MakeToys MTCM-03C: Metalstorm

 

 

Ok, so. It’s been a while since we’ve spent some time on a converting robot action figure, and it feels like that should change.

Metalstorm is the MakeToys Scattershot, the largest figure in their excellent Quantron set. He is by far the largest figure of the team, something which at first makes the other four figures seem much too small, until one looks at it from the G1 perspective, after which point all is just fine. Metalstorm will have a lot of work to do, as he converts from robot to spacecraft to armored spacecraft to armored robot to torso; but not, as the G1 version did, that strange cannon tower, although certainly with enough applied creativity, said additional conversion could be fan moded. Initially, he seems to be the least impressive figure of the five, but given time ends up being really satisfying and fun.

Metalstorm is all around big. The limb figures of the team reach his hip when stood side by side, and everything about this toy physically is large and blocky: he is a lot of rectangles and flat surfaces. Contrast this with a figure like Celeritas, or the forthcoming Overheat, both of which are sleeker, smoother looks, and Metalstorm stands out as pretty unique among the other members of the team. The white plastic is very white, and it is the standout color of the figure. The other colors, primarily the Technobot maroon, look good on his as well, and the figure immediately invokes the original Scattershot in a much more direct way than even the pretty faithful to the source Blindfire did; but coming after the real aesthetic curveball that Celeritas was, something about Metalstorm feels comfortable and familiar. That’s honestly a good overall heading to put on the entire Quantron set, really. New, different, but comfortably familiar at the same time.

 

The figure has a decent range of motion, although some movements are slightly compromised in the visual department thanks to the hips and shoulders, both of which are as they are due to the need for Metalstorm to serve as the torso of a giant robot. A pair of panels hang on the side of the forearms, necessary for the torso mode, but they occasionally get in the way of the hands because they don’t tab in to anything to prevent them from swiveling. Not a big thing, but you know. There are some translucent plastic parts that serve as accents on the figure, in the spaceship wings and the forearm parts, as well as up on the robot shoulders. These catch light pretty well, but in general are just there to break up the look of the solid plastic. The figure comes with a bunch of accessories, several of which are the combiner parts which we’ll touch on in a little bit, but also a pair of G1 Scattershot-looking blasters, an underslung block that looks like it’s supposed to be a projectile launcher, and a plastic block that the two blaster attach to which then allows Quantron to wield this double barreled blaster assembly. The blasters are nice and have all kinds of detail sculpted onto them, which is nice.

The huge nosecone part that sticks so prominently off of Metalstorms’ back and forms the front of the spaceship mode actually comes off, attached via grooves in the plastic, and it hides the Quantron head when Metalstorm is in robot mode. Otherwise, Quantron’s head is just hanging off the back of the toy, like they didn’t even try to hide it. The nosecone hides it very well, however. And the nosecone is ridiculous. Rather than split open lengthwise, as the original part did, this one, which will be covered more thoroughly when we get to Quantron in total, extends into a huge bow, or serves as some giant blaster weapon. It doesn’t do much for Metalstorm, but we will talk about this part later on with Quantron, because it is a pretty unique weapon.

Metalstorm is blocky and chunky, but can pose rather well. The feet are a slight issue, as they do have ankle rocker joints but they are high inside the leg, so they only sort of work for the robot. This is one of those figures that requires some effort to balance, and then only balances well in a certain number of poses, but they can be achieved with some effort and patience. The foot is at the end of an arm that moves inwards and outwards for transformation, and this means that it is a little challenging to arrange both feet in the same way for standing. The grey cannons on his shoulders can be positioned outwards, which is pretty neat, but since they face sideways they don’t increase Metalstorms’ forward facing arsenal. Kind of an odd thing, but Metalstorm is super thin at the waist, like the designers just gave up there and figures hips to abs would be just fine.

Spaceship mode is a lot better than one might think from just looking at the robot mode. In true Technobot fashion, it does take a little bit of staring to make the alt mode work, but once it does work, it works well. The wings look too short and too far back on the vehicle body to actually be functional, a piece of translucent yellow plastic on the nosecone gives the impression of a cockpit. The visual cues for space vehicle are fairly abstract, but it would seem that that is what makes Metalstorm work as a vehicle. Once again, the Quantron head is just hanging out at the rear, and it seems like the antenna on the head are supposed to look like cannons or antenna on the vehicle mode, but look: it’s a head sticking off the back of a spaceship. All told, this is probably the worst third party figure in terms of combiner head hiding that I’ve experienced, outpacing Hercules’ Dr. Crank pretty easily.

The combiner feet, included with this figure, can be attached to the vehicle mode in order to form what the instructions call “armor mode,” which is better in the vehicle case than the robot. In alt mode, the combiner feet attach to the wings to form booster engines, and the look beefs up the ship considerably, now turning it into a battleship. In robot mode, the feet can attach to the robot legs, adding pods to the legs that don’t really seem to serve any purpose. It’s a good way to account for the pieces in both modes, and is easily enough ignored if one doesn’t care for it. If not, the feet contain the hands, stored under translucent flaps, and the parts are large enough that they can be set aside without fear of losing them or anything, so like, worst case scenario, there are two combiner pieces that are just laying around.

 

Metalstorm is a good figure, and one that got more fiddling time than was expected. It’s sort of the least impressive figure in the set out of the box, but it rewards time and attention spent on it fairly well, by revealing itself to be a real solid figure. The size disparity between Metalstorm and his teammates is a bit weird, and it remains to be seen how this will impact Quantron once we get to the combined mode. But a good, solid figure, and a surprisingly entertaining one as well.