Grahf, you made excellent points, and I got a chuckle at how you ended.

Hasbro has been sending me, "hey, where have you been?" Spam-mail lately, and to tell you the truth, I have bought very little tf's from Pulse or anywhere else in 2024, which had already seen a steady decline year after year for several years now. It's not financial constraints, though I think my wife is happier to see a spending reduction. The real reason for me is exemplified by these latest Hascon "reveals." I'm not interested in any of these and until Hasbro gets it's act together, I won't be buying anything more from them, and I used to spend at least a thousand a year or more per year for the past decade or so. You can't tell Mr that Hasbro can't use "Selects" to give us some obscure characters like Dogfight, Horri-bull, or Backstreet, just to name a few, at least one a quarter. Going back to my wife, she said to me recently, "wow, you hardly bought any Transformers this year!" Her saying that really got me thinking and I got frustrated me about Hasbro's lack of direction. They may find that when you alienate your customers for too long, they might not ever come back. I've lost hope that we'll see an updated Outback, Windcharger, Tailgate,  or Powerglide,  again, just to name a few, and that's poor product planning and execution. I can deal with a lot of things, like poor qc, but just ignoring fans and then insuling them with tf "reveals" like what we just got, yeah, I'll keep laughing and deleting your emails begging me yo come back...for now. You better right the ship, Hasbro, cause I'm guessing if I feel this way, so do many others, too.

In a wave comprised entirely of 5 straight reissues and 3 redecos. A wave where one of the 3 "new character" redecos is a troopbuilder. A wave where one of the redecos is the 14th reuse (and counting) of its base mold. A wave where one of the redecos is the 15th reuse (and counting) of its base mold. They couldn't find it in the budget to make sure Armada Wheeljack came with Wind Sheer free of charge.

Weren't reissues and redecos supposed to be put in waves to balance the budget out on other figures that might eat up more of said budget? To make it so that other one time only molds or characters that need more paint apps or accessories or are larger be made? That's what they said right? So why wasn't that implemented here? It's an entire wave at all three size classes of nothing but budget savers. 

I don't like to shit on Hasbro but c'mon man. This is some bullshit. 

Please tell me this is the new style of Transformers packages! I love the G1 look! 

DNA should take notes on how it's really done.

While those new pieces are by no means perfect in any sense, they're at least better and have more function than DNA's. For starters, the arms are the same lengths and the elbows will bend at the same spot for both arms. They actually do something with Doryu's sword. Combined mode weapons that break down to be used in the individual robot modes. Combiner parts that don't actively interfere with the stock parts. 

This is going to really need those shoulder widening parts that YYW designed for Volcanicus. The knee parts too of course but those aren't essential. I just know that turning the arms like that is going to create problems with the hips so wider shoulders are going to be a must. 

I wish there was a little more "meat" on that left arm piece. It really doesn't do much to cover all that gap in the forearm made from Gairyu's legs. At least the parts are black or at least close to it as it hides it better.

This time around though, I know to pass on the DNA kit. QQT or nothing for me this time. At the very least I'll get the QQT wings they'll hopefully redeco for this and not the arms and feet. 

There's just one thing off about this set though. If it was always supposed to be Dinoking and not Volcanicus, why is it that they were molded exactly like the Dinobots and not the Dinoforce? I would've thought there had been some different moldings somewhere to at least try to make these look a little less like the Dinobots for this release. Other than new heads that is. I'm not entirely sure what else they realistically could have changed on these figures though. I'm just a bit confused by this set is all. They were meant to be the DinoFORCE from the start but were molded to look like the DionBOTs instead. Either way, I will welcome them to my collection. Kinda want too actually just for those extra pieces that will hopefully get faithfully knocked off like they did for the Centurion Drone and Red Cog extra parts.