Dave's Titans Return Rant: Legends Seaspray

[Dave Van Domelen]

Dave's Transformers Rant: Titans Return Legends wave 5

Seaspray (hovercraft)
Cosmos (redeco of earlier Cosmos, not reviewed)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/LegendR5

Apparently Hasbro felt there was a market for the T30 Cosmos mold and
brought it back into circulation. No Payload, and they did slightly change
the plastic colors (for instance, the head is now red plastic rather than
white plastic, since there's no Payload to need white plastic). Since I
already have two copies of that mold (original and Scrounge) I passed on this
one.

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/Legend3 - Cosmos review


CAPSULE

$10-11 price point.

Seaspray: A good update of the G1 design, recommended.

Cosmos: Original was recommended, and if you don't already have it (it
was kinda hard to find at the time) it's worth picking up this one.


RANT

Packaging: Same as previous few waves of Legends.


AUTOBOT: SEASPRAY
Assortment: C2399
Titan Master: None
Altmode: Hovercraft
Transformation Difficulty: 8 steps
Previous Name Use: G1, G2 (RotF one was Sea Spray)
Previous Mold Use: None
Weapon: Missile Launcher
Function: Naval Defense
Motto: "None shall pass."

No DECEPTICON can get past the naval defenses of SEASPRAY.

STR 3 SPD 6 INT 9 FRB 6

One point smarter than G1, otherwise the same stats. (Aside: I love how
the original techspec writers didn't get that he was a HOVERCRAFT, and
specified that he had wheels for limited land mobility.)

Packaging: 5 ties on the robot, 1 on the missile box. His big clompy
feet are splayed out sideways to fit in the blister.
Notably, the pseudo-painted art on the top of the card front is of
vehicle mode, not robot mode as is the usual way (Gnaw being another
exception). The trading card also has the vehicle mode on it, rather than
robot mode. Makes sense, why commission two pieces of art for a Legends
figure?

Robot Mode: Back in 2010, "Hunt For The Decepticons" Sea Spray went for
the "Let's take the basic idea of a hovercraft Transformer and make it
badass." And it was good, to the point of being Strongly Recommended. So
there's not much point trying to outdo or redo that, especially since the
Minibots are getting done at Legends size now. So they went the "G1 with
articulation" route, down to the doofy big feet and semi-cylindrical arms.
Very similar to the "Spray/MANATEE" 3P mold, but with a boxier torso because
of the Titan Master driver compartment. Oddly, the head mold isn't really
exactly any G1 version...not quite the G1 toy, not quite the G1 animation
model. The coloring is more like the G1 comic if you assume the blue upper
face was "blue for black" coloring. Unlike the G1 Minibot, he has a
detachable hand-held weapon, but it lacks the flexibility of Brawn's weapon.
3.5" (9cm) tall at the head, with the propellers behind the head rising
up a little bit above that (the strut with the propellers is not as tall as
on the G1 toy). The color scheme is blue, white, and yellow with some red
accents. White plastic for most of the torso box, the head, the belt front,
and the handheld weapon. The top of the torso (including the propeller
struts), the pelvis, and the legs are made of golden yellow plastic. The
feet, arms, propellers, and a sort of butt-pack part on the torso are
medium-dark blue plastic. The upper arms, the heel backs, and the propellers
are a slightly different kind of plastic (more flexible?) and took the dye a
little differently, with a less gloss surface.
The head is dipped in golden yellow paint (so-so match) and then the
upper face painted sloppily black. The front of the weapon (which looks like
a missile launcher box) is painted red. Red on silver Autobot symbols are
printed on the top of the wespon and on the bellybutton area of the robot.
Details are printed in red, silver, blue, and yellow on the abdomen to
emulate G1 Seaspray's stickers. The hovercraft front windows are painted
black, and there's white paint on some of the details on the feet. The eyes
are painted metallic blue over the black upper face stripe, but it's almost
invisible unless held under strong light.
The head can turn, but not easily due to being blocked in by the
strutwork. No waist articulation. Ball joint shoulders, elbows, and hips.
Mid-thigh swivels, hinge knees. There's transformation joints in the ankles,
but they're blocked from doing more than wiggling. The entire top of the
torso is on a hinge to swing open, but there isn't enough room in this mode
for a Titan Master to sit inside.
The hands can hold 5mm pegs, but not as through-holes, and they're a
little tight. There's a 3mm peg hole for stands at the bottom of the
backpack. Rather than use standard pegs, the hand weapon uses a trio of thin
tabs, one of which goes into a slot on the top of either wrist. The other
two tabs are for helping stabilize it in its position on the chest. If
placed there in robot mode, it looks like he has a pot belly. I can't find
any way to store the weapon otherwise.

Transformation: The torso has a box within a box, and the inner box
shares the hinge with the yellow top piece. The entire inner box swings up,
while the arms lift up and peg to either side. A little panel on the sternum
flips up to cover the robot face. Hoverskirt segments on the backs of the
heels fold open to let the legs fold up inside the boots. Finally, place the
missile box onto the top (the sternum plate must be swung up before placing
the weapon).

Vehicle Mode: It's a big hovercraft ferry, as in G1, although some of
the vehicle bits are shuffled around. The white bit of the topside extends
farther forward and the legs are significantly less visible. The front end
is a truncated rectangle (part of an octagon shape) rather than the
triangular front of the G1 toy.
3.75" (9.5cm) long, and based on the molded doors I'm guessing it's
about 5mm scale, or 1:400. That would make it 38 meters long at scale, which
is in the neighborhood of existing passenger ferry hovercraft that I checked
on Wikipedia. Near as I can tell, neither G1 nor the new Seaspray is
particularly like any real hovercraft, although the pointed front of the G1
version is closer to an MVPP5 used in Japan.
No particular articulation and no wheels on the underside. The
propellers spin freely, and the 3mm peg hole is at the rear bottom.
The instructions do not mention the Titan Master passenger
accomodations, but there is an intended way to do this. The yellow top of
torso chunk just flips up and now there's room for a Titan Master inside the
torso box, either as a head (more secure this way) or a robot. There's a
little hole behind Seaspray's head that lets the top of the Titan Master head
poke through, and it can take a little jiggling to get things to line up.
Alternately, the blue underside of the torso box is merely pegged on and can
be removed to let you insert a Titan Master with its head directly into the
roof hole, then closed back up. (This removable piece does not seem to serve
any purpose as an accessory.)

Overall: Well worth getting, and as an owner of MANATEE I can say that
this mold outdoes the 3P in pretty much every way. It just took Hasbro
getting around to putting in the effort, I guess.


Dave Van Domelen, picked up the new movie Voyager Optimus the other day
because the price finally dropped to something more sensible than $30.

[Zobovor]

On Sunday, June 11, 2017 at 12:47:08 AM UTC-6, Dave Van Domelen wrote:

> I love how the original techspec writers didn't get that he was a HOVERCRAFT,
> and specified that he had wheels for limited land mobility.

The G1 toy had wheels, so I expect that's why.


Zob (of course, so did Bombshell, Swoop, Scourge...)