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Zob's Thoughts on the Zhong Jin Unlicensed G1 Mindwipe and Skullcruncher Reissues
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Zobovor
Dec 26, 2019, 3:41:50 PM12/26/19
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I've had Weirdwolf for quite a while now, and it seems like I always put these guys on my Christmas wish list every year. But, it also seems like there are always Masterpiece toys that I want a whole lot more. I guess these guys must have finally made it to the top of the queue or something!
MINDWIPE
Funny story: My son asked for Titans Return Mindwipe for Christmas this year (he's so into the current toy line that he's even wanting to hunt down specific characters that he missed) and I asked for G1 Mindwipe. So, there were two Mindwipes under the tree this year, originally released about thirty years apart.
I generally dislike the designs for the 1987 Headmasters. So many of them are chunky and simplistic. (This also makes the toys nearly indestructible, but that's entirely beside the point.) Mindwipe was my first Headmaster toy, as he seemed the coolest out of all of them. But I was not prepared for what a heckin' chonker he was.
I loved Mindwipe in "The Rebirth." Stephen Kenner gave him a fun, exotic vampire voice, and his ability to hypnotize other Transformers is similar to Bombshell's ability to control minds, only it's a bit less messy.
In bat mode, Mindwipe is a box with wings. His robot legs are pretty obviously tucked behind him, and don't really integrate well into the rest of his design. He's mostly black and purple, with a brownish head and bat wings, and a magenta bat chest. The chest is also the cockpit for his "trainer" Vorath (Autobot Headmasters get pilots; Decepticon Headmasters get trainers), who bends his legs at the knees in order to fit inside. On my Zhong Jin version, the cockpit locks so tightly that I can't even get it apart with my thumbnails. I have to use a metal tool to pry it open. (The G1 toy was never like this!)
The bat mode has a wingspan of about eight inches, and the wings are articulated so they can flap a little. (On my toy, one of the wings was fused in place and refused to move until I wiggled it. Zhong Jin just doesn't do hinges with metal pins very well.) The head is one piece of plastic; he's the only one of the original Decepticon Headmasters without an articulated jaw. His feet don't do anything at all. It's honestly a little hard to get him to stand up because of the way his tail is pointed downwards (years ago, I took apart my G1 unit and flipped the orientation of his tail so that it points upwards and isn't in the way so much). Officially, he can't use his gun in this mode, but if you pop his robot fists out, you can attach it like a shoulder-mounted weapon.
To transform him, the robot legs unfold, the pieces to which the wings attached rotate, and the robot arms unfold. It's pretty simple. The fists slide out using some of the most fragile fist-slider knobs on any Transformers toy. I think of all the other toys that use fist-slider knobs (Soundwave, Slag, Highbrow, etc.) and none of them break as easily as those on Mindwipe. Seriously, just leave the fists out all the time.
As a robot, he's about six and a half inches tall. Officially, the wings are supposed to fold up behind his back, but as with most winged Decepticons, he looks better with them poking out (and this look is also supported by his animation model used in Marvel Comics and TV). His hips can rotate, but his knees can only bend backwards. His robot arms can swivel, and can use a secondary hinge used for the transformation (he can almost touch his fists together but not quite), but chunks of his torso will rotate just as easily as his arms, if not moreso. Also, he's such a chunkmeister.
As with all Zhong Jin toys, he comes with an unapplied rub symbol, tucked into his instructions. He comes with his consumer-applied stickers but he lacks the factory stickers (the Decepticon symbols for his bat mode, which end up upside-down on the sides of his shoulders). Not difficult to replace, but it's kind of annoying. The Technobots were missing factory stickers in the Computron gift set, too.
I feel like Zhong Jin must have re-engineered the ratchets for Mindwipe's knees and ankles. I don't remember them ever being this tight on the G1 toy.
Color matching: In comparing the reissue with an authentic G1 toy, I see that they nailed the particular shade of brown for the wings. It's spot-on. The shade of purple used for his arms and legs is a little lighter than G1, a bit closer to the magenta side of the spectrum. The magenta used for Vorath, meanwhile, is a bit darker than the G1 toy. And black is hard to get wrong.
One pair of stickers is not authentic to G1: the vent-shaped stickers meant to go near his armpits in robot mode are entirely purple. They should actually have a purple border with silver vents.
Also, it seems like his tech specs meter is slightly off. The G1 toy's readings look like SPD 7 STR 9 INT 6 to me, while the reissue's readings are more like SPD 4 STR 6 INT 3. It seems to be the way the meter itself is calibrated; putting the fake Mindwipe head on the real body delivers the correct readings, but putting the read head on the fake body does not.
You can get the unofficial Mindwipe reissue for around $40-$50 USD; a loose, complete authentic G1 Mindwipe will run you about $100 or so. The quality of the unofficial version is excellent and I recommend it very highly.
SKULLCRUNCHER
Skullcruncher is one of those characters who technically appeared in "The Rebirth" but never got name-checked and never got any dialogue (there's one scene in part 3 where his mouth is moving, but it's actually Grax speaking).
So, in alligator mode he's a long boi, measuring ten inches in length from snout to tail. Like Scorponok, he's shades of green and purple, though in this case it's more of a dark, swampy green contrasting with a bright magenta and a little bit of off-white. His front legs are articulated at the alligator shoulders, elbow joint, and wrist joint (the robot fists are pretty obviously embedded inside the front alligator claws). His rear legs are articulated, too; for years I had thought that these were non-moving parts on the G1 toy because the joints are so tight. They're actually easier to move on the Zhong Jin version, which is weird (it's usually the other way around).
Skullcruncher has a dark, translucent grey cockpit in his head, and his trainer Grax is meant to ride around inside his mouth. On the G1 toy, you can open the mouth and place Grax on Skullcruncher's tongue and then just close the mouth. On the reissue, the fit is so tight that at first I thought maybe they increased the width of the plastic parts and that Grax didn't fit in there at all. Actually, he does, but it's a super tight fit. If you slip Grax's shoulders into the upper jaw first and then close the mouth, it works.
His transformation borrows a lot of ideas from the Dinobots. The back of the alligator unfolds to form the legs like Sludge, and after removing the tip of the tail, the rest of the tail splits in half, also like Sludge. The front gator legs form the robot arms. Twist his waist around, and then the gator head just sort of folds back out of the way.
As a robot, the front gator claws cover his forearms like oversized vambraces, but they interfere with the movement of his elbows, so you can tuck them behind his forearms instead of you want. He's still green and magenta, with more off-white visible on his pelvis and upper robot legs. His waist moves, but his hips are not articulated, and his knees are fused together, so while they move independently, they're always stuck touching each other.
Skullcruncher comes with an off-white rifle (his "softening-up gun") and the alligator tail supposedly forms a laser. The serrated fins actually make it look more like a chainsaw style weapon. The tail has one square connector and one circular connector peg, so you can't accidentally attach it upside-down (which would show the hollow underside). Oddly, he's one of the few toys without a prominent Decepticon symbol in robot mode.
In comparing with the G1 toy, the original version has a shade of green that's a little yellower than the green on the Zhong Jin toy. The shade of magenta is also a touch more yellow on the G1 toy. (The whites are the same, in case you're thinking my toy is suffering from ultraviolet exposure damage or something.)
The tech specs meter is off again; the ratings are SPD 3 STR 10 INT 9 on my G1 toy, while they're more like SPD 0 STR 8 INT 6 on the reissue. Well, at least there are individual ratings at all (they messed these up pretty badly on Weirdwolf, who was the first Headmaster they attempted).
Again, the Zhong Jin version of Skullcruncher has no factory stickers, so he's missing the stickers that go on the alligator's back, which are the only Decepticon symbols on the toy. So, that's a little upsetting. Guess I'm going to have to hit up toyhax.com at some point.
The unofficial reissue of Skullcruncher can be yours for around $55 shipped; You can expect to pay closer to $125 for a loose, complete G1 specimen (you're really paying for the gun and tail and Grax). I'm pleased with the unofficial version, though I'm going to have to do something about the missing stickers.
Zob (just gonna start buying authentic Autobot Headmasters, since there seem to be no reissues on the horizon...)
MINDWIPE
Funny story: My son asked for Titans Return Mindwipe for Christmas this year (he's so into the current toy line that he's even wanting to hunt down specific characters that he missed) and I asked for G1 Mindwipe. So, there were two Mindwipes under the tree this year, originally released about thirty years apart.
I generally dislike the designs for the 1987 Headmasters. So many of them are chunky and simplistic. (This also makes the toys nearly indestructible, but that's entirely beside the point.) Mindwipe was my first Headmaster toy, as he seemed the coolest out of all of them. But I was not prepared for what a heckin' chonker he was.
I loved Mindwipe in "The Rebirth." Stephen Kenner gave him a fun, exotic vampire voice, and his ability to hypnotize other Transformers is similar to Bombshell's ability to control minds, only it's a bit less messy.
In bat mode, Mindwipe is a box with wings. His robot legs are pretty obviously tucked behind him, and don't really integrate well into the rest of his design. He's mostly black and purple, with a brownish head and bat wings, and a magenta bat chest. The chest is also the cockpit for his "trainer" Vorath (Autobot Headmasters get pilots; Decepticon Headmasters get trainers), who bends his legs at the knees in order to fit inside. On my Zhong Jin version, the cockpit locks so tightly that I can't even get it apart with my thumbnails. I have to use a metal tool to pry it open. (The G1 toy was never like this!)
The bat mode has a wingspan of about eight inches, and the wings are articulated so they can flap a little. (On my toy, one of the wings was fused in place and refused to move until I wiggled it. Zhong Jin just doesn't do hinges with metal pins very well.) The head is one piece of plastic; he's the only one of the original Decepticon Headmasters without an articulated jaw. His feet don't do anything at all. It's honestly a little hard to get him to stand up because of the way his tail is pointed downwards (years ago, I took apart my G1 unit and flipped the orientation of his tail so that it points upwards and isn't in the way so much). Officially, he can't use his gun in this mode, but if you pop his robot fists out, you can attach it like a shoulder-mounted weapon.
To transform him, the robot legs unfold, the pieces to which the wings attached rotate, and the robot arms unfold. It's pretty simple. The fists slide out using some of the most fragile fist-slider knobs on any Transformers toy. I think of all the other toys that use fist-slider knobs (Soundwave, Slag, Highbrow, etc.) and none of them break as easily as those on Mindwipe. Seriously, just leave the fists out all the time.
As a robot, he's about six and a half inches tall. Officially, the wings are supposed to fold up behind his back, but as with most winged Decepticons, he looks better with them poking out (and this look is also supported by his animation model used in Marvel Comics and TV). His hips can rotate, but his knees can only bend backwards. His robot arms can swivel, and can use a secondary hinge used for the transformation (he can almost touch his fists together but not quite), but chunks of his torso will rotate just as easily as his arms, if not moreso. Also, he's such a chunkmeister.
As with all Zhong Jin toys, he comes with an unapplied rub symbol, tucked into his instructions. He comes with his consumer-applied stickers but he lacks the factory stickers (the Decepticon symbols for his bat mode, which end up upside-down on the sides of his shoulders). Not difficult to replace, but it's kind of annoying. The Technobots were missing factory stickers in the Computron gift set, too.
I feel like Zhong Jin must have re-engineered the ratchets for Mindwipe's knees and ankles. I don't remember them ever being this tight on the G1 toy.
Color matching: In comparing the reissue with an authentic G1 toy, I see that they nailed the particular shade of brown for the wings. It's spot-on. The shade of purple used for his arms and legs is a little lighter than G1, a bit closer to the magenta side of the spectrum. The magenta used for Vorath, meanwhile, is a bit darker than the G1 toy. And black is hard to get wrong.
One pair of stickers is not authentic to G1: the vent-shaped stickers meant to go near his armpits in robot mode are entirely purple. They should actually have a purple border with silver vents.
Also, it seems like his tech specs meter is slightly off. The G1 toy's readings look like SPD 7 STR 9 INT 6 to me, while the reissue's readings are more like SPD 4 STR 6 INT 3. It seems to be the way the meter itself is calibrated; putting the fake Mindwipe head on the real body delivers the correct readings, but putting the read head on the fake body does not.
You can get the unofficial Mindwipe reissue for around $40-$50 USD; a loose, complete authentic G1 Mindwipe will run you about $100 or so. The quality of the unofficial version is excellent and I recommend it very highly.
SKULLCRUNCHER
Skullcruncher is one of those characters who technically appeared in "The Rebirth" but never got name-checked and never got any dialogue (there's one scene in part 3 where his mouth is moving, but it's actually Grax speaking).
So, in alligator mode he's a long boi, measuring ten inches in length from snout to tail. Like Scorponok, he's shades of green and purple, though in this case it's more of a dark, swampy green contrasting with a bright magenta and a little bit of off-white. His front legs are articulated at the alligator shoulders, elbow joint, and wrist joint (the robot fists are pretty obviously embedded inside the front alligator claws). His rear legs are articulated, too; for years I had thought that these were non-moving parts on the G1 toy because the joints are so tight. They're actually easier to move on the Zhong Jin version, which is weird (it's usually the other way around).
Skullcruncher has a dark, translucent grey cockpit in his head, and his trainer Grax is meant to ride around inside his mouth. On the G1 toy, you can open the mouth and place Grax on Skullcruncher's tongue and then just close the mouth. On the reissue, the fit is so tight that at first I thought maybe they increased the width of the plastic parts and that Grax didn't fit in there at all. Actually, he does, but it's a super tight fit. If you slip Grax's shoulders into the upper jaw first and then close the mouth, it works.
His transformation borrows a lot of ideas from the Dinobots. The back of the alligator unfolds to form the legs like Sludge, and after removing the tip of the tail, the rest of the tail splits in half, also like Sludge. The front gator legs form the robot arms. Twist his waist around, and then the gator head just sort of folds back out of the way.
As a robot, the front gator claws cover his forearms like oversized vambraces, but they interfere with the movement of his elbows, so you can tuck them behind his forearms instead of you want. He's still green and magenta, with more off-white visible on his pelvis and upper robot legs. His waist moves, but his hips are not articulated, and his knees are fused together, so while they move independently, they're always stuck touching each other.
Skullcruncher comes with an off-white rifle (his "softening-up gun") and the alligator tail supposedly forms a laser. The serrated fins actually make it look more like a chainsaw style weapon. The tail has one square connector and one circular connector peg, so you can't accidentally attach it upside-down (which would show the hollow underside). Oddly, he's one of the few toys without a prominent Decepticon symbol in robot mode.
In comparing with the G1 toy, the original version has a shade of green that's a little yellower than the green on the Zhong Jin toy. The shade of magenta is also a touch more yellow on the G1 toy. (The whites are the same, in case you're thinking my toy is suffering from ultraviolet exposure damage or something.)
The tech specs meter is off again; the ratings are SPD 3 STR 10 INT 9 on my G1 toy, while they're more like SPD 0 STR 8 INT 6 on the reissue. Well, at least there are individual ratings at all (they messed these up pretty badly on Weirdwolf, who was the first Headmaster they attempted).
Again, the Zhong Jin version of Skullcruncher has no factory stickers, so he's missing the stickers that go on the alligator's back, which are the only Decepticon symbols on the toy. So, that's a little upsetting. Guess I'm going to have to hit up toyhax.com at some point.
The unofficial reissue of Skullcruncher can be yours for around $55 shipped; You can expect to pay closer to $125 for a loose, complete G1 specimen (you're really paying for the gun and tail and Grax). I'm pleased with the unofficial version, though I'm going to have to do something about the missing stickers.
Zob (just gonna start buying authentic Autobot Headmasters, since there seem to be no reissues on the horizon...)
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