FansProject Intimidator: Last Chance

Last Chance is the second installment in the very first set of Third Party Stunticons, now that apparently they and their Aerialbot nemesis are the hot 3P focus, and is the Dead End stand in. We covered the basics of this figure, in terms of size and build and all of that, a few months back with Car Crash, before shelving the set until the new year in order to try and finish off a bunch of other Coffin articles.

Last Chance, right away, is a gorgeous figure, with that Dead End maroon color just bursting out at you. The robot mode is very interesting, unconventional in places, and it and vehicle mode are nicely stylized in a way that makes the Intimidator team similar to the Warbotron team in that three of the figures are realistic and accurate, while the other two take some risks and wind up being cooler for it. The transformation is real simple, not unusual for a figure of this size, or from this particular set of figures.

One thing that is instantly noticeable about Last Chance is that the robot is essentially a grey plastic skeleton covered with car panels, and this serves as a pretty eerie parallel to what we’ll eventually see in the finished, combined Intimidator gestalt. While that alone is not anything damning for the toy, the car panels also happen to be rather thin, with the legs in particular being offenders. The legs are basically nothing more than hollow plastic with parts for the legs and feet to attach to, and their hollowness does impede the ability of the figure to stand, if the legs and feet are not posed in ways so as to manage the weight of the toy, and keep it balanced. While this hollow limb condition is hardly anything new in the world of action figures, on Last Chance it is a bit startling, and absolutely means that the toy should never be viewed from any angle except straight on. I know that nobody actually displays figures with their backs visible, but this one has got to be one of the best examples in my entire collection as to why doing so would be a terrible idea, even if anyone actually did that.

The figure also has a somewhat odd overall look, with the chest plate and shoulder panels sticking up the way they do looking cool, but different from what I suppose would be the “normal” look for a Transformer. Last Chance and teammate Down Force look more anime-styled than figures such as Car Crash or T-Bone, remnants from the earlier days of the 3P combiner scene when companies were actively working to inject some distance between what they were making and what they were aping. This stylized look applies to every figure in the set, but is most visible on this one and Down Force. This is mainly being brought up because there are a slew of new 3P Stunticons hitting the market, and most of them are very G1 faithful, and that makes one wonder where the Intimidator team will wind up in the final assessment. This is certainly a theme that will return over the course of the remainder of the set, so there will be plenty of time to talk about it later.

Last Chance’s weapon is a pretty nondescript piece of plastic that splits in half and forms the exhaust system underneath the car, a cool storage option but not much of a weapon. Pretty sure this came up with Car Crash, but the entire set minus team leader Diesel has this weapon arrangement, and Last Chance comes with no other accessories.

Vehicle mode is real cool, very sleek and nicely molded. The colors really come through in this mode, as in robot mode they are interrupted by the grey robot skeleton so much that they become muted. But in car mode they are free to really shine, and they take advantage of the opportunity. Probably based on a real car to some degree, this one is a mixture of sports car and race car, that kind of pseudo-car that you see in movies or something, something like would be highlighted for two seconds in a Fast and the Furious movie, where you can tell that the intent of having it onscreen was to make audiences say “wow”. Sorry, I’m not good with cars.

Stability issues prevent Last Chance from being as good as Car Crash, or the other three team members, but it’s difficult to really find fault with the figure. Poseable, and aesthetically strong, the figure is an all-around success, but the balance issue is a thing that detracts. Every combiner team has a weak link figure, but this one is much more a Nemean than a Whirlwind or Neckbreaker. In the long run, as part of a combiner, nothing that Last Chance does individually will effect the combined mode of Intimidator, but as a stand-alone piece, he is not without a drawback.

I know we’ll get in to this later, almost certainly with Diesel, but the emergence of larger, Masterpiece scaled Stunticons put these figures in a strange sort of jeopardy, in terms of their desirability moving forward. Already practically forgotten, having been released a number of years ago, and having watched the Third Party scene advance beyond them, these figures are generally difficult to track down, but then are not that hard to buy, as their value has seemingly decreased across the collector market. What I’m about to say is terribly predictable, but I think that’s a bit of a shame, as these figures are good, quality examples of combiners from the 3P scene that was still attempting to do things a little differently, before they just went full G1 replica mode, and while I do find myself staring a little longer at new Masterpiece scale Stunticons, I cannot say that this set would leave my collection if I did decide to take the plunge on a new group of Stunticons.

Last Chance is the weak link of the Intimidator team, but he is still a very good figure on his own. Dead End is a character that does have a fan following, and Last Chance would serve fans of the character well, even if it were the only member of this specific team that was acquired.