Radio Free Cybertron’s 2013 Halloween episode opens with the Action Toys Ultimate Optimus Prime, a 17-inch, $800 display figure with die-cast parts. The crew also reacts to the scaled-up Beast Hunters Voyager figures for 2014 and the Kabaya Overlord and Road Caesar kits. The comic review tackles Robots in Disguise #22 and Beast Hunters #6, and Transformers Rewind revisits the season 3 episode Dark Awakening. Brian also explains how he broke the news of Ultra Mammoth.
This Week in History
Ten years ago this week, in 2003, a Transformers game for the PlayStation 2 came out in Japan. The crew calls the G1-based game terrible, with bad controls and invisible barriers. They argue that few Transformers games before Armada were any good. Contenders for the best include the Beast Wars games. Headmasters for the Famicom Disk System and Mystery of Convoy for the NES are written off.
News
Beast Hunters Voyager 2014 Series 1 Easy Transformation Figures
Hasbro’s 2014 Beast Hunters Voyager wave brings easy-transformation figures that are older toys scaled up. The crew calls them knockoff designs and wonders why Hasbro bothered when good Voyager molds already exist. Their guess is that an Optimus Prime will sell to parents at Christmas no matter what. [Source: not found]
Action Toys Ultimate Optimus Prime Is 17 Inches and $800
The figure the crew saw at a convention and took for a reworked MP-10 turns out to be the Action Toys Ultimate Optimus Prime. It stands 17 inches tall, has die-cast metal parts, lights and sounds, speaks and costs $800. One host calls it gorgeous but finds the back over-detailed. Another argues it is a high-end display piece, not a toy to compare with MP-10. One host hopes it sells well enough for a G1 Megatron to follow. One host jokes that he is buying it, then admits he is not. [Source: not found]
Kabaya Overlord and Road Caesar Kits
Kabaya’s next candy-toy kits are Overlord and Road Caesar. The crew likes Kabaya’s quality, saying the kits have improved since the early ones. Overlord looks amazing, while Road Caesar keeps the giant hips of the original toy. The crew does the math on a case of kits, a little over $30 with shipping. [Source: not found]
Mastershooter Strange Dog Is a Slagacon Exclusive
Mastershooter’s Slagacon exclusive is Strange Dog, a small partner figure that pays homage to Weirdwolf. The crew calls it bizarre but inspired, and they like the bright colors on such a small figure. Another third-party company teased a Trypticon with only a silhouette of the G1 toy. One host calls that teaser worthless, though he would still love a giant Trypticon. [Source: not found]
Comic News
Aimee rounds up the week in comics. Robots in Disguise #22 and Beast Hunters #6 are out, and the Autocracy motion comic continues on the Madefire app. Bleeding Cool looks at IDW’s pack-in comics, and Comic Book Resources interviews John Barber and James Roberts about Dark Cybertron. The Ultimate Transformers pop-up book by Matthew Reinhart, teased at the BotCon publishing panel, is now on Amazon. Aimee says the engineering sample at the panel won her over.
Comic Review: Robots in Disguise #22 and Beast Hunters #6
Beast Hunters #6 splits the Dinobots into three groups escaping the tunnels under Cybertron. The reviewers struggle to tell the groups apart, since every tunnel is gray or brown. They say the issue reads like part one of a two-part story rather than a conclusion. They hope writer Mairghread Scott gets more Transformers work after the series ends with issue #8. Robots in Disguise #22 stretches Soundwave’s backstory across two issues, and the reviewers call the story weak. Soundwave and Shockwave talk past each other in oblique lines. Andrew Griffith’s art is consistent but flat, with no shadows to give the scenes depth. The reviewers praise Livio Ramondelli’s environments and suggest he color other artists’ line work.
Q&A with Rob Springer
Mike Mallory asks about new Encore releases. Rob has heard nothing, but he says Encore is just the latest name for a reissue line that has run for years. He wishes reissues reached past 1984 and 1985 into late G1 and G2. He speculates that Overlord could be next, because Kabaya kits have hinted at reissues before.
Transformers Rewind: Dark Awakening
For Halloween, the Rewind crew revisits the season 3 episode Dark Awakening. The Quintessons reanimate Optimus Prime’s body as a trap, and Prime sacrifices himself again to save the Autobot fleet. The crew calls it maybe the best episode of season 3, and one host remembers sobbing at the end as a child. They love Rodimus’s blunt leadership and the scenes in the Autobot mausoleum. They also laugh at the generic Autobot that falls out of a closet.
Ultra Mammoth and Masterpiece Bluestreak
Brian points out that he was the first to report Ultra Mammoth. JD has already sold his, and the crew finds it going for over $100. They call the robot mode great and the beast mode weak. The crew also talks up MakeToys’ trailer add-on for Scourge and its Nova Prime, at $149 from MakeToys. Masterpiece Bluestreak is shipping, and one host loves its 1970s Datsun car mode.
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.