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If I’ve counted correctly, and if you can believe it, this is actually the 300th review that I’ve posted here on Children of Primus, since I started in 2020. And what better thing to look at this time around than sonething related to one of my little areas of expertise: Obscure Transformers comics characters.
Also, I already looked at the best Hot Rod ever a month ago.
So, this two-pack here’s a part of the same Generations Comic Edition series as the Straxus I reviewed some time ago. The line was a series of premium boxed figures that you could mostly only get from Hasbro Pulse in the US. That made these guys prohibitively expensive for me to grab, until I noticed that the wonderful Comic Alley Toys, over in Oshawa, had a loose set, with the box, for a good price.
Funny enough, Xaaron’s barely on the box’s cover, and Flame isn’t at all, thanks to the comic issue they used for the art.
The most notable thing about Xaaron and Flame, though, is that they represent a rare accomplishment when it comes to modern Transformers: They’re both Generation One characters, straight from the 80s, that have never once gotten figures made of them before, mostly due to their obscurity, and how they belong to the Marvel UK comics, instead of the US ones.
A showdown unseen by American audiences for decades!
As I recounted during my review of Death’s Head, the Marvel Transformers comics in the UK were published weekly, instead of monthly, but with a much smaller pagecount than the American book. So, they’d chop each American issue into multiple parts, and serialize it across the weeks, but even then, ran out of material fast, resulting in a stable of British artists and authors (eventually, almost entirely just Simon Furman as the writer) creating their own stories, taking place between the US issues. But instead of just making them quick filler, Furman and company decided to put their backs in to it, and tell their own set of unique, darker stories, often exploring settings and characters that the American book didn’t have the time to linger on, or use at all. These stories really resonated, making the UK edition of the comic more popular over there than the cartoon ever was, even as these stories remain obscure in the American market.
Also, there were zombies one time.
But, enough with the backstory, let’s talk about the characters!
Emirate Xaaron
Despite being a member of the ruling elite who’s made of gold, he’s not a villain!
Introduced pretty early on in Furman’s UK comics, Emirate Xaaron was an ancient Autobot senator, who, in the present, served in the important role of leader of the Autobot resistance back on Cybertron. He wasn’t a ‘bot of action, and hadn’t even transformed in eons, but he was great at inspiring the troops, while also being cunning enough for Impactor, leader of the Wreckers, to persistently call him a “wiley old buzzard.” Xaaron’s probably the less obscure of these two characters, both because he was in a lot of stories, but also because he did eventually make the leap to the American Marvel books, when Furman took them over. Still, he’s really only had tiny cameos in other works since the 80s, and the whole thing with him being, y’know, a politician, means he wasn’t the first choice for getting merchandise, until now.
Robot Mode
Ready to speechify!
Xaaron arrives in plastic form as a retool of the old 2019 Siege Deluxe Refraktor (aka Reflector) figure, which I reviewed ages ago when it came out in a special three-pack. The thing about Reflector’s design is that he makes for an extremely generic robot, a pile of boxes in the shape of a person. And, wouldn’t you know it, that’s what Xaaron was also drawn as, making this the perfect tooling to make him out of. There’s even less retooling on him than I thought, with only his head and chestplate being new.
A clandestine meeting with his counterpart on the other side.
I guess, technically, a lot of smaller details on Xaaron are off from his comic design, especially considering all the techie greebling sculpted across his body, but it feels very correct unless you’re literally comparing him to comic art. His new chest is incredibly accurate, though, including a little triangle of damage at his left pec that he was always drawn with, which helps sell the design.
He never turns his back, for aesthetic reasons.
One disappointing thing about the Reflector body, though, is how hollow it is from the back, with big, visible holes behind his legs, at the small of his back, and under his forearms, with the weapons ports on those forearms often showing what’s behind him, so he can come off as a bit chintzy when he isn’t covered with accessories, to say nothing of him feeling kind of small for a Deluxe.
He may be small, but he’s got heavy hitters like this backing him.
On the positive side, he’s got a great new headsculpt, with a helmeted, crowned head. Xaaron was designed early enough that Transformers design language hadn’t really been nailed down yet, so his weird vent-mouth really stands out.
It’s a vent for blowing hot air.
Xaaron’s sculpt may be generic, but he makes up for it with a unique, eye-catching set of colors. They picked a good shade of gold to be his main color, not too metallic, but not too yellow, often a hard line for figures to walk. He’s also got some light gray, and accents of silver, bronze and black, all laid out precisely how he appeared in the UK version of the comics (his US appearances saw him get a more monochrome solid-gold deco.)
That one comic panel.
There’s also the unique color gimmick this entire toyline shares, a set of complicated black accents across his lower legs and torso, designed to resemble comic art shading, and a scattering of dots across the left of his chest, in imitation of ben-day dots. As I said in my review of Straxus, it’s not an aesthetic choice I was initially fond of, and its use turned me off the first wave of this line, but it’s subtle enough on Xaaron that I think it actually works for him, and just reads as additional bits of weathering on a robot that’s already supposed to be ancient.
Inspiring the troops since 4 million BC!
Despite his hollowness, Xaaron’s still solidly-built, if a bit on the light side in your hands. His joints are tight, and despite his lack of heel spurs, he’s got no problems staying standing.
“Good argument. Have you considered that I can do this?”
For articulation, Xaaron’s got the standard Siege Suite (™), including ankle tilts, knee and thigh swivels, universal hips, a swivel waist, shoulders with enough swivels to be universal, bicep and elbow swivels, and a head that’s on both a ball joint, and a transformation joint that lets it look really far up and down. No wrist swivels, but that’s down to the transformation. I do think his shoulder articulation looks a bit odd, though, thanks to the outward swivels on them being a bit lower than they should be on a person. Aside from that, though, he’s basically bendy.
For when his powers of persuasion need a boost.
Xaaron’s accessories are interesting, because they’re both brand new toolings, and also stuff that they just made up for the figure, since Xaaron never once used a weapon during his comic appearances, at least that I can remember. Firstly, though, he’s got a pair of tank treads, cast in gold, with silver and black paint, that are meant to clip onto his lower legs, mostly intended for his alternate mode. For armaments, he’s got a tank turret, which can split apart into the barrel, and the turret itself, to form both a long gun, and a shield.
“Speak softly, but carry a big stick.”
Both of them are in gold, with bronze paint, and more of that inky black shading on the gunbarrel. The shield can peg onto his back, or on his forearm, and he can hold or arm-mount the gun, as well as recombine them on a 5-millimeter port.
For when the stick needs to be bigger.
It’s a made-up set of stuff, but it fits him well in an amusing way. It’s like how, for a long time, Star Wars figures of officers, politicians, and civilians all came with guns they never actually used in the movies.
Three hours into the cabinet meeting, and he just does this.
Xaaron’s other feature, though, is his Weaponizer potential. The original figure’s from early Siege, when that was a hot new gimmick, so they made sure he was lousy with 5-millimeter ports and pegs.
This isn’t even most of them!
I count 11 ports and two pegs on his body, more if you count his accessories. It’s funny how much stuff you can give this unassuming character.
Masqueraiders is a Tabletop RPG by Red Requiem games, available now on Itch.io.
Transformation
The original Refraktor tooling was meant to combine with two other copies of itself to make a camera, but each individual release had a “spaceship” mode, so he could technically work independently. That’s what you’re changing Xaaron into, but, to be clear, you can still cube him up and make him part of a combined Refraktor camera mode, though the instructions won’t tell you how, and his retooling means he can’t form the center portion.
“Day 75: The Decepticons still suspect nothing.”
As for the transformation you’re supposed to do, it’s a more involved process than you’d think, with a fair amount of flipping around of limbs, and a ton of dedicated tabs and slots to fit everything together. Controversially, he’s also a partsformer, with his clip-on tank treads and turret.
Otherwise, he looks like this.
According to the designers, this is on purpose, since The Canonical Xaaron hasn’t transformed in eons, and needs the parts to help him along. A clever way to justify it, I suppose, and I’m on record as never having minded partsforming. More Transformers should be open to it.
Vehicle Mode
What are you?
To be clear, this is an Action Master Elite-esque, Pretender-inner-robot-altmode-esque mess of a thing, a slab of folded up person that can’t decide if it’s pretending to be a tank or a spaceship, thanks to the tiny little cockpit and general shape clashing with the turret and treads, which feel like they’re at an entirely different scale than the rest of him.
Not that the implied scale of the original version was any better.
But, honestly, he’s kind of charming. It’s this cute, confused little rolling vehicle, and despite my grousing, feels more cohesive in hand than you’d think. It’s supposed to be a bit makeshift, and it looks like it.
Cybertronial altmodes come in all shapes and sizes, after all.
In terms of colors, we’re in the same territory as the robot mode, with only some extra silver windows making an appearance, and in terms of build quality, despite many of his parts being held on by 5-millimeter ports, he stays together just fine. Well, mostly. I find myself fiddling with his tank treads a lot, I swear they’re never quite properly lined up with the ground.
Also, here’s what they look like on Refraktor.
In terms of features, he can’t roll at all (even fictionally, since he’s held up by a middle leg without wheels). The most action you get is a rotating turret, with a barrel you can stick blast effects in.
Something about Political Power.
Of course, you can also Weaponize him, and he’s got six ports and a peg available, before you even take his tank parts off, which makes it eight ports and two pegs.
His carcinization policies were not popular.
I dunno, it’s simple and strange, but I find it oddly compelling.
Scale is fake, anyway.
Overall
This is an odd one to rate, because the whole point of him is that he’s not a ‘bot of action, he’s a politician, so that can be hard to translate into a dynamic, transforming action figure. But they kind of pulled it off here, and I’m surprised at how much I like him. His colors prevent him from being nondescript, his accessories and weaponization potential make him fun, and I’m way more fond of his strange, kitbashed alternate mode than I thought I’d be. I’d say he’s worth grabbing, both for the quality, and for how unique he is.
Trust me, this is a cool reference.
Honestly, I partially got him for obtuse reasons relating to a game of Masqueraiders I’ve been playing, but he’ll spend equal amounts of time being Xaaron, the Action Senator to me, because of how fun he is at being that, too.
Flame
The Transformers Wiki has a really nice composite of Flame’s robot and tank modes.
Flame’s definitely the more obscure of this pair, in that he only appeared in the UK Marvel comics, and only for one multi-issue story arc, albeit a memorable one, often collectively called City of Fear, which ran from Marvel UK issues 164-169. Flame was a pretty unique character concept for the 80s: An Autobot, complete with the faction symbol, that was outright evil. In Flame’s case, he was a mad scientist, determined to activate ancient planetary engines that could move Cybertron through space. Calmer minds than his knew that activating these engines would destroy the planet, but Flame was so determined to be proven right, that he worked on them in secret, and then raised an army of robot zombies to defend his laboratory (y’know, like a normal, non-mad scientist would do). It fell to the Weckers, and, surprisingly, Xaaron himself, in a rare role of action, to stop him. Like Xaaron, though, Flame’s only gotten tiny little cameos since, but as a deep cut character from a story I enjoyed, that’s part of the appeal.
This was the other half of the appeal.
Plus, he’s a retool of Studio Series War for Cybertron Megatron, pictured above, a figure I’ve never handled before.
Robot Mode
Dramatic even when standing still.
Flame’s on the larger side of Voyager-class, and looms fairly impressively over Xaaron, specifically.
Memories of happier times.
War for Cybertron Megatron’s got a pretty unique design, one I’m familiar with from playing the game, so it’s impressive how Flame doesn’t immediately read as Megatron to me. It helps that they changed more than just the head and chest, also giving him a new pelvis and thighs, making him feel nicely accurate, again, to his comic book iteration, even if some of the specific details are off.
He fits right in with this “Marvel-original baddies” microshelf.
Still, there’s some obvious War For Cybertron Megs DNA left in here, like his asymmetrical shoulders, the “crown” detail behind his back, and his spiky, trapezoidal legs, but at a glance, it works way better than it ought to have. It helps that the retooled bits are extremely comic-faithful, giving him the ridged tubes and curved shoulderpads he had in the comic, and the sculpted flames on his chest that seem to mimic Hot Rod’s design, among other things.
“I don’t know him” -Hot Rod.
There’s one ugly bit of design work, though, and it’s his lower legs, which have this folded-up mess of tank treads on either side that don’t really come together in a cohesive way, and also have hollow bits flagrantly sticking out on the front. There’s also a bit of hollowness on his torso around the back, too, but it’s sculpted to look kinda tech-y, so I tend not to notice it.
And this is on a bot that’s very noticeable.
Uptop, Flame’s got a great headsculpt. It’s less accurate than Xaaron’s, in that it doesn’t really doesn’t imitate the big, flared shape of Flame’s noggin in the comics, but is more, well, Megatron-shaped, due to transformation needs. But he’s got all the details present, including sculpted flame patterns all on his helmet, and, importantly, a distressingly happy look on his face. This is a mad scientist who’s just stoked at the horrible things he’s created.
30 minutes into Necromancy and Chill, and he gives you this look.
Flame’s colors are really bright, and really impressive, as theatrical and loud at the character is. He’s mostly glaring orange and yellow, with a slightly darker red, and light gray, with bits of black and silver. That, plus the Autobrand on his chest, is really giving me “related to Hot Rod,” even if Hot Rod prefers pink these days.
Wants to finish his forbidden experiments in secret, and so, naturally, raises an army of the dead.
Like Xaaron, Flame’s also doing the Comic Book Colorscheme thing, but it’s even milder on him. There’s none of the ben-day dot stuff, he’s just got some inky black accents on his legs, and a little on his torso, but they’re very unobtrusive, and read as general detailing to my eyes, especially the one on his torso. Funny how I’m, again, like “The feature I don’t like is barely here,” though.
“How’s THIS for build quality?”
For build quality, Flame feels nicely hefty by Voyager standards, has joints that are nice and tight, and, while he’s got an odd footprint (tiny feet in front, separate heel-spur pieces a ways back), he stays standing just fine.
An unmodified Flame can’t do this.
There’s one big, huge design flaw with this tooling, though, one he apparently inherited from Megatron…which is what I’d say, if the previous owner of this copy hadn’t already fixed it for me. The supposed problem is that he’s got a plastic spike sculpted into the back of each of his knees, and they collide with his lower legs in a way that directly prevents those knees from bending more than a little bit, blocking a major point of articulation. It’s a bizarre, unforced error in the sculpt, but one that you can apparently fix by simply cutting, or sanding the spikes off of him. That’s what happened on my copy, and if I hadn’t heard about this issue in advance, I wouldn’t have even noticed that the figure had been modded.
The empty spaces at the bottom of those yellow portions behind his knees are where some kind soul removed some plastic.
It’s bad to have a design flaw like that, but it seems easily fixable, and even if you left it on, it’s not a Haslab Omega Prime or Earthrise Grapple situation, he won’t break, he’s just not going to be as bendy as he ought to be.
Still bendy, though.
Speaking of that articulation, once you unblock those knees, Flame’s got plenty of it. He’s got strangely well-articulated feet, with multi-joint ankles, tiltable toes, and movable heel spurs. Moving up, he’s got the usual swivel knees and thighs, universal hips, a waist swivel, a balljointed head, universal shoulders, and swivel biceps and elbows. No wrist swivels again, though! It’s almost the exact same set of joints as Xaaron, even. Importantly, he sure can wave those arms around like a scientist bellowing at the heavens that it is, in fact, alive. His articulation, combined with that grin of his to just make him incredibly expressive in a way that I love.
Born to be a theatre kid, forced to be a scientist.
For accessories, Flame’s got Megatron’s fusion cannon, which you can specifically only peg onto his right arm, on a 5-millimeter port.
He’ll probably tell you he invented it.
The cannon’s War for Cybertron design was already a pretty big departure from Megs’s traditional look, though, kind of short and stumpy, with a flared, techie front end, so it manages to not look too specifically Megatron-y. It’s got a ton of paint on it, too, with orange, red and yellow, plus more of that inky black comic shading, in a way that makes it look like a racing stripe. The cannon itself also has 5-millimeter ports on the front and back of it, for blast effects, or other weapons.
Living up to his name.
Another amusing little feature that all the War for Cybertron figures shared is that their forearms could detach. Flame’s still got that, and comes with a left forearm that pops off to reveal a 5-millimeter peg. The idea was that you could swap weapons with other figures in the range, to simulate the way each character would morph their forearms into their equipped weapon in the game. For Flame, diegetically severing his arm and sticking other things on there feels like a thing he’d do.
He’s taking after Shockwave, the greatest mad scientist of them all (in other continuities).
You can also, amusingly, stick that severed arm to his backside, using a pair of dedicated tabs.
Give ’em the ol’ butthand.
Besides that, Flame doesn’t Weaponize as much as Xaaron, though, with there only being a lone extra 5-millimeter port on his back, on top of the ones I mentioned already.
I still found ways, though.
Transformation
This is a complicated one, mostly because of how unique it is, especially for a tank-former. The most interesting thing about how Flame transforms is that his asymmetrical arms serve asymmetrical purposes, with one going where his chest was, and one swinging around to his back. The other impressive thing is what happens to his legs, which unfold into big, hollow bits of cowling that fit around either side of the body to finish off the tank.
Leave those parts unfolded for a bonus spaceship mode.
I do find the Final Squeeze you do with those exploded legs a bit challenging, though, with a lot of micro-adjustments, but the clever engineering conquers any frustrations I might have.
It gets real snug down there.
It’s a bit challenging to remember where everything goes, but the designers included that lovely little trick of bespoke tabs and slots that serve to jog your memory.
Tank Mode
Unlike Xaaron, Flame actually did transform in the comics, into a treaded sci-fi tank, and so does this figure. This mode does less to pretend it’s not War for Cybertron Megatron, though, with no visible retooling, or anything to imitate Flame’s comic look, outside of the colors. It’s just the Tank from the Video Game, in red and orange!
Y’know. For science.
It does create the interesting visual of Flame completely switching aesthetics when he switches modes, though, and it’s still a cool-looking vehicle. It’s all triangles, and odd trapezoidal angles, with barely a rectangle in sight, compared to Xaaron being All Cubes.
War of the Shapes.
The treads amuse me, because they’re not pointed in a way where he could possibly roll on them, but are instead sideways in a hovering configuration. I’m pretty sure that’s how it worked in the game, though the camera tended to cut off the bottom of the tank. Similarly, while it mostly manages to avoid looking like a folded-up person, the back of the tank is where that fails, with a hollowness exposing his bent knee joints. I know you couldn’t see that in the game, because the camera was always looking at it.
The most visible target on the entire battlefield.
For colors, Flame’s similarly a lot simpler in this form. He’s mostly now two-tone orange and red, with most of the other colors being minimized, limited to the gray treads, and the yellow at the end of his tank barrel, plus a black stripe along said barrel, and a bit of black on the side of the tank, again coming off more as diegetic scouring than the odd Comic Book Art effect it’s supposed to be. It’s plain, but plan isn’t bad when you’ve got base colors this vibrant.
Leader of the Zombie Convoy.
For build quality, despite all the little adjustments you need to make to get the tank snapped together, it sticks really solidly to itself. For features, though, Flame feels like he doesn’t do too much in this mode, beyond a bit of weaponization. At first I was all like, “the turret doesn’t move! That seems like a huge oversight.” And then I watched some game footage, and remembered that it actually doesn’t rotate in the, either, so it’s fine, I guess, same with him not being able to roll, because he’s a hover-tank.
One of the Zom-bots broke down. Who could have forseen it?
As for that weaponization, the Flame Tank’s got a 5-millimeter ports on his tank barrel, and another right above it, plus you can pop the barrel off for a 5-millimeter peg, so there’s a few options, even if it’s a bit more threadbare than I’d like.
Again, you can still find ways.
Overall
Flame’s probably the weaker of this pair, but only on technicality, and I’d like to stress, he’s still really great. He’s a big, beefy Voyager, with personality and presence to burn in his robot mode, and an intriguing transformation. His only real problems are those weird knees that you’ll want to fix, and a tank mode that’s competent, but oddly dull compared to Xaaron’s inventively strange one. He’s still definitely worth a look, though, especially if, like me, it’s a tooling you haven’t messed around with before. And how likely are they to ever make another Evil Autobot Scientist Flame?
The Whole Set Overall
That’s really the big caveat hanging over this two-pack: These are a pair of delightfully obscure comics-only c-listers (well, d-lister in Flame’s case), who have never gotten figures previously, and who, honestly, probably won’t again for a long time, if ever, so if you’re interested in the characters themselves, this is your one-stop shop. But beyond that, I genuinely do like the pair a lot, on their own merits. They took a couple of figures that were already really good, and cleverly retooled them into this unique pair. They’re a fun set, and the whole “Comic Book coloration” thing that turned me off the line’s not really a factor, either. So, I’d say to definitely track them down if you have the chance. I paid $60 Canadian for the pair loose, with their box, and I feel like that’s a pretty good deal for a set that were once far more costly. I’d go so far as to say they’re worth a bit more than that, especially if you like the kinds of obscure pulls that I do.
In terms of order posted on this website, my first review was of this Bumblebee, linked here.
…And that’s a wrap on review #300. Honestly, I’m startled that I’ve talked that much about plastic robots. I can’t help it, though, I compose these things in my head inadvertently, and putting them on the page is a bit like an exorcism. Either way, I’m grateful for the platform to write and release them on, and if you’ve read even one of my ramblings, thank you very much for taking the time, as well.
Meanwhile, this way-too-crunchy image is from my first written review, available here.
I’ve definitely slowed down over the years (I buy less figures, and I only put reviews out fortnightly), so it would take me much, much longer to do another 300, but either way, it’ll be a long, long time until I’ve got nothing more to say about the Transformers. Either way, thanks again for lending me your optics!
For precisely 300 Bot, Non-Bot, and Retro Bot Reviews, click here to view my archive. Want to run it back to the beginning? Right now, that means starting on page 50.
After I miraculously managed to nab Haslab Omega Prime last year, I made it my mission to grab every modern update of Robots in Disguise 2001 characters, to go with him. That’s a small enough group of figures that I was able to get most of them on a single spin around TFCon 2025’s dealer room, including the newest member of the group, Age of the Primes Sky-Byte, here. So, why’d it take me so long to review him? Well, at the time, I got a bum copy with a broken shoulder, and it took me until now to grab another one. Shout-out to Comic Alley Toys in Oshawa, they got a loose one that I was able to grab for a decent price.
“This is entirely too much reading that isn’t about me!”
So, Sky-Byte. Out of all of the original characters created for Robots in Disguise, he seems to be the one with the most fan-favorite staying power. He was technically a villain, second-in-command to Megatron, and fancied himself a warrior-poet, quoting haikus as he terrorized the Autobots. But he was also somewhat inept, prone to panicking, and a bit too eager to get on Megatron’s good side. Plus, when push came to shove, he ultimately turned out to not be that bad of a guy, moreso someone who wanted recognition. He’d go on to appear in IDW’s comics, and the Cyberverse and Cyberworld TV shows, though, distressingly, those last two versions of him would forget the “poet with a soft heart” angle, and just go for “vicious killer,” as his characterization, for some reason.
The original 2000/2001 figure.
The fact that Sky-Byte’s had this staying power’s kind of funny when you consider that he was originally a simple repaint, done to save money. See, the tooling used for his original figure was first released in in 1999’s Beast Wars toyline as the Transmetal 2 version of the Maximal, Cybershark, and he was repainted into Sky-Byte for Robots in Disguise, because nearly all the bad guys in the line were recycled figures.
He started out as this figure! It’s the one I had, too.
But Sky-Byte got so popular that we haven’t seen a new Cybershark since then, and it’s Sky-Byte that’s always getting the new figures. Back in the day, I had Transmetal 2 Cybershark, and my cousin had Sky-Byte, so do have some experience with the nostalgia this new version’s pandering to.
Robot Mode
A rare moment of not panicking or poet-ing.
My immediate impression of this guy is that he’s huuuuge. It’s really funny that I just reviewed Studio Series 86 Hot Rod, who’s a tiny little undersized Voyager, and then went straight to this giant-sized fishman.
“Try to hook me with that rod ONE MORE TIME!!!”
Sky Byte’s about as tall as Legacy Tarn, taller if you count the big fin at the top of his head, and he’s also a good deal wider and beefier in all directions. The bot’s got some real *presence*.
Despite that, he’s still envious of Scourge.
The other thing about him is that he really feels like a carbon copy of the vintage toy, in terms of design and sculpting. He’s not an exact duplicate, I’ve seen comparison images online, he’s got adjusted proportions and whatnot (including a much smaller claw-hand), but the resemblance is startling, and immediately makes me remember my old Cybershark.
“A little more than kin, and less than kind.”
It helps that, unlike nearly every Transformers show before it (and plenty after it) the Robots in Disguise anime had characters drawn to be extremely toy-accurate, so this is what he looked like on TV, too. He’s a kibbly robot, with two giant shoulderpads of shark skin hanging off of him, and a shark-upper-torso hanging off his back, but we’ve fully crossed the threshold into “this feels like character design, instead of toy limitations” at this point. It helps that, on this version, that backpack all folds up and pegs together.
“Smooth as a shark’s behind!”
One thing that the designers got really, really right with him is his sculpted detailing. See, Cybershark was a Transmetal 2 figure, and the whole idea behind them was that they were mutated bio-mechanical monstrosities, chock full of asymmetrical detailing. And sure enough, Sky-Byte’s got all kinds of sculpted little greebles across his limbs and torso, including a “face” on his chest, and they’re totally different on each side, as they’re supposed to be. This comes after Legacy Transmetal 2 Megatron and Tigerhawk both undersold that whole asymmetrical thing, so it’s good to see an update that understands the assignment.
“The difference between you and me? Nothing I’ve got matches. And that’s a good thing.”
Uptop, Sky-Byte’s got a headsculpt with a huuuuge shark’s fin, and a face with the kind of toothy snarl on it that action figures in the 90’s loved to have.
He’s snarling because I just switched photo-editing software, and am rapidly realizing the new one stinks at noise reduction, so he’s stuck looking all grainy.
I like that they also managed to make the face on him just a little bit “soft,” enough that I can buy that this is the insecure haiku-spouter from the show, and that he’s trying to be fierce.
Loudly insisting that he’s evil.
Now, the original Sky-Byte may have been a repaint, but he was a well-regarded repaint, because of how elaborate his paint job was compared to Cybershark. Doing that on a modern paint budget feels implausible, but they mostly got it right here. He’s a colorful bot, with a combination of navy blue, mustard yellow, multiple different shades of gray and silver, and a bit of red and purple, all across him. He looks really lush. Comparing it to the original animation model and toy, he got it pretty close, too, he’s just missing some hits of brown on his shins, blue on his upper arms, and a red stripe on his chest. But I didn’t notice until I checked the images, and he looks plenty lush on his own merits.
He’s delivering sonnets about it.
Well, okay, I still wish the “Spark Crystal” in his chest was translucent purple, it’s opaque here, though, apparently it’s still got a sculpted Predacon symbol on the inside of it (I saw it when I tried to fix my previous copy), so I guess they changed their minds at some point about it. Also, the original figure had silver chrome in several places, which this version doesn’t bother with, but as anyone who owned a chromed figure from that time period knows, that’s a good thing, because that chrome was doomed to chip, crack, and shed sooner or later.
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In terms of his construction, there’s a bit of literal “Build Quality” to this figure, in that you actually need to assemble him when you take him out of the box, since he’s too big to fit on his own. His giant shoulderpads need to be pegged onto him, as do the shark’s fins on his backpack, with the latter actually coming on model kit-style sprues that you need to break them out of. I’ve got no idea why they included them that way, but it was easy enough to pop them off, and put him together, and those 5-millimeter connections do stay put. This is a big improvement over the original figure, which I remember having shoulderpads that loved to come off at the slightest provocation.
Sure, this looks cool, but he’s going to break his foot on Optimus’s abs.
In fact, the whole robot’s remarkably solidly built. I was worried he’d feel kind of rickety, thanks to spreading his materials budget out over such a large bot, but that isn’t the case. He’s a bit on the light side in terms of weight, but not distressingly so, and his material quality and general stability (including on his feet) feels pretty on-par for a normal Voyager. There isn’t even much hollowness on him, just a little bit on the back of his lower legs, and a block in his shark-claw-arm that’s needed for transformation. That said, his tight joints do occasionally cause problems. Bending his knees the wrong way can result in his shins coming apart on their transformation struts, and bending his shoulders can make them come untabbed, but both cases aren’t really severe, and speak more to the tightness of the joints than the looseness of his transformation tabs.
Time to start flexing!
Speaking of that, onto articulation! I don’t have a strong memory of what the original Cybershark tooling was packing, but Beast Wars was the point where good articulation started being the norm. That said, this figure feels like it has to have a leg up on the original, if only because they weren’t doing omni-directional ankles or wrist swivels as a standard at the time, and he’s got both. Beyond that, he’s got a standard suite of swivelling knees, universal hips, a waist swivel, a ball-jointed neck, and universal shoulders and elbows. The fishman’s bendy!
Way bendier than his Cyberworld contemporary.
Something I particularly appreciate is that his shoulderpads and shark head are both poseable, too, to ensure that they stay out of the way of his movement. Another thing I appreciate is that there’s additional articulation on his shark-claw-hand, with two of the four prongs being able to pinch inwards.
There’s some real strength to him, too!
That articulation makes up for the fact that he’s missing the original gimmick behind the claw, though, which was that you could press a switch to spin it. Instead, it just swivels on a joint. Similarly, his lone non-built-in accessory, a yellow, square, double-barrelled weapon, originally shot missiles, but now can’t even host blast effects.
He’s trying to make you believe it’s a deadly weapon.
It’s also hollow on one side!
Rapidly realizing he got a dud.
I don’t expect modern figures to have those spring-loaded gimmicks, but it’s still a bit of a drag to lose them. You can stash the weapon inside his shark-head-butt-flap, though. In addition, you can pop out his two fins, and have him hold them like a double-bladed weapon in his one humanoid hand.
“We’ll see which one of us gets to be the real kid-appeal character, Autobot!”
When it comes to -Izer integration, too, he’s a bit limited. He’s got a 5-millimeter port on his humanoid arm, and the two ports that his fins fit into, and that’s about it. You could pop his shoulderpads off and use the 5-millimeter pegs that they’re on as an additional point of Weaponization, though.
Honestly, this kinda goes.
Transformation
Sky-Byte’s pretty much a shellformer. You’re folding up his robot body, extending his arms above his head, and then closing up his shark-body parts around him. I remember it being a bit fiddly on the original figure, and kind of a challenge. On one hand, the designers clearly went out of their way to take this previously rickety transformation, and make it solid and stable. On the other hand, it’s still a bit more difficult than I’d like.
Closing this bit up’s the challenge.
See, here’s the problem: Most of his shark-skin-panels have tabs and pegs on the inside of them, and they’re meant to fit in specific ports on his folded-up robot body. Lining them up and getting them pegged in can be a real chore, especially since most of the time, you can’t really see what you’re doing, since these connections are literally underneath his skin, and the best you can do is squint through the gaps at the bottom of the shark. There hasn’t been a transformation yet where I haven’t wound up wrestling with getting him pegged together. Another trouble spot’s his head, which is on a joint for the transformation, and if it pops out of place, getting it popped back in can be a pain.
His expression is how I feel trying to fix this.
That said, once you do get him pegged together, it’s a really, really solid connection, but getting him there’s a journey. And, of course, it’s a cinch to undo everything when going back to his robot mode.
Shark Mode
Something about Jaws, I dunno.
The original TM2 Cybershark toy made a notoriously strange choice in this mode: He came pre-posed, bent into a sideways curve, like his whole body was turning. I remember early internet reviews giving him a lot of flack for that, and I understood why. There was even a previous Sky-Byte update in the Thrilling 30 toyline back in 2014 that had the chance to not do that, but it opted instead to pre-pose him mid-leap, curving downwards. So it’s great to see a version of this biomechanical shark mode that’s actually just pointed straight forwards.
Like a normal Cyborg shark.
The fact that you’re compressing him down into this mode means he doesn’t come off quite as ginormous as his robot mode, but this shark’s still got some heft to him.
Reluctant allies.
The sculpting, as in his robot mode, goes nuts with the cyborg detailing. In this case, the motif is ripped shark skin, with technology beneath each tear. It’s also lovingly asymmetrical, which gives him kind of a funny face, because it looks like he has a different emotion depending on which side of him you’re looking at.
Mildly irritated….
…..and startled!
The colors were a spot where I knew there was going to be trouble. One of the things that made the original Sky-Byte such a beloved repaint is that he colored in all of the tech detail, adding lights, wires, and all kinds of tiny hits of paint. That wasn’t in the budget here, and all of his tech detail is uniform silver. I’m not really complaining, though, because he still looks really colorful and detailed in this form, and I think the solid silver tech is animation-accurate, anyway.
Theyre actually singing karaoke.
Most of the yellow’s now hidden, save for some on the tail, and on the belly, making Sky-Byte primarily that dark shade of blue, with silver tech detailing poking out, plus different other shades of gray and silver, including a nice fade into dark gray on the lower half of the body. Finish it off with points of red for the eyes, and you’ve still got an oddly calm-looking apex predator.
He found a different Megatron to glom onto.
For build quality, this shark’s even more stable than in his robot mode, thanks to all of those solid tabs snapping everything into place.
And he’s about to snap Prime’s arm out of place!
For articulation, the biggest twist is just that he has any at all, for effectively the first time. At the back of him, his tail can swish from side to side. At the front of him, his fins can move, and his mouth can open. Most impressively, his head’s on a joint that lets it point downwards a little bit, giving him a fun bit of cartoony expressiveness.
He’s still not ready to accept being a Friend To All Children.
That said, it does highlight the fact that he can’t elevate or stand up in any way, just kind of flop on his belly. Granted, I do find myself holding this shark in my hand and swishing him around a lot, but still, a stand or something would have gone a long way.
Famous Poster Reference.
For features, you can stash his fake missile launcher inside his head, though you’ll want to put it there when he’s in robot mode, since you have to tear his jaw open to get it up there in this form. You can also install it inside his lower jaw, so that it’s popping out of his mouth.
He tried to say a one-liner, but couldn’t get it out with his mouth full.
You can remove his fins, too, to access two 5-millimeter ports if you want some weaponization.
When subtlety has gone out the window.
Plus, the original Cybershark had a really lame “flight mode” that was accessed by popping open the panels on the shark’s sides, and flipping open the extra claws on his tail, which you can also do here.
He’s scandalized that the little guy’s winning.
He does feel kind of threadbare features-wise in this form, but just being a well-sculpted, well-painted poseable robo-shark goes a long way, in my book.
“Hey! Get off of there!”
Overall
I really like this one. As an owner of the original Transmetal 2 Cybershark, seeing such a direct update of the original, with such specific quality-of-life updates really hits the spot for me. In fact, it’s funny how much of an equivalent exchange this figure is. You lose spring-loaded missiles, a geared spinning table, and some of Sky-Byte’s paint apps, and you gain more joints in both modes, a shark mode that isn’t pre-posed, a lack of chrome, and a general upgrade to stability and durability. Feels like a pretty solid trade-off to me.
The Chainsaw Man Movie was really good. That’s all.
On his own, there’s a lot to like, too. He’s a weirdly huge Voyager that doesn’t seem to sacrifice any engineering to be that size, he’s well sculpted, painted and built, and he’s just a really unique character, well worth the pick-up. In terms of shark Transformers, he may, in fact, be the greatest shark around.
His predecessor still won’t talk to him, though.
For exactly 299 Bot, Non-Bot, and Retro Bot Reviews, click here to view my archive.
Oh, look, I went and got another slight update of a character I already have, despite trying to avoid buying into the Orobouros of Perpetual Updates. But in this case, I really had to.
Imagine I did an edit of the Simpsons “Do it for her” image, with a bunch of Hot Rod photos.
Here’s the thing. Hot Rod’s one of my favorite Transformers characters ever, maybe my singular favorite, if I had to pick. On one hand, it definitely comes from watching an old VHS of the animated movie compulsively as a kid. But if I might go deeper, let me paraphrase a little essay I once wrote about why I like them so much:
Forcing you to listen like
Hot Rod’s mostly known for their vices. They’re impatient, they don’t like planning, they’ll disregard instructions and barrel into action, they don’t often care about collateral damage, they have an almost reflexive disrespect for authority.
There was no reason for them to do this!
Intertwined with that is a desire for glory and recognition, tied into a sense of self-confidence that borders on narcissism. Typically when you see this type of character in fiction, when they’re not a villain, they require some sort of character arc to get rid of their vices before they’re narratively allowed to be the big hero. But the important thing about Hot Rod is they don’t need a redemption arc, because it’s made clear to the audience that despite their vices, they’ve got a fundamentally good heart.
A legitimately important character moment.
Whatever happens later in the movie, Hot Rod’s establishing character moment is babysitting Daniel by lake, while fishing. If the story was going to play the character type straight, some of Hot Rod’s first lines would have been complaining about having to watch the kid, or about how fishing is boring for someone who can’t stand waiting around. But instead, Hot Rod’s cheering Daniel up about missing his dad, because that’s what the kid needs. To me, that’s the character in a nutshell.
Also, they got to drop one of the hardest lines in all of fiction right here.
When it comes to plastic representations of Hot Rod, we already had a really good modern figure in the form of their Studio Series 86 Voyager, which I reviewed a whopping five years ago. At the time, one of my few complaints was that the figure was mainly red, when in the movie itself, Hot Rod’s a purply-pink coloration, something that, famously, Hasbro’s been reluctant to replicate in plastic form, because they’re cowards about boy’s heroes being pink, I guess.
Cowardly enough for the post-Movie cartoon to walk the pink back, too.
At the time, Hasbro designer Evan Brooks actually took to Instagram, to talk about the Studio Series 86 figure, and in the most polite corporate-speak way possible, basically said “we wanted this one to be pink, but the suits said no.” Well, five years on, I guess hell froze over, because they’ve repainted and retooled that old figure as a part of the MTMTE Collection, an ongoing line of fan-channel Studio Series exclusives, with this release carrying extra branding to celebrate the Movie’s 40th anniversary, and giving me a chance to revisit a figure I already loved.
Robot Mode
One convenient thing about having previously reviewed a version of this figure was that I got to go back and just re-take a bunch of my old photos.
I’d forgotten how *small* this supposed Voyager-class figure is. It’s not just that they made an undersized Voyager, they made something that’s an extremely normal Deluxe-scaled robot. But look, I’ll jump ahead and say that it’s definitely worth the extra money, between the extra engineering and accessories.
They may be short, but they’ve got moxie. Chutzpah, if you will.
Sculptwise, they pretty much hit the nail on the head when it comes to replicating Hot Rod’s cinematic animation model. This Studio Series version came after a long chain of official and third-party figures trying, and failing to get it quite right, so it was exceptional to just see everything as it was supposed to be. A properly tapered hood-chest, arms that were the right size, the compact boots, it’s all here, and it’s all accurate.
In 2D…
….And in 3D.
It’s a very clean robot, too, with basically no visible altmode parts that aren’t supposed to be there, save for some bits on the back of the boots. And after Kingdom Rodimus Prime’s scary boot transformation that existed to try and hide that part, I’m fine with what’s here.
One day, that face will be covered in lines from worry. But not today.
And that headsculpt! Sunbow Hot Rod had a very babyfaced look to them, which they nailed here. It really looks like it leapt off the screen.
If you think they just switched one color around, look closer.
So, let’s talk about the colors, which are the big selling point here. Obviously, all the red has been changed into a pinkish-purple. But here’s the impressive part: I would have been fine with a simple hue-shift. Instead, the deco artist went overboard, and made a bunch of tiny corrections to really dial into Hot Rod’s movie appearance. Bottom to top, there’s extra orange paint at their knees, to make the boots cut off in the right place, there’s extra yellow at their wrists underneath the orange, filling in a missing little bit of color, and there’s a bit of magenta on their “shirt collar,” which was previously incorrectly orange. On top of that, there’s a two-tone split in the shade of magenta on their pelvis, and on their helmet, replicating some shading that, again, the previous release didn’t bother with. As for other color changes, the dark gray boots have been slightly lightened, and the silver on their arm-pipes is now a more cartoonish light gray.
I say hell froze over, but I’m pretty sure the Retro Collection pink repaint of the G1 figure cleared the way for this one to happen.
Combine that with the orange, yellow, silver, blue, and the rest of the colors, and you have something slavishly faithful to the film design, while also looking great on its own merits. This is definitely one of those areas where the Voyager budget paid off, and I still felt that way on the older, less-painted version! The only bits that aren’t accurate are some components of the knee and elbow joints, and the backs of the boots, both of which come down to the needs of engineering, materials and transformation.
They’re so dreeeeeamy~
When it comes to build quality, let’s start with the positives: I got really, really, really lucky. The first batch of this version of Hot Rod hit the United States months ago, and immediately, people were reporting tons of quality control problems. Issues that I heard about included: Shoulders that were loose and floppy, misfired pins in the shoulders and boots, mismatched hands and forearm panels, missing wheels, and horribly mangled paint, among other problems. So, as I awaited my preordered copy, which, by the way, was intensely delayed, I was sweating buckets. Well, I don’t know if the delay had anything to do with it, but my copy has none of those issues. All the joints are nice and tight, nothing’s missassembled, all of the parts that are supposed to be here are here. If anything, the shoulders on this copy are oddly tight, but not to concerning levels. I did run into something very minor, but I’ll discuss it when I get to the transformation. I don’t know if I got lucky, or if the batch I got was fixed, but I’m grateful that everything feels good.
Also, they pass the “stand on one foot” test just fine.
Now, the negative: Something about the high partscount and complexity of this figure does lend it a certain fiddliness, a feeling of fragility that I rarely get out of Transformers. On one hand, I don’t think I’m actually in danger of breaking anything, at least in this mode (more on that later). On the other hand, my usual practice of putting a figure in my work bag to take with me to the office is something I don’t want to do with this one, unless I put them in a protective box, or maybe a bag. Basically, Rod feels a little less toy-ish than I’d like.
Peep the double-knees.
The articulation on this figure’s one of the places where they were definitely flexing the extra budget. All of the expected joints are here, with bonuses like omni-directional ankles, double-knees, wrist swivels, opening hands, and a ball-jointed neck with impressive range. There’s still one awkward bit of articulation, though, and it’s their shoulders. They have forward-and-backward swivels, and internal joints to let them “shrug” their shoulders inwards, but the shape of the arms limits that second bit of articulation the moment you move the first bit of articulation into anything other than an arms-down pose. To explain it like when I reviewed version 1.0, they can hold their arms in front of them, but they can’t spread them in a “the fish was thiiiiis big” pose.
“Well, at least my fish story’s realistic.”
It’s really the fault of the animation model that this figure’s slavishly faithful to for having arms that are a bit awkward in 3D space. I understand that the upcoming third attempt at a Masterpiece Hot Rod actually does solve this problem, via an even more ludicrously large partscount.
The closer you look, the more you realize how complicated the new Masterpiece’s shoulders are. Also, all of that partscount and budget, and it’s not even pink! Get with the times, man!
Okay, accessories and features. This’ll take awhile, because a) there’s a lot of them, and b) this is where the rest of the new stuff to this release is.
“Studio Series 86 Hot Rod comes with all that you see here!”
Let’s start with what’s built into the figure. Pop open their right arm, and you can flip their fist away to reveal a small welding torch.
When they get bored, they open their forearm and give it a good spin.
Something interesting about this is that they made the design of this torch up for the figure.
What we think we remember happening.
You’d think we saw it in the scene in the animated movie where Hot Rod fixes Kup, but in the actual movie footage, you can’t see what they’re welding with.
What actually happened.
Meanwhile, their left arm can open and flip around to expose a 5-millimeter peg.
For when you need to fling an entire Weaponizer around.
Speaking of that, there’s also a pair of ports on the backs of their boots, for a tiny bit of Weaponizing potential.
They only do this when no one’s looking, so no one can see their hollow head.
Uptop, you can open up their skull, to flip out a translucent blue visor, based on the “look, there’s a hole in the shuttle!” moment.
Right before they became a Darn Fool.
I’ll be a heathen, though, and say I would have preferred this in opaque blue, but that’s just me.
“Deal with it.”
Now, for the big pile of accessories, I’ll start with what’s returning from the previous release of this figure. We’ve got two laser pistols, based on the ones that came with the 1986 figure, complete with asymmetrical sculpts.
For that Duel-Wielding Action.
They’re cast in pink, but painted silver, and in an interesting twist, they have less paint on them than the first release, for a good reason. There’s tabs on both sides of each pistol that were silver on the original, and left unpainted here, so that they can slide into storage holes on Hot Rod’s back, without the paint rubbing, or the holes getting stressed and worn. It’s a little change that I really appreciate.
“Nothing’s Gonna Stand in Our Way” is a way better song than “The Touch.” Fight me.
Next, we have a silver and gray buzzsaw weapon, from the movie’s Squid Battle sequence. It fits on the 5-millimeter peg on Rod’s left arm, and the blade itself spins nicely, while also being sculpted to look like it’s spinning.
In this Squid Battle, they’re battling to protect the squids.
Finally, we’ve got the all-important MacGuffin, the Matrix of Leadership. There’s a number of different sculpts of this artifact floating around the mainline, but they remembered to give this one a 5-millimeter peg on the back. As for Hot Rod, their poseable hands mean that they’re more than capable of grabbing it by the handles, something a lot of mainline Transformers can’t actually do.
The criteria for who the Matrix chooses is actually just “can they hold it?”
One change with this release, though, is that the Matrix is totally unpainted, cast in unbroken solid blue. It might be that they’re aiming for the way it looked when Hot Rod accidentally grabbed it after Optimus dropped it. It may also be that they just needed the paint budget for the rest of the figure. Either way, I don’t mind, because like any collector of modern mainline Transformers, I have several other fully-painted Matrixes already. I even have another clear blue one, from Legacy G1 Optimus!
Clockwise from upper left: Studio Series 86 Hot Rod (Pink), Studio Series 86 Hot Rod (Red), Kingdom Galvatron, Studio Series Transformers One Optimus, Kingdim Rodimus Prime, Legacy G1 Optimus.
Speaking of clear blue things, this release of Hot Rod’s missing the blast effects of the older Studio Series 86 version, including a starburst for the Matrix, and two blasts for their guns. I miss them less than I thought, mostly because Kingdom Rodimus Prime has plenty of extras to spare, and taking them out in the name of the new accessories feels worth it.
Speaking of new accessories.
So, when it comes to what’s new here, first, we have a laser-sword and non-laser-shield, based on the little visual gag where Hot Rod was training against a drone in the movie.
I’m not allowed to say “cinematic parallels.”
The sword’s got a gray handle and painted yellow blade, and is one solid, unbroken piece, with the kind of flared handle that means only figures with opening hands can hold it. The fact that the blade’s solid yellow, as opposed to clear, and also kind of thick, honestly makes me think more of some kind of foam sword, or a Kendo training sword, which, given its use in the movie, is fair.
Hot Rod decided it was time for some serious training.
The shield’s a little more involved. It’s a medieval-looking thing, cast in gray, with yellow flames on the front, outlining an Autobrand. The 5-millimeter handle on the inside is on a swivelling joint, letting you raise and lower the shield, which I appreciate. It’s kind of funny how much the marketing for this figure emphasizes this shield and sword, considering how small of an appearance in any Transformers media they have, and especially considering the last accessory.
Time for an even mightier weapon.
Remember how important I said the scene with Hot Rod and Daniel fishing was? That’s why I’m thrilled that Hot Rod finally has their fishing rod, last seen on the second Masterpiece figure. It’s legit a huge selling point for me.
What else do you do when the fish are jumpin’?
The whole thing’s cast in solid gray, excellently sculpted, has a 5-millimeter port on one side of the handle, and fits nicely in their hand for some Real Fishing Pose Action (™). There’s not much else to say here, except that it’s really good to just have it.
They’re gonna have a fish fry later.
Now, on the previous release of this Hot Rod, I basically never used any of the accessory storage, because of that aforementioned problem with the tabs on the guns getting paint rub, but here, I can actually use it. And here’s the thing: It’s kind of ridiculous. You stick the guns on Rod’s back, and then you can slot the buzzsaw onto the top of them. On the other side of the Buzzsaw, you can slot the shield in, using the same double-tab connection. There’s then a dedicated tab on the inside of either side of the shield for slotting in the sword. Finally, since the guns at the bottom of this pile of stuff have exposed 5-millimeter pegs, you can pop the Matrix onto one, and the fishing rod onto the other.
At the end, you have this monstrosity.
On one hand, this makes Rod ludicrously overburdened. On the other hand, I like that it’s here, and a ton of effort was put into Tetris-ing this pile of stuff together.
Transformation
This is one of those ones that you’ve really got to learn the finer points of, if you want to have a good time, because it’s an extremely involved transformation, with a lot of little things that need to be just-so. To be clear, it’s nothing like the panel-hell shellformer-ing of some of the live-action Studio Series carformers, it’s not that difficult, there’s just a lot going on. One gimmick of it is that there’s a step where a big chunk of the upper torso spins around on a mushroom peg, to imitate how Hot Rod transformed in certain parts of the movie.
“Whoa, look at me spin!”
The real challenge of the transformation is making sure various things in the arms, legs, and torso are all correctly lined up and pegged together, otherwise the car will be gappy and misaligned. I’ll give you a little tip right now: When you bend those double-knees, make sure the joint inside them lines up with a specific groove sculpted on the inside of the knees, which I’ll show in this photo:
That yellow bar needs to line up with that sculpted groove at the bottom of their thigh, just like this.
Another tip: It can be hard to get those little headlight pieces to fit into the bot’s shoulders. The best way to do it is the opposite way the instructions suggest: Fold the little pieces out first, and then line the arms up to go underneath them, instead of the other way around. In fact, the order of operations in the instructions is the worst way to do this. I do the upper torso first, and save the legs for last.
Basically, do this, and then rotate the arms into position.
There is an actual trouble point, though: The pipes on their forearms, which fit into pipes on their legs, to make the altmode’s full exhaust setup. First of all, I did run into an actual QC error: The assembly on one of Rod’s arms that’s used to rotate the pipes into altmode configuration is a bit loose on mine, and prone to flying off during transformation. It’s not the worst problem, though, since the whole things pegs in securely in either mode, and frankly, I’m grateful that’s the only problem I have. The actual trouble spot is the connection point on these pipes. It’s the one instance of retooling here, to fix a problem on the original Studio Series 86 Rod, where the middle connector point on these three pipes would break, resulting in said pipes not wanting to properly connect. Sure enough, my old copy got hit with that after awhile. On the new version of the figure, the three connecting nubs have been thickened and strengthened.
You can see the broken middle connector on the old model, and the thicker pegs on the newer model. I’ll get to that paint scratch next.
And it…sort of works? What actually happened was the “lip” of the leg-pipe connection point actually scratched some paint off of one of the connectors (as you can see above), and then said thin plastic lip actually broke off. And then I went ahead and carved the lip off of the other side. And you know what? Thanks to the connectors being thicker, the pipe assembly still fits together fine. If it doesn’t, you’ve got something misaligned during the transformation. In fact, I recommend doing the same thing as Kingdom Blackarachnia and Cheetor, and just preventatively slicing that lip off.
Basically, that middle hole should look like this, and not have a plastic lip in it.
Don’t let this scare you off, I generally like this transformation, and I’ve owned this tooling for five years now, so it’s not hype speaking. It’s a lot of little things, but it’s not impossible, it’s better than your average Studio Series carformer, and it’s all in service of screen accuracy.
Vehicle Mode
Little pink non-Corvette.
Hot Rod’s swoopy retro-future racecar mode’s gotten a lot of good renderings in plastic form, and this is another good one. It’s streamlined, it’s dynamic, there’s the big spoiler in the back that doesn’t need any struts to support it, it’s all here.
There was a time when Hot Rod car modes needed extra struts on that spoiler.
Well, okay, there’s a ton of transformation seams in this mode, and visible folded knees at the back, but that’s down to engineering logistics. The most egregious ones are still those headlights upfront, which don’t quite blend smoothly into the robot mode’s shoulders. I’ve gotten good at smoothing them down as much as possible, but it can still be a bit of an eyesore.
This is as good as it gets.
You know what isn’t an eyesore anymore, though? The car’s roof. One of the big flaws of the 2020 release was a big, ugly chunk of yellow plastic on what was supposed to be an unbroken magenta roof, and somehow, they managed to sprue the plastic so that it’s not there anymore, and the roof is one color. I wasn’t expecting this to be fixable, and yet, they managed to.
One time when I’m happy to see less color.
The rest of the car’s deco is that same nice pinkish-purple magenta as robot mode, with orange, yellow, a silver engine block, light gray pipes, painted silver rims on black wheels, and a clear blue set of windows. Much like the visor in robot mode, I think they could have stood to make the windows less translucent, or even totally opaque, just because there’s no internal seat detailing in there, just the back of a robot head.
Having actual interior sculpting is something the G1 tooling actually has over this new one.
Also, the orange and yellow at the robot mode’s wrists is technically inaccurate in this mode, too, but I’d rather have too much deco than not enough.
Remember all those wierd cars everyone was driving 21 years ago?
For build quality, despite the complicated transformation, this is a pretty solid car mode, provided you got everything right during the conversion. That said, I do find myself squeezing the seams, especially around the pipes, so there’s some micro-instability. Plus, generally, there’s enough of a sense of fragility here that I’m still not going to cram him into my work bag in this mode.
In the intervening 40 years, they mastered Double Gun Technology.
For features, if you got the legs transformed correctly, the flat wedge of a car rolls nicely. And beyond that, well, it’s all about accessory integration. There’s two slots on the cart’s engine block to, once again, tab those two guns in, in a sort of advanced version of G1 Hot Rod’s single weapon mounting point. The slots that were used in robot mode, meanwhile, are also here, back on the roof. The instructions, once again, recommend overloading this mode with all of the accessories, in either one or two big piles.
It’s about to be a very odd camping trip.
It’s hilariously impractical, but it’s fun that they thought of it.
Overall
An important part of this 1986 Autobot Cast!
I’ve spent a lot of time with this figure’s original Studio Series 86 iteration, and this new version gives me a chance to look at it with fresh eyes. It’s still a favorite of mine, and not just because it’s the best-possible version of my favorite character, after a bunch of previous near-misses, though that certainly helps. There’s a lot going on here, between the engineering, articulation, and accessories, and it feels like the figure was a real labor of love, to try and make the most uncompromised animation-accurate Hot Rod possible, without sacrificing the fun of it. It may be a tiny Voyager, but you can see where the money went, beyond just the accessories.
Soak it in.
That said, while it’s a favorite of mine, it’s not perfect. The whole package is a tad bit fiddlier and more complicated than I’d like, with the handfeel being slightly too fragile, and the transformation a bit overly ornate. But, well, that’s the tradeoff for accuracy, and, despite my grousing, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of Transformers I’ve found too fiddly or fragile to actually enjoy.
And enjoy it, I do.
As for this new version, I would have been completely satisfied with a simple palette-swap from red to pink. But, once again, it felt like this redux was a labor of love, adjusting a bunch of tiny little things, in terms of both deco and tooling, to make a great figure even better, to say nothing of all the extra accessories, including the all-important fishing rod.
This is what it’s all about.
So, yes. If you love Hot Rod, or the 80s Transformers movie, I can’t recommend this enough, even if you have the old version. We could all use a little reminder that nobody’s perfect, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be good people.
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Wanna see the weirdest Transformer I own? It’s in that lovely category of “strange gifts friends have gotten me,” which is how I get all of my oddball Transformers.
I wonder how many viewers still had working brains by the time we got to the end screen.
So, we’re back to talking about Age of Extinction, the worst Transformers film (don’t @ me, just read my review of the recent Studio Series AoE Optimus for my thoughts on it), called Transformers: Lost Age in Japan. Back in the day, poor sales of 2011’s Dark of the Moon toyline had lead HasTak to rethink their approach to Age of Extinction’s line, leading to bots with simpler, more kid-friendly transformations, and a bigger emphasis on gimmick toys, to lure in the younger crowd (which is funny, considering the movie).
Clockwise from upper left: Murderous barbarian, racist stereotype, murderous army guy, and a dinosaur that didn’t show up for two hours and has no lines. Maybe the next wave will be better.
The Power Battlers were one such gimmick toyline, sub-Deluxe transforming bots, each with a simple combat gimmick. The whole movie cast got figures in this range, plus a few extra characters, and when the line was imported to Japan for Transformers: Lost Age, many of these cheap gimmick figures got strangely premium paint jobs. And then there was Nemesis Prime, a toy-only evil repaint of the line’s Optimus that was added to that Japanese release, and that’s what my friend gave me, because it was a fancy Takara import. Now that all that’s out of the way, let’s look at what a Takara-exclusive redeco of a North American gimmick toy from 2014 feels like in the year 2026, because I love keeping things current and relevant.
Vehicle Mode
It would be freaky to meet this on the road at night.
I’ll stat with this mode, because it’s the more conventionally “good” of the two forms. They were paying licensing fees for this swooshy truck mode, so it makes sense that they’d want to get it right (and they probably had to, legally, to use it).
The copy machine didn’t account for scale.
So, this is a pretty accurate copy of his fancy concept truck mode from the movie, just scaled down to about the size of a small Deluxe, the kind of size that’s usually reserved for Minibots these days.
Or Legacy Deluxe Optimus.
It’s a surprisingly clean sculpt from most angles, too. There’s even an absolutely miniscule Autobrand sculpted into his truck grill.
“Oh, he’s a good guy!” You exclaim, right before he runs you over.
The only issues are that it’s hollow from the back, with his head just hanging out there, and his truck bed, while very tidy, does have his robot arms visibly a part of it.
The big guy’s got him beat here.
Still, it comes together pretty well, though I think this is a Nemesis Leo Prime situation, where him being a black repaint makes him look more cohesive than he ought to.
He fits in well with the Cyber Changers, too.
Speaking of those colors, they’re not reinventing the wheel here. This is the same set of colors most Nemesis Primes have had, ever since the aformentioned Nemesis Leo first invented it in the late 90s. He’s mostly glossy black and dark gray, with fetching metallic teal for his highlights, along with red windows, and a bit of dark silver. The best choice here was making his truck’s flames into teal fire, and there’s a cool inverted effect on the hood, where there’s also black flames overtop of them. He’s also got a teal Decepticon symbol on his left side, for some faction confusion. He looks nice, and solid black definitely works as a way to avoid painting things like his wheels or smokestacks.
Those arms kind of free-float.
His build quality is…serviceable, I’d say? You can tell he’s on the cheap side, because of how light he is, and his plastic’s of the glossier variety that I associate with a leaner budget, but he holds together fine, even if he’s got a few gappy seams. My biggest complaint is that his truck bed kind of free-floats along his shoulder and elbow joints, rather than plugging in, so you’ve just got to manually adjust it to be even with the ground.
He only does a little less feature-wise than his larger cousin in this form.
For features, this isn’t the mode with the gimmickery, so all he does is roll. It’s possible for his sword to drag on the ground beneath him, so I transform him a little differently from the stock suggestions, and have the sword rest above the truck bed instead of beneath it, for extra ground clearance. There’s no hitch on him, so he can’t pull a trailer, sadly.
And if you try to, you get cut.
Transformation
Nemmy transforms in a pretty unique, but straightforward way. Basically, he’s a bit of a shellformer. You crack the truck canopy in half, and fold the halves outwards and forwards, exposing his robot torso, and then folding the truck chunks up into legs.
You get the idea.
After that, you split the truck bed into arms, fold and rotate them down, and you’re done! Easy-peasy in both directions.
Robot Mode
“Go on. Say something. I dare you.”
Okay, here’s where we get real Gimmick Toy about it. You know why the Cyberworld toys are universally all pretty good? Because they were designed as toys first, and then adapted into animation, instead of being character models that had to be stretched and warped to fit the gimmick, which is what’s happening here.
How far we’ve come.
This is a funhouse-mirror version of Age of Extinction Optimus (specifically his concept art design, too, with its different-looking chest). He’s skinny, with chunky legs, arms that are way too high up on his shoulders, and perpetually stuck in an aggressive “stanced up” pose. It’s his turn on the Xbox.
“Why the attitude, my small, familiar-looking friend?”
Something about this thin, tall headsculpt is oddly angry-looking, too, which combines with the pose to make Nemesis look appropriately mad.
“GRRRRRRR”
He’s funny and weird looking, and not at all accurate to the Optimus he’s supposed to be. I’d love to see an artist try and draw a toy-accurate version of this.
Optimus may or may not be making fun of him.
His colors, meanwhile, are in pure Nemesis mode, again, maybe with a bit more dark gray than black. This mode adds metallic teal accents to his arms and chest, as well as angry red eyes.
No thoughts, head empty.
Nemmy’s build quality is solid enough, maybe a bit more solid than his altmode, since that seamy-ness isn’t relevant here, and he can stand nicely on generous heels. As for his articulation, well, he’s not a complete statue, but he might as well be.
He can T-pose on his enemies.
You can raise and lower his shoulders, and rotate his elbows, but neither of them support meaningful poses.
He can also politely ask a question.
Okay, so, time for the big gimmick, the thing the toy’s built around. The idea is this: You squeeze his legs together, and he draws and slashes the sword at his back, retracting it when you let go.
Ready?
Only, that’s not exactly what he does. What actually happens is this: His robot arms fold up behind him, and then a second, tiny, prehensile set of feeble arms emerge from his back, holding the sword, which flops forwards.
Wh…what?
It’s extremely silly, isn’t convincing at all from any angle, and implies that Nemesis is some kind of eldritch four-armed monster, which is unintentionally characterful.
“Dear God, what is happening here?!!?”
Also, it relies a bit on gravity to even work, so if he’s tilted slightly back, the sword won’t make it over his head. You can pivot the sword a bit along its attachment point to his baby arms, to make him, like, stab downwards, I guess.
Now he’s definitely making fun of him.
That said, it does make for a decent stim to do, just squeezing the legs and flipping the sword in and out, like some kind of switchblade.
*stab*stab*stab*stab*
Overall
It’s funny how ill-conceived this whole figure is, on multiple levels. I remember these Power Battlers selling fairly poorly, though not as badly as some of the Dark of the Moon stuff that preceded them. I don’t see why kids would want this, they’re smart enough to want something that looks like the guy from the movie, and this figure just doesn’t. And it’s all in service of an amusingly badly-executed sword-slashing feature.
The Black Repaints.
The second level of ill-conception is that it’s immensely funny that Takara looked at the line and decided that it needed extra paint, and extra toy-only characters like this. Who was this for? I’ve got no idea. I’m glad that I, personally own one, though, because a) it’s amusingly strange, b) the fact that it’s a Takara repaint of something amusingly strange adds another layer to it, and c) a thoughtful friend got it for me as a gift, and I’m always going to cherish and appreciate it because of that. But you, dear reader? Don’t bother, unless you, like, get one in a lot of figures, or something.
“I don’t know him” -Both of them, at once.
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What’s the current public temperature on Spider-Man 3? It feels like opinions the finale of the Sam Raimi Spider-Trilogy have gone down, then up, then down, then up again in the public’s eye multiple times since its 2007 debut. These days, I’m pretty fond of it.
You’ll see this image again, later.
Sure, it’s the weakest of the three movies, but the weakest Raimi Spidey is still stronger than a lot of genre cinema. It has the job of bringing all of thematic ideas of the previous two to their natural conclusion, and does so with aplomb. Aunt May’s “revenge is a poison” speech? That’s one of the theses of the entire three-part story! I could go on, but instead, I’ll just talk about some Marvel Legends. Honestly, this first one, which is properly branded as a Spider-Man 3 item, definitely only happened because it was an easy retool of the No Way Home Friendly Neightborhood Spider-Man I already reviewed some years back. That’s why this writeup’s gonna be a twofer. But to start with, let’s talk about Mr. Bully Maguire himself, the black-suited antihero version of the films lead, who is confusingly just called “Spider-Man” on the box, no “Black Suit” or “Symbiont” modifier added.
The Sculpt
Yes, he’s a cringeworthy edgelord. That’s the point!
To start with, there’s more retooling than I was expecting here. Sure, he’s got a new unmasked head, I knew about that. But it wasn’t until I held this new model side-by-side with the No Way Home version that I realized the spider-logos on his chest and back were remolded, which means most of his torso’s new, too.
Their back tats do NOT match.
I’m actually not detail-oriented enough to speak on suit accuracy, but it’s a neat little thing.
“Mine’s cooler!!” “Sure, pal, whatever you say.”
Either way, this is the same nicely-sculpted live-action Spider-body as before, managing to have the proportions of a real person, not a chiseled Comic Book Man. It’s still impressive how they made his suit very three dimensional and textured, with its raised web lines, and fabric that reminds me of the surface of a basketball. There’s still visible joint cuts, but this is one of those newfangled “pin-free” sculpts, too, making his elbows and knees look a little cleaner.
“No one understands my twisted mind”
Uptop, the big story is the new noggin, replicating the emo-spider himself. He’s got the black hair, the laughably bad emo fringe, and a really good expression that looks like he’s trying way too hard to be a smarmy edgelord. It’s perfect.
Contemplating his edginess.
Of course, he’s also got the same masked head as the previous version of this figure, and I still think it’s a little too thick and bulbous to be screen-accurate, but at this point, I don’t mind as much.
The Colors
Told you you’d see it again.
He’s black (and silver), and that’s mostly it. Famously, there were plans to give Symbiont Spidey a suit that was more in line with its comics design, but it didn’t look good in live action, and so “his normal suit, but black” was the compromise.
There’s only a bit of a family resemblance.
And that’s what they did here! He’s mostly solid black, with silver lining for his webbing. It’s basic, but it looks good, and they did the important task of picking a black that was glossy enough not to wash out his details. The lion’s share of the deco, meanwhile, went to his face, beneath his black hair, and it’s nicely detailed.
How theatrical of him.
The bit I appreciate is the darkness around his eyes. Subtle fatigue? A bit of makeup? You decide!
Build Quality
He insists he’s tough.
This was a low point of the previous release of this tooling, with joints that were a bit too tight to feel good. I don’t know if it was a deliberate choice, or mold decay, but that isn’t a problem here, he’s a tiny bit looser, in a good way. He still also mostly feels like he’s made out of solid plastic, and doesn’t have that rubbery feeling some Marvel Legends have (like Death’s Head), so kudos for that. The one big issue I’ve got is, like a lot of Marvel Legends, it’s kind of hard to keep him standing while in non-neutral poses.
For example, I had to lean him against the box here.
It’s because I’m used to Transformers, who often cheat larger footprints to keep them more stable. An action figure with human proportions has smaller feet, and topples easier. It’s not impossible to stand him up in a fancy pose, but he’s not passing the “stand on one foot and kick” test.
Still, I can get him to stand in some bendy configurations.
There’s pegholes in his feet for a stand, sure, but as per usual, he doesn’t come with one.
Articulation
He really hopes no one notices how arched his back is.
This is unchanged from the previous use of the tooling, which was already really good. Modern Marvel Legends have articulation on par with an expensive Japanese SH Figuarts or Figma, so he’s got all the bendy bits you could ask for, including omni-directional ankles, double knees, thigh swivels, universal hips, a double-ab-crunch, universal shoulders, bicep swivels, double elbows, wrists that swivel and dip, and a ball-jointed neck. It’s pretty lush.
Perfect for all of the overdramatic nonsense you can think of.
The biggest criticism is that I’ve got other Marvel Legends Spider-Guys with the same joints, that have way more range than him, so he doesn’t feel as bendy as his brethren. On the other hand, he’s a replica of a real person, and not a cartoon or comic illustration, so the realism feels a bit like it’s the point.
Accessories and Features
“I HAVE TWO OPEN HANDS!!!!”
Alright, so, they fixed a thing here that only I care about, so bear with me. The previous Friendly Neighborhood Pete only came with four hands: Two web-shooting ones, a single fist, and a single splayed palm. That was a very big drawback for me, because it meant he couldn’t have any kind of neutral-looking pose with his hands. Well, Black Peter’s got a full set of six hands, adding an extra fist and splayed palm, resolving that whole issue. And having him be able to just do proper one-two pugilism, and proper wall-crawling poses, is a huge upgrade.
“Finally, I can give them the one-two!”
All of the fists pop on and off easily enough now, same with those two headsculpts I talked about.
Web-swinging nonsense.
He’s got another extra accessory, too: A warped, half-transformed Venom head, made out of rubbery plastic. It’s meant to sit around his neck, and look like it’s forming over and around his face.
“No one knows the beast inside me!”
It’s fairly neat, and well-sculpted, but I don’t remember anything like this happening to him in the actual film.
You can sort of pretend it’s from the belltower scene, I guess.
I’d have liked it better if they included a web effect or two instead, honestly.
Overall
Ta-daaaa!
It’s funny. I went back to my review of the previous Friendly Neighborhood version of this tooling, and I was actually kind of lukewarm on him. It was a combination of the too-tight, bad-feeling joints, and the weird choice with his swappable hands. Well, this repaint fixes both of those problems, so I find myself a lot more fond of it. Of course, the big issue is that this version represents a controversial take on Peter Parker, from a movie some people aren’t fond of, but me, I like the movie, and get a laugh out of what a cringey edgelord this nerd-with-sudden-power thought he was, so I love that there’s a fancy new plastic portrayal of him. Now, at $42.99 Canadian, he was a bit on the pricey side for Marvel Legends (he’s about $10 more than the previous release), so those extra fists, and that Venom head will cost you, but honestly, he was worth it to me. I’ve heard rumors that the Tobey Maguire Spidey will be back in the upcoming Brand New Day movie, and if that’s true, maybe they’ll re-release the red and blue version with a proper set of six fists, so everyone will be happy. But until that happens, let’s talk about this figure’s opponent!
The Sandman
Over the years, I’ve heard plenty of complaints that Spider-Man 3 retconning Flint Marko, a.k.a. The Sandman, into the man who actually shot Uncle Ben was a bad choice. Personally, I liked it, because of the whole story about revenge and forgiveness that it facilitated. Sandy and Pete’s final scene together is an excellent way to close the book on the trilogy’s story, too. Plus, the original Ditko Sandman was basically just an ontologically evil career criminal out to cause problems for no reason, so any depth the movies gave him was a big plus.
This was a really great bit of catharsis.
Now, this figure’s technically based on his appearance in No Way Home, where his actor not being available resulted in him staying half-transformed the whole time.
As seen here, looking amusingly normal.
Honestly, I bought all the Raimi-verse villains as stand-ins for their original trilogy selves, and I feel like I’m not the only one. Well, I’m one of the very few that bought this figure, at least, because he shelfwarmed really, really hard at the time, to the point where you can probably find him pretty easily on the aftermarket these days. So, let’s have a closer look, and find out if the figure-buying public was right or not.
The Sculpt
Exactly what it said on the package.
He’s a man, and he’s made of sand, hence he’s the Sandman. So, one thing about him is that I feel like they didn’t quite manage to nail what he looked like in the finished film, where he was kind of this indistinct mound of sand that vaguely resembled Thomas Haden Church if you squinted. On this sculpted version, the “resolution” is a little bit higher, and he’s more person-like. He’s still got a delicately-sculpted, coarse, grainy texture all over him, but honestly, he kind of gives me “statue of a guy” or “Vitruvian Man” vibes, especially the way he’s got defined musculature and anatomy across his body.
He feels made for poses like this.
I’m saying that I don’t mind it, especially because it makes it easier for me to pass him off as the 2007 version. In particular, the face is a really, really good likeness of Mr. Church, complete with an appropriately dour expression.
He looks like he thinks deep thoughts on the regular.
My wife joked that the likeness is good enough that this is actually an action figure of the character Thomas Haden Church played in George of the Jungle, after he got covered in animal feces.
The Colors
Vast tracts of beige
Speaking of “covered in animal feces,” we reach the probable reason why this guy was a shelfwarmer: He’s overwhelmingly beige, as befits a man made of sand. Now, an effort was made to give him some color depth. There’s dark brown inkwash all across him, giving him shading and texture, helping pick out the sculpt, so points for effort. But he still mostly comes across as monochrome, and that was seemingly a dealbreaker for most people.
He does nicely contrast with Black Suit Spidey, though.
I don’t mind, because, again, he reads more like a statue or sculpture, but I can certainly see where the problem is.
Build Quality
Solid enough to hold his own in a fight.
It’s a hard thing to convey through photos, but this is why I like this figure: He actually feels really good in-hand. His joints aren’t too tight, his plastic is a bit soft, but not too soft, and he just feels good to manipulate in your hands. He’s not perfect, his double-jointed knees are a bit stiffer and ratchet-y than I’d like, but I daresay it makes up for his bland colors. I’d still say Amazing Fantasy Spider-Man is the best-feeling Marvel Legend I have, but this is a close second, ahead of even Tobey Pete. And another important part of his build quality is how stable he is, because they used the “he is made of sand” angle to make his feet bigger and wider than a standard human sculpt, so he stays on his feet way easier than most of my Spider-Guys. He still can’t stand on one foot, though.
Articulation
I don’t think he ever posed this dramatically, to be honest.
This is another highlight. He’s got the same great articulation as Spidey, so I’m going to shamelessly copy-paste it here: Omni-directional ankles, double knees, thigh swivels, universal hips, a double-ab-crunch, universal shoulders, bicep swivels, double elbows, wrists that swivel and dip, and a ball-jointed neck. Unlike his webbed counterpart, Sandman’s general range of articulation makes me a lot more inclined to bend and flex him. Seriously, he’s just fun.
DRAMA!
Accessories and Features
This is the really amusing bit about Sandman. So, his first two sets of hands are pretty normal, a pair of fists, and a pair of splayed hands.
Good for expressing his disbelief at Venom’s stature.
His next set of accessories are, personally, really funny to me: A pair of giant-sized hands, with a couple of “sleeves” that fit over his forearms, to flare them up into his big hands.
He’s going to Get You ™.
Now, it’d be one thing if these were giant “Hulk Hands” type fists, but instead, they’re open-handed, with curled fingers, but gigantic.
“What’s that? I can’t hear you whining anymore!”
It’s like, he’s not going to punch you, but he is going to Get You.
“I’m tired of these jokes about my giant hand. The first such incident occurred in 1956…”
I can’t stress enough how funny I find these hands. They basically make the figure for me.
“Shhh. Sandman says go to sleep.”
Overall
Look, I can see why this one shelfwarmed hard. He’s overwhelmingly bland-looking, and I can’t say I wouldn’t have preferred a proper Spider-Man 3 version, green striped shirt and all.
Replicating this shot doesn’t hit quite right without it.
But I’m still really fond of him, entirely because of how fun he is to pose and handle, and how amusing the giant hands are. And hey, the fact that he was a shelfwarmer means (I assume) that he’s (probably) cheap on the aftermarket, so if you need a goon for your 6-inchers to fight, he’s your (sandy) man.
He really doesn’t like being lumped in with these wierdos, though.
Some More Thoughts
Marvel Legends aren’t for everyone. For one thing, their quality is all over the place, extremely hit and miss from figure to figure.
These two hit, though.
Maybe I’ll review Doc Ock and Green Goblin eventually, but spoiler alert, they’re not as good as these two. But, look, I’m a “I want the guy from the thing” kind of collector, and action figures from a trilogy of films I love are always an easy sell. And these two here are some of the better Legends I’ve handled, in terms of poseability, personality, and fun, so I’d call both of them worth a look.
Everyone disliked that.
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Collectors in Disguise Reviews
Not once or twice, but three times we have had Big Angry Trev from The Transformatorium appear on our Frenzy Freestyle Sundays, and I have to give Trev a huge overdue THANK YOU as part of my Journey of Amends like a certain company that brought us...
Original G1 Tie in products are the “New” Transformers figures in the collector world? Why?
Because serious collectors already have the figures, and through Hasbro and third-party companies continue to push
BIG ANGRY TREV!!! The Man! The Legend! First I first off have to say THANK YOU for taking your time to hang out with us. As this post is long overdue, it was a lot of fun having you on as a guest. You have quite a collection that is very impressive...
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Transformers News
TFcon is happy to welcome back Andrew Griffith to TFcon Toronto 2026. Andrew is best known to fans as the long-time artist on IDW’s ongoing Transformers: Robots in Disguise comic book. He will be signing, selling prints, and offering commissions to...
Today starts Amazon’s Prime Day deals, and there are some good Transformers savings to be had. Check out what we found so far below, and read on to check out some deals on other brands like G.I. Joe, MASK and more! Transformers Age of the Primes...
Via Baidu user 贴吧用户_aWXbJ21 and Passion4fun website we have images of the Flame Toys display at the GMHS 2026 (Global Miniature Art & Toys Show) event in Shangai. Kuro Kara Kuri Shattered Glass Longarm – Color prototype. Kuro Kara Kuri...
Thanks again to TFW’s Jtprime17, we now have the identity of 2027’s Titan figure, and it’s none other than Age Of Extinction Scorn! Tra Gen Studio Series Titan TF4 Dinobot Scorn Product Number: G3561 Let us know if you’re interested in adding him...
Via TFC Toys Weibo we can share for your images of the gray prototype of their STC-03 Stealthroar (G.I Joe x Transformers Rattler Starscream). This is a very impressive take on Starscream with a Cobra Rattler fighter. It will also includes a base...
The official City of Pigeon Forge Department of Tourism Facebook has just announced an upcoming The Play District: Powered by Hasbro attraction to open in 2027. Read on for details: Something BIG is coming to Pigeon Forge! We’re excited to...
Third party company Dream Star Toys have updated their Weibo account with images of the gray prototype of their DST03-002 Chaotic Warrior – Scammer (MP Scale Swindle). This a new stylized version of the classic Combaticon Swindle for the...
Via Snakas Blog we have new stock images of the Transformers Cyberworld Energon Surge Wave 4 Armored Cyber Changers. Airachnid (redeco) Bumblebee (redeco) Megatron (Drill Tank) Optimus Prime (redeco) Ratchet (VTOL Helicopter) These figures have...
TFcon is very pleased to welcome Dick Terhune the voices of Prowl, Maccadam and the Quintesson Scientist in Transformers Cyberverse to TFcon Toronto 2026. Dick will be taking part in a Q&A panel and autograph sessions at Canada’s Premiere...
We are catching up with the latest Transformers Cyberworld episodes. The thirty-third episode of the new Transformers Cyberworld cartoon have been uploaded via the official Transformers YouTube account. This a completely new CGI series targeting...
Third party company Dr Wu, via their Weibo account, have shared images of the color prototypes of their new DW-E09M Star Fear (Micromaster Shattered Glass Starscream). These are new entries in Dr Wu’s Extreme Warfare line which offer us a very...
Thanks to @canvasdigitalstudios on Instagram, we can share for you some new unreleased Transformers RID 2015 Legion Class Toys Renders. We had previously reported some never-seen-before official Constructbots renders, and now we have some very fun...
Coming to us via the official Transformers: Eternal War Facebook, we can confirm that the game started their soft launch for Australia, New Zealand, Singapore & Philippines. This is a new RPG adventure mobile game, which we saw its first...
Third party company Dream Star Toys have updated their Weibo account with images of the gray prototype of their DST03-001 Chaotic Warrior (MP Scale Brawl). This a new stylized version of the classic Combaticon Brawl for the Masterpiece scale. We...
Courtesy of Tets’ Toys and Shenanigans blog, we can share for you the English translation of the Takara Tomy New Legends Lio Convoy Legendary Green Ver. Web Manga/Comic. This 24-page manga tells how the Stunticons get their G2 deco in this...
Thanks to Weibo user NOTRAB we can share for you a new in-hand gallery of the Transformers Age Of The Primes Onslaught. We have clear shots and close up pics of Onslaught in robot and alt mode and together with the previously released AOTP...
Frezny Freestyle Sundays
News from the Transformers franchise from Our Collectors in Disguise. We will cover some Age of the Primes, the Eternal Wars video game, Liokaiser being shipped out, Skybound Comics, TFCON Toronto, and other news. Join Us with questions and comments.
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This Sunday our Collectors in Disguise will chat with Todd Douglas Bailey (@TFBerserker), an Emmy winning and two-time Emmy nominated television producer, and creator and producer of More Than Meets The Voice: A Transformers Legacy, a feature documentary exploring the lasting impact of the iconic voice actors, creators, musicians, and fans who helped shape one of the most beloved entertainment franchises of all time. The project brings together legendary industry figures, including acclaimed composer Vince DiCola and numerous voices from the Transformers universe, to celebrate a legacy that has inspired generations.
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The Kickstarter campaign for MORE THAN MEETS THE VOICE is officially live!
Help us create a feature-length documentary celebrating the legendary voice actors behind The Transformers: The Movie (1986).
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News from the Transformers franchise from Our Collectors in Disguise. We will cover the final wave of Age of the Primes, Exclusive Mini Cons, SDCC Exclusives, Transformers the Movie Reformatted Concert at SDCC with Cold Slither and JEM. Join Us with questions and comments.
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Tune in this Sunday as we talk about Mental Health Awareness with London Green Ranger, Lianne Gagné and Gerrimy Keiffer. Discusssions that many fans have been through or witnessed in comic books, fanexpos, cospaly events, cartoons and movies.
#fypシ #mentalhealth #cosplay #transformers #powerrangers
We will have two guests joining our Collectors in Disguise as we will talk about Mental Health Awareness in the many fandoms surrounding toys, cartoons, Sci-Fi, Cosplay and more. London Green Ranger, an Award Winning Advocate and Public Figure who we met at the Action Figure Comic Con, and Lianne Gagné, a Registered Psychotherapist (Q) will hang out with our Collectors as we discuss topics that are sometimes pushed aside. Join Us with questions and comments.
London Green Ranger
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Lianne Gagné – Destined for Distinction
https://destinedfordistinction.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@DestinedforDistinction
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Our Collectors in Disguise will show off some of their latest reveals while we also mention a few more news items. Join Us with questions and comments.
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Lots of Transformers News from Our Collectors in Disguise. We will cover Studio Series Dreamwave Sunstorm, Seeker Multipack, Collaborative Fast & Furious and The Mystery Machine, Monster Jam Collabs, Age Of The Primes Wave 3, Studio Series More Than Meets The Eye Collection Starscream, Prowl & Insecticons 3-Pack, Transformers Age Of The Primes Energon Optimus Prime & Dark Energon Megatron, Transformers Cyberworld Energon Surge Ultimate Cyber Changers Scourge and Shockwave. Join Us with questions and comments.
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Transformers Action Masters have been a recent discussion in many Transformers Facebook Groups, and our Collectors in Disguise will go over reasons this part of the Transformers line worked or failed in different markets. Join Us with questions and comments.
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