Botcon 2014: Pirates vs Knights

[Toph]

Thought I'd make a master thread for anyone wishing to throw up thoughts or opinions on this year's botcon toys.
Yesterday I got in the knights and pirates souvenir sets.

Knights:
Apelinq- using the BW10th/jungle planet Optimus mold.
In my opinion, this is the weakest one of the set, but through no fault of FP. The mold is just full of so many design mistakes, it's impossible to get a good looking toy from it. The biggest mistake, and the one that ruins it visually is how poorly the mold parts layout is planned. A shame, given how beautiful it's sculpt is.
The result here is the same as every other version of the mold. An odd assortment of "correct" colors that are just a hot visual mess. To overcome this would require so much paint that it's just financially unfeasible.
The colors chosen also don 't seem to be a terribly good match for the original Apelinq, though I only have online photo's to look at.
However, unlike the Optimus Primal version, this one has a certain charm. But maybe I'm biased, to see Beast era characters other than the main TV cast being homaged.

Flare-up- Prime "RiD" Arcee. An homage to the Botcon 2005 character of the same name.
I really don't have much to say about her, other than she wears these colors exceptionally well. She really offers no surprises. However, i do love her. She's a beautiful piece, and the original Flareup is one of my favorite characters.
I think my lack of enthusiasm comes from burnout on this design. (FE, NYCC, Prid, BH, Transmutate, Flareup, Flamewar, Chromia. All within an insanely close amount of time)

Alpha Trizor- Prime Thundertron, with Go Prime's swords. An homage to 3H Alpha Trion that would have used BM Snarl. As such, he's in Alpha Trion's colors. And personally, I feel he does a much better job than than their '07 attempt using Vector Prime.
This is my second outing of this mold (the first being AM Lioconvoy), and I'm extremely pleased with it, despite having no love or connection to G1 Alpha Trion. But then again, I may be biased to it being another obscure, non-cast Beast Era character.
Something that confuses me, TF Wiki seems to be under the impression this is Cheetor? WTF?

One extremely nitpicky minor complaint I have is the knight symbol. While it is cool, I do wish it were either Maximal green, or used the Maximal symbol as it's base. Almost half the knights are canonically maximals (trizor, apelinq, and one could make a strong argument Flare-up is more appropriate as a maximal than an autobot), after all.

Brimstone- FoC Air Raid, homaging Cybertron Brimstone, as the character Pirate Brimstone from Aligned.
This guy is the biggest surprise of the set, to me. Had no desire to own this and was fully expecting to sell it off. But there is an INSANE amount of clever wrapped up in it.
First, i had no love for the mold. It was awful as Shockwave, and had an absolutely terrible alt mode. The whole thing was only half thought out, and very amateurish. It was even worse, IMO as Air Raid (I felt not using it as Scattershot was a hugely missed opportunity).
However, in person it is astonishing how well it works as brimstone. It's a massive eagle eye to have seen it in him. That's not a character anyone would normally choose to homage, and this is not a mold that would spring to most peoples minds.
And then they take advantage of the retooling for Air Raid in an amazing way. On the back of the ship mode, he has a standard peg to secure his sword in alt mode.
Realizing this, brimstone does not transform into a spaceship like his mold mates, but instead the alt mode is explained as a small railgun that can be used by his larger crewmates, like Scorponok.
Overall, in just about every aspect this is an insanely clever toy. He's easily potentially me favorite.

Hunter- Prime FE Megatron w/ new head (the club Rampage head), homaging Botcon Shokaract.
Pictures do not do justice to this toy. It sounds and looks like it would be a very bland colorscheme, but in hand it is not.
He uses the same kinds of gradients that Rampage uses, but here he has a metallic flake to it that gives him a simulated irredecent quality. Of the two sets I have, he is by far the most beautiful.

[Bogatan]

You've made me a bit more excited about getting these chaps. I wasn't quite regretting the buy but also haven't been that bothered by them.

[Toph]

I myself was offput by the box set. As soon as the days of botcon past was rumored for the souvenirs, i was immediately interested in them.
However, sonething odd happened during and post botcon. Many of the figures (beside scorp whom i adored from the start), started to grow on me.
Figures I'd scorned like Ginrai and Devcon looked so much better than anything the club had showed, and despite no attachments to the characters, i started to desire the toys.

I'm moderately excited for ginrai, ferak, and devcon.
And so far, the only ones I haven't been able to secure are Scorponok, Devcon, the Clones, and Cannonball.
And Cannonball is the only thing this year I don't want.

[blueshift]

There's a lot in this year's Botcon set to like, I honestly feel like the rather lackluster 'theme' acted against it. There was literally no need to sell it as 'knights vs pirates' as... it isn't.

[Bogatan]

Yeah silly theme, but FP don't like not having them.

Really should have been sold as celebrating 30 years. Comic characters, cartoon character. AEC character. Japanese character, G1 mould (is that he first time since G2 break down 20 years ago?) Theres a little bit of everything.

And Botcon homages for the add ons was very clever.

[Toph]

G1 molds used since breakdown- Rook, Tapout, Glyph

Took me a minute to figure out what g1 mold you were talking about since I don't separate nebulon heads as separate toys in my mind.

[Bogatan]

Ah yes forgot about the keyrings.

My boxset arrived today.

Some quick thoughts that one day I might expand on.

Cannoball. Hmmm. I am actually a fan of the mould, and the repaint looks nice, it is a decent homaged to the original cannonball. It covers all the bases of a decent botcon exclusive. But it is so underwhelming. Maybe the mould is to recent. Maybe it looks too much like a standard retail toy, I don't know.

Too make matter worse the upper legs are fitted the wrong way around, it looks okay and does transform but the thighs are completely painted and each transform threatens to scrap it off. People ahave already reported lots of paint loss, one of mine has lost some already.

Ferak and Tornado - Version 6, 7 or 8 of this mould for me. Always happy to have another comic character or two in toy form. Its a good likeness to the IDW form. The only problem is that the mould is so distinctively Cyclonus that its hard to see past it. Replacing the head would help in most cases, but the head is a good fit in this case. Tornado, not much to say the colours make for a change.

Scorponok - I'm pretty sure this should be a big ole mess. The new neck joint leaves the head perched at ever so slightly the wrong position. The colours clash and at the end of the day the Energon mould is not the best with odd proportions and limited articulation due to its shape. And yet it works. Especially the robot mode, the colours might clash but as near as possible they feel like they are in the right places and the proportions that have always looked off suddenly suggest the power and strength of the character.

Zarek - The new head sculpt is amazing. It's really the best thing they have done.

Ginari - As I pulled him out of the box I saw the legs and thought to myself "those are Thunderclashes legs. Back in the distance past I made a Thunderclash from classic Prime and painting the legs proved tricky as the colour of the legs was in part due to the plastic having an almost translucent quality. It was hard to replicate with paint. But here on Ginari I find exactly the legs I was wanting. Anyway. Ginari Primes red bits are orange the blue bits red and he has a knigh symbol on a shoulder, thats about it it. If you like a bright orange Prime then this is for you, as it is for me. If you don't, well it's not for you.

Devcon - I have seen the episode once as far as I know and that was around 2006, so the character means not a lot to me, but is a name I have heard ever since getting on the internet. But as with the comic characters it good to see him in toy form and really the mould is perfect or as close as you'll find it looks a lot like the cartoon version with added wings or cape. The downside is that the mainly blue colour scheme doesn't distinguish it much from Scourge. They did give him a new head which helps but sadly it was one of the heads that has gone derpy. (see overlord)

Flame War - All the bat wings work rather well in black. But those flames, they are rather erm well I keep calling her Flame Bra, I'm not doing it on purpose but the paint apps stand out even more in person than in photos. But then it got worse. They morphed from a cool flame pattern into what I can only describe as a leopard print bra or bikini top. Its like the ducks on Botcon Octopunch once you see them you cant un-see them, but in this case its a little disturbing.

Overall a decent set. If Cannonballs spot was taken by something stronger it would be really quite impressive.

[Bogatan]

Scorponok really works well alongside the other Marvel comic Decepticon leaders.

[Toph]

I call shenanigans!
That Soundwave never lead the decepticons! He's BLUE!

[Toph]

Moar.

Knights:
Ginrai- toy looks way better in person than it does in pictures. And even better still than the photoshopped pics the club showed off to sell him.
He doesn't really offer any surprises though. I do feel he needs some more colors, though I admit mold layout may have prevented this. His thighs and biceps being cast in silver or gray would have really livened him up.
He has a great cohesive deco in truck mode.

Pirates:
Flamewar- She is beyond awesome, and quite possibly the best deco this mold has ever received. Her head has some fantastic deco work on it. The "flame bra" isn't nearly as distracting in person.
Her bike mode is considerably cooler than Arcee.

Ferak &Tornado- I think this is arguably my favorite use of the mold. The White, grey, and red deco is very striking, and it takes them well.
Nothing to say about Tornado.

Clones- they created a clever backstory. These aren't the real Pounce and Wingspan. Basically, they're clones of the clones.
They have very striking decos, with some amazing tampos on the vehicle modes.
Also I had no idea the jet vehicon WAS A FAIRY!!!! I'd have been all over this mold a long time ago, had I known! I thought the wings were part of the arms, like the show.
They both come with some arms micron that has a very cool rifle mode, but pointlessly turns into some quadruped that fails to look like anything at all.


On a side note, using "prid" arcee and bh arcee for flareup and flamewar makes me wish for fe arcee to be chromia.

[Philip Ayres]

Is it the same Arms Micron with both Clones?

In Japan the Vehicon & Air Vehicon came with identical weapons that turned into different beasts

Noji (Vehicon) tfwiki.net/wiki/Noji

Igu (Jet Vehicon) tfwiki.net/wiki/Igu

[Toph]

Same one for both, in different colors. The one that came with the jet, i think.