I picked up Hasbro's IDW Generations Wave 3: Skids today.This is the story...
Today, I sold off my TFC Uranos set. Yeah, I know, its all the rage for some, but for me the TFC stuff just does not do it. The design for Uranos was better than their previous combiner, Hercules, but the materials and the construction just leaves too much to be desired. After awhile, I could not tolerate this piece in my collection anymore and sold it on Yahoo HK.
I met the buyer at the toy shop area to pass him his loot, collect my money and then just proceeded to walk around the toy shops. I know that MMC's Feral Rex parts and also FansProject's not-Brianstorm were still not released yet, so I really was not expecting to find anything.
I walked into one of the trustiest and best shops at In's Point, Action Robo, and saw that they had the next Hasbro Generations wave in stock - Skids was part of the assortment, Skids!!
Wave 3 consists of Goldfire (who cares), Dreadwing (who?), Waspinator (yucks) and Skids (woo hoo!). Well, you can tell I really couldn't care less about the other 3 toys in this wave - I only wanted Skids.
So it was done, shop owner was kind, I got my Skids!
Here is Skids with his other incarnations - Skids USA box, Encore Skids, VSZ Skids (the only way one could get Skids in Japan back in the 80s), USA Skids (loose) and Generations Skids.
A close up of his Generation One incarnation with his most recent iteration. Generations Skids is based very much on Alex Milne's rendition of the character in the popular IDW series by James Roberts, More Than Meets the Eye. Skids just happens to be one of my favourite characters in MTMTE and I am so glad that Hasbro decided to make a toy of him.
Next thing I'm going to do is open Skids and play!
'ta
~ HD
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UPDATE AT 6PM TODAY....
Ok, so I woke up early today. Like a 10 year old, I gleefully started photographing Skids and then taking him out of the packaging to play.
This is such-a-great-toy. I felt like I was 10 years old again.
Irresistibly, I took another stab at this arrangement...
Close up of Generations Skids and G1 Skids.
Gratuitous shot of G1 Skids and his box. It's nice, its classic.
This is the back of the packaging. Again showing a highly photoshopped toy and a spec graph. Nothing much to see here, let's move on.
Some more shots of the packaging.
Now, I have broken him out the packaging and right into my grubby hands....
This is what it came with - Comic, very large piece of instructions (killing the trees man) and toy.
Vehicle Mode
Before we go into the far more exciting robot mode, let's see a few comparison shots of he vehicle mode with its G1 counterpart.
Generations Skids is certainly more exciting when it comes to the vehicle mode. It is more sleek and not really a camper van type vehicle.
It has an attach mode too! Can attach the guns at the side.
Oh, and for M.A.S.K. fans, it can become Thunderhawk!
***
Robot Mode
So now we look at the robot mode. Here he is...
Oh, did I mention he is part of the Diplomatic Corps.... and comes with a lot of weapons? Bam!
One of the really impressive thing about this Generations Skids release (and there are many impressive things), is that he actually comes with detachable weapons that look like weapons. A lot of the Classics / Henkei / United / Generations lines came with sorry things that pretend to be weapons.
Some shots of Skids from various angles.
Generation 1 Skids and Generations Skids
Just look at the number of weapons...
Hand guns, binary gun, nitrogen gun, 04 x shoulder cannons....
... and missile pods too....
Chromedome, Skids and Ultra Magnus
One-trick-pony and Skids...
and I guess perhaps, this is where it all started for this toy - the More Than Meets the Eye series from IDW, written by James Roberts and illustrated by Alex Milne.
Look, I can do what my comic personal does... just check out my weapons placements...
Closing thoughts:
This is one of the best Generations (Classics / Henkei / United) figures around. I haven't thought about whether it is the best, but it is certainly one of the best. There are just so many nice touches - some which homages G1 (ie: the transformation, dual cannons, wheels tuck into the bottom of the feet like G1, etc) and some which is straight out of the pages of MTMTE and Milne's illustrations.
There are many who would claim there are QC issues and admittedly I found 1, but its all fixable (minor parts are switched around). The complaint about it being 'back heavy' and difficult to balance, I have also found to be baseless, because if properly transformed, it stands and balances easily and fine. I will talk more about these in another post.
Skids may have been obscure in the G1 cartoon, but he does feature well in the G1 Marvel comics and IDW's MTMTE. In fact, he is my favourite character in MTMTE and that just adds a lot to how I will rate this toy. It's a beautifully designed and executed toy.
My rating - 9/10
My recommendation - must buy!
I still can't wait for find Skids Stateside. Any word if Takara Tomy is going to release him too?
ReplyDeletehi Colbey, I asked my shop-owner friend the same question and he said there is no news and from the dealer front, no Takara release of Skids, at this stage.
DeleteHowever, knowing Takara, its almost inevitable that they would release Skids I think.
If Takara does release him, I wonder if they'll opt for a darker blue color to homage the G1 version?
DeleteYou could be right on the money. Typically Takara will do a different colour shade from Hasbro. I do hope Takara makes all his weapons *chrome*. That'd be so bling, but so nice!
DeleteThanks for the post HD! I completely understand when you say that Project Uranos didn't fit into your collection. When it was initially coming out, I had the first two figures on preorder through my dealer friend, but as I kept on thinking about it and how much it was going to cost me in the end for everything, he luckily let me back out since I was such a good customer. Also, in the end, it didn't really fit into my collection either.
ReplyDeleteI barely have any 3rd Party products in my collection (I think maybe 2 or 3) and I don't see that number increasing in the near future. The costs for these items, and sometimes lack of quality area couple major contributing factors.
For the time being, I don't think that I will be picking up MTMTE Skids since there are too many other parts of my collection that I need to complete. I should grab an Encore Skids though. In North America, I don't believe Skids gets much love compared to some of the the G1 figures, but I believe that is due to his vehicle form. I think he looks fantastic in robot mode.
I love that VSZ Skids box. Those boxes are very hard to come by in Canada.
Cheers!
Joe
hi Joe, yeah, good decision re the third party stuff there. I do have quite a number of third party figures. In some cases, they are really nice but in other cases, the design and quality is really appalling.
DeleteAlso, many of these are NOT child safe. Uranos for example has lots of very sharp part and could even hurt an adult. FP's Crossfire Explorer (not-Blast-Off), also has its fair share of sharp parts and in fact, I have cut myself and bled for that toy.
I thought Optimal Omega said some really insightful things re 3P products - have a look here - http://kremziek.blogspot.com/2013/11/all-by-myself.html
If you do see MTMTR Skids stateside, I don't believe it will be too expensive, just the price of a deluxe, so I think definitely can consider grabbing!
Takara Tomy will surely release their own version, but this one doesn't look hot. Seems too small and from existing reviews, he seems back heavy. Someone needs to do the IDW figures properly, and unfortunately, that someone is not HasTak.
ReplyDeletealright, i just played with the toy and fiddled with it. Absolutely no issues with 'back heavy'. It was irking me at first, but it all goes down to the placement of joint that is slightly below the knees. I'll show photos later.
Deletehmmm... I'm not sure what the objection is - is it not hot because its too small? It's just "deluxe" size is all, so one can't be expecting it to be Voyager sized.
ReplyDeleteI've just been staring at it through the plastic bubble and have not taken it out yet, so not sure whether its design works, but it does look good for me.
Sounds like you'd like some 3P company to do Skids? Me, I'm just happy Hasbro did such an obscure character, but you know, haters are going to hate.
I think Hasbro has really found a gold mine with MTMTE and RID as it allows them to satisfy both collectors and kids at the same time, something they tend to have a hard time doing. I am really looking forward to this figure as well along with his case-mates because they all play a role in the comics. I also understand why you sold Uranos, I did the same thing before I even obtained "Silverbolt" just because I didn't want such a large Superion.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the comics are such a gold mine of possibilities. The beauty of the comics is really the dedication of the artists - although for many characters no toys exists, they usually design the character such that it could really transform. So Takara all but has to "reverse" engineer the toy from the comics.
DeleteI think I might have been unfair to his Wave-mates, but I try not to let myself get distracted by characters I don't otherwise like just because they appeared in the comics haha. I can see what they are trying to do. The universes are blending - even animated Lockdown was in the comics....
So I guess I can't count on either of you guys to read my Uranos review (whenever I get around to it)? Just kidding. I can understand why a lot of people jumped off. I was too far invested before I really wished I had waited. Oh well, perhaps I can find a buyer after I've reviewed him.
ReplyDeleteOut of the 5, I think not-Fireflight was the best one. I really do like that piece. However, each subsequent piece got worse and worse.
DeleteThe parts are really sharp too and not child-safe (not that I have kids!).
What really turned me off was when I tried to combine him - I did struggle. I snap on something and some other thing pops off somewhere else. It just won't stay together.
So I listed it at cost and it sold. I am so glad.
I'll definitely read it, I think it looks really nice, just not for me. I had to consolidate somewhere, unfortunately can't buy and display everything.
Deleteyeah, Colbey, I would definitely read it (as I read all your posts), so post on. Some of the individual bots are nice, but the whole 5 of them are not for me. If I were to chose 1 out of the 5, having Fireflight alone is enough.
DeleteSkids' G1 mode is the Honda City Turbo. I think that's what it's called. But it's not a camper type car...or maybe it is from where you're from. I know there's the misconception that he's a minivan (and was drawn that way in the Marvel US comics) because though we had compact cars, we probably had never seen one as compact as the City Turbo here in the US. (The GEO Metro, however, may be of comparable size). So his shape might've reflected the new minivans here in the US but not in scale with the other G1 cars, another reason for his lack of popularity, when in fact he's just a really compact car...still unpopular!
ReplyDeleteBut I loved him! Can't wait for this figure.
hi Paul, yes you are right, Skids is supposed to be a Honda City turbo, how could I forget that. You are also right that my misconception came from the US Marvel comics, which I went to re-read again. There, he does look like some sort of camper (when he was with Donny Finkleberg, the Robot Master!).
DeleteAlso, his Binaltech mold is a van like vehicle, a Toyota bB, which is a cross between a station wagon and a people mover van.
Those are the sources of my misconception, haha. I feel ashamed!
Generations Skids is a very nice figure though and I think his vehicle mode does look sleek.
Hey HD, its been a while!
ReplyDeleteI agree on TFC Uranos. I ended up getting silverbolt and another limb but the quality and design just did not satisfy me so I sold them.
Have to admit, Skids wasn't really on my radar, but ...wow.. you sold me on this figure..(considerations for top CHUG?). Actually have not been up to date on all the recent generations releases- i.e. trailbreaker/hoist, springer/sandstorm/blitzwing- have to pick them up soon. Also have to find MTMTE and begin reading.. been hearing that its amazing.
Re: Generations/Takara Metroplex - did you end up getting one?
Also thoughts on MP Star Saber?
hi GDMetro, long time my friend! =)
DeleteI highly recommend MTMTE, Roberts and Milne are weaving some of the best TF fiction around, ever. Try that and also Last Stand of the Wreckers. After those, I'm sure you will naturally need Generations Springer and Skids, both of which are very very good toys in my view - perhaps the best that Hasbro has released for the Classics / Generations line.
Re Metroplex Gens - nope, not got one yet, haha
Re MP-Star Saber - great that SS is getting an update, but I don't see the point of having an MP-SS if only because he does not really have an Earth mode, so any MP would be more like a Chogokin..... to me.