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Zob's Thoughts on Titans Return Deluxe-Class Blurr, Hardhead, Skullsmasher, and Scourge
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Zobovor
Aug 16, 2016, 12:37:59 PM8/16/16
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Finally, FINALLY got my package from Big Bad Toy Store after what felt like many long days of the toys at work taunting me mercilessly. Somebody remind me to just be patient next time and wait to buy stuff when it shows up at the store!
Some general thoughts on the new Headmaster designs: While the original 1987 Nebulan mini-figures were about the size of Micromasters (indeed, I think the Micromaster toys were conceived as Nebulans, even if the fiction never reflected this), the 1988 Headmaster toys (dubbed "Headmaster Juniors" in Japan) were made at a smaller scale. The Titan Master mini-figures are closer in size to the 1988 heads, only with longer legs. The articulation is similar to the 1987 Headmasters, with joined legs that move in unison at the hips and knees, and arms that swing up (and pivot out slightly). The tiny heads are articulated, too, and since the head is what connects the transformed head to the Transformer body, this allows the Transformer head to swivel, too. Just about the only thing missing is the forehead flap that allows you to hide the large robot's face when it's on the mini-figure's back. Sadly, they are too large to fit inside conventional Diaclone cockpits.
Remember during the G1 days when Hasbro would always spend a little more money on the Autobot toys but they would cheap out on the Decepticon toys? For example, Autobot Powermaster engines were held together with metal bolts, but Decepticon Powermaster engines had snap-on parts. Well, they're doing it again. Blurr and Hardhead have mini-figures whose legs are held in place with a pin, but Skullsmasher and Scourge have mini-figures with snap-on legs. I find this really bothersome.
BLURR
I really was singularly disappointed with the last version of Blurr (the Generations toy that was a redeco of Drift). I never considered it a suitable update for the character, given the lousy head sculpt (remedied by doing a head swap with Cybertron Blurr) and the Earth-based vehicle mode (there was no saving that). This toy looks much more like the character as I've always envisioned him, and even the rather disingenuous Headmaster gimmick doesn't detract from my love of the toy. This is my favorite of the four, by far.
However, let's address the elephant in the room. The big, blue elephant. Blurr is very plain-looking. He's basically blue from head to toe, and it bugs me. The character, as originally conceived for The Transformers: the Movie, was multiple *shades* of blue. Light blue complemented by dark blue, you know. The 1986 Hasbro toy, which was based on this animation model, simplified things a bit but still at least got the multi-tone color scheme right. On this toy, Blurr's body and head and arms and fists and upper legs and feet are all the exact same shade of blue. His lower legs are indeed painted, but they're painted such a similar shade of blue (a semitone darker, as Basil Fawlty would say) that I almost wonder why they bothered! The silver squares on his lower legs with the red triangles are tampographs that evoke the consumer-applied stickers on the G1 toy, which is an authentic touch.
Blurr's got a detachable shield/hood that comes separate in the package, but you can leave it connected to him in both modes if you want (the instructions show it being already attached to him). If you're feeling especially Geewunnish you can have him hold it in his hand; I think the only reason Hasbro did this with the original toy was because they couldn't figure out how to get the hood tuck away for his robot mode).
For the G1 toy, you basically laid him down and folded him in half. On this edition, the legs turn into the back of the car so that the chest-mounted windshield reverses orientation. One design item of note was a pentagonal-shaped spot underneath his cockpit window which was clearly intended to have a painted Autobot symbol. This much is visible in the computer designs shown on his package, but the idea was abandoned for the final toy. The sensor pod, or whatever that thing is on top, is actually hidden inside one of his legs and flips out during transformation.
When transformed to vehicle mode, he really is a thing of beauty. Slightly smaller than the G1 edition, he actually evokes the Sunbow animation model better than the G1 version. This has Floro Dery styling all over it. It's also more stable than the G1 toy, because the side fenders (formed from the robot arms) tended to flop all over the place. There's also a lot more color contrast here, as the paint budget was clearly allocated to the car mode first and foremost.
Lots of functionality here. The cockpit opens to accommodate Hyperfire (ostensibly the new name for Haywire, or perhaps a different partner entirely). The gun for the robot mode (blue plastic that's painted silver except for the peg) can mount under the hood. Blurr's detachable shield can also function as a sort of tiny boat for Hyperfire, flipping it upside-down so he can sit inside of it (and a tiny little X-Wing Fighter style landing gear flips down). Blurr's gun can attach to it, too. The mini-vehicle can also connect to either of Blurr's fenders as a sidecar, which is preposterous but also kind of cool.
One design element that seems to be an entirely undocumented feature is the tiny pegs on Blurr's fenders that are designed to accommodate the peg-holes under Hyperfire's feet (or any Titan Master mini-figure). So, Hyperfire can stand unassisted on top of Blurr's fender if he wants to.
Hyperfire is a clear attempt to evoke the styling of the Haywire figure from 1987. He's blue instead of black and grey, though his arms are painted silver and the fronts of his lower legs are painted black in an attempt to evoke the old color mapping. One thing I love about the toy is that the little sensor pod thingy on the top of Blurr's head is retractable. It pokes up for robot mode, but when Hyperfire detached and transforms, it can tuck away. That's so awesome.
This is the new definitive Blurr toy as far as I'm concerned. I love that the shield is no longer such a fragility problem and I love the way the fenders lock in place. The functional cockpit window is great. The robot mode does need more paint, but at least Hasbro is cheaping out in ways that discerning consumers can correct (i.e., a fan can do some touch-ups with a bottle of Testors, but not much you can do for a cheaply-made toy manufactured from terrible plastic). It will make a slightly less successful Brainstorm toy (Blurr completely owns the vehicle mode) but as cost-saving redeco ideas go, it's not a terrible concept.
This wouldn't make a completely horrible Headmaster Arcee toy. With a new head and some modified robot-mode styling, I would happily accept it.
HARDHEAD
I never owned the original Hardhead toy per se, but I had a friend from sixth grade named Richie Sargo who owned it, and I borrowed it for a while. (I think I still have one of the guns, too. Oops.) Anyway, I don't have the G1 unit on hand to do a direct comparison, but it's a surprisingly faithful update. (All the original Headmasters were huge toys compared to the toys from the Diaclone days. Hardhead was the tallest of the four large-sized Autobot Headmasters by far, so while this edition is comparatively tiny, it's to scale with the other Deluxe-class toys (which is good, because I believe in uniformity in my 1980's toy homages).
The color mapping is extremely close to the 1987 toy; just about the only thing that seems out of place is the black hips, which were grey on the original toy. He's got random yellow and red patches on his pelvis, which are meant to evoke the consumer-applied labels, but it just looks odd to me.
His transformation is largely the same as the G1 version, only this toy has a few more tricks to account for the improved articulation of the robot limbs. Lots of parts that lock together satisfyingly. Amusingly, the spot where his robot head attaches ends up on the top front of the tank mode, so you can leave it in place if you want. They could totally sell this toy as Beast Machines Tankorr and it would have an authentic-looking Vehicon tank mode, complete with vehicle head.
He's only got one green gun, rather than the dual guns carried by all the original Autobot Headmasters. The vehicle mode only has one place to attach it, so a second gun would only be useful for the robot mode. His large grey gun is mounted on a hinged panel and is detachable. The panel to which it's attached can slide out to the side for robot mode, to create clearance for his robot head. The grey gun has a secondary cockpit inside so Furos (new name for Duros) can ride inside it. There's still the regular side cockpit, complete with orange canopy glass. Hardhead's got four foot-pegs for a Titan Master figurine to stand on, one above each of the four treads. Hardhead has three working wheels, which oddly are translucent orange because they were evidently on the same sprue as the canopy glass.
The face sculpt for Hardhead is closer to the look of the G1 toy styling, rather than the Scattershot-like face design used in the American cartoon. (The Takara version of this toy has a different face sculpt that more closely matches the alternate animation design used for the character in the 1987 Headmasters cartoon.) I would have preferred a more cartoon-centric looking face, but this isn't terrible. I've never been a huge fan of Hardhead (military vehicles were never really my thing) but this is a great homage.
SKULLSMASHER
It baffles me that somebody else, somewhere, is actually using the original name for Skullcruncher. I just can't imagine it being a useful and marketable name for, say, a golf club or a hiking backpack. I choose to believe it's not a trademark issue at all, and that Skullcruncher adopted the new name to seem more menacing. I will continue to use the old name to describe this character, and thus this toy, because of reasons.
So, this is a pretty faithful update. His colors are right, his design strongly evokes the 1987 toy, and his transformation is pretty much exactly the same. The gold paint on his face is authentic, but they painted the bridge of his nose, which separates his eyes. Instead of wearing black goggles, now he's just got eyes that are weirdly-spaced with respect to each other. A minor detail, but a bothersome one. Like Hardhead, the Takara toy has a different head sculpt that's a little closer to the animated version from the Headmasters show.
When you transform him, the robot shoulders touch each other and the alligator head connects to the shoulders, so his front alligator legs are kind of splayed out a bit. The gun for his robot mode hooks to the underside of his tail, so the gun barrel forms the tip of the tail. The front alligator claws pop off all too readily, which is annoying. Like Blurr's hood, the alligator head comes packaged separately, but you do not need to remove it for transformation. The way the tail attaches allows you to wag it from side to side a little. His rear alligator claws have painted toes to match the front claws, which is nice.
His alligator head is articulated on a ball joint and the jaw opens to reveal a mechanical-looking tongue. All his teeth are safe and rubbery, which probably means some Hasbro employee will start cutting them all off with scissors eventually. His trainer's cockpit has been shifted from his alligator head to his back. The flap is flimsy and rubbery and is made from the same stuff as his teeth, only painted green. He's got tampographs that look just like the factory-applied stickers on the sides of the G1 toy.
The instructions don't mention this but I suspect the tail is meant to serve as a mini-vehicle for Grax, since it's hollow and the inside nicely serves as a seat. There's also a swing-up post so Skullcruncher can hold it as a gun. There are only two mini-pegs for Titan Masters to stand on, one on each alligator front leg. There's also a peg-hole underneath Skullcruncher's alligator chin, but I can't seem to find a way to attach the alligator head to anything in a way that makes sense.
SCOURGE
As with Blurr, the last Scourge we got was pretty bad (his vehicle mode didn't look anything like the original Scourge), so I'm really happy that they came up with a more faithful version of him. There are a handful of design elements that are not my favorite, but this is definitely a more palatable version of him.
Like Blurr, he's extremely blue in robot mode. He's the same color from head to toe, with only his wings and the armor on the back of his legs providing any color contrast. The details on his chest and the fronts of his legs are almost perfect replicas of the stickers on the G1 toy. Of course, these details weren't present on Scourge's original animation model, and were random details added by Hasbro because there needed to be something on the stickers, because G1 toys had stickers. I wonder if the budget for paint would have been better spent painting his hands and his upper legs and abdomen. Also, no toy of Scourge has ever had the pink fingernails. It's like how we've never gotten a proper magenta-colored Hot Rod. Hasbro's afraid to do anything even remotely girly.
I recognize that this new Scourge is a functional Headmaster so of course his head is going to be more-or-less square-shaped. It bothers me moreso on him than on Blurr for some reason. His head really does look like a folded-up mini-figure. Obvious arms are obvious. Like Blurr, the blaster on the top of his head can retract slightly, which is great.
His transformation is a little wacky and definitely not what I expected. He's got this pelvis assembly that is normally hidden inside his body (using the empty space inside his body for the Titan Masters mini-figure cockpit), but which can telescope out to a ridiculous length for transformation, allowing you to tuck his legs together to form the front of the vehicle mode. Wings do their usual shellformery-type thing, and there's a faux vehicle-mode head on his back. (A representation of the gun that G1 Scourge had on the top of his head is included here. It's removable, but you can just leave it on his back if you want to.)
By the way, I love the styling for the faux head. It takes its cues directly from an early Floro Dery concept, in which Scourge's face is still suggested by the lines ofthe design (you can see evidence of the mouth and moustache). This would have been impossible to execute if this had been his actual robot head (it's like Kranix's head forming the entire front half of his starship mode) but here it's done beautifully.
His vehicle mode is clearly more directly inspired by the G1 design than the last version we got (that weird wing-shaped thing), but it's still a departure. The poky-out wings on either side seem so unnecessary. It's like Hasbro thinks kids won't accept that a hovercraft can fly if it doesn't have wings of some kind. Of course, the wings are so tiny I doubt they would help much. They would not be difficult for an enterprising fan to cut off, I suppose. I wish Hasbro had made them detachable parts. There are other aspects of the vehicle design I don't love (the way his robot leg panels form these weird, floppy pontoons, or the embedded thrusters that seem to take their cue from the 2011 toy) but it's still leaps and bounds better than the Generations edition.
The original Scourge didn't really seem to have any cockpit in evidence, so they just sort of invented one for this toy. The entire faux head assembly flips up to reveal a spot for Fracas to sit, and the semi-translucent canopy glass is tinted blue, so it's not overtly apparent. As with Blurr, there are lots of accessory options for Scourge, none of which seem to have made it into the instructions. Scourge comes with the aforementioned faux head-mounted gun as well as a larger dual-barreled weapon. It vaguely evokes the Targetmaster weapon of the 1987 toy. There's a spot for Fracas to sit inside the gun, sort of like how Hi-Q could sit inside the grey guns for Powermaster Optimus Prime. The dual-barreled gun can attach to his faux head, and the single-barreled gun can connect to it as well to give Fracas something to shoot. There's also a secondary peg-mount on the hood of the vehicle, which is closer to where Fracas connected to Scourge in the "Rebirth" cartoon episode. There are also dual peg-holes on either side of his vehicle mode. Scourge has two mini-pegs on his forward section for Titan Masters to stand.
Scourge has no wheels or landing gears of any kind (he does have two mounting points for a display stand, but it's not like he comes with one). And the canards still bother me. All in all, though, he's a pretty successful update.
Zob (still need to open Galvatron, and still waffling on whether I'm keeping Sentinel Prime or not)
Some general thoughts on the new Headmaster designs: While the original 1987 Nebulan mini-figures were about the size of Micromasters (indeed, I think the Micromaster toys were conceived as Nebulans, even if the fiction never reflected this), the 1988 Headmaster toys (dubbed "Headmaster Juniors" in Japan) were made at a smaller scale. The Titan Master mini-figures are closer in size to the 1988 heads, only with longer legs. The articulation is similar to the 1987 Headmasters, with joined legs that move in unison at the hips and knees, and arms that swing up (and pivot out slightly). The tiny heads are articulated, too, and since the head is what connects the transformed head to the Transformer body, this allows the Transformer head to swivel, too. Just about the only thing missing is the forehead flap that allows you to hide the large robot's face when it's on the mini-figure's back. Sadly, they are too large to fit inside conventional Diaclone cockpits.
Remember during the G1 days when Hasbro would always spend a little more money on the Autobot toys but they would cheap out on the Decepticon toys? For example, Autobot Powermaster engines were held together with metal bolts, but Decepticon Powermaster engines had snap-on parts. Well, they're doing it again. Blurr and Hardhead have mini-figures whose legs are held in place with a pin, but Skullsmasher and Scourge have mini-figures with snap-on legs. I find this really bothersome.
BLURR
I really was singularly disappointed with the last version of Blurr (the Generations toy that was a redeco of Drift). I never considered it a suitable update for the character, given the lousy head sculpt (remedied by doing a head swap with Cybertron Blurr) and the Earth-based vehicle mode (there was no saving that). This toy looks much more like the character as I've always envisioned him, and even the rather disingenuous Headmaster gimmick doesn't detract from my love of the toy. This is my favorite of the four, by far.
However, let's address the elephant in the room. The big, blue elephant. Blurr is very plain-looking. He's basically blue from head to toe, and it bugs me. The character, as originally conceived for The Transformers: the Movie, was multiple *shades* of blue. Light blue complemented by dark blue, you know. The 1986 Hasbro toy, which was based on this animation model, simplified things a bit but still at least got the multi-tone color scheme right. On this toy, Blurr's body and head and arms and fists and upper legs and feet are all the exact same shade of blue. His lower legs are indeed painted, but they're painted such a similar shade of blue (a semitone darker, as Basil Fawlty would say) that I almost wonder why they bothered! The silver squares on his lower legs with the red triangles are tampographs that evoke the consumer-applied stickers on the G1 toy, which is an authentic touch.
Blurr's got a detachable shield/hood that comes separate in the package, but you can leave it connected to him in both modes if you want (the instructions show it being already attached to him). If you're feeling especially Geewunnish you can have him hold it in his hand; I think the only reason Hasbro did this with the original toy was because they couldn't figure out how to get the hood tuck away for his robot mode).
For the G1 toy, you basically laid him down and folded him in half. On this edition, the legs turn into the back of the car so that the chest-mounted windshield reverses orientation. One design item of note was a pentagonal-shaped spot underneath his cockpit window which was clearly intended to have a painted Autobot symbol. This much is visible in the computer designs shown on his package, but the idea was abandoned for the final toy. The sensor pod, or whatever that thing is on top, is actually hidden inside one of his legs and flips out during transformation.
When transformed to vehicle mode, he really is a thing of beauty. Slightly smaller than the G1 edition, he actually evokes the Sunbow animation model better than the G1 version. This has Floro Dery styling all over it. It's also more stable than the G1 toy, because the side fenders (formed from the robot arms) tended to flop all over the place. There's also a lot more color contrast here, as the paint budget was clearly allocated to the car mode first and foremost.
Lots of functionality here. The cockpit opens to accommodate Hyperfire (ostensibly the new name for Haywire, or perhaps a different partner entirely). The gun for the robot mode (blue plastic that's painted silver except for the peg) can mount under the hood. Blurr's detachable shield can also function as a sort of tiny boat for Hyperfire, flipping it upside-down so he can sit inside of it (and a tiny little X-Wing Fighter style landing gear flips down). Blurr's gun can attach to it, too. The mini-vehicle can also connect to either of Blurr's fenders as a sidecar, which is preposterous but also kind of cool.
One design element that seems to be an entirely undocumented feature is the tiny pegs on Blurr's fenders that are designed to accommodate the peg-holes under Hyperfire's feet (or any Titan Master mini-figure). So, Hyperfire can stand unassisted on top of Blurr's fender if he wants to.
Hyperfire is a clear attempt to evoke the styling of the Haywire figure from 1987. He's blue instead of black and grey, though his arms are painted silver and the fronts of his lower legs are painted black in an attempt to evoke the old color mapping. One thing I love about the toy is that the little sensor pod thingy on the top of Blurr's head is retractable. It pokes up for robot mode, but when Hyperfire detached and transforms, it can tuck away. That's so awesome.
This is the new definitive Blurr toy as far as I'm concerned. I love that the shield is no longer such a fragility problem and I love the way the fenders lock in place. The functional cockpit window is great. The robot mode does need more paint, but at least Hasbro is cheaping out in ways that discerning consumers can correct (i.e., a fan can do some touch-ups with a bottle of Testors, but not much you can do for a cheaply-made toy manufactured from terrible plastic). It will make a slightly less successful Brainstorm toy (Blurr completely owns the vehicle mode) but as cost-saving redeco ideas go, it's not a terrible concept.
This wouldn't make a completely horrible Headmaster Arcee toy. With a new head and some modified robot-mode styling, I would happily accept it.
HARDHEAD
I never owned the original Hardhead toy per se, but I had a friend from sixth grade named Richie Sargo who owned it, and I borrowed it for a while. (I think I still have one of the guns, too. Oops.) Anyway, I don't have the G1 unit on hand to do a direct comparison, but it's a surprisingly faithful update. (All the original Headmasters were huge toys compared to the toys from the Diaclone days. Hardhead was the tallest of the four large-sized Autobot Headmasters by far, so while this edition is comparatively tiny, it's to scale with the other Deluxe-class toys (which is good, because I believe in uniformity in my 1980's toy homages).
The color mapping is extremely close to the 1987 toy; just about the only thing that seems out of place is the black hips, which were grey on the original toy. He's got random yellow and red patches on his pelvis, which are meant to evoke the consumer-applied labels, but it just looks odd to me.
His transformation is largely the same as the G1 version, only this toy has a few more tricks to account for the improved articulation of the robot limbs. Lots of parts that lock together satisfyingly. Amusingly, the spot where his robot head attaches ends up on the top front of the tank mode, so you can leave it in place if you want. They could totally sell this toy as Beast Machines Tankorr and it would have an authentic-looking Vehicon tank mode, complete with vehicle head.
He's only got one green gun, rather than the dual guns carried by all the original Autobot Headmasters. The vehicle mode only has one place to attach it, so a second gun would only be useful for the robot mode. His large grey gun is mounted on a hinged panel and is detachable. The panel to which it's attached can slide out to the side for robot mode, to create clearance for his robot head. The grey gun has a secondary cockpit inside so Furos (new name for Duros) can ride inside it. There's still the regular side cockpit, complete with orange canopy glass. Hardhead's got four foot-pegs for a Titan Master figurine to stand on, one above each of the four treads. Hardhead has three working wheels, which oddly are translucent orange because they were evidently on the same sprue as the canopy glass.
The face sculpt for Hardhead is closer to the look of the G1 toy styling, rather than the Scattershot-like face design used in the American cartoon. (The Takara version of this toy has a different face sculpt that more closely matches the alternate animation design used for the character in the 1987 Headmasters cartoon.) I would have preferred a more cartoon-centric looking face, but this isn't terrible. I've never been a huge fan of Hardhead (military vehicles were never really my thing) but this is a great homage.
SKULLSMASHER
It baffles me that somebody else, somewhere, is actually using the original name for Skullcruncher. I just can't imagine it being a useful and marketable name for, say, a golf club or a hiking backpack. I choose to believe it's not a trademark issue at all, and that Skullcruncher adopted the new name to seem more menacing. I will continue to use the old name to describe this character, and thus this toy, because of reasons.
So, this is a pretty faithful update. His colors are right, his design strongly evokes the 1987 toy, and his transformation is pretty much exactly the same. The gold paint on his face is authentic, but they painted the bridge of his nose, which separates his eyes. Instead of wearing black goggles, now he's just got eyes that are weirdly-spaced with respect to each other. A minor detail, but a bothersome one. Like Hardhead, the Takara toy has a different head sculpt that's a little closer to the animated version from the Headmasters show.
When you transform him, the robot shoulders touch each other and the alligator head connects to the shoulders, so his front alligator legs are kind of splayed out a bit. The gun for his robot mode hooks to the underside of his tail, so the gun barrel forms the tip of the tail. The front alligator claws pop off all too readily, which is annoying. Like Blurr's hood, the alligator head comes packaged separately, but you do not need to remove it for transformation. The way the tail attaches allows you to wag it from side to side a little. His rear alligator claws have painted toes to match the front claws, which is nice.
His alligator head is articulated on a ball joint and the jaw opens to reveal a mechanical-looking tongue. All his teeth are safe and rubbery, which probably means some Hasbro employee will start cutting them all off with scissors eventually. His trainer's cockpit has been shifted from his alligator head to his back. The flap is flimsy and rubbery and is made from the same stuff as his teeth, only painted green. He's got tampographs that look just like the factory-applied stickers on the sides of the G1 toy.
The instructions don't mention this but I suspect the tail is meant to serve as a mini-vehicle for Grax, since it's hollow and the inside nicely serves as a seat. There's also a swing-up post so Skullcruncher can hold it as a gun. There are only two mini-pegs for Titan Masters to stand on, one on each alligator front leg. There's also a peg-hole underneath Skullcruncher's alligator chin, but I can't seem to find a way to attach the alligator head to anything in a way that makes sense.
SCOURGE
As with Blurr, the last Scourge we got was pretty bad (his vehicle mode didn't look anything like the original Scourge), so I'm really happy that they came up with a more faithful version of him. There are a handful of design elements that are not my favorite, but this is definitely a more palatable version of him.
Like Blurr, he's extremely blue in robot mode. He's the same color from head to toe, with only his wings and the armor on the back of his legs providing any color contrast. The details on his chest and the fronts of his legs are almost perfect replicas of the stickers on the G1 toy. Of course, these details weren't present on Scourge's original animation model, and were random details added by Hasbro because there needed to be something on the stickers, because G1 toys had stickers. I wonder if the budget for paint would have been better spent painting his hands and his upper legs and abdomen. Also, no toy of Scourge has ever had the pink fingernails. It's like how we've never gotten a proper magenta-colored Hot Rod. Hasbro's afraid to do anything even remotely girly.
I recognize that this new Scourge is a functional Headmaster so of course his head is going to be more-or-less square-shaped. It bothers me moreso on him than on Blurr for some reason. His head really does look like a folded-up mini-figure. Obvious arms are obvious. Like Blurr, the blaster on the top of his head can retract slightly, which is great.
His transformation is a little wacky and definitely not what I expected. He's got this pelvis assembly that is normally hidden inside his body (using the empty space inside his body for the Titan Masters mini-figure cockpit), but which can telescope out to a ridiculous length for transformation, allowing you to tuck his legs together to form the front of the vehicle mode. Wings do their usual shellformery-type thing, and there's a faux vehicle-mode head on his back. (A representation of the gun that G1 Scourge had on the top of his head is included here. It's removable, but you can just leave it on his back if you want to.)
By the way, I love the styling for the faux head. It takes its cues directly from an early Floro Dery concept, in which Scourge's face is still suggested by the lines ofthe design (you can see evidence of the mouth and moustache). This would have been impossible to execute if this had been his actual robot head (it's like Kranix's head forming the entire front half of his starship mode) but here it's done beautifully.
His vehicle mode is clearly more directly inspired by the G1 design than the last version we got (that weird wing-shaped thing), but it's still a departure. The poky-out wings on either side seem so unnecessary. It's like Hasbro thinks kids won't accept that a hovercraft can fly if it doesn't have wings of some kind. Of course, the wings are so tiny I doubt they would help much. They would not be difficult for an enterprising fan to cut off, I suppose. I wish Hasbro had made them detachable parts. There are other aspects of the vehicle design I don't love (the way his robot leg panels form these weird, floppy pontoons, or the embedded thrusters that seem to take their cue from the 2011 toy) but it's still leaps and bounds better than the Generations edition.
The original Scourge didn't really seem to have any cockpit in evidence, so they just sort of invented one for this toy. The entire faux head assembly flips up to reveal a spot for Fracas to sit, and the semi-translucent canopy glass is tinted blue, so it's not overtly apparent. As with Blurr, there are lots of accessory options for Scourge, none of which seem to have made it into the instructions. Scourge comes with the aforementioned faux head-mounted gun as well as a larger dual-barreled weapon. It vaguely evokes the Targetmaster weapon of the 1987 toy. There's a spot for Fracas to sit inside the gun, sort of like how Hi-Q could sit inside the grey guns for Powermaster Optimus Prime. The dual-barreled gun can attach to his faux head, and the single-barreled gun can connect to it as well to give Fracas something to shoot. There's also a secondary peg-mount on the hood of the vehicle, which is closer to where Fracas connected to Scourge in the "Rebirth" cartoon episode. There are also dual peg-holes on either side of his vehicle mode. Scourge has two mini-pegs on his forward section for Titan Masters to stand.
Scourge has no wheels or landing gears of any kind (he does have two mounting points for a display stand, but it's not like he comes with one). And the canards still bother me. All in all, though, he's a pretty successful update.
Zob (still need to open Galvatron, and still waffling on whether I'm keeping Sentinel Prime or not)
Gustavo Wombat
Aug 27, 2016, 9:35:02 PM8/27/16
to
Zobovor <zm...@aol.com> wrote:
> Finally, FINALLY got my package from Big Bad Toy Store after what felt
> like many long days of the toys at work taunting me mercilessly.
> Somebody remind me to just be patient next time and wait to buy stuff
> when it shows up at the store!
>
> BLURR
> Finally, FINALLY got my package from Big Bad Toy Store after what felt
> like many long days of the toys at work taunting me mercilessly.
> Somebody remind me to just be patient next time and wait to buy stuff
> when it shows up at the store!
>
>
>
> However, let's address the elephant in the room. The big, blue elephant.
> Blurr is very plain-looking. He's basically blue from head to toe, and
> it bugs me. The character, as originally conceived for The Transformers:
> the Movie, was multiple *shades* of blue. Light blue complemented by
> dark blue, you know.
The color scheme is so far off I'm having trouble seeing this as Blurr. We
>
> However, let's address the elephant in the room. The big, blue elephant.
> Blurr is very plain-looking. He's basically blue from head to toe, and
> it bugs me. The character, as originally conceived for The Transformers:
> the Movie, was multiple *shades* of blue. Light blue complemented by
> dark blue, you know.
have been trained to see new color schemes on body styles as new
characters, and characters upgrading their basic body but not their color
scheme.
This just isn't Blurr. He's as much Blurr as the Springer with Kup's color
scheme in the Season 3 opening is either Kup or Springer. He's like an
animation mistake, but in toy form.
I've decided that he is Bargle, a fast talking public defender in the
Quintesson court, who has a remarkable record of having gotten over 80% of
his clients declared innocent, often by just overwhelming the Quintesson
Judges with arguments. All of his clients were executed anyway, despite the
verdict. It's the principle of the thing, he rationalizes, and is mostly
content proving that the Quintessons have no legal shield for their crimes.
Also, he's a prisoner.
Bargle is armed with a finely honed sense of moral outrage, and a gun. The
gun doesn't work. Sensors on his head and behind his cockpit allow him to
detect injustice at a range of ten to twenty miles.
I expect the Quintessons behead him regularly, and that the head rolls off,
transforms into a robot, and walks back to the body.
My only question is whether he is real, or just a figment of Kup's
imagination.
(The name Blargle comes from Justice Scalia's phrase "legalistic argle
bargle", which I guess makes the Headmaster Argle)
> This is the new definitive Blurr toy as far as I'm concerned. I love
> that the shield is no longer such a fragility problem and I love the way
> the fenders lock in place. The functional cockpit window is great.
either blind (like Justice) or relies upon sensors.
> The robot mode does need more paint, but at least Hasbro is cheaping out
> in ways that discerning consumers can correct (i.e., a fan can do some
> touch-ups with a bottle of Testors, but not much you can do for a
> cheaply-made toy manufactured from terrible plastic).
doing more.
> HARDHEAD
>
>
> He's only got one green gun, rather than the dual guns carried by all the
> original Autobot Headmasters. The vehicle mode only has one place to
> attach it, so a second gun would only be useful for the robot mode.
They could have added a peg hole.
>
> He's only got one green gun, rather than the dual guns carried by all the
> original Autobot Headmasters. The vehicle mode only has one place to
> attach it, so a second gun would only be useful for the robot mode.
>His large grey gun is mounted on a hinged panel and is detachable. The
> panel to which it's attached can slide out to the side for robot mode, to
> create clearance for his robot head.
shoulder, or pointing straight up. It just seems rude to walk around with a
gun pointed at people.
This is my favorite of the bunch.
> SKULLSMASHER
>
> It baffles me that somebody else, somewhere, is actually using the
> original name for Skullcruncher. I just can't imagine it being a useful
> and marketable name for, say, a golf club or a hiking backpack.
> SCOURGE
>
> As with Blurr, the last Scourge we got was pretty bad (his vehicle mode
> didn't look anything like the original Scourge), so I'm really happy that
> they came up with a more faithful version of him. There are a handful of
> design elements that are not my favorite, but this is definitely a more
> palatable version of him.
> Like Blurr, he's extremely blue in robot mode. He's the same color from
> head to toe, with only his wings and the armor on the back of his legs
> providing any color contrast.
original character a bit more than Blurr/Bargle,mbut I think I prefer the
old kgenerations toy.
> His vehicle mode is clearly more directly inspired by the G1 design than
> the last version we got (that weird wing-shaped thing), but it's still a
> departure. The poky-out wings on either side seem so unnecessary. It's
> like Hasbro thinks kids won't accept that a hovercraft can fly if it
> doesn't have wings of some kind. Of course, the wings are so tiny I
> doubt they would help much.
>They would not be difficult for an enterprising fan to cut off, I suppose.
> I wish Hasbro had made them detachable parts. There are other aspects
> of the vehicle design I don't love (the way his robot leg panels form
> these weird, floppy pontoons, or the embedded thrusters that seem to take
> their cue from the 2011 toy) but it's still leaps and bounds better than
> the Generations edition.
just sit there on Galvatron. It's not a design element I like to see
repeated.
--
I wish I was a mole in the ground.
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