There's something special and fun about the occasional Transformer
that comes without a well defined character -- sure, a toy without a
character is just a lump of plastic, but it also gives you the
op****tunity to create your own character, and let that character run
and play in the normal Transformers universe, or simply sit on a shelf
next to an established character likeOptimus Prime, and stand his or
her own.
Beast Wars and Beast Machines, with their limited casts due to the
high costs of CGI, gave us lots of non-show characters. They had tech
specs, which described some form of character for them, but they just
didn't fit into the tight, closed universe of the TV show, which is
where most of the characterization was from. A character likeManterror
might be described in their tech spec as a raging alcoholic with a
history of domestic violence (or not, as the case may be), but there's
not the visceral recognition that you get with the show characters.
The tiny bit of characterization on the tech spec is just a starting
place, there's not enough there to flush out the whole character.
Your Manterror might be a circus freak and poet, the abominable
showman, ready to fire disks from his hands as he recites the most
obscene limericks imaginable, and yet he stands sculpted in plastic,
as real as any Optimus Primal or Megatron.
And that's fun. It wouldn't be fun if all the toys were lacking
character, but having a few blank slates waiting to enter the universe
is fun. I've had a couple of large, sprawling fanfic ideas that I'll
never get around to doing anything with rattling around in my head for
ages, and any new characters get some of these blank slate toys
assigned to them, and it makes them much more real.
Transformers: Universe gave us lots of redecos of existing toys, but
it requires a certain effort to blot out the character associated with
a distinctive mold like Silverbolt or Ultra Optimus Primal. There were
the redecos of non-show characters, which had more possibilities, but
they would always be second versions of someone else.
There were a few non-show toys in Cybertron (and good ones, too!), but
only a few. And Japanese toys, while being ripe for recharactization,
are expensive.
And so, the Transformers Crossovers fill me with a wee touch of
delight. There are a few that are reasonably well designed, to the
point where they can hold their own against real Transformers, give or
take. And there are a few that either don't represent iconic
characters, or who do a pretty crap job of it. And these toys are
little balls of potential.
The Transformers Hulk is one of those little balls of potential.
In vehicle mode, he's a green fantasy tank. It's not a great tank,
having a rather odd gap in the back, and such a very short barrel, but
it's a passableCybertronian mode. A low rent Vehicon, perhaps.
Everything pegs together pretty solidly, and he's got some size and
some heft to him.
The transformation doesn't feel cheaty. There are a few bits that
don't quite feel like a Transformers transformation -- it's clearly a
different design team -- so some of the common transforming tank
techniques are turned on their head, such as the barrel splitting in
half and becoming heel spurs. There are lots of little panels
unfolding around the forearms, but the panels fit in place in both
modes, and don't end up just flopping about.
The design team really has gotten much better since the early Star
Wars Transformers, assuming it is the same design team.
The robot mode is the most troubling, being as it's a large, green,
vaguely hulk shaped robot with a hulky head. But everything just
manages to skirt the edge of the Hulk's most archetypal visual
representation, without actually hitting it.
The Hulk's design is pretty generic, when you get right down to it,
which is actually pretty surprising for a Kirby creation. There's no
distinctive symbols or patterns, he's just a very large man with a
square head, bad haircut and lots of muscles wearing only torn up
pants. The color scheme of green skin with purple pants is pretty much
burnt into the mind of anyone familiar with the character -- it's
probably the only strong visual cue of the Hulk.
Other than the purple pants, there's no dominant visual cues that are
distinctively Hulk in the character -- any of these elements can be
found on other characters from comics and movies. It's only the
combination of these elements that makes him distinctive. If there
were traditionally a big "H" logo on the character's chest, then the
logo itself would become a shorthand for the character, and provide a
strong visual cue of the character -- but the Hulk's visual appearance
comes from a collection of weak visual cues.
So the toy needs to hit a whole lot of visual cues to be the Hulk, and
it doesn't quite do it.
The most dominant visual element, aside from being green, is the giant
grey tank treads that make up the upper arms. This immediately reduces
the appearance of green guy in pants, adding unique elements not found
in the original character, and which cannot be overlooked by
squinting.
The grey from the treads also appears on the pelvis and upper thighs
-- if this was the classic Hulk Pants Purple, there would be no way to
see this toy as anything but a robotic Hulk.
The chest has robotic details that suggest human pectoral muscles,
without actually being pectoral muscles, but there isn't a whole lot
of other musculature on the robot mode -- once again, skirting the
edge of the Hulk's defining elements, whithout quite hitting it.
There are toes, but they don't have to be folded out at all.
The head is very square, and has the Hulk Hair. A few after market
paint applications can hide the Hulk Hair very easily though, and
square heads are common enough on robots.
He's still recognizable as the Hulk, but he looks like a robot that
happens to resemble the Hulk, rather than a Hulk who happens to be a
robot.
I do wish we were getting a less classic Hulky recolor -- perhaps that
Red Hulk that I see on the covers of the comics these days, which will
probably last as long as the Electric Superman phase and never be
referred to again -- but as it stands, this toy misses the mark on
characterization just enough that it can be another blank slate.
And that's much more fun than some kind of robotic Hulk would be.
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