DX9 Tyrant Review

DX9 had a good 2015, branching out from their associaton with Unique Toys, releasing some nifty little Legends figures (Hulkie still to land, ZOMG!) and making quite the name for themselves with Carry, their take on a Masterpiece scaled Rodimus Prime. It was a good toy, nay it was a great toy, and a very well received one to boot. Riding that wave of momentum comes their logical next release - Tyrant. Yes, Prime's nutzoid nemesis gets the pseudo MP treatment as DX9 draw first blood in the Third Party Galvatron Wars.

Now, I like Galvatron. Look at his G1 cartoon origins; As Megatron reborn, this initially cold and clinical beast develops God sized daddy issues, fails at taking on his chaos bringing stepdad and becomes a raving twinkle horned lunatic in the follow up episodes after a prolonged nap in molten lava at the hands of Rodimus Prime. Sometime afterwards the big fella doesn't take too well to the idea of forced therapy to help him through his trauma, so blows up the planet his treatment takes place on. Personally.

That's the kind of music that sings to me, so a high end toy of Galvatron has expectations to live up to. Is Tyrant worthy of your your hard earned cash? Well..

I don't usually prattle on about packaging but this is a midnight carnival of garish colour and noise, full of lawsuit baiting imagery and phrasing along with what may or may not be teases to future releases. They don't even spell his name right. It hurts my eyes, I enjoy its bravado and we're done.

Evil gets a makeover

Tyrant comes packaged in robot mode, and straight away you have a fix to do. Urgh. You have to swap out the hip panels. Which were popped on the wrong sides at assembly. It's easy, but something to be aware of. That out of the way, Tyrant is a sight to behold. There's no escaping the bang up job DX9 have done here. From the three pronged crown to Sir's choice of golden or sparkly particle cannon, this is Galvatron through and through and it's kind of brilliant. Initial impressions out of the box are heavy, solid and purdy.

Fixes?! KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!

'..I want the Matrix'

That initial feeling of high quality continues as you have a good mess about, with chunky ratchets and tight friction joints abound. There's a good range of motion available to you which means some dynamic poses are easily within your grasp and the cleverly die cast feet do a good job in keeping him well grounded if not looking a bit bizarre. Which makes it all the more infuriating to have such a daft outward hip ratchet. From neutral...

Enough crotch for you?

..to damn! I mean, why? Thankfully there's enough play between the ratchet detents to circumvent some of this but it's a frustrating design choice. As are the fingers, which look great and are full of articulation - ball jointed knuckles, hinged fingers - but they're so small and loose and worrying. They don't stay in a position well and most of the time I find myself balling his fists to avoid using them at all.

Still, these gripes are gripes you can work around, and I write this just realising he has an upper bicep swivel (it's tight!) which means I can now access the double jointed elbow and add valuable XP to my Tyrant's articulation level. Result.

Accessory wise, Tyrant comes with his particle cannons in both animation and toy flavours, a (huge) Matrix and a chain for him to wear it around his neck. My Matrix appears to have been er.. 'appropriated' by my nephew so you'll have to make do with him wearing MP-10's.. it fits better anyway. His cannon actually contains a blindingly bright purple LED torch. The neighbours hate it! Magnificent stuff.

As you take your eyes on a tour of the figure, you'll see so many things that are so spot on to the original cartoon character yet the designer was not totally beholden to the animation model, so his alt mode treads end up on his back to no detriment at all. It's a choice made to keep the robot mode clean and works, though you G1 purists might find this a bit jarring. Some have commented on the proportions, that his arms are bit weedy and short but in hand? Nah. Not at all. This is a fantastic representation of Galvatron and both FansToys and X-Transbots have some serious work ahead of them.

And special mention must go to the head sculpt which is in all honesty, one of the best out there today. It's not just nailed down, DX9 came round to your house with a framed photo of it and put it up in your front room and in my eyes is truly the defining aspect of the figure.

Except for maybe the transformation, and it was from here on in that my love affair with Tyrant started to lose its sparkle. Right, I enjoy a challenge. I do. But Tyrant's transformation just doesn't click with me. First time round I used the instructions. I could've hopped onto Youtube but I thought 'Screw that, Carry was a dream, let's go for it'. GO ON YOUTUBE.

Because it took me 90 minutes and some stressed pieces even though I was was warned about them before using the included booklet.

After finally figuring out how to fit his arms inside his chest I needed a cigarette break. Which seemed apt as come leg transformation time it appears that the writer of said booklet was also on theirs.

Maybe it's just me? I dunno. But for your own enjoyment of an involved and inventive transformation (there's some really nice stuff going on to fill out gaps and maintain solid shapes), don't rely on the instructions first time round because the fun quickly becomes undone. I will also say that in addition to the warnings about these pieces, there are also some wickedly tight tolerances when transforming the leg panels too so be careful full stop.

                              
Space Cannon? We'll go with that. It's great regardless, an imposingly chunky bit of starscreaming bloody murder with all the parts on Tyrant's robot mode that seemed a bit understated finding their own voice after conversion.

Working rubber treads, chrome, translucent and metallic red highlights and to finish it off the toy almost totally changes its base colour which is an awesome little visual trick. Everything pegs together tightly and you also feel like your hands have been put through an Insanity workout in getting here.

No messing about though, I love Tyrant's vehicle mode.

Sadly, going back to robot mode (which as always, is so much easier) I felt that some of the shine had come away from my immediate thoughts regarding the figure. I had damaged it, caused a chip on that chiselled face of his while getting it out of vehicle mode and once I had him back in his robot form left Tyrant well alone for a day. Hmm.

Picking him up to write this review though, well I won't be putting him down for a good while after. Though the days of us finishing each others sentences and staying up drinking into the dawn have long gone now that he's revealed a bit too much of himself that I don't like.

Tl:dr then. Both forms are superb. Getting to one feels like someone has their middle finger in my face all the way through. It's an almost win of a figure but carries some serious caveats to universally recommending it as there is potential for breakage and frustration. The press on this toy has been almost unanimously positive and I'm not going out of my way to piss in the punchbowl, I'm just telling you of my own experience with it. DX9 made one of my figures of 2015. And this one is very, very good. I like Tyrant, I just don't love Tyrant.

'..but I got your name in a tattoo and everything'

You can order Tyrant from Masterforce here and you can read more from Boatful Manfish here.

The Darker Side of Transformers #9

Continuing our look at the darker parts of the Transformers franchise and history...

9. Whirl
A part of the original Wreckers but seemingly only for their introductory story arc and two cameos, Whirl was portrayed as being calm and rational but IDW's reimagining of the character is anything but and is arguably the most tragic character in More Than Meets the Eye.

Our introduction to Whirl comes in MTMTE #1 where following the conclusion of Chaos, Whirl has stashed the corpses of some Sweeps, including possibly Scourge himself, and is in the process of dousing them in fuel about to burn them. The corpses have been acting as a captive audience for Whirl as he's spent weeks ranting and raving about his frustrations as Cybertronians have returned home. There are two subtle things about this page which are easy to miss - 1. That Whirl can hear the dead bodies talking back and 2. Whirl himself is stood in the pool of fuel so it's possible that he's about to burn himself alive with them, a theory backed up later on when Whirl is taken hostage by a psychotic Fortress Maximus and begs to be shot in the head and again in the latest issue which would be spoilerific to discuss in detail.

Whirl's lust for violence and lack of concern for himself leads to him escalating the war between the Ammonites and Terradores by assassinating the Terradore leader on a whim. We discover that Whirl murdered his arch nemesis Killmaster (see image below) and that the reason Whirl was kicked out of The Wreckers was for trying to mercy kill a comatose Springer. Even more shocking is discovering that it was Whirl who, in a roundabout way, started the Cybertronian Civil War after beating a captive Megatron when the future Decepticon leader was simply a philoshoper on social change.

However Whirl's story takes a tragic turn as his origin is revealed - bucking Cybertron's system where every robot has to perform the function of their alternate mode, Whirl became a watchmaker. His change of career didn't go unnoticed by the Functionist Council who had the watchmaker's business destroyed. Destitute, Whirl went on to become a drifter and skilled fighter, eventually being forced into service of the Senate as an enforcer. Under orders he was forced to commit horrific acts, acts he'd later be punished for by the Functionist Council as part of their elaborate revenge on him. Whirl's punishment was Empurata: a process where the criminal's head and hands are replaced to make an example of them. With massive claws for hands, Whirl's career as a watchmaker was now over.

When Cyclonus questions why 4 million years later Whirl hasn't had the process reversed, he simply replies that the anger at his situation drowns out his conscience and that if the source of his anger was removed then he'd have to face the acts he's committed.

Therein is the horror of Whirl - a peaceful being driven to commit endless atrocities in order to not break down at the thought of what he's become.

Test, test, this a test...shot

Today we are looking at something a bit special, with three quite unique pieces.

We have a test shot of the recent Gold version of Masterpiece MP-O5 Megatron.

Following that is grey test shot of Age of Extinction Leader class Grimlock.

Last up, and probably the pick of the bunch for most people, is a test shot of the deluxe Transformers Animated Arcee figure, which was used for the packaging photography,

So an electic bunch of toys from a wide variety of lines and all are figures I have never handled before. Yay to new experiences!

Masterpiece Megatron was the third Masterpiece toy in the line, and as such is intended to scale with the large MP 01 Optimus Prime. Forever the Black Sheep of the Masterpiece family, the figure that usually provokes the reaction of "we need a replacement". From cosmic rust, to strange proportions and obscenely fragile parts - it does not hold the greatest of reputations and is the only one that struggles to hold its place in the Masterpiece line.

The story goes that Masterpiece designer Hisashi Yuki designed Masterpiece Megatron in just 12 short days. Less time than it takes to...okay I am drawing a blank on that. Such a rushed schedule clearly lead to many compromises, and so Megatron came to exist as the ugly duckling of the Masterpiece line - despite many quite ingenious engineering tricks

Here we have an unpainted test shot of the recent Gold re-release of the figure, so nothing is different mold wise from the previous releases. However we get to see the figure in its rawest form, as a stark, grey prototype.

Artwork frequently used throughout G1, particularly on his toys box art, depicts Megatron with a Gold chest and there is is also the cartoon episode the Golden Lagoon, which sees Megatron go for a swim in a puddle and emerge encased in Gold and invulnerable. I wonder if these were the inspiration for the otherwise random shiny Gold deco this Megatron's offspring were destined to be covered in.

But maybe, it is just Hasbro Asia being a bit fancy to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Transformers - I suspect that is the case.

Megatron is one of only two Masterpiece molds I have never held before (the other being Rodimus which is rapidly turning into something of holy grail of mine) and handling this didn't make want to run out and change that.

Whilst the test shot can transform into a replica Walther P.38 I did not manage to do so as some of the joints scared me with their tightness and a couple of pieces popped out without me knowing how or why they felt inclined to do so. The legend that is Morg said to go ahead and try anyway, but I did not want to break someone elses toy - which would have been just my luck at the minute.

The rougher edges on the engraved "P.38" give it an almost eerie quality which make this feel like it has not just fallen off a production line.

Using flat, brutal looking Gray plastic makes Megatron look closer to how he appeared in the cartoon, and the colours dress him more like the Microman concept model which Megatron's animation design and colours spring from.

So it feels like the most accurate of the Masterpiece Megatron releases so far, which is quite amusing. The colours are much better on this without the bling gold, or shiny silver.

It feels a bit more subdued, and that works to give him a bit more gravitas as a character toy.

Megatron's proportions have always been this toys downfall, because they are a complete mess. As mentioned before the designer only had two weeks to design this figure, and it is a rare example of a misstep from Takara with them rushing to force a toy out in a ludicrous timescale.

Perhaps it is responsible now for Takara enforcing a much longer production time on its Masterpieces, and why they are often delayed (like Tracks is right now).

This figure though is...aesthetically challenged. The head looks massive on that body, the face shrinks into a giant helmet which is too squared off for its own good. The head and chest look enormous in comparison to the spindly arms and legs which themselves look really long.

All of the details are there, but it is like it has gone through a fun house mirror filter first to make it look like it does.

Adding his fusion cannon to his arm only serves to compound the problem as it looks comically over sized.

The test shot comes with some of the accessories the final toy did, but in different colours. Instead of a bright Purple translucent plastic or yellow for Kremzeek, they are all produced in clear plastic for this prototype phase.

Lacking colour, it is a bit tougher to discern the details on these pieces, especially Kremzeek's facial expression because they just blend in but they do look a bit nicer. I adore the shade of light shade of Purple used on the flails chain, which did make it through to the production figures.

His little pistol that he uses to shoot Optimus Prime to death in Transformers the Movie is also present, and it is easily the best choice of weapon for him as it is the only one that does not look a bit awkward.

As a test shot, I find myself liking this far more than any other iteration of Masterpiece Megatron. The toning down of all of the colours makes it look far more like Megatron and pulls him back from otherwise looking a little gaudy as the retail and Gold versions ended up.

I may not like Masterpiece Megatron, but this version easily appeals to me the most and feels closer to the source material than any of the actual released products did. What the designer did in just two weeks is actually quite incredible, but then balanced against it being an actual released figure...it needed far more time and refinement.

Tight joints may have prevented me from transforming it, but as a new experience it was both fun and frightening. When things pop off and you don't know why, it is the toy equivalent of something going bump in the night. You know something is wrong, but you have no idea where or what the source of it is and you start to panic.

Generation 1 Megatron is a strange looking robot, which zany proportions and a crotch that would make Ron Jeremey blush, so it makes sense that his Masterpiece toy suffers a similar fate. Strange proportions are G1 accurate, even though where that toy was squat and strange, this one goes completely the other way by being lanky and spindly.

To this day we are still awaiting the perfect G1 Megatron, No one seems to be able to get it quite right which may be purely down to the struggle of trying to convert an animation model from 30 years ago into a three dimensional model that can then fold in upon itself and turn into a realistically sized hand gun. If you thought it was tough idea to swallow in fiction, it has proven immeasurably tougher for toy makers in real life.

Anyone who reads my blog regularly (and if you aren't you should be - feed my ego)  will know that I do not like the live action movies (except the first one) and the toys even less so.

My eyes see them as a mess, and my brain agrees and chastises me every time I force them to watch one of the movies.

So of all the things that were in the box of delights that Morgan kindly sent me to look at, I am stunned that this was my favourite and caused me to consider actually handing over money for some movie figures, in the form of those Platinum Dinobots that are coming along soon (yes, I know the Grimlock is a different mold but it's a much more palatable first step).

Michael Bay famously said that he didn't like the Dinobots, in fact he said he hated them, so with that man's record of daft statements it was inevitable they would one day show up. Sure, show no respect for things your audience like, it's cool man.

Why do we keep putting money in this mans pocket?

No, this is not a Black repaint, what you are looking at is a test shot of Age of Extinction Leader Class Grimlock. Completely unpainted, it is produced in a lovely to the touch feeling dark grey plastic. It does not feel soft, but it does not feel the same as Hasbro production plastic.

When designing Grimlock for the movie, the designers opted to bolt on the Knight of Cybertron stuff from the comics, and gave each of the designers a warrior style appearance.

They seemed to take the actual concepts of ye olde Knights and fashion it into something that could turn into robotic Dinosaurs. This is actually a really cool idea, and here he comes across as possibly an undead shadow barbarian.

So if you look at the figure, you can pick details that are clearly there to evoke a savage looking suit of armour. There's lots of detail to be found, and there are also a lot of gaps and holes- but they are more a result of the design aesthetic than Hasbro's cost cutting.

Grimlock comes with a rib cage on a stick (a mace?) and an arm mountable bone saw that has a toothbrush on the top.

I kid, I kid, I believe it is supposed to be a shield but it has too many gaps to be effective as that, and it is also covered in spikes which suggests instead of a defensive weapon - Grimlock uses this to hurt people.
But then everything is covered in spikes.

I mean look at those spiky shoes - is he a demonic Aladdin?

People evidently go for this sort of thing, otherwise the movies would not be as obscenely successful as they have been and Bay's at least pulled back a little from the hyper detail and mass of parts that plagued the first 3 movies and made it really difficult to focus on the actual robots. There's no bits just hanging off, nor does the robot look animal like - he has a fairly spot on humanoid figure which is all I want Mike.

Grimlock feels toned down in that sense, and it makes a massive difference. I didn't care for his colour scheme as it was painted on to the actual mass released figure, but here the dark Grey helps to smooth over the detailing and makes it feel more focused.

For a test shot, all of the joints are really nice and tight, and he has a nice balanced weight. He is really fun to pose with clickey ratchets, and articulation that lets you get some really good poses out of him.

I am a huge fan of the blocky G1 Dinobot's - so it stands to reason that Bay gave us a horny Skeletal nightmare T-Rex.

Yes, apparently it is a T-Rex, but with horns. Even though the odds are impossibly stacked against it, I quite like it. It is big, weighty and it was not tough to transform at all, bar some weirdness with rotating things multiple times, in multiple places to create the stomach. There was some rubbery stuff around the robots neck that I had no idea where that was supposed to do, so hopefully it went...somewhere....during the transformation.

He is definitely Skeletal, but looks seriously mean and definitely metal \m/

I could happily just have him in this mode for life, and I imagine like me you are hearing the roar of the Jurassic Park T-Rex now. That sound makes me like this more, even though it is not coming from it...

Whilst the joints have all been great so far, the test shots Dino feet are a little loose  so he tends to rock forward and took some delicate balancing to prevent a face plant.

Fortunately, the joint is just a screw, so tightening that should completely solve the problem if needs be..

I think being a test shot, the lack of colour works for it, because it automatically tones down the details, gaps and all of that stuff. It makes it look like a more cohesive mass of spikes and parts.

As I mentioned at the start, I scoffed at the idea of a movie toy originally but as I handled it I grew to really quite like it as a toy or more specifically as a test shot. Everything feels solid and the plastic is lovely and fun to handle.

Now I am going to be shelling out money for the upcoming Platinum release in G1 Dinobot colours and with new G1 style heads.

Who am I? I don't know anymore.

Animated Arcee is a figure I have always wanted to own, even though Transformers Animated did nothing for me as a toy line or a show.

This was the first Arcee figure that was specifically homaging the Generation One character who up to that point had never gotten her own toy. Collectors were picking up this figure to fill that void on their shelves, even more than for it being an Animated toy, and so it became quite valuable - even more so as one of the last Animated toys which saw a more limited release, plus it was shifted to being a Toys R Us exclusive.

I did not just want it because it was a great looking G1 Arcee toy, noooooo, it just looked like a fantastic toy to play with in a line of toys that had not grabbed me.

So what is this then? Well Morg reliably informs me it is a coloured test shot that was used for toy photography by Takara (TFW2005's coverage of the unveiling and the complaints about the colour can be read here).

Cool, so why should that mean anything? Ha, many figures are still undergoing their final colour layouts at this point so you often see minor or major changes to the final product. Toys very often vary from their packaging - just take a look at G1 Bluestreak's stock photography for an early example. Animated Arcee's stock photos show her in a sparkly pink colour and with a different spoiler design.

Whilst there is nothing quite as egregious here, there are a handful of subtle differences that make this unique and probably quite desirable amongst collectors.

Arcee's face on this test shot is painted in red, and stands out strongly. During the manufacturing process, this was switched out for a much pleasanter pink.

Her abdomen, upper arms, wheels and  upper thighs are painted in brown, but when the figure was released black had replaced it on the US version while Takara's still had brown forearms and abdomen but the other parts were switched to black, apart from her feet which Takara changed to pink.

I am not sure why they used brown on the test shot, as the animation model featured black.

A retro feeling shines through with the brown though, because I can't look at it without thinking of Chromedome, and brown is a very 80's colour anyway. Oddly G1 Arcee was planned for release as a Headmaster, who would have been a repainted Chromedome with a new head.


I am only going by pictures, but I think the pink plastic on this test shot is a few shades darker than the final release which seems to be much lighter.

I could not tell you if the test shot has tighter or looser joints compared to the released figure, as I have never handled one, but this is a very fun to pose but sturdy bot. Animated's aesthetic never appealed to me, but with Arcee it seems to click. 

Arcee has a very playful feel to her, the sculpt is rendered in such a way that lends itself to all sorts of fun posing. She can pull off super ninja warrior poses, stroppy teenager poses and all sorts of others. The darker, muddier colour tones on this test shot make her feel a little edgier and angrier than the more perkier looking toy that made it to stores. Using red on the face suggests anger and rage, whereas the pink of the final products already young looking face makes her seem more playful. Oddly the stripes on the head are still pink.

Star Wars informed Floro Dery's designs for Transformers the Movie (as if the movie was not already borrowing heavily from Lucas's films), and Arcee's head is inspired by Princess Leia's bagel style hair do. Perhaps that's where the inspiration for the laser swords comes from?

Speaking of which, those swords add a lot to the posing potential, and are produced in a clear Blue plastic that matches the final version.

Animated Arcee does suffer from a design flaw where the swords being inserted into her hands almost always cause stress marks to the thumbs, and when I took her from the box I saw the stress marks were already there. A sinking feeling came over me, as this is one toy I was really keen to transform. The futuristic space car alt mode is one of the very few times I think Hasbro has perfectly captured what I would want from a futuristic Cybertronian vehicle since Generation One (oh those glorious Targetmasters, how I pine to own you once again).

I could have tried to transform it, and it would have probably been fine, but the way her hands peg in to create the alt mode I didn't want to take that kind of risk. Not only is it someone else's toy, but it is such a unique piece of history that I would prefer it be preserved rather than die at my hands.

Pictures of Arcee's alt mode are available online, so for now I will continue to gaze longingly at the them, whilst telling myself I can't really justify eBay prices.

So there we have it, we travelled through three 3 different Transformers lines, taking a look at some test shots, each has its own tale, and it was fun to learn where each piece fit into its line respective history. I don't collect curios like this, lord knows my wallet could not handle it, but it is nice to experience them and get a peek at how products evolve through the production process.

Thanks to Masterforce for providing me with the opportunity to inspect them.

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