{"id":47413,"date":"2026-11-10T00:00:35","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T05:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/?p=47413"},"modified":"2026-11-10T15:03:28","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T20:03:28","slug":"transformers-botbots-zanzabar-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/2026\/11\/transformers-botbots-zanzabar-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Transformers BotBots Zanzabar review"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>By the time the Transformers BotBots<\/i><\/a> line reached Series 4, Hasbro had clearly given up caring. There was no new chart showing the mall where they all lived, so don't know where the Magic Tricksters<\/a>' store would have been found. This figure is a \"1 Star\" release, but that refers to his supposed rarity, not what level he'd live in in the mall.<\/p>\n

Humans have been scrying for far longer than they've been able to make glass, meaning the ubiquitous crystal ball - or \"orbuculum\" - is just the latest inheritor of a tradition that bgean with polished stones or obsidian, or even just standing water. This one is cloudy blue, and sitting on a brown tripod stand, and has breathing holes molded through it in case someone were to swallow it. The blue may seem an odd choice, but it does a better job of hiding the robot inside it than clear plastic would.<\/p>\n

Beginning in Series 4, BotBots<\/i> no longer came with instructions - you were just left to puzzle it out yourself. Here, you fold down the center section of the ball, pull the sides upward, and rotate them down to be arms. That's what makes the toy look like the official stock photos, but he looks better if you tale the additional step of turning the legs around backwards, so that's what we're going to do.<\/p>\n

Zanzabar loves telling fortunes... when bots gaze into his crystal ball, he can tell them whether or not they have hair, or whether or not it's raining out. He's such an amazing fortune teller, he can even tell bots what they had for lunch, as long as they ate it with Zanzabar.<\/i><\/p>\n

Okay, in all fairness, real scrying (quote\/unquote \"real\") is supposed to allow practitioners to see the past and the present in addition to seeing the future, so Zanzabar is at least doing part of it right. He's a very weird robot, though, with three legs and a tail, arms contained in big half-bubbles, and what appears to be a turban over his chest-high face. The torso is golden, and the face white, and he appears to have blue sunglasses and a black horseshoe mustache. What an utter oddity!<\/p>\n

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Zanzabar was available in the blindpacked portion of a Home Rangers five-pack, a Movie Moguls eight-pack, and a Wilderness Troop eight-pack. If the original plans for Series 6 hadn't been cancelled<\/a>, these molds would have been reused to create Susfishous, a \"Pet Mob\" member who turned into a fishbowl.<\/p>\n

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<i>And now, some more OAFEry:<\/i><\/H5>