Grahf: Nope nothing. Sixteen points just gone today for no damn reason. Fucking bullshit.

Grahf: We WERE able to get free figures constantly just from likes and comments. Until they changed it to less and less points being given out. I think I've saved at least $600 from points so far. And again, I wasn't trying to get points until after they reduced the points being given out as I wasn't commenting every day like I am now. I could've had multiple accounts the entire time to farm likes, but never did. I wanted to leave well enough alone, but not everyone thought that way.

Grahf: I've been checking Amiami and Mandarake over and over and over for the four Wild King figures I missed, but no luck. Amazon Japan helped for a few. Hobby Link Japan just sucks as they couldn't care less about their Transformers stock. So yeah, it's been rather difficult to get what I have so far. I didn't do the preorders as I'd like to stock up on them to save on shipping and most places don't do that in Japan. It especially sucks when two come out at the end of one month and then two at the beginning of the next. So Amiami won't ever combine those unless you're ordering them while in stock. It's just they'll never be in stock at the same time. Ask me how I know lol. It happened to me with the last four dark Energy Beasts that just came out.

Grahf: To the person going around double downvoting all my comments again, I didn't rat you out. If you're mad that Show Z took away your points for all your multiple accounts, blame someone else. Unless they read every comment I make, they weren't directly contacted by me about what's going on. It's your own fault for being a jerk taking advantage of the system. You're the one that ruined it for all of us, not me.

Grahf: Just read the new points for comments system in place.

Yeah...looks like I'm never getting points for comments ever again.

I mean, despite being one of the few here who actually make meaningful comments, I have haters that constantly downvote my comments for no reason until they're deleted. Doesn't matter what I say, how many people reply to the comment or how many likes it gets, they still downvote to get them deleted just because it's me. I'm still mad they got my very heartfelt comment deleted from the Missing Link Ultra Magnus listing. 20 likes and about two dozen replies from 8 or so people talking about old times together. Now all those comments are gone. I was able to put the main comment back up, but everything else is gone. Why? What do these people get out of constantly downvoting my comments instead of joining in on the conversation while having fun with everyone else?

So if "quality" comments is what's needed and I give quality comments that get deleted hours later, I'm never going to get the points.

Great.

Thanks a lot to the people who caused this to happen.

Might as well not even bother commenting here anymore at this rate.

I'll go for a bit more to see if the system if fair. It's not going to be due to the downvote system, but I'll give it a try for a few weeks to see. Then I'm gone. So enjoy my comments while you can people. I mean, why am I going to bother to comment if there's no point. The system as it is right now, is literally rigged against me.



That all being said, I'm still very confused by this set.

AM Rodimus makes sense. The size, the overall quality, the price. It works. It seems like a typical third party figure.

Then I look at this set and I just don't see it.

Each figure looks to be made out of quality materials so that's not the issue. It's the size vs cost vs design that's bothering me. Watching another video on the set again as I type this to remind myself.

I just don't see anything amazing going on with them. Standard transformations, visible combiner elements, wonky proportions, shortcuts obviously taken in the construction like waffles and gaps, basically designed joints, the overall sizes.

The paint looks great though. And again, they look like quality figures. I just don't see where the extra cost is coming from when nothing else is "special" for lack of a better term. It's all just standard fare. Par for the course and whatever other idiom you want to place here.

LOL, no waist joints for Headstrong and Tantrum?!?

The weapon and kibble integration while available, wasn't well designed.

The end result of them combined looks amazing though. The wonky proportions in each individual limb bot is to make Predaking look as spectacular as possible. It's just that you can do both at this price and size. These are not mutually exclusive things to attain. At this size and price, you can have quality design in all three modes, not just one.

No outward ratchets in the hips!?! Why? Oh, but there's ratchets in the ankle pivots lol.

I always find it funny when Takara products come with MP display base adaptors and then don't put a MP display base in the set. I mean, there's only so many of those to go around and it's not exactly like you can purchase them separately. For these prices, MP, AM and whatever else uses the MP bases, should come with a display base.

I guess we'll have to wait until we see more from Star Saber to know what this line is about. Going from a single, normal sized figure for your first release and then going on to an undersized combining five piece set is going to produce wildly different results. Star Saber SHOULD be a better match to Rodimus as they're both from the same era of comics and as a result, look and be sized accordingly. It's almost like they're doing two different lines and just named it the same thing. Like you have your standard figures at the same scale, but then you have your combiners that are scaled to each other and not the rest of the line. That remains to be seen if they do another combiner though.

Just, what a confusing piece. I know they're trying to break into a market that's existed for a while that neither Takara or Hasbro has entered into yet, but I don't think this was the way to do it. For mass retail like this set is, it shouldn't cost this much for a set this small where the individual components suffer as much as they do. Licensed companies and third party companies doing things like this make sense. The licensed companies need to pay for those licenses as well as have small runs on the figures due to the more limited market they're aiming at. The third party companies have small runs and limited distribution and marketing since they're unlicensed products that skirt around copyright laws. But this is one of the largest, oldest and most respected toy companies in the world. They're not limited in the ways others are yet this figure is being held back regardless.

Still, Predaking looks gorgeous.

Grahf: Super Model Soul. That was the name of the company that made the other Scorponok/Black Zarak kit. SMS-01 and -02. It came with four articulated cannons, the gun with armor and a brace for the claw to grasp, a larger shield, the metallic side leg things and for the Scorponok set only, a translucent red and colorless eye visor and larger helmet visor. No leg extenders, articulated scorpion legs or ankle flaps and the shield doesn't break down past taking out the smaller stock shield. Shame they never made anything else or even second runs. The Black Zarak kit I have is fine. Again, the parts feel cheaper compared to the DNA parts, but the price was right and came with all the parts I actually wanted and none that I didn't when it comes to Black Zarak. I would like to have seen this company do more kits for other titans as anyone else lucky enough to get one also said it was pretty good. As always, competition in a market only makes things better and since nearly every single actual company making upgrade kits are gone, DNA has had no competition and has long since become complacent. It's been pretty much since this kit came out and Super Model Soul didn't reissue their kits or do any more past them.

Grahf: Blokees have been around for a while now. You should know what you're getting with these larger ones.

And I'm here to tell you that...

nothing has changed with this one.

It's another beautiful looking model kit/figure thing.

Everything snapped together just as expected. The joints move fluidly and there's a very good range of motion in them. The wings even have some nice articulation. It's also a nicely sized figure as well.

However, the light feature on this one was severely lacking. I mentioned it already, but the bulb itself inside the chest seems to be slightly offset upwards/downwards (I forget which way) on mine. Since it's not centered in the windows, less light is able to escape.

That's all a moot point with this one though as the chest and back not only don't allow any light through being opaque plastic, there's not spaces anywhere to even light up anyway. Also, the eyes on mine don't seem to light up.

I bring all that up because, and as I already said, I have a few others from this size class and the lights are so bright and the figures look amazing when lit up. Nice and bright and they add another level to the displays when they're on. It's just that Megatronus here doesn't do that. So he looks almost dead in a way.

It's supposed to be one of the main selling features of this size class and this figure unfortunately falls short there. Otherwise, it's a great figure.

Despite the size difference between the two characters, I'd still like to see this design of Megatronus and FoC Shockwave share a mold so that we can get both of them out. The overall shape of the parts and the wings just make me think that they could share a mold. I mean, it's not like we've even seen the alt mode of this Megatronus yet and FoC Shockwave has a Cybertronian alt mode as well. So it could work other than the fact that any version of Megatronus should tower over any standard Shockwave.




TLDR: More of the same great Blokees Classic Class fun, but lacking the bright lights normally seen in this class when fully assembled. And that I think this and FoC Shockwave could be mold buddies.

Grahf: ...never mind. It seems likes and dislikes have nothing to do with it. I might have a more fair shot than I had anticipated. Thank you very much Show Z. I finally feel as though my well thought out and oftentimes, extremely wordy comments have finally paid off.

Grahf: Sadly, I've still seen the AI comments being made by the same people still. In fact, it was actually longer now than it used to be on a few too. I mean, it's pretty obvious when it's the AI comments. Some people never learn I guess. But if they get points from the new system, they might not stop. I don't know what the criteria is for getting points. I got 100 points each for five comments yesterday, but each one was different. Some had dislikes and no likes. Some had likes and no dislikes. Some had no likes or dislikes. Some had both likes and dislikes. Some were long and took almost the entire character limit. Some were shorter. Some were within the first three comments on a new listing. Some were from older listings. From those five comments, I can't tell what can get you points or why you get them now. I hope it's not ones that are just past a certain character threshold or those AI comments could still get points regardless. I mean, it's not like they can pay people just to read all of these and judge them accordingly right?

Grahf: My feeling for this set aside, DNA is claiming on their Facebook page that there's a high chance that this set will never get reissued.

Just thought I'd update here in case someone was on the fence or going to wait for a sale or something. This way you'll know your options and can better make a decision.