Ugh. I originally had this guy on pre-order, decided I didn't need him and cancelled, and then ordered him a second time, because the #FOMO is real, and I am addicted to plastic crack. Six months from now, I'll wonder why I ever spent money on this thing, but for now, it's new and shiny and exciting, and now I get to talk about him for a bit.

His retail box is not like other Voyager toys—it's completely windowless, and it's also oriented landscape-style (you can't see this until you open him, but he's actually laying sideways in the box). He came to me through Amazon and shipped in a SIOC outer shipping box, and is designated as TRA GEN ECOMM CAPSULE 4. There's also a lot of weirdness going on with the box artwork... he's displayed prominently on the front, but way in the background there are some robots standing on a Cybertronic tower that I cannot immediately identify. The illustrations are tiny, plus they're eclipsed in shadow, AND they're all colored purple, so I have no idea what I'm looking at. One guy on the side panel has Predaking-style wings.

So, Nacelle is a character with an odd history. At one point, Takara published a catalog photo of some planned 1985 Transformers, but a lot of them appeared in early prototype colors. Notably, Thrust appeared wearing a blue Thundercracker body but with the familiar red VTOL wings. This robot was retroactively named Nacelle and made a separate character from Thrust. However, it's also being claimed now that Nacelle is one of the generic background characters from the G1 "More Than Meets the Eye" pilot episode, the fourth and most well-hidden member of the "welcoming committee" that ambushes Wheeljack and Bumblebee en route to Iacon. He appears on screen rather smallish, and he's largely hidden by Hotlink's leg, so it's *possible* he's got red parts and Thrust wings and we just can't see any of that. But, it's far more likely he's just another Decepticon built exactly like the others in the scene. I don't see how he can be a year-one Starscream body type as well as a year-two Thrust body type, unless he got refitted at some point..

It's also not a great name for the character, regardless of what form he takes. He doesn't have engines that are separate from his body, so he has no nacelles. He's like Camshaft, who transforms into a car with no camshaft.

So, anyway. It's been a long time since I've bought a Siege-era Decepticon jet. Compared to the Earthrise style jets, I'd forgotten how packed full of greeblies the sculpt is (I will never not be reminded of Underbase Starscream), as well as how badly they were forced to bork the shoulder intakes and the main wings in order to incorporate the tetrajet mode. I understand *why* they used the Siege toy to represent the character (because he appears on Cybertron in the cartoon, so he would have a Cybertronic vehicle form), but it feels like a step backwards to be getting a toy with 2019-era engineering in 2023.

So he's mostly a deep, rich blue in color, with white as a secondary color (used for the toes, shins, forearms and fists, air intakes, and upper torso). He's got red upper legs, a red-painted face (shades of Tracks), and the little Studio OX fans in his chest are bright yellow. His cockpit is translucent orange and so are his eyes, but until you actually hold him up to a light source so that the light piping can function properly, they read as brown. Also, his guns are equal parts white, red, and blue, and when I see them, all I can think of is Bomb Pops.

Transformation is the same convoluted mess that it was during Siege, with the backpack doing the brunt of the work. Same issues as usual that are endemic to this mold, like the annoying tendency for the entire front chest panel to pop off randomly. I fixed like six of these toys with metal pins, back in the day, and now I guess I'm gonna need to do another one.

Jet mode is pretty much solid blue, with a white frame around the square cockpit as well as a white top section. No stripes, no battle damage, no Decepticon symbols. The tasty little Bomb Pops can mount under the wings, hiding the white part, which almost makes them look like normal red-colored launchers that fire blue-colored missiles (note: missiles do not actually shoot). It's a cleaner deco than we tended to get during Siege, but it feels like he's missing some color... he really needs a painted nosecone or some wing stripes or something.

There's nothing in his instructions about blast effect compatibility or plugging in any C.O.M.B.A.T. gear. This is a Legacy: Evolution toy. We don't do such silly things here. (No Evo-Fusion callouts on the packaging, though, either.)

So, I really like the generic Decepticon jets (there are at least 20 of them documented), and it's my hope we continue to get toys for them. So I kind of had to support Nacelle, and since we already got an official Hotlink toy in 2020, perhaps one day in the future we'll get tetrajet versions of Bitstream and Sunstorm to join them. This guy was $34.99 on Amazon and is still available as of this writing.

Zob (da rules are da rules, and da facts are da facts)

On Thursday, August 31, 2023 at 11:17:17 PM UTC+1, Zobovor wrote:
> So, Nacelle is a character with an odd history. At one point, Takara published a catalog photo of some planned 1985 Transformers, but a lot of them appeared in early prototype colors. Notably, Thrust appeared wearing a blue Thundercracker body but with the familiar red VTOL wings. This robot was retroactively named Nacelle and made a separate character from Thrust. However, it's also being claimed now that Nacelle is one of the generic background characters from the G1 "More Than Meets the Eye" pilot episode, the fourth and most well-hidden member of the "welcoming committee" that ambushes Wheeljack and Bumblebee en route to Iacon. He appears on screen rather smallish, and he's largely hidden by Hotlink's leg, so it's *possible* he's got red parts and Thrust wings and we just can't see any of that. But, it's far more likely he's just another Decepticon built exactly like the others in the scene. I don't see how he can be a year-one Starscream body type as well as a year-two Thrust body type, unless he got refitted at some point.

Oh, I've been trying to do some research on canon(-ish) characters who were left on Cybertron after the Ark and Nemesis left, so this is cool to read. I knew Nacelle was one of the names from the welcome committee, but I didn't know the catalogue stuff. I take it the catalogue character was named first?

If we're just applying retroactive names anyway, I'd be OK to go with the idea that this barely seen figure was a different body type than the others but happened to hang out with that team. But I'd also be OK with having a completely different character created for the spot instead. And honestly, my complaint is that Nacelle would be a great feminine name, so why didn't we retroactively decide it was a female Decepticon, too? (These days, I find that I'm wanting much more gender parity in my G1 TFs. We seem to be adding so many characters to that continuity now, they may as well use them to redress the balance...)

> So, anyway. It's been a long time since I've bought a Siege-era Decepticon jet. Compared to the Earthrise style jets, I'd forgotten how packed full of greeblies the sculpt is (I will never not be reminded of Underbase Starscream), as well as how badly they were forced to bork the shoulder intakes and the main wings in order to incorporate the tetrajet mode. I understand *why* they used the Siege toy to represent the character (because he appears on Cybertron in the cartoon, so he would have a Cybertronic vehicle form), but it feels like a step backwards to be getting a toy with 2019-era engineering in 2023.

Isn't there a decent tetrajet toy yet? I always liked the Cybertronian mode design, so this is disappointing.

Sidenote: I notice you don't use the term 'seeker'. Personal preference?

>
> So, I really like the generic Decepticon jets (there are at least 20 of them documented), and it's my hope we continue to get toys for them. So I kind of had to support Nacelle, and since we already got an official Hotlink toy in 2020, perhaps one day in the future we'll get tetrajet versions of Bitstream and Sunstorm to join them. This guy was $34.99 on Amazon and is still available as of this writing.
>

That feels like such a high price point for a character that obscure, but the way the toys are marketed these days, I'm probably more surprised that the other guys you mentioned haven't got toys yet. Looking at a picture of the toy in question, I'm disappointed by how mundane the colour scheme feels.... There are some really cool colour schemes in those generics--even Nacelle seems to be a much darker blue--so this is a bit of a wasted opportunity if you ask me.

Velvet Glove (Nobody did ask me; probably because I claim not to collect toys...)

On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 1:19:44 PM UTC-6, Velvet Glove wrote:

> Oh, I've been trying to do some research on canon(-ish) characters who were left on Cybertron after the Ark and Nemesis left, so this is cool to read. I knew Nacelle was one of the names from the welcome committee, but I didn't know the catalogue stuff. I take it the catalogue character was named first?

I think the BotCon toy was the first time the name Nacelle was used for the character, applied retroactively to both the early Thrust prototype and then, inexplicably, the blue character in the cartoon who was not designed like Thrust.
> And honestly, my complaint is that Nacelle would be a great feminine name, so why didn't we retroactively decide it was a female Decepticon, too?

It does seem like a female-sounding name, but I wonder how much of that is the fact that it rhymes with "Michelle." (Transformers are aliens, and yet they are so incredibly human-like, even to the point where their names follow some of the same naming conventions of American English; i.e, female names typically end in "a" such as Chromia, Elita, Strika, Rosanna...)

> Isn't there a decent tetrajet toy yet? I always liked the Cybertronian mode design, so this is disappointing.

The one from Siege is arguably the best one we've gotten. Impossible Toys attempted an unofficial design, but they really wrecked the robot modes in the doing.
> Sidenote: I notice you don't use the term 'seeker'. Personal preference?

I will begrudgingly refer to the Decepticon jets as "seekers" because most people know what that means, and it's also a term that's been adopted and used by Hasbro staff (in livestreams and such, if not as an actual product trademark). But, I'm not in the habit of doing so.

I hated that term it for years because it was basically a fan-invented term.. I disliked it in the same way I disliked "gestalt" as a term to describe the combiner teams. There's nothing intuitive about it. (For every person who uses the term gestalt, there has been a person asking "what's a gestalt?" and then the conversation is derailed because they have to stop and explain this totally non-intuitive term.) I realize that every little fandom has its jargon and abbreviations and such, but I have always tried to make my writing accessible because somebody, somewhere, is going to stumble into the fandom and a post of mine might be the first thing they see. And it will drive them away if my writing is cluttered with fan jargon (FFOD may be AKOM, but it's still better than TGWLP, YMMV).

I won't even abbreviate "Transformers" as "TFs," not necessarily because it's hard to figure out, but because I believe in clarity of communication.

> That feels like such a high price point for a character that obscure

I feel like there's been a critical shift in the threshhold of both how much consumers are willing to pay for toys like these, but also how much Hasbro is willing to charge. The pandemic kind of permanently affected the toy industry in a weird way, because the cost of container ships has skyrocketed (those big freight boats you see pictures of with stacks of multi-colored metal trailers on them) which means that it costs companies like Hasbro more than ever just to get toys manufactured and shipped from overseas. They were willing to weather the storm and absorb the extra cost for a while, but when it was clear it was a permanent change, they were basically forced to pass the extra expense onto the consumers. And now we have Titan-class toys that cost $200 USD instead of $150.

It used to be that a ten-dollar toy was pretty easy to gobble up here and there if you wanted extras, but in modern times they've been producing a lot of $30 armybuilders. That would have been unthinkable during the Beast Wars days (can you imagine buying ten Optimal Optimus toys?!) but now I've got multiple Voyager-class Sweep toys. I don't like how expensive collecting has become, but luckily the list of what I want and need continues to dwindle (as they continue to release the definitive new versions of characters), so it's a race to see what happens first—either I will get priced out of collecting, or I will stop collecting because I feel like my collections are largely complete.

We're at a point with Transformers, for example, where the question "which characters need a Hasbro toy?" can no longer be answered by the old standby answers like Arcee, Unicron, Alpha Trion, etc. You have to dig really deep now to come up with named characters of any degree of importance. Beta would be somewhere on the top of my list at this stage. Maybe the Decepticon cars from "Make Tracks." NUL-A. Allana from "Sea Change." B.O.T., perhaps. These are all incredibly unimportant characters, and it really is a testament to how far we've come that I can't think of anybody more notable.

> I'm probably more surprised that the other guys you mentioned haven't got toys yet.

I'm confident they're on the "to-do" list. I like and respect the current Transformers team at Hasbro a LOT, and they bring a passion and energy to the brand that I think is shared with a lot of the fans. They want to see some of these characters finally get toys as much as we do, I think.

> I'm disappointed by how mundane the colour scheme feels... There are some really cool colour schemes in those generics--even Nacelle seems to be a much darker blue--so this is a bit of a wasted opportunity if you ask me.

The new Nacelle toy seems to take its cues from the BotCoy toy from 2015 and not the G1 cartoon, which, as you say, he appears in a much darker shade of blue.

> Velvet Glove (Nobody did ask me; probably because I claim not to collect toys...)

Hey, it's fun to discuss these things even with a supposed non-collector. Your insight is most welcome!

Zob (all the wall outlets in my living room have spontaneously stopped working and I have no idea why)

On Saturday, September 2, 2023 at 12:21:59 AM UTC+1, Zobovor wrote:
> > And honestly, my complaint is that Nacelle would be a great feminine name, so why didn't we retroactively decide it was a female Decepticon, too?
> It does seem like a female-sounding name, but I wonder how much of that is the fact that it rhymes with "Michelle." (Transformers are aliens, and yet they are so incredibly human-like, even to the point where their names follow some of the same naming conventions of American English; i.e, female names typically end in "a" such as Chromia, Elita, Strika, Rosanna...)

Not just Michelle, but Danielle, Estelle, Isabelle, Gabrielle, Giselle.... -elle is a really common feminine ending in the western world to the point that it does sound genuinely weird when it comes up in a male name. I can't think of any male name ending in -elle (maybe there's a Tyrelle out there somewhere). As you say, Transformers are aliens so their names, even anglicised versions of their names don't have to follow gender conventions, but just as it would be weird if one of the -us names was given to a girl, it's weird when a name with a feminine ending is given to a guy.

Also, just to be really contrarian, I much prefer female transformers with names that would fit either gender.

> > Sidenote: I notice you don't use the term 'seeker'. Personal preference?
> I will begrudgingly refer to the Decepticon jets as "seekers" because most people know what that means, and it's also a term that's been adopted and used by Hasbro staff (in livestreams and such, if not as an actual product trademark). But, I'm not in the habit of doing so.
>
> I hated that term it for years because it was basically a fan-invented term. I disliked it in the same way I disliked "gestalt" as a term to describe the combiner teams. There's nothing intuitive about it. (For every person who uses the term gestalt, there has been a person asking "what's a gestalt?" and then the conversation is derailed because they have to stop and explain this totally non-intuitive term.) I realize that every little fandom has its jargon and abbreviations and such, but I have always tried to make my writing accessible because somebody, somewhere, is going to stumble into the fandom and a post of mine might be the first thing they see. And it will drive them away if my writing is cluttered with fan jargon (FFOD may be AKOM, but it's still better than TGWLP, YMMV).

I figured, and although seeker doesn't bother me and I'll use it myself when it's handy, I think you've got a very valid point. I don't think femme or femmebot is actually canon yet, but I can't bear that term for female transformers, since for me it hearkens back to a very different era of sci-fi which is best forgotten. I'm not a big fan of gestalt either... combiners is much more intuitive. One of the issues I have these days is that so much fanfiction uses terminology from modern G1 comics which I am not familiar with and which describe a societal structure we never saw in the cartoon (or earlier comics). At least I think it's from modern G1 stuff... for all I know, it might be fanon terms that have taken off.

Basically, it's a really tricky balancing act to embrace the retroactive terms that do help simplify your writing while still making it accessible to somebody who isn't familiar with the niche those terms come from.

>
> I feel like there's been a critical shift in the threshhold of both how much consumers are willing to pay for toys like these, but also how much Hasbro is willing to charge. The pandemic kind of permanently affected the toy industry in a weird way, because the cost of container ships has skyrocketed (those big freight boats you see pictures of with stacks of multi-colored metal trailers on them) which means that it costs companies like Hasbro more than ever just to get toys manufactured and shipped from overseas. They were willing to weather the storm and absorb the extra cost for a while, but when it was clear it was a permanent change, they were basically forced to pass the extra expense onto the consumers. And now we have Titan-class toys that cost $200 USD instead of $150.
>
> It used to be that a ten-dollar toy was pretty easy to gobble up here and there if you wanted extras, but in modern times they've been producing a lot of $30 armybuilders. That would have been unthinkable during the Beast Wars days (can you imagine buying ten Optimal Optimus toys?!) but now I've got multiple Voyager-class Sweep toys. I don't like how expensive collecting has become, but luckily the list of what I want and need continues to dwindle (as they continue to release the definitive new versions of characters), so it's a race to see what happens first—either I will get priced out of collecting, or I will stop collecting because I feel like my collections are largely complete.

Yeah... I'm currently having a vague dilemma over Ultra Magnus, who is technically part of my 'core 5' along Hot Rod/Rodimus, Kup, Arcee and Springer..... but he's going to be so damned expensive and large... but if I don't buy him, I'll never feel like I've got the set. Current plan is to watch out for a Black Friday or January sales kind of deal. At least Springer, whenever he's released, will be cheaper, right?

> We're at a point with Transformers, for example, where the question "which characters need a Hasbro toy?" can no longer be answered by the old standby answers like Arcee, Unicron, Alpha Trion, etc. You have to dig really deep now to come up with named characters of any degree of importance. Beta would be somewhere on the top of my list at this stage. Maybe the Decepticon cars from "Make Tracks." NUL-A. Allana from "Sea Change." B.O.T., perhaps. These are all incredibly unimportant characters, and it really is a testament to how far we've come that I can't think of anybody more notable.

I both want and dread a Beta toy. She's got to be coming, surely. Allana from Sea Change would be hysterical, but honestly, I'd kind of love to see a gondola transformer. She's not one I'd buy, but I'd like to see it!

Velvet Glove (absolutely a non-collector. Yep.)

On Thursday, August 31, 2023 at 6:17:17 PM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:
> So, Nacelle is a character with an odd history. At one point, Takara published a catalog photo of some planned 1985 Transformers, but a lot of them appeared in early prototype colors. Notably, Thrust appeared wearing a blue Thundercracker body but with the familiar red VTOL wings. This robot was retroactively named Nacelle and made a separate character from Thrust. However, it's also being claimed now that Nacelle is one of the generic background characters from the G1 "More Than Meets the Eye" pilot episode, the fourth and most well-hidden member of the "welcoming committee" that ambushes Wheeljack and Bumblebee en route to Iacon. He appears on screen rather smallish, and he's largely hidden by Hotlink's leg, so it's *possible* he's got red parts and Thrust wings and we just can't see any of that. But, it's far more likely he's just another Decepticon built exactly like the others in the scene. I don't see how he can be a year-one Starscream body type as well as a year-two Thrust body type, unless he got refitted at some point.
the Welcoming Committee, Rainmakers (specifically Acid Storm) and Redwing have such weird histories, it's kind of distracting.

> It's also not a great name for the character, regardless of what form he takes. He doesn't have engines that are separate from his body, so he has no nacelles. He's like Camshaft, who transforms into a car with no camshaft.

It's probably just because "Hey he turns into a plane therefore we must name him after a plane thing, it might not make sense but at least we're getting that trademark in."

> Transformation is the same convoluted mess that it was during Siege, with the backpack doing the brunt of the work. Same issues as usual that are endemic to this mold, like the annoying tendency for the entire front chest panel to pop off randomly. I fixed like six of these toys with metal pins, back in the day, and now I guess I'm gonna need to do another one.

I'm stunned that they haven't figured out the formula by now (they've used the mold thirteen times now)

> Jet mode is pretty much solid blue, with a white frame around the square cockpit as well as a white top section. No stripes, no battle damage, no Decepticon symbols. The tasty little Bomb Pops can mount under the wings, hiding the white part, which almost makes them look like normal red-colored launchers that fire blue-colored missiles (note: missiles do not actually shoot). It's a cleaner deco than we tended to get during Siege, but it feels like he's missing some color... he really needs a painted nosecone or some wing stripes or something.

I wonder how good he looks next to Siege Hotlink.

> So, I really like the generic Decepticon jets (there are at least 20 of them documented), and it's my hope we continue to get toys for them. So I kind of had to support Nacelle, and since we already got an official Hotlink toy in 2020, perhaps one day in the future we'll get Tetrajet versions of Bitstream and Sunstorm to join them. This guy was $34.99 on Amazon and is still available as of this writing.

Can't wait for Legacy Voyager class Blast, Wheezing Arrow, Avia, Blazewake, Blackout and Animation Error series Starscream-coloured Skywarp

Swivelbot (I can actually see them making an Animation Error series and that scares me)

On Saturday, September 2, 2023 at 1:59:28 PM UTC-4, Swivelbot wrote:
> On Thursday, August 31, 2023 at 6:17:17 PM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:
>
> > So, Nacelle is a character with an odd history. At one point, Takara published a catalog photo of some planned 1985 Transformers, but a lot of them appeared in early prototype colors. Notably, Thrust appeared wearing a blue Thundercracker body but with the familiar red VTOL wings. This robot was retroactively named Nacelle and made a separate character from Thrust. However, it's also being claimed now that Nacelle is one of the generic background characters from the G1 "More Than Meets the Eye" pilot episode, the fourth and most well-hidden member of the "welcoming committee" that ambushes Wheeljack and Bumblebee en route to Iacon. He appears on screen rather smallish, and he's largely hidden by Hotlink's leg, so it's *possible* he's got red parts and Thrust wings and we just can't see any of that. But, it's far more likely he's just another Decepticon built exactly like the others in the scene. I don't see how he can be a year-one Starscream body type as well as a year-two Thrust body type, unless he got refitted at some point.
> the Welcoming Committee, Rainmakers (specifically Acid Storm) and Redwing have such weird histories, it's kind of distracting.
> > It's also not a great name for the character, regardless of what form he takes. He doesn't have engines that are separate from his body, so he has no nacelles. He's like Camshaft, who transforms into a car with no camshaft.
> It's probably just because "Hey he turns into a plane therefore we must name him after a plane thing, it might not make sense but at least we're getting that trademark in."
> > Transformation is the same convoluted mess that it was during Siege, with the backpack doing the brunt of the work. Same issues as usual that are endemic to this mold, like the annoying tendency for the entire front chest panel to pop off randomly. I fixed like six of these toys with metal pins, back in the day, and now I guess I'm gonna need to do another one.
> I'm stunned that they haven't figured out the formula by now (they've used the mold thirteen times now)
> > Jet mode is pretty much solid blue, with a white frame around the square cockpit as well as a white top section. No stripes, no battle damage, no Decepticon symbols. The tasty little Bomb Pops can mount under the wings, hiding the white part, which almost makes them look like normal red-colored launchers that fire blue-colored missiles (note: missiles do not actually shoot). It's a cleaner deco than we tended to get during Siege, but it feels like he's missing some color... he really needs a painted nosecone or some wing stripes or something.
> I wonder how good he looks next to Siege Hotlink.
>
> > So, I really like the generic Decepticon jets (there are at least 20 of them documented), and it's my hope we continue to get toys for them. So I kind of had to support Nacelle, and since we already got an official Hotlink toy in 2020, perhaps one day in the future we'll get Tetrajet versions of Bitstream and Sunstorm to join them. This guy was $34.99 on Amazon and is still available as of this writing.
>
> Can't wait for Legacy Voyager class Blast, Wheezing Arrow, Avia, Blazewake, Blackout and Animation Error series Starscream-coloured Skywarp
>
> Swivelbot (I can actually see them making an Animation Error series and that scares me)

In other news, Seibertron.com is reporting that numerous fans are finding some sort of mold growth on their Nacelles (https://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/fans-reporting-fungal-growth-on-amazon-exclusive-nacelle-figure/47875/)

As if the Great Cheapening, hollow limbs, and the dreaded GPS weren't enough, we now have a new worry to add to our Lexicon (and TFWiki).

On Saturday, September 2, 2023 at 12:15:54 PM UTC-6, Codigo Postal wrote:

> In other news, Seibertron.com is reporting that numerous fans are finding some sort of mold growth on their Nacelles (https://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/fans-reporting-fungal-growth-on-amazon-exclusive-nacelle-figure/47875/)

Yikes, it's real-life cosmic rust! Yuck!

Zob (mine does not seem to suffer from this problem, at least for the moment)

On Saturday, September 2, 2023 at 5:46:01 AM UTC-6, Velvet Glove wrote:
> Also, just to be really contrarian, I much prefer female transformers with names that would fit either gender.

Agreed! I think both genders should get cool G.I. Joe-style code names, not just the dudes.

> I figured, and although seeker doesn't bother me and I'll use it myself when it's handy, I think you've got a very valid point. I don't think femme or femmebot is actually canon yet, but I can't bear that term for female transformers, since for me it hearkens back to a very different era of sci-fi which is best forgotten. I'm not a big fan of gestalt either... combiners is much more intuitive.

I feel like "femmebot" fell out of fashion when it was used in one of the Austin Powers movies, though I could be mistaken. And the problem I have with "gestalt" is that it doesn't really apply to combiner robots specifically. It could just as easily describe Reflector or Dreadwing or any of the Headmasters. But, when people say "gestalt" what they really mean is "five- or six-member combiner," so they should really just say that.

> One of the issues I have these days is that so much fanfiction uses terminology from modern G1 comics which I am not familiar with and which describe a societal structure we never saw in the cartoon (or earlier comics). At least I think it's from modern G1 stuff... for all I know, it might be fanon terms that have taken off.

It's hard to tell. I guess every bit of terminology was unofficial, until it wasn't. I suppose it's a little gatekeepish to tell fan fiction writers "you can't call it that, you have to call it this," but at the same time, a lot of the willy-nilly mix-and-match I see suggests a strong unfamiliarity with the source material. And if you don't know the material, are you actually a fan? And if you're not really a fan, then why are you writing... y'know... fan fiction?

Fun fact: In-universe, the cartoon didn't even use the term "Transformers" to describe Autobots and Decepticons collectively until "The Autobot Run" in season two. So, if we'd only ever gotten a single season, you just know there would be G1 pundits going, "Well, teeeeeeechnically they didn't call themselves Transformers in the show—that was only in the theme song and Hasbro toy packaging."

> Basically, it's a really tricky balancing act to embrace the retroactive terms that do help simplify your writing while still making it accessible to somebody who isn't familiar with the niche those terms come from.

Believe me, I get it. After Beast Machines came out, suddenly everybody was using the term "reformatting" to describe any time a Transformer got a new body (e.g., "G1 Megatron was reformatted into Galvatron") and it drove me nuts because it described a very specific process of Maximals with organic beast modes getting turned into technorganic life by the Oracle. But it kind of contaminated the fandom jargon, to the point where I think it was even used on the DVD cover for The Transformers: the Movie at one point.

> Yeah... I'm currently having a vague dilemma over Ultra Magnus, who is technically part of my 'core 5' along Hot Rod/Rodimus, Kup, Arcee and Springer.... but he's going to be so damned expensive and large... but if I don't buy him, I'll never feel like I've got the set. Current plan is to watch out for a Black Friday or January sales kind of deal. At least Springer, whenever he's released, will be cheaper, right?

The good news about Ultra Magnus is that with the Commander-class toy coming out, lots of people will be selling off their old ones. So if you wanted, say, the Siege or Kingdom versions of Magnus, you could probably get them for a song. Siege has a Cybertronic vehicle mode and Kingdom has the Earth mode, and the robot mode for the Kingdom toy is honestly pretty great.

We don't know what the new Springer is going to look like yet. But, he's scheduled to be a Leader-class toy, which will run you around $55 USD these days. I imagine if the new Springer is significantly superior to the Siege version, that will drive the aftermarket pricing down on the Siege toy. Just a thought!

Zob (watered my lawn tonight and did not get yelled at, which is always nice)

> > Yeah... I'm currently having a vague dilemma over Ultra Magnus, who is technically part of my 'core 5' along Hot Rod/Rodimus, Kup, Arcee and Springer.... but he's going to be so damned expensive and large... but if I don't buy him, I'll never feel like I've got the set. Current plan is to watch out for a Black Friday or January sales kind of deal. At least Springer, whenever he's released, will be cheaper, right?
> The good news about Ultra Magnus is that with the Commander-class toy coming out, lots of people will be selling off their old ones. So if you wanted, say, the Siege or Kingdom versions of Magnus, you could probably get them for a song. Siege has a Cybertronic vehicle mode and Kingdom has the Earth mode, and the robot mode for the Kingdom toy is honestly pretty great.
>

I'll put in a plug for the BPF reproduction of Siege Ultra Magnus. They removed the paint splatter, filled the gaps in the thighs and pauldrons, extended the legs to improve the proportions, and fixed the ankle tilt to improve range of motion. Quality in hand feels slightly better than the actual Siege toy, to me. The pegs are still 5mm and compatible with all the regular accessories from the modern line. This is my go-to Magnus. If you're going for Siege, you can't go wrong with BPF.

Best of all, it's available for about $28 online (https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805149298692.html).

Review/thread: https://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/siege-ultra-magnus-ko-slight-modifications.1199701/

On Monday, September 4, 2023 at 2:51:41 AM UTC+1, Zobovor wrote:
> Fun fact: In-universe, the cartoon didn't even use the term "Transformers" to describe Autobots and Decepticons collectively until "The Autobot Run" in season two. So, if we'd only ever gotten a single season, you just know there would be G1 pundits going, "Well, teeeeeeechnically they didn't call themselves Transformers in the show—that was only in the theme song and Hasbro toy packaging."

Ahahaha. I used "transformers" in dialogue recently and I remember pausing to think: "They did call themselves that, right?"

> Believe me, I get it. After Beast Machines came out, suddenly everybody was using the term "reformatting" to describe any time a Transformer got a new body (e.g., "G1 Megatron was reformatted into Galvatron") and it drove me nuts because it described a very specific process of Maximals with organic beast modes getting turned into technorganic life by the Oracle. But it kind of contaminated the fandom jargon, to the point where I think it was even used on the DVD cover for The Transformers: the Movie at one point.

I had no idea it came from Beast Machines! I always assumed it was just a fandom convention. Again, it's one of those things that is usually intuitive in context, but it's not something that I've ever felt was the 'technical' term.

> The good news about Ultra Magnus is that with the Commander-class toy coming out, lots of people will be selling off their old ones. So if you wanted, say, the Siege or Kingdom versions of Magnus, you could probably get them for a song. Siege has a Cybertronic vehicle mode and Kingdom has the Earth mode, and the robot mode for the Kingdom toy is honestly pretty great.
>

This is a really good point--as is the KO link Codigo posted below (which does work in the UK.) I've been focused on the Studio Series because the characters will all look consistent with each other (as well as their cartoon appearances), but it's not like I care about the blast effects or getting another matrix. I do like the fact that the Studio Series version can hold (some of) the other characters in vehicle mode, but I'm not sure I like it enough to spend £80 on it if I could get a decent Ultra Magnus for £25.

I'll see how the rest of the year goes anyway.

> We don't know what the new Springer is going to look like yet. But, he's scheduled to be a Leader-class toy, which will run you around $55 USD these days. I imagine if the new Springer is significantly superior to the Siege version, that will drive the aftermarket pricing down on the Siege toy. Just a thought!

Suffice to say, I am much readier to splash out on Springer than I am Ultra Magnus, but if I don't like how the new version looks, I'll remember your tip about the Siege version!

Velvet Glove (who keeps hearing that Studio Series Blurr is a pegwarmer and really needs to figure out where her nearest brick and mortar store selling Transformers is)

On Tuesday, September 5, 2023 at 7:13:48 AM UTC-4, Velvet Glove wrote:
> Velvet Glove (who keeps hearing that Studio Series Blurr is a pegwarmer and really needs to figure out where her nearest brick and mortar store selling Transformers is)
It's funny, before I started collecting TFs (literally just this year) I would see Blurr at my Walmart pretty frequently. Of course once I actively looked for him he was ancient history. I ended up ordering him online. He has a "handsome Squidward" face, but other than that he's a nice enough figure so I don't really get why he pegwarmed so.

Anyway...Nacelle. He looks nice enough (I really like his colors), but I also kind of hate the Siege seeker mode so I passed. If he was available in the Earthrise mold, I probably would have bit. The seeker I really want to see again is Sunstorm; he was the original "extra" seeker and it feels like he hasn't had a toy in a long time. I'd be first in line for an Earthrise style Sunstorm. I also recently picked up Cloudcover and I have to say, he (she?) is gorgeous.

Nacelle is a confirmed "he" by the way. He was in the last G1 comic (IDW's 2019 reboot) and he ended up getting pulled apart by Windcharger and messed up pretty bad. Nova Storm is your girl though if you want a "new" female seeker assigned to a formerly nothing character. (She has a pretty big role in that same comic, which I won't spoil.)

Anyway, regarding terminology: I have zero problem with "seeker" and in fact I quite like it. I don't like "skyraider" (despite my handle), because to me that name is *too* good and better used as a character's actual name. I always hated "gestalt" and thought someone was trying to add a layer pretentiousness to the proceedings that didn't need to be there; "combiner" was always right there and is really much better. As for "reformatting", that's an actual word that was not invented by Transformers (let alone Beast Machines) so I see nothing wrong with describing Megatron's remaking into Galvatron as such.

I agree that the formal name for the race is "Cybertronians" and that's what they largely refer to themselves as in my view, and "Transformer" is something the galaxy at large refers to them as. So in-universe, it's informal but still valid. Just as our formal species name is "human" but we also refer to ourselves as people, "Man"(perjorative), etc.

And it's funny you guys mentioned fanfic writers mixing and matching terms including those from newer continuities. Because for the last year or so, I've been trying to finish up a fanfic I was working on that *could* fit into the good old cartoon continuity (early Season 2 to be exact) but also takes a lot of inspiration from the aforementioned 2019 comic continuity. For example, the cassettes feature heavily and I use the term "infiltration troopers" from that comic to describe them a few times. I've just been so busy....but maybe this conversation (along with Velvet Glove's recent fanfic output!) will inspire me to get my ass in gear here a little, lol!

On Saturday, September 2, 2023 at 12:15:54 PM UTC-6, Codigo Postal wrote:

> As if the Great Cheapening, hollow limbs, and the dreaded GPS weren't enough, we now have a new worry to add to our Lexicon (and TFWiki).

Well, it seems that Hasbro Pulse is now seeing fit to cancel numerous pre-orders for Nacelle, and I can't help but think it's connected to the fungal spore issue that was widely reported. You can still order the toy through Amazon as of this writing, but given that Hasbro Pulse has *never* had an issue with the widespread cancellation of pre-orders before, unlike some online retailers (coughTargetcough), it seems likely they decided their small quantity of stock was a safety issue and decided to just cancel orders outright rather than risk further spreading the spores, and thus the hate plague, around to the far corners of the Earth.

It's too late, of course. We're all infected already. We just don't know it yet.

See, this is what happens when you complain to Hasbro, folks. Probably, I'm guessing, a bunch of people wrote into Hasbro complaining about their infected Transformers, thinking perhaps Hasbro would send them a free toy for their troubles. But, instead, it looks like they decided to just stop sending out Nacelle to people, and it probably wasn't just due to one or two people complaining about the fungus among us, the mold they were sold, the spores they abhor. So, way to ruin it for everybody, guys!

Zob (♫ Nacelle, oh well, la moisissure et le savon vont bien ensemble ♪)