Transformers Kingdom Titan Autobot Ark

Let’s get this ginormous robot out of the way so the rest of this year’s entries will fit. For nearly four decades, Transformers fans have been dreaming about the big orange spaceship that first brought the Autobots and Decepticons to Earth millions of years ago. For ages the Ark has been a half-disc-shaped spaceship, famously lodged in the side of a volcano. Now, thanks to the Transformers’ Kingdom line, the Ark has its own massive robot form.

You might want to stand back, this image is kind of big.

Standing 19 inches tall and covered with cool details, the Ark’s robot form would have ended the conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons pretty damn quick had it existed in the original cartoon. This is a beast of a toy, so big that my original plan to photograph him for this year-end list was thwarted because I spend most of my time in a hospital bed and there was just not room for anything more than this head shot:

Of course, with great size comes great pricing, which in this case is around $170. But hey, you can pull out his chest and transform it into a robot named Mainframe, which in turn transforms into Autobot computer Teletraan-1. Who can put a price on that sort of utility?

Hasbro can, and it’s still $170. Gonna put him back up on the top shelf and move on to smaller, mostly cheaper things.