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View Full Version : Collector Club Magazine #43 (Feb/Mar 12)



Tetsuwan Convoy
23rd February 2012, 08:50 PM
#42 is here (http://www.otca.com.au/boards/showthread.php?t=12652)

Just got my Mag yesterday and thought I would go over it, you can tell from the start that it is not going to be a good one. Otherwise they would have put the front page on the website, When I last checked after ordering the Runabouts, they still had the Wheeljack cover issue up.

Cover page - Has an image of optimus and The Motor Master clashing. The promoted aspects of the mag are (a bad sign) All-New Animated Allspark faeture and interview with LeVar Burton (From rescue-Bots.)

First page - Usual blab from the club hyping stuff. Talks about a Pre-orders for Drift and O/Run being up soon (too late for us) and a releaunch of the McAx.com club auction site, asking all members to add a couple of items to kick it off. Interestingly, it alludes to how many memeber there are by stating that there should be over 8000 items on the auction site(assuming everyone does add two auctions). So About 4000 or so members.

Page 2 - Interview with Michael Verret. Usual sort of interview they do with Hasbro people "Are you a fan?" "Favourite toy?" A couple of interesting questions on the packaging and changing style of bios (from skills and stats of g1 to rivalries and story we see now)

Page 3,4 - Levar Burton Interview. "did you know Tfs before?" "Excited to be part of the line?" Erm, didnt find this all that interesting, It takes up two pages and has a couple of shots of the rescue Bots and screen shots of the show.

Page 5-10 - New Comic Story "A Flash forward." 6 Pages. 4 of which happen 'off screen' from the G1 movie. That leaves 2 to set up a new Premise, which it does, but it fails to build any suspense and is horribly disappointing. Plugs the Battlechargers although they are drawn with the same face. But the G1s have different faces. Now I have to check on the clubs ones.

Page 11 - Ultra Magnus Bio

Page 12 - Runamuck bio.

Page 13 - Allspark Almanac page featuring, Road Rage, Chromia and Flashpoint.

Page 14 - Fake Animated Rosanna concert ad. Except they mess it up with tickets and a fan pass for Grandus on the page. I think it would have been more effective if they had it a fill ad with the info requireed for fanservice addressed somewhere on the ad.

But it leads into the next page which has

Page 15 - Transformers I.Q Multiple Choice Quiz.
A fan pic and that annoying Recordicons cartoon.



Man this is an awful issue. At least the quiz is better than a half assed word search, but still, no toys.

Considering how it was out before the Toyfair and they mention the toyfair in the first page, you'd think being an 'official' club they'd be able to have maybe ONE piece of preview news about what we are going to see at the fair? After all they should be best pals with Hasbro.

Buuuuuut no. Not a thing.

I am really beginning to see Griffin's point about the lack of toy coverage, which really is what I am after. I don't follow the comics closely enough to care and the club one is usually badly drawn anyway. More toy coverage in this mag would actually boost it up in my opinion. Right now it has the standards of a fan mag. And a bad one of them at that.

At least there were no hideous grammar errors that jupmed out at me this time, although I bet I could read it again and they'd be there. Interstingly in the credits section, they credit Richard Chang for the SD TCC Side Burn Design, but they have a SD Runamuck up there instead. Oops.

So to summarise, "Bah!"
:cool:

Paulbot
23rd February 2012, 08:53 PM
I found it cheap that they used toy photos for the profiles instead of drawing the alt modes.

The "lost/deleted" scene from TFTM suffers from being too precise to the storyboards IMO. Full line art and colour doesn't add that much.

Decepticon
23rd February 2012, 09:18 PM
Those magazines are pathetic!

Tetsuwan Convoy
24th February 2012, 11:33 AM
Just saw in the last issue (#42) that they said Wait for next issue (this one) for more on the Prime toys. It appears that they completely forgot about that is this issue has less toy info than the last :/

griffin
24th February 2012, 12:48 PM
I think people only sign up for the annual toy now anyway (and discount to BotCon, which is more than the cost of membership for American members)... I don't think anyone over there cares about the content of the magazine being a waste of money because they already get US$40 value out of their membership fee.
Foreigners like us on the other hand, don't get US$80 value out of our membership fee, as the toy and magazine are really the only features most members here get from that fee, and the toy is not worth US$80... so we need value from the magazine to make up the difference (or else it's cheaper to not be a member and just buy the annual toy on ebay later).

THEN, if the magazine started giving us something to value, they need to give Foreign fans access to an online version (PDF perhaps), so that when there is something amazing to rave about with the global fan community or on their members forum, we get to do it when they do, not a month later when no one there wants to talk about it anymore.
Not a big deal to most here who prefer to not interact on the global forums, but there are a lot of foreign Club Members who do actively interact on those forums.