How is it that people keep seeing MP Grimlock? I've been calling 5-6 stores and all of them are either sold out, haven't gotten any in, or lying.
TRU is horrible, even the good employees are frustrated by a useless inventory system, distribution and inventory sucks, and TRU and Hasbro just don't care about Masterpiece products. It is the same black hole of suck every year.
Short review of Hound.
Pretty good, but Hasbro's cheapness is back. Quality of materials does not feel as good as Evasion Prime. Plastic feels lighter and softer. No painted wheel rims (aw, come on! -- you did it on Drift!).
The biggest downside to Hound is lack of paint and monochrome. Hound is very, very green. His weapons are very, very grey. There is almost no painted detail in vehicle mode, so without the weapons it looks silly. The knife is silvery and nice, but the weapons are all boring grey. Molded detail is awesome; too bad there's nothing to really bring it out. Robot mode fares better because there's some silver paint and grey plastic is used for some limbs and parts (which would have done wonders for Drift).
Hound's transformation is pretty good. Intuitive, easy without being pointless, and full of some nice details. The truck mode, even though it is a giant brick, feels finished in a way that Hasbro doesn't often do anymore on their non-car models. All of the panels have tabs and seal up, kind of like Drift. I'm actually kind of impressed, because they could have made it gappy and tried to cover it with weapons.
Hound's robot mode is actually really nice. Well proportioned and very little kibble, he is poseable and imposing. I love that there are logical spots for all his weapons, or you can combine them to form one massive weapon. In this case, I think it's better when he is all decked out with multple weapons instead of one big one, but the ability to choose is appreciated. He feels like he is missing a little heft for his size; however, he weighs more than Evasion Prime and that's not counting the crapton of weapons.
A downside is that some of the weapons don't hold very well in vehicle mode. In a mystifying design decision, the weapons have plenty of posts, holes, plugs, and slots, but the vehicle mode has only one way of putting them on, and at least on one side of mine, they don't stay on. A peg prevents them from going flush, which means every time I touch Hound on that side, the weapons fall off. That side is pretty much a disaster -- two other guns are supposed to be mounted beneath, but they scrape against the floor. I have them mounted in the front of the cab like smokestacks.
This continues in robot mode. Hound can store his dual pistols in his ankles, which is great. Unfortunately, it's on a small little tab and touching the gun in any way will cause it to dislodge and fall out. Not so great.
Hound is close to greatness, with some really wonderful features. They clearly put a lot of thought into the weapons and it's so unfortunate that did not extend to actually putting them on the figure in a solid way. If they had, it would have been a home run.