And lo, on to Earthrise.
On his own merits, Optimus Prime is amazing. Easily the best general retail toy of the character ever. The robot mode looks great and is effortlessly poseable. Most of the truck mode’s kibble hides inside the torso in an incredibly smart fashion and somehow – somehow there’s an opening Matrix chamber with a removable matrix in there! and Prime can hold the Matrix in his poseable hands. And in a very nice touch you can fold up his gun and clip it into a 5mm port on his back in an approximation of how he had it stowed in that first Dreamwave miniseries way back when, and MP-10 did too.
The trailer is pretty cool, but not as great. It’s a touch on the small side – you can fit smaller Deluxes in there (I managed to get Barricade in, but not Hound or Greenlight. Impactor was right out), though this is down to width, and plenty of bots will fit on the Combat Deck. The Combat Deck is a sea of grey though – the original toy and various high quality versions broke that up with stickers/tampo/parts cast in different colours – most notably the gun turret/repair bot having some blue on it. And there’s none of that here unfortunately. And the turret is a bit teeny compared to the rest of the trailer. It really feels like a lot of compromise to get these features into the box. There’s a bit more interaction with Prime himself though, which is nice – you can slide out a chunk of the trailer ramp to use as a shield, and the turret can be removed and has a 5mm post that can be used to attach it to Prime (or any bot, really). There are a few ways you can use the turret as a backpack for Prime – including replicating the jetpack he borrows from Sideswipe. The other niggle I have is that there’s no way to have the turret poke out of the trailer like the original toy and most Masterpieces (and THS-02) could.
At the top of this, I said that Prime is great taken on his own merits. Which means there’s a caveat coming – if you have STE GE Prime, is it worth getting Earthrise? And that’s complicated. Both the toys feel like they’re successors to the high-end Prime toys of the last 20 years, most notably MP-01, MP-10 and THS-02 than anything done in CHUG to this point, and it’s really a case of taking a look at the problems of making a toy that does the truck and robot modes of the cartoon design, and highlighting different parts to do well.
So STE GE Prime hides his wheels fantastically between the flipping leg panels, and how the front wheels fold into the chest. But that engineering comes at the price of a backpack to hide the front of the actual truck mode, and a bunch of panels bulking up the arms. And by comparison Earthrise Prime gives us a trim waist and arms, no backpack and much of the truck kibble hidden inside the body, but the rear wheels remain fully visible on the legs, and the front ones fold up behind the waist. There isn’t the space or the part count to do the wheels folding up inside the body like the older Masterpieces and Hybrid Convoy did, or to do the fifteen trillion tiny panels of the newest MP. This is 10% the price of MP-44 though, so that’s a plus.
I missed Astrotrain when he came out in STE GE and so was very pleased to be able to pick him up now. And he’s a very interesting figure. Like Shockwave, he’s basically a Voyager figure with extra bits, in this case box that can attach to the back of train mode as a tender, fold out into a weapons platform/launch gantry for shuttle mode, and a set of foot extenders and a backpack for robot mode, as well as a large array of weapons – a Macross-style missile pod, and 4 rifle-size guns. These can be pegged together into one gigantic cannon as well as being held in his robot mode hands or positioned on the usual array of 5mm ports around the figure – Train mode can only mount 2 weapons but the tender has 4 ports, and in a really nice touch you can fit all 5 weapons neatly inside it.
In terms of complexity as a Triple-changer, Astrotrain is far closer to the Thrilling 30s examples like Springer than he is to the Titans return voyagers – transformation is far more involved, with a lot more moving parts and better executed alt-modes. Shuttle mode suffers a little bit – the front half of the main hull is significantly broader and the silhouette isn’t the best, but it’s a minor complaint compared to say TR Broadside’s “jet” mode. Transformation from robot to the other modes is involved and quite satisfying, and evocative of the G1 toy in many ways. My only complaint is that it’s hard to lock everything in place properly, and if you don’t do it all right there’ll be minor, but annoying misalignments of wings and tailfin especially.
I have described Grapple as being aggressively GWWEUN, but not in a bad way. His vehicle and robot modes are both very reminiscent of the original toy, but with modern design and articulation. He’s a good solid update of the design, and I don’t have a huge amount to say about him, I guess? It’s worth noting that a lot of people reported the posts that connect his head assembly into his feet for truck mode are very tight and prone to snapping off if you don’t file them down a bit. I didn’t have that problem but filed them anyway to be safe.
There are a number of very nice touches to call out though. He comes with a big claw that can attach to a 5mm port on the end of his crane arm, to replicate various times he used such a thing in the show. And the claw has a clip in the middle of it that’s compatible with the AIRLOCK connection points many of the Earthrise toys have – so you can pose him lifting up a panel or ramp… Or Hoist… There’s no handy place to hide the claw if you’re not using it though – you either put it aside or stick it into one of the side-facing 5mm ports. I’ve taken to sticking it into the bottom of Prime’s trailer to keep it out of the way. On the brighter side of things he also has a sneaky mounting point on the crane arm for the welding torch/gun barrel that usually replaced his left hand – it’s not called out in the packaging and people have actually missed that it exists, as the weapon is stashed in there when you take him out of the box!
Cliffjumper was a figure that had a lot of trepidation on his initial photos because he’s tiny, but I think he’s really rad. He is very small – only a bit bigger than Titans Return Bumblebee, but it’s clear that he has a much higher part count than the older legends-class figures and couldn’t do all the things he can with the parts count of a $12 toy.
Transformation of this figure is very impressive. Most of the front of the car mode is clustered around the feet, with the doors folding inwards to form the heels, and the front wheels folding downwards. There’s a lot of mass there and it’s noticeable from some angles, but it works. Up top you open the chest to fold out a bonnet that covers the head, then do this impressive twist and waist shuffle the lines the front of the car up properly, fold out the wheels from the back and fold the arms inwards then moosh everything together, and mount the backpack/shield /back of car piece in place.
Yeah, a big chunk of the car’s back half is a separate piece and that kinda sucks, but it works well enough, there’s a fold-out peg that lets you mount it on his back as a backpack, or attach it to his hand or arm as a shield. It looks better as a backpack IMO, but it’s nice to have options. And the elegance of the transformation aside from the part swap totally forgives this.
And there’s also a whole host of other bits in the box. You’ve got the option of making a gigantic gun that sorta emulates the sniper weapon he used to try and shoot Megatron in the first episode of the cartoon, or splitting it into a pair of smaller guns (using the bipod legs as basically ammo magazines) and a… thing that can either fold out and clip onto the backpack or be attached to mount points on either arm or leg. And in car mode you can either slap the big gun on the roof, or split it all up to emulate the waterski rig he used in Dinobot Island part 2.
Overall Cliffjumper is well worth checking out, maybe on sale if you balk at the asking price. He’s a very good example of how Hasbro seems to be allocating volume of plastic and parts across a wave, so a smaller but complex figure like him sits beside a larger but more simple one like Hoist.
Speaking of, Hoist is another solid update of a G1 toy. My brother had him as a kid, and rapidly broke off and lost the tow truck rig (which included his head) and the various weapons and fists and such, so it’s nice to see him be more solid and intact here. And like Grapple, I don’t have a huge amount to say. He’s got no glaring parts tolerance issues too!
There are a couple of nice, elegant things I do want to highlight – the box thingy behind his head folds down into the backpack for car mode, and you unclip the towbar to open up the space it fits into. So if you have the bar retracted then it’s hidden away nicely, and if you have the bar deployed, it’s just hidden. And the bar has an AIRLOCK clip point so you can attach him to a base or whatever. Or suspend him in midair using Grapple’s claw…
Like I mentioned when talking about Cliffjumper, he’s a much simpler figure, but it works well as Hoist is a chonky boy, so he’s got some nice heft to him here. He’s even taller than STE GE Ironhide in robot mode. Transformation is close to the original’s, but it’s hard to line everything up perfectly and it means his wheels don’t roll easily. Still, a minor complaint and I do like this guy so far.
Ironworks is the first Modulator, which is basically the same as a weaponiser but the partsform alt mode is a base, and a bunch of the parts have the ramp clips like on Prime’s trailer ramp, the folded-out sides of Astrotrain’s tender and so on. I really like this one as well. The robot mode is this nice, hefty blocky unit with a crane for an arm and lots of big boxy pieces. Part of this is to make pieces that clip together to make the base mode, but it works really well as an aesthetic.
There are two “official” base modes, one is a kind of a weapon tower that looks kinda cool but can’t be pulled off exactly as in the photographs because of a thick layer of paint inside a 5mm port, but the main base mode looks pretty cool and clips to other pieces really well (there’s also a kind of bridge mode here, I think it’ll work as part of a much larger collection of bases). The suggested way to take him apart and connect him to other bots feels more integrated and natural as a themed add-on set than any of the weaponisers. In a particularly nice touch, there are panels that fold out on the legs, and when you use them to bulk out the feet of a a bot these panels rest against the front of the legs, making them feel like armour rather than just a set of fancy New Rock soles.
Like Astrotrain, I missed Smashdown in STE GE, so was glad when she got an Earthrise reissue. I like that (redecoes aside) the melee weapon BattleMasters are all widely different from one another, even down to body types – Lioniser is a quadruped, Pteraxodon is a bird, and now Smashdown is a humanoid, albeit a Minotaur. Her robot mode suffers more in service of the altmode than most of the others, her arms and legs tab together to form the hammer ends, so they’re really just big boxes that have a smaller box on the end and a ball joint. but it works. The head of the hammer is pretty cool, but the shaft (fnarr) is quite short, making the weapon look a bit silly in a bot’s hand – an issue that Pteraxodon and Terror-Daxtyl share. What I hadn’t noticed before someone pointed it out to me is that Soundwave’s pointless pistol thingy fits onto the end well, and it’s not like I’m going to pose Soundwave using it… I also tried plugging into the 5mm port behind Impactor’s fist and while it fit, it didn’t fit well due to the smaller tip on the shaft stopping a tight fit (fnarr). Accessory-wise we get a nice smashy blast effect that has a 5mm peg on one side that fits into the hammer, and a smaller port on the other side compatible with the COMBAT weapon and damage pegs so you can firmly attach the effect to both figured if you’re using it as a hammer smash. Also, the hammer shaft is removable, so you can leave it in place in robot mode and give Smashdown a tail, or peg it into the inside of the left arm to make a gun for robot mode.
Soundbarrier is a very straightforward figure by comparison, the robot mode feels a lot like the STE GE humanoid BattleMasters, but with a big plate on the back instead of a gun. with somewhat limited poseability on account of that big plate. Transformation consists of unfolding the plate into a full ramp/shield, and pegging the arms and legs in so they’re held in place. If you want to use Soundbarrier as a shield, you fold out a peg in his chest, otherwise leave it in place. I haven’t tried hooking him up to all my other base bits yet, but I’ll do it soon. I like the blue and silver of his shield/ramp mode, it has a nice Wipeout look to it. And he comes with a blast effect that’s more like a shot hitting a target instead of a muzzle flash which is nice. There’s a lot of clear plastic though which gives me a slight dose of the fear.
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