Consume Monday

Monday has somehow returned. But fear not Zone Base readers, this isn't just any ordinary week, it's Toylanta Week! I'm gearing up for the great toy show and looking forward to having a great time! This weekend isn't just Toylanta, but my birthday as well! I'm looking forward to having some fun and celebrating getting older! This past weekend was pretty good, though I admittedly didn't feel very well. The Mrs and I did a little weakly shopping, but for the most part I kinda just rested. The extra business of the past few weeks cumulated in my crashing out Saturday. I was pretty tired and had all around body aches. So some much needed R&R took place. I intended to organize some toys... but got plenty of rest instead. 

As in the past few weeks, I didn't buy myself anything toy related, but did finally find something new. Walmart had Swapticons! These are a new lower priced Transformers series consisting of smaller robots that combine with a partner to form an alt mode. They're fairly silly and feel like a spiritual successor to Botbots. Of course I love them and I think the birthday fairy took notice. If this were a Facebook post, that would have been followed up with a winking emoji. I intended to play some Double Dragon this weekend, but was literally feeling too poopy for my beloved Switch. The Mrs and I took in a lot of Halloween cartoons and Mom came over for a very filling Sunday Olive Garden dinner. They deliver now, so I forsee lots of marinara flavored foods in my future. There's also a recently opened Fazoli's near, so clearly Italian food is on my menu. 

I've got a fun week in store for you all. This week is a con week and the first special event on the site of the year. The regular posting schedule will be off, but it's going to be pretty busy over the weekend. Please check back daily during the weekend for daily updates. Thank you all for reading. Please share the site with your friends and Mutual High Fives everyone!

BB-02HD Helldiver w/ BB-EXO45HD Helldiver Heavy Armor [BeastBox]

It's been far too long since I've talked about a BeastBox toy here on the site, so it seems today is the perfect time to talk about Helldiver and add on partner kit Helldiver Heavy Armor. The Mrs. got me this awesome little guy for Christmas and I just love his little fiery details. Helldiver is a fire themed variation of Ghostdog, whom is an armored up variation of Beastboxes lovable Dio. Adding to the fun is the Helldiver Heavy Armor. This is an additional add on piece that gives Helldiver some extra equipment and serves a cool scorpion-like partner drone when not attached. Helldiver is a charming little dinosaur covered in armor. I don't know if you can see or not, but he has some tiny little arms that look like wrenches. I love those. The fire deco looks great with translucent orange bits against two different greys used for various parts. The lighter grey has a little sparkle which looks great in person, but didn't show up in my pictures. There's a cool small laser weapon that can be attached to his back or added at the end of his tail.

Heavy Armor can be disassembled and added onto Helldiver giving him night vision goggles, a radar assembly with LARGE guns, and two BIG arms with a hook and chainsaw. This gives our little terror quite the upgrade and practically turns him into a whole new bot. It's really hard to express just how much it really ads to his overall visual. Helldiver's mouth opens, and all I can see is his excitement about how badass the armor looks. Transformation to box mode is pretty easy. If anything, getting his head just right can be a touch fiddly. Heavy Armor can join onto the box for easy storage and makes the mode bigger. It looks like it would all fit inside a Box Charger easily... but he didn't come with one. I should have gotten one and tried it out, but these are not things that occurred to me at that moment. Last month when I was at the 52Toys store last month, I should have picked up a nice orange one to match Helldiver's flames. This is a great BeastBox toy. Dio is a lot of fun normally, and upgraded he's even better. I love the translucent orange and his big feet. The addition of Heavy Armor adds to the package greatly and makes everything better.

Godzilla 1968 [ReAction/Godzilla Monster Island]

When I was a kid, classic Godzilla movies would play regularly on TV. This was before the Heisei era came in and the older shows were all I had. I'm not complaining mind you, it was great! Thanks to these older films regularly playing in the background, I grew to have a fondness for some of the 'goofier' looks the monsters have had. These were often done to make them appeal more to kids and be less scary than other depictions. By the time the Godzilla '68 costume was in use, he was a full blown superhero and generally considered for kids.

The scary monster from 1954 was long gone and in it's place was a friendly giant who dances while saving the Earth from various attacks. The SoshingekiGoji/AllKaijuGoji/HedoGoji/GiganGoji or in this case Godzilla '68 suit was used in films from 1968- 1972. This ReAction figure captures it's look very well. It was a definite happy moment when I opened the blind box after a trip to Walmart with the Mrs. There's a pleasant heft to the toy despite it's small size. He features the head/shoulders/legs at waist articulation you expect from one of these figures and just feels solid thanks to his broad design. Super7's has a great product.

Ultra Magnus [Galaxy Version 03 The Autobot Run]

I've always really liked Ultra Magnus in cab mode. I've always liked Ultra Magnus in general, but that white cab mode is so pretty. Originally, Ultra Magnus was made from the Diaclone Powered Convoy toy, which was an upgraded version of Battle Convoy. The toy that Optimus Prime was made from. I've heard a few different times that originally Ultra Magnus was intended to be an upgraded Optimus Prime before they settled on making him an all new character. Considering I can't currently find a source for that, maybe it's best to chalk that up as an unconfirmed trivial fact.

In most media, Ultra Magnus was shown only combined with his trailer. Obviously to cut down confusion, but as a result, it isn't common knowledge to everyone that Ultra Magnus has a cab mode and that the cab mode is basically a white Optimus Prime. It's to no surprise that a cab mode Ultra Magnus is one of the standby repaints you can expect to see when a new Optimus Prime toy is released. That's the story when we're talking about today's toy. Cab Mode Ultra Magnus as a Blokees, is mostly a straight repaint of their Optimus Prime kit that as you can expect is very sharp looking.

I say mostly a straight repaint as he has a different axe weapon included, a blue variation of the axe Optimus tends to use in Cybertronian depictions. Also, to my understanding, his inner head has some retooled pegs which hold his inner face parts in place better during assembly. I didn't notice it when I was putting him together, but now remember being frustrated with Optimus's head. So that's an improvement. Aside from that, he's pretty much a straight repaint of the Optimus Prime Blokees I talked about earlier that comes with all the same accessories and parts (except that alternative axe... damn, alternative axe sounds rad). However now, it's extra pretty.. you know. Because of that white cab mode.

Wild King Appears!

Weekend HENSHIN! Cyborg Monday

Hello Zone Base readers! Welcome back for another week of robots, monsters, and misadventure! I hope everyone had a great weekend, mine was pretty good itself. I can't say I did a lot, but enjoyed it all the same. The Mrs and I made a point to do our weekly shopping early Saturday morning to be home in time for the severe weather awaiting us that night. Like last weekend, I didn't buy myself anything toy related as my birthday and Toylanta are in 2 weeks. But did finally find a can of BBQ Doritos Minis. I vastly prefer the mini Doritos and really love the BBQ flavor. Now that they're available in the smaller size, I can indulge without worrying about eating too much. I love them, but still need to watch what I eat!

Saturday evening as the storms came in, I enjoyed some sushi the Mrs had ordered while I was sleeping. I had a wonderful meal of spicy yellow tail roll, sweet potato roll, and of course a cucumber roll. I normally get a spicy tuna roll, but think I'll be getting that yellow tail more often! It was so pleasant and this was my first time with a sweet potato roll. I'll definitely be getting it more. It had some tempura inside and went perfectly with the spicy yellow tail. Of course I enjoyed my cucumber roll, it's a favorite. I love cucumbers and you all know I love my spooky stuff. Nothing like a kappamaki roll to polish off a great meal! I had some rainbow sherbert for dessert and an overall wonder meal. The weather was not so great as spring is settling in and that means lots of storms in the American South. There was severe weather all evening including tornadoes. We made it out ok, but unfortunately others didn't. I wish the best for them and their families. After dinner, I rode out the storm with various ghost and robot videos in between playing Shredder's Revenge. That might just be my favorite TMNT game ever! 

Sunday, the weather was much better and I went to the local Kroger to renew my license tag for the year at the Tag Renewal vending machine. Afterwards, I decided to check out the Pokémon machine to see if they had anything cool. Normally there's a line, but the store staff had blocked the machine with online order pick-up carts. Jerks! I'm always annoyed when staff are inconsiderate to customers. Thinking how many people are usually in line at that machine, I know there was several unhappy people that morning. I worked retail and fast food when I was younger and remember how these sort of things were often because of incompetence more than anything. That's a large portion of my annoyance towards these types of situations. I still remember getting in trouble for things like this by the manager whose idea it was in the first place! Oh well, hopefully others got to use the machine later.

I organized my toys some more (I've got quite a mess to get under control) and enjoyed a wonderful dinner the Mrs cooked. Mom came over and we enjoyed Sunday dinner while watching the first half of The Electric State. I look forward to finishing it as it's really good! We had salad, spaghetti, and some awesome lemon cupcakes! After Mom left, we watched some Leemax and other companies Halloween offerings preview videos. It was a great weekend and hopefully this will be a great week! Being Monday, of course I have some household chores to do and some toys to picture for upcoming posts. It's finally happening, I'll be finishing our look at Beast Alliance Transformers. Of course I'm 2 weeks ahead as usual, so please look forward to it shortly after Toylanta. Thank you all for reading Zone Base. I really do appreciate it! Don't forget to share with your friends and Mutual High Fives!