Oh wow, it's Cosmos. It looks like Cosmos.

And yeah Decepticats, the lack of Generations Selects releases is puzzling. It should but all about lesser known characters and straight reissues so you can make smaller runs that don't need to be shopped to the big box stores. Instead, we get nothing. 

I just wish we'd all stop pretending as if certain characters NEED completely different molds from others. Like Prowl, Jazz, Hound and Skids for instance all transform exactly the same and have the same overall parts layouts. So why do they all NEED to have different molds? Just make a base skeleton that can easily be reshelled and can have certain joints work as needed for the slightly different parts layouts for robot mode. And in this case, make the door wings optional. You can have them out like the G1 toys (or Alternator toy for Hound) or just hide them away as you see fit. Or have the rear of the vehicle turn into the legs differently between Prowl (windshield forward), Jazz/Skids (windshield backward) and Hound (rear of vehicle as the bottom of the feet instead of the underside of the vehicle being the bottom of the feet).

Warpath, Cosmos and Seaspray can all be the same base mold. 

Jazz, Prowl, Hound, Skids, Cybertron Crosswise, Cybertron Downshift and many, many Bumblebees.

Sideswipe, Mirage and ALL the Spychangers.

Tracks, Wheeljack, Sunstreaker, Downshift, Camshaft, the Throttlebots, the Battlechargers and Backstreet.

Punch/Counterpunch, Pointblank, Armada Blurr, IDW Drift, Boss, Euro G1 Jetstorm, Windbreaker, Wildwheel, Hashtag, Strongarm, IDW Bumblebee, Sizzle, NIghtbeat, Bisk, Cybertron Hot Shot, Calcar and so so many more based on the front of the car becoming shoulders/shoulder pads and the placement of the windshield on the back/chest.

Trailbreaker and Turbomaster.

You can even mix things to get others like the front of the Prowl mold with the rear of the Sideswipe mold to get Overdrive for instance. 

And that's all without naming all the redecos and new head retools. 

It's just that throughout the years there's only been so many different ways to turn a rectangular shaped vehicle into a robot shaped form. There's tons of overlap. If you design the figures to be able to pull off the slight differences in transformation from the start then you can easily get a metric shit ton of characters from one base mold. Saving that much money can then open the budget to making sure that every time something in the transformation needed to be changed, it can be done (like door wings vs doors on shoulders for the Prowl vs Cybertron Downshift or doors hidden or doors on shoulder kibble like Punch/Counterpunch vs IDW Bumblebee/Goldfire). This would also free up budget for more characters than NEED to have their own mold.

And while I'm here since it's oddly the same thread, it looks like DNA didn't change anything for the Dinoking set.

The Grimlock/Goryu chest flaps will pop off the ball pegs. The combiner arms will be different lengths. The combiner arms will have elbows at different spots on the arms. The right elbow won't be tight enough to hold weight for very long and the ball joint just won't tighten no matter what I tried. The feet won't stay pegged in. And most likely the fingers will pop off just like the chest flaps but I'm not sure of this since the hand chunks themselves are new in not the fingers too. Oh and you'll STILL need to keep the stock combiner kibble parts with the figures (except for the right arm). 

It's great that they put the combiner feet pegs for dino mode storage on their new feet but they didn't included the robot mode pegs under the feet. So you can't use the feet as giant missile pod shields anymore. I mean they show them being used like BOOMboxes but it looks stupid and it barely works. But leaving out those new ankle connections is bad.

And still bad are the individual weapons. They didn't even bother trying to change their colors to match the Dinoforce. It's bad enough the weapons are doubled, but it's even worse that the weapons are colored for the Dinobots. AND they didn't even include Swoops's missiles this time around.

The new pelvis looks great though. As does the new combiner weapon. I also like that it can become two guns that can be back mounted. But those new heads are amazing. I just wish they all came with new dino heads now.

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.