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Sunday 22 September 2013

Prime - Sky Lynx

"Skylynx is a powerful and chaotic force who lives to serve the Predacon cause."
Name: Skylynx
Faction: Predacon
Continuity: Aligned
Toy Line: Prime: Beast Hunters: Predacons Rising

Strength: 7
Speed: 7
Rank: 6
Firepower: 7
Intelligence: 4
Endurance: 8
Courage: 8
Skill: 3
Robot Mode
Sky Lynx has a mostly white robot mode with a lot of blue , and red in some areas, as well as some gold details and missile disks. His main torso is made of the bulk of his beast mode's body as well, featuring his underbelly on his chest. There's not much else to talk about this part of his body, as being a deluxe figure he has limited features. Sky Lynx's torso also has his tail attached to his back, and his wings attached onto his shoulders, which can be posed as desired. The wings feature a disk missile launcher, which is activated by pushing the white trigger on the inside of the wings.
His head is made from his beast mode head, which is simply folded into his chest and opened wide, revealing the robot head, if you want to you can let him keep his beats mode head, but it would look weird. His head is white with red sculpted eyes and a metallic blue forehead chevron and a face mask, with what looks like a breathing filter on it.

His arms are connected to his shoulders at the point where the wings are also connected by a ball joint connector. His elbows are made with a pivot and ball joint connector as well, giving the arm all it's articulation. The hand also features a pivot joint on the wrist, but using this will reveal more of the beats mode foot , so it's probably not worth doing.
His hands feature three sculpted fingers posed around a peg hole so he can hold a weapon if you give him one (not that he needs guns)

His legs are connected to the groin area of the torso by ball joints again. His lower legs feature a couple of pin joints at the knee and mid-way down the lower leg, which makes him bend his legs midway for better support.
His feet feature a pin joint again, and a support strut at the back, giving him some good support in this mode as well.
Alternate Mode
Sky Lynx's alternate mode is a red, white and blue winged dragon, which is actually just basically his robot mode on all fours and his head and tail in a different position. Due to this he has much of the same articulation as his robot mode, so there's no need to mention it here again. His wings are differently connected in this mode, as you have to move them for the front legs/arms to have a better positioning, and this have a slightly different configuration, but not by much.
His beast mode head features an opening mouth (though be careful not to reveal his robot head in the mouth as well. The tip of his tail can be removed, but that doesn't seem to be for any real reason, escept maybe as a drone of some sort maybe. His hands are retracted and switched with his front feet by a simple pivoting joint.
He retains his wing's launching feature in this mode as well, or alternatively you can just remove the disks to give him better flight ability.
My Final Thoughts
This toy is difficult, the main reason I got him was because I knew he was going to be a main character in the upcoming Predacons Rising movie, but really he's a difficult to discuss toy, there's nothing too terrible about the toy itself, but it's also not so great either.
His disk missile gimmick is interesting, but I think could have been pulled off a bit better, the overall design of the dragon mode is very nice, and due to it's design can be posed to make it look like a bi-pedal or quadruped dragon if the owner desires. One major problem I had with this toy, which I believe was a problem with other people as well was that his right leg wasn't able to stay in the ball joint. This was easy enough to fix using some nail varnish, but is still somewhat off-putting though. Another small issue is that his wings need to be dislodged in a specific point, which is hard to locate the first few times.

I actually like this figure because of the bag of homages that he presents. He's obviously based on the G1 Sky Lynx character (his colours match up, as does his beats mode) but he's played as a villainous Predacon instead of an Autobot. This however is another of the homages I mentioned, in the cartoon he was often portrayed as a rival to the Predacons (the jungle animals from G1, not dragons from Prime), which is now his faction. This allegiance shift could also be seen as an homage to how Sky Lynx appeared to be originally planned to be a Decepticon (given how his character model often had a Decepticon insignia, and his rivals were originally planned to be the Anibots, an Autobot team).

I'd say, unless you particularly love Sky Lynx as a character, and want a mountain of homages in one toy, you may want to skip this toy. He makes a good figure for the shelf, but his play value is a bit underwhelming, especially with his fiddlyness in places.

Sunday 15 September 2013

Prime - Dark Steel

"Dark Steel is ready to annihilate the Autobots in glorious combat."
Name: Dark Steel
Faction: Predacon
Continuity: Aligned
Toy Line: Prime: Beast Hunters: Predacons Rising

Strength: 10
Speed: 7
Rank: 6
Firepower: 8
Intelligence: 5
Endurance: 9
Courage: 6
Skill: 5
Robot Mode
Dark Steel's robot mode is a large, well built blue and grey, winged form with a dragon head down the middle of his upper torso.
His torso is made of the bulk of his beats mode's main bulk too, with the neck folded inwards into his torso, with only the head really visible. This part of his body features some panels to give his bidy more of a shape. His head is connected to his torso by a ball joint connector that alows it to move as needed.
His head is sculpted to feature his orange face, blue and dark grey helmet with light grey decorations. His face itself is sculpted with blue eyes (unlike the yellow from the movie) and other facial details like a mouth, nose etc. When moving his head though, be careful of the dragon head, as it tends to come loose as it's not properly connected to anything really.
His wings are connected to his back by a simple connecting part and can be flapped a bit, but nothing else, so they're mostly just decoration. The wings also feature the peg hole for his accessory to live in if wanted too.

His arms are connected to the torso with a pivoting hinge which is mostly hidden by his shoulder pads. His arms feature a pivoting joint in the middle of his upper arms, his elbows are made of a hinge joint, he has a pivoting joint under the armour on his lower arm. All these articulation points allow him to move his arms in almost any direction and in any pose...so yeah, give him some weapons and have him go all out!
His hands are sculpted with clawsand feature a hinge joint on the wrist to allow them to fold in and out, he also has a hinge on his thumb that creates a peg hole when closed for his accessory to be held in.

His legs are connected to his lower torso by a pivoting hinge again. The upper legs also feature a pivoting joint and a hinge based knee as well, these give him some decent amount of articulation in his leg (well as much as anyone should anyway. His knee joint is hidden by a knee pad, making it look more attractive.
His feat are sculpted with claws, connected to the lower leg by a simple ball joint, The backs of his legs feature a solded down heel that give him a great amount of support.
Alternate Mode
Dark Steel turns into what is called an Ursagryph, which I guess means he's a Bear-Dragon combo of some sort. He's mostly blue all over, with some silver/grey highlights and inner wings. His body also features several orange Cyberglyphics, which just makes him look more interesting.
This form in itself is pretty much just the robot mode in a prone position, with the robot head retracted and the dragon head exposed, so it has much of the same articulation as his robot mode, just with less of a chance of him falling over due to him being on 4 legs rather than 2.
The only real issue in this mode is that his wings cant fold back (to clarify, you can make them flap, but that's all, it doesn't fold back like on some of the other Predacons).
His dragon mode's beak is able to open and close, so you can give him the illusion of talking in this mode if you want (even though Predacons don't talk in beast mode).
There are 2 points in this mode that can be used to store the accessory, between his wings, and near his small tail. The one near the tail doesn't seem to work that well, and keeps popping out for me, so it's best to just have an awkward placement between the wings instead (though honestly, you'd be better off just leaving it off him in this mode).
Accessories
Dark Steel's accessory is designed to look like a smaller dragon monster, and thus could be a separate Predacon as well, like it is in his mold-mate Grimwing's, however since this one doesn't have a name, it's just a lifeless drone or something instead. This thing is able to shoot out his grappling missile on a piece of string (by unravelling the string and pushing the grey button on it's back) so he can knock over some annoying Autobots or Decepticons. This accessory has a peg that allows it to be slotted in one of the holes on Dark Steel's body, or in his closed hands.
My Final Thoughts
Honestly, Dark Steel is great, he looks good in both modes, has a great amount of articulation, and besides the issue with his beast head in his robot mode chest not being secured, it holds together well.
Now for a little weird thing I noticed...Dark Steel looks a lot like a beast mode version of Dreadwing, from his base colours, even down to his cockpit-like chest decoration and wings!

I would highly recommend this figure to anyone who asks, and I think you'll love him more after watching his actions during the movie itself. Enjoy!

Saturday 24 August 2013

Ride - Deluxe Evac

"Evac is used to dodging laser fire. His entire life, Decepticons have gotten in his way, and tried to stop him. They've never succeeded. No matter how overwhelming their attack, Evac knows that with Optimus Prime and Bumblebee covering him, nothing will stop him from delivering his passengers safely."

Name: Evac
Faction: Autobot
Continuity: Live Action Movies (I think)
Toy Line: Universal Studios - The Ride
Size Class: Deluxe

Strength: 6
Intelligence: 5
Speed: 9
Endurance: 4
Rank: 5
Courage: 9
Fireblast: 5
Skill: 8
Robot Mode
Evac's robot mode is mostly grey with some silver, black and blue. His visible vehicle mode parts form blue armour plates for him on his chest, shoulders and backpack. His body-type is quite a common one for a car-based Transformer, in that his hood is now his chest, his wheels are found in his shoulders and legs and a large chunk of the vehicle is now on his back.
His torso section's most prominent feature is his vehicle mode hood forming the chest, and his abdominal area featuring a faux-part of his rear thruster (the real thruster is under his head). The rest of the abdominal area is made up of sculpted vehicle parts. An interesting part of this area is his abdominal blasters, which can be folded up/down manually to give him some sort of weapon (since his gun from the prototype has been removed).
The only other thing really to note about his torso section is his backpack, which can be folded out (as shown in my pictures) to give him a sort of cloak or wings.
His head is connected to the top of the torso by a ball joint from what was his vehcile mode thruster that allows the head all sorts of rotational points. The head is silver with a blue helmet and yellow eyes and rear of the head. The face is sculpted with details like a nose, mouth, chin and some definition marks (like on most Movie-based figures).

His upper arms are connected to the tops of the torso by ball joint connectors, leading to his shoulders (which include his rear wheels). The shoulder parts are connected to the main upper arm by a pivoting joint. leading to a hinge-based embow. The rest of the lower arm features no further articulation, but the hands are sculpted to feature a standard sized peg hole, so you can give him someone else's gun if you want to arm the poor fella. Saying that, his arms do feature some arm-mounted lasers (or blow torches or something), but they're just for decoration really. His arms also feature some C-Joints on his mounted cannon-thing and shoulders.

His legs are connected to the torso by his groin area with ball joint connector again, giving it just as much articulation as the arms. His legs should have a pivoting joint just below the tops of them, but due to the placement of the wheels, they cannot actually move. His knees are made up on a hinge joint, leading to his lower legs. His feet are also on a hinge joint of sorts, but i'm not really sure why, it doesn't help with articulation, posing or in his vehicle mode either...it's just there.
The bottoms of his lower legs feature a panel from his vehicle mode on each side, which gives him a winged-foot appearance (ala Hermes from Greek Mythology) possibly giving the impression that he's fast.
Vehicle Mode
Evac turns into (according to his card back) a Supercar, based on the car used in the Universal Studios Ride. This mode is mostly blue with green patterns along the sides, and a silver Autobot insignia on either side. Under his black, translucent canopy, you can see a set of four seats (for his passengers to sit in), which has some nice sculpted details in it, but sadly is inaccessible, as it's pinned shut. The rest of the car mode is mostly sculpted details, like paneling, side mirrors etc. This mode also features a set of four working wheels, which, as to be expected in this age of toy making, are fully able to roll along a smooth surface.
Items of note in this mode's sculpting include his front grill's small gun (helpful for shooting Decepticon's in the shins), his rear thruster (for quick escapes), and a set of small (non-working) lights on his hood, painted with some yellow paint (yet the main headlights are left unpainted, next to them).
One interesting point in this mode, is that Evac still features a small hole on the top of his canopy where his gun (seen in the prototype images) would have gone.
My Final Thoughts
People who know me, know I've been after this figure for some time now, I found him at Auto Assembly this year for £30 and I of course picked him up, and I have not been disappointed so far! He's basically a more advanced version of his Legion class toy (as you'd expect of course) but with some more features and details.
As mentioned a couple of times in my actual review, Evac was supposed to come with a gun originally, but it was removed, most likely at the last minute for some reason as the toy still features the peg hole for it in vehicle mode, and his profile image on the front of the toy's packaging still shows the gun over his shoulder as well. Despite this apparent last minute change, the figure still doesn't disappoint me :)
Something of note about this figure that I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice, is that he looks quite a lot like G1 Skids, as such, if Skids was not about to receive a new Generations toy soon anyway, I;d have said you could just put him on your Generations G1 shelf as him as well!

All in all, I think this toy is great, he was well worth the wait in the end, and sits happily on my shelf with the rest of my "favourites". The one problem with the figure really is that he's so hard to get, the only "legitimate" way is to get it from the Ride's store at Universal Studios, which of course for me would be too expensive, so I'd probably suggest that everyone just buy him the same way I did, on the aftermarket for a much lower price (you know, compared to buying a plane ticket, ticket into the park, paying the store's prices etc)

Sunday 28 July 2013

TFCC - Depth Charge

"Magnificently sweeping through the darkness with regal silence, a hunter trails his prey. Defender, pursuer, and if need be, judge; Depth Charge acts swiftly and with unquestioning resolve. He holds tightly to a desire for justice, even if he dispenses that justice himself.
After tracking down and incarcerating the murderous Protoform X, Depth Charge returned to a Cybertron torn apart by war. Aging masters forced the next generation of soldiers into battle in the name of "The Cause". Death haunted every street. Injustice abounded. Depth Charge was tasked with a mission to hunt down two deserters from the Maximal ranks who had dispatched their commanding officer, and consorted with the enemy in an attempt to use experimental transwarp drive technology to flee the planet. Retracing their steps with his own transwarp device, the Maximal soon found their escape route. It was not to another planet, but to another Universe: one which the Transtech call home."
Name: Depth Charge
Quote: "It's not revenge I'm looking for. It's justice."
Toy Line: Timelines
Continuity: Beast Era
Faction: Maximal
Function: Maximal Bounty Hunter

Strength: 9
Intelligence: 10
Speed: 8 
Endurance: 9
Rank: 7
Courage: 10
Fireblast: 6
Skill: 9
Robot Mode
Depth Charge's robot mode is..well it's very colourful! He has about equal amounts of grey, blue and pink parts, plus with some yellow to break it up a bit. and features a lot of pieces of circuit detailing, and left over parts from his vehicle mode visible.
The torso of this fine fella is made mostly by the cockpit and nose of his vehicle mode, and filled in by his forward wing-fin thingies giving him a nice triangular chest look. His abdominal area features his cockpit behinda canopy type area, which sort of resembles the abdominal area of Unicron (though much, MUCH smller). His Maximal insignia is located in the center of his chest. On the back of his torso are his rear vehicle mode fins, which appear here as wings (ala, the Seekers etc) and also features a small connector on his very back that can be used to hold his spear (though I personally use the other connector more - will mention later)
His head is connected to the main torso by a ball joint connector, allowing him all head-based motion as desired. The head is sculpted with a small face-plate and a very pointy helmet on top, the rear of the helmet also features a light-piping port that gives his red eyes a glowing effect.

The arms are connected to the torso by pivoting joints, leading to a hinge into the upper arms, which feature a pivot joint up the top, and two hinges forming the elbows. The lower arms feature no additional articulation, except at the wrists, which can rotate fully. All these articulation points give Depth charge a very good range of movement (handy for a trident-using bounty hunter huh?) His hands are sculpted into an set of 4 fingers molded together and a thumb in a semi-open hand position, which allows him to hold his spear (at the larger points) and any other similarly sized weapons.
His left shoulder features a moving connector on the outside that can be used to hold his spear-trident as a storage space, rather than using the one on his back (this is my prefered method)

His legs are connected to the groin area of the torso by ball joints that lead to a pivoting joint, giving him great posing ability. His knees are made from a simple hinge joint that is hidden from the front by his kneecap decoration. His feet are connected by a couple of hinges that also enable you to reposition the feet depending on the surface, as needed. His wings are located on the bottom of his lower legs too, also giving some additional support points if needed.
Vehicle Mode
Depth Charge's alternate mode is a lovely looking bright blue fighter jet with forward pointing wings. The jet also features some grey pieces and pink and yellow paint apps, emulating the patterns seen on the original Beast Wars Depth Charge too.
This mode features retractable landing wheels allowing him to be displayed in vehicle mode, and still be stable. The rest of the vehicle mode is simply decorative and has no other hidden features (not that that's a bad thing, he still looks pretty). These decorative parts include thrusters, cockpit and simple panelling detail.
His spear accessory is able to clip to the undercarriage by a moving clip, and a single gap on the part that hides his robot head
Accessories
Depth Charge comes with his spear weapon which can turn from the smaller spear into a long trident-like weapon by simple unfolding the stick, and moving the spear-head, revealing his prongs. If your's is like mine however and is a bit wonky, and the spear-head doesn't work too easily, you can still position it manually with some minimal effort.
My Final Thoughts
Oh Depth Charge, I didn't think I'd like you, but I do. His vehicle mode is beautiful (I'm a sucker for the Terradive mold as it is), your robot mode is painted well, and both modes do well to emulate the original, which not making him look stupid (like painting random eyes somewhere etc).
My only real issue with this toy in terms of it's design is that his counterpart, Protoform X won't be out for another year, meaning he'll be bored and lonely for all that time!
Besides any other small issues I've had (as mentioned in the review itself) I'd say this is a great figure, and can easily go with several other previous toys to make a pre-Earth Beast Era cast shelf (such as Chromia-10 Pilot, DOTM Dark Steel etc)
So yeah, in terms of fun, and general appearances, I'd say this was a very worthwhile figure to get, and I'm glad I renewed my membership for this year, and glad I have a reason to for next year as well (Protoform X)

Sunday 14 July 2013

DOTM - Wheeljack

Name: Wheeljack
Faction: Autobot
Continuity: Live Action Movies
Toy Line: Dark of the Moon

Strength: 4
Intelligence: 9
Speed: 8
Endurance: 6
Rank: 8
Courage: 9
Fireblast: 5
Skill: 10
Robot Mode
Wheeljack's robot mode, I have to say, is one of my favourite Movie-figure designs, he has a good symmetrical look, has all his limbs, and doesn't look too generic. His body is mostly grey with his blue car-parts being incorporated as body armour, and also featuring some gold, silver and light blue parts for highlighting.
Wheeljack's torso is one big lump of plastic that seems to be molded to look like his engine parts and also features his car-mode hood on his back (the hood part also features a clip so you can keep his spear latched onto his back too). Wheeljack's right-hand chest plate features his Autobot insignia. His chest also features 2 clips that can hold 2 C-Joint connected things (designed for his power tools, but you can put anything that'll fit in there if you want)
His head is connected to the torso by a small ball-joint connector that gives it some articulation. The head itself is sculpted with his screen-counterpart's famed features (spectacles, moustache, eyebrows etc). The sides of his head feature some wire-hair light piping ports that work as an alternative to the head-fins used by his G1 counterpart. The top of his head is noticeably large, most likely denoting his greater intelligence than most others.
Wheeljack's arms are connected to his torso by a ball-joint connector taht allows him quite some articulation in his shoulder area. In order to hide his ugly shoulder connector however he has his vehicle mode headlights and front doors to the car. His upper arm sections also feature his front wheels at the elbow points. The upper arm is connected to the elbow part by a rotating joint that leads to a connecting joint to enable his arms to flex and turn as needed. His lower arms are single pieces which feature sculpted mechanical details, peg holes on their outer fore arms (to hold some MechTech weapons if desired, and culminate in his hands with sculpted open fingers, surrounding a hidden peg hole for his weapons and tool box to go into
His groin is connected to the bottom of his torso by a pivoting joint that allows it to rotate fully, His legs are connected to his groin at the sides by connectors with ball joints that again allows them full articulation. The upper legs also feature some pivoting joints in the middle for a bit mode posing potential, but this is mostly hidden by his leg-decoration. The upper legs also feature some side-panels with his vehicle mode rear wheels attached. His knees are simple joints that allow them to bend back or forth as needed (unlike real knees of course). The backs of the knees also feature the rear parts of his vehicle mode, so you may need to re-position the rear-parts for bending backwards, otherwise there may be tears. His lower legs are made of most of the roof and rear of his vehicle mode, but folded out. The windscreen is used in this mode as a type of back-support as well, giving him some good balance too, along with his wide-enough feet (so basically he shouldn't fall over too much)
Vehicle Mode
Wheeljack turns into a blue Mercedes-Benz E550, or in other words, a thing of beauty, he has tinted black windows that hides all the robot bits inside and, being licensed, he is detailed with all the things you'd expect to find on the exterior of this make of car, including the badges, headlights, door handles, license plate area, and rolling wheels with silver rims and 5-pointed star hubs. The roof of the car mode features 2 push-down holes for the tool-box (or any other MechTech weapon) to be inserted into, and yeah, why wouldn't you want to put a giant green toolbox on top of a beautiful blue car? 
Accessories 
Wheeljack comes with four accessories, a spear and two guns/power tools that feature C-Clips to connect to his various connection points, giving him the look of just having all his equipment hooked onto him at all times. He also features a tool box with 3 legs to stand on, and a hand (which of course fits into his hands). This toolbox also features a gimmick, where you push on a button at the back to release a briefly spinning buzzsaw, so you know, he can saw up any pesky Decepticons and humans who get in the way of his building work!
My Thoughts
As you may be able to tell from the review itself, I love this figure, he looks great in both modes, he's very screen accurate, comes with some great accessories, and is just great as a figure in terms of play-value in general.
My only real gripe with this figure in terms of design is the legs...they are extremely fiddly to transform, and just one missed step can mean it won't transform properly, and you end up with a vehicle with a weird roof, or a robot with balancing issues. So, just make sure you read the instructions for how to transform the legs properly a few times, but the rest is pretty easy.
The only other issue I possibly have with this figure is the availability. He was a main character in Dark of the Moon, but like several others, his toy was cancelled last minute, meaning he wasn't released in the west, and has to be bought by the fans from Takara, or the Hasbro Asia market (mine came from the magical land of Ebay). Still I guess it's great he got a proper toy still, unlike poor old Mirage/Dino.

All in all though, I think this is a great figure, and would urge anyone who likes the Movie toys/characters to buy this awesome fella :)

Thursday 13 June 2013

Transformers - Evac

Information
"Blistering speed and lightning-fast reflexes make Evac more than an effective courier - they make him a frighteningly powerful warrior. His speed often catches Decepticons by surprise, allowing him to strike and move before they can return fire."

Name: Evac
Toy Line: Prime (sort of, it's that packaging, but no line identifiers other than that)
Size Class: Cyberverse Legion
Faction: Autobot
Function: Commando

Strength: 7
Intelligence: 8
Speed: 7
Endurance: 9
Rank: 5
Courage: 10
Fireblast: 5
Skill: 8
Robot Mode
Evac's robot mode is quite nice actually, he's mostly blue with black upper-legs and silver inner-lower-legs and lower torso. His upper arms also feature some red between the "elbow" and shoulder.
His torso is made from his vehicle mode hood and what looks like is supposed to be his engine (it's actually some faux-parts that form the undercarriage in vehicle mode). His chest features his three grill-guns in the center, giving him, yes - boob guns with his Auotbot insignia set just above. His windscreen is left on his back to act as a back-packof sorts. His head is sculpted with a basic helmet covering his silver face, which features light blue optics.
His arms are connected with his torso by a hinge=ball joint combination that also gives the arms it's sole point of articulation (hey, he's a legion toy!). The arms themselves are scuplpted with some fine details, and hands with peg holes sized for his aupplied weapon.
His legs are connected to his torso by the ball joints in his groin, his knees feature a hinge that is only there because it's also needed for the transformation (I'd assume). They are of course sculpted with some details you'd expect, including his feet, which allow him to freely stand with some ease.
As well as the peg holes in the hands, you can mount legion weapons in one of the four peg holes in the lower legs and upper arms.
Vehicle Mode
Evac's vehicle mode is a mostly blue covered-canopy rocket powered buggy. It's apparently based on the cart you ride in on the Transformers: The Ride attraction, but as I've never been on it, I don't know myself. His windscreen is black and is elongated to also act as a "sunroof"of sorts. The rocket on his rear is silver and he also features a set of four rotating black wheels.
His form is sculpted with various cosmetic details including vents and even some guns out of his front grill. His Autobot insignia is located at the very front of this mode, just above the gun-laden grill. This mode features four peg holes for the supplied red blaster weapon (and any other legion weapon) to be mounted into
My Thoughts
My thoughts on this figure? Yikes, he's one of my favourites :) 
One reason I like this toy so much is because of how good he looks in both of his modes, his vehicle mode is just a cool rocket powered buggy, whilst his robot mode is well-rounded and well designed...it also helps that he's in my favourite colour, blue! Of course, since he's a Cyberverse toy, he can also be used in any of the Cyberverse playsets or vehicles, giving him extra levels of fun.

One of the most interesting things to note about this toy is that no-one is quite sure where he's supposed to be put. He was originally meant to be in the DOTM toy line, but he, along with other legion guys like Mirage were put into the Prime toy line, however he's actually a promotional toy for the Transformers: The Ride attraction, along with his deluxe counterpart (who is annoyingly only available at the ride itself at the moment, which, whilst I am a dedicated collector and fan, I'm not going to go to America just to pick up one toy).

Even though this version's been released in the wide-market I actually have never seen him in physical shops, I found mine on Amazon for a reasonable price, so, yeah...YAY!

I do fully recommend this figure for anyone who likes a nice fun figure, who is easy to Transform, yet still looks fantastic, despite it's size class.

Sunday 10 February 2013

Rescue Bots - Chase the Police-Bot

Name: Chase the Police-Bot
Toy Line: Rescue Bots Energize
Faction: Autobot
Robot Mode
Okay...well as you must have realized already Chase is a very simple toy (he literally has ONE transformation step, you pull back his siren bar in vehicle mode, and that's it! (and the reverse to turn him into his car mode too). As such his robot mode has no articulation, other than being able to make him seem to lean backwards by carefully balancing him that way, but otherwise, none.
His torso is made up of most of his vehicle mode including the windscreen, with his whole front section making his legs and feet. His arms are made from his car doors with hands sticking inwards. The hands feature a peg hole for him to hold his supplied weapon in. His vehicle mode wheels are located on his shoulders and heels. He also features a spotlight and a megaphone on his forearms, which you could pretend are weapons of some sort (but that wouldn't be kid friendly now would it?)
His head is unable to move, but is sculpted to look like a helmeted police officer with sunshades (like kinda TFA Prowl), he also has a happy little smile (which is sort of out of character, but whatever). His vehicle mode siren bar (and transformation lever) is located behind his head in his mode.
Chase also features 2 Autobot insignia's, one on his helmet and one more stylized one on his chest. Chase features a lot of clear blue plastic, which is no doubt a part of the "Energize" theme, he also comes with a very terrible looking blue  claw weapon.
Alternate Mode
Chase's vehicle mode is a very adorable squashed up police blue and white car with yellow windows. He features quite a bit of sculpted detailing like lights, vents etc, and also features a set of rotating wheels to allow him to roll out on a smooth surface very nicely. You can plug his claw weapon into his hood via 2 peg holes, but it doesn't look very good (like at all)
My Final Thoughts
Hmm...this is a difficult one, as a Transformers toy I'm sort of disappointed with Chase (and the Rescue Bots in general) due to them being very simplistic, and also due to them only having a passing resemblance to their fictional counterparts, however since this toy line is aimed towards very young children, and therefore needs to be simple, I guess it NEEDS to be simple.
I'll be honest here, if you're just a collector like me, then you should get this toy, just so you have the character of Aligned Chase for your collection, but if you want a toy that's fun to play with (and you know, puling a lever a few hundred times isn't enough for you) then you may want to pass up on this toy, or the rest of the Rescue Bots. Let's just hope he gets a more impressive toy in the Prime or Generations line!