Make Toys shows its Giant combiner in four color schemes on this November 16, 2011 Radio Free Cybertron, while TFC’s Hercules sets the not-Devastator price bar at $600. Transformers Prime season two is due in early 2012, and Takara’s Dark of the Moon Striker Optimus Prime turns up in hand. Ender rips IDW’s Transformers #30, the end of Chaos. The crew shares the toys that got away, and The Girl Who Loved Powerglide gets a defense.
JD Church hosts while Brian is away, joined by Ender, Peter, Rob Clay and John DeLuna.
News
Make Toys Giant and TFC Hercules
Make Toys, a Fans Project spin-off, showed pictures of its not-Devastator, Giant, in several color schemes. The crew recognizes G1 and G2 colors, and a chat member identifies one scheme as Shattered Glass. TFC’s Hercules is the one JD wants, with its second of six figures, Heavy Labor, out this month at about $100 each. The chat debates whether any combiner but Devastator could command $600. [Source: not found]
Transformers Prime Season 2 Coming in 2012
Transformers Prime season two is expected in the first quarter of 2012. The crew thinks avoiding the holiday gap makes sense, but jokes that Hasbro forgot to launch a toy line with season one. Hasbro’s shareholder presentation calls 2012 the year of Prime. [Source: Hasbro shareholder presentation]
Toys R Us Black Friday Plans
Toys R Us will open at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving for two hours, close, then reopen early Friday. The crew calls it a slap in the face to employees. The doorbuster is the Dark of the Moon Ultimate Optimus Prime at 40% off. [Source: not found]
Takara Striker Optimus Prime In Hand
In-hand photos show Takara’s Dark of the Moon DA-28 Striker Optimus Prime, a Revenge of the Fallen Leader Optimus mold with two guns and a shield. Ender says everyone should own some version of that Leader Prime, but he skips repaints with add-ons. He recalls giving it a 9 out of 10, and the designer was briefly furious until Ender explained the lost point. A 4-year-old can’t transform feet with 12 joints when the box says 4 and up. [Source: not found]
Star Cats Combiner Becomes a Defensor Redeco
Last week’s mystery combiner turns out to be from a Japanese CGI show called Star Cats. A third-party company will redeco it as a not-Defensor, with a center robot pictured in Hot Spot colors. The crew expects third parties to chase combiners if Hercules sells. [Source: not found]
Other News
Takara has an F-22 Starscream model kit that comes with a die-cast Bumblebee, which the crew calls a why-bother item. A die-cast knockoff Steeljaw draws no enthusiasm. The Transformers ride is open in Singapore, but nobody plans to travel for it. [Source: not found]
Comics: Transformers #30 and Timelines #6
Ender says IDW’s Transformers #30, the end of Chaos, opens with eight pages of exposition. He sees co-writer James Roberts frantically trying to make the story make sense and bringing back characters killed off earlier. He hopes things get better under Roberts and mocks the D-Void, which sounds like a rejected He-Man villain. Timelines #6, The Sandstorm Con Job, is also out today, with extras from Jim Sorenson and Bill Forester.
Twitter Theater: Little Superstar
Rob’s Thanksgiving best-of continues with Little Superstar, a musical number from an Indian movie that borrows from Transformers and Harry Potter. A little girl sings and dances with her dead uncle’s spirit, now a robot that transforms into a little yellow car like Bumblebee.
This Day in Transformers History
November 18, 1985, marks the US premiere of The Girl Who Loved Powerglide. One host calls the David Wise episode hysterical and well written, with a one-off human worth watching and Powerglide played like Cary Grant. Spike even gets a rare moment of character. The crew agrees it goes where you fear it will, but it works.
Topic: The One That Got Away
Ender passed on three eBay lots of unreleased Robot Heroes Primes, expecting them in stores for $6. Then Robot Heroes was cancelled. He also paid $40 for the BotCon Kre-O Optimus Prime, which turned up at Toys R Us for $7. Peter says he never hunted toys hard enough to lose one.
One host saw a marked-down Fortress Maximus at a closing Lionel Kiddie City around 1991, but it was out of his 12-year-old budget. Another host and his father missed a $50 Toys R Us Fortress Maximus by an hour. John passed on the rare white Fans Project Superion armor at $200 and never saw one again. One host still regrets giving his childhood collection to Goodwill.
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.