If only I owned the Action Master, so I could show 20 years of progress in decade-long steps.
I remember, long ago, when I dared to dream of a world where Action Master characters would be given new toys that can transform. And not just, y’know, one or two, but a whole fleet of them, as if it were God’s mission to give every single last untransformable guy a new transformable toy.
Ladies and Gentlemen, that world is now.
Axor doesn't care if his vehicle mode isn't a good disguise. It will Cut You.
Axer was actually the first! True to the circumstances of the time, he was just a random redeco with his name planted on it. That’s how it happened back then. He was a black motorcycle. Sort of fitting, since Axer was a nonstransformable robot who rode a transformable motorcycle, so it was close enough at the time. But he was in the wrong colors and, judging by how the original toy’s sculpt looked, actually transformed into some kind of automobile.
"I'm your biggest fan! I'm wearing your skin!"
So, woo, hey, hell yeah. About ten years later, Hasbro’s given us our second Axer. Okay, he’s called Axor now. And, being in the live-action film continuity, he’s likely a different guy, though since the first Axer was a dimension-hopping fellow, I’m pretty okay pretending Axer and Axor are the same dude in my Personal Canon. They’re both ruthless bounty hunters, though Axor’s now got some sort of stalky/fanboy thing going on about Lockdown.
Axor represents one of the first instances of Hasbro’s new mandate for Transformers toys: they all have to have alternate heads (and/or other parts) planned out ahead of time and put into the original tooling. That way, they can give more individuality to their redecoes, so that not every redeco shares the same noggin.
Suspiciously, no Autobot Action Masters get updates.
So Lockdown’s tooling has not only his own head and his hook-arm, but also somewhere on the sprue there’s a Axor head and an Axor axe. Depending on what toy is being produced, one set of those is gonna be gated off. (Or still produced and thrown back into the vat, who knows.)
Giving guys new heads used to be the territory of BotCon, but, whoops, now Hasbro does it constantly. It’s got to be getting pretty tough for Fun Publications, now that Hasbro’s cranking out all this stuff that used to be their bread and butter. Not even G2 is safe! Not even Pretenders or obscure Victory guys or comic-only characters are safe! Hasbro will scrape the bottom of the barrel long before FP even gets a chance!
So, yeah. New head, new axe, new deco. It’s BotCon all year long now.
I was wondering… is it possible to easily swap Axor’s saw hand and Lockdown’s hook? Really, I’m just looking for a new accessory hand for Lockdown.
If you know how to pop out rivets, maybe. It’s beyond my skill-level, which is limited to unscrewing things.
Damn! I’m not a rivet-popper.
Great! Now for them to do Rad.
Well for that one, Cybertron Crosswise/Smokescreen would be perfect, since his head was already an homage to Rad.
[insert your own joke about the kid from Armada]
On Bandai’s Gundam model kits a lot of the time, molds are partly modular, in that parts of them could be cut off from the rest of the mold. Sometime this is done to have multiple colors on one runner…or just to exclude unneeded parts. It would make sense that modern toymakers would use a similar technique.
It’s The Cars That Ate Paris!
planning out alternate parts in advance? Something that’s actually NICE to fans, and possibly costs them money? MADNESS!
Oh so THAT’S who Axer is! I bought that guy at a flea market before I even knew what Action Masters were. I knew they were transformers related, but really, I just bought ‘em ’cause he was a neat robot. Well heck, now I wana get this guy! I was gona skip ‘em because he was just a minor Lockdown change, but it’s kinda cool that they made a version of that old bot.
Erm there have been autobot actionmasters which have been remade, most notably Skyfall.
Action Master Skyfall has absolutely not been remade. There is a random Autobot/cosmic dude named Skyfall and G2 Skyjack is also called Skyfall now.
I demand a redeco of Classics Jetfire as Skyfall!
Generations Jazz as Jackpot! The WoH-suggested Energon Bulkhead as Over-Run!
And we really need a Classic-style Soundwave already so we can get him as Mainframe.
WFC Cybertronian Soundwave, in stores now (ha ha ha no), would be a good Mainframe.
The club could still do the even-more-obscure redecoes of the obscure guys. Somehow I don’t think even Crazy Homages Everywhere Edition Hasbro will give us a Generations Circuit.
Banzaitron has been remade twice now- once as the botcon mirage repaint and now as a bludgeon repaint- so thats another decepticon AM to add to the list. Twice