UNIVERSE POWERGLIDE: There was an IDW Spotlight issue about Wheelie
recently, which tried to make Wheelie kick-ass, and mostly succeeded.
This toy does the same thing for Powerglide. There's not a whole lot
of Powerglide's orginal toy or animation model in this new toy.
The plane mode is a light grey, rather than red, with entirely
different undercarraige junk on the wings. You wouldn't recognize him
as Powerglide from this mode, and while updating to a more realistic
color scheme might be fitting for the toyline, it's not particularly
fitting for the character. He was a plucky red plane in G1 and had no
other appearances since. His plane mode is now neither plucky nor red.
The robot mode has Powerglide's head, and the wings fold up as his
sides, but that's pretty much where the commonalities end. The
enormous arms are now rather dainty, there are no longer engines on
his legs, and his torso is massively bulked out by the engines.
In the batch of eHobby minibots, there was a Powerglide redeco called
Bad Boy. The general look of this toy is like a cross between
Powerglide and Bad Boy.
There's something about the color and sculpt of the legs that has me
thinking Gundam for some reason. And things don't quite peg together
right -- the engineering requires greater tolerances that the Chinese
factories are capable of.
Overall, it's not a bad toy, but it does inspire me to dig out the
Movie Wingblade and realize just how much more fun that toy is than
this one.
UNIVERSE ONSLAUGHT is another re-imagining, and possibly more
successful. I say possibly, because I don't really remember G1
Onslaught all that well. The SWAT APC is a good update for the alt-
mode -- it's vaguely militaryish and more impressive than the tank
carrier truck or whatever G1 Onslaught was. It's the type of change
that doesn't stay quite true to the character, but can work well
enough if the robot mode works.
The head is Onslaughty and there are the two barrels sticking up
behind it. The colors work reasonably well, and he has the imposing
presence that Onslaught should have. He cannot combine with the rest
of the Combaticons, but that's pretty minor to his Onslaughtyness
(pretty major for his Combaticonnyness, though).
But then I squint, and he looks a bit like Armada Megatron. He has the
columns on his shoulders, and the Decepticon symbol right on the
shoulder. The two barrels behind the head are an echo of Armada
Megatron's serated bunny ears. There's the same small arms, and small
things, and big boxy ****ns. They even have similar stomach detailing.
Slightly odd character issues aside, it's a very good toy, though.
Transformation is interesting without being aggravating, and the two
modes are both very good, and very distinct from each other.
I don't think the ****eld looks good in either mode. It stays at the
bottom of the toybox forever.
And, like Powerglide, the engineering requires slightly higher
tolerances that the Chinese factories were able to give it. The right
leg on mine keeps disassembling.
UNIVERSE DECEPTICON DROPKICK is a little odd. The original Dropkick
was a blue micromaster, who actually had a passing resemblance to
Cybertron Defense Scattorshot in vehicle mode (blue, with a grey
turret). This bright yellow repaint actually looks less like the
original use of the character than the original use of the mold.
That's kind of nifty in it's own weird way.
I'm not sure why Dropkick is such a great name that Hasbro wanted to
get it back, even with the slightly silly Decepticon prefix
everywhere.
In vehicle mode, Dropkick is actually a pretty good homage to Energon
Blight. They're both bright yellow anti-aircraft tanks.
The toy suffers from all the problems of the Cybertron version --
hands are perpetually blocked by the arm weapons, the rifle stores on
the vehicle mode without doing anything useful, and there's a large
gap where where you can see robot mode bits in vehicle mode, if you
raise the weapons to point at airplanes. And, there are a few new
problems -- the left tread panel that swings down wants to pop off,
and the left weapon pod doesn't open as well as it used to when you
use the cyber key, so the nub no longer goes into his left hand.
The robot mode continues to look a bit Blighty, because of the massive
weapons on the arms, and the bright yellow. If the brown were black,
it would be a closer match.
There's a very interesting paint application -- on the left lens of
Dropkick's goggles, there is a tiny spot of vivid green paint. This
color is not used anywhere else on the toy.
A mostly fine toy, weighted down by some quality issues.
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