MichaelandChrissy.com

One of the time honored traditions of Transformers figures is the repaint.  Some people won’t collect repaints unless they’re another character entirely.  Some not at all, no matter how many identical Seekers  are produced.  I love’em.  If I already own one figure of a certain mold, I also want to own every redeco or remold of that figure.  I just like to see them side-by-side and study the contrast.

The problem that I have with repaints is when the new deco is almost identical to the older deco.  For example, I’m fine if they paint Optimus Prime purple and call him “evil”.  I think that’s cool.  I’ll buy it.  But don’t try to sell me another yellow Bumblebee with a silver stripe instead of a black stripe.  It’s not much of a repaint if you can barely tell them apart at first glance.  Such is the case with Activators Battlefield Bumblebee.

I’ve talked about my love of the Activators line before: they’re small, easy to transform, and cheap enough to collect any repaint that Hasbro cares to make.  Animated Starscream got two repaints from this line: Thundercracker and Dirge.  Both completely different color schemes and different characters.  The deluxe-sized Bumblebee got a really nice gold and brown Prowl-like repaint with Elite Guard Bumblebee, so we know that good decos are out there.

Bumblebee got a nice white deco in Patrol Bumblebee, but followed with another yellow combination with Battlefield Bumblebee.  What?!  After the pack-in figure with True Colors Shockwave got no repaint at all, this was just adding insult to injury.  There was potential here!  Maybe give him flames on the side and call him Team Rodimus Bumblebee?  Or they could have surprised us with a Japanese Animated-inspired metallic yellow deco.

Derrick Wyatt designed a number of characters with the same structure as Bumblebee for Animated, so Hasbro had many options for repaints with this mold: a blue one named Glyph (bonus for using a female Transformer), or a green one name Wasp, or a beige one named Bumper, or an homage to any of the G1 Throttlebots.  I’m just wondering how another yellow Bumblebee got the green light.

I had a few ideas for blog posts last year that never made it to the light of day.  They were either not fleshed out very well or I was just too busy to finish them at the moment.  I thought that I would spill out the raw ideas onto this post, just to give you an idea of what I’m thinking about from time to time.

Sir Toppem Hat’s Cult Of Personality (3/5/09)

Like the “family” of Charles Manson, the locomotives of Sodor require the affection of their appointed leader.  To gain that affection, each has been brainwashed to believe that salvation comes at the expense of being “Really Useful”.  Never-ending servitude is a small price to pay to be praised by God on his own island paradise.  Just don’t drink the Kool-Aid!

The Neurosis Of Lofty The Crane (5/18/09)

Aiden loves Bob The Builder.  He just can’t get enough of the construction vehicles.  Each one has its own personality, and in some cases, neuroses.  Lofty the Crane, for instance, absolutely refuses to give a confident answer to anything.

Can we do it, Lofty?  Lofty says, “Um, yeah, I think so”.  This shows a lack of self confidence.  Instead of just ignoring the obvious warning signs, Bob and his friends should stage an intervention.  Maybe put Lofty on some anti-anxiety medication.  Can you do that for trucks?

Remind Me Not To Push Cars Up Hills (11/9/09)

Cassie got a new car!  Well, new in the sense that she never owned it before.  It doesn’t actually run, so we had to tow it to her house and then push it into the garage.  About 50 feet.

“Oh, this car is light! I could push this car all day!”  I was down in front, hunkered over the hood, helping to push the car back.  Then, once the car was up past the curb, it hit me.  My legs were burning from the knees up.  They still are.  Ow ow ow!

In retrospect, I can kind of see why I never finished these.  I probably could have squeezed out a couple of paragraphs on each one, but I only provide quality blog posts to you, my faithful readers.  All three of you (you know who you are).  I’ve actually got one more old one in disrepair, but I really want to finish that one.  Watch this space!

Swavek got me a copy of Borderlands for an early Christmas present.  He also got a copy for himself, since we like to compare notes over time while we play the same game.  He started off playing a Sniper character, while I chose to start with a Siren.  We talked a lot about the game.

I’ve compiled the emails that I sent out below, along with hindsight commentary in brackets.  I’ve already beaten the single-player game twice, but Swavek and I have yet to play cooperative mode.  If you’re at all interested in information about Borderlands gameplay or links to cool Borderlands stuff, then read on.

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It’s a new year, and we’re off to a great start.  Aiden is talking more than ever, and we’re already seeing Gavin’s first few words.  Gavin is really asserting his own little personality!  We’ll probably be upgrading him from the crib to his own bed this year too.  Both of our boys are growing up so quickly!

We’ve also finalized plans to go to Disney World in June.  Grandma and Aunt Cassie will be going with us to help wrangle the boys, since we’re taking both of them this year.  We hadn’t planned to go back for another couple of years, but Botcon 2010 will be held in Orlando.  It should be a lot of fun!

Chrissy and I have both made New Year’s resolutions to lose weight this year, so we’ll see where that takes us.  I’m shooting for twenty pounds.  I also want to start up my language studies again.  It was nice to talk a little with some Japanese people at the last AUTM meeting, but my vocabulary is extremely limited.

As an aside, this New Year’s Eve was almost an exact repeat of last year’s.  Hopefully, I’ll have better luck with my resolutions this time around (since they’re pretty much the same this year).  Wish me luck!  Anyway, have a great new year!  Let’s make the most of 2010!