Originally written August 2020.
I’ve said this in a few other reviews, but one of my favorite bits of Transformers fiction is IDW’s More than Meets The Eye comics, and its sequel series, Lost Light, an offbeat, comi-tragic tale of the crew of the titular starship Lost Light, made up of familiar faces, d-listers, and new characters, as they jammed through the cosmos on a vaguely-defined quest. I’m not the only one, as it picked up some legitimate industry awards during its run, and as a result, there’s been a lot of demand in the collecting world for representations of the characters as they appeared in the comic’s pages.
Rung was an original character, created by series author James Roberts, and made into a central member of the ship’s cast. He was, by Transformers standards, pretty unique: A psychologist to the traumatized Autobot warriors, who was mild-mannered, meek, peaceful, and a collector of model starships. He changed into a strange rod with a light on the end, of unknown purpose and use, even to himself, plus he had this odd quirk where people often forgot his name.
The mysteries around the character are central to the series, and his popularity stoked demand for merchandise, of which there was none, even in the third-party world (2021 update: That’s changed, thanks to Mastermind Creations taking a crack at him), mostly thanks to his unorthodox altmode. Transformers: Siege found a solution, though, reimagining him as a Battle Master, one of the line’s miniature weapon-forming partners. Unfortunately, he was also released in the final wave of the line, and was hard to find in stores, barely showing up in Canada. Luckily, Hasbro’s become more active when it comes to combating bad distribution (which, for the record, is the fault of retailers, not the company), and just straight-up re-released some late-end Siege figures in Earthrise, including Rung. That’s the version I got, though he is identical to the Siege release. So, let’s have a look at this tiny little psychologist.
Robot Mode
Rung’s the same size as most other humanoid Battlemasters in Siege and Earthrise, which is the same scale as old-school Legends minifigures.
This means he’s much, much smaller than the normal-sized he’s been portrayed as in IDW’s comics.
That being said, the sculpting on this guy is 100 percent meant to be accurate to his IDW comics appearances, and the amount of faithfulness in the detail is astounding. It’s not just the big things, like his chest, glasses, and really pronounced eyebrows, but the subtler things, like the specific details on his arms and legs, and the little antenna on the right side of his head. Whoever designed this figure feels like a fan.
Speaking of his headsculpt, his expression looks curiously angry for a character who was normally much meeker. I actually find it kind of funny. Someone must have broken one of his model ships.
In terms of proportions, the actual Rung of the comics is a lot thinner than this figure, and doesn’t have the large backpack, but those concessions are expected on a transforming figure at this small of a scale.
For colors, he’s mostly orange, with bits of grey, yellow and blue to pick out details, especially on the face. It more or less follows his color breakdown in the comics, though with some omissions for budget, mainly his lower arms, feet and ears. But, importantly, he doesn’t look underpainted.
Naturally, he’s not the most articulated figure, thanks to his size, but he’s got more poseability than I expected. His shoulders are on unrestricted ball joints, letting him freely shake his fist in a way that combines well with his angry face nicely. He’s also got ball jointed hips, and, most surprisingly, a twistable waist, despite not needing it for his transformation. It’s not a lot, but good enough to get some decent poses out of him, and his oddly-shaped, clampy feet keep him stable in all of them, despite his backpack.
Transformation
Like most Battlemasters, he’s really, really basic. Flip his backpack over his head, swing his arms up and clip them into the backpack, peg his legs together, and you’re done!
Weapon/Tool/Mysterious Object mode
Rung’s alternate mode tended to not have a consistent design in the comics, so when it comes to this plastic rendition, it was allowed a bit more creative interpretation. And it gets the broad strokes right, in that it’s a nondescript rod with a circle on the end.
I really wish the paint budget had allowed that circle to be painted blue, though, since that was always the one consistent feature the mode had, regardless of design changes.
For Siege, to justify this alternate mode, he’s been re-imagined as a weapon to be held by other robots, a “cerebral circuit scanner” according to the toy lore, appropriate for his function as psychologist. This means that he’s got a peg on the bottom of this mold for larger figures to hold, or mount.
Unfortunately, it’s a bit farther forward on him than I’d like, meaning the back of this mode juts out a lot, so most figures have to handle him with straight arms, instead of bent elbows, or, if it’s a smaller figure, handle him like some kind of Psychology Bazooka.
Speaking of that, he’s got two effect parts that you can mount on the end of this mode, transparent blue rubbery things that are made to look like energy blasts, but their shape and color make me think more of solid crystals instead. The fact that the connectors on the end let them be held in the hands of most Siege and Earthrise figures certainly helps.
Also, while it’s probably not intentional, you can still bend his hip joints in this form, letting the end of the device aim up and down, independently of the wielder.
Overall
This is one of those figures that’s notable mostly for existing, as no one really expected Rung to get any merchandise, yet here he is. On the other hand, I suppose this figure’s a little bit of a monkey’s paw, in that he’s also wildly out of scale with his More Than Meets The Eye contemporaries.
Still, a lot of love clearly went into his design and engineering, and re-imagining him as a Battlemaster is a clever way of handling him. Certainly, he’s the best of the (admittedly small amount of) Battlemasters I’ve handled, and considering how small and cheap he is (particularly now that he’s available on store shelves again,) I’d still wholeheartedly recommend picking one up, both for the novelty of him existing, but also because he’s just a good execution of the concept.
For over 100 Bot, Non-Bot, and Retro Bot Reviews, click here to view my archive.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks