Bot Reviews: X-Transbots Masterpiece Shafter

Previously on Retro Bot Reviews, I said I’d love a crack at X-Transbots Masterpiece Shafter. Thanks to TFCon noticing my writeup, I got a chance to own one. But let’s back up, and cover the story behind this bot, chronologically.

1989: Hasbro releases the Autobot Micromaster Erector, a little yellow construction truck with a big transforming crane trailer. Like most late-game Micromasters, he basically never appeared in any stories, and would have remained obscure, were it not for the fact that he happened to have an unfortunately funny name.

2011: Thanks to a fan campaign, done entirely because of his funny name, Erector gets officially nominated for the Transformers Hall of Fame. He doesn’t win, of course, but on both the fan side, and the official side, everyone has fun with it.

2012: Playing on that popularity, Third Party company iGear took their figure, Rager, a Generations-scaled take on the Autobot Huffer, and repainted him in Erector’s colors. He was named “Shafter,” and was released as an exclusive at that year’s TFCon. He’s a pretty great figure these days, too, as you can read in my writeup.

2014: Two years later, Third-Party company X-Transbots, a maker of Masterpiece-scaled figures, decides to follow it up by taking Krank, their own take on Huffer, and repainting it into Erector’s colors again, as “Masterpiece Shafter,” 2014’s TFCon exclusive. And so, now, I get to have a look at this meme’s final form. I’m eager to take a look back in time.

Some Assembly Required

Masterpiece Shafter has something of an issue out of the box, in that there’s a lot that’s left unclear in the instructions, in combination with the fact that you need to do some assembly when you unpack him. Aspects of this assembly are particularly harrowing because I don’t want to break this old, hard-to-obtain exclusive, and so, one cheat sheet I used was Vangelus’s old video review of the figure, due to plenty of clear shots of how everything was supposed to fit together in both modes.

So, out of the box, here’s what I needed to do: First, insert the chrome side mirrors into both sides of the cab, which proved to be a tight enough fit that I sanded down the rods I needed to push into the holes just a little bit.

Next, the chromed smokestacks needed to fit in behind the cab, and while photos and video that I’ve seen have them pointing straight up, the tight fit of the bottom connections meant I pointed them a bit diagonal.

Finally, both of his weapons need to stash in different spots on the back of his vehicle mode as a critical part of its assembly, and it wasn’t terribly clear how or where they stashed without that video, again. Above, you can see photos of where they go.

Vehicle Mode

Once that assembly’s complete, Shafter changes into a big, bulky semi-truck, more or less the size of a modern Voyager. It’s definitely not an accurate replica of Huffer’s truck mode, which, funny enough, makes it work better for a character that’s not Huffer.

Sculptwise, there’s a ton of little details on the front of his cab, including running lights, door handles, and windshield wipers. The back’s a bit more indistinct, though, and suffers from that classic Optimus Prime problem of pretty clearly being composed of collapsed robot leg and torso, with wheels and taillights tacked on. Generally, they’re aiming for a more realistic look, over the chibified design of the iGear version.

One thing about him that feels a bit off as a homage is his choice of colors. The G1 version of Erector had a sort of proto-G2 look to his colors, a bright mixture of yellow-orange, pinkish red, and grey, and the iGear version hit this color mixture dead-on. Masterpiece Shafter, on the other hand, opts for a paler, more neutral yellow, clear windows that are tinted reddish, and a whole bunch of silvery chrome parts. It’s a strange choice, because in some ways, it’s less gaudy and more grounded, but in other ways (namely the chrome), much more gaudy. Outside of the main colors, he’s incredibly well-painted, with bits of black, silver, and red, and details like his headlights, door handles, and wheel rims being properly colored in.

Between the sculpt and the colors, I’m not sure it works as an Erector update as well as the smaller one. It feels more like a looser homage, like older Universe 2.0 and Generations 1.0 repaints from the 2008-2010 era, where they’d take the basic idea of a character (often a micromaster, too), and slap the color scheme onto a Unicron Trilogy mold. That being said, if we forget about who it’s supposed to be, this Construction Truck Character feels like they could slot in with other transformers as someone new.

In terms of build quality, Shafter does have one major stability issue in the form of the bed of his truck, formed from his legs, though it comes with a strange solution. The truck bed is really loose and saggy, and will sink and come undone, unless you plug his two weapon accessories into the places I showed earlier, where they act as literal linchpins to keep him together. It’s a weird solution to a weird problem, but that’s not all that’s strange about Shafter.

It’s the materials and handfeel where things get odd, and perhaps speaks a bit to my own limited experience with Third Party figures. We all know what a Generations figure feels like, or what a Masterpiece figure feels like, and most of the Third Party figures I’ve handled over the years try to pass as one or the other, to varying levels of success. But this version of Shafter feels different. Between the plastic quality, the chromed components, and a certain hollowness to his cab, he feels somewhere between a knockoff, and a sandbox construction-toy vehicle. That being said, I don’t mean this in a bad way, as he’s still had a lot of thought put into his build and engineering. It’s just different, and between his release, and X-Transbot’s later figure, Arkose, things obviously changed to be more Takara-adjacent. I’m still not really a fan of his chrome, though. As a material, it feels weird, and I worry about it chipping. Regular plastic with shiny paint is the way to go.

Transformation

Getting Shafter into his robot mode is pretty easy, if a bit unusual. You’re basically just unfolding the legs, getting the arms out of the cab, and getting the cab’s shell out of the way. The unusual bit is the soundscape of squeaking plastic that occurs when you pull out and adjust the legs and feet, nothing like what you’d hear on a first-party figure. On mine, one of those legs initially collapsed incredibly tightly, and required a lot of force to extend out, but seems to have loosened up.

It’s getting it back to truck mode that’s hard, simply because I always forget the specific way that you need to fold and align the arms so that they cram back into the cab. Once you properly line them up, the whole thing slides back in just fine. Here’s a pic, more for my own reference than anything:

Also, there’s a tiny bit of partsforming, in that you have to remove Shafter’s smokestacks and stash them on his robot arms.

Robot Mode

Still standing around Voyager-class height, Masterpiece Shafter makes for a much more streamlined, humanoid robot than the squat iGear one, and when it comes to Huffer-accuracy, is definitely aiming more for “detailed re-interpretation” than “slavish Sunbow replica” like his smaller predecessor.

It’s still undeniably Huffer, though, with his pipe-arms, big backpack, and everything. Right out of the gate, one thing this sculpt does better is ensure that his backpack-hood is far back enough that I can actually get at his head. At the same time, though, he’s got a huge gap of empty space behind his torso (which, itself, is really just a chestplate), and the sculpt doesn’t really make any attempt to hide it, which is a bit unsightly from most angles.

The mixture of Shafter’s colors, while still mostly pale yellow, has changed a bit in this form. His almost-totally-chromed arms are a big point of focus, and he’s got some reddish accents and some flat grey added to break that yellow up. Like in his vehicle mode, I don’t know if he works as Erector, but he sure does fit in with the other construction-themed Autobots.

When it comes to handfeel, though, a whole bunch of construction issues rear their head. Firstly, Shafter’s hips are very loose, which combine with his big backpack to make him start to tilt backwards very easily.

Standing him up straight was a balancing act, until I figured out that I could tilt his ankle joints forwards, subtly leaning his legs diagonally in to adjust his center of gravity. Putting some floor polish on those hips might help fix him up, but I’d need to unscrew his pelvis to get it done.

Next up is his shoulders, in particular, his right one. They’re constructed oddly in that they seem to stay on their ball joints okay, but if you do anything odd with them (like the acrobatics required for transformation), they tend to pop off. At least they go back on very easily. Finally, the head likes to flop around if positioned too far sideways, thanks to that gappy area behind the torso. Combine all of that with the chrome and other materials, and you have a figure that feels extremely janky, like an early attempt at imitating the official designs that didn’t quite work out.

Outside of his stability issues from his hips and backpack, Shafter’s poseability is suitably Masterpiece-grade at least, including jointed ankles, a swivelling waist, swivelling wrists, grasping hands, the works.

So, Shafter’s got two headsculpts, based on Huffer’s show and toy heads. Back when I reviewed iGear Shafter, I said the era it came out in was a time when Third Party headsculpts could be a bit iffy, but it managed to avoid that. Not so with this version! Something about the shape of the face, the flat, drawn-on mouth, and the whole vibe of it just looks kind of off.

Luckily, you can swap it for a mouthplate-and-visor face that looks a lot nicer, even if it’s less Erector-esque. Unluckily, it’s really difficult to swap these faces. You’re supposed to slide out the panel in the middle of his forehead, and rotate his face, but both of these steps are incredibly stuff and incredibly difficult to pull off. Eventually, I popped the head off the balljoint, and used metal tweezers to get it done. The other problem here is that both faces are covered in red paint, and as a result, I wound up scraping the paint clean off the humanoid face’s chin. Luckily, it was a symmetrical scrape, so he’s got a goatee now. Still, I think I’ll leave it on the moutplated face going forward, and never rotate it again.

For accessories, Shafter is armed with two pistols, sculpted to resemble the kind of generic G1 Cartoon weapon Bumblebee and others use. They’re also cast entirely in chrome, like his arms. They fit in his hands nice and snug, using the same system as a lot of Takara Masterpieces, a peg on the handle, a hole in the palm, and a tightly-closed hand to seal it up.

Normally, the altmode’s removable smokestacks hang out on Shafter’s forearms, but you can also remove them, and clip them into the sides of one of his guns, to make it a bit more mean-looking.

One last thing that specifically helped my enjoyment: Vangelus’s old video review of this guy suggested an alternate transformation of the backpack, based on Stax, the Pipes-themed retooling of the mold. Basically, you rotate and install the backpack in a position that’s further back, making less of a hood.

I think this is actually a significant improvement, because visually, there isn’t a big empty hole behind his head, and it hides the fact that his torso is completely empty a bit better. Plus, it stops his balljointed head from flopping around too badly. And if the holes for installing the smokestacks bug you, you can just pop them back in on either side of his head.

Overall

Here’s what it comes down to: The toy historian in me finds this figure very interesting, both from the angle of it being an earlier Third Party figure, and the angle of it being an old exclusive from a beloved convention of mine. I knew what to expect going in, but still, there’s a lot of early-Third-Party jank with this figure.

The chrome bits, the weird handfeel and design, the hollow robot mode, the points of instability, all of it makes it hard to recommend on its own merits to the modern-day collector, especially when I know firsthand that later X-Transbots releases turned out a lot nicer, and when a smaller version of the concept exists that is legitimately great on its own merits.

That being said, I find all of these problems and points of weirdness to be interesting, and I like it as a historical curiosity piece. Outside of that, it looks good, but doesn’t handle too well, so I can only recommend it if you have the same narrow set of interests in it that I do.