Not much to say here. I went to Botcon and he sold out in the first 20 minutes. I regretted not getting him, so I ordered him online as soon as I got home.

I don’t order toys online much these days, but boy am I glad I did in this case.

And with this video, I prove that I really am out of my mind. After the jump you can see the commercial I parodied in the video. Special thanks to Zac Shipley for help with the music for the parody portion and lending his voice for the chorus!

Show Notes after the jump!

Autobot Whirl vs Bludgeon 2-pack Bio:

For the first time on Earth, two masters of the ultimate fighting art – Metallikato – face off in a battle to the very end. Wielding ancient blades, handed down through generations of warriors, Autobot Whirl and Decepticon Bludgeon circle one another, every sensor alert for the slightest opening. Though they move slowly and deliberately now, once they strike, the battle will be far too fast for the human eye to see. It will be decided in a matter of microseconds by flashing blades powered by centuries of training.

Decepticon Bludgeon (Voyager Class) Bio:

Decepticon Bludgeon was nearly destroyed by a fight with the Metallikato master Autobot Whirl. Forced to retreat and hide, he scanned a new vehicle mode and disappeared in to the Southeast Asian Jungle. He is desperate to prove himself against an Autobot, however, so he has caused just enough chaos locally to attract the attention of Ironhide. Now he lies in wait for the Autobot, ready to spring his trap and destroy his victim in an instant.

Side note: When pushing the torso down to the hips during the transformation, make sure it clicks, locking in place. That was an issue during the video that I didn’t realize until part way through.

Many of the images shown during the video came from this site on Bludgeon.

There was a lot of information on this topic that didn’t make it into the video, so feel free to ask questions and check out the sites I referenced.

And now for something completely different.

PowetToys Collectors Edition is a new spin-off series to the PowetToys reviews. I wanted an educational video series on the industry and collecting as a whole. This is my attempt in this endeavor. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Links:
ITWTransTech Pad Printing 101

PowetToys – MOTUC He-Man and Beastman

Show Notes are after the jump!

Original MOTUC He-Man Bio:

HE-MAN
Most Powerful Man in the Universe
Real Name: Adam of the House of Randor
A direct descendent of the legendary King Grayskull
Prince Adam of Eternia was chosen to protect his ancestor’s Power Sword from evil. At first he used a techno vest with a built-in force field to fight evil, but Adam has since learned to combine both halves of the Power Sword, using it to channel the energy of the Elders and become He-Man – the most powerful man in the universe! He guards the safety of all Eternia along side the heroic Masters of the Universe.

Reissue MOTUC He-Man Bio

HE-MAN
Most Powerful Man in the Universe
Real Name: Adam of the House of Randor
A direct descendent of the legendary King Grayskull,
Prince Adam of Eternia was chosen to protect his ancestor’s Power Sword from evil. At first he used a techno-vest with a built-in force field to fight evil, but Adam has since learned to combine both halves of the Power Sword, using it to channel the energy of the Elders to become He-Man – the most powerful man in the universe! He guards the safety of all Eternia along side the heroic Masters of the Universe.

MOTUC Faker Bio:

FAKER
Evil Robot of Skeletor
Real Name: N/A
Originally built by Man-At-Arms to cover for He-Man when Prince Adam is needed, Faker was abandoned in the royal junkyard after his first mission and salvaged by the evil warrior Tri-klops. At the request of Skeletor, Faker was reprogrammed to replace He-Man and convince the people of Eternia that He-Man had betrayed King Randor and turned to evil.

Check out ItsAllTrue.net for a great resource of the MOTUC release schedule, past and present.

Faker’s spotlight on Robot Chicken:

See the results after the jump:

Thanks everyone who participated. The winners of our sweet prizes are as follows:

2nd Prize: Famicom Dojo Season 1 DVD
Jago666

1st Prize: $25 Amazon.com Gift Card:
Raistlin

And, last but not least, the videos you voted for, in descending order of most votes received:

1) 2009/02/04 – PowetToys: MOTUC He-Man and Beastman – Crazy
2) 2008/12/24 – Famicom Dojo: Twin Famicoms – SeanOrange
3) 2009/04/01 – Breaking News: Guitar Hero Beatallica – Zac
3) TIED! – 2009/08/26 – Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Review – aDam
5) 2009/04/15 – KEEP PLAYING: Resident Evil 5 – Sindra

To vote for your favorite video, simply leave a comment below. Please only comment once, and only name one video — if you do this more than once, we’ll only take your first selection.

All voters will be entered into a random drawing for a $25 Amazon.com gift card! Keen, or what?

See more voting details after the jump:

Polls will close on December 28th. Winners (including the gift card drawing) will be announced on December 30th. Watch Powet.TV to see if you or your favorite video has won!

2009/08/26 – Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Review – aDam
2009/02/04 – PowetToys: MOTUC He-Man and Beastman – Crazy
2008/12/24 – Famicom Dojo: Twin Famicoms – SeanOrange
2009/04/15 – KEEP PLAYING: Resident Evil 5 – Sindra
2009/04/01 – Breaking News: Guitar Hero Beatallica – Zac

It was only appropriate to follow Sindra’s Powet Alphabet article on Voltron with a review of the briefly mentioned Voltron I-Men figures that I have acquired over several toy hunts and conventions. Equally appropriate was the theme for our halloween costumes this year. Watch to find out more!

Do any of you commenters have any good memories of Voltron? Let us know below!

Disclaimer: These figures were bought by me, for me.

It’s been a year since we’ve promised our viewers One Video Per Week. For 52 weeks we brought you 52 new videos for Keep Playing, Powet Toys, Famicom Dojo, our movie review series, as well as many others. Help us celebrate a successful year by picking out your favorite moments!

It’s really easy. All you have to do is find your top five favorite videos from the official list (after the jump). Watch them again to find your favorite scene or clip from each one. Once you think you found it, reply to this post with the name of the video and the timestamp (MM:SS) of your favorite moment.

We will tally the results and present them to you all for voting after the close of nominations. Winners will be announced in our December 9th video.

So what are you waiting for? Nominations close next Monday, November 30th!

See a list of valid contenders after the break:

Keep Playing

2008/10/22 – Keep Playing: Silent Hill Homecoming – Sindra
2008/10/29 – Keep Playing: Top 5 Lost Licensed Games – Zac
2008/11/12 – Keep Playing: Samba de Amigo (Wii) – SeanOrange
2008/11/19 – Keep Playing: Saints Row 2 – aDam
2008/12/10 – Keep Playing: Gears of War 2 – Zac
2008/12/17 – Keep Playing: Castlevania – Order of Ecclesia – Sindra
2009/01/21 – KEEP PLAYING: Castlevania Judgment – Sindra
2009/02/25 – Keep Playing Street Fighter IV – Zac
2009/03/18 – Keep Playing Review: Halo Wars – Zac
2009/04/15 – KEEP PLAYING: Resident Evil 5 – Sindra
2009/06/17 – Keep Playing: Mass Effect – SeanOrange
2009/07/08 – Keep Playing: Wolverine, Ghostbusters, and Transformers! – Zac
2009/10/14 – Keep Playing: Halo 3 ODST – Zac (and Zero)

Keep Playing: Rewind

2009/03/25 – Keep Playing: Rewind – Castlevania Bloodlines – Sindra
2009/04/29 – KEEP PLAYING: Rewind – Golden Axe: RoDA – Sindra
2009/05/13 – KEEP PLAYING: Rewind – Alisia Dragoon – Sindra
2009/06/24 – KEEP PLAYING: Rewind – Demon Sword – Sindra
2009/07/15 – KEEP PLAYING: Rewind – Arcus Odyssey – Sindra
2009/07/29 – KEEP PLAYING: Rewind – Castlevania: Belmont’s Revenge – Sindra
2009/08/19 – KEEP PLAYING: Rewind – Fatal Labyrinth – Sindra
2009/09/16 – KEEP PLAYING: Rewind – Batman – Sindra

PowetToys

2008/11/05 – PowetToys: Transformers Movie Mudflap – Crazy
2008/12/03 – PowetToys: City Commander Armor for Classics Ultra Magnus – Crazy
2008/12/31 – PowetToys: Transformers Animated Sentinel Prime – Crazy
2009/01/07 – PowetToys: Universe Powerglide – Crazy
2009/01/28 – PowetToys: GI Joe Ultimate Battle Pack – Zac
2009/02/04 – PowetToys: MOTUC He-Man and Beastman – Crazy
2009/03/04 – PowetToys: Hasbro Marvel Legends Ares Wave – Crazy
2009/04/08 – PowetToys: Animated Jetfire and Jetstorm – Crazy
2009/06/10 – PowetToys: Botcon 2009 Exclusives – Crazy
2009/07/01 – PowetToys: RotF Wheelie – Crazy
2009/08/05 – PowetToys: Revenge of the Fallen Starscream – Crazy
2009/09/02 – PowetToys: RotF Leader Class Optimus Prime – Crazy
2009/09/09 – PowetToys: SDCC Soundwave – Zac
2009/10/07 – PowetToys: Animated Activators Cliffjumper – Crazy

Famicom Dojo

2008/11/26 – Famicom Dojo: Microphone Roundup – SeanOrange
2008/12/24 – Famicom Dojo: Twin Famicoms – SeanOrange

Movie Reviews

2009/01/14 – My Pet Monster DVD and Live Action Movie Review – aDam
2009/03/11 – Ghost in the Shell 2.0 Movie and Blu-Ray set review – aDam
2009/05/06 – X-Men Origins Wolverine Review – Zac (and SeanOrange)
2009/05/20 – Star Trek: Keeping Up With the Cardassians – aDam
2009/06/03 – Star Trek Review – Zac (and SeanOrange)
2009/07/22 – T2 Blu-Ray Endoskull Collector’s Set Review – aDam
2009/08/12 – Review: GIJOE The Rise Of Cobra! – Zac (and Zero)
2009/08/26 – Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Review – aDam

Misc

2009/02/11 – Powet Candy – Diabetic Edition – aDam
2009/02/18 – How To: Digital TV Conversion – SeanOrange
2009/04/01 – Breaking News: Guitar Hero Beatallica – Zac
2009/04/22 – Powet.TV at Midwest Gaming Classic 2009 – Zac
2009/09/23 – Powetcast Episode 11.5: Favorite BotCon Moments – SeanOrange
2009/09/30 – Gargoyles: Clan Building Vol. 2 Review – aDam

Blackbolt, Punisher, the Punisher variant, and Nemesis/Holocaust get their turn at bat in this second part of my Marvel Legends Wal-Mart Exclusive Wave of figures featuring Nemesis as the Build-A-Figure.

This video features Daredevil, Tigra, Astonishing Beast, and Nova. Stay tuned for Part 2 in two weeks!

Finally got my hands on an Animated Cliffjumper figure and figured I’d share it with everyone.
Did you like Transformers Animated? Activators? Comment! Let us know.

Auto Tune courtesy I Am T-Pain

After having received more requests than any previous figure in the past, I finally finished this review with you all. YouTube was a little strict, so I had to do a little creative editing. Hope you enjoy!

If you like this figure, purchase it from this link:

To see the full transformation, click through for more.

For full Transformation video, see more after the jump.

Wheelie is the toy of the day.
Post in the comments and let us know what you have to say!

If you like what you now know
Click on a link below!

       

This month I have put together a quick glance at each of the figures in the Wings of Honor Botcon 2009 Exclusive Box Set. Sorry, no transformations. With 5 figures to look at, that was the first thing to get cut.

Show Notes:
The SWAT repaint of Energon Rodimus is named Checkpoint.

Images come from: TFWiki, Google Image Search!, Seibertron.com, Botcon.com

Yes, I’m wearing a Botcon 2009 Staff shirt.

Music clips during transformations are instrumentals from Tony Bacala. You can listen to some more of his stuff here. (Warning, its a MySpace page with autoplay.)

Crazy takes a look at the Wal-Mart Exclusive Ares Marvel Legends Wave.

The 7th Kingdom was so popular in the FanEx polls, it has been spun out into its own line, independent of the annual FANtastic Exclusive promotion. I thought I would take this opportunity to take a look at the logo and how I figured out what symbols went with what kingdom.

Read on for some simple reasoning, research and deduction.

A bit of background first. Its important to understand the storyline in order to understand the logo.

Seventh Kingdom Backstory (from back of packaging):

In the infancy of time the world was made of one great continent. As civilizations prospered and grew, the world’s people separated into six enormous kingdoms. As some kingdoms expanded so did their hunger for power. Bloody battles raged for centuries resulting in nothing but death and frustration. When the devastating effects of these wars finally became too unbearable, a plan was devided to end the bloodshed once and for all. The kingdoms would combine their power to shatter the very land they fought for into six equal parts. However, when plan was indeed realized a grave miscalculation was made. Six equal continents were created, but central to all of them was a seventh continent bigger than the rest. It was a land that breathed an incomprehensible new power. Because of the new unpredictability of this power, the kingdoms vowed this terrain was never to be stepped foor upon. Until now… Growing doubts about the creation and evolution of the seven separate realms have infected some with a renewed thirst for power. Quests for power have turned once again into battles, and those battles have transformed into wars. In these troubled times one thing is for certain – the wars will not end until a legendary power is unleashed. The power of the … SEVENTH KINGDOM

Xetheus (from back of packaging):
The mighty minotaur known as Xetheus was once called Memmnonn. Memmnonn’s dedication to bringing peace to the kingdoms was so great that he freely gave up his life during the splitting of the lands. The sun lord Xemnoss, the most powerful of the elementals, was so moved by the selfless act that he granted Memmnonn immortality and renamed him Xetheus – son of Xemnoss. Xetheus is now a champion whose power is unrivaled by even the greatest heroes of myth and legend. He founded the captial city of Mynothecea in the center of his native kingdom of Animynthus. Xetheus and his mighty Mynothecean minotaur warriors have dedicated themselves to overseeing and defending the land that he has been spared to protect.

With that information under our belts, this logo now looks more like a map than it does random design. Six mostly equal parts surrounding one large seventh piece. Sure sounds like the description of the six kingdoms surrounding the seventh to me. Neat! That means the middle kingdom is being represented by that big sun symbol, but wait. That looks familiar. Check out Xetheus’ chest.

Certainly looks like a certain symbol of a sun god that brought Xetheus back to life and granted him immortality. You may ask why the 7th Kingdom is represented by the powerful elemental. The answer to that is still yet unknown. We can only speculate at this time.

Seeing this map and the distinctly different patterns and designs in each of the 6 Kingdoms gave me pause. Its clear from the sculpts on the figures that the Horsemen are pretty detail-oriented and FanEx board members knew that the 4H had a bible for the series already and many other characters tentatively planned. It just made sense that these symbols meant something. It wasn’t very hard to figure out which symbol belonged to the Animal Kingdom.

It was on the front of every minotaur package and on every flag accessory they came with.

 

The symbol on the left ‘land mass’ seemed to match it perfectly and the design pattern even looked sort of like a maze.

Since the selection of the 7th Kingdom as the property for FanEx 2006 was in the first round of voting, the second round consisted of character designs entirely from the property. I did not have much else to go on, so I looked at each character design and looked for cues that might match the sybmols in the 5 remaining ‘land masses’. Fortunately, I had two matches.

The first and more obvious was the Human. If you look at the markings on the top of his weapon, we seem to have a match. For an exact match, you need look no further than the marking on his forehead. Its a little hard to make out, but its there.

Our next match was on the Alien Shaman.

At the top of his staff, just above his hand, there is a symbol that seems to be a match for another piece. It was hard to make out and I definitely did not see it the first couple of times I looked at the image searching for a match, but a match it is.

That narrowed it down to three. With only the Elemental, Machine and Mutant kingdoms remaining, I turned to my intuition.

  

So lets do a little word association. What do you think of when you hear the word ‘Elemental’. I think ‘the most basic of things’. I think forces of nature; fire, water, earth, wind, etc. Looking at the remaining symbols, I see one that seems to match that theme.

While I guessed that was a match, I had no way of being 100% sure so I kept it in consideration for the other kingdom choices. Time for another round of word association. This time, ‘machine’. The first thing that pops in my mind is robotics, circuit boards and computers. And I didn’t even notice it until I did the word association, but one of the symbols is a dead ringer for a circuit board.

That was such a dead-on match I wouldn’t accept that it was any other kingdom. That left one unchosen logo. I looked at it and thought about what I would have thought from the word association for ‘Mutant’. My first thoughts were chaos, entropy and confusion.

It was a close enough for me to say that it was a match since everything else matched up so well between kingdom and logo. That gave us all six symbols to represent each of the kingdoms. After figuring all this out, I thought I’d add it to the FanEx 2006 video I made and see what happened. My assertions would be confirmed days after the video’s release by the Four Horsemen themselves.

If you are interested in the 7th Kingdom story, characters and/or the FANtastic Exclusive project, check out FANtasticExclusive.com for more information.

Remember to also check out the episode of PowetToys referenced at the start of this article.

This video turned into a more overly ambitious review than I first thought.

Show notes after the jump

Show Notes

CORRECTION: Stratos will go on sale February 17th since the 15th falls on a weekend. I assume similar will happen in March since the 15th is a Sunday.

Flickr Set of Classic Torsos can be found here:
http://flickr.com/photos/scottheffernan/sets/72157607462559007/

Classic packaging card art was found at the wonderful resource located here:
http://www.dukenostalgia.com/He-Man/Motu_boxart.html

Special thanks to members of the FanEx boards for helping me track down some images and answering my annoying questions!

Overall this toyline stands on its own, which is really good because Mattel’s marketing has been misleading, confusing and full of delayed promises.

What Do Lonzo Wilkinson and Laird James McCullen XXIV have in common? They’re both trapped inside the giant plastic prison that is the GI Joe Ultimate Battle Pack. I literally chop open the box to show you whats inside.

I was, admittedly, a little liberal with the video editing in this one. Hope you guys enjoy!

Just a note on that really tight joint on the wing I mentioned in the video, if you loosen the screw just a bit, it should relieve most of that tension that makes it so hard to twist.