Pastel Typhoon and Me Stuff

I drove into work this morning, so I parked at the Convention Center parking lot. There was some convention of some food product vendors, who appeared to be coming in the opposite direction of me, wearing a lot of bright-colored clothing and were about 99.9% female. It was a frightening occurrence and my retina are still burning from the experience.

Last night I decided to go nuts and drive north on Central, picking up stuff that I want. First stop, Twin Cities Comics, where I picked up issues 1 and 2 of the new Angel series. Good stuff, it continues where the series finished, but has so far been fairly ambiguous about who lived through the final attack, who died, that kinda thing. It deals with Angel venturing Romania to convince the Gypsies that he's done enough good in the world where the "happiness clause" of his curse could be lifted.

Next stop, Rainbow, as I needed to restock my tortilla-and-shredded-cheese stock.

Gamestop was next, picked up Tomb Raider III for 2 dollars. Now I have the whole collection, I-III and Last Revelation, and plan on playing my way through the entire series in the next few months of boredom.

Finally, a stop at Target, who FINALLY has released their stock of Cybertron figures. I took advantage of the $25 dollar toys ($30 everywhere else) and got myself Scourge.

Normally I'm not a big fan of quadru- and bi-ped-based animals as Transformers. The designers tend to get lazy, awkward-looking, and unoriginal. "Hey, I have a great idea on how to transform this guy! Lets turn his front legs into his arms and his back legs into his legs! Then we make him switch heads! Brilliant!" This was basic formula in the Beast Wars era, and continued on into Energon with Ravage and Cruellock.

Scourge is no exception to this rule, but, unlike these other figures, it works. His alt mode is that of a very cool-looking dragon, complete with a feature that lights up the eyes and mouth and makes a screaming dragon noise. His Planet Key feature turns him into a Hydra, flipping two other heads out on either side of the main.

Robot mode, yes, front legs are arms, hind legs are legs. But there's enough alteration of the limbs, flipping out at the shoulders and pushing into the body at the waist, where it works well. Plus his tail is dealt with by turning into a big-ass battle axe. Like the other Cybertron figures, his Planet Key feature carries over into robot mode, flipping the two dragon heads out of his shoulders. The flipdown loin-cloth-looking thing is a neat addition, as well.

Overall, I REALLY like this figure. Still not my favorite as far as animal-based figs go (that one still goes to Energon Divebomb), and a pretty lame Planet Key feature. But I think I can safely say that this is my favorite figure of the Cybertron line so far. At least out of the ones I own. I'm sure he'll eventually be topped by Optimus or Megatron, but I'll deal with those when they come into my possession.

Oh, and I saw two Buddhist monks walking through the Target I was shopping at, too, which was odd.

Tonight and this weekend I don't know how much I'll be blogging. But I'll have at least two reviews to post when I get back (Wedding Crashers and the other Fiddler production). And I may or may not be banging my head against the table, depending on how things fall into place this weekend.