The last Generations toy! EVVARRRRRR

by David Willis on April 20, 2011 at 9:50 pm
Posted In: Blog

Original Warpath, new Generations Warpath, and Universe Warpath

Deluxe Warpath here is kind of like a weird footnote in my brain.  He was so barely on my radar I still don’t really register him existing, despite having gotten him in the mail 36 hours ago.  I suppose my anticipation factor for him was pretty low.  He’s just Warpath!  I got a new toy of him in the last batch of Generation 1 retreads.  And, well, he’s just Warpath.

He punctuates his speech with “POW!” and “KABLAMEE!”  That’s his entire personality, right there.

So,  yeah, it’s a Warpath.  He looks a lot like Warpath!  He still has the turret chest with the barrel poking out and the treads on his arms and feet.  He’s dark red and silver.  He’s Warpath!  This version did borrow the trick from the previous Warpath, the Legends Class toy, with the collapsing tank barrel.  It pushes into his chest in robot mode, and it’s engineered that so when it’s extended in tank mode, it can articulate up at an angle.

Before a dip in the pool.

People seem to dislike Warpath not being a real tank.  He’s an “H-tank,” which means he’s a tank that doesn’t look like a rectangle from the top, but instead a smaller rectangle with four “legs,” each housing a set of treads.  On this matter I don’t really care.  H-tanks are a staple of Transformers by now, and while some dislike them, I tolerate them if only for the variety they bring to tank alternate modes.  Hell, I got Rumble and Frenzy just last week, and they were also tanks.  I’m happy that Warpath’s tank mode has a different silhouette.  It also allows a better visual upgrade to his original form, with the treads on both his arms and feet.  I dislike when Transformer toys break treads cleanly in half during transformation, so splitting the treads up into smaller, self-contained chunks to begin with avoids this.

After a dip in the pool.

In tank mode, in addition to the barrel articulation, his turret can also rotate.  This is a feature I’m always happy to see in Transformer tanks, and usually it requires the turret to stay on the robot mode’s back, unintegrated into the rest of its robot mode form.  Not Warpath!  It turns, plus it manages to fold down into and become the robot mode torso.  There’s also a spring-loaded missile launcher on his right shoulder.  This is notable because spring-loaded weaponry seems to have been kinda slowly budgeted-out of Deluxe Class toys in recent years as prices remain the roughly the same and production costs continue to skyrocket.

I was disappointed to learn that the missile launcher and the non-functioning weapon on his other shoulder weren’t “c joint” snap-on accessories.  They really look like they should be!  But at least Warpath has places on his arms and legs that you can snap other guy’s “c joint” accessories onto him.

His color scheme’s a little boring.  I mean, yeah, it’s exactly like the original Warpath’s, but I kind of wish he had a brighter accent color somewhere.  He does have bits of gold, but it’s hard to distinguish those parts from the silver, since it’s a very desaturated gold.  As a nod to his sole personality trait, as I mentioned above, tampographed on either side of his tank mode are “K4-90W” and “Z0W-333.”

I sound kind of down on the toy, but I’m really not, over all.  He looks great in robot mode and I enjoy his big treaded stompy feet.  The fun of a robot mode is a very important attribute that can help me overlook minor disappointments elsewhere.  He’s a much better Warpath than the one I already had, but I think I would have preferred a toy of a guy I didn’t already have as Generations‘ last hurrah.

Speaking of which, the head in Warpath’s instructions belongs to Hardhead.  Guess what old toy they’ll be  wanting me to replace now!


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