Statues from Palisades - impressions & thoughts

I know they're not toys, but I wanted to ask if anyone has any comments or thoughts on the 'heavy-mecha' style Transformer designs that Palisades is releasing as statues.

Last I heard, Optimus was due at the warehouse on the 10th but hadn't shown up yet. Megatron is in production after a last Hasbro-initiated revision (his face) and Arcee is in approval at Hasbro.

Any comments on their 'look'? Anyone planning on buying the big, expensive polystones?

A lot of the press has sort of latched-on to calling them 'anime-look', but they're actually more influenced by just realistic war machines like MSV Gundam, Dougram, Macross' Destroids & such plus modern armor vehicles - built to serve & take a lot of punishment... millions of years of it in the case of these characters.

In Particular I like Arcee becuase it looks as if those joints can really move. too bad it's only a statue. I don't buy statues.



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I asked if I have "Time For L-Gaim" but I got "No Reply From The Wind".

Ray:

Hey, man. Long time. Been busy; how are things over at the Embassy?

As for the Transformers statues, and with all respect to Palisades and its consultants, I hate 'em. Not unlike Vincent, I dislike toys that have, say, less than two points of articulation. But I'm a huge Transformers freak, so I'd buy the statues if they were doing something for me that the toys didn't. Very nearly bought the Unicron statue from that other company, for precisely that reason, before hearing that Hasbro would put out its own version.

What's wrong with the statues, IMO? You said it in your post: "but they're actually more influenced by just realistic war machines like MSV Gundam, Dougram, Macross' Destroids & such plus modern armor vehicles ...." Transformers are supposed to be SILLY. No, seriously. Transformers owe far more to super robots like Getter Robo than the real robots of Macross (yes, Jetfire is ironic). They have bright primary colors, unrealistic docking sequences, hyperbolic storylines, and aren't really about the human characters except incidentally. When you paste a real robot facade over Transformers, you end up just exposing how ridiculous the whole conceit is.

Palisades' execution looks very nice, but I just don't dig the concept. Nonetheless, best of luck to Palisades -- maybe future editions will fill the void.

Happy holidays,
--Ken-A.



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I miss the future.

Personally, I really wish these were 'action figures', also. George Tremaco has done an amazing job realizing these as 3D CGI (his Soundwave is absolutely amazing).

I've found there's a strong 50-50 opinion in TF fandom for extremely 'realistic' portrayals of the TF core characters. Your thoughts, Ken, are shared by many TF fans.

:-) Things are still pretty busy over at the Embassy. Lots of comment on the upcoming Micro-Force designs, and the recent Beta Midgets V3. Takara has been very involved in sharing their designer's thoughts and giving good previews of the developing designs. Its very refreshing to see that from them (same with their TF developments, also). They've been rather uncommunicative in the past.