcheted and can perform full curls. His toes are on hinged ball joints. Depending on how you transform the back of his legs, he can have heel spurs.

Not unexpectedly, transformation to combined mode is a pain. While Wild Hunter himself is not too difficult to transform, Raging Bull and Red Knight basically require returning them to their vehicle modes. This means dealing once again with that dreaded ball-jointed armature of their doors. In the end, I cheated and removed those things to complete the transformation. I also don’t like how the back of his arms just sit loosely and are prone to swiveling open. Happily, Red Knight is unaffected by the broken piece of his hood.

Not surprisingly, combined mode is very striking. I was worried that being only comprised of three robots we would end up with Fall of Cybertron Bruticus proportions. Fortunately, that is not the case. He is shorter than I would have hoped if he is meant to take on Hades.  Without the large expanses of red, the line work and paint details on his body really shine through.

His head is on a ball joint, but it has a very limited range of motion. His shoulders are on ratcheted swivels and hinges; they were previously his knee joints and shin swivels. He can raise his arms up and out parallel to the ground. His wings get in the way of raising his arms in front of him though. He has ratcheted, single-jointed elbows. He swivels at his biceps, wrists, waist, thighs, and knees. All his fingers are on large ball joints. His thumbs have one knuckle while the rest of his fingers have two each. His hips are on ratcheted swivels and hinges; they were previously his shoulder joints. He technically has knee joints, but I find them hard to manipulate without popping apart the parts of the cars or his thighs. His feet are on solid (for now) ball joints.

His accessories include another Transtector, an alternate head, a pair of rifles, a sword, a pair of hands, an alternate combiner face, and some screw covers. The Transtector is just as minuscule as the previous ones. At least, he has the benefit of not carrying a face on his back. The alternate head restores neck articulation. Since I will most likely be displaying the entire set in combined mode, it doesn't really matter which one I have on there. Of note, the Transtectors for all three cannot stay in the bodies. The rifles don't look all that convincing and don't sit well in his hands. As feet, they function well. The combined sword is nearly as tall as he is. He can put on a scowling expression with the alternate face. The screw cover bits go on his abs in combined mode.

I’ll probably display Trinity Force next to Masterpiece Star Saber (once I dig him out of my garage). It’s too soon tell how the joints will hold up over time, but since he doesn’t have the added weight of two more figures, I’m holding out hope. I like these voyager sized figures from TFC Toys and hope they continue to bring us more.

Fans Toys Koot - Kup

Kup was one of my favorite characters from The Movie. I loved the idea of a grizzled old war hero who had to suffer the inanities of a younger generation. While Toyworld Crank did nothing for me as a display piece nor as a playable figure, Fans Toys Koot looks great on my shelf.

As some sort of futuristic truck, Koot looks fine. It hits all the right notes to represent the source material. It definitely reminds me of the old toy I used to have. Unfortunately, he doesn't roll very well. Perhaps I made a mistake somewhere in transformation because his crotch scrapes the ground.

Transformation to robot mode is fairly easy, but transforming to vehicle mode is not very enjoyable. I felt like I had to flex pieces past each other and was afraid of breaking something. Simultaneously lining up tabs and ports across multiple pieces is a frustrating experience.

Now this is how I remember Kup to look like. Unlike Crank, Koot has the right colors. His face is suitably stern. I especially like the translucent orange and metallic silver highlights. His backpack folds up, if not entirely cleanly, no worse than Masterpiece Hot Rod. My only nitpicky complaint is that there is no good spot for a sticker symbol.

His head is on a ball joint. He can look up but not down. On my copy, when pushed down, his head always pops back to the neutral position. His shoulders are on hinges and ratcheted swivels. He can raise his arms up and out a bit past 90 degrees. He swivels at his biceps, wrists, waist, and thighs. His double-jointed elbows can almost perform full curls. His thumbs are fixed. The rest of his fingers are single-pinned and articulate as one unit. It's disappointing to see that Phoenix's finger articulation was a one-off. His hips are on universal joints with ratchets for the front-to-back swivel. He can perform a full side splits, but not a front splits because there is only one click in the reverse direction. He has double-jointed knees that can also almost perform full curls. He has ankle tilts and his toes are on hinges.

His accessories include a rifle, a Targetmaster, an alternate face, some cigars, and transparent windshields. His rifle is colored plastic with simple line work. It fits well in his hands using a Masterpiece-styled tab. The handle is hinged so that the rifle can function as a mounted gun in the bed of the truck. The alternate face is for him to chomp on cigars of which we get two that are black plastic. All the alternate pieces will probably stay in the box since I don't want to mess with unscrewing the head and am happy with the painted windshields.

Unfortunately, my Targetmaster came with two right legs so I can't turn him into a rifle. 

Koot will go on my Fans Toys shelf and double as my Masterpiece Kup. Fans Toys continues to satisfy my itch for Masterpiece stand-ins. I'm hoping that they bring back the Phoenix's finger articulation, but still look forward to their Arcee and Hot Rod.

Planet X Apollo - Ultra Magnus

I never got my hands on a Fall of Cybertron Ultra Magnus. I didn't like the smaller Optimus Prime figure it was based off of and that one third party figure turned into vaporware. Planet X Apollo is essentially an armor kit with a repainted Jupiter, but the end result is glorious.

The base truck mode is the same as Jupiter. All the armor parts attach to give him more bulk. It's a nice idea, but it was not implemented very well. The tabs are too weak to hold all the various pieces securely together. Things are constantly popping off somewhere or another. I believe the front and middle to back sections are supposed to be at an angle to each other. On my copy, they follow the same slope. If I press down on the back, things will start falling off. The crotch piece is supposed to tab in there, but I have to leave it out as it always falls off. It still rolls very well on three pairs of plastic tires. His hammer is part of the "glue" holding things together, but I couldn't figure out how to attach his rifle.

Transformation is pretty much what I remembered of Jupiter, down to the annoying feet that have to be fed through his legs. You cannot keep the armor pieces on through transformation even if you are aiming for the armored robot mode because the armor pieces require some parts-forming themselves. For the unarmored robot mode, you need to swap out the armor for the smoke stack pieces or his shoulders will be bare and hollow.

His unarmored form is basically an off-white version of Jupiter. It is still an awesome figure. The paint is not as striking as Jupiter's, but the highlights are still clean and pop off the figure. He has metallic painted eyes instead of light-piping. My only criticism would be that hole in his crotch where his armor attaches. Articulation is exactly the same as Jupiter and doesn't change much to his armored mode.

Attaching all the armor parts is far less finicky in robot mode than it is in truck mode. It does require pushing those feet back through the shins and removing the four black thrusters to plug in his larger feet. The crotch armor pegs into that unsightly hole in his crotch.

Armored mode looks absolutely wonderful. His chest is very evocative of the character. I like how his shoulder pylons are not ridiculously elongated like on the Combiner Wars version. He doesn't dwarf Optimus Prime like his Masterpiece counterpart does, but is still larger. I love the Fall of Cybertron aesthetic, especially as Planet X has given us in their entire line up. Apollo is no different with the cleanly applied paint and line work. My only complaint is that his neck flap doesn't peg in anywhere. It just sits loosely on top of the torso.

His head is on a ball joint while his neck is on a hinged flap. He can look up, but not down without raising the flap and breaking the form. His shoulders are on swivels and double hinges. He can only raise his arms up and outward well shy of 45 degrees. He swivels at his biceps, wrists, waist, and thighs. His elbows are single-jointed and can only curl about 90 degrees. His thumbs are on ball joints and are hinged at the lower knuckles. The rest of his fingers are single-pinned and articulate individually. None of the knuckles are hinged, but his fingers are all curved. He has a waist swivel, but it is impeded by the ab portion of his armor. His hips are on universal joints. He can perform a full front splits, but his crotch armor prevents him from performing a side splits. His knees are single-jointed. They can't quite curl to 90 degrees. His feet are on tilts while his toes are hinged.

His accessories include his rifle, his hammer, all his armor parts, a baggie of bits to attach to his body, and the Matrix of Leadership. Both weapons have some blue highlights and molded details. Both sit in his smaller unarmored fists just fine, but sit loosely in his armored fists. The Matrix is gray plastic with a plastic jewel in the middle.

Apollo will stand on my Planet X shelf. It is a fine piece that I waited a long time to get. Planet X is one the first third party companies I purchased from and will happily continue to do so. Bring on the Insecticons!