DotM Figure Review Thread

[138 Scourge]

Yeah, turns out I wasn't turning the one bit on Skyhammer's gun/sword thing far enough. Turned it like I meant it, and then the thing stayed locked in place for two days, no problem. Herp, and furthermore, Derp.

Got some unexpected leisure time, how 'bout I write about some toys? That'd be something!

Crankcase: Crankcase gets an "all right" from me. He looks great in robot mode, but makes for a fairly awkward truck. You don't even have to lift the thing up and look at the bottom to see the robot kibble, look at it from the side and it's right there in front of the rear wheels. Also, the truck's body seems to be too high above the wheels, if he's passing as some sort of police truck, are those things allowed to get a lift kit? Plus side about the truck, though: I really dig how the big claw things can come out from under the front of the thing, making it an insectotruck or something. I like that kind of attack mode.

Transformation's not bad going from truck to robot mode, but going the other way, man. If you like the "line up a bunch of panels just right" game, then you will love this guy. However, he does pull off the "How the hell did they get that much robot into that little car" thing, too, which is something I always like.He's not as bad a shellmaster as a lot of ROTF stuff was, but like I said in the Hauls thread, he does have that kind of vibe to him.

Robot mode's decent, nothing real special. He looks pretty cool in a "horrible alien monster" kind of way, and he's got a look like Darth Vader and the Predator's secret love baby. The poseability's a little wonky with mine since he's got an extra-special gimped-out ball joint on his hip that give him one loosey-goosey leg, but if I put the weight on that leg to hold it still, we're in business. The shoulders have a hard time staying pegged into the chest area, but the plus side of that is it gives you an extra point of rotation, which means you can rotate his arms up in a fashion that he's flipping both birds, so that's a plus.

The Mechtech gun here looks like a big square gun, but it does look like a gun, so some points there. I'm not sure what the grabby claw thing it turns into is supposed to accomplish practically, but it's kind of fun to do, and makes for a neat-looking claw arm thing at full extension. Sadly, it doesn't stay at full extension, but y'know, deluxes. Nice thing about it is, even though it doesn't fit in Crankcase's claw, it does fit on his arm and kind of fakes going into his hand. Good enough.

Oh yeah, cut vs. uncut. I got lucky with an uncut one, that's got both pointy middle fingers of death. I put some effort into finding the uncut variety, just because. I dunno, weird collector impulse, you guys know what it's like. It's not even that I wanted the "flipping everybody off" action feature that bad, it's that I wanted to find the one that's not modified. Anyway, with this dude, the hunt and the moment where I opened that sucker up and found the middle fingers was probably the best part of having this dude. Not bad, not great, but pretty decent.

[138 Scourge]

Topspin:

Does it seem like an odd choice to anyone else that Hasbro or Bay or whoever put the effort into licensing the official NASCAR vehicles for this movie and toyline? You can barely tell that the Wreckers are NASCARs anyway in the movie, they just look like brightly-colored Mad Max cars through their kind of brief appearances. Suits me more this way, though. I'd rather have crazy-ass vehicles loaded down with weapons than official racecars any day of the week. Topspin's vehicle mode reflects the in-movie style. It looks fantastic. The thing's covered with armor, techy bits, guns, spikes, all manner of craziness. It looks just great. The only thing that gives it away as a race car thing is the Lowe's decal on the back, but otherwise it just looks like a big blue hurtmobile. Love it.

Transformation is kind of enjoyable, overall. The only parts that seem to get in their own way are the grill folding up under the hood, and the car roof folding down behind the robot head. They get there, but they're a little finicky. But then the back of the car splits into two parts and folds over to the sides, which is nice and easy, but good lord, the ball joints come apart on those easy. More on those later, they're kind of the major downfall of this toy.

Robot mode looks good at first, then I got cross with it, then I decided I liked it overall. It's goes heavy enough on the detail that it almost gets too busy, and the head's small enough that it kind of gets lost in all that mess. But once I took some time to check it out more, I got to liking it a little bit. The worst part, though, I'll just get out of the way. The two damn halves of the back of the car just sort of fold up into these kind of artillery emplacements, which make sense for one of the Wreckers I suppose, but man, they're unwieldy as all hell. I folded 'em down to the sides by the robot's shoulders, and that seems to work okay, but I feel like it could've worked a lot better if those things could've folded down over the robot's back or something, to give the robot mode the option of a more streamlined look. And also, again, those friggin' things just pop off if you look at 'em funny. Which, I guess, just pop 'em off and be done with it, but that feels like cheating. Aside from that, though, the robot gets pretty neat-looking once I gave it a good hard look. He is rocking a robot mullet, which I gotta love, and there's an array of exhaust pipes around his head which is a neat-lookin' feature. I especially like Topspin's commitment to clamps and things clamp-related. He holds a big clamp in each hand, and has a bigger clamp for a Mechtech weapon. If you need something clamped or shot, Topspin's your boy. Downside, though, is kind of so-so poseability. He looks good, but he can't do much.

The Mechtech thing starts as a crossbow-lookin' thing, and converts to, as I say, a big pinchy clamp thing. Works well enough in both modes, and it's kind of fun to go around clamping things with it. With most of the Mechtech things, mounting 'em on the vehicle makes the weapon look out of place, but on this guy's crazy car mode, it's like "Hey, giant crossbow, why not?"

Overall, man, what a mixed bag. This toy's got two things that drive me nuts in a Transformer figure: Big chunks of kibbly crap that don't really go anywhere, and pieces that pop off easily. And yet, he's got enough charm that I like the toy despite these flaws. I like it, but don't know if I'd recommend it unless you really want the Wreckers toys, or, hell, if you just want the vehicle mode, he's almost worth the purchase price for that alone.

[Dominic]

General question:

Am I the only one bothered by how little some of the toys look like their screen counterparts? I am thinking of Crowbar and Hatchet, who are arguably not even in the movie itself.

This is arguably worse than the deviations during G1 and BMac.


Dom
-well, it makes it easier to skip the toys.

[Onslaught Six]

I guess that's just Hasbro trying to make those toys sell. If they were all trucks, they (in theory) wouldn't sell.

[138 Scourge]

I guess that's just Hasbro trying to make those toys sell. If they were all trucks, they (in theory) wouldn't sell.

I could see 'em selling, but three dudes with the same alt. mode all at once? That'd be some kind of overkill. Of course, they could avoid that by scattering the three of 'em across the different pricepoints (which, I guess they kind of are doing that already), but still, I'd think that'd get irritating for everybody. Hatchet wouldn't be as bad, since his robot mode's distinctly different, but Crankcase and Crowbar looked pretty similar in that one bit they showed up in.

[Dominic]

Package one in vehicle mode, one in robot mode and the other in panther mode.


And, we all know how well non-screen toys sell. Everybody wants toys of those non-screen characters? Right?

(In all seriousness, "on screen" or "looks like the character on screen" are common standards many collectors use to buy something or leave it in the store.)


Dom
-somewhere, somebody is kitbashing a proper Hatchet figure....

[138 Scourge]

Package one in vehicle mode, one in robot mode and the other in panther mode.

Okay, yeah, I guess that'd work. I dunno, man, it's a mystery, then.

And, we all know how well non-screen toys sell. Everybody wants toys of those non-screen characters? Right?

Hasn't been as much of a thing for this movie, but, say, for the last one, it was the non-screen characters that I was more interested in. Even with this movie, there's Skyhammer, the HA basics, Thundercracker, Powerglide, lots of non-screen dudes that are pretty solid toys.

[Dominic]

Skyhammer might be great, (even if the movie assumes he is dead). But, most people want movie characters in movie forms.

Given the sheer number of figures on the shelves, people are likely to be selective about what they buy.


Dom
-and how will most of them be selective?

[BWprowl]

General question:

Am I the only one bothered by how little some of the toys look like their screen counterparts? I am thinking of Crowbar and Hatchet, who are arguably not even in the movie itself.

Even discounting deviations like the vehicle modes, which were arguably made for the sake of variety, these are Legends toys you're talking about, Dom. Those things compromise like crazy to begin with, and when you try to apply them to the busy, ultra-detailed Movie aesthetic, stuff is guaranteed to get lost. Remember the first Legends versions of guys like Optimus, Ratchet, and Ironhide? Even the Commander class Optimus still doesn't look that much like the character. Hatchet and Crowbar look enough like their on-screen counterparts within the allowances of the size class (plus they're both just generally good toys).

I like Hatchet better as a plane anyway. And I wouldn't mind just seeing a Deluxe Crowbar as a retool of Crankcase, even though I have no idea how they'd pull off his ultra-long tentacle-dreads.

[138 Scourge]

I've been on an Optimus Prime kick lately:

Deluxe Prime: This one got my attention when I was watching Peaugh's vidya review. It's a pretty solid little version of Prime. Truck mode looks good, the paint on this guy is a lighter blue than usual, and the red shifts down to gold down by the truck's grille. It takes a minute to figure out how to lock everything into place when getting him to be a truck, not that the transformation's hard, mind you. You can figure out what you need to do, but it takes a minute to get it all there. You gotta get the arms that are folded up in the back to lock into the legs, lock the legs together, and then get the kneepads up under the back of the cab. It takes some doing, but once you got it, you got a really nice looking lil' truck. Transformation to robot mode's a lot simpler. Once you get it going, it's pretty self-explanatory. A good one that's fun to flip back and forth.

Robot mode looks decent, kind of a simplified version of Movie Prime. The figure ends up a little back-heavy thanks to his truck nose backpack, but the legs and feet have good poseability that helps make up for that. The main reason I bought this toy is because the robot mode reminds me of this. That's gotta be a good thing.

The Mechtech weapon here is no big deal. It's just Mudflap's recycled for Prime, with some yellow paint on it. I can see why they went for this one, it's a rifle that kind of turns into an axe, and the axe blade here is done up in orange to look more like Prime's axe. It's okay, but nothing that special.