MP-11 Starscream - Bayverse Style by Steve Phiakkou

What a treat! Tonight I got the chance to photograph this utterly spellbinding Movieverse-style MP-11 Masterpiece Starscream custom by good mate Steve Phiakkou. Using Acid Storm as a base and employing Fans Want It upgrades for the leader class movie Starscream, Steve has created this gorgeous, competition-winning custom. Enjoy the pics!

Transformers Square One - Year One

It all started with this Jetfire. Roughly a year ago this weekend I started the Transformers Square One blog, something that really shocks me as I still feel like it's brand new...apparently not though, March 1st 2014 was the first post on TFSquare One. Thank you all for the support, for sharing my work, photographs, for liking the page and reading the articles or spreading word of the galleries. It's been one of the best decisions I have made during my time in the hobby.

Human Alliance Autobots (Pre-Completion)

I know what's going to happen. I'm going to buy that Hasbro Asia Human Alliance Barricade and Soundwave 2 pack, and within 4 weeks of that I'll have bought the black and then Flash Freeze Human Alliance Sideswipes for the complete set. So in advance of that, I took a shot of all my pre-completion Human Alliance Transformers from across ROTF and DOTM, minus regular Bumblebee and Barricade as I didn't bring them out of storage for the shoot. I didn't even foresee this shoot until tonight.

New Arrivals - Early December 2014 (Part 1)

It's not just been 3rd Party stuff coming in of late, I've definitely rediscovered my love of the Transformers movie lines, and filling gaps in burgeoning collection directions has been a theme of late. In addition to the kind of toys you see int he above image - Human Alliance, Animated and Age of Extinction - you will see the most ridiculous addition so far in these posts.

DOTM Human Alliance Leadfoot

You've got to be careful when pursuing Transformers toys you love, especially of a certain limited sub category or niche, because you can overdose on a good thing, run into something you don't like which can dampen the whole experience or alternatively, fail to stretch out the enjoyment savouring every moment of discovery with it all ending too soon thanks to expedited purchasing or over-indulgence in a short time. This year I returned to buying Human Alliance figures again, adding to Bumblebee, Sideswipe, Jazz and Barricade first with DOTM Skids, then DOTM Roadbuster and most recently ROTF Mudflap. So far, all have been a success, excellent complexity, engaging transformations, movie-matching aesthetic and plenty of charm each to warrant the hard-earned mantle of Human Alliance worthy. Leadfoot and Soundwave were always going to be last on my list because of the images I'd seen online, and my attitude that ROTF was the best of HA, everything after a weak imitation, just not up to the same standard. Was that true of Leadfoot?

ROTF Human Alliance Mudflap

It's dawning on me slowly that the Movie Human Alliance line of larger figures could actually be - across the board - a 100% run of successfully excellent figures. Bumblebee, Jazz, Sideswipe (good luck convincing me otherwise, flaws and all), Barricade and Skids from ROTF and Roadbuster from DOTM have all been excellent figures. They've each had shortcomings and difficulties, but on the whole none have left me cold or unwilling to praise them overall. The strongest is still Jazz, and the hardest to justify to others Sideswipe - and even then the latter has one of the most beautiful alt modes ever seen on a Transformer. With all sub-lines of such quality, the demand is high and collectors tend not to sell the toys often. Add to that short-packing or bad distribution of particular releases and you have astronomical aftermarket 2nd hand prices and a lot of incomplete HA collections. Mudflap is a fine example of this. This year I decided to finally plug those gaps, and finally Project Human Alliance Mudflap is complete.

DOTM Human Alliance Roadbuster

The Movie Human Alliance cars have been the absolute highlight of Hasbro and Takara Tomy's feature film robot offerings with items like Jazz, Barricade and Bumblebee rightfully considered to be Masterpiece quality toys. They are representative of everything that is right/wrong with the movies, depending on your persuasion. I enjoyed the movies, and the HA toys are some of my most treasured possessions. I thought - mistakenly - that the quality ended with Jazz, but since then I have discovered Human Alliance Skids and now Roadbuster. Roadbuster is one of the Wreckers introduced in Dark Of The Moon, based on Dale Earnhardt Jr's #88 Hendrick Motorsport Chevy Impala NASCAR sponsored by the National Guard. Leadfoot and Topspin were similarly weaponised official NASCAR vehicles, but only Leadfoot got a release alongside Roadbuster. Dino and AOE Lockdown never really stood a chance of being given the Human Alliance treatment. Why do the best things in the TF universe have such tragic omissions?

DOTM Human Alliance Skids

The Human Alliance series of Transformers Movie toys are widely regarded as the very best to have come out of the Bayverse group of releases, premiering around the time of Revenge Of The Fallen (ROTF). Bumblebee, Sideswipe, Jazz and Barricade are utterly magnificent creations, but none of the others ever got my attention, so were never bought. I think it is also accepted that after the ROTF range, the HA toys went slightly downhill, I know upon seeing Soundwave I lost heart for the line completely. Recently I purchased the above Dark Of The Moon (DOTM) repaint of the Human Alliance Skids. This toy is now a black vehicle with green stripes, seen for a micro-second in DOTM, and the same mould as the all green version released during ROTF. 

Movie Mania

A new Transformers movie is coming, don't you know? Age Of Extinction, TF movie number 4, is a few weeks away for us in the UK and I will of course be going to see it. I enjoyed the first movie so much I went to the cinema 7 times including the premiere in the UK where Michael Bay and half the cast introduced the screening in person, and also the US premiere at BotCon 2007 where the other half of the cast were there! Revenge of the Fallen I saw once, didn't like that, and Dark Of The Moon got seen repeatedly as well. None of the sequels captured my imagination as much as the first, and my toy/merchandise buying at that time reflects this.

My Dream Collection

There are a few toy lines that have found a place in my heart throughout my time as a Transformers and pre-Transformers collector, and when I imagine what my dream collection would look like, something I could fit into a single room and be able to appreciate properly and fully in terms of quantity just by looking around, it's a pretty clear picture. It involves stuff I have now, stuff I am buying and definitely stuff I have already sold. Apologies in advance for recycled photography. 

My Daughter's Hand-Me-Downs

The new Transformers 4: Age Of Extinction theatrical trailer saw release today, so why not focus on some Movie toys? Seven years ago, the 2007 Transformers feature film was new, and the week it saw release in the US was the same week I met my future wife in New York City. It was on the way back from BotCon 2007 and that film's release was inextricably linked to that week where I met her. As we continued to see each other, I bought her gifts, as you do, and as a joke I bought her the above two movie toys from the UK to remember me by as we lived in different countries at the time. Having finally dug them out again on a recent trip back home, they have now been lovingly adopted by my daughter into her growing - and frightening - collection of Transformers.

Never Buy-Back

Tonight's TFSource Blog article is about toys I have sold over the years that I have regretted, and given the opportunity (read: funds) would buy back again to correct those mistakes. That's just gone live HERE. This post, however, is about the toys I don't regret selling, not because they were at all bad, just that I am glad they've moved on having been enjoyed at the time.

Ambassadors Part 5 - and my picks for Part 4

Tuesday night in March means Ambassadors on the TFSource Blog! This week the crew of experts dissect the 3rd Party scene and select their representatives for TFC Toys, MMC, FansProject and iGear HERE. Companies like FansToys and Perfect Effect were omitted because the choice would have been blatantly obvious for each - Quakewave and Warden respectively - and the 4 companies chosen had significantly more product released to date. But, here now are my admittedly meagre choices for Ambassadors Part 4 which involved late European G1, ROTF, Takara's SCF PVC and TF Prime. You can remind yourself of contributors' choices HERE

Under-appreciated Transformers

Taking photos for the Ambassadors articles on TFSource Blog recently, I had to dig deep into what collection I have left to put as many different Transformers from different lines together as I could. Doing this - especially transforming and posing them - reminded me just how amazing some figures are, why I've never thought about selling them amidst the variant G1 and Diaclone exodus, and just how little people speak about them in the Age Of Masterpiece And Third Party.