Takara’s Transformers Car Robots line hits Japanese shelves, and a contest prize hints at a Fortress Maximus reissue in Grand Maximus colors. Turin fills in for Brian Kilby on this March 17, 2000 Radio Free Cybertron. John DeLuna’s ATT Buzz covers comic book combiner deaths and the first Dinobots sightings, and he reviews Beast Machines Longhorn. Mopboi debuts Ask RFC, and part one of the RFC parody of Transformers: The Movie premieres.
News
Transformers Car Robots Launches in Japan
Takara’s Transformers Car Robots line, which some fans called Transformers 2000, has started in Japan, with toys hitting shelves this week. Brian asks anyone who gets one to send in a review, since it will be a while before he gets his hands on any. [Source: not found]
Car Robots Contest Hints at a Fortress Maximus Reissue
Car Robots buyers can send in five robot points for a drawing to win one of 300 Cybertron bases. The pamphlet shows a kid playing with Fortress Maximus in Grand Maximus colors. Turin doubts Takara would revive the mold for just 300 contest prizes, so he thinks a retail reissue may follow. He hopes so, since he wants one without paying eBay prices. This is a rumor based on the contest art. [Source: alt.toys.transformers]
RFC Notes from Brian
In a pre-recorded segment, Brian thanks Turin for filling in and puts his editorial on rip-offs off until next week. He plans a review of the latest Beast Machines episode on the site, probably Monday. Listeners can vote on whether Trivia lives or dies, with votes tallied Friday, March 24. RFC gets a mention on Trans Talk this week. Ask RFC questions can go by email or the message board, labeled Ask RFC. The parody’s background music comes from 3H Enterprises, with the soundtrack available through BotCon.com.
ATT Buzz
John DeLuna says spring break didn’t slow alt.toys.transformers at all. The big G1 topic was death, especially comic book deaths among combiner teams. John jokes about the Constructicons losing Bonecrusher and his tuna casserole at Thursday potluck, and about a one-armed Devastator renamed “Irritator.”
The first Dinobots sightings came in on the West Coast. John is surprised by the group’s apathy, since these repaints are new to most fans. He guesses that without Beast Machines on the package, it just isn’t the same. The Beast Wars Mutants, he expects, will draw far more opinions. Turin hasn’t seen the Dinobots in the San Francisco Bay Area and isn’t interested, since he owns three of the four original Japanese versions.
Ask RFC
Mopboi hosts the first Ask RFC. A fan asks where to download Transformers episodes, and Mopboi points to TFXStream.com for Beast Machines and possibly the movie. Agricon writes in that Optimus Prime’s “hold on, Elita” line in The Search for Alpha Trion sounds like Bruce Springsteen’s “Rosalita.”
Toy Review: Beast Machines Longhorn
John DeLuna reviews Longhorn, one of the two Basics leading off the second wave of Beast Machines. First, a few words on Obsidian. John likes his helicopter mode despite a scale mismatch, but finds the hipless robot mode weak. He also notes that obsidian is a black rock, “and there ain’t no black on this guy.”
Longhorn comes on the same card as the first wave, Cheetor’s face included, which John blames on Hasbro cheaping out. His bull mode is nicely beefed up once out of the package, though John says he’s a bull, not a longhorn, and Tantrum would have been a better name. He also questions why an alien robot bull has a nose ring. The head-butting gimmick is more of a weak nod.
The robot mode looks big, buff and proportional, with massive horns some compare to Tim Curry in Legend. John has two complaints. The weapons are permanently stuck on his hands, though he cuts a Basic some slack. The bobbing head gimmick also has nothing to lock it down in robot mode. He likes the tan and brown colors and gives Longhorn 8 out of 10, a notch below the first-wave Vehicon Basics but “a definite buy.”
RFC Parody: Transformers: The Movie, Part One
Part one of the long-awaited RFC parody of Transformers: The Movie premieres. Turin plays Spike Witwicky, ViceGripX plays Cliffjumper, and Zobovor plays everyone else, with a “special guest star” credit for Captain Jean-Luc Picard as Brawn. The narration software needs a Y2K fix, Jazz delivers a top 40 countdown instead of a security report, and Brawn refuses to admit his shoulder is gone.
Radio Free Cybertron is the world's first and oldest toy and action figure podcast — broadcasting from the heart of the Transformers fan community since October 1999. What started as a scrappy fan show has grown into an institution, with nearly 1,000 episodes and over 25 years of coverage. Every week, host Brian Kilby and the RFC crew dig into the latest Transformers news, toy reveals, collecting, and everything hitting shelves from Hasbro, Takara, and beyond. No fluff, no hype — just informed, passionate collectors who have been doing this longer than anyone else on the planet. The original. The longest running. Till all are one.