Review Transformers Prime Beast Hunters Season 3 Finale Episode 13 Deadlock

Wow, so Transformers Prime animated television series has finally ended and what a ending! 

SPOILERS AHEAD! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

The climatic series finale, Episode 13, Deadlock, has it all. We see the death two of major character, resurrection of one of those major characters, the return of some powerful and often forgotten weapons, and even tongue in cheek nods to some past episodes from the previous seasons. It's 20 minutes packed full of explosions, action, drama, and suspense which leads up to a somewhat satisfying ending. Definitely a bitter sweet pill to take as Transformers Prime is, in my opinion, the best Transformers series that has ever been produced in any format.


The main thing I loved is the all out assault nature of this episode which adds a "all or nothing" feeling to the final conflict between the Decepticons and Autobots. It just feels definitive. We haven't seen anything like this yet. Set dramatically over the Earth's orbit, the full Autobot force (both Scout Team and Wreakers) launch an all out assault on the Decepticon Nemesis warship to stop Megatron from cyberizing the Earth. Characters carry both their default weapons, as well as some of their assault weapons load outs, including Bumble Bee's force shield and the Wreckers heavy weapons. It's also a great nod to see both the Star Saber and the Dark Star Saber make their return.

Heroic Bumble Bee about to get shot in the chest.

Another great nod is when Soundwave uses the Space Bridge as a weapon to displace the Wreckers assault on the Nemesis bridge and also how Jack, Miko, and Raph use the same trick to trap Soundwave in the Shadow Zone. Also a nice nod is when Miko shows up in the Apex Armor and takes out several Vehicons.

Bumble Bee falls to his apparent death.

While this is a epic conclusion, there are some things that linger on and bother me about the ending of this series. The main thing that bothers me is how Bumble Bee's seemingly death and resurrection was handled and the death of Megatron. Ultimately I thought the episode was flawless up until Megatron death. Bumble Bee's apparent death was both heroic and poetically tragic at the same time. I felt  he was yet another soldier who paid the ultimate sacrifice in the war against Megatron's tyranny. Resurrecting him in some "magical" artificial Energon pool and having him stab Megatron from behind kind of sucked. It negates both Optimus Prime as a leader and warrior. It negates Megatron as this bad ass cunning gladiator from the pits of Kaon. It give no purpose to Bumble Bee's apparent sacrifice. I understand that Bumble Bee is probably the only character with a vendetta against Megatron. Megatron tortured Bee, maimed him by ripping out his voice box, and also took over his body during season 1. I'm sure there would be physiological damage to Bee after all that but still it just seems like a cop out because Transformers Prime, despite it's dramatic story, is still a children's show geared toward selling toys. I'd rather have had Smokescreen kill Megatron since they heavily eluded to him being Optimus Prime's successor. Why build up Smokescreen as "the next Prime" and then have him get shot in the shoulder and taken out of the battle? Hmm.

Megatron impaled by the resurrected Bumble Bee.

A few other additional loose ends are left hanging too. Predaking is shown escaping to Cybertron. I'm assuming the TV movie Predacon's Rising will spotlight the climatic fate of the last Predacon versus the Autobots. 

Additionally, What happened to the remaining Vehicons? Did they all fall at the hands of the Autobots assault? We see 3 Vehicon Generals escape after Megatron's demise but they are nowhere to be found when Starscream and Shockwave escape the Nemesis. What happened to Knockout? He attempted to defect to the Autobots side when they resurrected Cybertron and he was punched out by Miko in her Apex Armor. Did she kill him? Is he imprisoned?

Lastly, the hugest unanswered question has to do with Season 3 Episode 8, Thirst. What happened to the infected Airachnid and her Insecticons? We last saw her steadily feeding on her Insecticon minions. Did she drain them all of their Energon or did she merely infect her army and is bidding her time on the moons surface to escape?

Who knows. Hopefully we will get conclusions to these answers in the final installment, Transformers Prime Beast Hunters Predacon's Rising TV Movie. The wait till October is going to be a long one. 

Airachnid - Last seen on the Moon gorging herself on Insecticons.

2012 Year in Review (Part 2)

Here's part 2 of my 2012 year in review. While I did

Here are my top 5 Stinkers for 2012:

#5 Transformers Kre-O Collection - Yeah the entire collection sucks. From the confusing ill conceived premise to poor design, this entire initiative by Hasbro has been a huge debacle. I can see why someone in marketing would think that combing Lego type sets with their out performing Transformers line would be peanut butter and jelly time but it is not. It takes hours to build, deconstruct, and rebuild these sets to transform them from vehicle mode to robot and back. Do you think kids have the attention span to do this? Do you think adults do? No one does. The sets try to recreate the characters from the classic Transformers series (be it G1 cartoon, Movie-verse, whatever) but with the absence of abundance of specialized block pieces the Kre-O design sets fail. It was no wonder when these sets started going on clearance halfway through the year. It's baffling to me that they have considered continuing to produce a wave 3 of this toy line, albeit with an emphasis on the Kreon mini figures as opposed to full on deluxe building sets.

*Image Courtesy of Seibertron.com

#4 Transformers Prime RID Airachnia - By far the worse Transformer to come out of the deluxe line in a while is Airachnia. I admit the original Transformers Prime character design is really complex since she is technically a triple changer and super slim but what we got was a rigid brick with the same articulation as a 70's Kenner Star Wars figure. While her helicopter mode looks well and her robot mode kind of represents the character, they failed to give her any articulation of playability. There is absolutely no way she can assume her spider mode transformation without buying 2 or 3 of the same toy and augmenting the chopper blades for extra elongated spider legs. Her gun accessories are also horrific in design. Absolutely the worse toy I've seen in the deluxe scale figures in a long time (not counting the horror of the Bayverse deluxe toys).

*Image Courtesy of Seibertron.com

#3 Transformers Arms Micron Autobot Swerve - This toy is not that bad but the fact that his head broke off seconds after I untied this figure from his plastic tray gives him a place on the 2012 fail list. Quality control has been horrible lately with Takara Tomy / Hasbro figures and Swerve is on this list to represent this fact. I paid $50 for this import figure and his head snapped off out of the box with no pressure applied at all. I expect this will happen more and more and we are all f*cked for collecting Transformers.

*Image Courtesy of Seibertron.com

#2 Transformers Arms Micron Unicon - While the figure looks TV show accurate, his transformation into a rock ship with his face on it and the really lame battle suit mode for RID Optimus Prime and Megatron was really poorly designed and executed. Surprise to me, the figure I got has a small tear in the rubber horns on his head. It looks like his horn was assembled wrong and when the rubber was glued to the PVC plastic base someone tried to adjust the horn to point in the right direction which tore the rubber horn. The horn is pretty secure in its glue and the tear is not loose at all. However whomever tried to adjust the position failed and promptly tied the figure down into it's packaging and moved on with their lowly life, thanks for the defective figure mysteriously incompetent factory worker.

*Image Courtesy of Seibertron.com

#1 Transformers Generations SDCC Bruticus - The worse disappointment in 2012 is SDCC exclusive Fall of Cybertron Bruticus. There was so much anticipation for this set. The first combiner Transformers set in years and we got a very poorly engineered misformed hodgepodge of deluxe figures that mangle themselves together into a Frankenstein monstrosity. The set contains 5 combaticons representing a updated version of the classic G1 progenitor combaticon team. While each figure range from average to above average in vehicle mode, robot mode, and transformation, every single figures combining transformation is a compromise which leads to a misformed mess. With uneven limbs, awkward articulation, and a hollow center mass, Bruticus is a unanimous mess. This toy is my #1 failure of 2012 because it has the most promise to be a centerpiece must have toy of the year but sadly a series of design failures and compromise  hampered it's true potential.

Transformers Prime Season 2 Loose Ends

SPOILER WARNING!

Last Friday Transformers Prime Episode 52 "Darkest Hour" aired and oh 
my god, wow. This is the most epic season finale of all 
Transformers animation history. Episode 52 beats Beasts Wars Season 
2 finale by miles. With the apparent defeat of the Autobots and the fate 
of both Optimus Prime and Wheeljack unknown, the tension and 
apex of season 2's 26 episode story arc was a masterful climax.

That being said I started thinking a lot about all the individual story strands that make up the tapestry of Season 2 and while I'm was super stoked with the finale and a handful of individual episodes (my favs include Crossfire, Armada, Toxicity, and Out of the Past), the bulk of the season had a lot of 
unanswered and superfluous story arcs. Below are my top ambiguous 
questions that were not answered in the shows finale.

1 - Insecticon Swarm - In episode 7 "Crossfire", Arachnid stumbles on what looks like several hundred stasis pods housing Insecticons. She wasted no time in employing her new army to assault Megatron and his base warship the Nemesis. The episode never really explained why the Insecticons were on Earth or who sent them. I doubt they were part of Alpha Trion's shipment of legendary Iacon relics and keys. Where did they come from and what purpose did they originally have?  

Additionally, the first few appearances of the Insecticons hyped them up 
as brutal, primal, and very deadly combatants. Once Arachnid was 
defeated and Megatron took control of the Insecticon swarm almost all the 
Insecticons turned into cannon fodder, with the exception of Hard Shell. 
Why did they get nerfed so drastically?

2 - Airachnids Fate - Airachnid was a formidable Decepticon during late season 1 and early season 2. With Starscream being outcasted by Megatron, Airachnid took up the mantle of first lieutenant and primary political antagonist stirring up deceit in the Decepticon ranks. This all lead up to her overstepping her boundaries in  episode 7 "Cross Fire" and Megatron ordering her execution. After she killed Breakdown and escaped Dreadwing, she stumbled on a nest of Insecticons (please see 1 from above) and quickly employs them to take out Megatron enforce. 
Unfortunately for her, she  was finally defeated by a quick witted 
Arcee and frozen in a Insecticon Stasis Pod. It's shown that the Stasis Pod 
housing her is reclaimed and stored in the Autobot Vault in their secret base. 

During the final Iacon Key arc, Starscream raids the vault for the Iacon Keys. 
You would think he would have seen her there. One would suspect he 
would have killed her outright for her prior treachery (she ordered her first 
Insecticon to eviscerate him after all). Even if he was too much in a hurry to 
acknowledge her, they should have at least showed that she was still there. 
This all leads to to episode 52 "Darkest Hour". The Nemesis destroys the 
Autobot base, seemingly demolishing the entire mountain range the base 
was embedded in. Was Arachnid vaporized or is she still in stasis buried 
under the massive debris of a collapsed mountain?

3 - Iacon Relics (Weapons) - The Iacon Relic story arc was introduced in episode 12 and lasted throughout until the season 2 finale (episode 26). While the relic's possession changed sides several time, the bulk of the legendary weapons sent to Earth by Alpha Trion ended up in Autobot hands. In episode 25 "Regeneration", the Decepticons hold the Earth children hostage and the Autobots surrender their weapons. Prime goes on a rampage after seeing Megatron attempting to destroy the Earth and reclaims the Star Saber to destroy the Omega Lock. Were the remaining Iacon relics recovered by the Autobots before they 
retreated to Earth? Also, did the Forge of Solus Prime survive the 
obliteration of the Autobot base? The forge has the ability to craft any 
weapon or apparatus (including a fully working Space Bridge, the Star 
Saber, and Dark Energon Saber) so the relic is probably the most 
powerful item in all of Transformers Prime universe. It would suck if it 
was used as a throw away plot device.

4 - Cylas Fate - Cylas lost is body when Optimus Prime destroyed MECHS' Nemesis Prime. MECH saved Cylas by embedding him in the husk of the deceased Decepticon Breakdown in episode 19 "The Human Factor". Cylas then turns on MECH and tried to join the Decepticons. After losing his satellite laser weapon, Megatron turns on Cylas and Cylas is incapacitated and dragged off to Knockout's lab for "study". So what happened to Cylas? Is he a prisoner on the Decepticon warship Nemesis or has he been dissected for the good of Deception science?

5 - Optimus Primes Fate - With the end of season 2, Optimus Prime chose to stay behind and cover the Autobots space bridge evacuation by destroying the bridge after Ratchet leaves. Megatron obliterates the entire mountain range where the Autobot base stood. The aftermath shows Optimus Primes still hand jutting out of a pile of rubble. The million dollar season 3 question is "Did Optimus Prime die at the end of season 2?" We'll have to wait till next year to find out!

Honorary mention goes to Wheeljack and Shockwave. Both characters were last seen in Season 2 taking severe damage (Wheeljack crashes in his Jack Hammer ship after being shot down by Starscream and Shock wave was left blinded and wounded within the energy of the space bridge). Thanks to New York Comic-con 2013 and the Beast Hunters assets released, we know Shockwave is alive and well. He is seen in the teaser trailer introducing the Ultimate Autobot Killer Predaking. We can also safely assume Wheeljack is fine since Hasbro released images of his next iteration Deluxe class toy.

Overall, these plot gaffs do bother me but they don't provide substantial logic leaps that hinder the enjoyment of season 2 as a whole. I'm off to rewatch  the entire thing over again and hopefully they will add some behind the scenes info to enlighten these unanswered questions when the Bluray comes out later this year. Let me know what you think?

PS. Smokescreen and the kids still suck. Dreadwing, Hard Shell, and Breakdown were weak characters and deserved to die. After seeing Cliff Jumper in "Out of the Past" I really think killing him in season 1, episode 1 was a HUGE mistake! Sigh.

Toy Purchases February 2012

Transformers RID Deluxe Wave 1 * Image courtesy of Seibertron.com

Continuing my catch up with my toy diary, I examine the month of February 2012's purchase. February was actually a crazy month for my purchasing habits. With preorders being fulfilled  the new Transformer lines debuting, and my nostalgic leap into collecting MIB Machine Robos, I actually spent a grip this particular month. Unfortunately  this is a trend that will continue for the rest of 2012 apparently. Yep!

Transformers RID Voyager Wave 1* Image courtesy of Seibertron.com

The most exciting burst of news was the release of the new Transformers RID line which exemplified the mass produced Transformers Prime toys. Late in 2011, Hasbro limitedly released their Transformers Prime First Edition line. Unforgettably for reasons unknown, the distribution in North America was absolutely horrible. Only the first wave of deluxe figures hit the shelves at Toys R Us with a very limited distribution plan. North America did not received distribution for the bulk of the series including the more expensive Voyager class toys, wave 2 deluxe toys, and the entertainment 2-pack. This actually set the tone for the upcoming 2012 releases as fans and collectors trust remained shaken as Hasbro struggled to get their products on the shelves at a timely and evenly distributed manor.

BotShots Bumble Bee * Image courtesy of Seibertron.com

Back on track, the first wave of Transofremrs RID Prime figures were nice but also a bit of a disappointment as they were much more dissimilar and smaller than the previously mentioned First Edition figures which were far more complicated with a higher degree of engineering and complexity in designs. Even so, the deluxe wave of Bumble Bee, Wheeljack, Cliffjumper, and Soundwave were fairly decent releases. In my own opinion the only toy that seemed a tad bit inferior was Cliffjumper since his transformation involved painted on features on his chest instead of the actual movable parts. Additionally, the RID Cliffjumper figure lacked deploy-able hand blasters which deviated from the successful First Edition figure and the cartoon character design.The one figure that stood out the most was surprisingly Bumble Bee whose simplistic RID design was, in my own opinion, far superior to the First Edition figure. Although even this figure is marred by the artificially attached self-transformation feature that adds a ugly cog and teethed track to Bumble Bees upper chest / lower neck area, the figure still seems better proportioned and detailed than it's progenitor figure.

Encore Twincast * Image courtesy of Seibertron.com

While the Deluxe RID wave 1 was a marginal success, the Voyager class seemed to be a dismal failure in design. The First Edition Optimus Prime, in many ways, is far superior to the RID version. Aesthetics and transformation seemed lacking to the previous edition. RID Megatron seemed lackluster. The grey drap plastic gives a overall cheap feeling to the toy. Transformation seemed cumbersome and the plane mode feels fragile with parts not fitting correctly. Additionally, the continuation of "mech-tech" weapons gimmick from the movie line was a really poor choice by Hasbro. Weapons were crudely designed for light activation gimmicks. The design made the weapons awkward in their default modes and also hindered any display ability of the characters. Optimus Prime's rifle sits in his hand as a big block of plastic instead of the deployed weapon many sought for. Many collectors have opted to remove the battery and the light up mechanism altogether and also remove the "mech-tech" spring so that the weapon can remain in a deployed mode. The fact that consumers have to make such modifications illustrates Hasbro's failures in design lately.

Encore Sound Blaster * Image courtesy of Seibertron.com

Releasing at the same time were the Transformers Cyberverse and BotShots line. I picked up Cyberverse Ratchet and Cliffjumper and Botshots Optimus Prime and Bumble Bee. Both lines were ok but failed to really appeal to me. The Cyberverse were just too small and simplistic for me to get into. I liked the Botshots for their super deformed designs but there is no way I would continue to pay $7 for something this small. The attached game gimmick is basically rock, paper, scissors. Overall, both series seemed lackluster in nature. Leave it for the kids.



Impulsively I had previously preordered The Takara Encore reissues of both Sound Blaster and Twincast. I actually have a previous set of reissues of these 2 particular characters but I wanted to pick them up to check out the new recolored versions of the cassette bots that came with both products. Overall, this was a needless impulse purchase I probably should have not picked up. Both larger Transformers are pretty much the same as the previous reissues with the exception of new tampo printed decals which replace some of the foil sticker decals of the vintage line. The new recolored cassette bots are cool though. While they are recolored versions of the classic cassette bots, the nice use of sympathetic color scheme and detail makes them stand out.

Fansproject Warbot * Image courtesy of TFW2005.com

The next purchase came late in the month and is not a official Transformer product. I repurchased Fansproject Warbot (AKA Not Springer). I originally purchased this guy back in 2011 but was not happy with him. I think I didn't like the heft of the diecast and the limited articulation of the figure. Months after trading him to a friend, I started to regret it. It was not due to the toy being suprior to anything released. I just had a hole in my Classic-verse original 1985 cast lineup of figures. I had the Trans Repro Valkyrie (Arcee), Fansproject City Commander (Ultra Magnus), Fans Project Protector (Rodimus prime), and the official Transformers Wrek-gar, Perceptor, Kupp and Blurr. Springer was missing and I was compelled to pick him up again. Looking back, my opinion of him has not changed  He's a lump of diecast steel and plastic with limited articulation, and really bad balance in bot mode.

I almost completely forgot about the Transformers Official Collector Club Exclusives that released in February 2012. SG Drift and Over-Run (AKA Runabout) both released with high expectations. SG Drift is a recoloring of the Generation Drift figure with the inclusion of Generations Blurr's pistols. Unfortunately  this excellent figure with a overall impressive design and paint job was marred by manufacturing defects. This blogger received a figure with 2 right sided pistols. Other less lucky individuals reported getting figures with 2 left hands or 2 right hands or even figures missing hands altogether. Very sloppy and bad QC process guys. Over-Run suffered none of these reported problems. Based on the Wheeljack / Tracks mold, Over-Run is pretty solid black Deception figure based off the original Battle Charger toy. The best thing about Over-Run is that his box comes with a pre-cut foam insert that has a space for his partner in crime Runamuck!

TFCC SG Drift and Over-Run *Image courtesy of Seibertron.com

Last on the February spending spree is a trio of MIB Machine Robo's purchased on ebay. I had been wanting to start collecting the first 10 Machine Robos in their Popy packaging for a long time. A seller had a huge collection that he was auctioning off piece meal and I decided to jump in and start bidding. I purchased MR-02 Battle Robo, MR-03 Jet Robo, and MR-04 Gyro Robo. Overall I'm really happy I have these 3 guys. They are so awesome with their retro styling and diecast construction. While they are the same exact toys that were released under the Gobots line, the packaging gets points for being beautifully nostalgic.

Machine Robos!