New Shelf Improved

 I stopped in at IKEA today, and picked this up to add to my Vittsjo shelf

It may not look like much right out of the box

But Let it light our darkest hour...

Update: hide our cords better in our darkest hour...

Christmas Wishes Coming True in Odd Ways

     A while back, I did a League post about Christmas wishes, and I wished for Project Uranos, a third party Superion figure


     Well, really what I wished for was a new Superion, with modern engineering.


     Hasbro's theme for 2015 is "Combiner Wars". And the first Combiner they gave us all the pieces to (sort of-more on that later) is Superion, formed out of the Aerialbots

Silverbolt-Voyager Sized Leader of the Aerialbots

Acrophobia is not a good trait in an
aircraft

Skydive-Deluxe sized arm or leg

Anything you can fly, I can fly better

Firefly- Deluxe sized arm or leg

Take him out to the black
tell them he ain't comin' back

You can't take the sky from him

Alpha Bravo(...?where did he come from?)- Deluxe sized arm or leg

Get to da' choppah!

Dragstr...what the...?

yep, Dragstrip the stunticon- Deluxe sized arm or leg

My belief is that Hasbro was making a point that these combiners could be recombined in a large number of combinations, and would not rely on the original teams. Aerialbots Air Raid and Slingshot will follow in later waves to finish up the classic G1 team.

      So on to the development of the 2015 Combiners, or my theory of it. Some time ago, Hasbro came up with a line they called "power Core Combiners. they were not well received, given their size, and the fact that the limbs were not individual robots but vehicles haplessly drawn in and worn by the robot as limbs in a terrible run-on sentence. I bought one or two in this line but they never really drew me in. When I look at the new Combiner Wars, though , I can see their genesis in the power core combiners, with the same sturdy connecting port. Now however, we have five full-fledged robots with back-story and personalities behind them.

Impressive, huh?

but he's tiny....

      I know you want to see this bad-boy put together...

     Here we go. A La Voltron, hold the lions

Form Feet and Legs

Form Arms...

And Torso!

And I'll form the head!

 Each of the hands can become feet, and vice versa. and each have a different weapon built in. I'm highly impressed with the engineering

The Seeker

     The TF Wiki defines the term Seeker as follows:

The term Seeker refers to Decepticon jet troopers who share Starscream's body-type but with different colors or minor variations in wing and head shapes. This is most clearly and commonly known from Generation 1, but any franchise with a Starscream is almost inevitably going to feature a similar "family" of redecoed jet-formers.
The word "Seeker" hovered a long time in a strange gray area between official and fan-coined terms. It seems to have originated in extremely obscure official or semi-official writing, but somehow became widely used among fans. In 2002, the term appeared in dialog from the first issue of The War Within from Dreamwave Productions, making it truly official after years of controversy. It has subsequently appeared in many other places such as on toy packaging, books, and in other stories.


     I have quite a few Seekers, and in my own particular parlance, I include other jet-formers as well among the decepticons. Seekers have usually been characterized by a lot of redecos, but I don't mind that because they were the first redecos, and fun to collect

StarScream and Jhiaxus

Scourge and Cyclonus

Lugnut-Great figure

Thrust and Dirge

Thundercracker and Skywarp

Sky Shadow and Dreadwing

Terradive-another excellent figure

"The Seeker"by The Who

I looked under chairs
I looked under tables

Dreadwing- A redeco of IDW Megatron

I'm tryin to find the key
To fifty million fables

Terradive-not a redeco, but redecoes have been made of him

They call me the seeker
I been searchin low and high
I wont get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die

I asked bobby dylan
I asked the beatles
I asked timothy leary

Jhiaxus copied Starscreams body using "reactive armor"
he was mentor to Shockwave...what a nutcase

But he couldn't help me either

They call me the seeker
I been searchin low and high
I wont get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die



People tend to hate me
Cuz I never smile

Whether Good guy or Bad guy, Cyclonus
is never accused of being a "Nice Guy"

As I ransack their homes
They wanna shake my hand

Scourge along with Wreck-Gar were proof positive that
Cybertronians could grow wicked beards-he plays second banana
to Cyclonus in the G1 era

Focusing on nowhere
Investigating miles

Skyshadow is a redeco/retool of Thunderwing
they both apparently scare Megatron

I'm a seeker I'm a really desperate man

Lugnut is Megatrons number one fan in TF Animated, but
always loyal to him anyway. His fists can generate pinpoint singularities to
ruin the best of days- no redecoes on this one, and that is both good, and a shame

I wont get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die

I learned to raise my voice in anger

Skywarp epitomizes the phrase "if he had brains he would be
dangerous" - given the power of teleportation, he uses it for fratboy pranks instead of
as the powerful weapon it could be.

Yeah but look at my face ain't this a smile

Starscream is the right hand of Megatron,-if the right hand is the
one that can reach around to stab you in the back. He is smirking,
snarky, sarcastic, and scheming. if you search "treacherous second in
command" on google, his name is top of the list

I'm happy when life's good and when its bad I cry
I got values but I don't know how or why

Thundercracker was once a bully, with contempt for those
 who could not fly, but he has mellowed over time, into a far more
sympathetic soul, thanks to the power of puppies-really

I'm lookin for me
You're lookin for you

Thrust is a loudmouthed braggart with no pretensions to stealth at all.
Cool wings, though.

Dirge is Gloomy and Morose and uses the sound of his engines to strike
fear into the hearts of his enemies(a cowardly, superstious lot).
He has never been known to dress like a bat though

Were lookin at each other and we don't know what to do

They call me the seeker
I been searchin low and high
I wont get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die

Amazing Thrift Store Find

     I have spoken about our local ARC thrift stores before, on this blog. I like going there, sometimes to find the useful, sometimes merely the very weird. I work my way through it's aisles, an amateur ARC-ieologist looking for hidden treasure. I have found Louis L'Amour, Dan Brown, Tony Hillerman, even Jim Butcher in it's shelves and stacks.


     But every once in a while you hit something that makes you go "...No Way..."


     I love reading the Bloggess. Her writings (st)range from the really thoughtful to the almost fell out of my chair with laughter, with almost no dull filler. I have been making plans to pick up her book, when out of the clear blue thrift store sky...

A Hardback...in not quite pristine condition, but good condition nonetheless. I picked it up yesterday, I am about 2/3 through it. It is hard to put down, and I highly recommend it at any price.

      Thanks, Bloggess, for your wit, your wisdom, and your perspective. And thank Primus I have never been thrown a sudden bobcat, even a smallish one. (you'll have to read the book on that one...)