Ronnie

5 hours ago, Chris B said:

That's a pretty big spoiler for MTMTE, which not everyone has read and a lot of people are recommending.

Yep. If I didn't already know and were one of the people working my way through a six-year series which had recently been recommended in this thread, I'd be pretty frustrated with air_raid. Revealing it like that seems bad form to me.

6 hours ago, hallicks said:

Anyone got any experience with/recommendations for lifetime ISAs? We want to start saving for a house but we've only got a couple of years left before we're not eligible to open them. Doesn't look like any of the main/high street banks offer them at the moment.

I've got one with Skipton and think it's ace. I'd never saved before so getting an extra quid for every four I put in was quite the encouragement. Just set the money to come out of your account after payday so that you never see it and sit back.

3 hours ago, Nostalgia Nonce said:

These two pictures properly demonstrate the gap between the excitement they generated at launch, and the clinging to indifference of later releases. You can bitch about Ratchet's weird robot mode, but look at all the details. Die cast metal parts, articulated arms, stickers, transparent windows and chromed sections. 

It's easy to do that when you're using somebody else's moulds, of course. I think I recall GoBots having "diecast" as a selling point on their advertising too, and the toys are much closer to the Diaclone-/Microman-licensed early Transformers than to the later ones. How well did that work out for them, though? The characters weren't compelling the way that the anthropomorphised Transformers were.

I suppose there's not much of a better example of Hasbro not caring than the 1990 release of the Action Masters: Transformers with the unique ability not to transform. I'd outgrown them by this point (I was more occupied with watching Palace and Man U play to a 3-3 draw in the FA Cup final) so can't say I noticed them. But it brings to mind something related to my earlier point: Hasbro could do that because the children had grown to love the characters. "You can get Wheeljack and Megatron, kids, and this time they actually look like them!"

If the character models for the animated series had stayed true to their toys, I just don't see kids developing that attachment, just as they didn't with the less anthropomorphic GoBots.

1 hour ago, BigJag said:

Got any pics of this collection.  I really like seeing different versions of the same character together. 

I've taken some photos but, unfortunately, a few are too blurry. Here are the most presentable photos.

There were another four or five photos of those shelves which didn't come out properly but you get the idea. Then we move in the direction of some which are too big for those shelves so need some higher ones:

And some are so big that they have to go on top of the shelving:

Somewhere in my office is a Masterpiece Megatron. For some reason, I can't find him, although two Jar Jar Binxes (Ronette's, not mine) are on display and I can't escape them. I have a small gang right above my monitor:

(Pissing cat. That's Pebbles's massive tail which has trashed those.) 

And for all my office looks superficially very serious, with its thick hardbacks, bound collections etc, one glance at a wall does away with any pretence of sophistication:

1 hour ago, Nostalgia Nonce said:

Wow, I'd forgotten about all three of those, and I actually had the black (Pontiac?) Sparkabot. I actually thought it was pretty cool.

It's not so much the gimmick that bothers me but that, as with the Jumpstarters, that the gimmick is the only thing it has and that all the stuff you would want in the toy is sacrificed for it. I know that extremely simple transformations were nothing new, but look at Guzzle (the tank) there: stretch the brick and stand it up. Those Firecons too look shit: do a chest press and then lean it forward, whilst the robot mode is a brick with kibble. Likewise the Throttlebots:

1 hour ago, Nostalgia Nonce said:

We all wanted Megatron, but he was gash in robot mode, and anyone that had one with both arms still attached wasn't to be trusted.

I collect Megatrons. I must have around 30 of them. It's a stupid hobby but if there's something that looks like G1 Megatron, then I end up getting it just to stick it on a shelf because that's how collections work and that's why it's stupid to start. I don't, however, have a G1 Megatron on the basis that the toy looks nothing like G1 Megatron despite being G1 Megatron. Without (supposedly) Flory Dery reworking the animation models so that in plenty of cases they looked nothing like the toys, I think Transformers might not have taken root at all. Look at Ironhide and Ratchet, and then picture anybody taking to them if they looked like that in the cartoon.

24 minutes ago, Nostalgia Nonce said:

I got totally taken in by the Pretenders. The big cunts. Whatever year that was, I badgered my parents for one for Christmas and got Waverider.

The Autobot ones in particular were shit, weren't they? The Decepticons were objectively turgid too but at least you can give them 1/10 for their characters being a bit more interesting than your friend's dad.

There must be some poor souls out there who ended up with Cloudburst, Landmine and Waverider as their Christmas presents in 1988. I think I'd rather have had a second serving of sprouts.

15 hours ago, Nostalgia Nonce said:

Triple Changers were actually a bit shit, weren't they?

Blitzwing was one of the better ones, but as much as we pretended otherwise, Springer gave you the choice of helicopter, stubby helicopter without blades, or robot with disproportionally small head.

Yes, but he wasn't quite as bad as Quickswitch, the Autobot Six Changer. It's a bit rich marketing something as having six distinct forms when half of them are "brick":

Cindersaur at the bottom there has brought to mind another couple of shit series, the Firecons and the Sparkabots. Hasbro really did add some total rubbish at times.

He's already posted the full video of Incursus (Onslaught). It looks immense!

17 minutes ago, air_raid said:

The Duocons look like shit as well.

Hasbro did a cracking job a couple of years ago with a revamped Battletrap. It had the usual two alt modes, but this time each was an independent Cybertronian who combined with the other to form Battletrap:

Such a nice-looking figure:

1 hour ago, Nostalgia Nonce said:

I'm loving @Nostalgia Nonce's fat willy

6 hours ago, PJ Power said:

Me being lazy, but what breakdown does the figure for the UK correspond to each of the 4 "nations"? I know that over here in NI we haven't had any noted COVID-19 related death in over two weeks.

I saw this post recently:

You report Northern Ireland not having any deaths recently, Wales appears not to have had any on that day (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.walesonline.co.uk/news/health/wales-records-no-new-coronavirus-18675560.amp), and Nicola Sturgeon reported that there were none for Scotland (https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-update-first-ministers-speech-28-july-2020/), so the image seems plausible.

There seemed to be something familar about a heavyweight boxing champion who turned up in an episode of Murdoch Mysteries.

And then I realised and struggled to parse how such a small wrestler is a relatively large person when compared to normal folk:

58 minutes ago, PJ Power said:

"I'm not fuckin' getting my KFC rationed! It's like Nazi Germany!!"

My best friend of nearly 40 years was complaining online about this "socialist" government taking away his "right to karaoke".

We see each other probably twice a year. Since the referendum on leaving the EU, even that has often seemed perhaps a bit too frequent.

2 hours ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

That said I’d say half that were wearing them properly with most not having their nose covered at all

Ah, but it doesn't matter, though: they're mouth-breathers.

1 hour ago, Chris B said:

It's nowhere near essential reading, but it's fun. Simon Furman is writing it, so I'm always going to be interested, even just for nostalgia reasons.

I read issue 0 when it came out and really enjoyed it. I'm a bit of a weirdo like that. (I don't watch films but am one of those oddballs who enjoys the Star Wars prequels because I like knowing what the end result is via the original films and seeing how the producers fill out the backstory to work towards it.)

But ... massive continuity error from Furman! Ultra Magnus is a core character in it, this series pre-dating the Arrival from Cybertron ... but Furman's own Target: 2006 contained a character profile stating that Magnus had been built shortly before Operation: Volcano in 1986

17 minutes ago, air_raid said:

Over the weekend I read some daftness about Furmans “attitude to female Autobots” relating to some dialogue in Earth Wars. Missing the point that a writer writing a character (Grimlock) to be a chauvinist, doesn’t make the writer a chauvinist, and actually the Torchbearers/Rust Renegades are invariably badasses. Anyhoo, this nutball referred to him as “Fuckman” and I can’t get it out of my head.

Oh, there was some real nastiness directed to him a few years ago for his explanation of Arcee being an identifiable female in a species where everybody else uses male pronouns. (Jhiaxus arbitrarily deciding to introduce gender to the species by experimenting on her was what it boiled down to, I think, with the character continuing to use those pronouns because she felt different as a result.)

That brings to mind the reactionary pile-on which James Roberts suffered on Twitter when the Decepticons who had discovered a mentally shutdown Grimlock were offered a sizable sum to hand him over at the end of an issue. He left Twitter for a time and had to write a note explaining the obvious. It's amazing to me that anybody who has read MTMTE could think of him as a bigot.

6 minutes ago, RancidPunx said:

Was a MASK man myself .

Don't forget to drop by the pets thread to share that you preferred your Tamagotchi. The cricket thread might benefit from knowing that you favour croquet, too.

On 5/9/2013 at 8:29 PM, Ronnie said:

Rikku looks particularly stunning in your pictures, Chris. I particularly like the white tufts in her main. Is she a Norwegian Forest Cat?

Here's my big girl, Heidi Honeycoat:

The first part of her name came after we'd had her a few days and had barely seen any of her, because she was (and remains) extremely timid and did everything she could to stay out of sight. I put a photo of her on Facebook and asked friends for suggestions, since Ronette had originally wanted to call her Marmalade, thinking that she was redder than she actually is, and I didn't like her proposed alternative, Butterscotch. Among brilliant suggestions such as Weapon X and Stamina Force came some advice from a friend to "spend some time with her, get an idea of her personality, and then you'll know". I responded that if I took that approach now, then she'd be called Hide-y. The bulb went off and she got her name, the second part because I liked the alliteration and it got in Ronette's original idea to name her after something that one spreads on toast.

Here's our little one, Pebbles Pepperpot, the little bastard trying to help me out whilst I was preparing to take some promo shots of a friend's book:

She was originally going to be called Poppy Pepperpot, until we picked her up. She was good for the first 30 minutes, then spent the following three and a half hours of the drive home crying at Ronette to let her out to play. She was so persistent that she blew her voice out and didn't get it back for a few months. Anyway, watching her demand to go into every room of the house despite the presence of a big cat who didn't want her there, charging and careening all over the place, battering her toys recklessly, it became clear that a soft name like Poppy wasn't going to work. We gave it some thought and then picked up that if she were human she'd be coming home with cuts and bruises on her knees, no doubt skidding on concrete and whatnot, and so Pebbles seemed an obvious name to give her. It fits her perfectly, though I tend to cut it down to Pebsi more often than not.

Dave: I hope your big boy is feeling better soon, mate. I share the earlier sentiments that it's horrible knowing that your pets are in pain and don't understand why. Good luck!

It's been several years since I posted in this thread. My big girl turned ten last week!

She got spoiled, of course, including having a bit of a fun challenge, which she had a good attempt at:

Little sister Pebbles (who has just turned 9, even though I still see her as being young) knew well enough not to touch it

I'm not Chris B, so discount as appropriate

MTMTE had a twin ongoing series which also got rave reviews and which incorporated James Roberts's worldbuilding. The two series came together at points during their runs for large "events". So if you've worked your way through MTMTE and Lost Light (MTMTE was given a name change after season 2 ended), then you might want to consider the sister series written by John Barber. It was called Robots in Disguise, then changed to The Transformers (volumes 9 and 10), before switching to Optimus Prime.

Both MTMTE and RID start together. The War is over and it's time to create a new society. MTMTE features a crew leaving Cybertron to track down the mythical Knights of Cybertron. RID is the Cybertron left behind.

7 minutes ago, Chris B said:

Weirdly, that list of MP Prime's is the first time I've consciously noticed the tendency for Autobots to have blue eyes and Decepticons to have red eyes. I know there are plenty of exceptions, but I can't believe I've never picked up on that before.

Yep, that was certainly the case with the original cast. And whenever an Autobot was taken over and became a baddie, his optics changed colour accordingly:

Did you notice that the Autobots' weapons shoot yellow blasts whilst the Decepticons' are pink? Once you know it, you can't unspot it!

6 hours ago, Chris B said:

To be fair, though in the Marvel UK stuff, Shockwave was a former leader as well, wasn't he? I was thinking about it like with the Starscream thing mentioned earlier. Whatever the reason for that specific kicking is, the immediate element is only part of it, as the reason Galvatron/Megatron are laying in so hard is also because of their past history with Shockwave being a duplicitious, political shit that Megatron hates, as well as their paranoia.

Like I said, leadership of the Decepticons in the Marvel universe had become the hardcore title of its day. But it hadn't always been. And it wasn't the case that "Shockwave was the first leader of the Decepticons before Megatron toppled him".

Megatron founded the Decepticons, as established in State Games in the 1986 annual. He was the first and only leader at the point he attacked the Ark and became offline for four million years. (If there had been a break in continuity, this was never mentioned, anyway.)

The next leader was Trannis (Marvel UK), and at the time that Megatron was reactivated, Straxus was the leader. This is the point where we become acquainted with the story as readers.

Shockwave appears in US #5 and takes leadership of the Decepticons on Earth for a few months. Over the next few years we have several leaders: Soundwave, Megatron and Shockwave (joint leaders), Megatron (Shockwave conceding the logic of Megatron being the better fit), Ratbat taking over from Straxus on Cybertron whilst on Earth  Shockwave takes over from Megatron, who went insane and appeared to kill himself, Scorponok ...

Then it gets messy with Thunderwing, the Triumvirate of Legonis, Octus and Seizer (he had claws and it took me decades to pick up on the wordplay in his name!), a returning mix-up of Megatron and Straxus, Scorponok again for the battle with Unicron, and, finally, Bludgeon, at the point the comic comes to an end.

But then there's the complication of there being a (future) 2006 in the comic and a UK-only continuity which sits outside of the US one. That's how we get Galvatron (popping back in time), short-lived reigns of Megatron, Shockwave, Cyclonus and Scourge, Soundwave...

So there's no known long backstory with Shockwave, just a short one from 1985 onwards. And, of course, the covers were supposed to be used to accentuate and sensationalise. That particular cover (is Shockwave spurting blood in it?!) gives a bit of an exaggerated take on the single-page fight scene from the story.

36 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

I remember reading somewhere that Shockwave was the first leader of the Decepticons before Megatron toppled him. He was made leader of the Decepticons on Cybertron, answering to Megatron. Maybe this was the story that explained what happened. 

Nope. This is the Marvel (UK) universe. There are several different histories depending on which version you're following, so "I think I heard" etc isn't likely to be the answer. In this one, he happened to be the leader at the time, that mantle passing around like the Hardcore title used to.

1 hour ago, ReturnOfTheMack said:

I have a memory of reading a comic where Megatron and Galvatron meet up and talk about killing Starscream. Is my memory playing tricks with me?

They definitely met up:

I know the quote you mean but I couldn't find it when leafing through my collection a minute ago. From memory: a Galvatron who knows he cannot kill Megatron is desperately trying to explain his origin to his attacker. Once things settle down, Megatron asks him what he did in response to Starscream's betrayal. Answer: "What would you have done?" And then they both have a good old giggle together.

You'll find as you progress with MTMTE that you get little pages like this popping up:

They add a little bit of depth and help you disambiguate. As @Chris B said, there are plenty of new characters, either because they're inventions of the author or are obscure or unused G1 characters, like Swerve and Tailgate, both of whom star. You soon get used to the core cast and their quirks.

I've read volume four over the last couple of days (12-16) and am midway through volume 5 (17-22, the end of "season 1") and it's struck me yet again what an amazing piece of work issues 4 and 5 are. They're a two-parter which is ostensibly self-contained and which contains predominantly new characters, plus Ratchet in a starring role. It's a beautiful story in its own right, wrapping up with a surprise happy ending, and yet so much of it feeds into the next five years. The planning is off the charts for this book.

3 hours ago, Herne's Son said:

The Predacons are prob my favorite Transformer Sub Team.

I'll always have a soft spot for the Constructicons even though the original toy Devastator is small and flimsy. That's just the bias of him coming first. But the Predacons make it very easy to question my favouritism, and if I weren't emotionally attached to Devastator, then my boy would easily be in first place.

1 hour ago, BrodyGraham said:

"Such heroic nonsense." 

The sneer Megatron has as he just point blank executes Ironhide is still chilling to me.

You pre-empted my post. That's exactly what mine was going to be precisely because it brings to mind this visual: