Tag Archives: Arcee

Album Review – Cybertronic Spree: Transformers 1986

October 25, 2019 Big Angry Trev Leave a comment

Ok, c’mon Trev, be objective here…

Do not come across like a teenage girl at a ‘One Direction’ reunion concert screaming ‘Oh they are so dreamy! I want to have their babies!’

Be harsh mate, be scathing, pull apart song by song to find any fault so that you can give a frank assessment of this CD….

… fuck it, I can’t! Its just too good!

Ahem. I got my Cybertronic Spree CD this week. I kinda like it.

About the Band

For those that don’t know, Cybertronic Spree is a true fan success story. A bunch of singers and musicians came together about six or so years ago, dressed in awesome looking self-made Transformers costumes and sang songs from the Transformers 1986 movie.

It proved popular. Amongst us TF fans it proved really popular. So much so that they started getting gigs, appearing at various conventions and even earlier this year got their own IDW Comic Cover variant.

And so a Crowdfund Project is born!

So riding on the wave of that popularity they decided to Crowdfund a CD where they played 10 of the songs from the 86 movie. CD title appropriately ‘Transformers 1986‘.

The reaction was better than they could have hoped. It all sold out fast. I mean, really fast! So then they reopened the Crowdfund and then that all sold out.

So they now had the money and went to work recording their album. Digital copies to those who contributed to their Crowdfunding went out about a month ago.

As much as I would have loved getting a signed poster, my funds at the time meant I was only able to order the CD. And when it came to writing a review I wanted to review the CD, as I knew the digital copy I received would not do the music justice played over the shitty little speakers on my computer.

So having received the CD this week, I set up my sound system in the disused outdoor carport on the farm, where the acoustics are puzzingly good and I could crank the volume to max, pulled out a deck chair, cracked a beer and sit back to listen to the music.

It did not disappoint.

The Music

This is a fucking awesome CD! Damn they did a good job. Whilst this CD is primarily a Crowdfunded fan project, you can tell that these are all singers and musicians who know what they are doing and have a genuine love for the material.

As someone who has the soundtrack to the 86 movie and knows every song by heart, it was so cool to hear these songs faithfully redone but with the twist of having new musicians and, most importantly to differentiate them from the originals, new vocalists.

Damn Arcee has a set of pipes on her! Don’t get me wrong, Spike is a good backup vocalist and Hot Rod can sing his arse off, but Arcee has a voice that can pick you up and pound you flat with its power! I’ve always loved female vocalists who sound like they could kick my arse. I shudder to think of the poor singer inside the costume – how many TF Fanboys must there be out there she is currently starring in the fantasies of (my own efforts to get my good wife to dress as a Transformer have always met failure, as public record will testify). As all the original songs were sung by men, to have Arcee singing half the songs and providing backup vocals on many others gives the songs a new and unique twist, breathing new life to tunes you’ve been listening to for the past 33 years.

Full credit to the musicians too, The guitarists (Unicron & Hot Rod) provide those tasty big 80’s riffs big time and Rumble the Drummer pounds those skins like a true professional.

This CD hits all the right notes for me. The Touch gave me goosebumps, Dare gave me a nostalgic lump in my throat. I didn’t understand why they chose to have Hunger as the last track on the album until I heard the end. That massive instrumental finale right at the end of the song kicks so much arse you wanna put your fist through a wall, headbutt a tank and yell to the world that every other sci-fi genre sucks Quintesson Balls compared to ours!

So yes, I liked this CD.

Cybertronic Spree, all I can say to you is (cue eye-rolling song lyric references):

You’ve indeed got both the touch and the power

You’ve got the passion and the pride. It can’t be denied.

When it came to getting this CD made you let nothing stand in your way and us fans count ourselves among the fortunate ones.

And if you ever decide to tour internationally, I can guarantee you a sold out show in Sydney. The tendrils of Big Angry Trev will twist throughout the Aussie Fandom to hound TF geeks out of parents basements, comic stores and online chatrooms across the land to fill a venue in your honour (with extra security to keep the fanboys off Arcee).

All I ask in return is that you let me get on stage and do the ‘AAAAAAAA-AAAAA’ at the end of Instruments of Destruction 😉

Extra Merchandise

As I mentioned, I was only able to afford at the time the CD. However fellow Transformer Enthusiast and Skydiving Superstar Brendan was able to get some more of the merch.

Got something to add to this review? Pop it in the comments section below!

Related Articles:

*Album Review: Transformers Roll Out

*Album Review: Metal Resistance by Baby Metal

Transformatorium, Videos

Video – My 150+ Generations Autobots

January 25, 2019 Big Angry Trev Leave a comment

Several months ago I did a short video showcasing from my personal collection 100+ Generations Decepticons. Well now it is the Autobots turn. These figures are mainly of G1 characters who have received an update through toylines such as Thrilling 30, Combiner Wars, Legends, POTP and so on.

So enjoy this short video I made of the display. Also below you will find some screenshots and a full list of the Autobots onshow, along with links to reviews of many of the figures displayed here – have fun!

Air Raid, Afterbreaker, Afterburner, Alpha Bravo, Alpha Trion, Arcee

Beachcomber, Blades, Blaster, Blurr, Brainstorm, Brawn, Broadside, Bumblebee

Caliburst, Cerebros, Chromedome, Chromia, Circut, Cliffjumper, Cludburst, Cloudraker, Computron, Cosmos, Crosscut

Depthcharge, Dustup

Eject, Elita-1

Fastlane, Firefly, First Aid, Fisitron, Flak, Fortress Maximus

Gears, Getaway, Groove, Godbomber, Grappel, Grimlock

Hardhead, Highbrow, Hoist, Holepunch, Hot Rod, Hot Spot, Hound, Huffer

Impactor, Inferno, Ironhide

Jackpot, Jazz, Jumpstream, Junkheap

Kup

Landmine, Lightspeed, Lightsteed, Lio Convoy

Metalhawk, Metroplex, Mirage, Moonracer

Nightbeat, Nosecone, Nova Prime, Novastar

Omega Supreme, Optimal Optimus, Optimus Prime, Orion Pax, Outback, Override

Perceptor, Pipes, Powerglide, Prowl, Ptero, Punch, Pyra Magma,

Ramhorn, Ratchet, Red Alert, Rewind, Roadbuster, Roadhandler, Rodimus Prime, Rook

Sandstorm, Sawback, Scattershot, Scoop, Scrounge, Seaspray, Sentinel Prime, Shuffler, Sideswipe, Silverstreak, Silverbolt, Skids, Sky Lynx, Skyburst, Skydive, Slash, Slingshot, Sludge, Slug, Smokescreen, Snarl, Springer, Steeljaw, Stripes, Stormclash, Strafe, Streetwise, Sundor, Sunstreaker, Super Ginrai, Superion, Swerve, Swindler, Swoop

Tailgate, Tracks, Trailbreaker, Topshot, Topspin, Twin Twist, Twinferno

Ultra Magnus

Victorion

Warpath, Wheelie, Wheeljack, Whirl, Windcharger, Wreck-Gar

Related Video

My 100+ Generations Decepticons

Games & Competitions, Transformatorium

Game App Review – Transformers Bumblebee Overdrive

October 2, 2018 Big Angry Trev Leave a comment

There have been a ton of Transformer gaming apps in recent years on both Android and iPhone; a few have retired and several are still chugging along. In anticipation of the new Bumblebee Movie coming out later this year, we have a new game (currently only available through Apple) based on everyone’s favorite little yellow bot in Transformers Bumblebee Overdrive.

Pretty much every app has been based on either the Movieverse or Generation 1. This is most definitely G1 with a bit of Generations thrown in. And like G1, this game is 80’s arcade all the way baby!

You start the game as Bumblebee and work your way through 4 main stages over and over, gathering crystals and coins in order to unlock new characters. Once you reach a certain points level, you then take on a boss character, the defeat of which will unlock new weapons and bonuses within game.

The four main stages consist of Highway, Canyon, another Canyon and Decepticon bases.

Highway

Lots of innofensive traffic which you need to dodge, the only real enemy you encounter and flying Decepticon Drones that fire off missiles, one hit of which can kill. It is during these highway drives that you can try to earn bonuses from completing events, such as destroying a certain amount of Phone Booths or Fire Hydrants.

Canyon – style 1.

*Who takes a sports car that expensive offroading?*

Lots of swerving required here. Surprise spike pits pop up, silver mines are laid about, more flying Missile Drones and as you progress Laser Cannons. Ironically the main thing you need to avoid are rock columns, crashing into one kills you instantly.

Canyon – style 2.

Nothing to crash into here, but you are being pursued! Here we get some G1 goodness with you being chased by Stunticons Dead End & Breakdown as well as other G1 Cons Ruckus and Ground Hog. There is also the Stunticon Offroad from Combiner Wars and Slice(r) from Timelines thrown in. Taking out these other cars is probably the easiest of the levels, though as it gets harder sometimes you find ones parked in your way as you fight the others.

Decepticon Bases

Here is the only part of the game where you get to fight as robot mode and a plethora of different dangers get in your way. Laser Canons in different configurations, barriers both physical and electric and purple flying Conheads who resemble the same ones found in Transformers: Devestation. These levels are also the ones were you get to test out the different weapons you have unlocked by defeating bosses, in particular I like the laser beam you get for defeating Acid Storm.

Bosses

Nearly all G1 based (apart from Generations Battleslash) and they are a lot of fun! You only get to fight these when you have reached a certain amount of points. In the classic 80’s arcade style, these bosses throw different energy weapon patterns at you and as long as you avoid the obvious patterns the bosses are easy to defeat. Quite an enjoyable part of the game, it’s a shame that they come along so rarely.

Character Unlocks

You start as Bumblebee and, much like any toy isle you go down, the easiest other character to get is another version of Bumblebee, this one resembling in part his look from TF: AOE. The other characters to get at this stage are Sideswipe, Arcee and Optimus – Optimus requiring a whopping 500 crystals! When you obtain a character you use your coins to increase their armor and firepower, then use crystals to ungrade them to the next level to start all over again. I just got Arcee this morning and she is quite fun in robot mode since she has two guns, which means double the firepower when you use the upgrades like lasers and homing missiles.

*‘Freedom is the right of all sentient beings – as long as they pay through the nose with crystally goodness’*

In-Game Purchases

*Guess the game companies need to make their money somehow*

What app doesn’t have these. Personally I’d never buy even the cheap ones but maybe there is someone out there willing to spend over a hundred bucks on the big pack.

Is the game worth playing?

In short doses yes. It’s lots of fun! In big doses no. Your finger gets tired after a while and to be honest when I was most of the way to the points total for Battleslash I was hoping I would crash as I had had my fill. Also despite the minor variations you get each run through, having only 4 stages to work through over and over again gets understandingly repetitive.

Will I still be playing this game in a months time?

I doubt it. I’ll unlocked Arcee a few hours ago but no way could I be bothered saving enough crystals for Optimus. Also as mentioned before, the amount of points you need to gain increases exponentially to reach bosses. The first three (Tracer, Quake and Acid Storm) are not too onerous but then suddenly you find Battlelslash to be a whopping 256,000 points and that takes forever to reach.

So should you download it?

If you are a TF fan sure, why not! It’s a bit of cheesy 80’s arcade fun but it really doesn’t have anything to keep you there for the long haul.

Got something to say about this App? Put it in the comments section below!

Transformer Toy Reviews

Toys Review – Street Fighter Transformers

July 20, 2018 Big Angry Trev Leave a comment

I’ll put my hand up to not being a massive Transformers Crossover toy fan. Oh I’ve got a few token ones – a couple from Star Wars, a couple from Marvel, heck – even one from My Little Kitty. So I was kind of bemused when I saw they were making to celebrate it’s 30 year anniversary Street Fighter II Transformer figures.

But then I saw some pics and knew I had to have some!

The Bison/Ryu set didn’t hold much appeal. I thought the reuse of an Optimus mold as Ryu to be particularly poor (I mean really, Ryu has a faceplate now?) but the Chun-Li/Ken set looked great! The only way it could have appealed to me more was for it to have Vega instead of Ken so I could recreate that awesome fight seen between him and Chunners from the great animated movie from the 90’s.

So today I received the figures. Now, unlike other reviews I write, I’ll be going from a purely aesthetic viewpoint as I intend to keep these figures relatively MIB. That means no transforming and minimal removal from packaging. I’ll be including a marketing pic at the very end from Google Search but otherwise all the pics are mine. And I invite anyone who has opened and transformed their figures to pop in a review in the comments section – if good enough I might even add it to the review and credit you!

*I… I just cant bring myself to play with toys these, though by Primus I want to!*

To be honest, I think this is a set you would want to keep MISB, especially given the price tag for what is a couple of Deluxe figures. Chances are you already have these molds as other characters anyway. Ken is redone from Rodimus and Chun-Li is redone from Arcee. I’ve got a couple of each mold (including the fantastic Legends Nightbird) so am able to restrain myself, though I am sorely tempted to see how Chun-Li looks in vehicle mode.

The paintjobs are fantastic, though Ken’s eyebrows look even more ridiculous than in the video game which is no mean feat. Chun-Li is most definitely the stand-out of the two, all the little details and changes in colour work surprisingly well on many levels – just superb!

The box-art is very good, showing the SFII origins of these two. It also shows how each character can be put into one of their special moves, and indeed they are packaged with Ken throwing a Dragon Punch and Chun-Li performing a Spinning Bird Kick, a testament to how artciulated the Arcee mold is.

Do you need these toys? No. But will you want these toys? If you are of my age, you may remember just what a huge deal SFII was, it was a revolutionary game and many of us bought a SNES just so we could play it! I’ve been a rabid SF fan for most of my life, though kinda lost track after Street Fighter Alpha. This set will sit with pride within my display case for years to come.

Got something to add, or actually bit the bullet and played with these toys yourself? Would love to read about it in the comments section below!

Transformatorium

Big Angry Trev visits Hasbro Australia!

December 19, 2017 Big Angry Trev 3 Comments

On Monday, myself and 14 other lucky fellows were treated to a behind the scenes look at the offices of Hasbro Australia, located in Sydney. Organized by the operator of Ozformers, this was for a hands-on experience with the newest Transformers toyline: Power of the Primes.

After a short wait, myself and my compatriots were ushered up to the fourth floor of the Hasbro offices where a space had been prepared. Scattered around various parts of the room were examples of some of the great Transformer products that have come out of recent.

Of course there was one other major Hasbro product on show and that was My Little Pony. Whilst this was largely ignored by the Transfans I couldn’t help but have a good look. I loved the huge Pinkie Pie – if it had been Rarity I would have forgotten the TF’s altogether and tried to work out a way to smuggle her out of the building for me to ride whenever I saw fit (sounds kinda dirty I know but Rarity – I loves ya!).

Power of the Primes

Of course the main point of the day was to give fans a hands-on experience with the new toyline. This consisted mainly of Wave 1 which has been released in the USA already and is due out in Australia within the next few months. Whilst this is all the same toyline, it can be broken into different groups.

The Dinobots

Something that has all the fans excited is that for most of the Dinobot characters this is their first Generations treatment. On display was the latest (of many) Grimlock‘s as well as Slug and Swoop. Also on display was the newest addition to the classic Dinobot team – a female raptor named Slash.

Of course, without Sludge and Snarl we couldn’t see the fully combined form of the Dinobot gestalt but I will say that what we could put together did look a lot better than what I had seen in photos to date.

The Original 13 & Pretenders

Now I’ll admit – I was not a fan of the Pretenders from G1, not particularly liking organic modes. But many of these characters have been brought back and in a bizarre twist, has been combined with the characters from TF lore which constitute the first 13 Primes. The classic Pretender shell characters are used to ensconse the mini-Primes within. Rather odd, but I know when they hit the shelves I wont be able to resist.

*Apparently Landmine & Alpha Trion were the same dude*

The Primes

A rather interesting concept that has been done here is with Optimus Prime and Rodimus Prime. Not only do both transform from Truck/Cybertronic Winnebago to robot, but you can remove a smaller robot which transforms into their pre-evolved forms – Orion Pax and Hot Rod. I really dig this concept and both toys looked great! Both also came with a Matrix of Leadership.

And the others…

There were several other figures on show from the new line. These included Beachcomber, Windcharger and a Dreadwind which is based on an older Combiner Wars figure. The Ozformer owner was also kind enough to bring a couple of figures that were US exclusives that not many Aussies would have touched – Arcee and Grotusque.

So overall it was a very interesting hands-on experience and behind-the-scenes look at Hasbro. I’d like to thank Hasbro for the opportunity – I’m sure my fellow 14 fans had as much fun as I did! And to top it off, in the raffle at the end I scored a The Last Knight Hot Rod to take home!

Got anything to say about this visit to Hasbro? Would love to read it in the comments section below!

Transformatorium

Transformers Wrist Rest Mouse Pads

March 24, 2017 Big Angry Trev 3 Comments

Well…. hmmmm. What to say here.

Wrist Rest Mouse Pads are all the rage these days. With more and more of us stuck in front of a computer at work or home for hours on end, the wrist can get sore. The whole idea of these kind of mouse pads is that they are filled with a squishy gel and are designed to be smooth and comforting to your wrist.

Then someone had the idea “Hey, since we are making a gel filled mat anyway, why don’t we shape the gel sacks like boobs?!”

And thus an industry was born. An industry I was blissfully unaware of until a few weeks ago. I had been using the same mouse pad for about 10 years (a Bumblebee one from the 2007 movie) which had disintegrated and I had never replaced. So while idly surfing ebay I typed in Transformer Mouse Pads.

That’s my story and I’m sticking with it!

Apparently these type of mouse pads are very prevalent. Name nearly any cartoon or video game coming out of Japan which features cute anime girls and someone has made a ~~boobpad~~ wrist rest of them. Oh, and not just the boobs – you can get butt ones too! So whether you want to rest your weary wrist on Nami’s ample chest or Chun-Li’s ample bum there is a product for you. So I guess it was just a matter of time before they made Transformer ones.

So lets have a look at the two shall we:

The mouse pads themselves are quite large. However even larger are the ~~boobs~~ wrist rests. I knew they would be bumpy when ordering them but I didn’t think they would be this… er… prominent. If they were human these femmebots would be rockin’ serious F cups (and probably have serious back issues). Since a Transformer is usually at least 10 times the size of a human I think we would have to expand the alphabet to give these ones a proper designation. The characters are Arcee and Windblade, both quite prominent in the IDW comics at the moment and both have had Generations toys in recent years. Admittedly the toys themselves do have chests that stick forward in a female manner, but they are certainly not this abundantly female!

Certainly making good use of that 3rd dimension

Yes, they even included her measurements

The material feels… quite um… smooth. And the bumps feel…. quite er…. squishy. Oh shit – what am I supposed to say here? These are Transformer Boob Mouse Pads, there is no getting around it! Rest your wrist on it (and only your wrist boys) and click yourself silly! Of course you can always leave them in their packaging and hang them on the wall as a talking piece when friends and relatives come to visit.

“No honey, its not perverted. It’s *‘decorative wall art’*“

Somehow I think mine are going to live in a box to be taken out to amuse my mates when they come over for a beer. With two little kids in the house I can’t see my wife allowing otherwise and I definitely cant take them to work.

Look, one could easily make the argument that these objectify… er… giant transforming alien femmebots (hmmm… maybe its not so easy after all) but in the end it’s a bit of silly, inexpensive fun that is more likely to illicit a dirty chuckle from your friends than any real arousal from yourself. So have a good laugh that these kinds of things have been even created in the first place and click ya brains out!

Related Article: Elita One Mouse Pad

Big Angry Trev!