Saturday 25 August 2012

The month of Kre-O Transformers continues

Today I went to pick up my pre-ordered copy of the new Fall of Cybertron game (which came with a free poster), and checked the post office to see if anything new I'd bought recently had arrived in the last week.
There was two boxes and one envelope relating to Transformers.


The envelope was just the recent issue of the Club newsletter... which didn't have anything in it even worth mentioning.


One box had a Japanese Translucent Dual Model Kit Optimus, which was a limited edition exclusive at Amazon.jp. Since it was a "bonus" item for the TF3 movie Bluray, it was able to be purchased (Amazon.jp doesn't sell toys outside of Japan).
I still only barely started the regular DMK Optimus, and now I have another one to do.

The other box had the title of this posting... Kre-O.
The preview wave of mini-changers (single-packed Kreons), which were released in America a couple weeks ago.
I ordered a set from BBTS, to be sure I get these in case they aren't released in Australia, so ended up with a lot of extras to sell/giveaway.


I sorted them in their "code" numbers, and opened one of each pack to verify that the code numbers matched up to what they were supposed to.
I found that the box of 32 had 6 of Spinister, Sunstorm, Scorponok and Waspinator, while only having 4 of Galvatron and Crankstart.
Hasbro must have a thing for even numbers because it would have been better to have 5 of each and two extras, instead of leaving us with only 4 sets and 8 extras. I can understand short-packing Crankstart, especially since it doesn't look like Gen1 Crankcase (if it is meant to be Crankcase).  Actually, Galvatron is the most significant character of the six, so why would that one be short-packed?
Seems a bit stupid to me.

Alt-modes, which mostly suck...

More of a "squint to see what it is meant to be". (click on image for full size)
Waspinator looks best in that picture, but side on it isn't too good.  Sunstorm from the top looks okay as well.
Crankstart is the only one that uses up all parts in alt-mode. Actually, Spinister was supposed to as well, but the placement of the gun on the instructions had it sticking out at an odd position.
On the instructions for Scorponok, it has one part on the tail drawn as being the wrong way around. It doesn't do anything to the alt-mode though, because the part can be either direction to make the hinge.

In Robot mode.

I started building them from the left (Spinister, Galvatron, Sunstorm), and was thinking that they had managed to design these in a way that they didn't have any pieces left over in robot mode (a bit like the big build sets that have very few left over bits when building the robot modes).
But as you can see, the other three have several bits left over.

From the side, to show the kibble...

The Crankstart instructions had two of those pieces attached (chest piece and the clear piece), but it covered up half the face, so I left it off... and it looks better with the painted chest showing anyway.

Actually, that's one of my biggest peeves of the Kreons (not just with these ones - but these have more parts to make this occur more often) - chest parts (to attach kibble to) that end up covering up the painted chest (which has the Gen1 robot details on it).
This is what I mean...

Five of the six were meant to have chest pieces on them, so I removed the other four (to show what is now wasted paint apps), and put on Crankstart's to show how the face is half covered up if you go by the instructions.
I want to point out though, that the CG image of Crankstart on the cover of the instructions (you can see it three pics above) has a black chest. The other CG images have all the other characters with their chest-pieces (except Sunstorm of course), but Crankstart does not, so perhaps the instructions wasn't meant to have it either.

Word of warning - just like with the Stealth Bumblebee set (in Series Two), you need to sand down the wrists of Scorponok, as they are two big to fit into the two grey cylinder, causing stress marks if you do.

All the Kreons I now have (still missing the small two sets from Series Two though)

And everything from Series Two together on the shelf, waiting for the last two sets of the series...

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