Man, Waspinator is the one guy in this wave of Generations Deluxes that is always hard to find!  He was missing when I got the other three in Austin (no worries, he was bought up by the dude who sent me there), he was the lone member of the wave when I found them yesterday, and there was just one lone Waspy remaining when I finally found him this afternoon.  He's not shortpacked or anything -- there's two of everyone in each case, and most places seemed to have multiple cases.  Folks are just buyin' up Waspinators and leaving everyone else.  

In your face, G1!

When folks learn we're getting new toys of old Beast Wars guys, they often wonder why.  It's an understandable viewpoint if thought about in the abstract -- I mean, usually fans want modern reimaginings of characters who are from Before Articulation, and Waspinator is definitely on the After side of that wavefront.  Usually folks want new toys of old dudes just to get those dudes with articulation, and Waspy's original toy doesn't fall short there.  

But once you get the original (well, mine's the Japanese release with bright green shoulders instead of pea green) next to the new one, you realize, oh, hey, Hasbro/Takara's gotten a lot better at things that aren't articulation in these past nigh-20 years.  Next to the new Waspinator, old Waspinator looks like someone blindly put him together out of mud.  Increased show-accuracy aside, new Waspy is just much more crisp and solid and visually interesting.  He's got a lot more going on.

Waspinator's lost his spring-loaded missile launching (he still has the stinger gun though) while picking up a wing-flap gimmick.  Pull on the lever on his back and they either swing forward or clap together, depending on how you have your wings placed into the balljoints.    He's also lost the head-swapping "mutant head" gimmick, but I wouldn't be surprised if the "robot" head exists in the tooling somewhere so they can pump out a Buzz Saw redeco in the future.  

Waspinator also transforms a little differently.  Instead of transforming Waspinator's robot legs into some amazingly oversized wasp legs, the legs instead try to hide themselves underneath the insect mode.  Well, "try."  They're pretty obvious under there, because they're actual robot legs, but they do run along the contour of the body.  It's also better, I think, than trying to do it the old way.  I prefer the insect legs to look like insect legs, even if they're sprouting out of robot parts.  

He's basically a perfect Waspinator toy, if what you're looking for is a toy of Waspinator-the-character, not toy-that-will-become-Waspinator-the-character.  But if you'd rather the latter, then you probably already have that one.  

Like the other Deluxes from this wave, Waspy comes with a comic book issue that features him.  It's not a great issue, but hey it's a comic book, and I'm sort of happy that Waspinator has been inserted into this continuity.  It's fun to see guys like Jhiaxus and Optimus Prime interact with him.  And since Wheelie's in there, too, it's not like Waspinator's the guy with the most annoying speech gimmick.  

Well that's the last of the Autobot Cars subgroup to be remade in Classics/Universe/Generations!  Skids finishes 'em all up.  It makes a perverse kind of sense that it works out this way.  Dude got two lines in two different episodes in the original cartoon, was heavily shortpacked back in the day, and made real appearances only in the old Marvel stuff.  He's the guy you're bound to forget.  

(Maybe that's the hidden joke regarding his characterization in the ongoing IDW comics.  Dude's got amnesia.  He's forgotten himself!)  

His original toy was a Honda City Turbo, which was this tiny thing, so his new toy is a similarly-eensy modern hatchback.  The Turbo wasn't sold in America, and was drawn in the comics and cartoons as a much larger mini-van.  Americans know what mini-vans are.  Compact cars, not so much.

Just like the Trailbreaker toy which preceded him, this Skids is based on Alex Milne's design from the More Than Meets The Eye ongoing comic book but with a more Earthy alternate mode rather than a Cybertronian-style one.  His head is the Milne-est thing ever sculpted, with the artist's signature pointy hook nose.  In robot mode, he doesn't look far from having leapt directly out of the comics.  He's just got a few Earth car parts here and there to spoil the illusion.

I like the idea of Transformers being designed after certain artist's styles.  Especially if we're going to get characters repeating.  It'd be nice to have, say, a "Geoff Senior" Nightbeat or a "Guido Guidi" Galvatron.  It interests me artistically.  Usually instead Hasbro tries to skew towards a more neutral presentation.  

(Skids also comes with an issue of MTMTE, as do the rest of the current line of Deluxes.  But that issue isn't drawn by Milne, so you don't really get the one-to-one comparison.)  

Skids also comes with the "nudge gun" that was a focus of his storyline in the MTMTE comic book series.  This smaller gun can plug into the back of his larger gun (based on the toy's original weapon) to make an even longer gun.

He transforms fairly similarly to the original toy.  He's got a hood chest and his legs fold out of the back of the car and the roof and wings fold onto his back and his arms sorta tuck away somewhere inside.  Also like the original Skids toy, he's covered in weapons.  There's two shoulder-mounted weapons, missile racks sculpted into his shoulders, and guns under his forearms.  Each set of forearm guns is geared into itself so that if you raise one side you raise the other.  

The only thing that bugs me about the toy is the lack of non-hand storage for the guns in robot mode.  I kinda wish I could plug them in somewhere on the robot mode to keep his hands free.  However, the only other 5mm pegholes are on the undersides of his feet in robot mode.  

(His hips are misassembled, so you'll have to swap them to get his legs to bend forward.  No tools needed, just chunk those pieces out of their tabs.)

Orion Pax toy Number Two!  The first one was a redeco of the original Kup, but this new one is his own mold.  It's based on a design for Orion Pax seen in the IDW comics.  It first appeared in just one story, Spotlight: Blurr, and it was designed by Guido Guidi though illustrated by Casey Coller.  However, subsequent appearances of Orion Pax used Optimus Prime's usual pre-Earth design, which is kind of annoying.  It's cool when Optimus Prime gets to have a separate Orion Pax body!  

And so when it came time to release this toy with a comic book, a new story was commissioned featuring Orion Pax receiving this body for a limited time for the sake of a specific mission.  It's kind of hamfisted, but at least some continuity was smoothed out, I guess.  In all honesty, I just wish he was always drawn with this Orion Pax body when he while he was Orion Pax to begin with.

The toy itself is fun -- as fun as an Optimus Prime toy gets to be, anyway.  The windows become the windows, the long-nose part of the cab is formed from somewhere else, this time piling up on his shins, and his arms sort of poke out the back, but are obscured enough that it doesn't look all Energon Optimus Primey.  He comes with both a giant axe and a gun, because why not.  They don't integrate into the vehicle mode, but instead peg in whichever 5mm peghole you choose.  

The toy has a different altmode than Guido originally designed for the robot mode, but that altmode didn't ever  feature in the comic, so I guess that's fine.  

The comic story included is the first of two of these new "Spotlight" issues that feature a very conspicuous Nightbeat.  PRETTY WEIRD HOW HE'S SHOWING UP IN A LOT OF THESE STORIES SUDDENLY, I WONDER ABOUT THAT

Hold onto your butts.  We're about to get painfully nerdy in here.  We kind of have to, because I don't know if I have enough words otherwise to bury two photos of a simple and predictable Seeker redeco in.   It's Thundercracker.  He's a blue and silver Starscream again.  Let's move on.

War For Cybertron Starscream is technically a toy of Aligned Starscream, right?  Sure, the War for Cybertron aesthetic is blocky and having-a-nose-y enough that he can pass for other version of Starscream, and sure enough a bunch of the WFC designs were borrowed for the ongoing Robots in Disguise comic which is a Generation 1 book.  Some folks don't cotton to the idea of stylistic choices varying so widely within a continuity, and so they're happy to ignore the whole Aligned angle and just consider him G1 since he looks G1y enough to them.  

There was also a Thundercracker in War for Cybertron, and now there's a toy basically in those colors as Thundercracker.  He's being released in the same line as WFC Starscream, but only after the focus of the line shifted from WFC to a G1/Classics approach.  And since these toys are being packaged with comics, specifically comics which were written to these toys, thus placing the WFC Thundercracker design in this G1 world as G1 Thundercracker, he isn't even ambiguously a WFC toy, even though he's still sort of repurposed.

OR IS HE???

Here's the wrinkle that I've been mentally picking at.  While the Deluxe Class toys in this portion of the Generations line come with IDW comics featuring those characters, the packaging bios mostly ignore the IDW comics' specific interpration of these characters, content instead to rehash the original tech spec bios from the eighties.  Swerve is a guy who doesn't drive so good instead of being a insecure bar owner, for example.  The packaging presents the "original" version of the character rather than the version currently-appearing-in-fiction.  We're getting a new Armada Starscream toy and the Generation 1 comic books are gong to use that design for its G1 Starscream character.  However, if the pattern holds, the bio on the package will still talk about Armada Starscream rather than G1 Starscream.  The packaging will claim the toy is a different iteration of the character versus the comic inside.   

What I wonder is, does this hold true for Thundercracker?  And even if this is a question to ask, is it possible to know?  WFC Thundercracker's characterization is likely indistinguishable from G1 Thundercracker's.  So of course this Thundercracker's bio is just every Thundercracker bio you've ever read before.  And it'd be written this way whether it were WFC Thundercracker or G1 Thundercracker being described.

(I wouldn't expect the writer of this bio to know that Takara's Prime Thundercracker toy's bio takes the character in a different direction, nor would I expect him to feel bound by it.)  

What I'm getting at is that this is likely a toy that comes in packaging which claims it's two different versions of the same character, much like everything else in the line, but with Thundercracker there's no outward way for us to know that, because of things.  

And that fascinates me.  

Because I'm a weirdo.  

Part of me wanted to just drop that blog post title bomb, throw these photos at you, and then back away slowly before running away in shame.  But no, I guess I'll actually, like, do my job and talk about these guys a little.

Man, Megatron Origin.  There was a point in time in IDW's recent history where the powers that be were like, "hey, would anybody care if we ignored this?"  Megatron Origin is one of those.  For a long while it was this isolated piece of weirdness buried deep in the IDW continuity's past.  I'm not sure where it went wrong, whether it was the story, the art, the coloring, or a perfect storm combination of all three.  It was really hard to tell what was going on in that miniseries, artwise, and when you got through the gray art down to the story, maybe it was for the best?  

Artwise, though, those folks have gone on to do some really awesome things very well.  Alex Milne is now the the very readable penciler of More Than Meets The Eye, and Josh Perez is now the very readable colorist for Robots in Disguise.  Those two are now seriously among my favorite creative people.  Eric Holmes hasn't written anything Transformers since, so who knows if today he'd likewise be amazing. 

So I'm just gonna blame Megatron Origin, the entity.  Maybe it was cursed.  The story was repurposed from an abandoned Dreamwave idea, so maybe reanimating the story for IDW was akin to building over sacred burial ground, with like Pat Lee ghosts seeping up into the story's foundation and haunting the shit out of it and also probably not paying anyone.   Either way, I believe we shouldn't let its memories soil the talented people involved.  

Regardless, here are these two Megatron Origin toys.  The first is a retool of Generations Scourge with a new head as Senator Ratbat.  It's a Japanese release, so I'll forgive it for not having a "REPUBLIC SENATOR!!!" call-out starburst on the front of the packaging.  In Megatron Origin, Ratbat was a pre-war Senator with like a real humanoid body and everything, and he wore a bat-head-shaped helmet on his head.  And then at the end SPOILERS Soundwave extracts his spark and shoves it into this tiny bat Recordicon body and there you go.  This toy does its best to replicate that first body by translating Senator Ratbat's color scheme onto Generations Scourge's toy.  It does a pretty good job.  Like the other Japanese Generations toys, he's in shiny plastic and shiny paint.  This would visually clash with my other Generations toys in usual circumstances, but this is a Senator, so I'll let him be exceptionally shiny.  

The tiny Megatron is an entirely new Legends Class toy of Megatron in his original miner body, when he was a revolutionary for social reform before he got a taste for violence that drove him evil.  And so he's got the hazard stripes painted on him that he and his fellow miners had.  He's a pretty amazing Legion Class toy, considering some of the others!  His turret can rotate all the way around, and his head turns.  Both of those are kind of crazy for a toy his size.  He transforms from robot to tank by folding his arms in front of him to form the turret and then opening up his legs so they can fit around the rest of him to form a shell.  

He also comes with a tiny Chop Shop, but I don't know where he is now.  I need to clean up the office.

Megatron is available in American stores now.  Ratbat is available in Japanese stores as of a few months ago.

Hasbro's been trying to make new Trailbreaker toys since like 2002, but losing the trademark to "Trailbreaker" kept on getting in their way, but finally once they bit the bullet and renamed him a year or so ago, we've gotten this flood of him.  And here's the version of him everyone wanted -- "Classics" G1-style Trailbreaker at non-Legends scale!  Of course, his name is "Trailcutter" now.  The comic book he comes packaged with even shows him deciding to rename himself.  (Well, okay, the original comic-book-store version of it did, but the version that comes with the toy excises these exchanges and calls him Trailcutter throughout.)

(The toy version of the comic also removed his alcoholism.)

(Because he's an alcoholic.)

(You see, because his 1984 tech spec said he was inefficient at metabolizing fuel, so...)

Anyway, now that Trailbreaker's out, your roster of 1984 Autobot Cars is complete!   He was the last out the door, much like at the bar every night OHHHHHHHH!  Ha ha ha, gems like that are why I'm a popular webcartoonist.  And once Hoist and Skids come out in the upcoming waves, your 1985 Autobot Cars'll be done, too.

Like Skids (and also like upcoming Legends Class Tailgate and Swerve), Trailbreaker is based on his appearance in the current ongoing More Than Meets The Eye comic book.  His robot mode, anyway!  Also like Skids and Tailgate and Swerve, the toy gives him an Earth-ish style vehicle mode rather than the wacky-looking Cybertronic vehicle he is in the comic proper.  This makes Trailbreaker look less like his comic book robot mode design than he would otherwise, because about 40% of his robot mode is his truck's front end.  But make no mistake, the parts of his robot mode that aren't parts of his truck mode are definitely based on Alex Milne's design.  Check out those Milne-style forearms (larger box connected to a smaller box with a little tab between them)  and the sculpted FOC-style light-stripes Milne put on the thighs.   Also, well, the feet.  The armored-SUV parts are the only non-Milne stuff to be found on him.

The truck bed cover is removed during transformation to robot mode to become either a shield or be attached to his back to give him his usual double-cannoned silhouette.

His transformation hits that sweet spot between simplicity and complexity.  His hood/torso area's multilayered and takes a short while to figure out, but it's not rough to do.  The arms fold underneath as you'd expect and his legs collapse in on themselves.   The only point of real annoyance for me are his shoulders.  Not because they don't functionally work, but because even though the joints are tight enough for his arms to stay in the right place, it's obvious that the grooves which should lock on to the side view mirrors aren't attaching fully.  It's a neuroses thing.

He's the size that Deluxes are now.  On the smaller end of Deluxes Through History, but still clearly a Deluxe.

I like him.  He's fun.  And he's an alcoholic except when edited for children.  And he's in a comic I like.

I tell you what, I did not care a lot about Megatron's new stealth bomber body when it was introduced in IDW's first ongoing Transformers title.  I mean, I didn't hate it.  It just kind of existed.  It was  undoubtedly a thing, just not a thing I gave a lot of thought about.  And it had a big M on his forehead, which I'm not sure if I love or hate for its goofiness.

But then Hasbro decided not only to make a toy of it, but to also commission of comics about the toys they were making to include in the packaging.  And so we got this amazing comic book both written and illustrated by Nick Roche.  I wish Nick Roche would write more.  Hell, I wish he would draw more.  .... while he writes.  He also both wrote and drew Spotlight: Kup, which is another fantastic Transformers story, easily one of the best.  The connect between what the story wants to do and what it actually does is strong.  Not an inch is wasted.

You might roll your eyes at a "Spotlight: Megatron" issue because, yeah, oh boy, FINALLY, there's gonna be a focus on Megatron, leader of the Decepticons, ABOUT TIME, but the comic book lives up to and exceeds your expectations.  We see Megatron returning to life in a new body amidst his crumbling army, and we see how we begins to build that army back up again.  He has a way of things, a formula, and center to that formula is Starscream.  However, Starscream's as much in shambles as the rest of the Decepticons, and so Megatron literally spends the issue beating Starscream back into his usual self again.  And Jesus God, is it slashy, and not in a kind way.  By issue's end, you have a perfect idea of how Megatron's brain works.  It's brutal, but amazingly executed.

ANYWAY NOW I CARE A BUNCH ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR MEGATRON BODY I GUESS.  Thanks, comic.  Stupid excellent storytelling.

Stealth Megatron is a Deluxe.  This means he's on the small size for towering over much of your collection as he should, but there's a Starscream who's arriving on pegs at the same time who is just about the right size relative to him.  Legends Starscream is also an IDW comics design, but a discarded one that was never used for Starscream himself (just Thundercracker).  Also, this Starscream comes with a tiny Waspinator partner/weapon.  I'm just piling on the reasons to own these things, aren't I.  And so I've been having my Deluxe Megatron smack my Legends Starscream around my desk since Megatron arrived in the mail.  They're a good pair.

Despite Stealth Megatron's Deluxeness, he's pretty meaty.  His arms have a great mass to them, and he just looks like this intimidating chunk of dude who could mess you up... so long as you don't put him next to anybody else in his size class.  He transforms by bunching up into this pentagon-shaped thing, and then you tear his arm cannon in half and plug them into the ends for wings.  It's a little complicated and messy the first time you try it, but on the second tries and beyond it gets pretty simple.  The learning curve is fairly short.

And of course the comic book comes with it.  If you don't own the comic book, pick up the toy just to read it, dammit.  (Or here it is on Comixology.)

So here's my bit of fanon.  In Robots in Disguise, the Commandos (who combine into Ruination) are reprogrammed Autobot protoforms, just like the Predacons did to Maximal protoforms in Beast Wars.  But who were these Commandos before they got Decepticonned?  Because of this new Ruination, I've decided that the Commandos used to be the RIDverse iterations of Impactor, Whirl, Roadbuster, Topspin, and Twintwist.  Man, RID Topspin's gotta be pissed his name is Movor now.

But seriously, guys, WRECKERS COMBINER DUDE.  This is usually the stuff of bad fanfic, but I'm allowing it.  For one, there's no accompanying fiction to remind us all of The Beast Within.  (No, that job's being filled by the current Monstrosity digital miniseries.)  And technically these guys are all from the Aligned continuity family, and those versions of the Wreckers can combine if they wanna.  They can even combine into a weird homage to RID Ruination, apparently.  Roadbuster can be a green and orange offroad vehicle like Rollbar, Topspin can be a white and orange shuttle like Movor, Twintwist can be a blue tank like (America's) Armorhide, and Whirl can be a dark blue and orange helicopter like Ro-Tor.  Impactor does his own thing.  He's like the wind, baby.

(Sorry about the comparison photo -- I only have the Japanese-version Baldigus, who has some color differences with our Ruination.)

The individual guys all come with additional weapons, with one or two based on real weapons from the Fall of Cybertron game.  Everyone also comes with the weapons that came with the original versions of the molds, and there aren't really any good ways to integrate both sets of weapons into any mode.  And unlike the first set of weapons, the new set of weapons don't combine.  They're just there to be value-adding and package-filling, I guess.  The newer weapons are all pretty hefty, too, which is unfortunate due to the weak balljoints of most of these dudes' arms.  Dang.

And, hey, good news!  Apparently the Transformers Collectors' Club wants to redeco Roadbuster as Ironfist as one of next year's Subscription Service guys, so, hey, later you can have a slightly different line-up of Wreckers to combine into Ruination if you want.  And who knows, maybe we'll get Whirl done as Rotorstorm or Twintwist done as Guzzle or Topspin done as... uh...Verity Carlo?

Anyway.  Wreck and rule.

"These Decepticons scatter like cowards."
"Til all are one."
"Metroplex heeds the call of the last Prime."
"Foolish Decepticons."
"Decepticon deactivation commencing."
"Target synchronizing initiated."
"Target obliterated."

Unsure of how to start this damn post about Generations "Thrilling 30" Metroplex, I thought I'd start with a quote from his electronics.  Apparently there's a lot of quotes, so I wrote out all of them for you!  As these cycle through, the sentences alternate with mechanical sounds.  Two AA batteries (not included) fit into the small of his back (screwdriver also not included), and once you start pushing down on his collarbone, he starts chattering.

But let's get the most important and obvious thing out of the way first.  Metroplex is two feet tall.  He's the tallest Transformer ever made, including 1987's Fortress Maximus, who he has a very slight edge over.  (Mine is in the basement and kind of an unsightly yellow, so, uh, use your imagination for height comparisons.)  He's so big, he's packaged in his box with his arm detached so that the volume of the box takes up less shelf real estate in stores.  Of course, once the arm goes in, the arm doesn't come out, so don't expect to use the box to store him later.  It's the same deal with the recent huge-ass Millennium Falcon and probably lots of other similarly-sized toys.

So of course, when you get to BotCon and Cheetimus points out to you that, dude, Big Bad Toy Store is here for the first time in years and they brought frigging 240 Metroplexes a month or two ahead of its expected release date elsewhere, your first thought is OH MY GOD I WILL BUY IT IMMEDIATELY followed by OH SHIT HOW DO I GET THIS THING HOME???  I ignored the second all-caps exclamation and went ahead and bought the damn thing.  Once I got my artist alley table set up, I stared longingly at the box.  I could just, y'know, open it and take a look inside!  I can still put it back in the box if I only pull out the cardboard tray!  Oh, and I can probably remove Scamper, his little included car dude.  Oh, hey, look, I've removed his detached arm and played with it OH GOD NOW HE'S COMPLETELY REMOVED AND HIS ARM IS PLUGGED IN HOW DID THAT HAPPEN????

shiiit

In the end, it turned out removing him from the box actually helped me get him home.  Since BotCon is in San Diego, as are my in-laws, and Comic-Con is in three weeks, I was able to keep most of the contents of my suitcase (posters, prints, bookmarks, etc) in Maggie's closet at their house for the duration, allowing me to stand up Metroplex inside my suitcase and pack him in tight with all my clothes and other BotCon swag.  Glad I bought that new 2-foot tall suitcase a few weeks ago!  So I just checked my suitcase with Metroplex inside and all was well.  I threw away the box.

Metroplex is... well, Metroplex.  He has a robot mode and then two modes which are extrapolations of that.  He transforms very similarly to the original in either non-robot form, just with some smaller extra steps.  For battlestation mode, he still sits down and unfolds the front of his legs.  This is my favorite non-robot mode because I love the new black runways.  "Aircraft carrier" is a more fun alternate form in my view than a battle station.  His city mode is also basically the same as the original's but with a pretty important improvement -- you can actually drive cars all the way down through his legs.  The original Metroplex unfolded his legs open in much the same way, but they formed very obstructive streets.  His knees and feet were in the way of driving cars through them.  But on the new toy, those feet and knees lift and tilt out of the way of the roads.  A car can go all the way from inside Metroplex's chest, down the ramp, and out to his toes.  ...well, his knees, due to how the legs open up.

He comes with a sticker sheet, and it's enormous.  Like, legal paper size.  And most of the stickers aren't terribly large!  Each arrow going down the runway is a sticker, as well as anything written anywhere in Cybertronix or any set of hazard stripes.  It's a lot to sticker, and it'll take a while.

The only problem I have with getting Metroplex to function is the deal with his face.  You're given an option between normal eyes or red shades to fold down over the eyes, because one is toy accurate and the other is accurate to Metroplex's cartoon portrayal.  And so if you tilt Metroplex's helmet forward, his shades will flip and click forward into place.  But these shades can get out-of-joint pretty easily and I've had to put them back into his head a number of times.  It's kinda annoying.  But it's really the only part of him that annoys me.

Well, and I think like three stickers are mis-numbered in the instructions.  Oof.

If you have room for a two-foot robot, I recommend him.  He's massive and fun and all your smaller dudes can play inside him in various ways.  If you don't have room for a two-foot robot, buy a bigger house.  There's gonna be an SDCC version, so you can look out for it, but I'm plenty fine having the "normal" version.  I really don't like the SDCC Metroplex's chrome nor do I have any desire for the little decoys he comes with.  A second gun would have been all right, but it's not a dealbreaker.  If you don't care for any of that stuff either, the normal Metroplex is due in stores within a few months.

Both Springer and Sandstorm sold in 1986, and both were car-to-helicopter Triple Changers.  Both were not great Triple Changers.  Springer was designed as a cartoon character first, like most of the new Transformers The Movie characters, and so his toy was kind of a robot who becomes this vague vehicle thing that's two vague vehicle things if you squint at it.  Sandstorm, on the other hand, was designed as an actual Triple Changer, more in line with the other four Triple Changers sold that year.  He's everything Springer's original toy wishes he could've been.

And now he IS Springer's toy.

When you've got two car-to-helicopter Triple Changers and Hasbro makes one of them, there's a good chance they're a headswap and a redeco away from making the other, especially when the other guy isn't nearly as well known, meaning you can take more liberties with his design.  But apparently Hasbro was all, yeah, okay, we could do that, but what if we also heavily retool him to give him different vehicle modes and a different transformation?  Like a boss?

At a glance, Sandstorm seems like he might be an entirely different toy.  Much of the toy's engineering and parts are the same, but between all the new parts and the strikingly different color scheme, they could be confused for different tooling entirely by casual buyers.  Sandstorm's land mode is now an offroad dunebuggy thing with a wire-frame bumper and oversized hind wheels, the latter of which flip to become VTOL engines for his new hovercraft mode (instead of the traditional helicopter mode).  You like his new hovercraft tailwings?  Well, they fold over to become his roof and armor up his windows in land vehicle mode.  The VTOL engines and the tailfins also change the robot mode's silhouette significantly.  All the new parts are used pretty efficiently.  You can fold the kibble that pops up behind his head if you want, and it fits snugly into his back, but I'm fine doing it the instructions way since I think of Sandstorm having kibble up over his head like on the original toy.

Like Springer, Sandstorm has a gun (a completely different one) that hooks up under his cockpit in ways unexplained by the instructions.  And also like Springer, you kind of have to start shoving stuff everywhere until you find the elusive groove that snaps into the elusive slot.  His gun has one firing missile instead of Springer's two, and because Sandstorm isn't a helicopter anymore, he doesn't come with the propeller sword either.  A trade-off for the awesome color scheme, I guess.

Sandstorm's traditional mustard-and-orange color scheme has been contrasted dramatically into a very visually grabbing yellow and orange.  He's hard to look away from, he's so pretty.  If I didn't have such a hard-on for Springer and Nick Roche, Sandstorm would be the best of the two just by virtue of his color scheme.  Even then, he and Springer are often neck-and-neck in my brain.

(All Wreckers symbols are Reprolabels I applied.)