The number of paint applications aren’t just budgeted per figure, but also across a single wave. Paint can be sacrificed from one toy to give to another and it still adds up for the bookkeepers, since toys are sold to stores by case and not by individual toy.
Which probably explains vibrant Dead End here and his naked pal Airachnid, dontcha think???
Don’t get me wrong. Dead End looks like he has more paint than he has, due to how cleverly his plastic colors are broken up. Wheeljack, from whom he was retooled, was an all-white dude, while Dead End splits up that white into dark gray and yellow. (With Wheeljack’s grays becoming orange.) It gives the appearance of more color because, well, there IS more color. And Airachnid’s plastic was required to be almost entirely black.
But he still has a lot of paint. For example, those painted hubcaps are usually a luxury on Deluxe Class mainline toys. Many Transformers have them left unpainted, because, hey, that’s probably the easiest thing to cut, saving you four paint applications and leaving you with, oh no, black hubcaps. But Dead End gets to have glorious bright green hubcaps. Which are glorious. Did I mention they’re glorious?
Dead End doesn’t actually have any brown, but the combination of yellow, orange, and green sure makes his dark grays look brown. It results in him looking like a big radioactive cornucopia. Like he’s in Thanksgiving Colors, from the Nineties. It’s pretty damn striking.
Oh, and apparently he’s some sort of borderline zombie vampire thing. He didn’t use to be, but whoops.
TL;DR: Way better than Wheeljack
The vehicle mode looks like it should be some sort of heromobile. Possibly the Great Bright Green Bull Mobile. I’m torn between going “Oooh, pretty!” and my eyes exploding from so much bright color.
It’s action master Thundercracker levels of awesomeness isn’t it
*Looks him up* THAT IS THE MOST MAGNIFICENT THING I HAVE EVER SEEN, AND WILL EVER HOPE TO SEE. ONLY PARTLY BECAUSE MY EYES ARE NOW ON FIRE. IT IS AMAZING.
*sigh*…they’re sticking with this whole “Vampire” thing from ROTF Dead End? Why can’t he be a suicidal stunt car like he used to be? Wait…I just answered my question. I’m tempted to say NEON, but he’s really not. Green just clashes with everything.
As a follow up, while the “vampire” idea makes me want to scream, that head sculpt sure does work well for the idea.
I LOVE the zombie vampire version of Dead End! It’s literally the toy that got me into Transformers!
Maybe the bright green is the robot equivalent of sparkling in the sun.
I just picked him up and glorious is indeed the right word.
His promo picks made me think he had a green monkey maw but in hand and from the box art it’s clear he has a giant screaming death hole for a glowing mouth. Screaming madness.
Lol, Monkey-maw. Well Cheet, I supposed that “Jazz Mold” Dead End we briefly discussed could use this color scheme, but that’s only if the green is easy enough to match.
Is he actually a homage to anything? I’ve been searching for ages and I can’t find any link between him and other Deadends.
Sometimes dudes have new colors!
I keep wanting to think it’s a Death’s Head homage, but I can’t find anything convincing beyond bright colors and a gaping maw flanked by pointy things
I keep seeing him and thinking of the Rasta movement and Ethiopian flag.
OMG, he is the love child of K-B Toys Universe Snowcat and Downshift.
http://www.seibertron.com/images/toys/files/24/r_snow-cat-128.jpg
I have it on good authority that black hubcaps are an atrocity and a perfect example of how Hasbro is intentionally trying to sabotage their own toyline for… some reasin.
The same authority tells me that “reason” totally has an I in it.
If I buy one Prime toy, probably gonna be this guy. I’ll just pretend he ate and absorbed all the other characters from the Prime universe.
I like the mold, and the green swords are cool, but overall… I prefer Wheeljack over him. The colours are just a bit too wild for my taste.
I’m also not really a fan of vampires. Or zombies. Or vampire zombies.
I prefer to think of him as less a zombie vampire and more a half-melted, shambling, irradiated abomination.
I’ll probably be passing. I got hot shot as my requisite “toy only dude,” (because A. I like hot shot, B. I like the mold he’s using, and C, I like this deco. win win and win.) But I don’t care for Dead End or this Mold. I only bought Wheeljack because by “Triage” I felt he had finally made a threshold number of appearances to be relevant enough to by a toy of. I think I’d rather hunt down a second Vehicon before getting Dead End.
wheeljack superior, dead end inferior.
I’m eventually getting a Wheeljack, but Dead End will be in my collection first. That should tell you something.
I bought this today – thanks for the review! Way better in person.