Crossovers Anakin, General Grievous

For today we have some smaller class figures. I guess these are the old basic class figures? As small as it gets almost.

I guess we'll start with Anakin. Kinda delicate, especially in the legs. Plus, he's got a landing gear hanging off one of the legs. For some reason, he's got 2 sabers.

Vehicle mode barely holds together. Unlike Obi-wan from previous post, this guy stows both lightsabers awar in the vehicle and looks like laser effects. The landing gear doesn't do any good because the underside of the alt-mode is a complete mess. Junk? Junk.

Next is General Grievous. This is a rather unique interpretation of his multiple arms. Instead of regular arms, he has these appendages that protrude lighsabers.  The legs suck and do a poor job of supporting the guy.

Vehicle mode looks surprisingly nice due to the weathering. Doesn't stay together all that well and on top of that the landing gears are in permanent landing position. Yet, another junk. Am I going to have something that isn't junk? We'll get to them eventually.

Universe Prowl, Crossovers Obi-wan

Let's start off with TF Universe Prowl. Frankly, not a fan of this mold. He looks butt-ugly. He has a dinky pea-shooter gun compared to his shoulder cannons. His transformation is a bitch when it comes to swinging his wing panels around. Otherwise, he's half decent I guess. He's still getting junked though. BTW, according to tfwiki, a lot of this particular release was afflicted with a sticky paint issue. As far as I can tell, mine isn't sticky at all. Wonder if someone wants a non-sticky Universe Prowl.

Next up is SW Crossovers Obi-Wan Kenobi (2010). There's no real naming convention for the different versions so all you can do is put a year of release on it. Both this guy and Prowl are deluxe class figures btw. Anyways, something looks off about this figure.

Okay, forgot to tuck the head part back. But that part looks surprisingly like a head and kinda looks like a mouth where it separates from behind the cockpit. Anyways. this guy looks more like a Shakespearean clown than a Jedi knight. What the hell were they thinking.... Unlike Darth Maul from previous post, this guy does have flip down landing gears. He's still going to the junk bin.

Junk review: Crossovers Darth Maul and Animated Ratchet

So this is basically going to be a pocket of mini-reviews as I go through some of my toys and deciding whether to keep or dump. This is more for my own note taking purposes as I collect my thoughts on what I like or hate about each toy.

Crossovers Darth Maul: Deluxe size (?). Kinda scrawny like the actual guy. His arms seem really fragile and can likely break off with mild pressure. Most of the SW Crossover Jedi figures come with lightsaber weapons but I don't know where his went. Interesting note is one hand is normally molded but the right hand has the grip hole covered. Likely so he can hold two lightsabers together like his weapon in the movie.

Alt-mode is his iconic vehicle from Phantom Menace. The landing gear is permanently protruding with no way to really stow it out of the way. You can tuck it flush against the fuselage but it still sticks out so not helping much in that regards. Like many deluxe class SW Crossovers, the cockpit can open and fit a small enough figure inside. It's unfortunate that many of those figures didn't include a mini-figure as that would have raised the play value immensely. The cockpit seat even rotates so that it's in a somewhat upright position when Darth Maul is in robot mode. Anyways I'm junking him, next!

Deluxe Class Transformers Animated Ratchet: I never watched much of the Animated series but the toy line was by far one of my favorites because they were somehow take these very Western aesthetic styled characters and somehow transform them perfectly into a perfectly looking vehicle mode with that same animation aesthetic. The designers for this toyline are genius. Unfortunately, this Ratchet isn't one of the ones that transform all that smoothly and frankly it's a pain. This guy has a surprising amount of spring activated parts. One in each arms for his tools/weapons, one for his pop-up head (transformation gimmick), and one more for his vehicle mode rear end (also to aid transformation). Fitting his legs in during transformation is a pain and a half; the left one pops off if I'm not careful enough while trying to cram it in. Also his chin has a bit of scrapping on the chin due to the pop-up gimmick. Status: junk!

Be politically active part 2

I just realized that I never did make my point in my previous post. That's what happens when you make a post late at night. 😂😂😂

What was my point again? Oh yes, why you should vote or at the very least, influence those who can. By not voting, you're essentially letting others choose for you and most importantly, you lose the right to bitch about the results because you weren't a part of that process. Anyways, something to chew on. If you're not in the US or someplace where the voting is rigged (like Russia 😜), this don't apply to you.

I'm thinking about outright dumping some of my toys. I'm kinda in spring cleaning mode but due to the coronavirus, there's not going to be much takers for my junk. So I may just donate or throw away the stuff I don't want to keep. I definitely have way too much stuff. 😅😅😅

Be politically active if you can

So...we're in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic. Hope everyone's doing well. As an active voter in the US, I find it difficult to talk about current events and news without going into the political aspects as well. Back before I became an active voter, it was easy to harbor the thinking of maintaining a neutral stance and I understand that a lot of people whose blog I visit and/or follow on Twitter maintain that view. I'll straight out and say that it's a naive point of view because politicians that are in power, regardless of whether you helped put him/her there, will affect aspects of your daily life including the chances of you getting sick or die from the pandemic. If you follow news at all, you'll know that certain countries have weathered the coronavirus better than others. Unfortunately, the US and UK are some of the ones faring worse and one of the leading reasons for that has been that the political leaders of each respective country tried to pass off this disease as if it's a mild thing and never quite took it seriously. Well, the fact that one of them actually fell ill to the disease sure changed their perspective, no? Of course, it's far too late to improve the situation at that point. 😒

So back to my point, take an active interest in the news and make sure your source is one you can trust like NPR, Reuters, BBC. And even then, take things with a bit of salt, even more so if it's from some place you've never heard of. Unfortunately, enemies of the common good have taken to fabricating lies and half-truths to influence those who are easily mislead and they seemed to have done quite a good job seeing how fucked up the US has become since Trump became president. MAGA indeed. SMH

Me? I guess I'm doing okay. I'm working as usual since my work is considered "essential". My bro gets to work from home but not sure how stable his position is since the oil industry has completely gone south earlier this week. I guess I'm done ranting for now. Hopefully, I'll have something more normal to post next time, ha!