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Zob's Thoughts on the Netflix Voyager-Class "Sparkless Seeker"
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Zobovor
Jul 14, 2021, 9:08:28 PM7/14/21
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Power's out. Too many people running their air conditioners, one supposes. Nothing else to do, so imma write about a toy I got today. (Posting on mobile, so I will not be held responsible for autocorrect being stupid.)
So originally I did not want a dead Decepticon toy. But then when I took a good look at the toy today, I realized it was very close to Slaughterhouse colors. For those who don't know, there are lots of miscolored characters in the G1 cartoon, and Decepticon jets in particular. My favorite among them is the one from "Five Faces of Darkness" part 4 that has Combaticon Onslaught colors (blue with green and black). I've been very vocal about my desire to get an official Slaughterhouse toy. I know you're reading this, Hasbro!
Anyway, this isn't a perfect Slaughterhouse, but it's close enough that I wanted to own it. He's a pale army green, mostly, with some black parts and some orangey-brown camouflage-like spots. I could definitely see somebody at Hasbro coming up with this deco after looking at some badly-lit photos of G1 Onslaught online. Do I really think this was meant to represent Slaughterhouse? Not sure. He doesn't have any blue on him. I could be living in a fantasy world. But the similarity got me to buy the toy, so there's that. Allow me my delusions!
This mold has gotten used a lot. I think I can see some mold deterioration on the unpaintable plastic parts (feet, rear thrusters, etc.) but the details on the rest of the toy are as sharp as ever.
More later!
Zob (hoping this power outage doesn't turn into a four-day affair like last time)
So originally I did not want a dead Decepticon toy. But then when I took a good look at the toy today, I realized it was very close to Slaughterhouse colors. For those who don't know, there are lots of miscolored characters in the G1 cartoon, and Decepticon jets in particular. My favorite among them is the one from "Five Faces of Darkness" part 4 that has Combaticon Onslaught colors (blue with green and black). I've been very vocal about my desire to get an official Slaughterhouse toy. I know you're reading this, Hasbro!
Anyway, this isn't a perfect Slaughterhouse, but it's close enough that I wanted to own it. He's a pale army green, mostly, with some black parts and some orangey-brown camouflage-like spots. I could definitely see somebody at Hasbro coming up with this deco after looking at some badly-lit photos of G1 Onslaught online. Do I really think this was meant to represent Slaughterhouse? Not sure. He doesn't have any blue on him. I could be living in a fantasy world. But the similarity got me to buy the toy, so there's that. Allow me my delusions!
This mold has gotten used a lot. I think I can see some mold deterioration on the unpaintable plastic parts (feet, rear thrusters, etc.) but the details on the rest of the toy are as sharp as ever.
More later!
Zob (hoping this power outage doesn't turn into a four-day affair like last time)
Gustavo Wombat
Jul 14, 2021, 11:36:10 PM7/14/21
to
but from the online pictures he looks like a blend between Slaughterhouse’s
color scheme and Sgt. Slaughter from GI Joe.
I do have the Sparkless Car, and his rust design is wacky. Definitely looks
more like camouflage than rust. Netflix and IDW both had a Rust Sea, and
whoever this is, he’s in disguise to hide there.
Zobovor
Jul 15, 2021, 1:51:20 PM7/15/21
to
On Wednesday, July 14, 2021 at 7:08:28 PM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:
> More later!
Power came back on. I guess one good thing about posting on mobile is that it forces brevity, something I've not been accused of too often. But, now I'm back to rambling on a proper computer keyboard, so prepare yourselves.
So, yeah. Sparkless Seeker. I know there are people who like the Netflix shows and want to own an army of undead zombie Transformers, which is why they keep trying to sell Barricade, Ironhide, etc. in those garish, desaturated color schemes. But, for me, this is a toy of Slaughterhouse and that's how I shall enjoy it. (Toys get repurposed and reassigned all the time, both officially and unofficially. No harm done.
At the end of the day, nobody else gets to decide how I play with my toys.)
It's worth mentioning that Slaughterhouse would almost certainly have had a Cybertronian vehicle mode, given that he didn't pop up at any point during the Decepticon campaign on Earth. He was likely a trooper who was driven off Cybertron during Unicron's attack, later falling under command of Galvatron. So, if they'd used the Earthrise toy for this character, I would have accepted it, but it would have been less authentic. I like that they made him from the Siege toy.
He's currently shipping in the Netflix Battlefield assortment with the Optimus Primal/Rattrap set. Rattrap seems to be a slightly darker shade of grey, but there's no shortage of single-pack Rattraps at my store as it is. Primal doesn't look significantly different. I thought the whole point of doing a redeco was to get you to buy the toy again?
Since this is a $40 set, and he's a thirty-dollar Voyager toy, they threw in a couple of five-dollar toys just like they did with Hotlink. Where the Hotlink toy was packaged with two basically identical baby blue copies of Blowpipe, Slaughterhouse comes with "Sparkless Singe" and "Sparkless Caliburst." Since these are organic Nebulan partners in transforming exo-suits, aren't they already sparkless? I would think a Nebulan *with* a piece of the AllSpark inside his body would be even more disturbing than not. But, I digress.
Singe is in a military-themed color scheme this time, the same green-grey as Slaughterhouse. It's yet another reuse of the Firedrive mold, but unfortunately this isn't a situation where you can take the toy and pretend it's "really" Haywire or Recoil or whoever and give it to one of your other toys. I liked it better when I could buy Battlefield Megatron and give Trenchfoot to my Crosshairs toy and pretend it's Pinpointer. He's got two of the same style of blast effects as before, but the shade of green is a little darker.
Caliburst is dark grey with light grey arms and legs, a straight redeco of the previous Caliburst (who in turn was a redeco of Blowpipe). It comes with the same twisty blast effect, just in a darker flavor of purple. Unlike Battlefield Megatron, which I bought for the pack-in figures, I wanted this set for Slaughterhouse so I gave the extra Targetmasters to my 13-year-old son (he can always use more Shooty McBang Bang's for his collection). It's a little disappointing that I couldn't appropriate them as legacy characters in some fashion. There were 23 guys during G1 who turned into Targetmaster guns, and we're arguably still missing like 12 of them for neo-G1.
Well, anyway. I definitely didn't want to pass up an almost-Slaughterhouse toy. I like to think Hasbro saw my many, many requests for this character and finally produced this toy just to shut me up. That may or may not actually be the case, but reality is highly subjective anyway. The point is, they got another $40 out of me, and ultimately I'm sure that's all that matters.
Zob (is also sparkless, but not by choice)
> More later!
Power came back on. I guess one good thing about posting on mobile is that it forces brevity, something I've not been accused of too often. But, now I'm back to rambling on a proper computer keyboard, so prepare yourselves.
So, yeah. Sparkless Seeker. I know there are people who like the Netflix shows and want to own an army of undead zombie Transformers, which is why they keep trying to sell Barricade, Ironhide, etc. in those garish, desaturated color schemes. But, for me, this is a toy of Slaughterhouse and that's how I shall enjoy it. (Toys get repurposed and reassigned all the time, both officially and unofficially. No harm done.
At the end of the day, nobody else gets to decide how I play with my toys.)
It's worth mentioning that Slaughterhouse would almost certainly have had a Cybertronian vehicle mode, given that he didn't pop up at any point during the Decepticon campaign on Earth. He was likely a trooper who was driven off Cybertron during Unicron's attack, later falling under command of Galvatron. So, if they'd used the Earthrise toy for this character, I would have accepted it, but it would have been less authentic. I like that they made him from the Siege toy.
He's currently shipping in the Netflix Battlefield assortment with the Optimus Primal/Rattrap set. Rattrap seems to be a slightly darker shade of grey, but there's no shortage of single-pack Rattraps at my store as it is. Primal doesn't look significantly different. I thought the whole point of doing a redeco was to get you to buy the toy again?
Since this is a $40 set, and he's a thirty-dollar Voyager toy, they threw in a couple of five-dollar toys just like they did with Hotlink. Where the Hotlink toy was packaged with two basically identical baby blue copies of Blowpipe, Slaughterhouse comes with "Sparkless Singe" and "Sparkless Caliburst." Since these are organic Nebulan partners in transforming exo-suits, aren't they already sparkless? I would think a Nebulan *with* a piece of the AllSpark inside his body would be even more disturbing than not. But, I digress.
Singe is in a military-themed color scheme this time, the same green-grey as Slaughterhouse. It's yet another reuse of the Firedrive mold, but unfortunately this isn't a situation where you can take the toy and pretend it's "really" Haywire or Recoil or whoever and give it to one of your other toys. I liked it better when I could buy Battlefield Megatron and give Trenchfoot to my Crosshairs toy and pretend it's Pinpointer. He's got two of the same style of blast effects as before, but the shade of green is a little darker.
Caliburst is dark grey with light grey arms and legs, a straight redeco of the previous Caliburst (who in turn was a redeco of Blowpipe). It comes with the same twisty blast effect, just in a darker flavor of purple. Unlike Battlefield Megatron, which I bought for the pack-in figures, I wanted this set for Slaughterhouse so I gave the extra Targetmasters to my 13-year-old son (he can always use more Shooty McBang Bang's for his collection). It's a little disappointing that I couldn't appropriate them as legacy characters in some fashion. There were 23 guys during G1 who turned into Targetmaster guns, and we're arguably still missing like 12 of them for neo-G1.
Well, anyway. I definitely didn't want to pass up an almost-Slaughterhouse toy. I like to think Hasbro saw my many, many requests for this character and finally produced this toy just to shut me up. That may or may not actually be the case, but reality is highly subjective anyway. The point is, they got another $40 out of me, and ultimately I'm sure that's all that matters.
Zob (is also sparkless, but not by choice)
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