The gun-happy old guy pickup truck with the window on his chest
on September 18, 2012 at 10:16 pm
It can’t be great that both of the popular old guys in Transformers are just a color swap away from each other. What I’m saying is, making Ironhide into Kup shouldn’t result in that great of a Kup, yet it does. I mean, it’s good that it’s a great Kup, y’know, for purposes of having a great Kup, but not so good in a world-building sense. You don’t want the two guys who share an archetype to be even more interchangeable. It makes one of them redundant.
For some reason, the toy that was originally designed and solicited as Transformers Prime Deluxe Class Ironhide, based on Ken Christensen’s design for Prime Ironhide, ended up being redecoed and released as Kup instead. And like I said, it works pretty well. They’re both pickup trucks who are old guys who have windows on their chest, and neither of them is particularly shy with weaponry. But Kup is green and Ironhide is red. This is how you tell the two old guys apart.
The design itself is a great hybrid of elements of various Ironhide incarnations, particularly his G1 and live-action movie versions. He’s red and has his mohawked dome head with the cylinder ears and a windshield chest, but he’s a pickup truck with giant cannons on his arms, his head embedded within his massive shoulders. Since this version of the toy is Kup, I’ve not been attaching his giant cannons to his arms, opting to combine them into a larger hand-held cannon. It makes him look less Ironhidey.
Ironhide’s character is pretty huge, especially in these post-Michael Bay days, and this toy’s design reflects that. What I mean to say is his head is tiny compared to his body. In a more perfect world, he would have been a Voyager Class toy. Instead, he’s the size of Deluxe Arcee and with a head half the size. It makes him look kinda Classicsy, really, since a frequent feature of G1 toys is their pinheadedness. He’s got a small head and he’s blocky and rectangley. Plus he has a nose. Deluxe is a better size for Kup, I think, but his tiny head makes him look really out of place next to other Prime toys.
I like how the doors fold in half to make his forearms. I don’t like how hard it is to get the center of his hood to split off from the rest of his hood and headlights. I was afraid I was gonna break it when I tried to separate them the first time. They click together pretty solidly. After a few tries, the hood comes apart more easily, and also comes off the hinge entirely, which it’s not supposed to do. But if I put it back on upside-down in robot mode, that actually solves the problem of it sticking out pretty annoyingly from his back. So, hey, making lemonade.
I’m sad this guy isn’t who he was originally supposed to be, with no known stateside release at the moment, but I do like Kup way better than Ironhide, so that works for me.
UPDATE: I have added an image of Deluxe Kup next to Cyberverse Commander Ironhide because many folks are apparently confused about Kup’s size and there was no way to slip any more iterations of the word “Deluxe” into this blog post without sounding like a jerk.
Me, I’m just thrilled they made a Kup figure that I can actually, y’know, afford. Also, is it just me or is, at $20, Prime continuity Prime is the cheapest he’s been in years?
At BBTS you can get $20 Prime continuity Prime for $9.50 right now.
You can’t get a Generations Kup for $7 at a Marshall’s or TJ Maxx?
That whole last wave of Generations is *everywhere*.
No kidding. My local Toys R Us has been restocking Generations Kup and some of his wavemates.
Kup, Wheeljack and Warpath shipped with Sky Shadow and Junkheap earlier this year in the last regular Generations wave. That’s the cases that Marshall’s and TJ Maxx have been getting in. Only Thundercracker from the last 2011 wave is hard to find now.
Kup has no cigar in the pic – this is blasphemy. It wouldn’t have killed them to alter the mold a little bit…
Man, Hasbro couldn’t put a cigar in Nick Fury’s mouth, much less some Transformer’s. Something about smoking being not a great thing to idolize in a children’s toyline….?
Nah man, smoking is awesome. A camel told me about it.
Nice You Can’t Do That On Television ref.
Been eons since I’ve seen that show. Is Kup’s response to Hotshot something Ross used to say?
Or is there something mixed in the review that I’m missing? I don’t see Walky suggesting that Ironhide said ‘I Don’t Know’ & became a Kup.
Yes, except it was usually a teacher blaming the school board.
“Instead”? They still made the Ironhide. I totally have one. He’s pretty neat.
Only in Japan. So you imported. So Walky’s statement stands.
Unless you mean the tiny Cyberverse toy, which this is not. This is the full sized Deluxe.
You certainly don’t have the Deluxe, unless you went a month into Japan’s future.
I’d like him a lot more if his head didn’t make him look like a monkey.
I’d like him a lot more if he had some semblance of peripheral vision. His massive shoulder pads prevent his tiny monkey head from looking any more than about 30 degrees in either direction.
Lol, yes, and there’s that.
I’m wondering how this figure compares to the Cyberverse Ironhide since they have similar designs.
Cyberverse Ironhide’s exactly like this but smaller and his windshield is real.
And his arms are less impressive in how they wrap the roof around themselves.
But at first glance I mistook Kup up there for a repaint of the Cyberverse, so yeah, pretty freakin’ similar overall.
I am not sure whose arms you’re saying are less impressive. At any rate, I think Cyberverse Ironhide’s arms are awful.
I was talking about Cyberverse Ironhide’s arms. Assuming the sentence structure as-a-continuation-of-your-sentence didn’t twig you into it, I’d think that the fact that no same person could be more impressed by Cyb Ironhide’s arms would.
Folks say many things in these comments that surprise me!
If you turn Kup’s second cannon upside down, the 5mm peg serves as a sight, giving it more of a rifle look, albeit a really bloated, oversized one with a chunk missing from the top of it.
The squareish, blocky, and detailed upper arms and legs (as opposed to the rounded and generally smooth upper arms and legs of most Prime toys) also help give Kup/Ironhide a very “Classicsy” look. But I really like Generations Kup, so I don’t really need this guy. I might be more tempted if we get Ironhide.
Where is this Kup from? We just got the Ironhide here in the last 2 weeks, never seen nor heard of the Kup…
This is the Cyberverse commander, no? I can’t quite tell, he’s the same size as that blue-bumblebee….
I don’t know how to answer this other than to point back up at the blog post again.
Psst. Look at the third photo.
That wasn’t there when Irrellius posted. Many mentions of “Deluxe” were, however.
Have you had trouble with the hood on Kup? I got this yesterday and the hood just popped right off when I was transforming him.
See, now I know no one reads these things before posting.
Wow, that’s pretty neat Hot Rod but who is that teal guy?
Ironhide doesn’t strike me as “old”. Just “older” than most Autobots.
Kup, on the other hand, is “ancient”.
I thought you were talking about me until I got to “with a window in his chest.”