01270: Adopting Piranacon and More O Bar

Let's take a moment to make fun of the weirdest Decepticon gestalt combiner - Piranacon. This cute and cuddly little monstrosity is the combined effort of the six Seacons. This was always my least favorite gestalt since (1) he was never featured in the US G1 cartoons and (2) his colors hurt my eyes. Even in the scaled down images of the Transformers catalogs that would come with the toys, I never felt all that compelled to pick up this toy.

But during our toy run at Greenhills just before the holidays, we encountered this figure with a ridiculously low price. But when I saw it I didn't think "Ooh, great deal". I thought "Awww, poor thing" - like the equivalent of seeing a sad little puppy at a pet orphanage. So I eventually rustled up the cash and took him home with us and it was only today that I found the time to open up the box and document all that it came with. It did make for an interesting afternoon, although it got in the way of my plans of unboxing more Transformers today.

This reissue of the classic set decided to stick with the original color scheme and transformation modes. Plus like may of the other Hasbro 25th anniversary figures, the stickers were already applied.

Image via Wikipedia

Now I'm not sure if it would have been a better deal had they decided to follow the alternate color scheme that the comics utilized (as seen on the left) versus the color scheme it ended up with. I'm not quite sure how they came up with this final design in either case. True, in that era, Decepticons were known to favor shades of purple for the color schemes of many of its robots (since purple is evil, yes?) but how it got warped into this mix of fuchsia, lilac, aqua and what have you is beyond me. Plus the fact they transform into strange sea creature mutations (such as a manta ray with legs), but I guess they were running out of ideas.

The set also has a weird gimmick in terms of all of the limbs being able to form into an alternate weapon mode. Some wiki sites argue that this means that the Seacons are not only combiners but are also Targetmasters, which is a funny way of looking at these outlandish figures. Thus only 4 get involved as the arms and legs of the gestalt robot while the fifth becomes a gun, because that totally makes sense.

The figure does have a few interesting features here and there, but I still don't get it. In the Transformers world, you could argue that my purchase of Piranacon is the equivalent of an act of kindness or charity. For now he has a decent enough spot on the shelf but I'll probably figure out where to place him in favor of better figures. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my red-headed step child. And he's probably queer given his styling and color choices.

We ended up at O Bar Ortigas again last night as I had mentioned in yesterday's post. Dee Dee and the rest of the O Divas were fabulous as always and a good number of friends were present as well. There were some minor annoyances that tried to throw a monkey wrench into our fun for the night, but we still survived the night decently enough. I tried to ease up on the alcohol front, and it felt like I succeeded in terms of not going home too hammered. Plus I only took less than 300 photos this time around, mainly because the poi dancers weren't around to occupy most of my photography efforts. Go figure.

It looks like we'll be going again tonight, at least once Tobie finishes up with a game chronicle for one of his alternate gaming groups that play mid-week. They're playing right now as I compose this blog entry (and sort of hope that our own Changeling the Dreaming group will be able to play tomorrow or something). I know we're kind of pushing it in terms of number of repeat O Bar trips in the past week (tonight will be our sixth run in the past 8 days), but then it's the holiday season so we might as well make the most of it, right? Plus by next week my vacation time will be over and I'll be back to the night shift work grind again. Hoo boy.

But I am having fun experimenting with different shots like the one above. These are burst shots of one of the dancers, Enzo, contrasted against the laser light and the strobe flashes across the bar. I keep taking shots like this, but I now realize that my burst setting does a better job than my sport setting alternative that I also use.

If yesterday was about going to the bar to support one of our favorite O Divas, Dee Dee Holliday, today it's about supporting the poi dancers and of course hanging out with friends to celebrate the holidays as well. Tobie has to go home to his family for New Year's Eve, so it looks like we'll be initially sepate during this period. But once the fireworks are done we expect to be together again - at O Bar. Go figure.