 So what's going on guys? Patriot Prime here once again with another episode of The Sit Rep. And I am here tonight with Eric, also known as InuTabi on YouTube. Eric, how are you doing tonight? Hey, how's it going, Jason? Don't worry about it, buddy. Good, good. Well, first off, tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, my name is Eric. I'm from a small town in northern North Carolina. You might can tell from accent. And the shirt. I work for a... Yeah. Yeah. I work for a textile company. It's probably the largest in the country. And I'm a manager there, and I handle several things within the company. I have a family, have a daughter, and a son, and a wife, of course. And we just built a house in the last year and moved to a different part from where we used to live. It's actually closer to like civilization. So that's much better. Which part of North Carolina are you from? I have family in High Point. Actually, I'm from a small town called Oxford. And we moved closer to Lake Wake Forest, which is much bigger. It's close to Wake Forest, Durham, Raleigh, all that. So yeah, you can see the big city. Yeah, I've got family in Charlotte, too. We always enjoy going down there. That's where I went to my first transformer convention, Shardacon in 2013. Oh, okay. All right, sir. So how the sit-rep works is I have five questions for you as a transformer collector and then five questions for you as a YouTuber. So are you ready to rock and roll? Sure. Let's do it. All right. First question. What's the appeal of transformers for you? I think it's the transformation and I always like the engineering. To me, it's gotten me like, how do they do that? How do you make a robot as a truck that turns into, you know, it's very unique especially with the stuff nowadays like it back in the 80s, it was very easy. It's a couple flips, a twist, you know, but now I mean, you've got stuff that a tab goes in here. This is folded in here. You turn this around. I mean, you got to have a degree in mechanical engineering sometimes figure these things out. And some of these master's figures, you almost have to have a pair of tweezers to move something out of the way. It's like, how do you even think of that? Yeah. I agree. Yeah. That's always been, I think, the thing that got me. It's like one of the, like I had He-Man, I had G.I. Joe, I had Rambo, if anybody remembers that. I had, you know, all the stuff from the 80s, Jason, the Wild Warriors, you name it. But transformers just really kind of stood out as like the one thing that I've always liked. Now, I haven't always collected it, but you know, back in like when the first movies were coming out in 2007, I picked up a few figures and I was like, they just sat on the shelf, didn't really do much with it, and then didn't really do anything else for a while. But yeah, that's kind of been the appeal to it. That's a long drawn out explanation, isn't it? Hey, man, that's fine. That's fine. I've had some doozies on here. All right. Number two, aside from G.I., which is always the right answer, what is your favorite transformers fiction? Ooh, fiction. Cartoon, comic book, movie. Well, how I first got into it was comic book. There was like a four series comic in like the 80s. There was like a painted cover with Optimus and I think Gears. I can't remember episode two, but three was the one with Spider-Man wrapped around. Yeah, that was three. That was my first introduction to transformers. Oh. So that's how it started out. So it was originally a four issue limited series, got popular, turned into an 80 issue limited series. Yeah, I remember a lot of them because one of them was, I think number six was all about the Dinobots. Number four was like, I think Mirage is holding his shoulder in the corner or something like that. He could just bit his arm off. Yeah, that's it. They're very kid friendly back then. Yeah. Yeah, I found those at a place called Eckerd Drug Store and that's where we would go get our comics. My dad took me and it was on the shelf and I just remember, wow, this is pretty cool. And then I remember Spider-Man and then the toys come out. So just kind of went from there. That's great. That's great. Love Marvel G1. That was my fiction growing up because I didn't live where I could get cable. Oh, yeah. So my series was the comic book stories and you know, every now and then I'd catch a show if I visited my grandparents. Yeah. All right. Number three, do you have a favorite figure in your collection? A grail. This is the one toy you'll never get rid of. Um, yeah, I just got it not too long ago. It was Magic Square's Optimus Prime. I went through hell to get that figure. So yeah, I will never get rid of that thing. He's a nice looking figure. My buddy Bert the Stormtrooper did a great interview or interview shit review of him and I was really impressed with him. And I think Deluxe Baldwin, he does a lot of Magic Square. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I clicked a lot of those too. Yeah. This is a great figure. I mean, there's other companies that are making them now like Transformer Element and Smother Places Zeta is doing one, but it looks great. It fits with all the other masterpiece and third party stuff I've got. Um, can't really say any complaints about it. The plastic. I mean, it's not really, you know, die cast and it's all plastic, but it looks fantastic. But the problem is I made a mistake of ordering that like January 13th. So coming out of China in the beginning of January, Chinese New Year. Yeah. So I got it. I got it like a month and a half later and I didn't know I've never really ordered anything from China like that. And then I was going through the internet and people say, oh, that is the worst time to ever order anything. It's like, well, shit, I didn't know. Last time I ordered something from China, I got it in hand in five days. Yeah. I've seen it. I've seen them doing like a week and that's amazing. But this I was emailing the company and it was like, well, it was sitting at the airport on January 20th and I was like, well, it's February 14th. I'll just give it a couple more weeks. Good God. Yeah. It's easy for them to say when, you know, it's not their money you just spent to get this thing. Yeah. All right. Number four, what figure is your white whale, your most wanted toy? I would like to have a nice G1 shockwave that, you know, I don't care about the box and all that, but just a good quality looking one or either one sound wave or either a sound wave with the tapes that looks in decent shape. I never had a sound wave or a shockwave as a kid. Those are the ones I always want. I was so upset. I have a shockwave that I rebuilt. I mean, he's got the good hose on him. I did the rewiring. He worked perfectly. I set him on my shelf. So, and this was a couple of years ago. I pulled him down to do a review on him the other day. His electronics don't work anymore. I'm like, ah, he still looks good. So I still got a shockwave. All right. Last question regarding the transformers. What's your favorite transformer character? Any fiction? Any media? Um, had to be Mirage. Just he's a spy. He was, you know, always sneaking up on people. He turned invisible. Uh, I think it was something questionable about his motive. Sometimes I think from what I've read in some comics, um, I always liked that character. I don't think they were delved into it in the cartoon enough. I remember one episode like he pretended he was he had to set the con badge or something. I can't remember what the deal was at. I know the episode you're talking about and I can say I shot him with a shrapnel in the chest or something like that. And he appeared from being invisible. I don't remember much else. I think it was something about bombshell or maybe he was faking that bombshell got him with a Cerebro shell. Yeah, yeah, we're seeing something about it when I reviewed when I was researching my bombshell video. Now, I really think it. I don't think he did much in the comics other than the first that last episode episode. I always call comics episodes last issue where he fought Ravage and Ravage bid his arm off. He always played on the fact he was the most homesick of the Autobots, which carried over into the television show. That's why he snuck aboard the Decepticon ship when it was leaving and was able to cause it to crash. That was that was also my first transformer. So I've always just kind of like that character. I had the toy as a kid and I just always like that's one of the ones you don't hear of. I've done hell. I think you're going to be my 14th episode and it's always either Optimus or Megatron or one of the biggies. I've never heard one like Mirage show. Good deal. All right, here we go. These are the YouTuber questions. Number six is what possessed you? A grown-ass man to do toy reviews on YouTube. So one night I was just surfing through YouTube and I came across this guy that was doing toy hunts named Josh Pence and they're in this group called The Syndicate or whatever and he was going to different places in Ohio and there's toy stores everywhere there. There's nothing here. It's maybe one, but it seems so interesting. He made it seem so much fun to get these toys and get these figures and I watched it and I watched it. I probably watched 50 of those videos over like a weekend and I just got the bugs like damn, I like transformers. And I went to the store in Rawling and next thing I know I bought two or three. Then I ordered some more. Then I bought a Predaking and I was buying figures left or right and then it was just snowballing there. Next thing I know I had like 50 or 60 figures and I just jumped in it kind of a little bit too quickly. I didn't do enough research. I was just, oh, there's transform. There's transform. There's transformers buying stuff instead of like, hey, I should maybe do a little bit more research and do it, but I was just hooked and been that way ever since. It's kind of hard when you jump right in. Of course, when you're doing these YouTube videos you always learn from your previous video. It's so funny to go back and see some of my first ones like I had this camera angle that shot upwards because I didn't have a tripod. I think I mounted it on my belt clip somehow. And then you work with your lighting and different styles and I think it took me a year but I think I finally found my niche. All right. Now I know you're fairly new but what keeps inspiring you to get in front of the camera? One, probably that I watched a lot of other YouTubers and that's my motivation on its own. I watched your stuff. I watched Deluxe. I watched T-Man. I watched Nate Simmons. I watched, you name it, I watched Ben Collectibles. If there's a guy doing transformers and doing reviews unboxing, I'm watching it. That motivates me to do it. Also like some of the stuff they're releasing is really, I mean, third party alone is great. Just they're releasing something every month, multiple times. Hasbro is doing a fantastic job with Siege. I really don't think I've seen a bad figure out of everyone I've bought and I bought every single one of them except for like one or two of the new deluxes that's come out. Yeah, I think that's what keeps me going. It's just, it's really become a lot of fun. That gives you a new way to appreciate your figures. Yeah. All right, question number eight. There are thousands of toy reviewers on YouTube. What makes you different from the rest? Well, that's a loaded question. I'm not sure I'm so necessarily different than everybody. I just try to be plain and simple. I don't try to do too much fancy graphics, whatever. I'm getting better. I don't know enough about it to do it right now. So I'm trying to get my intros a little bit better trying to do the famous thumbnail so that everybody does a good thumbnail. I'm like, well, I got this one thought I like. So I'm gonna go with that for right now. I do record in 4K. I have increased my lighting. I'm trying to explain stuff and show it better. When I was first doing it, yeah, that looked like garbage. And I mean, it looked freaking terrible and I admit it, I didn't know what the hell it was doing. But it was one of those things where I want to learn how to do it all. So I'm getting better and better and we'll continue to get better and better as I learn how to do more things. But differentiating myself from other people is, I don't say I'm that different. I'm just giving you a common sense approach to a figure. You have it, you don't have it. Hey, watch this video. I'll show you what it looks like and we'll show you what I like about it. If you wanna buy it, great, if you don't, don't. There you go. So what was your first figure you reviewed? Oh God. Well, to start off, how long you been doing this? Uh, July. Okay. July of 2018, a Predaking, I think, was the first one. Pretty sure that's it. Damn. Picked a small one to start with, didn't you? Well, yeah, I did the figures and I did the robot. I did the robot and I did the animal conversions and I did it all at one and it's a sucky video, but gotta start somewhere. My biggest problem with the big guys is I don't have that much of a viewing space. Yeah. I learned that. You have to rig up something right here on my desk. All right, this is question number nine. What's your thoughts on the transformer social community, i.e. YouTube, Facebook, anything like that, and do you have any special shout-outs? Uh, when you say shout-outs. Like, um, my stuff or? No, anybody that you, you have a space, I mean, if you're on the community, somebody that you appreciate, Oh, okay, I gotcha. Sorry, I'm new to the whole thing. The community, so I told Matthew this, I really had no issues with it. YouTube has been great so far and a few people have commented on my videos. So, I mean, I get a few comments here and there, but they've been good. Facebook tends to be a little different. I see some of the forms, are they forms? I don't know, whatever you call them. Posts. Groups or whatever, I'm in like several different ones and a lot of them are good, but then you see the stuff where like, got to post a picture of his box or something, he said, you know, and maybe he's asking for it, I don't know, he just says, what's in the box? And the guy says, your mom or something, I mean. That's been going around, it took me a while to get used to that. It's a thing, it's just a game, the collectors are like, hey, I just got something today, what's in this? And yeah, your mama jokes, they're all over the place, you have to deal with it. If your big boy panties and roll on. Yeah, it wouldn't bother me either way. I'm one of those people that, I'm hard to offend, so I don't get offended easily, so. I knew we'd get along well. Yeah, it doesn't really matter. Somebody could go on my video and say, that's the suckiest shit I ever seen. So, okay, thanks for watching. I appreciate it. I'm gonna say thanks, what can I do to improve it? Yeah. I take the criticism, like you were talking about thumbnails. I got into a conversation with some other YouTubers regarding thumbnails and when I first started, my figurehead, if you will, is my MP01 Prime with the American flag. Right. And when I was making thumbnails, I always made that like the big front and center image. And I did that for almost a year and I forget who it was, told me, said, listen, when somebody's looking for your YouTube videos, they're not wanting to watch, they're not looking for your image, they're looking for the figure. So I tweaked my thumbnails around now, I'm very consistent where I'll have a picture of the robot mode on the right side and the vehicle mode on the left. Of course, I still do my American flag background. And that's kind of helped, I think, with my views a little bit. People are more apt to click on that than the same link they see with this giant Optimus Prime with the flag. That's interesting, I hadn't thought about that. So like I normally just do like a picture of the box with the figure and then just the name of the, like the line and then the name of the figure. But that's interesting. I may have to take that advice right there and change mine. You do, man. We help each other out. And now we both just lost it. Oh, fantastic. He's off the cuff, cuff one's up. Would you have any special shout outs? Any reviewers you wanna holla at? Oh yeah, well, you're one. I watch all, I lie to your stuff. Like the other night, I might've told you this, I watched every single MicroMaster video that you had MicroMaster month. Oh my God. I think it was 28 or 29 videos or something like that. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. It was last May. And I was just trying to come up with some kind of gimmick to do and I thought the month of May starts with M, let's do MicroMaster's month. I forgot how many I had. And I think I did like 28 videos in 28 days. So I might not be out one or two on the same day. Then I had a couple of regular reviews, a couple of unboxings and it was nuts. And then during that review, I actually realized, hey, I don't have this one. I went hunting for him, found another one. So yeah, I won't be doing anything like that again. I might do a jump starter month or something. It was great. I mean, it kind of got me hooked where I've been looking through eBay for MicroMaster Watts. Oh, they're addictive. I didn't think I'd like them as much as I did. Yeah, I like the bases. I don't know what it is. It's something about those little bases. It reminds me, I'll tell you what it reminds me. As a kid, I had Hot Wheels, had like little garages and stuff like that. You could put the cars with. I think that's maybe what it is. It kind of reminds me of that. It came out the same time the micro machines were popular. So all the toy lines were feeding off each other. And I was gonna bring something up to our viewers too. You were talking about, you were watching my videos. So the other night, I'm watching Eric on another show on Hale Hasbro. I don't know what he wants to be called. Matthew Baldwin, Hale Hasbro reviews. He's doing an interview with Eric. In the background of Eric, he has his TV on and he's watching me. So here I am watching a guy who's watching me while I'm watching him. So it was like a YouTube exception. It was weird. I thought that was so funny. It was like, oh, there's that's me. Well, in the background now I got Matthew with his new Megatron. You can't say sorry, Matt. My screen doesn't work. Yeah, I got the new Megatron review I gotta watch back there. But yeah, he's another one I'd shout out, Matt. I watch a lot of his stuff. I like his, I think one thing that I like about his is like he's from, I think Arkansas, Mississippi or something like that. So I'm very cognizant of my accent. So when I first started doing this, like, God, people, you hear a lot of people say, I don't like Southern accents. But then you hear a lot of people say, I love your accent. So like doing videos, I was like, I don't know if people's gonna want to hear me talk and stuff like that. So I started hearing his, I was like, well, his isn't worse than mine. It's similar. And he's got a lot of viewers and people like him. And so it made me feel like, yeah, all right, I can do this. Another one is- Man, you sound like Hank Hill. You sound like that guy from King of the Hill. Are you from Texas? I got there, Bobby, I'm from West Virginia. I guess they expect more of a Hillbilly slang sometime from West Virginia, but, you know, do what I can. All right, my man, will you have any more? We keep- Well, of course. Yeah, Ben's collectibles is another one. He's English, I guess. He does a lot of stuff ahead of time. I like his, Emgo, I watch that. There's one guy who I kind of like do mine sort of similar to, just like his demeanor, the way he does the videos is, I can't say it, but it's like P-A-U-G-A, whatever. P-O? That's how I say it, like P-O. P-O, okay. All right, I'll start saying that. I guess I could be wrong, hell, I don't know. That's the kind of way I like to do mine. He shows the figure, explains it, doesn't go into too much stuff, because I'm not as knowledgeable as like other people, but he just shows you the way it is. And I feel like that's a good review. Good deal. All right, final question. Do you have any channel goals for yourself and where can my viewers find you? Plug yourself, this is all about you now. All right, here we go. So I'd like to be at 500, I'm at like 119 right now. So the goal is like 500 by the end of the year. I know I could probably maybe do more, but what I found out as I do more videos is I contribute more, as I interact more, I'm getting more views and more interaction. So I've learned that part of it. My channel is Enutabi, so it's capital E, N-E-W-T-A-B-I-E. I have an Instagram, which I put pictures and links, well not links, but like a picture of my thumbnail, my YouTube channel, and I have to look that up because I don't know what that Instagram channel name is. All right, it's E. I'll go ahead. Yeah, it's E underscore Newton, N-E-W-T-O-N, underscore collects. So that's Instagram, I've got like 470 some people following me on there. I don't care, thousand be nice. Here's a goal. Well, just to let you know, and my viewers know that I will put a link to your channel in the description of this video. And at the end during my flag waving outro, I'll have a link to one of your videos and your channel as well. All right, I'm gonna help you out. Thank you, I appreciate that. Appreciate that. All right, well that is pretty much it with our sit rep. I wanna thank you for coming on with, coming on the show with me. Man, this is water people, I swear. It's water, cannot talk tonight. So that's it, got anything else? No, I appreciate the time and you didn't have to do it, but it means a lot to me to get on the channel and talk about transformers. I could do it every day pretty much, but I appreciate the opportunity to be on your channel and talk with you about it. Thanks. I enjoy this too, because there's nobody around here that I can talk to. Nobody's into this that I know. Me either, same thing. This YouTube thing's been a great way to meet people and somebody commented earlier, how much they like me doing this, because they get to meet people they subscribe to as well. Most everybody just knows just this little round images in the comments section. Man, I cannot talk to my puff. Pull up my shot glass here. All right guys, well, as you, I'm gonna try this one more time. As usual, I wanna thank everybody for taking the time and watching my video. If you like what you see, don't forget to like, don't forget to subscribe and give my man, Eric, some love as well. This is Patriot Prime, signing out. Who are? Hey, I really appreciate you guys stopping by my channel. Don't forget to like and don't forget to subscribe. Also, check out some of my other videos that I've done on Generation One Transformers, Modern Era Transformers, and Toy Hacks Reprolabel 6. Once again, this is Patriot Prime. Who are?