Ask a stupid question
Well, either that or Hedge End takes its golf very seriously.
A screen grab from the ITV show "Penn and Teller: Fool Us" last night. Look who's sitting just right of Teller's shoulder :)
So, it seems that Hasbro has begun to release the Masterpiece line of Transformers here in the UK. I've yet to see any of the earlier figures, such as Thundercracker or Optimus, in Toys 'R' Us, and I doubt I'll ever see Megatron due to our restrictions being so much stricter than those of the Japanese, but nonetheless, they're doing good. I've now seen Starscream and Grimlock in the UK (in US-style packaging) and today I saw the latest Masterpiece figure, Rodimus Prime.
But there's an issue. OK, some figures get modified for the west. The Binaltech/Alternator series were completely different in that they were made entirely out of plastic rather than die-cast metal, virtually every re-release of Optimus Prime since the 80s has had short smoke-stacks and Masterpiece Grimlock has flatter teeth. Rodimus has a pleasant addition for the west in the form of his Targetmasters accomplice Firebolt (renamed Offshoot for some bizzare reason). But there is something rather major missing - his trailer.
Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not annoyed with the lack of trailer. Personally I preferred Rodimus when he was still called Hot Rod and had no trailer, he looked 10 times cooler (despite being the moron who got Optimus Prime killed in the 1986 movie). Every toy version of Rodimus I've seen I always got annoyed at the trailer - it's supposed to be integral. The only Rodimus toy I've ever liked was the Titanium edition which actually changed successfully from robot to van without having a massive chunk of kibble left over. In fact, when I first saw the Japanese masterpiece Rodimus (which does have the trailer) I got annoyed and wondered why, with the Masterpiece scale and budget, couldn't they have done it properly. I was tempted to buy it and simply throw the trailer away and call him Hot-Rod. So now they've released him in the west at a fraction of the price without the trailer I should be happy, right?
No... because they still call him "Rodimus Prime". For those who don't know, the two characters are the same entity, Hot-Rod was a robot that turned into, surprise surprise, a hot rod. He was introduced in 1986. At the end of the original animated Transformers movie, he inherits leadership of the Autobots from Optimus Prime (via Ultra Magnus) and is 'reformatted' into Rodimus Prime. During this transformation his robot mode stays the same but his alt mode changes from a hot rod to a hot rod-styled van/winnebago type thing, which is basically his old alt mode with a hulking great trailer thing on the back. So my issue isn't that they've released him without the trailer, my issue is that they're calling him "Masterpiece Rodimus Prime" when he's clearly "Masterpiece Hot-Rod".
So in conlusion, Hasbro - thanks for finally thinking of us UK trans-fans and releasing some Masterpieces in the west, but do try to get it right. I look forward to some good figures from Takara in the future, in the hope that they also make it to these shores, incomplete or otherwise.
A fortnight ago, I went through the daily ritual of coming in from work, picking up everything on the doormat that had been posted through the letterbox and disposing of the 80% of it not in an envelope and addressed to either Shell or myself. One of these objects was a Kleeneze catalogue. A few days later we had a little note through the door informing us that someone called to collect the catalogue but we weren't in, so please leave it on the doorstep.
After consulting with various people I now know that Kleeneze delivery people generally expect you to do this because they re-use the catalogues. Had I been someone who actually has time to read every piece of crap that comes through my letterbox, I'd have known this. But hey, shit happens, and on the plus side they probably won't bother coming back. Or so I thought.
Every day for the past two weeks we've had a note through the door saying that someone called but nobody was in, please leave the catalogue on the mat tomorrow. On Fridays they even cross out the 'tomorrow' and hand-write 'Monday' on it. After two weeks, personally, I would have given up. I was beginning to get a bit annoyed with the continual notes through the door for me to leave out a catalogue that is probably festering in a landfill site as we speak. But then something happened that made me laugh.
Today I came home and found the familiar white slip of paper, only this time it was written in polish.
Ooh yes please! Sign me up! I'll turn Javascript on, I always wanted to see more adverts on the web! And ad servers are renowned for their honesty and good practices too, so I've no problem whatsoever in allowing them to run client side code on my machine!
Fucking idiots.
If your surname happens to be 'Harrison'...
Don't start a Ford dealership.
Today, I saw this in a bridal shop in Portswood.
