info
Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
Zob's Thoughts on the Impossible Toys TRNS-03 "Alicon" (Quintesson Guard)
19 views
Skip to first unread message
Zobovor
Apr 19, 2016, 8:00:15 PM4/19/16
to
Every so often, I'll go trolling for eBay listings for the various unofficial Transformers toys produced by third-party company Impossible Toys. I generally don't do third party stuff, but I've bought lots of Impossible Toys products because they are quite exceptional, and fill a specific gap in my collection. To date, I've gotten their small battery-powered light-up Kremzeek figure, the QUINT-03 Quintesson Leader toy, the five-faced QUINT-01 Quintesson Judge toy, their Nightbird action figure, and (prior to the Generations Arcee release) the TRNS-01 "Valkyrie" Arcee toy. (I am given to understand that they were working on an Alpha Trion figure and a giant-sized Guardian Robot action figure, but I don't know if they were ever released.)
The Quintesson Guards were one of the many crazy creatures encountered by Hot Rod and Kup in The Transformers: the Movie. They were the guys to whom Kup offered energon goodies, and with whom Hot Rod practiced the Universal Greeting. Like the Sharkticons, they lived on Quintessa and were likely the creations of the Quintessons, capable of transforming from robot mode to creature mode and back. The Sharkticons got more screen time, which is perhaps why Hasbro opted to make a toy in their likeness, but not these guys. (Officially, they were referred to only as Quintesson Guards, named so in "The Killing Jar," but some fans have taken to calling them Allicons, as in alligators. Impossible Toys deliberately misspells this term as they have with other names like Kremzeak, Alpha Traon, etc. perhaps not realizing it was never used officially by Hasbro.)
I always wanted the Impossible Toys version of this guy ever since I heard about its release, but the pricing on these things tends to fluctuate wildly (I got the Quintesson Judge for around $40 when it came out and now it tends to go for closer to $200-300). I offered the seller $25 for this toy and he accepted; I was surprised to find it was sealed in the box (I had assumed for the price that it was used).
The box is surprisingly large. It matches my memory of the size of the box for the G1 Predacons (and the Sharkticon named Gnaw), about 8" x 6" x 4". The TRNS nomenclature is obviously supposed to suggest the name Transformers, but in this case it's a retronym that allegedly stands for Transitional Robot Neural Soldiers. If the numbering scheme is any indication, this is their third transformable toy (TRNS-02 was a redeco of Arcee as the Paradron Medic).
Box biography: "Kill, crunch, and repeat." The Alicons were created to be big, brutal, and loyal to their masters, the Quint Judges. They exceeded all expectations afor what were to be simple guard drones. Now they are the personal body guards and executioners for their masters. Unlike their smaller Sharkbot predecessors, they have earned a reputation of terror that had taken a millennia for the Sharkbots to gain. Not as intelligent as the Sharkbots, the Alicons are easy to control and command. The few drones that have shown slightly higher intelligence abilities, have been repainted and made into a special Elite Class.
The rumors of the Alicons were whispered as myths, until a lone fembot named Valkyrie was caught in the middle of a Alicon raid. Captured and forced to see their brutality and lust for death, she knew her time was short. Thanks to a lone Medic, she was fixed and fought her way out, but the Medic was killed in the process. Now the galactic war means nothing. All that matters is preparing for the wraith [sic] that the Alicons will bring. A myth no one belives is coming, until they themselves are face to face with one.
Wow. I lost actual brain cells typing that.
Okay, onto the toy itself. It's satisfyingly large, the size of what we would call a Voyager-class toy today. He's about seven inches tall in robot mode, bigger by a fair margin than most of the Transformers: the Movie toys released in 1986 (and he positively towers over Gnaw). He's got 21 points of articulation, most of them in the arms and legs. His tail is also segmented and has six individual hinges, so that it can lay straight in creature mode but curve slightly when he's standing erect as a robot. All in all, he nicely matches the G1 toy aesthetic, except perhaps to say that he's actually much closer to his animated appearance than a theoretical 1986 toy of this guy would ever have gotten. Some of his joints are loose, which was a problem I had with Arcee and Nightbird. I may have to work on tightening them later.
He comes with two pronged spears that can be connected together to form a single weapon, using a separate connector piece that can be stored in his mouth in creature mode. The spears are very sharp and very pointy. Definitely not Hasbro-friendly.
The character's on-screen transformation is fairly simple (the creature head pops out of his chest and that's pretty much it), and the toy is not preposterously elaborate, nor does it need to be. Basically, you flip the creature head out, tuck away his robot arms, dig his skinny creature arms out of two opening panels in his backpack, and you're done. The nose of the creature flips up for robot mode in an attempt to emulate the "belt" he wears in robot mode. You do have to pop off two of his shoulder spikes in order to swing his robot arms together, and there doesn't seem to be anywhere to store them. I'm worried about losing them.
As an alligator (if this is indeed what he turns into; he could be a Crocticon, I suppose) his jaws open to reveal some very sharp Diaclone Grimlock style teeth. His creature-mode arms are fully articulated at the shoulders, elbows, and wrists, and he retains all leg articulation since his robot legs serve double-duty as his creature legs. In this form, he's about eleven inches long. His tail is disappointingly hollow, but the rest of the toy is pretty solid.
Overall, this is a really good attempt at capturing the look and feel of the character in three-dimensional form. It's more screen-accurate than I would have any right to expect, and it looks from all outward appearances like it could have come from the same toy like as Gnaw (though what he needs is some really cheesy and pointless consumer-applied stickers and maybe a rub symbol stuck asymmetrically somewhere on his back). He could really use some options for undercarriage parts storage (there was plenty of room under his tail for some clips or something to hold his spear pieces and the detachable shoulder spikes) but that's literally my only complaint about the toy.
Zob (off to shift the G1 reissue display around a bit now)
The Quintesson Guards were one of the many crazy creatures encountered by Hot Rod and Kup in The Transformers: the Movie. They were the guys to whom Kup offered energon goodies, and with whom Hot Rod practiced the Universal Greeting. Like the Sharkticons, they lived on Quintessa and were likely the creations of the Quintessons, capable of transforming from robot mode to creature mode and back. The Sharkticons got more screen time, which is perhaps why Hasbro opted to make a toy in their likeness, but not these guys. (Officially, they were referred to only as Quintesson Guards, named so in "The Killing Jar," but some fans have taken to calling them Allicons, as in alligators. Impossible Toys deliberately misspells this term as they have with other names like Kremzeak, Alpha Traon, etc. perhaps not realizing it was never used officially by Hasbro.)
I always wanted the Impossible Toys version of this guy ever since I heard about its release, but the pricing on these things tends to fluctuate wildly (I got the Quintesson Judge for around $40 when it came out and now it tends to go for closer to $200-300). I offered the seller $25 for this toy and he accepted; I was surprised to find it was sealed in the box (I had assumed for the price that it was used).
The box is surprisingly large. It matches my memory of the size of the box for the G1 Predacons (and the Sharkticon named Gnaw), about 8" x 6" x 4". The TRNS nomenclature is obviously supposed to suggest the name Transformers, but in this case it's a retronym that allegedly stands for Transitional Robot Neural Soldiers. If the numbering scheme is any indication, this is their third transformable toy (TRNS-02 was a redeco of Arcee as the Paradron Medic).
Box biography: "Kill, crunch, and repeat." The Alicons were created to be big, brutal, and loyal to their masters, the Quint Judges. They exceeded all expectations afor what were to be simple guard drones. Now they are the personal body guards and executioners for their masters. Unlike their smaller Sharkbot predecessors, they have earned a reputation of terror that had taken a millennia for the Sharkbots to gain. Not as intelligent as the Sharkbots, the Alicons are easy to control and command. The few drones that have shown slightly higher intelligence abilities, have been repainted and made into a special Elite Class.
The rumors of the Alicons were whispered as myths, until a lone fembot named Valkyrie was caught in the middle of a Alicon raid. Captured and forced to see their brutality and lust for death, she knew her time was short. Thanks to a lone Medic, she was fixed and fought her way out, but the Medic was killed in the process. Now the galactic war means nothing. All that matters is preparing for the wraith [sic] that the Alicons will bring. A myth no one belives is coming, until they themselves are face to face with one.
Wow. I lost actual brain cells typing that.
Okay, onto the toy itself. It's satisfyingly large, the size of what we would call a Voyager-class toy today. He's about seven inches tall in robot mode, bigger by a fair margin than most of the Transformers: the Movie toys released in 1986 (and he positively towers over Gnaw). He's got 21 points of articulation, most of them in the arms and legs. His tail is also segmented and has six individual hinges, so that it can lay straight in creature mode but curve slightly when he's standing erect as a robot. All in all, he nicely matches the G1 toy aesthetic, except perhaps to say that he's actually much closer to his animated appearance than a theoretical 1986 toy of this guy would ever have gotten. Some of his joints are loose, which was a problem I had with Arcee and Nightbird. I may have to work on tightening them later.
He comes with two pronged spears that can be connected together to form a single weapon, using a separate connector piece that can be stored in his mouth in creature mode. The spears are very sharp and very pointy. Definitely not Hasbro-friendly.
The character's on-screen transformation is fairly simple (the creature head pops out of his chest and that's pretty much it), and the toy is not preposterously elaborate, nor does it need to be. Basically, you flip the creature head out, tuck away his robot arms, dig his skinny creature arms out of two opening panels in his backpack, and you're done. The nose of the creature flips up for robot mode in an attempt to emulate the "belt" he wears in robot mode. You do have to pop off two of his shoulder spikes in order to swing his robot arms together, and there doesn't seem to be anywhere to store them. I'm worried about losing them.
As an alligator (if this is indeed what he turns into; he could be a Crocticon, I suppose) his jaws open to reveal some very sharp Diaclone Grimlock style teeth. His creature-mode arms are fully articulated at the shoulders, elbows, and wrists, and he retains all leg articulation since his robot legs serve double-duty as his creature legs. In this form, he's about eleven inches long. His tail is disappointingly hollow, but the rest of the toy is pretty solid.
Overall, this is a really good attempt at capturing the look and feel of the character in three-dimensional form. It's more screen-accurate than I would have any right to expect, and it looks from all outward appearances like it could have come from the same toy like as Gnaw (though what he needs is some really cheesy and pointless consumer-applied stickers and maybe a rub symbol stuck asymmetrically somewhere on his back). He could really use some options for undercarriage parts storage (there was plenty of room under his tail for some clips or something to hold his spear pieces and the detachable shoulder spikes) but that's literally my only complaint about the toy.
Zob (off to shift the G1 reissue display around a bit now)
0 new messages