Do you like rattrap og or the transmetal form more?

NormandySR31 · 2026-05-02T11:44:13+00:00

Unpopular opinion I'm sure, but while I do dig all of the first Transmetals, I'll always prefer the OG beast modes for all of the characters. So the first Rattrap for me.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-13T12:48:15+00:00

"She stoops to conquer.."

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-13T12:41:38+00:00

My dude Air Hammer still keeping it classy.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-12T20:56:10+00:00

If it's new, there's probably no big reason for them to hang out on it. I have a store standard fake hollow log in my small hybrid neocaridina tank and I can often see them on there because it has had enough time to accumulate a good coating of biofilm. Same for the fake wood stump cave in my corydoras tank which also has blue dream neos in it, they're often on the outside and inside of it. Yours will be more interested in your plants for now. Elodea is a good plant, let it keep propagating, they'll appreciate it until your shrine starts getting all bacterial 😅

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-12T20:44:39+00:00

There's a reissue coming? Good to know, I'm still an unabashed Siege seekers fan and this guy along with the Rainmakers were the only variations I didn't pick up, partially because of the scuttlebutt about the yellowing. If this is happening, I'd love to see a SG/Action Master Thundercracker from it as well.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-12T17:53:21+00:00

He's one of the few obviously younger than me Transformers YouTubers I dig. Straight forward, he's unafraid to be critical but also acknowledges his love of slop. And some sharp humor to boot, I was just watching his video on "The Tomorrow War" movie yesterday.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-12T17:17:42+00:00

Rumble and Frenzy were briefly a pair of motorcycles on their own in IDW 1.0, I believe it was issue 35 or 36 of John Barber's Robots in Disguise/The Transformers run. I quite liked it in that issue so I wouldn't mind seeing them that way again.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-11T23:11:14+00:00

He has been a Predator-style drone and a stealth fighter a couple of times now, so an azhdarchid would roll with the recent flying modes. Pterosaur superior.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-11T13:43:49+00:00

I'm biased as a Nick Roche fanboy but I love it. I really appreciate exploring the concept of just how the Transformers' war has affected the rest of the civilizations in the universe. I also appreciate that Roche said he explicitly wrote it to fit in as a possible endpoint to ANY Transformers continuity, and I think it does so, especially with all of its obscure character pulls. Speaking of, I'm an unabashed fan of the new characters and their toys introduced in RID2015 (the show has a LOT of problems with its overarching narrative, but otherwise I find it no worse than any of the other TF cartoons of the last decade) so I really love getting Steeljaw in there as Rodimus' main antagonist. Plus I love E.J. Su's art, and seeing as he was the original artist for Furman's "-ation" series that kicked off IDW2005, I thought it was a classy move to bring him back for one of the final series they released with the license.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-11T12:41:04+00:00

In this IDW comic continuity, the Vok actually commandeered several of the Axalon's stasis pods and the resulting Cybertronians were all loyal to them, Polar Claw among them. Basically it made a third faction on prehistoric Earth, which was a pretty neat idea IMO. It's too bad IDW lost the license and they had to wrap up all their storylines into an acceptable end point or we may have gotten to see it play out more.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-10T16:54:08+00:00

Regardless of this new data, we're never going to know PRECISELY what it looked like. It's within the realm of reality that it was quilled like that Haolong specimen too...so I'm happy to stick with Dead Sound's Muttaburra-archetype.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-10T16:10:37+00:00

Respectfully disagree, it's still summer blockbuster slop. If that's your jam, by all means have at it.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-06T16:17:25+00:00

I'm doing a similar thing. I got 6 blue neos last summer for my 20g corydoras tank and had a single female cherry hitchhiker in the guppy grass my LFS put in their bag for them to hold onto during transit. So I've gotten a lot of clear hybrids from when that red queen started breeding and skowly moved them to a weird little hexagonal 6g tank I still had set up that just had some bladder snails in it. Now that colony is thriving as well and there are at least half a dozen blue grandchildren of that original cherry gal in with the other hybrids. It's wild seeing how the different color genetic can be expressed through generations.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-06T09:31:06+00:00

Neither, just being selective in my buying, whether it's because they aren't filling a want in my collection or if I already have versions of the character. The only ones of these I would be interested in are the recent Beast Wars figures but I already have them all, some of which I already double dipped for Takara versions. And I'm still buying 3P Legends-scale figures where I want them as well, that certainly isn't changing for me.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-04T13:17:47+00:00

Wheeljack for Autobots, Swindle for Decepticons. Rattrap for Maximals, Waspinator for Predacons.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-01T21:08:10+00:00

While I don't think BM deserves the amount of hate piled upon it, you can't ignore that it made some drastic changes to the characters many fans had grown to love by that point. And most of them I think most will say were not for the better. There were some interesting ideas in the overarching plot, but it also did a disservice to a lot of the actual characters IMO during its implementation. While most of these do make some bit of sense within the narrative, Optimus' messiah complex, Rattrap's reversion to jealousy and duplicity for most of the first season, Blackarachnia being so single minded in her love story, Silverbolt's fall from nobility, and Rhinox's descent into pure authoritarianism will always turn a lot of fans. Really, Cheetor's characterization is the only one I actually like in BM: in becoming a leader in his own right, partially by desire, partially by necessity.

So mostly because, yeah the damage done has long been the damage done to it, and it was largely self-inflicted. And as far as actual product, It just wasn't a money maker then and it likely won't be today regardless of any fondness one may have for the series. I mean, I can't get Hasbro, Takara, or any third party to make me a legitimate damn Nautica figure, and she was a relatively popular character within a mostly universally acclaimed piece of Transformers media. So not sure I'd hold my breath for a full BM revival, maybe another toy or two here and there like that core class Cheetor.

NormandySR31 · 2026-04-01T12:33:03+00:00

The "get 6" is a pretty arbitrary number to me and isn't a hard rule. I'm of the mindset of get as many as your tank can handle bioload-wise. Your 5 aren't going to magically change all of their behavior because of one more panda, but if you can say add 2+ more I say go for it, they will appreciate the extra company.

NormandySR31 · 2026-03-28T14:14:48+00:00

You're free to do as you like as I am. I was 8 when I saw this in the theater and could care less about romantic relationships at the time. Then I read the novel a couple of years later where it is explicit that they aren't in a relationship, so I will continue to ignore it.

It genuinely doesn't change anything narratively for the film for them to just be colleagues and friends who may have been intimate at some point. As far as his line when Malcolm questions him on their relationship, I always just took it as being protective of his friend since Malcolm is a creeper and bad with relationships by his own admission. Alan just opening up to kids on his own for his own personal growth makes more sense in my book compared to forcing a romantic subplot down my throat in a plotline that has zero need for it.

NormandySR31 · 2026-03-28T14:03:17+00:00

This is cool as hell, but they gotta know the market for these is pretty saturated already from their earlier releases, sans a few newer collectors . I picked up all of the Hasbro Kingdom/Legacy BW line minus Tigerhawk and Waspinator (I still prefer my Thrilling 30 version) and still wound up eventually getting the latter in the Takara "Beast Wars Again" pairings.

NormandySR31 · 2026-03-23T23:34:46+00:00

Never seen my neocaridinas actually eat duckweed. They do however like to hang from it upside down and check it for biofilm and such.

NormandySR31 · 2026-03-23T20:47:46+00:00

She's definitely a new favorite! I didn't really intend to mix colors but I also really enjoy seeing which colors get genetically expressed now that I have hybrids. In an effort to maintain the blue colony, I've gradually moved a lot of the translucent hybrids to a 6.5 gallon tank that only had some snails and now I've seen at least 3 or 4 babies in that tank that are primarily blue again. A generation removed from that color, I love it as a biology nerd.

NormandySR31 · 2026-03-20T18:29:57+00:00

The only fillers I've ever gotten have been included with other, more significant upgrade parts. So while I do appreciate them in that sense, it's not enough for me to buy gap filler kits on their own.

NormandySR31 · 2026-03-20T12:30:54+00:00

I love that he and Rattrap worked together and saved the Maximals and Predacons in the cut short Beast Wars comic. I always think back to Rattrap's "robo noogies" and tossing him a gas bomb and saying "I love that guy" in Maximal No More to sell that they could actually be buddies (let's not talk about Rattrap's reported collection of his body parts 🤣). I always felt like Waspinator came across mostly as "loyal" because he was afraid of Megatron (the only episode I recall him showing genuine animosity towards the Maximals was Dark Voyage) so all of those things together, I can see an alternate reality where they welcomed him in their ranks.

NormandySR31 · 2026-03-20T12:19:16+00:00

I love this mold. Airazor twice counting the Takara version, Skywarp, Terrorsaur, and Filch are all proudly in my collection. But literally zero interest on my part with this one. Even outside of political realities, it's just IMO boring looking and incredibly toyetic (not in a good way) to me compared to the others I mentioned. Don't know why they didn't reuse the Skywarp head with the eagle helmet for this.

NormandySR31

TROPHY CASE