Received this lovely gentleman (BB-15DP Smoke) today, and I’m really happy with him. Open box, but otherwise it seems to be immaculate, and I love the gold, red, and silver accents on the translucent purple. I only recently saw some videos reviewing various figures with this BB-15 mold, and while the gator is kind of chunky and stiff in beast mode, I actually quite liked the look of the transformation, which led me to check out listings for Teardrop, Schlegel, and this guy (not ready yet to consider Albitron from the Botcon 2022 set, but it does have a great look, too). I got a bit lucky and saw a listing for an open box figure from a US seller, and the cost was much less than it would've been to get it from any of the small number of Chinese sellers. Also lucky with the condition, as it didn't feel like it's ever been handled except for photos, and all the paint and plastic appears to be immaculate.

I have to be a little careful opening the mouth in beast form, lest it come a bit unhinged, but otherwise I really like how the head/neck and tail unhinge into panels and collapse. The box form feels solid and looks great, though the head/tail side is a mostly just held in place with joint friction rather than tabbing together (edit: transforming it a second time, now I see where tabs from the neck and tail base go into the belly to secure it a little more - nice touch). I can already tell I will be reaching for it a lot to go through the transformation. When I can have a properly dark room I might add a pic showing the UV reactivity of the plastic and red paint.

I've picked up some more boxes since my last post, and I have some thoughts on them to share.

BB-13FYX/26FYX/39FYX Firefighter Heroes

Firefighter Heroes' hangars, ready to deploy!

When fires are burning, these guys are turning... into beasts!

BB-13FYX Water Cannon: Mixed feelings about this guy. He's a kind of cute panda character, but of the boxes I have, it's the one which is most representative of the early days of chunky, less elegant Beastbox figures. I'd love to see a newer bear design; the only really new one they've done since BB-13 is the SwinGo bear IronPaw, which hardly counts. That said, Water Cannon makes a decent box, and while I don't really care for Beastbox partsformers, I do at least appreciate that the box mode comfortably accommodates the extra pieces of the the cannons and baby panda. This won't be my least picked-up Beastbox, but it's a little too simple to be as pleasant to handle and transform as the boxes that came after it.

BB-26FYX Firethrash: This guy is the reason I wanted this set at all, if I'm honest. Ankylosaurus is my favorite dinosaur, and not only is this set considerably easier to get ahold of than the older Thrashard, I actually like the red and black color scheme here a little bit more than the yellow/orange/grey of the original toy. You can really see how Beastbox was rapidly evolving, comparing the original BB-13 Bigpower to BB-26 Thrashard, and while this toy's appearance is still pretty cartoony, and the articulation of later toys isn't here, it shows a lot of improvement. Honestly, I was surprised how much I like Firethrash. He's got good desk presence in either mode, and the transformation really is in a nice spot for me where it's intuitive and pretty easy, but has enough going on to occupy my brain and hands for a minute. It also forms an extremely neat and tidy cube, which is a big plus for me. This, of all the Beastbox I currently have, is probably the box I've been reaching for the most, lately, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

BB-39FYX Firepower: Of the three boxes in this set, this is definitely one of them. It's got more going on than Water Cannon, and arguably more than Firethrash, especially considering the wing-flapping action mechanism, but that's only really entertaining for a few moments, and after that one must reckon with a too-chunky body, legs that seem to move in every way but that which will let them hold up the figure, and a box mode that is weirdly fussy to form, for how comparatively simple the transformation is. I'm glad to have it, but it's not going to be a favorite.

Overall, I am quite happy to have the set. The box chargers are fun, with the vehicle hangar theming, and I really, really like Firethrash. Someone with less ankylosaurus affection might find the figures in this set a underwhelming compared to more recently-designed releases.

Komodo dragons have venomous saliva!

BB-66 Kommando: I have strong feelings about this figure, in multiple ways. The beast form is one of the best I've seen - it's very convincing as a komodo dragon. It has great articulation, I love the purple and grey aesthetic, and it's really pleasant to just have it in that form on my desk. The transformation to box form is a real pain, though, especially at the end. It's still not intuitive for me, so I either have to bring up a video, or fuss with it for a while, and the best thing that can be said about the end result is that it's nearly, almost a pretty good cube. The reverse (box to beast) feels to me like a much easier and more pleasant process. When converting to box mode, the grey quarter panel flaps never want to stay in the right spot at the end, the side corners don't come together as neatly as they feel like they should, and I almost always end up with a box that's a little too warped to smoothly slide into the box charger. No regrets on getting it, because I really do love the look of this thing as a beast, but the box mode on this one feels just a little underbaked, to me, despite its complexity. That said, it's hard for me to fault them for being ambitious with this design.

A reasonably well-armed dragonfly

An unreasonably equipped helicopter (with bonus item cannons)

BB-62 Onitopte: I love the look of this figure both as a dragonfly and as a cube, and yet this is among the boxes I'm least going to reach for, because of how hard it is to reposition the legs without breaking the joints. I cracked one of them the first time I transformed it, although at least that joint moves more easily now. It's just so uncomfortable to transform that I can't enjoy it even though I really like it in almost every other way. This is another one where I don't really like taking apart the built in weapons to reconfigure it for box mode, and this one is worse because getting all the pieces to line up is weirdly challenging for me. It really does look great, though - probably the single best-looking box mode of any that I have. That's honestly the main reason I got it, even with the warnings about the leg joints. I've read some tips about lubricating the joints, and maybe I will give that a shot sometime, because I really don't want to neglect this figure indefinitely.

Black Wind's box charger casts an eerie glow under UV, as it gets ready to leave for an BBAB mission

BB-38BW Black Wind: My buying this piece broke up another Redditor's Air Force set, which feels sort of weird. I really wanted one of the BB-38 mold figures, though, and when it was offered for sale, I decided I actually like this one the best of them, whereas the seller favored Tech Ninja. Regarding the rest of the Air Force set, I already have White Noise, and don't feel the need to get one of the horned owl retools. With the archaeopteryx mold being largely a retool of the pterosaur, I do not want another box that feels like Firepower. Again, getting a custom box charger is a bonus, though the Air Force didn't get anywhere near as cool looking chargers as the Firefighters, UV reactive plastic aside. Anyway, this figure pretty much immediately became one of my favorites. IT has a very nice looking box mode, a fairly straightforward transformation that still has interesting steps, and a pretty much a perfect wasp shape and articulation, down to the ready-to-strike, stinger-forward pose. I sometimes find it tough to line up the wings just right for everything to lock into place, but when I do get it, it's a really solid cube, and all the sides look good to me. This is a figure which has convincingly well thought out engineering in almost every aspect, and it's a shame the BB-38 mold is tough to acquire outside the Air Force set for a US buyer, without importing from China or Japan. A part of me has been wondering if this might be my first mold to double dip on, as the original Gunpowder deco is looking better and better to me when I see it in pics or vids. I will admit, I remain curious about the 5mm pegs on the wings that don't seem to have any use. Are they meant to be able to be attached to Unus, maybe? My only other quibble is that it lacks a 5mm or 3mm peg hole in its underside that would allow it to be more easily raised up on a stand for a flying pose. I gotta get some action figure stands with grabber arms to go around a figure's waist; I've seen those used to good effect with this figure.

Without UV, this Meltdown could belong to any faction - you'd never know!

Stealth mode, showing the clean black and red appearance without UV

BB-16MD Meltdown: This one felt pretty self-indulgent to seek out, but XMattingly's review of various crabs got me thinking about it, and it's not that much more pricy to get this one compared to Kanibal or Overkill (or so I'll keep telling myself). Getting the other goodies in this set is a nice bonus: a custom, UV-reactive box charger, a UV penlight, and a nifty little Beastbox-themed puzzle cube on a lanyard. This figure, randomly, comes either with white, glow-in-the-dark paint markings, or nearly invisible, UV-reactive ones. I got the UV-reactive figure, and while I don't think that would've been my first choice, I do like how clean the figure looks in normal light. The transformation is extremely simple, as reflects the early days of the Beastbox line, but its robot crab shape is quite fun, and the box mode is also quite clean. Having it made me want to also get a BB-18 male crab, which is actually a bit tougher than coming up with a BB-16. I've got a Blue Crab coming soon, and I'm looking forward to getting it and being able to do the full crab assembly mode with the two of them. Taking out the integral weapons and plugging them back in to complete the box mode doesn't bug me with Meltdown the way it does with Onitopte and Firepower. Partly, that's because it's such a trivial thing: just fold them up and put them back in the same 3mm holes, but with the opposite orientation. The other reason is, they really do complete the look of the box nicely. Regardless, this is likely to be a box I reach for on the regular, since it combines an easy transformation with a fun crab figure. It seems to me that after this one, 52TOYS moved away from making mainline Beastboxes (which is to say, not counting AMTS) that were designed for interaction with 1" figures, up until some of the 7cm cubes had bays and cockpits for them. I don't have any of those figures, but it doesn't bug me that this one feels like it's meant to go with them. The minimal lore suggests that it's autonomous, anyway.

The duality of bun

BB-54 Ironblood & Loyalheart: These were recommended to me in a comment after my first collection post, and I was immediately taken with them when I looked at some pictures and videos. What a delightful pair of cute little guys. They can easily hold a variety of interesting and realistic poses, as well as standing up like the White Rabbit, and I quite enjoy the way they form a bit of a taijitu symbol from the side when they combine into their box mode. Compared to the foursomes (penguins and meerkats) they have pretty interesting transformations. I do sometimes find it challenging to leave enough room for their heads in combined form (the key is to make sure to push the tail assembly far enough in to click), so sometimes it's a bit of a tight squeeze to get them back into their fantastic, zodiac rabbit themed box charger. I like Godspeed's a little more, but this is definitely one of my favorite custom box chargers, and really helps this set feel like a complete package. I really hope Beastbox continues for many years, in part so that we can see more lunar year zodiac animal releases.

I really do have the Beastbox fever. With these additions, I currently have fifteen boxes, if I count an increasingly shabby Wandering Star (in addition to the rear foot I lost previously, my last attempt to transform it resulted in one of the forelimbs flying away, and I still haven't found that, either). Meanwhile, I'm waiting for five boxes that I've ordered from various sellers in the last couple of weeks, including an almost indefensible choice to pay eBay prices for a BB-44DP Deep Purple set. That one came from my wanting that mold, but really not liking the Vanitas or Oldone colors at all, and while I almost settled for a Chimelong Octopus (it really has a pleasing color scheme), I really am a sucker for DP's dark purple theming, additional components (I still don't have one of the transforming stands), and beautiful box charger... plus, now I have this UV penlight I can use to appreciate the UV reactive elements. Besides Deep Purple, the next batch will include Blossom, Blue Crab, Icyboy, and Floyd, so I'll soon have quite a variety of birds and aquatics.

...and, as I was writing this, I impulse bought a BB-15DP Smoke, after seeing a pre-owned one with domestic shipping at what felt like a pretty reasonable price (considering its rarity).

My remaining wish list after those currently looks like this, in numerical order: Year of the Horse Dio, Jetsam/Sea Turtle, Chromeribs or Dark Klawd, Ricochet or Realsteel, Vaporwaveor Lotus, Kharon, Pyromancer/Cryomancer, Phantomaster, Mortal Coil, Giraffe, Neo Gio or Mojo, Tukuru Neon Blue, Baihu, Golden Dragon, Xuanwu, and then the upcoming Cubeauty Diana, Capybara, and Vermillion Bird / Zhuque. Most likely, I won't get all of my wish list items, and almost certainly not as quickly as I've built up my current collection, but I think I'm in it deep, regardless.

Took these pics Saturday night, and I added a copy of Through the Desert the next day when I walked by the Allplay booth and saw they had a small discount on it, plus I picked up a Mark Tedin Necropotence print for a friend. Otherwise this is all the stuff I got. I’ve already gotten Estate and Vine to the table and liked them both. Those display case advertising setups by the Westin skywalk worked on me - I saw the Estate display and immediately wanted to know more, and I did end up tracking them down on the stadium field and getting demos of that and Vine, liking both.

As for dice, I was originally not planning to get any resin dice besides the Crystal Caste freebie, but the CRWN booth had some fantastic designs that were part swirl, part clear with foil inclusions, and they catch the light amazingly well. The purple/blue swirl dice caught my eye at Crystal Caste’s booth when I was getting the freebie, so I guess that loss leader worked for them, even though they were just a buck a die. I kind of wish now that I’d gotten some extra d6 in that style.

Pretty good chance I get to play Greylune and Aiye, at least, this weekend, and hopefully Hacienda as well.

I got the Beastbox bug after the Penny Arcade web comic recently highlighted them, right before the Prime Day sale. Without the sale I could probably have held out longer, but with it, I ended up ordering first just Lovegun, and then eventually adding more on until I had quite a number coming to me in a short period of time. As they rolled in, I initially had second thoughts that turned to mostly being quite satisfied with what I got, with a few qualms. Here are some thoughts on the ones I got, in mostly the order of when I unboxed and tried them out.

* BB-76 LOVEGUN: Maybe not a great first Beastbox, for a few reasons, notably that it's got a fairly tricky transformation, and it was easy to screw up steps until I really got it down. Also, the articulation is pretty limited for the bird mode, and non-existent for the gun. That said, now that I have done all the mode transformations a number of times, I'm finding it very satisfying to get right, and the dove mode is very cute. I don't like that the wing tabs seem to catch on the inside of the box charger unless I orient it in a very specific way; I'd rather have the chest plate side facing out, rather than the wing kibble (as shown).

* 1/4 SQUAD SACREDPOWER ROBO: I'm always conceptually drawn to combiner toys, and yet the reality is often unsatisfying. I love that the individual pieces of this set take the forms of the Chinese four auspicious beasts. I also quite like the cube stack that they make. I particularly do not care for the fact that the beast forms require removable pieces that have nowhere to be stored in cube mode, so that I have a bunch of little pieces I need to keep track of. I like the look of the robot combiner mode, but I wish the arms had better range of motion, and it's so top-heavy that it needs to be positioned carefully if I leave it transformed. Also, the individual animals, other than the vermillion bird, don't feel super fun to fiddle with. I do quite like the bird, and of the auspicious beasts, it's the one I'm most interested in getting as a 5cm cube, which makes it irritating that it's the one that isn't available yet. On the whole, this is the only 5cm cube I kind of regret getting. The others are all well suited to being desktop fidget toys that I pop out of the charger, transform, appreciate, transform back, and stow, but there's too many steps and pieces for Sacredpower Robo for me to do that as casually as I'd like. Not a bad set, and if my desk had a display shelf close at hand I might enjoy just leaving them in their animal forms, because they're a nice collection, but as is these is the box I'm going to touch least.

* BB-32 DEMON DART: This is one that I initially wasn't going to get, but I kept seeing it on lists of favorite transformations, and I'm really glad I got it. The beetle mode is fine; I don't love it, and the "third mode" jet form is not my favorite aspect of it, but it really is a very satisfying piece to transform from box to beetle and back. If I'd gotten into Beastbox sooner, I would definitely have considered the Evangelion set as a way to get all three beetle variations, but given the price they go for, I won't bother. Of all the boxes, I got, this and the owl have been the ones I most often reach for.

* BB-52 DOWNSPIRAL: I love this thing. The transformation is one of the simpler ones, but still fun (although getting the legs to line up properly to stow it back into box mode is sometimes irritatingly fiddly), and it just looks awesome in its orthocone form, with tons of articulation in the legs, and I love how easily it can stand with a lot of different positions of the legs, which consistently are able to hold it up without tipping. The spinning drill on the cone is kind of silly but I still like to give it a few flicks when I have it out. The only downside is that for whatever reason, this thing is attack on sight for my cats, so I can't leave it out in the orthocone form. Also, it's one of the few boxes that I have no regrets whatsoever about having in the standard color versus one of the variations. It's a great colorway that suits my aesthetics nearly perfectly.

* BB-63C WANDERING STAR: Really mixed feelings about this little guy. On the upside, the axolotl form is cute as heck, and while I did consider the pink Heatmiser colorway, I really dig the mix of blues and purples for Wandering Star. It also has a moderately complex but still quite straightforward transformation, excepting that I almost always seem to need a reference to get the front legs in the right position. Downsides, however, include that the "box" form is really just a bunch of kibble that manages to barely squeeze into the mini charger. Two of the sides just don't look great at all, to my eyes. The biggest issue, though, is that it just has too many pieces that are delighted to come apart when it's least convenient for me, and in fact I've lost one of the back feet apparently irretrievably (though I'd love to be wrong and turn it up at some point). Since there's no real way to get a replacement part other than rebuying, it's pretty much a loss for me. Also, it turns out that it bugs me that it doesn't lock into place with the 5cm cubes.

* BB-41 WHITENOISE: This little guy rules. I'm glad I listened to the folks who were saying it belongs in pretty much every Beastbox collection, because it's so, so satisfying. I love how posable the head and wings are, and now that I have the transformation down, it's really pleasing to pick up, transform, leave hanging around for a little big, and eventually change it back to box mode and put away. Also, as I now find that I have Opinions about what makes a good box mode, the perfect cube this toy forms is deeply pleasing to my brain. This is another mold where I appreciate the alternative colorways that have come out, but am quite happy to have the original.

* BB-75 GODSPEED: Wow, just wow. The gem of my small collection, I love nearly everything about it. The horse mode looks fantastic and has some exceptional articulation - the head and neck particularly are very expressive, and it's able to take the form of almost any arrangement of legs for a walking or galloping horse (fun fact: at no time during a horse's gallop does any hoof touch the ground). The transformation is complex, with a lot of steps, but comes together in a convincingly satisfying cube and, if scrunched well, fits easily in its beautiful custom charger. The included stand attaches nicely to the charger and offers a great way to display it in horse mode.

Not pictured: I bought a BMM-01 Psychotrain that I have buyer's remorse over. I didn't really understand that only the head could take a cube form, and the train can only become the body of the robot mode. Despite its Ganesha-like appearance and my love of elephants, I can tell I just won't get any satisfaction from it. I'm on the fence between just returning it, or holding onto it until the holidays and either giving it to a friend or coworker as a gift for a kid, or donating it to Toys for Tots or a similar place. I think as a kid I would've loved this thing, but again I have learned about myself that I only really want Beastbox toys that can take 5cm cube form and stack in box chargers, and so this is going to remain unopened and eventually end up with someone else.

I've tried for a while to minimize buying collectible plastic in nearly any form; I don't have a lot of display space in my home, and I haven't prioritized adding shelves for things like that, and I tend to shy away from acquiring fandom/IP related items. These boxes seem to have completely bypassed my fragile psychic defenses, which have crumbled as I engage with the idea that if I have the right ones, they will genuinely ease the itching in my brain. I definitely don't need an unending stream of them, but I find myself craving more of them to build out my wall. I just made a BBTS order for the Firefighter set (an excellent value per cube, albeit all older molds - the ankylosaurus mold was the big draw for me here, particularly given the inflated prices for the older BB-26 Thrashard, whose colorway I don't actually like better than the Firethrash included in this set), Onitopte, and Kommando.

I'm also toying with the idea of eventually getting Mortalcoil (I've been reading a great web fic with a pseudo-Chinese setting, and it's left me very well-disposed toward cranes and also generally towards Chinese mythological creatures), Baihu, Golden Dragon, maybe Xuanwu (I don't love how obviously hollow its shell is), and potentially either Gunpowder or the Air Force set (barring a newer recolor of the wasp mold that would be less expensive). The two that I am really fighting with myself over are the Chimelong Giraffe (whose appearance I like considerably better than Moonsafari), and the Deep Purple limited edition octopus (which looks **amazing**), but both would be painfully expensive to buy from a Chinese seller. If I better liked the design for Oldone or Vanitas it would be easier, but my second choice for an octopus appearance would be another, pricy Chimelong variant. As is, that BBTS order will have five boxes for about the cost of getting Deep Purple or two Chimelong boxes, so I'll try to be content with that for the time being, and not think too hard about having gone several hundred dollars deep into a bunch of plastic toys, with few illusions that I'll stop there. I think I can do without the recently announced rhinoceros, but the pics I've seen of Diana suggest that she has a fantastic looking cube - I'll almost certainly pick that one up once it's easily available in the US. The Realsteel boxing kangaroo variant is another I'm tempted by but trying to resist.

Lastly, I want to give a big shoutout to xmattingly on YouTube, whose Beastbox / 52Toys reviews I've found invaluable for learning about the line and helping with tricky transformation steps. Something about his calm, chill voice reminds me a lot of one of my favorite Monster Hunter content makers, Gaijin Hunter, and I enjoy the combination of thoughtful analysis, cornball humor, and a deep appreciation of the details of printing and packaging. He has disappointingly low follower numbers, but he's remained very consistent in putting out reviews and other videos about the Beastbox line, which have helped a lot for me to figure out what I like in a Beastbox toy, and helped guide me towards ones I think I'll enjoy and avoid ones that might've disappointed me.

Bonus full cat pic, third.