Posted July 31, 2013 at 2:48 am
San Diego Comic-Con was pretty great for new Ravages!  Two of them, anyway, between Hasbro Toy Shop's G.I. Joe Ravage and Entertainment Earth's offering of Masterpiece Soundwave.  I like Ravages, so this was gratifying.

G.I. Joe Ravage is a newly-molded nontransformable Ravage for Baroness to keep on a leash.  This pairing homages an OTFCC 2004-exclusive cover to Devil's Due's Joe Vs. Transformers #3 by Mike Norton and an unreleased First4Figures statue based on that cover.  Both Baroness and the leash are removable from Ravage, and Ravage's articulation consists only of a balljointed neck (at the shoulders).

Masterpiece Ravage is also newly-molded, surprise!  Like the other Masterpiece Recordicons, he still transforms into the same-sized microcassette tape as the original toys, and so he works in either MP Soundwave or either of the original Soundwave or Blaster toys.  He looks great from the front, but the back isn't terribly great.  It's kind of a mess back there, beyond what you usually expect from a Transformers Mini-Cassette guy.  Usually it's at least flat back there, if not obviously an arrangement of animal parts, but here the backside is mostly a hollow pit surrounded by legs.  MP Ravage does not have a very pretty backside, no.

It's in service of a fully articulated, as-cartoon-accurate-as-possible-at-the-scale jaguar mode, though!  Like Buzzsaw and Laserbeak, Ravage's previously-removeable weapons are integrated into the transformation itself.  He's pretty damn intricate!  He kind of has to be, at the size he is.  Lots of overlapping skinny parts and, really, he's a jungle of hinges.  He's not bad, though, other than the aforementioned pit at the back of his cassette mode.  He certainly aims to do what he aims to do.  He's just not terribly fun, though, and despite how fully-articulated he is, he doesn't feel as fun to me as Universe 2008 Ravage (the guy who came with Universe Hound).  I like transforming that Ravage back and forth, but this guy's got way more steps (and a foreboding feeling of fragility) that keeps that fun from happening.  Maybe if he had a articulated jaw.

But hey, he can do his stock art pose, so hurrah!

Now all we need is Masterpiece Skids, I guess, so Masterpiece Ravage can get knocked into an abandoned mine shaft and be forgotten in American comics for like fifty issues.
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