Saturday, June 13, 2015

Transformers Combiner Wars: The Stunticons: Breakdown and Dragstrip



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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