Unique Toys R-09 Red Destroyer

The moment I learned that Unique Toys were planning to develop Stinger for their line of Masterpiece-analogues, my curiosity was piqued. After all, this was a nonentity who dissolved into a flying cloud of metal cubes rather than transforming. When the first grey prototype images appeared, I was instantly hooked. My experience with Unique Toys products thusfar has been uniformly positive: their engineering has always been clever without being overly complex and their QC has yet to disappoint. However, in terms of screen-accuracy, particularly on their head sculpts, they've never been 100% on the mark, which resulted in some of their more recent figures later being 'fixed' by cheaper knockoffs.

Their strategy for this figure was to cut down on paint applications to reduce the retail price as far as they could, in the hope that people would buy the original rather than wait for a KO, and they teased the release of a Camaro Bumblebee with much the same robot mode as additional motivation - the suggestion being that the reception of Red Destroyer will determine whether the yellow Camaro goes into production. Their paintwork has almost always been considered lacking by fans and, coupled with the eyewatering prices of some figures and inaccuracies in their sculpts, they've given the KO merchants ample room to make improvements in the past. Dialling things back even further seems like the worst decision to me. As it turned out, they revealed images of the Camaro remix within a month of Red Destroyer shipping.

But let's see how Red Destroyer stands as his own product, before anyone has the opportunity to reverse engineer it and produce a cheaper option.

2025 Retrospective

Well... What a year.

Toward the end of 2024, I was contacted by both of my regular/annual freelancing clients, with the expected jobs: updates to a website for one, updates to a printed booklet for the other. Both would normally gear up during January, but it's good to be forewarned, and get the question of payment out of the way in advance... At least, as far as possible, where one of them is concerned...

Retro G1 Gears

Given that Hasbro have been recycling G1 now for almost five times longer than G1 actually existed, back in the day, it became increasingly baffling to me that each new iteration - particularly from the Prime Wars trilogy onward - that the focus has been wholly on the G1 cartoon rather than the G1 toys. Sure, the argument rages on, that the cartoon is the main reason TransFormers exists as a brand, but that's a particularly American point of view, and has me questioning whether some of these people are actually TransFormers fans, or simply fans of a TV show they view through nostalgia goggles, and afflicted with a compulsion to buy branded merchandise.

However, about 20 years after the Classics reboot, which brought a fresh new look and contemporary engineering to the old-favourite characters, Hasbro seem finally to be acknowledging that some TransFormers fans actually want familiar-looking, contemporary remakes of their old G1 toys... and so we have the Retro G1 line.

Essentially, it's a mix of latecomers in the grey area of an ongoing line that is War for Cybertron, Legacy and Age of the Primes, and including toys which, for whatever reason, are popping up first in the Studio Series '86 line. Their plastic colours and head sculpts are more toy-accurate, but it's like something the TransFormers Collectors' Club would do: a repaint with a new head, packaged under its own brand... only this is specifically targeted at the 40- to 50-something nostalgia hounds rather than the Premium Collector bracket. The inaugural pair were - to no-one's surprise - a repack of the War for Cybertron: Earthrise Bumblebee (which, having been a Netflix exclusive to being with, has since been repainted about a billion times already) that kept the animation-style head, and Legacy Gears.

Much as I might have wanted a new G1-style Gears, it wasn't just the ugly, animation-style head that put me off buying the Legacy toy... So let's see if this cynically-marketed re-release is enough to make me change my mind about an entire mold.

Age of the Primes Onyx Prime

Thusfar, Age of the Primes looks like another toyline that I'll skip almost entirely, with exceptions being those that are either holdovers from Legacy (more likely their 'Retro G1' remixes) or figures like this one, which fits about as well into TransFormers as did the live action movie Dinobots or TLK Megatron.

I have to confess that my knowledge of the Primes is pretty much non-existent, both in terms of who they are and how/why they entered the lore... But, if I had to guess, it was probably Furman (and I'd be right). The idea of thirteen Primes representing aspects of Cybertronian physiology or society isn't inherently bad, per se, just... superfluous... And their introduction into TransFormers media really highlights how astonishingly easy it is for a moderately proficient writer to define authority figures and get a whole community of people to accept them as gods in a religion.

Nevertheless, we're currently at a point in the Age of the Primes line where there's only a couple more of The Thirteen to go - Quintus and Amalgamous, both of whom sound interesting in theory, but look terrible as toys - and I'm highly unlikely to add them to my collection... Let's see if Onyx Prime can help us ascertain why that is...

Seventeenth Anniversary

Cynics in my audience might have expected that getting back into full-time employment back in January of this year might dispel the sense of ennui I've had for the last few years of TransFormers... but, if anything, it's made it worse. Sure, I have some disposable income now, but the ever-increasing prices and ever-decreasing quality of the merchandise leaves me largely without any compelling reason to spend my money on Hasbro's mainstream output. Not to say I haven't bought anything since last September, but you'll see what I mean when I get to the list.

So, without wanting to get into spoilers, here's this year's Dishonourable Mentions:

Trying Out Another New Webshop - AKA Not Another Unboxing IX

Although when I say 'new', I mean only that it's new to me - Show.Z Store have been around for ages, I've just never tried ordering from them before. However, they listed Unique Toys R-09 Red Destroyer before my usual online retailers - even those others also based in China - and, with the fear of missing out uncommonly strong on this figure, I preordered him at the earliest opportunity, back in mid-August.

Preordering can be a bit of a gamble at the best of times, but this one actually got quite alarming when I received notification of despatch on 4th September, precisely a week before I was due to fly to Iceland with my girlfriend, for a relaxing break after she handed in her MSc thesis. This meant that there was a chance the package would arrive while we were away... and, knowing most couriers, that meant it might end up getting shipped back to China before I even returned home.

Notification that the package was out for delivery arrived the very day we were set to fly out... though there was no indication that delivery had actually been attempted when I checked the tracking later on.

However, while away, on a coach, out in the wilds of Iceland, I got a phone call from the courier, attempting to deliver. I explained that I was out of the country, and asked if delivery could be rescheduled for this week. He seemed to be OK with that, but couldn't offer anything concrete, so I later visited the courier's website to look for my options. Finding nothing, I contacted their UK Customer Service department via email, explaining the situation and asking again for delivery to be rescheduled to anytime this week. They emailed back to confirm that was all OK, and that they'd flag my package for delivery in the week commencing 15th September.

However, the following day - as Courtney and I were on our way back to the airport - I got another call, from another courier. When I explained that I was still out of the country, but due back later that day and that I believed that I'd arranged for delivery to happen another day, this one said he could see that my package had been flagged for redelivery, but that no date had been specified... and he pretty much insisted on making the delivery there and then, leaving it with a neighbour.

Thankfully, it all worked out... but I dropped the Customer Service department another email to say that someone hadn't received the memo about holding the package for a day or two before attempting another delivery, and have yet to see any response from them.

So, super-fast delivery from Show.Z Store - this package probably cleared UK Customs at Heathrow quicker than I did - if somewhat nerve-wracking in its final stages. Not Show.Z's fault at all, but I'll be certain to avoid ordering from them - or any other overseas vendor, for that matter - anywhere near a holiday, and potentially avoid pre-ordering entirely, as far as is practical.