I was never a huge fan of the Protectobots, and most of the team
members faded into the background for me, other than Hot Shot. So,
this toy is an homage to a character that I know next to nothing
about, except for his tech spec and the information on the wiki.
He's a good enough recolor, and all the joints are tight. And finding
him in the stores means I don't have to hunt through boxes to be able
to play with the original use of the mold. And the red is quite nifty.
But there are two things that I do notice:
First, I really wish that the Cyberkey gimmicks would be remolded to
not need the keys -- and if that is non-trivial, then the toys were
designed wrong. The Cybertron molds are fun, but the little keys...
how I hate the keys! Well, I don't really hate the keys, but the toys
would fit better in other lines without the keys.
Transformers get reused enough that they should be considering this
when designing them -- active Minicon hardpoints could be reduced to
be just buttons, and the key slots could be the same.
Second, Energon Bulkhead was recolored as a red helicopter named
Quickstrike (who was, incidentally, Bulkhead's cousin, adding another
odd Transformer familial relation****p to the batch... Might be worth
while trying to list them all). I do wish that Hasbro would try to
build up some of these secondary characters, by giving them several
appearances in toylines, with tech specs that add a little something
different each time. I don't know if Energon Quickstrike should have
been named Blades, or Blades should have been named Quickstrike, but
they should be different versions of the same character -- a little
bit of continuity for the long term collector.
(I never bought Quickstrike -- he was a more interesting color scheme
than Bulkhead, but then when I saw Sprung on Superlink, with his inane
cackle, I knew I needed a toy that matched the character)
Gustavo!
|
