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

REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (ROTF)

Human Alliance Autobot Jazz

Where's Epps? Who cares.

Now, having never owned a single late Euro G1 toy or a TF Prime toy, I'll be skipping those categories. Another reminder why I'd be such a poor contributor to those articles myself! As far as ROTF is concerned, I think 75% of folks would pip for Leader Optimus Prime, but I already had the 2007 movie version and didn't feel like spending another £40 for the same character. That was ill-advised as it turned out to be one of the biggest successes for Hasbro in recent years, a glorious toy.

A rare occasion where we got what we prayed for

Small car, huge robot

It probably wouldn't have mattered to me though, because I had already fallen head over heels in love with Human Alliance as a sub-category. It was like Movie Masterpiece toys of the characters Hasbro and Takara knew we really wanted. Leader Blackout and DOTM Human Alliance Dino aside, Human Alliance from ROTF gave me absolutely everything I wanted from the movie toys. Bumblebee, Sideswipe, Barricade and - especially - Jazz, done properly. Done beautifully, accurately, and suitably complex. Displayability is tremendous, and while posability isn't quite as good as it is with modern Masterpiece releases, HA Jazz is without a shadow of a doubt the best toy to come out of the movie lines for me, and the best Jazz we'll ever get, just as the HA Bumblebee, Barricade and Sideswipe are their respective definitive versions.

SCF / PVC

A picture from a decade ago

Pic courtesy of Heroic Decepticon

As far as SCF/PVC is concerned, I'd have to agree with Brandon Yap (Heroic Decepticon) that the Seeker mould is the winner. It's the very same one that first got me into the PVCs when they were all the rage, a time when they were one of the only new things being produced that were directly acting as homage to Generation 1, and doing so unashamedly and without compromise. Unless you count the fact that they couldn't transform. But who cares? They were cheap, could be displayed anywhere, anytime and with great success. They also weren't called "Super Collectible Figure" for nothing, the fever surrounding chase figures and completion was as widespread and comprehensive as I have ever seen in a Transformers category.

Now when you consider the fact that the G1 Seekers were very far from their on-screen counterparts as far as show accuracy was concerned, this was one of the first times we ever got  a fully proportionally-correct cartoon accurate Starscream or Thundercracker, and that's to say nothing of the colours. Years before anyone knew what a Masterpiece was, the Seeker PVC mould gave us something we'd never had. How times change though, and while some chase figures remain impossible to find, the hype has most definitely quietened.

JazzJazzJazzJazzJazzJazzJazzJazz...

All the best
Maz