Velocitron/Speedia 500 collection
Cosmos is a good example of the current vibe in Transformers Generations compared to, like 10 years ago. The 2009 and 2014 versions of the character are both scout/legends sized, and instead of recreating the animation model make a modern version of a small, slightly tubby boy that turns into a modernised version of a flying saucer. By comparison this new version of the toy is an attempt to replicate the animation model. And like, it does that very well.
Probably the most interesting element of the toy is the transformation, which has this really interesting element where the sides of the UFO/robot mode arms and the back of the UFO are a chunk to themselves connected to the rest of the body by a T-shaped piece that connects to the back of the torso. After you unclip the arms, you pull this whole section back, swing it 180 degrees, fold it up and the shoulders swing forward to lock in place and make a very firm connection. This also gives the flip around panel that hides the head the clearance to be moved. It’s very clever and makes for a surprisingly solid robot mode compared to bots with a similar transformation like, say Reveal the Shield Perceptor.
Overall this is a very fun figure – the vehicle mode is a very solid George Adamski-style UFO (fans of The Wild Storm can double this as a Skywatch Breslau spacecraft!), the robot mode is highly poseable and very fiddlable-with. If there’s a point that it falls down at, it’s the Speedia Collection elements. First, as the racemaster his accessory gun has a chequered flag part that can post in. And that’s kinda cool but the chequer pattern is on one side and if you want to use Cosmos’ gun as a gun there’s no real place to store it, similarly you can’t really store it in UFO mode. And then there’s the price. Like Martin said for Road Rocket, these guys are pricey for Deluxes, at €32 they’re a significant price jump over the €22-25 for regular ones and when most of the line is redecoes of prior releases that feels iffy.
Override is the other original figure in the Speedia collection, and feels like everything Legacy should be as opposed to say, the Prime universe figures in the main line being GEEWUNified versions of the characters. This figure looks so out of place and I love it, she’s incredibly anime, between the smooth lines you rarely see in modern Transformers, the white, red, and black colours with a splash of gold, and the incredibly sci-fi car mode that looks like Shoji Kawamori designed it for Cyber Formula GPX. For clarity’s sake, I have not seen Cyber Formula GPX, but I have a Kawamori artbook with like 20 pages devoted to cars he designed for the show.
The transformation is really nice, taking advantage of the Voyager price point to have a higher part count even though the toy is closer to the Ironhide/Impactor big Deluxe side of the size chart. There’s this really nice bit where the rear wheels are on arms which fold around and inwards to form the sides of the torso, and the robot mode arms fold outwards from them on hinges that flip the wheels in to hide them. Most of the back of the car detaches to become a double-barreled gun similar to the original toy’s one, and while there is a port for a Cyber Planet key on here, there’s no spring-loaded action. Overall I really enjoyed this figure, and the price hike on the Speedia Voyagers isn’t quite as egregious as the Deluxes
Meanwhile Robots in Disguise Universe Scourge has no price hike over the new normal for Leaders, though the G2 Laser Prime version of this toy is discounted by a tenner in Smyths so make of that what you will. This is a straight repaint, with the Scourge/Nemesis Prime/Black Convoy colours on display, and a nice attention to detail, like using the upside-down G2 Autobot logo as the RiD Combatron/Commando logo. There’s a lot of indigo clear plastic parts including his weapons, truck mode windows and a few parts throughout the robot mode, including some wonderful light piping (while the back of Laser Prime’s head is painted so no luck there)
The trailer is the weak point, as often is the case for the modern Voyager-with-loads-of-stuff-<wbr />sold-as-a-Leader toys. Like it looks cool, and the transformation is pretty much the same as the original, but it just feels like an approximation of the original trailer. Not just because features are missing, I’m not expecting launching missiles or anything but the RiD/G2 version feels like a little fortress with walls you can use for cover and weapons and stuff, but this is a tiny little tower and shin-high “fortifications”. There’s a little claw arm on a hinge on a platform at the front of the tower, and a turret on top that can be removed and used as a gun by Scourge, and mount points to store his sword and axe inside which is quite a nice touch. Not bad, just sorta functional instead of great.
By comparison though, the truck is pretty awesome. A nice long-nose truck to compare to the usual flat Optimus Prime type, the transformation is this really nice unfolding of parts and sorta making a hollow box for the chest that the rest of the body hangs around. I have some quibbles around the arms – the hinge joint that swings them into place can unclip easily, the forearms can pop off their mushroom joints, and unlike the original toy, the big shoulder bits aren’t attached to the shoulder joint so they just kinda sit there. They do have hatches that open to reveal missile bays though, and as a Macross fan that is very cool. In another nice touch there are storage points on the truck for both the sword and axe, though you can’t attach the trailer and mount the axe at the same time. And there’s a Matrix in his chest, the fifth different one I’ve gotten recently!
I’ll admit I wasn’t too bothered with the Wreck N’Rule collection, mostly being figures I had no interest in (Bulkhead) or repaints of ones I already had (Impactor, Twin Twist, Springer), and while Spindle looked kinda cool I wasn’t willing to spend a whole bunch of money on him in a 2-pack. Leading me to get one pack from the line only
I didn’t get the Earthmode Mirage figure from Kingdom, so G2 Universe Leadfoot is my first encounter with the mold, and one minor thing aside, it’s a marked improvement on Siege Mirage. In robot mode it’s largely the same except for the lack of a weapon mount point on the shoulder (being the minor thing), usual level of detail and poseability. But the transformation is smoother, the fake kibble-chest is hidden better and everything clips together nicely. I don’t think I’ll try and track down Mirage, but I’m more likely to get Speedia Crasher when she comes out.
The other thing of note here is the colour scheme, which is gloriously gaudy – bright yellow with red stripes and panels, a teal Wreckers insignia, large metallic blue sections on the legs… It’s ugly and endearing at the same time. Nice new head sculpt too.
I don’t have a huge amount to say about Masterdominus, he’s Ractonite redone to transform into a mastodon. The main contributors to this are a reworking of the skull./shoulder piece, and replacing the tail/sword piece with a pair of tusks that can be plugged into the skull, While Masterdominus can’t hold the tusks, the front of the skull and the tusk mount points can be removed and mounted as a kind of punching/stabbing weapon. there’s also two more hinged joint pieces that are used to make the forelegs longer in skeleton mode and the instructions suggest mounting these below the wrists in robot mode to make them look bifurcated. My copy has some very loose joints which is a bit annoying, but he’s still a decent figure.
Studio Series 86
Spike Witwicky in Exosuit was one of those figures I got partially because of novelty value, partially because why not, and partially because it actually looked kinda good. And it’s actually really good! There are some physical limitations to the figure, yeah, but these feel more like the fault of the animation design rather than problems translating it to a physical model. Like the arms have these spindly forearms but they seem to work the same way in the movie as they do on the toy. No waist swivel but other than that there’s plenty of articulation everywhere else. In a very nice touch there’s a tab on the back that lets you turn Spike’s head inside the helmet. Also there’s a pair of weapon effects that can be used to simulate the suit’s arm-mounted weapons as seen on Daniel’s suit in the movie, or as engine exhausts in vehicle mode.
This is a very unassuming toy overall but it’s been one of the most enjoyable ones I’ve gotten in a long time, it’s been sitting on my desk and I’ve been fiddling with it almost every day for a couple of months. It’s incredibly enjoyable to just transform back and forth, a quick, tactile experience. Highly recommend.
Wreck-Gar is one of those toys that’s probably not worth picking up full price, but he’s showing up discounted in some places (Smyths had him as low as €26 before rapidly selling out, and Big Bang in Dublin has him for €30 right now) and I picked up a second hand one from Dublin City Comics recently. And I know this is damning with faint praise to say, but he’s easily the best modern Wreck-Gar toy – easy when the competition is the highly flawed Reveal the Shield one, and redecores of Combiner Wars Groove’s Legends and Deluxe releases. But anyway. The figure looks great, as with the other SS86 figures he’s a loving recreation of the animation model from the cartoon. There’s some very nice touches like his chest guns being on little ball joints.
Transformation is a bit fiddly, but when you get everything lined up right the bike mode comes together really well. And the bike is sized to comfortably fit a deluxe or small voyager on there, you can even get them to hold the handlebars if they have opening hands like SS86 Hot Rod or Earthrise/Kingdom Optimus Prime. It’s a very nice figure, but a bit too much at full price.
Legacy
Kickback is another example of how modern Generations toys are really good representations of a G1 character, but in doing so there’s not much going on here. He hews very close to the animation model in terms of look, to the toy in terms of transformation and weapon, and yeah, it’s all pretty good. The big difference here is the addition of two energon weapons, basically big clear plastic swords that can be held or clipped to the wings, or in insect mode pegged together and then placed to form a thorax-like segment. Very good figure, but very standard modern Transformer
Tarantulas by comparison is one of those amazing representations of a character. It looks like it could break out into a maniacal cackle at any moment. It’s also very interesting in that it’s not a redeco or retool of Blackarachnia. It’s more like they looked at how they did stuff with her, fixed all the little problems and came up with a figure who’s very similar to Blackarachnia while also being quite different.
And then Jhiaxus is a total weirdo. And an amazing triumph of engineering because like, if you’ve read the G2 comic you’ll know that there’s very little evidence in his robot mode of the aircraft he turns into, and yet here we get a very good representation of that robot which turns into a pretty decent representation of his jet mode. Poseability is the usual high standard, he’s even got a poseable finder block like Earthrise Prime amongst others, and he comes with a pair of 90stastic guns that are compatible with weapon effects.
Transformation is simple, but also a really nice example of current toy engineering. an unfolding of the chest, folding in of the arms and collapsing the legs makes for a long, sleek aircraft mode, and like his weapons, the jet mode engines are compatible with the larger blast effects. All that said, this figure is another one that’s very 90s, and is largely going to appeal to the 12 of us who liked the G2 comics to begin with. If you don’t like the look of him, he’s an easy skip but if you like the character or the design, well worth grabbing
Blitzwing is very much a mixed bag, and most of the problems were on display in the promo shots – yes, there’s an atrocious kibble shelf on the bottom of the jet mode, yes the cockpit poking out the front of the tank is stupid if more or less accurate to the animation model, and yes, those big block/hulk hand things are just there to fill out the plastic budget. But these things aside, the figure is pretty good. The big strength is robot mode, which has some great poseability and looks. He also comes with a pair of rifles and a sword so there’s plenty of weapon options without even needing to break out the hulk hands.
There are a number of saving graces to the toy that help to mitigate the jank – the tank mode is pretty cool-looking aside from the nose, and the Hulk Hands can mount on either side of the turret like missile pods – being pretty much the only mount point that looks good for them. The plane mode looks really good from above, and you can separate most of the kibble, and use the rifles as balancing pieces so it acts as a display stand which isn’t ideal, but it works. There’s a lot of really impressive engineering in the transformation that I feel gets overlooked in complaints about the kibble shelf – like wing sections that wrap around the legs to fill in gaps. Overall he’s a really good Blitzwing toy, and while i never got the Titans Return one I did get the Megatron of the mould, and I can see how it did some bits better – especially integrating (most) of the two alt modes into each other, this one is better in other places, like having decent arms.
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lorcan_nagle.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by lorcan_nagle.
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Still don’t get why branded Monopolies have to use the original symbols for Go To Jail etc.
Despite it being a brand new product, they’ve not got any. They can’t tell me if/when they might get any back in or when they even ran out and their best advice is to “return it for a refund and buy it elsewhere”. But it’s sold out everywhere. ” 
