Review: DX9 Cocomone (Not-GoBot's Crasher)

I won't repeat my introduction to Salmoore (aka Cy-Kill), other than to say that I welcome more GoBots being made!

Salmoore was generally ok. There were a few things I wasn't overly keen on, but generally he was a good figure. The great news is Crasher is even better.

Review: X-Transbots Hoss (not Go-Bots Road Ranger)

3rd Party Transformers are a lot like boxes of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes you get a Quake Wave, a figure so good it puts Hasbro/Takara to shame. Sometimes you get a Grand Patriot, which, well, is a big pile of poo. Even a company with a good reputation can be a risk as quality varies from product to product. Take, for example, Fans Toys' follow up to Quake Wave, Scoria, which suffered a number of problems.

This risk factor is the reason why I refuse to pre-order 3rd Party products. Sure, there's normally a discount if you order early, but the quality issue and consistent pushing back of release dates isn't worth it, in my opinion. Even online reviews of 'test shots' aren't a reassurance as you never know for sure if minor niggles are going to be corrected (or become worse!) in the final product. It's much safer to wait and see what the final reviews are before committing money - especially with the amount of money these products costs.

X-Transbots hasn't got the greatest reputation in the world. While I don't have a lot of their products, the common complaints online seem to be plastic quality and general quality control. More than one online retailer is now refusing to carry their products because of this.

But I ordered Hoss anyway. And it's really not that bad.

Review: Unique Toys Salmoore (Not Go-Bots Cy-Kill)

People tend to look down on Go-Bots. And it's true; despite being first to market they were never as successful as their transforming rivals. But I've always been of the opinion that Go-Bots were unfairly judged. Take the cartoon. Many would argue that the Transformers cartoon was vastly superior. I would suggest they rewatch a couple of episodes of the original Transformers cartoon first.  Fried gold, it certainly isn't.

The Go-Bots cartoon is exactly what you'd expect from Hanna-Barbera, in style and tone. I also liked the fact that 95% of the time they didn't cheat with their transformations, unlike Transformers. For example, burned into my memory is Rest-Q, in Ambulance mode, crashing and rolling within the first few minutes of the opening episode of the cartoon, revealing his face underneath...just like the toy. In the Transformers 'toon that toy-limitation wouldn't have been there and you'd have seen a perfect bottom-of-ambulance instead.

The Go-Bots toys were licensed by Tonka from Bandai in Japan. Unlike Hasbro, which bought the moulds to their Transformers toys outright, this means that the names and characters were owned by Tonka but the rights to the actual toys were - and still are - owned by Bandai. This means that it's 99% certain that these toys will never be reissued.

Much later Tonka was bought by Hasbro, who've since released a series of Go-Bots, which had absolutely nothing to do with the original line. They did, however, release Fracture, which is essentially an updated Crasher. But that was it.

Maybe spurred by this lack of production from Hasbro, a number of 3rd Party companies have released Go-Bot homages lately, which brings me nicely (and eventually) to my review: Salmoore aka Cy-Kill, leader of the evil Renegades.

Review: Rock Lords

What's the most boring thing a Transformer could turn into? Tom Hanks suggested a building, but I think there's something even more dull. To make matters worse, they didn't just stop with the prototype on these, they went into production and made a huge bunch of the things. And a movie. Yeah, you know where I'm going with this, you've read the post title, it's the Rock Lords!

Review: GoBots Scooter

Recently I wrote a review of the New Adventures of He-Man Starship Eternia. I mentioned that NA wasn't particularly well liked at the time. Coincidently, today's review is of a toy from another line which wasn't very well liked - GoBots.

GoBots was the competitor to Transformers and, despite starting off well, was soon massively overtaken in popularity and sales by its rival. The Hanna-Barbera cartoon was never as popular as the Transformers Sunbow one. Upon recent rewatching, I discovered it really wasn't as bad as people seem to think it was. In actuality it's the Transformers cartoon which is far worse than memory tries to insist. The cartoon is exactly what you'd expect from something created by the people behind Yogi Bear, Wacky Races et al.

One of the main characters from the show was Scooter who, thanks to ebay, is now mine to own. There were two scales to GoBots toys - the smaller ~4 inch one and the larger deluxe line. This Scooter is of the smaller variety.