KM-06 STORMER

This is the 3rd Seeker installment by Mastermind Creations. The first one was a limited edition pure white version known as KM Awakening while the second version was KM-05 Screecher (the supposed Starscream). As you can clearly guess, Stormer is a rendition of Thundercracker.

The toy comes with a short train track as well as a series of plastic blue caps, for you to seal off the screw head openings. Hence if you take a look, you will hardly see any screw openings.

I have applied gold markings on parts of the figure. Also, the only extra detail on the toy is the green markings as can be seen above. I really appreciate the efforts of Mastermind for such a small part of the figure.

Stormer comes in the form of a 3-winged plane from the steel ages. It resembles the early inventions of the Wright Brothers. There's one main factor why you will never see toys like these bring produced by mainstream toy manufacturers & that's because of the safety issue. If you're wondering whether the wings & propellers of the plane are sharp, they are pointy sharp alright! You could probably use the wings as a letter opener if you wanted to.

A closer look shows Stormers face resembling that of Thundercracker.

One main weakness of these third party toys is the plastic quality. You gotta be really careful when you transform them as they do feel a little fragile at times. Also try not to have sweaty palms when you're transforming Stormer, you don't wanna hurt yourself from the sharp edges.

 
The rear wings can actually be spread open giving Stormer a larger wingspan when flying I suppose. Even though the rear or Stormer looks bulky, the figure is actually quite sturdy.

Various other poses of Stormer.
 

The additional wings tucked along the waist can actually be removed to become fighting blades. Alternatively, you can also combine both of them together to form a huge scimitar.

 

Here's one cool thing I found out from another blog that the instruction manual doesn't show. You can actually combine both the blades along with the rear wings, to form a gigantic shuriken.

I'm sure Stormer is going to need a whole lot of strength to even flip that at someone. Having said so, wouldn't something as huge as that be bloody visible for the opponent to have plenty of time to evade? Go figure.

Lastly, here's a concept art of the early designs of the three Seekers. Although they're not the same, they do bear a lot of resemblance.

To me this has been a fun piece to look at & appreciate. I really do look forward to upcoming figures from Mastermind. One to mention would be Hexatron, which I have yet to purchase.

CYBERTRONIAN OPTIMUS PRIME

Arguably one of the best Optimus Prime molds that I have seen in a very long time is this Cybertronian Optimus Prime from the Transformers game War for Cybertron.

In vehicle mode Optimus Prime comes in a sleek & futuristic form. This mold is somewhat similar to a lot of concept car designs that you would see at an auto show.

Here's a close-up of Optimus.

Although this version of Optimus is only in deluxe class, the transformation process of this bot is rather complex I would say. There are many small steps that you would need to perform to get the transformation right. Unlike many of the other deluxe class toys, we probably would remember the transformation process for this Prime after numerous transformations. The design of the beam rifle is also quite cool. It is spring loaded, making the rifle turret flip out into a longer rifle for use in robot mode.

Given that this bot requires many complex steps for transformation, one difficult part is to transform it back into vehicle mode. It's a real pity that the toy makers didn't design this bot for the voyager line. I'm sure there would be much greater detail & articulation given to Optimus.

PROJECT ELITE GUARD - WINGS OF HONOR (ONGOING)

It was around the middle of 2013 that my dad decided to pay my sister a visit in Adelaide, Australia during her university break. I took advantage of that time frame to see what I could hunt on eBay Australia for my dad to bring home. So happened, during that time, there we a couple of great, & I mean great deals! However, due to baggage space restriction I decided to settle on ordering 2 items. The first item was a loose but complete supreme class Constructicon Devastator from the Transformers ROTF line. The second item was a deal too sweet to miss. It was the 2009 Wings of Honor BotCon box set.

A few months thereafter, I started doing my own research on "Wings of Honor" (WoH) & found out that it was actually the term for this particular Autobot insignia. The emblem consists of an Autobot logo, followed by 3 red wings at the side. Soon, I discovered that this insignia was worn by the Transformers Elite Guards (EG). Not long after that, the addiction to hunt down the members of the Elite Guards bearing the WoH insignia kicked in.

To make things easier, this major project is being split into three smaller parts. First I'll be looking at Transformers Animated, then Wings Universe & finally other aligned universes (currently only Transformers Prime).


1.0 Transformers Animated

Theoretically speaking, the EG first appeared in the Transformers Animated series, a series that I was never fond of, no offense to my readers. I just didn't like the anime-styled designs as I prefer the figures to look more robotic. However, my findings showed that the EG timeline was later on expanded to the Wings Universe line & has also spilled over to the latest Transformers Prime series.

In the midst of all this research, I dug up some of my TF Animated toys that I have just to take a closer look. Much to my amazement, I saw the huge WoH insignia sticking out like a sore thumb from Ultra Magnus! In addition I also had the jet twins Jetstorm & Jetfire. They too had the WoH logo on! Since I already had some head start, I decided to hunt down the EG one by one, to find the robots bearing the WoH emblem. I reckon this would be a mid to long term project to complete depending on how good of a deal I can find for each of the WoH bots, so stay tuned.

2.0 Wings Universe

The Wings Universe series is a documentation of events that occurred loosely around the early G1 cartoon continuity. The comics were published by Fun Publications. In the comics, this special task force was originally founded by Magnum, a member of the Autobot High Council to be a special strike force within the Autobot army.

Having said so, the hunt started to get a little complicated. As I look through the list of the EG members, not all toys are currently available. Also, not all EG members that are available in the market bear the WoH insignia. Based on comic pictures from IDW Publishing & Fun Publications the search just expanded into a whole new world. Hence, this would have to be a long term bot-hunt for me to get hold of the pieces required.

Take a look at what I mean below:

With the help of another blogger, the names of all 31 Elite Guard members are as follows:

From the pictures, you can see that there are a handful of familiar faces. The entire EG crew is actually made of a combination of robots from various past series such as Action Masters, G1, Robot Masters, Universe, Fall of Cybertron, Victory, TFCC, BotCon & a few that have yet been ever produced.

I actually researched further & found that there are numerous EG teams. They are as follows:

Main Officers -
Big Bang, Sentinel Major

Alpha Team [BotCon WoH box set] - COMPLETE
Thunder Clash (leader), Flak, Kup, Landshark

201st division Strike Team - WIP
Metalhawk (leader), Dion, Iron Fist, Over-Run

Special Ops Team (Combaticons) [Universe & Fall of Cybertron]  - COMPLETE
Onslaught (leader), Blast Off, Brawl, Swindle, Vortex

45th division Stealth Team [Action Masters] - WIP
Powerflash (leader), Rumbler, Sprocket, Tap-Out

116th division Artillery Team [Figure's don't exist yet] -
Halonix Maximus, Windsail, Clear Out, Paddock

Fast Attack Team [Victory] -
Ranger, Blacker, Braver, Laster

349th division Recon Team - 
Crosscut, Delta Seeker, Rest-Q, Roadfire

If you're interested to find out more, you can also look out for this:

3.0 Other Aligned Universes

i. TF Prime-

In the cartoon series, both Smokescreen & Ultra Magnus are depicted as being members of the Elite Guard while they were still on Cybertron. Smokescreen is seen with the WoH insignia on the shoulder (ep. 44) while Ultra Magnus reflects on the past military ways back in Cybertron as an EG (ep. 61).


I would like to share this ongoing project of mine with my readers as part of the fun in collecting them. In order to limit & simplify my current project, I have narrowed my search down to a few criteria:

i.    Complete the Transformers Animated EG line
ii.   Collect the other toys from various lines with the WoH insignia
iii.  Attempt to collect all the other 31 bots from the EG poster above

I'm assuming that not many people are keen on the Transformers Animated line. Hence I should be able to find some of the WoH easily. There are still plenty of Animated Sentinel Primes, Blurr & Jazz lying around in the market, so I'll keep these aside for now & hunt for the harder ones first. My main concern for now would be Animated EG Prowl & OP. TFCC's Dion was not in my list back then due to the rarity & price of the figure.

Here is the current status of the project:

Aug '13: 

AM-26 Arms Micron Smokescreen

Animated EG Bumblebee (Picked it up at dirt cheap price)

Animated TA-01 EG Optimus Prime (Going on clearance price at BBTS)

Sept '13:

Beast Hunter Smokescreen (VHTF alternate mold, found it at the airport! In the near future I plan to get the WoH decals from Reprolabels to revamp this figure)

Oct '13: 

TFCC Dion & Mini-Con Cop-Tur (Going at a great deal on eBay)
TA-05 Animated EG Prowl (By luck, I stumbled upon this at a local store. I calmly asked for a discount & the guy agreed. Double jackpot!)
Striked a deal with an old time seller for the following 2 items:
TA-30 Animated Blurr
TA-14 Animated Decepticon Shockwave

Nov '13:
Action Masters Over-Run (Loose but complete, minor restoration needed)
Animated Roadbuster Ultra Magnus (Going on clearance)

 

With that, stay tuned for future updates on this project. There will come a day where I will be able to snap a group picture of all my Elite Guards together!