Review #5: Impossible Toys G1-Scale
Sparkplug & Spike
So I start myself a new website dedicated to Transformers reviews, a subject that by its nature requires many photographs. It should only figure, then, that my digital camera would decide after less then a handfull of reviews that it would be a good time to break down. I had an opertunity today to go out and buy a new one, and wanted to give it a quick try-out. I didn't want to deal with anything to big just to do a quick test and shoot a few photos, so I decided to instead go small. Really small. You might have thought I was dealing with small when talking about Reflector, but that was just peanuts to this!
We have another completely original third party offering, so I thought I'd start you off with a still from the original G1 animated series so you could see what Impossible Toys, the makers of these figures, were trying to emulate. |
Above picture taken from TFWiki.net.
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Father and son wearing matching outfits and hardhats, although with the father's expanded... presence, shall we say? He tends to wear his shirt open. So how do these two fare when reproduced in plastic?
The answer is that they fare pretty well. When you look at the above photos, the detail may initially seem rough, but that is a dime in those photos just to give you an idea of how tiny they actually are. They are very, very tiny. So unless you are looking at them from very, very close you are unlikely to see the roughness of the detail. And in fact from any reasonable distance they look fantastic, like Sparkplug (the father) and Spike (the son) stepped out of the show and onto your shelf.
Now, why are they so tiny, you might ask? Might they have been better at even a slightly larger scale? Perhaps, except that their scale has a purpose that those not knowledgable in the history of the Transformers toyline may be unaware of. The early G1 toyline was actually made up of pre-existing toys from Japan, often from different toylines, that were licenced by Hasbro for sale in the U.S. and rebranded as "Transformers" into one toyline with the acompanying unifying storyline. One of the Japanese toylines Hasbro borrowed from to make up Transformers was a line called Diaclone.
Now, why are they so tiny, you might ask? Might they have been better at even a slightly larger scale? Perhaps, except that their scale has a purpose that those not knowledgable in the history of the Transformers toyline may be unaware of. The early G1 toyline was actually made up of pre-existing toys from Japan, often from different toylines, that were licenced by Hasbro for sale in the U.S. and rebranded as "Transformers" into one toyline with the acompanying unifying storyline. One of the Japanese toylines Hasbro borrowed from to make up Transformers was a line called Diaclone.
Everyone who may have wondered why some G1 Transformers had seats in them, such as Optimus Prime, Starscream and his fellow Seekers, or even ones that had no logical reason to such as Dinobots or Insecticons... well, you can stop wondering. Before they were Transformers, the molds used to make those toys were all part of the Diaclone line. And the Diaclone toys came with little tiny figures to drive them. These figures were left out when the toys they piloted became toys in the Transformers toyline, but their legacy remained in the form of the seats they once occupied.
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Thus, the scale of Sparkplug and Spike here are to take advantage of this.
Alas, I don't have a large G1 collection. I have a few figures... but most of my collection is made up of toys that could be described as "Classics" figures. Although tiny, Sparkplug and Spike seem to fit in well enough there, as well.
Alas, I don't have a large G1 collection. I have a few figures... but most of my collection is made up of toys that could be described as "Classics" figures. Although tiny, Sparkplug and Spike seem to fit in well enough there, as well.
The figures both feature removable hardhats, little wrenches to hold, and stands that peg into their feet. The hats and wrenches can both be difficult to get to stay on the figures, but it can be done. Just be careful! In the course of taking these photos, at various times I dropped both a wrench and a hat to the floor, and they took many stressful minutes to find. The wrench could possibly be lived without, but these figures would look less like their iconic selves without their hats.
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Posability is rather limited, which is unsurprising given the scale we are working with here. The arms can move independantly at the shoulders. The legs move at the hips. Both sets of limbs are just simple backwards and forwards swivles. The joints are tight out of the package and you may worry you might break them when you're first trying to move them, but I managed to do it with no damage done and afterwords things feel comfortably looser.
These definitely are not children's toys. They are tiny enough that just the figure would be a choking hazard. (Although the accessories would probably just go right down the throat and be digested, no problem!) For the adult collector looking to add a little human element to either their G1 or Classics collection, however, I most happily recomend these.
Review added 16 January 2010. Please comment!
These definitely are not children's toys. They are tiny enough that just the figure would be a choking hazard. (Although the accessories would probably just go right down the throat and be digested, no problem!) For the adult collector looking to add a little human element to either their G1 or Classics collection, however, I most happily recomend these.
Review added 16 January 2010. Please comment!