Bot Reviews: Transformers: Legacy Voyager Inferno

It’s been almost two years since I posted my review of Kingdom Rattrap, and as of right now, we’ve reached the end of a long, slow journey, because with the release of this guy, Legacy Inferno, the entire cast of the first season of Beast Wars has been updated.

The younger me who watched that show would be over the moon to have the complete set of characters, something I didn’t even have back in the day, much less versions of them that are show-accurate and show-scaled like these ones are.

Inferno’s a good one to end this collection on, because he was the final character introduced in the show’s first season, making a strong impression, and coming into his own in the following two years.

Born out of a crashed Stasis Pod, Inferno had faulty programming, believing himself to actually be an ant, and eventually, worshiped the Predacon base as his colony, and Megatron as his Queen (much to Megs’s consternation). But what really made him fun was how unhinged he was. He was unpredictable, wild, bestial, loud, and fond of burning things.

He was a simple character, but a fun one, and his fanaticism would earn him the rank of second-in-command of the Predacons, after the departure of the much-less-interesting Scorponok.

Inferno’s original Mega-class toy, pictured above,  was a notorious shelf-warmer back in the day, not due to being bad, but due to shipping in solid cases of only him. I had one, and enjoyed it, but, see, they decided to make him almost entirely out of translucent plastic, so mine shattered and broke a long time ago (if any cranks who think clear plastic is an automatic death sentence are reading, no it’s not, but making a figure mostly out of it is, eventually. He lasted a long time, though).  More importantly, his 90’s toy commercial (which also advertised Cybershark) came out at just the right time to get burned into my mind, and even before looking it up on Youtube, I recalled the silly phrases (FROM INSECT TO HIGH-TECH), and the fact that they tried to act like he had somewhere between three-to-four modes. Check it out, it’s Important Media:

Maybe it’s because that original figure was a shelf-warmer, but this Legacy version is actually the first time he’s received a true, proper update since the original. So, not only am I eager to finish off my season one cast, I’m eager to get a more durable version of this figure that I loved.

Robot Mode

Inferno’s a tall Voyager, standing slightly higher than the Earthrise Grapple tooling. Internet photos reveal he’s the same height as the original 90’s release, too.

Inferno’s a fairly standard beast-former design, meaning he has his alternate mode’s head on his chest, and his insect abdomen on his backside, like Waspinator. While his sculpt doesn’t immediately make him look bulky, he takes up a lot of real estate thanks to his bug legs, and rear-mounted turbine. More on that later.

The original figure wasn’t bad in terms of show-accuracy, but this sculpt manages to look so much more like the television design. More importantly, he looks mean and frantic, like he should be. He’s a really characterful presence in-person.

Funny enough, he’s actually got too many insect legs on him. He has fake ones sculpted into his robot legs to imitate the animation, which in turn was imitating where a set of them ended up on the original figure. Meanwhile he’s got two hanging off each arm (he used to only have one, but the extra set presumably had to go somewhere), and two hanging off his waist, so he seems like an arachnid instead of an insect.

Speaking of those waist-mounted legs, the instructions and stock photography want you to make them point downwards, while I pointed them upwards across his back, because it matches his animated series design better, and keeps them out of the way of his abdominal turbine.

Unfortunately, those legs are his one structural problem, as all three (real) pairs like to bump into each other, and it can be a challenge to get them out of the way when moving his arms. Still, between the ones on his wrist swiveling, and the ones on his upper arms pivoting, you’ve got options about where they go.

Uptop, he’s got a really nice headsculpt, one that looks like it leapt off the screen. He has his big, toothy jaw, his ant-antenna, his wide eyes, and even includes lightpiping, something the original didn’t even have.

Around back, you’re supposed to leave his insect thorax split into four segments to turn it into his flying turbine, but on the show, it was frequently closed, and you can still do so on this version.

The lower chunk of the abdomen kind of sinks in, though, because it’s fake kibble that’s unnecessary for his actual bug mode, and is a bit small so that it can fold away. Meanwhile, you can spread out and open all four segments to make his spinning “fan,” but again, it can be a bit of a challenge to get his ant-legs out of the way to do so.

The left and right “blades” in the fan, in particular, feel like they should be able to click out a little further than they actually can, and trying to put them where it feels like they should go will make them spring back inwards.

Modern mainline Transformers don’t work this way, but he feels like he was gang-molded with the concurrently released Transmetal II Megatron, because he’s similarly made of red plastic. Comparing them side-by-side, though, Inferno’s a bit brighter, and more orange, though Inferno pulls the same trick of having a nice purple gradient on his back, and just a light dusting of the same purple on his thorax.

His main secondary color is a really nice, deep, silvery metallic blue that pops against the red. He’s also got bits of brown, black, purple, and a bit of clear blue on his insect eyes, and clear red for his robot-mode eyes. It’s a pretty nice color scheme, and something about the blue metallic colors against the red make me think of watching a fire burn wood into ash. Importantly, outside of his eyes, there isn’t one lick of transparent plastic on him.

I already griped about Inferno’s biggest build quality problems (his bug legs bumping each other, and his back wings not extending as much as they ought to). Beyond that, his insect-mode head likes to split in half a tiny bit unprompted, which is a part of his transformation, and I find myself constantly adjusting its antenna into their proper position (I might have goofed in some photos). But this is all minor stuff, the whole package feels really hefty and solid in your hands, which, like TM2 Megatron, is particularly impressive considering his size. The only hollow point on him is the back of his thighs, and they’ve turned that into a bit of design stylization with the sculpting.

Inferno can be a challenge to stand, though, because he’s back-heavy, with his giant abdomen. It’s not, like, Thrilling 30 Deluxe Windblade bad (the nadir of not being able to stand up), though, just “I have to think about balancing him, because it’s not automatically guaranteed.”

And I do think about it, because Inferno’s got a LOT of articulation. Because of his transformation, he has double-elbows and double-knees, so they’re extra bendy.

He’s got ankles, wrists, a waist, the works. His bug legs might get in the way, but like I said earlier, they all have joints, too. Importantly, Inferno’s got some special articulation that feels like a gimmick: The blades on his big rear-mounted fan can spin. Granted, the original toy had them geared to a lever you could push, you have to just do it with your hand now, once the legs are out of the way, but I appreciate that they left it in.

And even more importantly, he’s got a movable jaw! You lift his head up to do it, and it can open wide. Considering his propensity to yell and scream, this is an incredibly appropriate choice. And on top of that, not only does he have lightpiping, he has mouth-piping. It’s incredibly characterful.

For accessories, Inferno has a four-barrelled gun, cast mostly in clear red, that he can hold nicely.

I was initially confused, since it doesn’t resemble his show weapon, and then the Wiki pointed out, oddly, it’s his thruster from his big turbine, a missing detail that I didn’t clock until then. Still, it looks good and threatening, and the four ports can all hold blast effects, though good luck getting them fit without bumping each other.

Meanwhile, you can mount the weapon inside his turbine if you want, to serve its original purpose, though that leaves him weaponless, and I didn’t miss the thruster there, largely because the port where it’s supposed to go can also house blast effects.

Speaking of that, Inferno’s lousy with 5-millimeter War for Cybertron weapons ports. Like I said, you can mount an effect part in his turbine instead of the thruster, and speaking of that thruster, it’s oddly got a port on either side of it, letting you use it as the base of a larger weapon. He’s also got ports on his elbows, legs, and beneath his feet.

I guess with the Weaponizer system being given a new lease on life with the upcoming Legacy Junkion figures, this simple yet effective feature is here to stay (which means I’m going to stop calling it the War for Cybertron system, as it’s probably going to live long past that trilogy.)

Transformation

This is a good one, complicated enough to keep your attention, but basic enough to remember the finer points of. Basically, you flip his head up, put his arms into the chest-space where the head was, compress and rotate his legs, and fit the thorax around it. Outside of the head-swap, it’s surprisingly quite a different transformation from the original, mostly in the name of making a better ant mode.

Importantly, he’s got no issues, everything works, everything makes sense. And, as a neat bonus, cracking open his ant head exposes sculpted detail only visible during transformation.

Ant Mode

Inferno’s even more red in this mode, and his exposed skin shows off that purple gradient very well. This guy’s got some real creepy-crawly energy. The sculpt is kinda horrifying, but also kinda cute? I think it’s in the big blue eyes.

Either way, it feels like the kind of sculpt you’d see on a rubber dollar-store bug toy, and I mean this is a complimentary way. That, or a giant ant in an old creature-feature.

Either way, it’s good looking, and still impressively big for a Voyager, again, too

The biggest sculpt issue is that his abdomen is a bit kibbly, thanks to the big mass of his folded-up robot legs being pretty plainly visible.

The rest is pretty clean, though. And the big trick of the transformation was to give him legs that didn’t have visible robot limbs on them like the original 90’s figure, so I’d say this is an overall improvement on that one’s ant mode. I particularly love the chitenous skin sculpted into him, and the vicious double-mandibles.

His insect legs, again, can be a challenge, with this mode’s version being getting all six of them to touch the ground. The big issue is that none of them have any joints, save for where they attach to the body, with those joints all being on separate, different axes of motion. Specifically, his back legs have two forward-and-backward swivels, the middle ones swing in and out, and the front ones go up and down, curving inwards. So, getting them to level out is tough. On the other hand, he doesn’t even need to be on all six of them to stay standing. Still, after Blackarachnia and Tarantulas came with ball-jointed legs, it’s something I miss here, especially because his articulation is pretty nil outside of that.

Inferno’s head raises and lowers, his mandibles can chomp, and that’s about it, though there’s some fun to be had getting those mandibles to chomp down on stuff.

Still, he has shelf presence, and the mission statement seems to be to focus on the visuals. His only other feature is that you can mount his gun on his back, and I think it makes him look like an enemy in a video game.

Overall

There’s a lot of little flaws here, but the whole package still comes out really good. Inferno looks great in his show-accurate robot mode and buggy ant mode. His articulated jaw (in both modes!) and sculpt communicate his loud, aggressive, wild personality really well. His biggest flaws are his irritating insect legs in both modes, and, I guess, abstractly, I’m missing some of the gimmicks of the original. But you get a figure that looks great (and accurate) poses well, feels solid, and won’t crumble to pieces in a few years (I think?).

This makes him into an overall solid recommendation, and a great way to finish off my Beast Wars updates. Here’s hoping they do season 2 and 3 in their entirety, as they’ve done a few characters already. If they make ‘em, I’ll grab ‘em!

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