Jacob Blackmon Blogs

It's been a while since I built a bestiary entry for "The Monsters Are Our Heroes." Here is my concept for the Valkyrie... Check out " The Monsters Are Our Heroes " by Bloat Games . Cosplay photo by Jessica Nigri. When the Monster Covens do not properly manage their own population from slaughtering humanity, as detailed within The Accords, then Santa Claus is forced to send in his daughters to clean up the situation. He sends in the valkyries! These maidens of death take after the celestial hosts from which they were birthed, and visit righteous vengeance upon the wicked. Sometimes their zeal for meting out justice goes a bit too far, and they end up leaving a “Scorched Earth” in their wake; all monsters – and not a few innocents – having been destroyed while they got their smite on! Valkyries always appear to be beautiful women adorned with battle armor and mystical weapons. Being birthed from the combination of All father Odin (aka Santa Claus) and celestial a...

Today's contact build  is the Decepticon Recordicon Frenzy ! Not to be mistaken for his brother Rumble -- but often is -- Frenzy is one of two humanoid mini-cassette bots created as Soundwave's minions in the early days of the G1 toys series. With their feisty "Let's get 'em!" attitude and willingness to take on 'bot MUCH bigger in size than themselves, Frenzy and Rumble became fan favorites. Now for the controversy... Which one is Frenzy and which one is Rumble? One is red and one is blue.  In the toy line, the red bot is Rumble and the blue bot is Frenzy. But in the animated series, they switched them. Not only that, but the animated series gave them the same power: the big pile-driver arms! That's supposed to be Rumble's power. Frenzy's got his own thing going on. What is Frenzy's power? A sonic battle cry that disrupts electrical flows... like those found in most Cybertronians... and even human nervous systems! Despite my love of the G1...

Starting onto the Decepticon Contact Builds, we go to the way back machine with Buzzsaw ! One of two "condor" cassette tapes used by Soundwave, Buzzsaw functioned as his spy. In the animated series, they pretty much had Laserbeak pull double-duty as the spy-bird. But for the toy series, this was supposed to be the specific function of Buzzsaw. Laserbeak was intended as the interrogator for Soundwave's tape of Recordicons. And one might argue "conservation of characters"  except that they had Frenzy and Rumble be exactly the same in the cartoon, despite the fact that they functioned very differently from each other, according to their tech specs. Buzzsaw was special, as he was packaged directly with Soundwave. Unlike the other mini-cassette Decepticons, this was the only way one could acquire Buzzsaw in the original toy series. Lucky for me, my older brother had a Soundwave, and thus a Buzzsaw as well, as one of the very first Transformers toys ever in my househo...

The last of the original Autobot Headmasters, and one of the largest figures from the original G1 series of toys: here is Fortress Maximus! As a character Fort Max has undergone many changes during his time in the TF universe.  * In the American TF cartoon, he was a Headmaster assault fortress created by Spike Witiwicky just one afternoon while hanging out on Nebulos. * In the Japanese continuity, he was the leader of the Headmasters, the largest and  most powerful of their team. He also served as their mobile base / starship to aid in their interstellar adventures. * In the Marvel comics series, he was an Autobot leader striving for peace; evacuating Cybertron with his allies to find a world away from the Decepticons. Unfortunately, he was tracked down on Nebulos by the Decepticon Scorponok, and forced to become a Headmaster to prove to the local Nebulans that he was not like the Cons. Ultimately, to save Nebulos, he was force to leave the planet and eventually made his way t...