Transformers: Adventure - Jeffrey Prime

I think it's fair to say that both the toy series and the animated television show follow up to Transformers Prime took the series in a different direction. Transformers Robots in Disguise (known as Transformers: Adventure in Japan) blazed it's own path with a more cartoony, light hearted approach. While I admit it took awhile for the animated show to appeal to me, I was intrigued by the toys from day one. While it was a departure from the what was then considered the norm, I liked the idea of the Decepticons having animal characteristics and traits. I like different and different doesn't always have to be bad. I was happy to see Hasbro trying something different, like they did with Animated years earlier. It didn't appeal to everyone, but that rarely happens anyhow. Just take G1 vs. Beast Wars or G1 vs. "Bayformers"...you get the picture. Rarely do Transformers fans ever agree on anything.

For the longest time Takara (now Takara Tomy) gave their line of Transformers that extra special detail that made their figures stand out against what pretty much everyone else in the world got. For this reason I and may others would import these figures at a premium versus buying the Hasbro versions at local retail. I ended up importing a good chunk of the Adventures series for this very reason, but even if you didn't care for the changes Takara Tomy made or had the income to import them there would occasionally be that one exclusive that would make (some) people open their wallets. For the longest time it was the black repaint of Convoy/Optimus Prime, but with the Adventures line Takara Tomy teamed up with the retail giant, Toys 'R Us for not only one release, but two different releases of a "new" character, affectionately known as Jeffrey Prime.

Jeffrey Prime as you can see is a take off the Toys 'R Us mascot, Jeffrey the giraffe. Takara Tomy used the deluxe class Optimus Prime mold as the base and gave him the "TRU treatment". He was also given a very cool translucent orange Energon axe weapon. Like with all Japanese Transformers, he was given the designate # TAV-EX noting his exclusivity. Jeffrey Prime was released later in the Adventures series, which you can tell by the Prime of Micron subtitle. Unfortunately I've never been able to find a translation of his profile as pictured on the back of the blister card.

At first I wasn't thrilled with this mold as Optimus Prime. I loved the legends class version of the mold, but the deluxe class took a while before I came to appreciate what it had to offer. Most of my opinion is based on the alt mode, but the robot mode itself is pretty good. 

Like with most modern Transformers the articulation is very good. All the limbs are connected with ball and socket joints, giving him fluid movement. By the time Jeffrey Prime was released this mold had already been used several times by both Hasbro and Takara Tomy, however I didn't notice and mold degradation.

The color scheme used is obviously Toys 'R Us colors, mixed in with yellow for Jeffrey the giraffe. They did a great job on the legs and feet giving it the look of a giraffe. What I didn't notice at first however are his orange spots are actually little stars. My only gripe with this mode is the inclusion of stickers on this red and green shoulders. It would have been nice if those designs could have been tampographed to the actual toy. Stickers are so 80s/90s!

The only accessory packaged with Jeffrey Prime is this large translucent orange Energon axe. This axe was included with several different versions of Optimus Prime and even the Adventure exclusive Nemesis Prime, however those versions didn't include the extension handle to make the axe longer. I like the look personally of the longer axe and I'm glad this extra piece was included.

Previously I mentioned having some issues with the alternate mode of this toy and I think you may be able to see why. The vehicle is missing the rear portion of the cab and exposes the hips of the robot. I can almost see an inch worm when I look at this vehicle from the side! Angled the toy does look a little better, but it's still not one of my favorite toys of Prime.

Here in this mode the stickers used on his shoulders are exposed as well. Thankfully they don't encounter any friction with other pieces of plastic during the transformation so the stickers should hold up for a long time...or at least that's what I'm hoping. I was a little surprised there weren't more paint apps on this toys, especially to the areas of the alt mode like the front bumper, headlights or even the wheels. I think those small changes would have really popped and helped the overall look of the alt mode.

Released around the same time in the Adventure line was an EZ Collection version of Jeffrey Prime, simply known as Toys 'R Us Prime. Outside of the differences in the mold used, there are plenty of similarities between the two toys. The one glaring difference however is the color of the cab. While the deluxe version retained the red of Optimus Prime, the legends version keeps the yellow/orange color throughout. Personally I'll take either version as they both look cool in my book.

In robot mode both toys share more of the same look overall, though there are still some minor paint differences that can be seen. The legends version is missing the white paint on the forearms and some yellow trim to the head. The other changes are based on the mold differences between the two toys.

Overall Jeffrey Prime is a fun toy (both versions) and one that I was glad I decided to import. Prices to this day still aren't too bad, with current listings online hovering in the $35-40 range. I'd say it's for completionists or die hard Toys 'R Us fans only however. Looking back at these photos that I took some time ago is a little bittersweet since TRU stores closed in the US, however it also serves as a good reminder of what once was and evokes plenty of childhood memories.

KO Korner: Toy Galaxy Transformable Robot "Sunstorm"

Knock off G1 Transformers are nothing new, however sometimes they can be hard to find. I'm guessing with the US' laws and such is why we don't see as many of these toys in the US, however people living in other countries seem to find a wealth of KOs. For this reason alone I love to follow certain people on Instagram because of the crazy toys they post. I've always found KO toys of the Transformers I grew up with to be oddly fascinating. My collection of KO TFs is small as not every one I acquire meets my requirements. Today's specimen is one of those that didn't quite make the cut.

From what appears to be a Canadian toy company, Toy Galaxy, we have their line Transformable Robot. There is no individual name of the toy, but come on...this is the G1 character Sunstorm. I believe I picked this up off of eBay some time ago for right around $10. The blister card was cheap and flimsy and I have expected the blister bubble to be falling off the cardboard backer. I also just assumed it would be G1 size since the toy appeared to be based off the original G1 seeker mold.

As you can see in the first picture, "Sunstorm" is just a bit smaller than an original G1 seeker. Plastic quality is sub-par as expected. There wasn't a sticker sheet included as all of the stickers were pre-applied. What's odd is the stickers that were applied to the wings should be applied to the legs/thighs of the robot.

Transformation is the same as the original mold, albeit pieces don't always stay in place as they should.

The accessories are near replications of the originals, just smaller. The launchers are not spring loaded, but I wasn't expecting that they would be.

While this was an interesting piece to play around with, I decided that since it was smaller than the original mold that it didn't quite fit into my G1 KO collection so off it went to my eBay store. Not surprisingly, someone else snatched it up pretty quickly. Since then I've seen this one and other colored versions for sale in the range of $10-20. I'm sure there are some collectors that love these and had it been 1:1 with the original mold then I perhaps would've kept it.

New Comic Wednesday - The Late Edition

April is the beginning of my business' busy season so I apologize for getting this post out so late, but I was excited to share some of this week's books...and a few stragglers.

I was pumped back in the day when the now defunct Dreamwave Productions got the rights to produce new Transformers comics. While my relationship w/ the old Marvel series was sparse, these new TF comics came at the right time. I loved the art and while the stories left a lot to be desired at times, I kept buying. Eventually when the license ended up with IDW I gave it a try...but after a year or so I just didn't care for the direction my beloved 'bots were going.

I really haven't followed anything IDW did with Transformers. The only "new" book I red was last year's Free Comic Book Day issue of Unicron...something or other...and I don't even remember what went on in that book. When I heard that the franchise was going to get a reboot I thought now may be the time to give IDW another chance. While I still haven't gotten around to reading the first issue, I picked up the 2nd issue thinking I'd enjoy it. Well I haven't read this one either...but I'll be on the road this upcoming week traveling for work and I always take a comic book board box with me full of my backlog so I will be getting caught up.

I've been giving non-Marvel titles a look here and there and The Girl in the Bay has been a fun ride. I really enjoyed the first issue and immediately couldn't wait for the 2nd issue to come out to advance the story. If you've haven't heard of the book - it's basically a murder mystery w/ a sci-fi twist. Very fun ride, highly recommended.

I loved Linda Carter as Wonder Woman when I was a little boy, but that was the extent of my "relationship" with the character. I try not to be one of those type of guys that buys a book for it's cover, but dang it if Jenny Frison didn't put out some awesome art. That alone got me hooked on the current WW title. Even those issue 66 wasn't done by Jenny, it's still a beautiful cover none the less. The story they've been telling isn't half bad either...

I recently picked up an old Crypt of Shadows book at a local show and loved it. I vaguely remember seeing this new #1 solicited in Previews, but I didn't order it. Well it was sitting on the front of the shelf as I was leaving the store the other day and caught my eye. I've already dropped this book in my box to read this week while I'm on the road...looks great based on the cover.

I don't know how I missed the 3rd issue of the current Daredevil series so I was glad there were still a few issues on the shelf.

While I really enjoyed Miles' previous series, I haven't been able to get into his current book. I've decided it'll be dropped after this current story line wraps up. Same goes for Champions. I just don't have much of a connection to the characters and from what I've read, this version of Champions may not be around much longer anyhow.

Finally after months and months of teasing, the giant War of the Realms miniseries is finally here. There were a bajillion variant covers and the shop I stopped at the other day just happened to have one of several of the different variants. I don't usually buy the same comic more than once so trying to decide which cover to buy was tough. There were a lot of great art - Oliver Coipel's Lady Sif and Ryan Otley's Spider-Man cover to mention just a few, but I ultimately decided to go with the Frank Cho variant. Simply stunning. Now I just hope this story is a good as Marvel has been hyping it to be. We'll see...

Transformers Alt-Modes: Optimus Prime

I've been collecting Transformers since their debut in 1984. I've seen a lot of different product come and go over the years, but nothing quite like Transformers Alt-Modes. I'm finding it difficult to describe what these are and why someone thought these were worth the plastic used to make them.

Alt-Modes come packaged in blind box like cardboard boxes and were packaged in a tray for retail stores. The first wave featured 8 different characters, but these aren't blind packaged like you may think. On the back of the box was a small hole that if you were patient enough, you could line the toy inside up with the hole to get an idea of which character was inside. The first time I bought one of these I thought I had Optimus Prime, but ended up with the Decepticon Thundercracker instead. It wasn't foolproof, but at least you had some sort of idea and weren't going in blind.

So what are the Alt-Mode toys? Well it's a giant head with either an Autobot or Decepticon emblem on the top. When you fold up the emblem (as shown) and pull it up, a spring loaded transformation of sorts happens and it switches from a chibi vehicle to a small robot body. It's an odd novelty, I'll give you that. They retailed for way too much ($6 or $7?) and they didn't sell well because eventually they would wind up in close out stores like Five Below and Ollie's.

I have two of these in my collection - Optimus Prime and Thundercracker. If I didn't collect those two characters I'm not sure I would've even kept these things. If you like odd toys then these may be right up your ally, but otherwise you may want to stay far, far away from these!

Re-Dedication

Over the last few years the activity on this blog has taken a back seat to many things, but life in general. As a result I've noticed my readership drop off tremendously and I get it. Only one or two new posts per month doesn't give people the content that can be found on other social media type outlets. While I may never recover to the point where this blog once was, I've decided to re-dedicate myself (as much as I can) to producing more new content for this blog, more frequently.

Much of what I've been working on behind the scenes isn't new necessarily, but it'll be new to the blog. I've still got TONS of pictures that I took of Transformers and other various toys that I just sat on. I've been digging these out, cleaning them up and will start posting some new reviews/articles very soon. I'm not going for quantity over quality, but I do want to pump out more than I've been doing.

Of course there will be some hiccups along the way. Work, life, other hobbies, but this is something that I enjoy doing and I even like looking back on my own stuff I've posted in the past. If you're one of the few readers that have stuck around and still check the blog every once in awhile, thank you. If you're new to the blog, thank you.

Look for new posts of older toys and some new stuff sprinkled in as I look to get this blog kick started once again.

P.S. - This is NOT an April's Fools joke either!

Charlotte Comicon Haul - 03/23/19

This past Sunday I took my oldest daughter (9) and drove up to Concord, NC for the Charlotte ComicCon spring show. I wasn't planning on taking my daughter, but due to some last minute changes off the two of us went.

I've been to this show for years and it's always a great show. It's family friendly and the variety of dealers that come are always great. The size of the dealer's room is a pretty large, with the dealers set up around the perimeter and the guests set up in a row down the middle of the room.

Usually I like to walk the room first to get a lay of the land. I'm always on the look out for the $.50 boxes for starters so I'm looking to see who has what. After I've walked the room at least once, then I'll dive into the boxes with my CLZ Comics app on my phone.

This time however we stopped at the first table w/ $.50 boxes. My daughter knelt down on the floor with me and thumb through the boxes herself. I did have to show her and remind her how to safely look through the box without bending the books, especially since not all of the cheap books were bagged and or boarded. We went through about 7 short boxes at the first dealer. I ended up finding about couple of bucks worth of books. As I was paying, the elderly lady helping run the booth handed my daughter an old Disney Scamp comic book (that was amazingly in good condition) as she noticed how well behaved and patient she was!

Eventually my daughter put the breaks on me and wanted to find something for herself. She was upset that we hadn't walked the entire room so off we went. I've had to teach her that at shows like this you can't always buy the first thing you see because you may see something else that you want more. Surprisingly she did an awesome job showing her patience as she turned down several items that interested her. Later in the day she settled on a large plush Pokemon of Vulpix, but this was the "winter" version. After that she was happy and just wanted to find something for her sister...which ended up being a Hot Topic exclusive Mary Poppins Returns POP! figure.

Now that the kiddo was happy I could return to my $.50 boxes...which I found plenty. I didn't even get to all of the various dealers that had cheap boxes before it was time to go. Did I mention my daughter was my vocal conscience about how much money I had to spend?! I had a blast that day. It was fun spending time with my daughter and the show was great as usual.

Enough small talk, let's get to some of the stack of books I brought home with me!

This is a (mostly) toy blog so here are a few books based on 80's toy properties. I now have issues 1-3 of Air Raiders, only two more to go. I often wonder why this appeared as Marvel title and not a Star Comics title since that's where other toy properties like Inhumanoids and Thundercats were.

I had forgotten DC had a series based on the C.O.P.S. cartoon/toy line. I wish I had found more, but I was happy with this one.

I've been picking up books of different storylines, such as Siege of Darkness. My list is getting smaller and smaller as the books I needed are getting tougher to find. This issue of Darkhold was a pleasant surprise.

I'm not the biggest Doctor Strange fan, although I do like the direction of his current title. I knew this issue was later in the original run of his series, but that is all I knew. I thought it looked cool so it was one of those "hey, it's just $.50" type of purchases. Now I'm on the look out for a few more issues to finish out the series.

This issue of Crypt of Shadows is from 1974 and isn't in the best condition, but again it was $.50 and looked interesting. I love horror stuff so this purchase was just for kicks.

Last summer I was able to pick up several great issues of Gen 13 from early in the run. I didn't have issue 7 so this was an easy purchase. Flipping through the issue last night I'm starting to wonder if Jim Lee's art style has changed a bit. I don't really follow him anymore since I'm more of a Marvel fan, but I do appreciate his style none the less.

Long before my older brother got me into comics, he was reading most of the mutant titles. I've heard great things about some of their bigger stories, like Inferno, but have never read them myself. When I started seeing several of these issues in the $.50 boxes I decided to see how many I could find. I added them to my want list in the CLZ Comics app and kept looking. I'm really looking forward to sitting down and reading some of these older stories for the first time.

I worked in a drug store during my high school years so I was able to basically get any magazine I wanted for free...including Wizard! The only cavaet was I had to rip off the cover to return to the magazine vendor. I really didn't care as I got to keep the magazine and anything included in the polybag...like this issue of Uncanny X-Men. This was the issue that kicked up my reading of X-Men, the first issue of the Legion Quest story that would eventually lead into the Age of Apocalypse.

I loved that story as well as the follow up storyline with Onslaught. I've toyed with the idea of picking up these books (again) for awhile...well as you can see I'm on my way of reclaiming some of those great memories. I really loved the art and the stories from this era of the X-Men.

John Romita, Jr. has a very distinct art style and while he isn't my favorite artist, I did love his run on Iron Man. I felt his style was well matched with Tony Stark and his various suits of armor. Plus the Armor Wars II storyline is great. I don't often find issues form this story so I was more than happy to grab these.

Another goal of mine is to complete all of Marvel's 2099 series' and while I only pictured Ravage 2099, I was also able to find several issues of Doom 2009, Ghost Rider 2099 and Punisher 2099. Several of these Ravage 2099 issues are at the tail end of his run which have proven hard to find in the past.

Back in January I picked up a few books from Marvel's New Universe imprint, including Star Brand and an associated one shot called The Pitt. My brother told me about a four issue mini series called The War that also fit in and he found three of the four books for me. These were square bound books and while I don't know much about them, they do look interesting.

Let me start off by saying I'm NOT a Rob Liefeld fan. Actually I can't stand his art...but I kinda like most of the books that Awesome released. I don't often see these books in any boxes period so I was surprised to see several, especially this "comicon edition" and the gold foil version of the 1st issue.

Not shown, but I also found two issues of the follow up mini series that featured Ed McGuiness' talent.

The last book featured is one that I still can't believe I found in a discount box, especially a $.50 box! This issue of The Incredible Hulk features the first appearance of Devil Hulk. It is rumored that this character will re-appear in the pages of Immortal Hulk, the current Hulk book. I only knew about this book thanks to the awesome Key Collector Comics app and Comic Tom from Instagram. I don't usually buy books because they are "hot" or whatever, but I couldn't pass this one up. Sometimes it pays to be cheap!

I didn't bother to show everything I purchased, but I thought these were some of the more interesting books. So, how do you think I did overall? Every book purchased was $.50...that I feel good about. The last dealer we hit up also gave my daughter a comic, but they let her pick any $1 book she wanted. She grabbed an issue of Spider-Girl (the old M2 title from Marvel) to go along with two other books I let her buy. I may have indirectly started her own comics collection after this ComicCon trip!

Hot Wheels: Fast & Furious '70 Dodge Challenger (Screen Time 04/10)

As a kid I loved Hot Wheels. I had more cars and trucks than I did of any other toy. To this day I still like to thumb through the pegs to see what's new and some time ago I noticed that Mattel was doing a Screen Time series featuring vehicles from different movies.

Fast & Furious has never been a series of films that I've followed, in fact I'm not sure I've seen any of the movies from beginning to end! However this '70's Dodge Challenger was just too cool to pass up.

I do remember seeing this car in the trailer for the movie and I thought it looked pretty awesome. The lifted suspension, larger tires, the rollbar on the front and the (spare?) tires on the back of the car gave it an edgy look. What I didn't realize until after I took the car out of the packaging was there was real working suspension on the car!

Regardless of this car being from a movie, it's an awesome Hot Wheels car and one that I know I would've played an awful lot with as a kid. As of the time of this post there are new Screen Time vehicles out at retail, but nothing as a tough as this.