This question comes from Dallas in Sydney “Should I buy Reformatted R-17 Carnifex?”

For those that don’t know R-17 Carnifex is 3^rd party developer Mastermind Creations version of the increasing popular character Overlord from the Transformers franchise.

Well the usual answer would be “yes, yes, a thousand times yes!” This looks like this is going to be a fantastic figure and it comes from a quality 3^rd party company that has done great work in the past.

However there is a cyber-spanner in the works – a possible official Overlord figure may be on the cards.  This is MUCH sought after as so few of us have the original one.  Personally the closest I have is my Heroes of Cybertron Gigatron and he doesn’t quite cut the mustard.

At Botcon Hasbro showed sneak peaks of figures that will be coming out over the next two years.  Most of these we got colour images of but there was one in shadow that looked suspiciously like a tank and jet that would combine.  Now this might be an upcoming Flywheels figure (Battletrap got a TFCC figure at Botcon last year) but it also might be an Overlord.  Overlord is arguably the more popular character, he featured prominently in the Japanese cartoon whereas Flywheels only showed up in the opening credits of the G1 S4.  Overlord has also been very popular in the recent IDW comics whereas Flywheels got killed over a year ago by the DJD in them.

So what to do?  Well it depends on your predilection.  If you really like 3^rd party products

then you may as well go for Reformatted R-17 Carnifex – he looks great and really is only lacking a base mode.  But he is expensive – really expensive.  At most online places you are likely to be shelling out well over $200AU for this big bad boy.

It also depends if you would prefer to have a official toy rather than a 3^rd party one.  Personally I have no problem with 3^rd party figures – I have a few Quintessons and my upgrade kits for Universe Hardhead and Combiner Wars Menasor make the figures look infinitely better.  But it always feels a little…. I dunno… like I am cheating a bit by getting something from a 3^rd party, almost like it’s not quite real.  Also if there is an official Overlord toy on the way, it’s possible that it may have a base mode, something that R-17 Carnifex lacks.

So my advice: hedge your bets!  Personally I’m preordering R-17 Carnifex from BBTS as I have the option of cancelling my order up to the day before it arrives in their store.  That way if an official toy does get announced and it look like it will be of good quality then I can cancel my 3^rd party order.  If it turns out there is no official Overlord toy on the way, then I’m covered and wont have to worry about not being able to lay my hands on a representation of him.

Good luck Dallas – may we both get the giant, psychopathic, mass murdering alien robot we are after!