Birthday Special: INSIDE TOY BOOK 8

#foldabots #TheFoldabotsBlog #Foldabots10Years

Ah yes, it's my birthday again, so on this very day, I'll be talking about Toy Book 8 in excelsis.

At first I knew it would have that Astig and Tikbalang retools aside from the aforementioned characters (i.e. 10 characters, 3 gestalts, and 1 masterpiece figure). Instead, we got something very familiar, which a lot of Total Girl readers who already got the One Direction paper dolls (also made by 'Prime Minister' Jomike Tejido) few years ago would find this similar to the boy band made in cardboard (I'm not a fan of 1D unfortunately, but I'm mentioning this for the sake of all the TFBB readers around the world, or just the Philippines). I'm talking about the Cherifer boy (advert toy included in Toy Book) the mascot of... you know. What so good about this basketball dude, is he's utterly well-designed and simple, partly because it's a product placement, and partly this is what we got instead of Astig's Christmas '08 design and Tikbalang's official evil version which will be probably included in TB9 next year along with Magmatron, Bughaw, Harurot, Machete, Maneho, Rampa, and Pag-Asa, plus the remaining Maximum Lutant Weapons for Nu-Sho and his minions.

Now, onto the main contents... but before that, I also found out when I first took out most of the patterns (excluding Sporticons because I still have them in pristine good condition), it was much more tedious to tear through their lines, than the last ones.

Sporticons: Friend or Foe?

The Sporticons unlike most reissues, were practically different from their initial releases, which I suppose I have somewhere in my early blogs. All of the Sporticons have been retooled very excellent to make them adapt to their purified Foldabot selves, not to mention Agimat decals were made for the five if you want to complete their reformation. The weapons for everyone but Buhatron (which is a first to have a Toy Book exclusive to be re-released, after four volumes) and Verdetron, are made for their Foldabot selves

Rojotron now gives off cleaner nitro blasts thanks to the advancements of Euro 4 petroleum. Verdetron has no much changes except getting rid of the filth off his limbs except his right forearm. Violeta's bow and arrow is now made of clean stuff as well. And Azurenator finally uses clean purified water to make his ice blade instead of filthy flood water.

Formation for Sporticus is still the same fortunately, but you could utilize the Scramble System gimmick to swap the four members with each other to make new formations which will add up to a total of 24 possible combinations.

In hindsight, the Sporticons in this one, were treated the same way as Gubatron from TB3, which the relocations of Kuwago and Kagat were applied and Mikrokosmos from TB4, which gave the gestalt a massive overhaul.

Lutabot Diadrones: Twice the Terror, Twice the Action

This is also the reason why I picked this up, it's because I didn't complete the set before. The first Diadrone is actually made by one person, and the other were made by two, if you don't recall, assuming you've been PAYING ATTENTION.

Basically the four were reissued as is, except for Du-Rogg where he gets  some decent alterations to make the pattern clearer, and the Diadrone headgear has been alter as well. When I first saw this, I thought the design was wrong, but it turned out to be the way it's supposed to be. You will still need threads though for the winches which is good.

Whether altered or not, the L.Diads are still as superior as their Foldabot counterparts. Also with the first pair, I can actually make a similar blaster cannon to even the capabilities of their rivals, whereas I can make a humanoid combination for Tinidrone and Tu-Lock, which is made in a similar way as with their enemies.

MP Patrol: The Best Masterpiece Yet!

After Astig's well articulated design and lack of transformation gimmick (they should make a new one in the future...), and after Bangis' odd elbow joints despite he can now transform, we now have Patrol, our third Masterpiece Foldabot.

Suffice to say, MP Patrol's design is definitely much better than the last two (probably after this, will be MP Liyab for TB9, and probably we'll be expecting a Toy Book X, all composed of a full Masterpiece gestalt like Elementron which could be released before TB10 as a special gift for adult collectors) despite having almost the same number of sheets as the last ones. Unlike Astig, and like Bangis, Patrol doesn't have a head articulation, but his joints are much more simple than of Bangis. Transformation wise, Patrol compacts himself to his police car mode by actually placing his lower legs into the canopy of the car, whereas the rest of his limbs blend in with the car mode better, especially if you use 4 blue paperclips.

MP Patrol to my opinion is the best Masterpiece Foldabot to date, aside from setting a standard for future MPs including Xi-Takk, Kidlat, and probably Nuno (or Nu-Sho), and Siklab as well.

Conclusion

As 2015 draws to a close, most of the Folda-Fans who are on Facebook (and a few on YouTube, and a bit on DeviantArt and every other sites) are very excited for the 10th anniversary lineup made by everyone who won various contests online. We should make one too on DA despite not having an official group yet and a lot of fans rarely use this site anyway. For me, 2016 should be a year of all Foldabots and probably new gestalts to fight the ever-growing Lutabot army led by Nu-Sho, and some others.I might be back soon with the Year-End Blog which covers the highlights of Foldabots Fiscal Year 2015 and to the shortest set we have by far since two of the issues were fillers for the gestalts Zootron and Toxicus, and unfortunately one new Foldabot named Bisig. I'll also be throwing in pictures of the toys and my configurations to the gestalts to make them 10 times more awesome than the provided. It's because like a beer, THE FOLDABOTS BLOG REFRESHES THE COMBINER PARTS OTHER FOLDA-FANS CANNOT REACH. Well, I guess that's that for this edition, until then, this have been The Foldabots Blog, we'll see you next time!

And of course, Happy Birthday to the person who fooled you last year, and thought he won't be back... but there you go.