Breakdown:
Breakdown
is a strange robot. His hips are ball joints that are on this scissor type
construction; I’m not sure what its official name is. It’s the kind of joint
that lets the legs compress closer to the body in robot mode, but extend
further away from the body to lengthen the car mode. The overall result of this
is that I’m not entirely sure how his legs are supposed to look in robot mode.
The way I’ve got him, he seems a little squat, but this places the legs
basically in line with the shoulders, giving him a wide waist. Out of all the
Stunticons, Breakdown is the ‘meh’ one, not being very exciting in most
categories despite not being necessarily bad at anything. I think if he does
have a real flaw, it is the hip construction. I do think though that once I
find a way to situate them that I like, he’ll look better. As of this writing,
I’ve owned him for less than a week and am fiddling with him for the third time
while I write about him. His legs are big and boxy, and he is wearing his car
mode hood on his back. The head sculpt is right on with the original, which is
awesome. His blue and off white paint job is very nice despite, like
Motormaster, being real minimal. Something that Breakdown, and later on Dead
End, does that sets him apart from pretty much all the Combiner Wars Deluxes is
that he has a chest piece, basically a bib, that folds down to partially cover
the combiner connection that flips out of his robot chest. Most of the other
Deluxes all simple have their combiner pegs visible – really visible – directly
in their centers, and it is a nice touch to have one or two of them where the
peg is covered up, if only to break up the general sameness of appearance that really
does come with these teams: after all, the Deluxes, while all different, have
to be essentially the same in design so as to facilitate the Scramble
City-style modularity of the line.
The
vehicle mode is really nice. Breakdown is a very sleek sportscar, just like his
G1 figure, with a punch of red paint on the hood to break up the all off white
of the rest of the body. We have had numerous versions of this car over the
years, that Lamborghini that was on so many Trapper Keepers in the 80s.
Probably the best version of it in my opinion has been the Classics
Sunstreaker/Sideswipe figure, but the Breakdown one is more angular and cuts
sharper lines, as opposed to that Classics figures more rounded appearance. I
hate to say “it’s that car again” and leave it at that, but there isn’t much
else to say about it really.
His
weapon some kind of rifle/sword thing, and some people are all excited that
it’s a gunblade from Final Fantasy VIII. It works better as a sword than a
rifle, but it’s not a great weapon in either form. None of the Stunticon
weapons are very good, to be honest. The combiner hand foot has two open
exhaust port looking things, and you can mount it in vehicle mode like exhaust
vents, and it actually doesn’t look like a folded up thing stuck to a car, the
way most of these accessories end up looking.
Dragstrip:
Dragstrip
is the one I’ve had the longest. I picked up the Wave 1 Deluxes in early
February I think, and then waited and waited and waited to find Wave 2, which I
just got the last of about a week ago. Dragstrip is pretty lanky, with thin
thighs and angular shoulders and calves. It’s a fairly slender overall look
that works well for a robot that transforms into a Formula One racer, and the
front end of the car does a neat thing in transformation where it flips around
to peg in to the back of the figure, leaving the front wheels right behind the
robot shoulders, and this look gives the figure a feeling of depth, making the
upper body feel much meatier than the legs. Yellow and maroon are the main
colors, or perhaps the only colors would be more fitting. Aside from the black
of the tires and the silver struts and engine details, Dragstrip is essentially
two tone. He does have a new head, nothing like his original appearance, but
the face sculpt is a sinister looking one with the darker maroon paint of his
visor having two tear-like tails, and some people have likened it to tears of
blood. I won’t that melodramatic about it, but it is a mean look.
In
vehicle mode, Dragstrip is once again an open wheel race car, four wheels down
from his G1 bizarre six. Unlike Breakdown, there aren’t any newly revealed
colors on Dragstrip’s car mode, the yellow and maroon remaining fairly
unbroken. He is a nice looking car, a very slender car, as is telegraphed by
his robot mode.
Overall,
Dragstrip is a simple but deceptive toy. Slight in both modes, color consistent
in both modes, and fairly basic in both modes, he nevertheless is an impressive
figure for his new head and general posability. While he is no more jointed
than any of the other Combiner Wars Deluxes, Dragstrip can get some neat poses
going because of the overall slender nature of the figure.
His
weapon is some kind of sword thing. There are no good places to stick the
weapons in vehicle mode.
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