Hi all, here's a quick look at the Transformers Fansproject Shadow Commander Set.
This custom piece is an upgrade kit armor for the SDCC 2008 Tf Classics Nemesis Prime. The armor is a repaint of the City Commander Armor released last year for Ultra Magnus (I'm still kicking myself for not getting that one. )
Trailer mode
Opening tailgate
The trailer connects to the cab (Nemesis Prime) through this peg.
Ok admittedly, in most of the following pics I "painted" the eyes on Shadow Commander using Photoshop to give him more presence. I think it worked.
Arise Shadow Commander!
Once combined with the Armor, Nemesis Prime stands about 8-9 Inches tall.
A large section of the trailer actually becomes a huge gun for the Shadow Commander.
The Shadow Commander set also comes with an Energy sword (the sword isn't present in the Ultra Magnus set).
With the armor on, Nemesis Prime just towers over Optimus!
With Megatron
Other fun tidbits:
His left foot has a flip out plate, which "conceals" the license plates, the plate sticker application is optional.
Optional face plate, "unmasked" mode, similar to Ultra Magnus' faceplate.
Overall, a great add on to a decent, I actually had a lot of fun with this piece (for $80-90), the final combination certainly gave me more satisfaction compared to the badly made Cm's Mekanda Robot.
The armor connections are solid! The plastic feels solid. The only problem is the way the leg armor "snaps" into place but it's no biggie given how solid the plastic feels it looks like it can handle the stress up to over a hundred transformations in that area.
Generally I'm not really into buying non-official merchandise, but it seems like more and more the non-official stuff is beating out the real ones. I mean, look at Hot Toys, they went from making non-official toys to make superb quality licensed stuff now( check out the MMS-DX02 Dark Knight Batman!). I wonder if this trend will continue with FansProject?
Here's a quick look at the The Gear of War (Usually written as GOW) Weapons kit.
Box
Tray
The set has a lot of pieces to upgrade your TF Henkei/Classics.
First up Inferno's Ladder and his "blaster hand". It comes in two pieces so some assembly is required.
The ladder clips on the plate on Inferno's arm.
The "squirt" or Blaster hand just clips onto the left fist.
The Ladder plugs into the water cannon's hole in vehicle mode and the Blaster hand is clipped onto the end of the ladder. The ladder can extend.
Shoulder mounted rockets for Sideswipe, Red Alert and Mirage. Essentially, all 3 rockets and launchers are the same, with the "fins" of the rocket being placed at different ends of the piece to make it seem different.
Mirage's launcher clips onto his "grill" via one of the slits in the rocket launcher. It's not really a solid connection unfortunately.
The shoulder-mounted rockets add a lot in terms of capturing the G1 look of the toys.
Another accessory added was this orange plastic "box" to simulate Mirage's "invisibility".
Sadly, this is where the set fails, the box needs to be folded into becoming a 3D cube. But the material is so tough it will warp if you do so, plus the arrow-head locks for keeping the conections together tend to break, so overall, just leave it alone. I would've preferred a pre-assembled tray with a missing fourth wall and no roof instead of this mess.
Finally, Soundwave's "Scouter cassette" with 4 energy crystals.
Team Gear of War
According to the backstory provided on the box, Wheeljack developed these weapons to help a strike team of Autobots rescue Optimus from Megatron.
Autobots on the move!
Again, another decent set but at roughly $50, this set might be somewhat a hit or miss for folks. The ladder, scouter and rocket launchers are great add ons but the Mirage "wall" and the launchers' springs have a tendency to get stuck up so it might not exactly be what some folks are expecting.
Gold
