Review #96:
Random Pieces of Various G1 Figures
Last Christmas, we were a bit short on funds, and were having to get a bit creative with making sure the kids all had good presents. The youngest was getting into Lego big time, and I had a box stashed in my parents' basement with a bunch of my old Lego in it. So we brought that home, cleaned them off, and presto, awesome present! Before giving it to him, though, we did find that there were some other things mixed in this box with the Legos that I instantly recognized as Transformers. Well, bits of Transformers!
I often joke that it's a shame I played with all of the Transformers I owned as a kid, as I wish I had them to play with now. And the proof is in the pudding, as they say. But more accurately, it seems that the proof was in the Lego! And so it seems, we unearthed what little remained of my childhood G1 collection. Let's take a look, shall we?
I often joke that it's a shame I played with all of the Transformers I owned as a kid, as I wish I had them to play with now. And the proof is in the pudding, as they say. But more accurately, it seems that the proof was in the Lego! And so it seems, we unearthed what little remained of my childhood G1 collection. Let's take a look, shall we?
First up, we'll look at three of the four guns that came with Powermaster Optimus Prime!
No sign of the other black gun, alas. But such is life. Now, I do own a modern reissue of this figure, which I've reviewed on this website. The black guns... well, they're still black. But the difference in the grey guns is remarkable! The original is more of a flat grey, and the reissue is more of a metallic grey. Almost silver.
Mind you, the reissue here technically isn't Powermaster Optimus Prime. Rather, it is the remarkably similar (so much so that they share the same toy) Japanese character named Ginrai. So if the difference in color is a difference between Hasbro and Takara, or is just a difference in toys produced in 1987 vs. toys produced in 2002, I couldn't say.
That being said, the grey on Powermaster Prime's guns matches up almost perfectly with the grey found on Takara's most recent version of Ginrai from 2017! But the older guns are much bigger! If you want to beef up your Legends Ginrai (or Titans Return Powermaster Prime) with larger weapons, you can do so if you can track down the G1 weapons. The black guns will need some alteration, though, as they only loosely fit into his hands as they come. But I have heard it said that trimming just a little bit of plastic off of the gun's handle makes it fit much better. Personally, though, I think the G1 guns look a bit comically large on the updated figure, so I am happy to leave him with the guns he came with. |
That's about all I have to say on those guns. So next up is this random little black car.
So, what is this? If you had never seen it before, you could be forgiven for questioning if it even has anything to do with Transformers. After all, it is just a plain, untransforming, tiny, plastic black car. It's fairly hollow underneath. It almost seems like the kind of cheap little car toy that would be a dime a dozen. But what it actually is... is someone else's chest plate! |
Known as the Roller Car, a name only found on Motormaster's instructions, this car's main function is to be the chest plate of the Stunticons' combined form, Menasor. Of course, it can also be a tiny extra little car when the Stunticons are acting separately.
Roller Car doesn't have much fiction associated with it. Indeed, it was usually left out of the fiction all together, with Menasor's character model for the G1 cartoon omitting it. Roller Car did add some nice extra playability to the Stunticon toys, however. Motormaster's G1 toy even actually had a base mode with a ramp that Roller Car could fit on. |
By Roller Car's very existence, he made for the one updated gestalt in Combiner Wars whose new sixth member made a tiny bit of sense. This new member was a double homage, however, replacing Roller Car with an updated version of Micromaster Blackjack, a robot with an alternate mode of a black car. That figure had a full review here.
I also have what could be considered a third party version of Roller Car, except Fansproject dropped the ball a bit by not intending it to be used separately, and so all of the "car" details end up on its undercarriage. Rather, when not a chest plate, it is intended to be used as the rear wheels of Motormaster's vehicle mode. It can also be held as a shield by Motormaster in robot mode.
I also have what could be considered a third party version of Roller Car, except Fansproject dropped the ball a bit by not intending it to be used separately, and so all of the "car" details end up on its undercarriage. Rather, when not a chest plate, it is intended to be used as the rear wheels of Motormaster's vehicle mode. It can also be held as a shield by Motormaster in robot mode.
To the right, we have an image of these newer versions along with G1 Roller Car. Next to that, these modern versions being used as chest plates for their corresponding Menasors. (Well, in the Combiner Wars case, my stepson's Motormaster and four random other Combiner Wars limbs. But it should get the point across.)
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Next up... this head! It is one of the heads of G1 Sky Lynx, a figure which I really loved! So it makes me sad to have just his head left. I wish I still had the rest of him!
What did I mean by one of his heads? Well, G1 Sky Lynx was a neat toy that was two vehicles (a space shuttle and a shuttle carrier) that transformed into two beasts (a giant prehistoric bird and a giant lynx) that combined into one beast (a giant walking prehistoric bird).
Now, unlike Powermaster Prime's guns or Menasor's chest plate, Sky Lynx's lynx head wasn't intended to be a seperate piece... So how did I end up having just that left? Well... I may have gone through a phase when I was a child where I liked to take a screwdriver, disassemble all of my toys, and then put them back together. And I'm guessing Sky Lynx didn't make it all back together at one point. I suppose most of my Transformers at least fared better than my GI Joes, whose somewhat standard parts layouts between figures led to me intentionally reassembling some Franken-Joes back in the day.
Two more images for Sky Lynx here. First, borrowed from the TFWiki, an image of an intact version of Sky Lynx's lynx, so you can see this head in its proper context! Then, there is a modern update of Sky Lynx... but it does something a bit, well, differently than the G1 version. And I haven't reviewed it yet. So rather than a full image of the figure, a bit of a close up focusing on the heads, and acting as a sneak preview of the newer version.
Now, unlike Powermaster Prime's guns or Menasor's chest plate, Sky Lynx's lynx head wasn't intended to be a seperate piece... So how did I end up having just that left? Well... I may have gone through a phase when I was a child where I liked to take a screwdriver, disassemble all of my toys, and then put them back together. And I'm guessing Sky Lynx didn't make it all back together at one point. I suppose most of my Transformers at least fared better than my GI Joes, whose somewhat standard parts layouts between figures led to me intentionally reassembling some Franken-Joes back in the day.
Two more images for Sky Lynx here. First, borrowed from the TFWiki, an image of an intact version of Sky Lynx's lynx, so you can see this head in its proper context! Then, there is a modern update of Sky Lynx... but it does something a bit, well, differently than the G1 version. And I haven't reviewed it yet. So rather than a full image of the figure, a bit of a close up focusing on the heads, and acting as a sneak preview of the newer version.
Next up, a trio of parts from a duo of toys that, like Sky Lynx, seem to have never gotten fully reassembled! This pair, named Fastlane and Cloudraker, were a pair of "clones." The clones were pairs of robots with identical robot modes (if one ignored the vehicle kibble on their backs) but completely different vehicle modes. (Photos of the intact duo come from this website.) There were two sets of clones. This is the Autobot pair.
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The spoiler, at least, was a detachable piece, and belongs to Fastlane who has a race car alt mode. The leg, on the other hand, belongs to Cloudraker, which you can tell as it has a wing on the back of it. The chest could in theory belong to either figure. The clones had a heat sensitive rub sign on their chests, though, which when activated gave a clue as to the robot's alt mode. (If turning the figure over and looking at its backside wasn't easy enough for you to do.) And since the rub sign still works, we can figure out that this is Fastlane's chest.
Next up is just a single gun. What is strange about this one is that this gun is from a figure that I honestly don't remember owning! It is from one of the six-changer figures from G1. I remember owning the original six-changer, the Decepticon Sixshot. But I didn't recall owning his Autobot son, Quickswitch.
And yet here's one of his guns, and I never borrowed any Transformers from any friends as a child, so I must have owned him at some point! Weird, but also kind of cool... |
Next up... an actual intact figure! Well, intact in that the robot himself is all together. Not so intact in that he is missing any accessories that he would have come with. Dear readers, I give you the Pretender Monster, Scowl.
What an adorable little super deformed werewolf he is! Sure to make his victims cry out, "Kawaii!!!" right before he rips their throats out. An incredibly simple (even by G1 standards) transformation turns him into his robot mode.
His robot mode isn't too different, and honestly, is still kind of adorable. He is missing all of his accessories, which in robot mode would mainly be his gun. But as a Pretender figure, he would also have had a Pretender shell.
Pretenders took the concept of "Robots in Disguise" one step farther. Robots who transform into alternate forms, and then can also hide inside of a shell. |
Of course, taking a monster and hiding it inside of an even more terrifying monster is a rather questionable form of disguise. But hey! It was the 80s! And I seem to recall thinking that these were cool as a kid. And that's what Transformers are supposed to be. Cool to kids! But the cool doesn't stop here. There were a total of six Pretender Monsters, and they were a combining team! In my collection of random parts, I actually had one other piece of this combiner: the head. The head came with fellow Pretender Monster Slog. And together, all of the Pretender Monsters combine to form Monstructor.
This is a cool little group, and I'm bummed I have so little of them left. Before moving on, I want to make note of the stickers on Scowl. There's some obvious wear on them, of course, but for the most part, they're still intact. Not too shabby for stickers that are about thirty years old, and that have been recently submerged in water. (The Legos that Scowl were buried in were quite dirty.) If only the stickers Hasbro was using these days could be so durable!
Last up is a piece that seems to be another victim of my prediliction towards disassembling and reassembling toys: a neck piece for one of the Headmaster Horrorcons, specifically Snapdragon.
Last up is a piece that seems to be another victim of my prediliction towards disassembling and reassembling toys: a neck piece for one of the Headmaster Horrorcons, specifically Snapdragon.
I made a big goof when taking my photographs, though... I mixed up which Horrorcon the piece belonged to! And so, for comparison, I took a photograph of the neck piece with the modern update of the other Horrorcon, Apeface.
Mind you, looking at the images of the G1 figures that I've collected for this review, I can't help but think, "You know, I don't think I ever had G1 Apeface." So I don't know why I think I did when I was taking the photographs for this review!
Anyway, I took a bunch of photos of Titans Return Apeface thinking they would be relevant to this review, only to then realize, "Nope! Nothing to do with these bits and pieces!" But the heck with it. I've got the photos, I may as well use them. So to put an actual review of a toy in this article, let's take a look at Titans Return Apeface!
Anyway, I took a bunch of photos of Titans Return Apeface thinking they would be relevant to this review, only to then realize, "Nope! Nothing to do with these bits and pieces!" But the heck with it. I've got the photos, I may as well use them. So to put an actual review of a toy in this article, let's take a look at Titans Return Apeface!
The Real Review #96:
Titans Return Apeface
The Headmaster Horrorcons were both triple changing Decepticon Headmasters with a vehicle mode, a beast mode, and a robot mode. The Headmaster figure that came with them also did triple duty.
As was standard for Headmasters, they became a pilot for the vehicle mode and a head for the robot mode. But additionally, these figures also became the heads for the larger robots' beast modes, as well! Titans Return Apeface updates the G1 figure into a tiny, compact package. Let's take a look at it and see how it holds up! |
The Titan Master vehicle takes the original Apeface's vehicle mode and makes a nice homage to it. Of course, at this scale, the Titan Master can't fit in the vehicle as a pilot, but it incorporates nicely into the vehicle in a way that fills it out nicely and doesn't stick out as a super obvious robot unless you're looking for it.
Moving on to ape mode, again, this figure is a bit small for the Titan Master to be its head. So instead, the Titan Master rides on the ape's back.
Moving on to ape mode, again, this figure is a bit small for the Titan Master to be its head. So instead, the Titan Master rides on the ape's back.
He's a good looking little ape! But now we come to the question of the little robot on his back... And that is where things get confusing with this Titan Master figure. Is the little robot Apeface? But G1 Apeface would have been the whole toy. The little robot just forms Apeface's head, and on the G1 figure, that little robot's name would have been Spasma. So is this Spasma? If so, who is Apeface? Because the rest of this figure does not have its own robot mode. So that can't be Apeface! Will the real Apeface please stand up?
Honestly, I just wish Hasbro had made a proper full sized Apeface, and saved us all of these existential questions. That being said, this little robot, whoever you consider him to be, is a pretty standard Titan Master figure. Same articulation as we've always seen with a ball jointed head, ball jointed shoulders, pinned hips that can swing forward, and pinned knees that can swing both ways.
On his back is an upside down head that is a pretty good representation (within Titans Return aesthetics) of G1 Apeface's face. This can be plugged onto any Titans Return figure of Deluxe Class or above. And, as with other Titan Master figures, his jet/ape drone has a third mode where it becomes a weapon that can be held by larger figures. Here he is making use of a random larger figure.
On his back is an upside down head that is a pretty good representation (within Titans Return aesthetics) of G1 Apeface's face. This can be plugged onto any Titans Return figure of Deluxe Class or above. And, as with other Titan Master figures, his jet/ape drone has a third mode where it becomes a weapon that can be held by larger figures. Here he is making use of a random larger figure.
The gun mode... Well, they tried. But I have seen more effective weapon modes in Titans Return. I'll give it a pass, though, since the other two modes come off so well. The Apeface head is a really good looking head! I just wish it had an Apeface body to attach to. But, for what it is, the Titans Return Apeface is a cool little toy. And at the Titan Master Class price point, you can't go wrong with it.
Well, that kind of brings us to the end of what we're looking at today. Anything else you can do with all of these random bits and pieces? Well, I suppose you can lay them all out like an archaeological display of what ancient proto-Transformers must have looked like. But other than that, no. Not really. After finishing this review, I put the guns away somewhere in case I ever found a use for them, I gave the Roller Car and Scowl to my stepson, and I threw everything else out.
Size comparison! Here's everything with a standard DVD case: |
And last but not least, here's the shelf in my collection that Titan Master Apeface lives on:
Well, that's it for today! Happy Easter! And, more importantly (considering most of what was going on in this review), Happy April Fools!
Review added 1 April 2018 by Yotsuya. Comments are welcomed!
Review added 1 April 2018 by Yotsuya. Comments are welcomed!