Transformers Animated Allspark Almanacs

Transformers, falling meets the eye. Transformers,

robots in disguise. Autobots wage the battle

to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons.

Transformers. Transformers. And I'm jiving to

this episode of Transformation Animation featuring

Mike Blanchard, Stephen C. Phillips, and Michael

Wilson. Hello and welcome to episode 19 of Transformation

Animation Podcast. I am one of your hosts, T

.F. Joe and Mike, and joining me is Steve Megatron.

Hello. Hello. And Pecan Court Michael. Hello.

Hey, how's it going? It's going. What's been

going on with you, Steve? Not much. I finally

pried my ass away from Arkham. You are a stronger

man than I. I've beat it three times. Because

he's been playing for the last 175 hours. Off

and on. I thought you were playing the DC Universe.

As soon as I got Arkham, I jumped ship. Because

it's just a hell of a lot better. And I'm stuck

in DC. Not that I won't eventually go back to

it. But I'm also playing Spider -Man Shattered

Dimensions on 360, which is quite cool. Oh, sweet.

That looks cool, actually. It's difficult in

some aspects, but it's kind of cool because you

get to play as the different timelines and they

get special powers. And some of their abilities

are similar to playing Arkham, so I was right

at home. Neat. Is the control scheme the same?

Roughly the same between games? It's similar.

There's a lot less controls to be had in the

Spider -Man. Eh, it's fine. But... Other than

that, pretty much been... Besides our membership

application on the website now. Yes. Which we

had to draft because we were getting ample of

emails of people inquiring to join the network,

so... It's not my fault. We had to make an application

for people to fill out and a guideline of rules.

And so, yeah. Yeah. That's been going on. We've

been working on the guide to next year, what's

coming next year. I actually have to go back

and listen to the last year's year in review

episode because I have to figure out how the

hell I organized that last year. So I've got

to do that for this year's. Let's see. We also

have a, I think, where did I put it? Here we

go. Even though this is Transformation Animation,

we are currently not doing any more TBU episodes,

but we did get a review on TBU. It was left on

November 17th, 2011, by Charles Niedermeyer.

Four -star review. Why not five? I have no idea.

Very good show. Tough crowd. Beast Era podcast.

This is probably my favorite of the Transformers,

and I'm so glad that there's finally a podcast

covering it. In this show, you get an in -depth

look at each episode, plus voice actor interviews,

great stuff. So thank you to him for leaving

that review. As for, what about you, Michael?

What have you been up to, seeing as how it's

the holiday season? What has the family Wilson

been up to? Oh, that's a good question. Actually,

I... I find it very hard to tear myself away

from Skyrim lately. You like Skyrim. Everybody

that plays that is finding themselves hard to

be torn away from it, yeah. Yeah, I got a buddy

of mine that's going on 100 hours, and he has

barely touched the main storyline. Good lord.

Yeah, I don't know how many. I think I'm going

on about 30, and I haven't touched the main storyline

yet. But it's... It's fairly immersive. I mean,

I just ordered a brand new computer just to play

it. I mean, well, I installed it on my machine,

and my machine immediately said, oh, you're not

seriously going to try to run this, are you?

It said, uh, bite me. It didn't go that far.

I can play it. I just have it on the lowest visual

settings, and even then, it's so... bogs down

a bit sometimes they're like it's like there's

this huge beautiful vistas of countryside with

mountains and occasionally a flying dinosaur

in the distance and the minute i look up my machine

grinds to a halt while it's busy rendering all

these mountains and then it kicks back in and

i can move so like half the time i'm staring

at the ground while i'm running and people are

sneaking up on me and mountain lions are chewing

my face off before i know what's going on It's

just not the way the game was meant to be played.

I mean, I got a new machine in the mail now.

It should be coming here in a week or so. Are

you sure about that? You sure no one stole it

or anything like that? Well, you know, I actually

got a really good deal through Dell. It was like

a Black Friday deal. It was $1 ,000 off this

machine. I mean, I've got like 16 gigs of RAM.

Sorry, 16 gigs of RAM, 2 terabytes of hard drive

space. I've got just a ginormous video card in

there. This thing's going to run like a monster.

And I'm really looking forward to playing Skyrim

on it, but I haven't received it yet because

we're waiting on the video card. Oh. Yeah. I

mean, initially it had canceled. And I'm thinking,

what the hell? I was expecting to get it. And

I went online and found out that it was canceled.

And I talked to the guy, the customer service

guy, and he said, well, it canceled itself because

this video card won't be in for a month. And

I'm like, tough. Reinstate it. I'll wait. I want

that video card. So, yeah. So I'm waiting on

the new computer now. It should come in in a

couple weeks. I won't get it until after Christmas,

which is unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah. This is kind

of like my wife and I, this is kind of like our

Christmas gifts to each other because we both

got one. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, I'm notoriously

hard to buy for. So just, you know, buy me a

$2 ,000 computer. I'll be okay. Okay then. Well,

that's the beauty of it. Cause I got it for like,

you know, a little over a thousand. It's just,

it's ridiculously powerful, expensive. beast

of a machine and and yeah i got it for less than

what i could have built it on my own for and

that's really the criteria there i'm fully capable

of building the machine on my own but can i can

i just buy it cheaper with a warranty i'll do

it that way yeah exactly as far as me i'm getting

all the new shows ready for next year um Getting

blog posts for the end of the year done. Let's

see, what else? Getting the GCR Music Spotlight

going. We've got to record our 80s episode this

month. This show's coming to an end. This is

the second -to -last episode of TAP. So there's

that. Other than that, not much else is really

going on. It's winding down for the holidays,

huh? Yeah, it's not even, I mean, I'm still going

to be working straight through because, I mean,

my mom lives up in Massachusetts. I'm here by

myself, so I don't care. I mean, to me, and this

is not to take anything away from the holiday

spirit, but to me, it's just another day at this

point because, I mean, I'll just be here by myself,

so I don't really care. I mean, I've already

sent my mom her Christmas presents. I already

told her, you know, hey, if you want to wait

until Christmas, fine. If you don't, that's fine,

too. to open them. Uh, it's just not, you know,

the holidays pretty much have no meaning for

me anymore. That's a shame. Eh, shit happens.

So we're going to take a break. You're going

to hear some quotes and then we'll come back

with the all spark almanac volume one discussion.

Perhaps thou should have planned this caper with

greater forethought, hm? Such as arranging a

getaway car? Hey, William Smell. Quit picking

on her. Quiet, both of you. I'm thinking. Hi

there. Look to your left. The key is in the ignition.

Come on! From whence comes this? Don't argue

with the lady. Get in. chariot is fleet it's

not a chariot feather brain it's an suv hey suv

that's what we ought to call ourselves as in

society of ultimate villainy oh i like it the

perps couldn't have gone far they're on foot

not anymore they're not That was like a dream,

doesn't it? Also, plenty of cargo space for your

stolen loot. And don't even get me started on

a cup holder. Let me just say I've had my eye

on your operation for the last few days. And

I'm really impressed with what I'm seeing. The

whole costume, villain, team -up thing. It's

very exciting. I'm thinking we could do something

together. That's funny. Kind of an I -scratch

-your -back -you -scratch -mine type arrangement?

Consider this slick ride a down payment. It's

a truck. Big whoop. Push the red button. for

stuff that wasn't for Season 4. Yeah. And the

pictures of all the stuff that... Yep. Yeah,

this is just... We'll get to that. Wow. It's

just terribly, terribly cool stuff. Yes, it is.

All right, we are back, and we are going to start

the AllSpark Almanac discussion with Volume 1.

Both volumes are written by Jim Sorensen and

Bill Forrester. The Volume 1 cover has Bulkhead

with a broom. And Sari sitting on his neck. Yeah,

I don't know why they went with this cover. I

honestly don't. No, he doesn't have a broom.

He's painting. Oh, broom, paintbrush, whatever.

It looks like a broom to me. Well, it is a broom

because he uses the broom to paint with. That's

like, I don't want to say a major portion of

Bulkhead's. or not his backstory, but, you know,

his personality. He's like, well, I'm the big,

dumb Bumblebot. I think I'll paint. And he spent

several episodes just painting. Yeah. So I kind

of like this. Especially because Saria's got

her little paintbrush in her hand and she's,

for some reason, covered in blue paint. I don't

get it. But, you know, I like it. I like that

it kind of looks like they painted the cover

together. Yeah. Well, they do like to paint together.

Well, yeah. They're artistic and such. It's stuff

and junk. Yeah, stuff and junk, stuff and junk.

I don't know. One of the first things that caught

my eye when I was flipping through this was the

table of contents page. Not really for the fact

that it's, oh my god, it's the table of contents

and you can see where to go from there. But mainly

for all of the different logos that they originally

had for the show. All the different logo designs.

I really love those. Yeah, that's kind of an

interesting behind -the -scenes look. Directly

across from that, you've got sketches of what

the characters would end up looking like. So

lots of behind -the -scenes type stuff in here.

Oh, yeah. Several pages of... character sketches.

I'm assuming that Derek Wyatt just turned over

his notebook and said, here you go. Publish all

this stuff. I almost wish they would have went

with some of these designs in here more so than

what they used. What do you mean? Transformers

Hero? No, not the name. Originally, they were

going to... have that series be Transformers

Hero and the toys, and I'm assuming portions

of the storyline, would have been more directly

related to the Unicron trilogy. But then they

went with the Derek Wyatt route, which was more

cartoony and stylized. I think what Steve is

saying is he wishes that... More of the robot

designs looked like the sketches, kind of like

Ratchet's ambulance look in drawing form and

that kind of stuff. I think that's what he was

talking about. Yeah, there's that. There's, for

instance, Megatron's head. Nothing against what

was already previously there. I just like the

one that's on page 8 better. Yeah, because it's

more of the bucket head. Yes, I like the bucket

head. Everybody likes the bucket head. Bucket

head. More G1 -esque, let's say. I really like

what they came up with, though. I really like

that Megatron. For the series, at least. I don't

think this show would have had the popularity

it got if it was called Transformers Hero. It

would have been Heroes, not Hero. Heroes. Well,

it says in here on page 11, it says Transformers

Hero. Well, that must be a typo because it was

Heroes. Right. I don't know. I mean, I remember

when the first leaks came out. I was covering

the coverage of it, too. Yeah, it was like Hero.

Hero? I heard Heroes, but... See, that just doesn't

sound right. Maybe to you. He rose. He rose and

did what? Yeah. You know, one of the things I

really love about both of these books, but simply

because the first volume is mainly the first

two seasons of the show, during the show you

don't always get to see every little detail on

the robots. And I love the fact that they have

all these model images. Full model, full color

images of Optimus and all the characters and

all his different facial expressions and all

his different trailers. The dump truck trailer

that we never actually saw. The dump truck, the

G1, the fire truck trailer, yeah. The G1, yeah.

No, it was very cool. I mean, they, again, somehow

got all these images that were, I'm assuming,

designed for the show. A lot of these were used.

The back of Ratchet, the back of his ambulance

mode, most of the vehicles and the cab where

people would actually sit and drive. All of these

images that were used in the show that were just

blink and you'll miss it. They pulled them out

and they displayed them here in all their glory.

I'm sure that Derek passed a lot of this stuff

over to Jim Sorensen. I believe when I talked

to Jim Sorensen, he said that he handled most

of the visuals, most of the imagery, and Bill

Forster handled most of the story in the book

as far as writing the bios and stuff like that.

What about you, Steve? What do you like so far

going into the book, the first volume? Well,

some of the information, I find it interesting.

but ultimately I like it for seeing the designs

that they threw to everything and the variations

thereof. Yeah. So being a past comic reader,

I would have to say that I like the imagery that

I'm seeing in here more so over the information.

So if something strikes my attention, then of

course I'm going to read about it. It's just

nice to see all the different variations that

they had going on through here. Did Prowl ever

use his tuning fork in the show? I think he did

once. The seismic staff. I just noticed that.

I'm like, wait, that's a tuning fork. What the

hell? Okay. I like being able to see all the

different, you know. Aspects of Bumblebee, even

though I still don't care for the character.

I like being able to see it in slow -mo without

having to get a stock transformation scene to

learn how to transform the toy. There's one page

in here. It doesn't actually have a page number.

I'm not going to point out the pages, actually.

Page 57 that actually has Bumblebee in all the

different lighting. So, it's like, you know,

you have him in the dark, you have him under

blue light, under red light. And it actually

looks like a page just covered in Bumblebee repaints.

But it's, in fact, it's Bumblebee just under

different lighting conditions. Yeah, yeah. That's

kind of cool, though. I thought it was terribly

cool, yeah. I think... Out of all of the character

bios in this volume, my favorite is seeing Jazz.

Just seeing all the different visuals of Jazz.

One of the things I really love about this book

is, talking about the bios and stuff, is how

they had other characters. Like you have Sentinel

Prime writing Jazz's bio, talking about Jazz.

So to me, when I first read these bios, when

I first got this book, oh. God, however long

ago it came out. When I was reading the bios,

it's funny, I can actually hear, sadly, Sentinels

Prime's voice in my head talking about Jazz.

I wouldn't want him flying around in my head.

Okay, but what I'm saying is they really brought

the characters to, like you have Bumblebee writing

Blur's bio. I could hear Bumblebee's voice in

my head when I'm reading about Blur. So I'm saying

that they brought those characters that were

talking about the other characters to life in

this. Oh, yeah. In most cases, I could see it.

In most cases, you can actually hear it as you

read it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you... Well, after

you've watched this enough, right? After you've

sat through all three seasons. you can tell just

by the way it's written which character it's

supposed to be, and then that voice comes out.

In a few instances, I actually had to read to

the end to see who penned it. Yeah. Because each

one has the author's name at the back. Yeah.

I wish Swoop would have used the thermal mace

more in the show if he was actually in the show

more. That thermal mace looks awesome on page

43. Again, they're all very... All the Dinobots,

except for Grimlock, were very underutilized.

Even Grimlock was underutilized. I mean, he...

I wouldn't say underutilized. I would say poorly

utilized. Yeah. He showed up a lot. I mean...

Yeah, he was there quite a bit. Yeah, if I didn't

know any better, I would almost say that, you

know, he had a little British influence there,

let's say. But no, he showed up a lot. He just

was very poorly used. I think if Hasbro had actually

made a repaint of Ironhide in the silver armor,

I would have bought that toy. I wouldn't care

if it was a repaint of Cybertronian Ratchet toy.

I would have bought that toy if there was a silver

repaint of Ironhide. But the orange just... We

were very lucky to get the orange toy. So many

toys that we didn't get. I mean, even repaints.

Repaints are a layup. And, yeah, there's so many

that we just didn't get. I mean, a green bumblebee.

How hard would it have been? They were supposed

to do that, but we never got it. I know. There's

a lot of stuff they were supposed to do. You

know, again, well, I want to say, like, Goldfire

Grimlock, and there was at least one more on

lockdown. There was a jazz repaint that didn't

come out. No, the jazz repaint came out. Freeway

Jazz. He was movie colors. He was the silver

animated jazz. He was movie colors. He was called

Freeway Jazz. Right, right. Okay, I got him.

Who was I thinking of? Oh, I'm sorry. The blur

repaint. Yeah, the vortex blur. The vortex blur,

yeah. Anyway, what it comes down to is... As

far as Hasbro is concerned, repaints are manna

from heaven. You know, we've already got the

mold. All we've got to do is print it in a different

color. Yep. So, I don't know. I mean, I think

at this point, at that point in time, the sales

were so low, they just said, all right, we're

just going to kill this one. Just going to kill

it, yep. It sucks, but... Sad, but it happens.

Yep. I find it funny that... Looking at the page

out of the corner of my eye, Swindle's Scatter

Blaster on page 77. When I first looked at it

out of the corner of my eye, I was like, wait,

he has a purple lightsaber? Because the weapon

is on the bottom of the page. Yeah. It looks

like a lightsaber. It looks like a giant purple

lightsaber on its side. It looks like the handle.

That's funny. This is cool because you not only

get... Pictures of the front and the back of

Swindle's alt mode. The front and the back of

his robot mode. You get pictures of him with

all of his weapons deployed. Pictures of close

-ups of his arm. Even black and white pictures

that detail how the weapons come out of his body.

It's just a lot of detail here. It's a lot of

neat stuff to include. And I still wish we had

a tape deck sound wave. I would have bought the

hell out of a TFA tape deck sound wave any day.

He's called the world's smallest transformer

sound wave. What'd you say, Steve? I said you

would. Shut up, you Beast Wars fanboy. I will

kill you. Right. Bastard. There's no shame in

being a Beast Wars fanboy. No. Wait, Starscream

wrote his own bio. Truck that monkey. That's

because Starscream is extremely conceited. That's

true. And he's a douche. I love seeing the clones

in here. The Seeker clones. Because it shows

clone 3370318, which is Skywarp, and it shows

the Ramjet clone as well. I just love that they

added those and it shows Slipstream and all the

other clones as well. I just really like that,

that they're showing off each one individually,

that they're taking the time to write a bio for

each individual toy. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

I like all the different colors. Locked down

in his poncho on page... That's funny. Oh, page

88. You gotta think that's gonna be like 80 feet

of fabric. Yeah, you would think so. He's tall.

When did Sari ever have sunglasses in the show?

At night. Those are like goggles. Yeah, but I

never saw those goggles on her in the show. Oh,

I don't know. I remember when she showed up with

the hockey gear. But not so much the cold weather

gear. Yeah. Well, the cold weather gear came

in the camping episode. Oh, okay. So maybe the

goggles were used. Okay, maybe they were used.

It's weird because seeing them on the page, I

don't remember them in the show. Where's the

context? Exactly. And they show Sumdack's head

without the stripe and then with the stripe.

That's nice. We are seriously going to go through

this page by page. No. Hey, two more pages until

Professor Princess. Yeah, we're skipping that

page. That page doesn't exist. Professor Princess

PhD. You can have your Professor Princess moment.

Go ahead. They've got half a page of Angry Archer's

weapons. This is cool. Yeah. And then after the

bios, it gets into all of the stories and this,

that, and the other thing. The headmaster. He

said headmaster. goes into the events of what

happened. I believe these are all comic events.

What I really love is how they're showing off

different colors of black arachnia. That's awesome.

It's on... Crap. It's on page 117. Oh, okay,

let me catch up here. Yeah, because these are

the... Yeah, these are from the comics. All these

pages now are from the Arrival comics. Oh, are

they? Yeah. No. Yes. No, like page 113, 114,

115. These are episode rundowns, aren't they?

Right, but the next page where Blackarachnia's

multicolor is, it says the Arrival number four,

A Few Loose Strands by Marty Eisenberg. Oh. Oh,

I thought this was just stuff that they put together.

No. She's got Starscream's crown. Yeah. I love

on the next page where it's talking about...

Sorry. I love on the next page where it has the

Episode 7 rundown of The Thrill of the Hunt.

On the page opposite that, it has Swindle's ledger.

This is so cool. Oh, there we go. And it gives

you prices and amounts and personally it's four.

There's an evaluation form about Optimus. That's

really cool. And it's got the old school tech

spec. Yep, that's awesome. Yeah, it does. Nice.

You know, actually, on the opposite page you

get an example of this, but what's really awesome

is that they show a lot of the painted backgrounds.

Yep. Because a lot of the times in the show,

you know, you can get lost just looking in the

backgrounds. They gloss over them so quickly

that it's hard sometimes, but they're... They

turn out really nice. You got a page from your

favorite character's diary all in pink. Professor.

Guess who's on the other page? Yeah, and I saw

it. The pinata. And I remember when we pointed

out the pinata in that review. That was funny.

Good times. Monster from Mars. Oh, I forgot his

name. It's another pretender. Skullcrant, I think.

Yeah, I think that's what it was. Eh, I'm getting

old. Don't begrudge me. Wait. There's a love

letter to... Well, there's a letter to Sardak

from Sari. How far ahead are you? I'm on page

138, 139. Garbage. Garbage. I am Rick Gar. Oh,

you're way ahead. I'm on like 127. Megatron's

encrypted internal log is talking about Stella

Healy. The kickboxer comes saboteur. I don't

remember this. This must be from a comic book.

It's probably from one of the comics. Oh, it's

The Arrival number three. Okay. Yeah. I don't

recognize this at all, but she looks kind of

cool. Yeah, she does. The story of Garbage -Os.

Garbage -Os. Futritional facts. Are you serious?

Okay, I know TFA has its own language and its

own culture. But futitional facts, really? Fuel

-titional? Yeah, fuel -titional. Ah, pimp my

bulkhead. Oh, this is so awesome. Memoirs of

a Magnus, chapter 39. I'm going to have to go

back and try to find these comics because these

look just hilarious. I didn't realize they had

comic reviews interspersed in here. Yeah. But

that's really cool. On page 150, it has the Titan

Magazine stuff. They have an Iron Man butt afterburn.

Hold on, I'm skipping a bunch of stuff here.

Oh, yeah, 150? Yeah, where it says Titan Magazines.

Oh, yeah, these are the British ones. Yeah, those

crazy Brits. Simon Furman. There's our Grimlock

maniac. Oh, there's Afterburn. Yeah, you know,

when Afterburn first came out, there was a lot

of talk about him being Sideswipe. Yeah. And

they were like, oh, it's animated sideswipe.

And then they named him Afterburn for some reason.

Yeah. Who fights off a deadly rage virus. Oh,

God. Can we just not rehash that old storyline

over and over again? Yes, let's not. One thing

I want to bring up is something that Michael

and I kind of didn't really argue over, but I

was sure and he wasn't. If you look on page 160.

There is models of Sentinel's Cybertronian form.

That is so not a snowplow on him. He did have

a different Cybertronian form. It was more of

an APC type of battering ram, not a snowplow.

That looks cool. That looks really cool. I wish

they had kept that for the Earth mode. I like

that better than his Earth mode. His Cybertronian

mode almost looks like a... Almost like a...

A head. Yeah, like the Beast Machine's Megatron

head. Yeah, the Pegaboard Megatron with no arms

or no spider legs on it. Yeah. So you take Sentinel

Prime's Cybertronian mold and just set it right

on top of your headless Fort Max and you'd be

good to go? Yep. But he'll get shot before then

and die. Let's talk about our favorite season

of the year, Halloween. Page 170, 171. He was

just flying ahead. You know, just leafing through

here, leisurely looking at the pages. It's been

a while since I've actually looked at this book.

This came out a few years ago. Well, the only

bit of art in here I like on the Halloween part

is Bumblebee. Yeah, Bumblebee looks great. Count

Bumblebee -alila. All right. Wants to suck your

energy on. Here we go. Pages 176, 177, we have

Design Evolution. Ultra Magnus, basically, white

repainted Optimus. That looks really cool. I

wish they would have used that, honestly, instead

of the... Or had, when Magnus got damaged badly,

I wish they would have went to this design, had

him break off the shell and be like, whatcha!

Now, normally I am more so in toy form rather

than animation form. I am severely against the

way they've done Ultra Magnus since the beginning

of Transformers Toys, which he's basically a

white Optimus Prime with a bunch of armor. I've

never liked that, but just seeing TFA Optimus

painted white like this, I really like that design.

And, of course... You know who you can blame

for that, though? Who? dreamwave comics oh yeah

that was yeah well they were they were the first

ones to you know it was basically a comic book

where uh i forget i think it was shockwave that

supposedly killed ultra magnus but instead of

dying uh he just shunted the armor yeah he shed

the the whole thing broke apart and this white

out from his prime popped out and it's like oh

and at the time it's like that's the coolest

thing ever And then after... Until they made

it one of the biggest crux in toy history. Exactly.

It's like, well, we could just make a black repaint,

but we could paint him white and make him Ultra

Magnus. I like the white and blue scheme. I think

it's cool. I would have bought that toy. But

then, like, right next to him, look who you find.

It's a Shattered Glass Mortar Master. Or I should

say, you find Mortar Master, but he looks like

Shattered Glass Prime. Because he's in the green

and the purple. Yeah. This is what Motor Master

was always meant to be. Motor Master was not

meant to be a garbage truck, damn it. Now, the

one thing about this page that I'm kind of really

digging on, because, again, like you, Michael,

I haven't looked at this in a while. I haven't

looked page by page in a while. Yeah. On Optimus'

heads that they have here, I like how they almost

gave him a Beast Wars optimal. face thing right

yeah he's got like a nose plate and a chin plate

with like a mouth in between yep i like that

that's cool and for kevin who is not here and

kevin won't actually be in this episode because

i don't think he's ever even seen these books

uh originally prowl was going to be white and

they show it here and he looks they they should

have kept him white no he looks it looks good

uh Oddly, there was actually a Japanese repaint

of Prowl in this color scheme. Right. And it

looked awesome. That's the Tokyo, it's some special

Tokyo exclusive fair thing. Yeah. It's on BBTS

for like 55 bucks. Yeah, I don't want to pay

55 bucks for a repaint. But it looks really good.

We'll leave it at that. And again, as you said,

Michael, about, you know, when you're watching

the show, you don't always, for me, I know, like

I noticed the backgrounds, but it's not like

I'm paying attention to the story. I'm paying

attention to the action and chapter eight or

chapter six of this book is they're showing you

all the different areas of Detroit. And I really

liked it. They're actually showing you the background

shots in here. Right? Yeah. I mean, there's a

lot of gorgeous art. Yep. Someone who put a lot

of time into this. It's just really... Well,

Derek put a lot of time into it, but yeah. Do

you think... I mean, I know Derek did the character

designs, but I don't think it was Derek doing

the backgrounds. I'm not sure what he did. Well,

I know he was doing character design, but I mean,

maybe he did all the backgrounds. Maybe he painted

all these. I don't know. But somebody... I mean,

somebody with a very unique style. uh, you know,

did a really nice job on these. What do you think

of the background images, Steve? Um, I think

that they're actually highly detailed for, uh,

you know, for, for one, nobody really paid attention

to it in the show. Right. Um, and two, it, it,

I don't know, it looks really well, I mean, compared

to the rest of the animation in the show, I'd

say that, uh, They should have gone with this

more, I don't know, nicer animation of detail.

Yep. But overall, I mean, these are... Volume

1 gives you a lot of great details of Season

1 and Season 2. It gives you a lot of great information.

For me personally... I can't read the episode

recaps because of the fact that it's a black

page with bright green lettering. I mean, it's

not that I don't want to read them. I would love

to read them. Yeah. It's a little hard on the

eyes. Yeah, it's very hard on the eyes. Yeah.

I'll buy that. For a dollar. For a dollar. Ha

ha! I'll buy that for a dollar. You know, I love

all the settings of, like, the Decepticon base,

the Autobot base, Sumdack Tower on the outside.

They have two pages of cars. Yep. It's like two

pages of Earth denizens, two pages of cars. It's

like, you know, it's cool because they use this

stuff in the show, but at the same time it's

like, wow, you know, are they... They're just

digging for filler here when they... You know,

a whole page of stupider animals. Yeah, they

actually say stupiderganics. Yeah. It's like,

here's a bird and a cat and a dog, several dogs.

Twelve cows, a monkey. This is something worth

pointing out. It's like page 193. They talk about

being the city. Yeah. From the 2008 VodCon. Yeah.

That was a lot of fun. That was, for those who

weren't sitting in on it, Chris Ho, Evangelist,

who did the voice of Shockwave. That was the

first time I met him that year. I was like, who

the hell is this guy? Why is he doing the voice

of Shockwave? But he did a really good job. Yeah.

Overall, Volume 1 has done up very well. It pretty

much encompasses all of the first two seasons

stuff. Do you have a favorite page or a favorite

thing that they put in this book, Steve? I wouldn't

say I have any particular one thing that's my

favorite, but I do like the fact that they show

in here different variations of what the characters

could have looked like, all the detailed settings

without characters in them. Right. Not only is

it nice backdrops in there, but I just like all

the art. I know the information is great too,

but like I said, the art is what catches me.

Despite me not caring for most of the actual

cartoon, I do have to give props that they did

some things right. What about you, Michael? Yeah,

I'll have to go with Steve there. The art in

this book is just really, really amazing. In

fact, I would go so far as to say that I don't

necessarily need all of the episode synopsises.

You know, the episode synopsises are nice because

you have art from each episode in there. Right.

it's not as much as you're going to get from,

you know, the character details or in the back

of the book, you've got all, all the backgrounds.

Yeah. In fact, I, well, that's funny. My wife

is a school teacher. She got me the scholastic

version. I was looking for the word scholastic

on it, but I don't see it. It's a smaller book.

It's a very small book. And it's just a, you

know, she, she, she got it for me thinking that

this was the full version. Uh, she's like, look

what I got you. And it's, it's really cool. It's

about a hundred pages. Yeah. Uh, but it's got

all of the character art and, uh, a lot of the,

uh, uh, I don't want to say it. Well, no, actually

it's just character art. Yeah. So it covers the

character art. Uh, but I mean, as far as an art

book goes, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, it is.

It's really, really neat. Oh, it only goes up

to page 103 of the full -size one. But for me,

the cool thing about the full -size is once you

get past page 194, we get in Chapter 7 settings

where we have, again, all this gorgeous background

art. One of the funniest things for me, and I

just now noticed this because I'm looking at

the back of the book, on the UPC code it says,

not intended for children under 13. Okay, I know

it's a big 220 -page heavy -ass book, but there's

nothing graphic in here. I mean, this... thing

isn't you know an nc -17 movie or something like

that i think it might be the reading level probably

might be referring to because i mean just just

looking through all this green text that's hard

to read on the dark background yeah uh but yeah

a lot of big words just a lot of big words but

no i i uh i don't know i mean maybe there's you

know 10 year olds that are reading at a 13 year

old level and they'll enjoy it more but But the

Scholastic version, just leafing through it,

what bit of text there is, interspersed among

all the character art, it's not terribly difficult

to read. But then again, I think most of this

is written to sound like other characters. In

most cases, you're not going to get a lot of

big words out of some of these characters. If

that makes sense. Oh, that makes perfect sense.

I mean, it's a second to third grade book, so.

Yeah. And I think it's nice that they did that

and they condensed it so, you know, kids at a

younger age whose parents might get them to watch

the cartoon can actually see it as well without

having to, you know, have this big heavy book.

Now, one of the greatest things about this book

is, you know, most books will have words of praise

or. Acclaim. The reviews. Hard to believe that

a couple of organic humans put this volume together.

It'll surely help me make Magnus someday. Sentinel

Prime. I like Sunstorm's review. Yeah, hold on.

A superlative showcase of early 22nd century

Detroit, and I don't say that just because I

own a substantial share of the publisher's stock.

Border Sea Powell. And of course, this is actually

where our clip of Grimlock actually came in.

As soon as I saw this, book good. That's where

I had David do podcast good. As soon as I saw

that, that's where I got the podcast good from.

And Lockdown says, this here guide is invaluable

in sussing out any potential quarries worth its

weight in upgrades. This book ain't bad. It could

stand a bit more of me, but other than that,

pretty good. Bumblebee. And then Sunstorm. What

a brilliant book. Probably the best I've ever

read, human or Cybertronian. I can't recommend

it strongly enough. I just love that character.

Yeah, Sunstorm is awesome. So we are going to

take a quick break and then we're going to get

into a volume two podcast. Good. We are back

and we are here talking about the all spark almanacs.

This time we're going to talk about volume two.

Now this cover, I love, uh, you got retgar, uh,

you got bumblebees. Sorry. Are the three main

main characters. And then you've got them playing

with other characters' toys. And you've got toy

boxes strewn throughout. This cover is awesome.

Yeah, I like the toys. They have the toys in

there. I like the fact that everything's covered

in those little plastic twix ties. I hate those

things. I hate those things. Did you notice the

little sound wave popping his head up? Yeah,

I did. Of the box? That's funny. Yeah, that's

awesome. Now, this book is slightly different

than Volume 1 because for me, when I read Volume

1, I thought Volume 1 was going to be everything.

Right. When I got to the end of Volume 1, the

first time I looked through it, I'm like, wait,

where's Season 3? What the hell? You're missing

a big chunk. Yeah, I was like, wait a second,

you guys are missing a big chunk of stuff here.

And I didn't realize that they were saving it

for a second volume. And here we have the second

volume. This is basically broken up into two

sections. Part 1 is the Season 3 stuff. And then

Part 2... is all about the toy design, the animation,

Season 4, the toy gallery, packaging art, and

the cast. And you have a lot of the main characters

on the opposite page here. You've got Optimus,

Prowl, Ratchet, Bumblebee, Bulkhead, Grimlock,

all that stuff. Very, very awesome. Whereas in

the previous book, Derek J. Wyatt wrote the foreword,

in this one, Matt Youngberg is writing the foreword.

So that's very cool. Let's see. Oh, wow. Well,

there's your Roadbuster Magnus in animation form.

Woo -hoo! Actually, I was looking ahead later

on at the toy designs, where they're actually

showing early prototypes of some of the toys.

Yeah. And oddly, oh, these are the Hero Jet Twins.

Apparently, the Jet Twins appeared in the original

version, which was the Transformers Hero. And

honestly, they don't look nearly as crap as the

animated version that came out did. They actually

don't look that awful. I so wish the Shadowblade

Megatron toy looked like this animation model

on page 10. Oh, the repaints? Yeah. The animation

model, yeah. I so wish the Shadowblade Megatron

looked like this repaint of Megatron. That would

have been cool to see him look like that in the

show, honestly. Oh, yeah. Of course, so would

it have been of half these other characters shown

right here. He looks very Tron. That's what I

like about it. Hence Megatron. Megatron. I like

the swindle repaint, the red and gray swindle.

It doesn't look nearly G2 enough for me, but

it's still very cool. What I like, though, is

you get the animation models here early on, but

then when you get to the second half of the book

in toys, they actually show the toy repaints,

at least the ones that they made. Right, yeah.

Yeah, it's just a lot of good stuff here. If

only Wheeljack was in this series more. Oh, man.

I know we're getting a Transformers Prime toy

of Wheeljack. I know we've got Generations Wheeljack,

and that's all well and good. But, oh, man, does

animated Wheeljack look so awesome. Yeah, don't

get me started on Prime Wheeljack. Oh, stop it.

Yeah, it's like, oh, IDW wouldn't give us the

rights to drift, so we'll make our own Mary Sue

with swords. Hey. Anyway, we'll get to that way

later. We'll get to that in 2014, people. My

only real complaint about Season 3, I never saw

Rodimus in car mode in the animation. but they

have it here in the book, and that's just awesome.

It looks like Rodimus. Well, of course it looks

like Rodimus. Well, the thing is, though, is

I would expect Rodimus to have a more Cybertronian

alt mode, and here it's clearly a car. Well,

they were homaging, obviously, for G1. Well,

you know, G1, he's a Cybertronian car, which

just makes no sense. Especially when you look

a couple pages earlier, and all the other Cybertronians

have Cybertronian modes. Oh, you know, I take

that back. Look, Wheeljack has wheels. Yeah,

Wheeljack has wheels. Well, technically, they

all have wheels, but not like... Earth wheels.

They're round, but they're not earth wheels.

It's something else. This series really... It

doesn't make up for what this character was in

Armada, but it made him a hell of a lot cooler,

which is Hotshot. I love Hotshot's alt mode in

this. It's so good. No, it looks about the same

as Hotshot. True, it does. It's animated style.

I never liked the Hotshot character. For the

five seconds that he's in Season 3, Episode 1,

the transwarp, he's only in there as an homage.

I don't mind him there, but yeah, you're right.

The Hotshot character in Armada can go to hell.

And more so burn in hell and die. I like the

brawn. He's like all short and squat. Yeah. He

got fat in his old age. That's funny. I would

have loved to have seen a toy of this Red Alert.

That looks awesome. I think if they had kept

Red Alert as a main character as opposed to going

with Ratchet, we would have gotten a very cool

toy. Yeah. And I wonder if maybe they went with

a Ratchet because they couldn't figure out how

to get a Red Alert to transform. Maybe. What

I like is in the character art here, they show

her arm, or I should say her hand, kind of ends

in a gun type of thing. Yeah. But that is the

same hand extension that Armada Riddler had.

Yeah. So it all ties together. Yeah. And of course,

on page 27, Warpath, again, we needed a Warpath

animated toy. Oh, my God. I don't know. You know,

honestly, if you look at this toy and you compare

it to, like, Generations Warpath, or you look

at this figure and you compare it to the toy

of Generations Warpath, very similar. Someone

was, you know, basically keeping this in mind

when they designed that toy. Yeah. I like Beachcomber.

Yeah, Beachcomber apparently wasn't a favorite

of certain people on this show. I think Seaspray

looks awesome. Oh, he's got an inner tube. I

think it's funny that they included, like, Di

Atlas and Sky Gary in here, because I don't think

these two made it into the show. They might have

made it into a crowd scene, but I don't think

they actually had an actual appearance. I think

their heads appeared in Yokitron's dojo. Yeah.

But they were just like busts. It was a sculpture.

They didn't actually show the rest of the figure.

Hey, kids, look. It's me, Mario, and my brother,

Luigi. Woo -hoo! Pipes and Huffer. Yeah, they

have Botanica and Wheelie. Yep. They were never

in the show. Nope. I kind of like the way Wheelie

might have been in a crowd scene, but I don't

think Botanica was in the show at all. No, not

at all. I'm surprised that a character like Botanica

would fly because she's literally, you know,

that's her thing. She's a plant lady. She's half

a plant. She's an organic. And that would have

made everyone else on the planet go into a complete

tizzy. yeah i love cosmos tracks and mirage those

three look amazing yeah we did see tracks in

in transwarped but he was only in robot mode

for a second um but toys of tracks and and and

mirage those would have been awesome you know

if you look at the figure and the uh to a certain

extent the car mode there he looks an awful lot

like uh Oh. Blur? No, I'm thinking Nitro Prime,

and I forget what name they gave Nitro Prime

in the U .S. Nightwatch Optimus? No, in Japan,

there was a character named Nitro Prime, and

in the U .S., they turned it into a girl. Oh.

And I forget what they named her in the U .S.,

but... Some of these other ones that are in here

are so weird to me, like Light Bright. No, this

is shit they're making up. Yeah. I mean, well,

like the Throttle Bots, Chase and Freeway and

Searchlight, those positive, those weren't in

the show. And then, like... Flare Up was in the

show. Like Volks and Carrera, these are like

Argentinian Bumblebee repaints that they're just

like... Let's go ahead and throw that in there

just for the hell of it. But by the time you

get into Light Bright and Lickety Split, these

are toys that they made up. And I think they

said that they were going to let Mongo name them.

And Mongo wanted to name them after My Little

Ponies. So you end up with Lickety Split. And

then Lightbrite, it turned out there was something,

my little pony that sounded like Lightbrite or

something, but they couldn't get their rights

to that. They couldn't say it because of trademark

issues. So they settled on Lightbrite, which

worked just as well because that's the name of

an old 80s toy. So you get extra kudos there.

Okay, so first of all, I'm going to talk about...

The animals first, and then we'll go back to

that pink thing that supposedly saved G1. The

animals. You've got Steeljaw, Zor, and Ramhorn.

Now, the problem I have with showing Steeljaw

in this book is, Steeljaw and Ramhorn specifically,

we never had a blaster in the show, and we never

had Soundwave's adversary in the show at all.

I think the Human Error two -parter and Sound

and Fury, if you had made those three episodes

Blaster versus Soundwave, fans would have liked

them a lot more. I think maybe we would have

seen that in season four. Maybe. I've heard of

this Rosanna thing for two or three years now.

Someone please explain this to me. Explain what

now? The fact that everyone says Rosanna is going

to save G1. I don't get this. It was part of

the Japanese storyline behind the Binal Tech.

So, you have Ravage, right? It was a Binal Tech

car. There was actually a purple Corvette, I

think. No, that wasn't Ravage. Yeah, it was a

black Corvette that transformed into a robot

with the Jaguar head, which was Ravage. And then

later on, they had a Jaguar car that transformed

into a beast mode Jaguar. And they were both

supposed to be Ravage. So the idea there, in

Japan, there was a whole storyline there where

Ravage from the future came back into the past

and was interfering with the Binal Tech production.

Something along those lines. It's like Beast

Wars Ravage didn't really die, but he was stuck

in cassette mode and then somehow got sent back

into the past where he... reformatted his body

into a car, something along those lines, and

somewhere Rosanna stopped him. Oh, okay. At least

I think that's how it went. I don't know. Well,

maybe one of the listeners, maybe Gogdog from

TFW or somebody, I know Gogdog loves the Rosanna

thing, so maybe someone can explain it to us

in an email or something. Sari's protoform in

the... design stage. Well, I mean, the full art,

it just looks weird. I forget how I described

it in the show. What did I call it? Encephalitis

baby head or something? Something like that.

I don't know. It's creepy looking. Yeah, it's

very creepy looking. He's creepy. You know, and

then you get Wasp. with his Earth car mode, basically

just a repaint of Bumblebee. We are completely

glossing over the two pages of Sorry Gadgets.

Yeah, that's because we've kind of already made

fun of the Sorry Gadgets. We really need two

pages for Sorry Gadgets? Apparently so. Okay.

We got two pages of Wasp. I mean, honestly, there's

like... One is his before -inator form, and the

other is post -inator. Well, there's entire pages

here of background between... the love interest

between Doug base and like flare up or something

that, that they completely chucked. They couldn't

even include that because they didn't have enough

space. And yet we have two pages of sorry fingers.

So I don't know, man, I feel a little cheated.

Um, do you read a Jim Sorenson's blog? No, I,

I will read it every now and then, but it's not

something that I read as much as I love Jim Sorenson.

He's an awesome guy. I. I don't know. I only

go there when stuff is pointed out to me. Well,

he recently wrote a huge chunk of behind -the

-scenes, specifically for this book, and how

he wrote half of them, and the other author wrote

the other half, and how they traded the bios

back and forth. Like, I like this character,

and you like that character, and nobody wanted

Doug Bass. But apparently after a while, they

started writing all this stuff that was just

off the wall. Like I said, a love interest between

Doug Bass and Flare Up or somebody. And they

ended up cutting it. They couldn't include it

because they did not have enough room in the

book. Yeah. You have to go back and read that

on his blog. It was very interesting. I love

behind -the -scenes stuff. Yeah. I would have

to say my favorite part... out of the entire

Volume 2 at this point, is page 50 and 51. Two

pages of Cyclonus. Well, it's not really two

pages. I mean, if you look at it as an open book,

it's one whole page sample. I mean, it's, you

know. Right. No, it looks good. One page is his

bio and his alt mode, and the other page is his

different animatic designs. I don't think they

even showed most of this in the show. No, he

was in the show for about half a second. Blink

and you miss it. Yeah, pretty much. So this is

just gold right here, the fact that they included

it all. Yeah. Now, one of the things that a lot

of people have said, and I've even said this,

the... Not classics. Crap. Universe... Is it

Challenge at Cybertron? Yeah. Challenge at Cybertron

3 -pack, where it's a repainted universe Cyclonus

to be more G1 -ish colors, the more regular Cyclonus

purple that he is. Yeah. As soon as I saw this

page and I saw his two swords that are on this

page, I'm like, as much as I don't like third

-party stuff, one of these third -party companies

needs to make Cyclonus swords for that generation's

version of Cyclonus. Yeah. It does look very

cool. Steve, you haven't said much. What do you

like about the art in this one, or what do you

like so far out of part two before we get to

the toy stuff? I like some of the characters

they show in this one compared to the previous

one, and some of the descriptions of some of

the season three characters, such as Cyclonus

and Wasp. various characters that you see very

limited versions of. I like the variations in

some of them, like Soundwave and some of the

homages that are in here. Such as Reflector,

Straxus. The Straxus. But overall, they're all

pretty decent, but there's a lot of throwaway

characters in here that have nothing to do with

the show. Stretch. What the hell is a stretch?

It's one of those toys from the 80s that you

just yanked on the arms until they almost broke.

Stretch Armstrong, yep. I was going to say, wasn't

there a GoBot that was a limo? Oh, I don't know.

Probably. I don't remember. I've said this before,

and I'll say it again. I don't like the Soundwave

toy. Now, I know that they made three different

Soundwaves. They made the original version, they

made the electrostatic, and they made the electromagnetic.

The electromagnetic never got to retail. It only

leaked here and there, and I think I only actually

have talked to and know of one guy who has the

white and green, black and purple electromagnetic

Soundwave, and that's Mitch Santona. He's a YouTube

reviewer. But I would have loved the Soundwave

toy in those colors. That would be awesome. Yeah.

And then the black version is basically Sound

Blaster, and that's awesome as well. The big

question would be, which guitar would that one

get? The electromagnetic? Yeah. I would hope

it would get Ratbat, because I love Ratbat. Oh,

actually, I was going to say he could have gotten

a buzzsaw. Or, you know, I think somewhere in

here they show an orange rat bat and call him

Wing Thing, which is, like, really, really digging.

It's some obscure stuff there. Yep. And now we

get into the toy pages. Wow. Yeah, the Takara

versions are super shiny. Oh, you skipped Spitter.

Spitter was disgusting. Yeah, it's another one

of those characters, though, that, you know,

you didn't even see his entire robot mode. Yeah.

Yeah, but here they've got the whole thing front

and back. Not only that, but they repaint him

in the slapper, which I think is awesome. What

I really love about this is page 64. This is

another one of my favorite parts of this book.

Yatter. Yatter? Yes, Yatter, page 64. Report

to me at once. And it's basically the Transformers

animated version of Twitter. And it's basically...

It's basically Total Ownage 42. It's basically

Headmaster. Trending Yats. That's awesome. Trending

Yats. Freaking rule. Short -packed. Oh, that's

funny. Frenzy is red. Rumble is blue. Frenzy

is red. Rumble is purple. Frenzy is red. I like

Ravage Kitty. Yeah, that's awesome. Ravage Kitty.

That's funny. Oh, man. But no, the toy design

on these and all these additional things that

are in here about the Japanese stuff is just

awesome. Oh, the Japanese toys? No, there's a

couple of Japanese -looking ads. It's on page

7879. It's kind of like a Japanese newspaper,

I think. I don't know. It's some sort of newspaper.

You're jumping way ahead there. You didn't mention

anything about the several pieces of Sentinel

on page 70, which I thought was kind of cool.

Well, we already saw him without his head. I

mean... Sentinel without his head? Yeah, when

his head got lobbed off by Motor... Not Motor

Master. Headmaster. Oh, I'm sorry. You know what?

I flipped that entirely. I meant Ultra Magnus.

Oh, yeah. You didn't even look on page 70 to

prove me wrong. Like, whoa, what do you mean?

That's Ultra Magnus after he got shot by Shockwave.

Yeah, that's kind of disturbing. Tired. I'm actually

trying to get to the actual story. Wow, there's

like several pages of fake magazine here. Yep.

A bunch of fonts, a bunch of different fonts

with the Autobot and Decepticon names on them,

which is pretty cool. On page 87, what looks

to be like a TFA Bumblebee, one of those stupid

things. Oh, God. Pogs. Looks like a Pog that

you would throw and whatever. You know, this

is, oh, you know, I was going to say, this was

the first time that I think that individual characters

got their own stylized, you know, name thing.

But that's not entirely true. They started that

in the Transformers movie. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so,

I mean, that was not the good one, but the one

that came out in 2007. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean,

Optimus Prime had his own name. It didn't look

like this, but it had flames and stuff. Bumblebee

had his own name, and it looked like, you know,

some urban kid spray -painted on a wall or something.

Hey, look, there's Snake Eyes. Are you skipping

ahead already? Yeah. Totally missed the rock

creature and the space bridges. Yeah, the space

bridges. Oh, the scooter jetpack. Yeah. Yeah,

that was awesome. A Thanatos -class ship. I have

no idea what this is. A Great War game? Yeah,

no idea. Yeah, a lot of this stuff is really,

really weird in this book. Yeah, you're getting

really deep into this stuff now. Again, another

one of my favorite things in this is seeing the

purple shockwave design like that. That's awesome.

Here is page 104 or 105. They actually go through

all of the busts in Yokotron's dojo and who they

are and what they did. That's awesome. That is

cool because there's a lot of people speculating

like, what is this guy and what is that guy?

A lot of these ended up being Japanese toys that

no one had ever heard of. Well, you know, people

who... who know about the Japanese shows would

have heard, like Star Upper, Star Saver, Die

Atlas, and Sky Gary. It's like, who the hell

are all these guys? But they're, you know, Grandus,

they're heavy loaded, they're all Japanese toys.

Yeah. Stellar cartography. That's funny. That's

almost like a Star Trek term. It is, yeah, yeah.

Page 106, wing thing. It's an orange bat. Yeah,

the rat bat. Oh, and a Sunder. Buzzsaw and Sunder.

I'll take Sunder. Sunder is awesome. I, um...

Yeah, so that is cool. And I wonder where they

get all these names in the stellar cartography.

I mean, there's an awful lot of planets listed.

You know, some of them are Transformer -ish,

like there's... Up in the upper right, there's

a planet called Zarek. Yeah. It's just really

cool what they did with this. Because when I

heard that they were making a volume two, I was

like, okay, outside of season three, what else

are they going to put in it? I mean, I didn't

know at the time that they were going to put

all this other stuff in it. And it's just so

cool. New Texas. There's a planet called We Made

It. There's a planet Scarrow, which I'm assuming

is where the Daleks are from. Planet Convoy.

Planet Doom. Planet Blot. That's funny. Where's

Scar or Junk? It should be the planet Junk. There

it is. Planet Junk. There's the Beast Planet.

Well, this is cool. I haven't looked at any of

this yet, so this is kind of a neat thing. Nintendo.

It's a Nintendo planet. There's Char in Stryker's

Domain. Oh, that's cool. Okay, I gotta turn this.

There's a planet Eternia. Yep. Okay, yeah, I'm

just having too much fun with this. I'm going

to have to turn the page and keep going. Sorry,

you know, I just got this book in the mail like

a week ago because I didn't get it when it originally

came out, but I wanted to have this before we

did this podcast. It's just been a lot of fun

to look at. There's a lot of neat stuff in here.

Planet Vespa. Yeah. Viacon. The Viacon. Dinosaur.

There's the Rigel system. They got Styx. SETI

Alpha. The Planet of Goo. Right next to the Planet

of Junk. Well, of course the Planet of Goo and

Planet of Junk would be next door to each other.

Rekar owns both of them. Airlandia. I wonder

if there's an Alderaan. New Texas. There's Aberon.

The planet of We Made It. Is that actually in

there? It is in there, yeah. It's the planet

of We Made It. There's one couple below. Yeah,

a couple below that. Skaro. Skaro. Strogos. Yeah,

so they pulled from a lot of different... Nebulos.

Yeah. New Contessa. There's a lot of battle planets

in here. Nexus Zero. You're familiar with this

battle planet. Nexus Zero ties into the... Beast

Wars. The other... No, not... Well, not just

Nexus Zero and Beast Wars, but it also ties into

some of the other stuff of... What the hell is

that other series called? That never made it.

I don't know. I don't know. Fuck it. I don't

care. Just reading way too deep into it. What

I didn't notice until just now is that there's

a key on the bottom of page 114 that actually

tells you if it's a robot planet, it's an organic

planet, Decepticon world, Autobot world, whose

territory it lives in. Valk territory. Yeah.

It should have had the Valk. Oh, Protoss is right

in the middle. That's Valk. And Nexus Zero is

right in the middle. That's all Valk area. It's

kind of neat. I kind of like that. But I was

going to say, page 119, you get a whole half

-page view of Metroplex. Yep. Which is so cool.

This is so awesome. The toy you'll never have.

Oh, an animated Metroplex? Yeah. It looks enough

like G1 Metroplex that I think I already own

this one. All right, moving on to part two, which

is the toys. There's a foreword on this by Eric

Siebenhaler, so that's awesome. And this basically

shows you all the sketches and prototype designs

of how they went about constructing the animated

toys. Multi -color long -arm shockwave? That

looks weird. Page 164. Wow, you jumped a lot.

I haven't gotten that far yet. I'm still leafing

through the eight pages of Omega Supreme repaints.

Not to say it's not cool, but jeez -a -beats.

They have a Beast Wars reference? Where? Unknown

locale. It's on page 139. Oh, I gotta back up

a little bit. Oh, yeah! Don't read too much into

this. I know. They should have done what I said,

dammit! I do like the Sigma Supreme. The Steel

Haven schematics. Yeah, that's awesome. They

so should have made that. This looks a lot like

the G .I. Joe schematics. I still think they

should have made the original arc, the Axalon,

the Dark Side. And then the Steel Haven. Yeah,

I'm so glad I'm not in on the toy production

stuff before we actually see final product. I

don't know, I'm just like... I think it's cool

that they show us resin models and stuff like

that, but I would much rather see the final product.

A lot of these didn't have a final product. I

mean, literally, they only got as far as the

resin stage, and they said, yeah, we're never

going to make this. Well, Snarl had a final product.

Oil Slick had a final product. Oh, okay, I see

what you're talking about, yeah. Shockwave had

a final product, yet you see him in resin form.

Even though we didn't get the toy, we can see

what Wingblade Prime would look like. I do like

seeing Rodimus in resin form. That's really cool.

Arcee as well. That looks really cool as well.

Arcee almost looks like a Leader One figure.

I like the prototypes of Shockwave. Yeah, the

prototypes of Shockwave are awesome. Those look

very, very cool. I think I mentioned earlier

I like the Transformers Hero Jet Twin prototypes.

Those look really cool. Those remind me a lot

of the G1 Twins. And I forget their name, but

the Decepticons, they had Pounce and Wingspan.

Yeah, Pounce and Wingspan and, oh, Lightspeed

and something else. For the Autobots. No, that's

a Computron toy. One of those Compubots. I forget.

I forget the Autobots' names, but basically they

looked identical. And then, well, the G1 didn't

combine, but the combined mode... Fastlane and

Cloudraker were the twins for the Autobots. There

you go. That's right. Okay. But the combined

mode for the Hero Jet Twins looks good. compared

to the combined mode for the animated jet twins

which looks like ass painful ass yeah i i like

seeing you know it's like as sad as it is that

we didn't get these toys i like seeing that they

put the effort in you know almost giving it to

us yeah i mean these are these are really awesome

and then really for this one as far as reading

this book is really where you get into, like,

you know, where they go into about the animation,

about the prototypes, and reading this versus

reading the episode synopses that were in earlier.

Yeah. This is really where I love reading about,

like, the sound and the music and all this and

all that, this part of the behind -the -scenes

book thing. But my favorite part, page one, Papa.

Oh, I need some sleep. Page 182, Season 4. Oh,

yeah, we got to talk about 182. Oh, this is awesome.

And it's like, you know, you get through Volume

1, and you say, okay, you know what? We're missing

the toys here, and we're missing Season 3. And

you know what would be cool? Season 4. And lo

and behold, here we have, you know. More information

about Season 4 than what we've ever had before.

And we speculate a lot as to what might have

come in Season 4. But it's really, really neat

that they put down as much as they had. They

didn't have a lot. They didn't plan out the entire

season. But from what they had, they showed it

here. And it's really kind of cool to see what

could have been. Oh, my God. K -On and Link Erie,

that's an awesome image. Page 183. Yeah, yeah.

That's neat. Ironhide's Earth mode. Man, you're

trying to kill us with awesome. Now, again, as

I've said before, I've never, no one, I think,

has ever really liked Hotshot. But seeing the

Hotshot toy design, because it's animated toy

aesthetic, I really like it. I wish we got this

toy. Nah, I don't. You know, we got, I don't

want to call it classics. Was it classics or

generation Hotshot? That's just a crap toy. Just

so unimpressed with that toy. But I do like the

Power Master Optimus Prime. I mean, this is just...

These are just drawings. But, I mean, they got

to the design stage. It looks like it would have

made a cool toy. It looks very Robots in Disguise.

Yeah. It would have made a really cool toy. The

Marauder Megatron, because he has a Beast Machines

Megatron mask. Right, the triple changer? Yep.

I don't know. I mean, as far as triple changers

go, it kind of reminds me a lot of some of the

six -shot modes, where it's like, okay, it's

a jet. And then you fold the wings up, and look,

it's a car. Yeah, but see, I would only get,

like, if they had ever made that toy, I would

have only gotten it for the robot mode just to

see the face. Oh, meh. The face is cool. It's

very Hannibal Lecter, but I just, you know, can't

get on board. And then the rest of this is pretty

much just images of all the toys we've gotten

to this point outside of, like, Hydro Dive, Bumblebee,

and Goldfire Grimlock. Well... When you get into,

like, page 203, there's your Blackout, there's

your Thundercracker, Eaglefire Grimlock, Fugitive

Waspinator, Mercenary Swindle, which does look

awesome. Yes, he does. You know, Mudbuster Bulkhead,

just don't... I don't see the point in that.

I mean, it's still Bulkhead. It doesn't look

right to me. But, yeah, like, Wingblade Optimus,

Vortex Blur. They didn't even get Vortex Blur

in Japan. Yeah, I know. Vortex Blur didn't even

come out. Yeah, it's like, screw you guys. Screw

you guys, I'm going home. This is a layup, man.

I mean, honestly. I suppose if they could find

people to buy it. Yeah. You know, but, yeah.

I don't know. That's a dead horse I don't want

to beat anymore. The one thing of the praise

on the back of this book that I really like is

from Swindle. I've donated dozens of these books

to the poor protoforms at the minimum security

orphanorium. As part of a charity work, they

just can't get enough. Part of my charity work.

And you can hear it in his voice, too. Oh, no,

it's the Mirror Universe twin. Mirror Universe.

That's funny. Oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't paying

attention at all. I was staring at Tara Strong's

headshot here on page 215. It does talk about

the cast. It talks about the crew as well. So,

Steve, final thoughts on Volume 2? I would say

it's a nice addition showing... Mostly the nice

nods and the planets and some of the backgrounds

and some of the other models of the characters

that they came up with. Not that I really care

much for the toy aspect of it, but I don't entirely

discount it either because it does have some

pretty nice stuff in it. Overall, it's pretty

nice. I'd say that if you have the first one,

you definitely have to have the second one to

complete the whole. uh piece of the show and

i really want to get the addendum at some point

as well we probably won't do anything with that

as far as podcast form but the addendum is supposed

to show you designs of how they came up with

the stunticon job stuff it's supposed to show

you all like that kind of tfa botcon character

stuff so that's what the addendum is supposed

to be right i think that comes included with

the uh With the Diamond Edition of the Stunticon

Job, the retail version of the Stunticon Job

comic. Right, the one they sell at the stores.

Yeah, yeah. So assuming your store has it, and

assuming you have a store. Yes. Final thoughts

on Volume 2, Michael? Yeah, I mean, I really

like, again, Volume 1 covered everything very,

very well. I mean, everything, everything, even

stuff that you, Didn't think you needed, you

know, pictures of the humans, pictures of the

cars that were there. It's like, well, that's

great. Very thorough. And then you get into volume

two and equally thorough for the season three

stuff. But then, you know, that's only half a

book. What are you going to do? Then we get into

toys and character models, just all sorts of

neat stuff. At what point did they just start

making stuff up? It's like, well, you know, maybe

we don't have enough room. How about we put Stretch

in there? And, hey, didn't Derek Wyatt make an

animated scalpel? We'll put him in there, too.

And, you know, it's just, like, Magnificus. Why

is there... It's like, why is there a Diaclone

colors perceptor here at all? I'm not... I'm

not sure how we got in here. It's kind of cool

to see a repaint of the different characters,

so... That's... Yeah, I suppose, but then you

end up with, like, Straxus? Was Straxus going

to be in Season 4, and they're just not telling

us? Probably. Is it, like, one of Derek Wyatt's

favorite characters, so he just happened to draw

one up? I don't know. Just recently, Derek Wyatt

did a... G2 Straxus. Yeah. Digimash or whatever

of his artwork. Yeah, he's all in leopard print.

Yeah, it's pretty horrific. My final thoughts

for Volume 2 are pretty much like, I love seeing

all the Season 3 stuff. It... It just hurts my

brain to even read the Season 4 stuff because

I know we're never going to get it. I like seeing

all the toy designs, even though I'm not really

a fan of the resin models for the most part.

But all in all, it was a very good read -through

of information and background stuff, behind -the

-scenes stuff. So with that, I think we're going

to take another break. We're going to come back

to close the show after this. I'm already broken.

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