Both Stege and EarthRise like to beat the hell out of that 1984 drum, but ever so often it'll give us a small crumb from the margins of the original toyline.  So, hey, say hello to Doubledealer!  This 1988 Double Powermaster is back, minus his Powermasters, sort of.  

Transformers has been steadfastly adhering to the old Eighties cartoon as its bible, and so Doubledealer comes in like an enigma.  We like to have things look like the cartoon, but Doubledealer only appeared in animated form in a commercial which you can only find fuzzy versions of on YouTube.  We like things to be SCALED like they were in the cartoon, but, again, same issue.  What Doubledealer looks like and how big he is are largely things Hasbro could make up.  And so EarthRise Doubledealer takes its lead from the original toy a lot more than it would otherwise.  And it turns out Doubledealer is a pretty chonky dude!  He's Leader Class, which recently means "Voyager Class-sized robot with extra stuff," but in his case he's extra wide and a little extra tall and a higher parts count.  He's dense.

The original Doubledealer was pretty lanky, but EarthRise Doubledealer adds girth so that his torso can encompass a gimmick borrowed from Soundwave.  Yeah, he's got a tape cassette compartment!  That's how the Powermaster angle is achieved with him this go-round.  His Powermaster buds were released separately as part of an online-exclusive mini-cassette four-pack, and so instead of attaching them to him as little engines, you slot them into a big box on his chest.  Knok (the red humanoid partner) has his details sculpted into Doubledealer's abs, but you can still put Knok into Doubledealer's chest compartment, unplug a portion of the engine detail from the abs, and replug it onto Knok.  Ditto with Skar, though Skar doesn't seem to be sculpted into Doubledealer's bird mode.

(That was Doubledealer's double deal.  He was an Autobot-aligned robot who transformed into a Decepticon-aligned vulture/chicken/thing, and his missile truck mode was the... neutral mode?  In practice, he was pretending to be two folks -- Both an Autobot robot/truck guy and a Decepticon bird/truck guy.   Just... two guys, both with the same missile truck mode.  You weren't supposed to connect the robot guy to the bird guy.  Optimus Prime wasn't very perceptive, I guess.)

EarthRise Doubledealer is... complicated!  Like I said, he's got a high parts count.  Lots of hinges and stuff, all of which help you get a pretty okay robot to an acceptable missile truck to a block with a head and wings on it that's a bird because we say so.  When there's a robot/vehicle/animal Triple Changer, I feel it's the animal mode that suffers the most.  And being a bird doesn't help, either.  Transformers has trouble with birds.  There's a not a lot of volume in a bird for stuff to go, and so you end up with situations like Doubledealer where he looks like a chicken that's trying to poop a truck.  Like half his beast mode is truck butt, with a tiny little bit of tailfeathers on top.

The original Doubledealer placed his giant missile slung under his torso in bird mode.  Earthrise Doubledealer realizes, yo, this looks like a huge dick, and officially the missile gets placed on his bird mode back.  ....however, there's 5mm pegs placed underneath if you still want to give him that huge traditional bird dick.  And it's not a happy accident, they're definitely there for that purpose.  Gotta keep the fans happy with bird dick!

That's essentially EarthRise Doubledealer's deal!  1) Hooray, a minor character from the latter days of G1 who's not, like, the 30th Prowl toy!  And 2) oh dang he is fussy.  He's just trying to do so many things at once, but not any of it well.  Not any of it TERRIBLY either, just, you know, he's solidly in the middle.  

The early 80s were a wild time!  For example, you could sell a kids toy robot that transformed into a racing car with the logo of a cigarette company painted across it.  In Japan, a variant of the toy that would later be repurposed by Hasbro as Wheeljack had a new head, plus Marlboro's distinctive red and white angles across the hood.  Marlboro was misspelled (probably purposefully) as Marlboor, and so the little guy was known in collectors circles as Marlboor Wheeljack.

It wasn't until 2015 that TakaraTomy tried to integrate Marlboor Wheeljack into Transformers proper as Exhaust.  A retool of Masterpiece Wheeljack (so that he got the new head), Masterpiece Exhaust's photos promised a slightly altered arrangement of the hood deco.  But, whoops, that wasn't enough, and Marlboro had them change it even more.  The toy was released with a weird stairsteppy version of the usual clean red angles.  

Five years later, we've got Generations Selects Exhaust!  A retool (again, for the new head) of EarthRise Wheeljack, his car mode has an even more Game-Of-Telephoned iteration of the red hood deco.  Just, y'know... going that extra mile to not get the attention of Marlboro.  There's very little resemblance to the original deco, other than color.  Which is honestly fine.  Collectors know Exhaust is about cigarettes.  He's still got that hint of illicit marketing.  And I betcha five bucks ToyHax has stickers ready to go to recreate it.  

Also, "Exhaust" is misspelled three times on the toy as "Exhuast."  Let's... pretend that's a purposeful reference to the vintage "Marlboor" mispelling, and not, like, an accidental typo.  Let's pretend it very hard.

Generations Selects is the online-exclusive line of Hasbro toys that's supplemental to the ongoing retail mainline.  Exhaust (and Greasepit) showed up for order from a few of the smaller online stores a few weeks ago, but Hasbro's yet to acknowledge the toy exists.  It's possible it's going to be available as a "see it and buy it now" SDCC-timed exclusive in a week or so, at which point HasbroPulse and the rest of the usual online retailers will put theirs up for sale.  

Honestly, if Hasbro was gonna do an Evil Wheeljack, I woulda preferred Slicer.

When a new $80 "Commander" size class for Transformers was announced last year , just so that a Jetfire toy would be at cartoon scale, the amount of eye-rolling in my reaction was non-zero.  I mean, sweet, new size class, yes, and yeah actually I do like scale, and the Jetfire it produced was actually surprisingly good, but... what else could this new avenue bring us?

Well, David of the past, nuts to you, because this year's Commander Sky Lynx is glorious, actually.  And it's largely due to his size.  He's just... an enviable chonk of Sky Lynx.  He's a big dude!  Well, two big dudes that combine into one bigger dude.  ...fine, one bigger dude that separates into two smaller dudes.  You know what I mean.  He's a lynx.  He's a bird.  He combines into a dragon.  The dragon transforms into a shuttle on a transport.  The shuttle can detach from the transport.  There's a lot going on here!

There's apparently a lot of budget room to work with on an $80 Transformers toy.  Jetfire spent its moolah on a lot of smaller things like hands that disappeared their 5mm ports when the palm opened and little handholds for smaller Transformers to hold onto while Jetfire airdrops them into battle.  There aren't many things exactly like that on Sky Lynx, but he feels like he has a robust budget all the same.  His poseable neck and tail, the ankle rockers on all six of his limbs (the bird has two), the myriad of ways you can pose his wings... Sky Lynx is just impressive.

Because he's a large Earthrise toy, he's got a new base mode.  You unfold the lynx into a shuttle launch pad with multiple ramps!  The ramps each have connectors to attach to other EarthRise base modes.  There's two broad white cannons  you can awkwardly attach to the lynx feet in this mode, helping you pretend these are towers and not, you know, feet.  This is probably the weakest aspect of the whole arrangement.  In lynx or dragon modes, you can attach these cannons to his hips.

One of the biggest joys of Sky Lynx is standing other guys next to him and getting this sense of scale.  Again, he's a big guy, and it's neat to see Optimus Prime small next to him.  Plus, like, huge winged dinosaur thing.  And, yes, his face is just a shuttle cockpit with a jaw, but it still possesses this shocking charisma.  

EarthRise SkyLynx's altmode is actually licensed by NASA.   Like, it's got the NASA logo on there, and on purpose, and he transforms into a very accurate 80's style space shuttle.    His shuttle name is the Magnificence.  Later this summer, there's a pair of Micromasters that transform together into a shuttle which also have the NASA logo printed on them, so Hasbro went for broke this year, NASA-wise.

I'm just always delighted to see this thing on my desk.  I need to eventually put him away where he needs to end up in my display shelves, but he's just gonna be mostly hidden behind so many other guys, and I'll be sad.  I put him there once just to make sure he fit (he did, amazingly), but had to yank him out soon enough so I could love him more.  

Though it's also possible I'm just going mad from being inside for 4 months, I dunno.

If I recall, I bemoaned Stege Optimus Prime for being a uncanny valley Earth Truck, so very close that it looked like an Earth truck wearing some extra parts stapled on it.  Well, here's the truck underneath those parts!  It's what you wanted really all along, after we sold you the other one that tried to be this but not really!  Stege was ""not"" Earth truck, and EarthRise Optimus Prime is just Earth truck.

I mean, it's an Optimus Prime, whaddya want.  A trailer?  It's here!  It even splits open and there's Command Deck inside.  Roller?  It's... not here.  Well, there's plenty of other Rollers.  But this is your Trying To Be The Cartoon G1 Optimus Prime With An Actual Trailer, At Retail.  

And to be honest...?  Heck, I think I preferred the Cybertronian-style one.  I miss the way the front wheels folded up into the ribcage.  I miss it having... I dunno, what small amount of stylization it had.  Yeah, it was an Earth truck wearing goggles, but turns out the goggles were the interesting part.  

I mean, this isn't a bad toy.  It's actually quite good!  It has some new ways to get Cartoon Optimus out of a box.  I like how it wads its truck stuff up inside its shirt.  I do actually like the trailer -- it's largely why I bothered with it.  My kids are... VERY into trucks with trailers and also connecting all my Transformer base stuff together.  The middle section of the trailer door slides out and becomes a shield, AND it has hinged edges that connects to all the road pieces from the rest of the line (plus Stege's Omega Supreme).  If I skipped this Optimus Prime toy that has a trailer with base-connecting capability, I'd be a monster.  

I did have to fix his eyes, though.  They were blue, which... well, his face is also blue, so they kind of disappear.  I opened up his noggin and painted his eyes gold.  That's one major thing I like about current Transformers toys, the part where the eyes are sculpted into the back of the head but poke out through the front, likely to make painting them easier for the factories.  Well, it makes it easier for me, too!  Huzzah.  Those gold eyes pop, now.  

EarthRise Optimus Prime also comes with an ion cannon (his rifle) that folds in half and can store anywhere there's a 5mm peghole.  (There are lots.)  And there's a Matrix of Leadership inside his chest which can be removed.  Technically this is why his hands are sculpted to open, but he's not great at holding it.  Kind of have to wedge either end around his thumbs and pray.  But!  If you flip around the Matrix, there's a 5mm port there, which means you can shove effects parts into there if you want to have him do Matrix Blasts or whatever Optimus Prime is up to these days.  Or just have the Matrix zoom through the sky like Nyan Cat.  

One of my favorite oddities with EarthRise Optimus Prime is that he's partially made from actual Stege Optimus Prime parts, especially his legs.  But they gutted his legs, put some new stuff in there, and they don't flip around to transform anymore, and so you have this extra, vestigial 5mm trailer hitch peghole split across the outsides of his shins, with a new 5mm peg added to the insides of his new legs.  It's wild.

I'm not sure any of you followed that.  I barely understood myself reading it.

Oh well.

It's Optimus Prime, folks.  

Yo, if you've got any familiarity with the original Grapple toy, dang is EarthRise Grapple gonna feel like some dejavu!   In ways more than other retreads, he feels solidly like "this 1980s guy but with joints."  He transforms basically identically, but now there's knees.  And because Grapple's cartoon model was designed in 1985, he's gonna look pretty much just like his original toy, too!  Due to Circumstances, there is not a lot new here.

And generally, with Stege/EarthRise stuff, things just work so dang well -- executed so simply and flawlessly -- that even though there's (again) that feeling of dejavu, it's all cool!  ... However, Grapple has a big problem.

See, he's got some pegs at the back of his head/crane arm that plug into the back of the vehicle/his feet while transforming into crane mode.  But the connections between the pegs and the crane arm are kind of Not Enough and so there's a chance of plugging them into the pegholes for the first time and then ... them tearing off inside the pegholes when you try to untransform him.  Mine has not done this, but the problem was already reported and I was careful and it was still... an... ordeal to get them out.  Just, like, pulling on them as straight and outward as I could, very slowly.  Some folks sand the pegs or the peghole down, some folks just snip the pegs in half.  But this is still a pretty serious oopsie-doodle!  The default of "Stege/EarthRise is boringly G1 but executed really well so it's hard to be mad" has been poked in the eye by this feller.  

*DISTRAUGHT SHRUG*

I painted the helmet on my Grapple black.  The all yellow head look from the cartoon IS NOT GOOD.  I fixed it.  

Also I had to shave down the pegs on mine as a precaution.  

One of those things I shouldn't be expected to do with my stuff.  

You see the phrase "mini-Masterpiece" thrown around at some modern regular retail toys.  Stege Sideswipe?  Mini-Masterpiece!  Earthrise Grapple?  Mini-Masterpiece!   It gives the impression that these retail toys are just scaled down Masterpiece toys.  And honestly, these toys are not much like their larger, expensiver counterparts at all.  They just all try to look like the cartoon, while transforming pretty differently.  

EarthRiseEarthrise Wheeljack is like that!  He looks like a smaller toy of Masterpiece Wheeljack, but he's really not.  He just wants to look like the same source material.  And so he has similar proportions and colors, and he transforms into the same box with a dome, but he doesn't feel like he takes home any lessons in particular from the Masterpiece.  Heck, his arms pull out of the back of the car mode in a completely different way.  His torso transforms (so that parts are facing the right way) in a much simpler, elegant way than, you know, turning inside out as per usual.  

In that way, it's a pretty satisfying Wheeljack toy!  He... looks like Wheeljack.  And handling him doesn't disprove the existence of a benevolent god.  (that's jetfire's job)

The first Deluxe Class G1-style Wheeljack toy came out in... what, 2011?  Dang, 9 years ago.  In between then and now there was also the Combiner Wars Deluxe.  Neither have something that's very important to me: rally deco.  I want sponsor logos!  And so regardless of how I feel about the rest of this new Wheeljack, the fact that he has doors covered in tiny fake sponsor logos makes him the best one.  The red hubcaps don't hurt, either.  

"Regardless of how I feel about the rest of this new Wheeljack" makes it seem like I'm trying to compensate for some faults.  I'm not, actually!  He's a pretty good Wheeljack.  There have been ... well, honestly, not that many Wheeljacks.  It feels like more Wheeljacks.  A lotta Wheeljacks.  Maybe there's some premature Wheeljack fatigue.  But this is still a pretty good one.  Maybe the best one.  

It has sponsor logos.

Dangit, Stege is over, and so now it's EarthRise time.   I'm going to miss Stege, because I liked calling it Stege.  It's just fun to say and fun to type.  EarthRise is just EarthRise.   And you gotta abbreviate it as "ER" which always makes me think of George Clooney.  Goodbye, Stege.  You were too Stege for this world.

Check out Hoist!  That's right, he's mistakably an Earth truck, because, well, EarthRise.  The toyline is, in theory, on Earth.  And so he's not just an Earth truck that Hasbro tells us is a Cybertronian vehicle, he's properly an Earth truck.  And because this is Hasbro in the late 2010s to early 2020s, he's an Extremely Eighties Earth truck.  He seems to be a Toyota Hi-Lux pickup, same as the original toy.  Or at least a Close Enough But Not Too Close That We Gotta License It version.  Which is fine to me if only because I prefer boxy vehicles 'cuz they're way easier for me to draw.  They're just rectangles.  None of those pesky curves.

The original toy had a little platform that lowered down off the bed of the truck to help Hoist tow other Transformer cars.  This is equally true for the new EarthRise Hoist, but specifically with Rest Of The Toyline compatibility!  See, Earthrise's "other than transforming" gimmick is "there are bases with interconnecting ramps."  And Hoist's towing platform thing is compatible with the ramps.  And so you can lengthen the towing platform with a piece of ramp, or connect it to a base and drag the base around, who knows.  It connects.  Connecting is neat.

Hoist's truck transforms into a... properly huge robot.  EarthRise continues Stege's commitment to adhering to cartoon robot scale, even if it results in large variations of robot size within a single size class.  Hoist is on the high end of the spectrum of Deluxe Class toys.  He's about the size and heft of Stege Ratchet and Ironhide.  They're all trucks and vans, so they're bigger than the sports car guys.  (but not quite big enough to rate being Voyager Class)  This is very satisfying to me, since the previous Hoist toy, from Thrilling Thirty, was a pretty small Deluxe.  For Deluxes, he was eensy!  And this won't do.  I mean, I'm gonna keep that toy, since that's the Lost Light design for Hoist, and I gotta Lost Light shelf display, but it's nice to have a Hoist that's Rightfully Huge next to, say, anybody else.  

Since Hoist is obviously gonna be retooled into his pickup truck buddy Trailbreaker later, his robot mode is a compromise of their two designs.  He keeps the toy-accurate truck kibble hiding behind his arms that Hoist's animation model had, while borrowing Trailbreaker's legs.  (Trailbreaker and Hoist, despite being drawn from the same toy, had animation models designed by two separate artists, and so their cartoon/comic appearances were more different than you'd think.) 

Hoist comes with an orange nozzle you can fit over one of his fists so he has his gun arm.  He's also got the standard articulation you'd expect from a Stege or (apparently) EarthRise toy, including ankle tilts, waist rotation, and all the other little movement spots that are now expected.  ER Hoist also continues Stege's seeming commitment to straightforward, non-reason-for-murdery transformation sequences.  It's a pleasurable encounter going back and forth.

He's a hefty boy and I like him.  All I need is a tiny Brick Springhorn figurine to complete him.

The reason I'm... inordinately fond of the 1987 Targetmaster Crosshairs is not one that's likely to be replicable by other, non-me people.  But I am!  I love this guy.  I've been waiting for a modern toy of this dude for a very long time.

So.  

Like, it's 1987.  I am eight.  I still don't own an Optimus Prime.  At this point, I've already tried taking washable red and blue markers to my white Ultra Magnus cab, resulting in a pink and powder blue Easter Optimus, oops.  And so I get taken to the store for, I dunno, my birthday, probably?  And there's still no Optimus.  It's 1987.  But I pick out Crosshairs because he's a red and blue truck.  He'll do!  Sort of!  

I take Crosshairs with me to my third grade class.  He's stolen.  The following day, while I'm still distraught, that kid who bullies me claims he took him home and melted him in his backyard.  A neighbor kid agrees, yeah, he saw a melted puddle of plastic in his back yard!  Crosshairs is gone and he's been murdered.  

The melting story, upon reflection, is not terribly likely, and probably made up to be a jerk.  But Crosshairs was still stolen!  And I was still, in the moment, fairly traumatized.  I became a weird little Crosshairs obsessive, like a very specialized Bruce Wayne.  I can tell you all sorts of things about Crosshairs that nobody else cares about, like his different-from-the-toy head that appeared in the comic and cartoon (and was based on early control art before it got changed to being a super boring normal-ass face head).  Or the white hands he had in the cartoon (which might have been based on the silver stickers across his wrists).  And I might drone on about his voice (supplied by Neil "Shipwreck" Ross) that tried to sort of be Jack Nicholson but came out more Ronald Reagan.  

Every time a new Transformer comes out that's a truck or whatever, I usually pine for a Crosshairs redeco of it.  It even almost happened a few times, like with a shelved BotCon Crosshairs from Generations Kup!  And finally, at long last, this has occurred, using Stege Ironhide.  And even better, Crosshairs has his comic/animation head.  (This is his real, better head, and the original toy's can go haaaang.)  And even even better, Stege Ratchet has compatible white hands I can swap in to give Crosshairs his cartoon white hands.  And even even even better, an updated version of Pinpointer exists (who was recently paired with Windblade).  And so I've got this perfect storm of a perfect Crosshairs.  

Just... try to feel my excitement through the screen, somehow.  I know, I know, he's just a 1987 Targetmaster truck.  Half his appearances are probably drawing errors of Pinpointer.  (He honestly had an overly-fair amount of lines in the cartoon.)  

Toy-wise, he's exactly Ironhide but in different colors and a different head, with Ironhide's hammer/cannon weapon redecoed red and black to look vaguely like Pinpointer.  Ironhide's a pretty good toy, if the side panels don't pop off all the time.  And Crosshairs' don't, so, yeah, we're solid.  And, yes, I swap out the hands and give him his rightful Targetmaster partner, and we're good, and we've almost entirely nailed floorboards over my third grade childhood trauma.  

almost

almost

When War for Cybertron: Stege Hound first came out, everyone noticed something odd about his packaging art -- he had Hot Shot's head!  Specifically, Cybertron Defense Hot Shot's head.  The packaging artist painted the wrong head, possibly because the photos they were sent presented the toy with it.  CD Hot Shot was a military vehicle, while currently Rescue Bots Academy Hot Shot is a dune buggy, so a Cybertronic Jeep mode isn't too far off the mark for the guy.   Thing is, most toys these days get extra heads built into the tooling for potential later releases, but these potential later releases don't always happen!  And so despite us knowing (intuitively) there was a Hot Shot head somewhere in Stege Hound's tooling, it didn't guarantee we'd get a Hot Shot from him.

Ultimately (obviously), we did!  He wasn't confirmed officially until dang near the end of the line, and just days before he was released exclusively at New York Comic-Con (via Entertainment Earth).  Entertainment Earth also had a matching Hot Shot pin and a little Hot Shot badge tag, both of which Adam Pawlus was gratefully able to get for me.  (I also was helped getting a pin by good ol' warcabbit.)  Since, you know, I've never been to a NYCC.  Hot Shot himself was available readily online through various outlets.

And the Stege Hot Shot is... good.

I mean, he's not the Hot Shottiest Hot Shot, since he's not a yellow sportscar, but he's probably one of the best Hot Shot toys?  Because Hound himself is pretty good, you see.  He's got a neat transformation (both sets of wheels end up in his legs), and he comes with two cannons and a ... fake spare tire thing, since the altmode is Cybertronian.  The fake spare tire thing can attach to the side of the larger cannon and make it look like a Tommy gun.  

But Stege Hot Shot is definitely the most articulated Hot Shot toy, that's for dang sure.  Like, I'm not sure any transformable Hot Shot toy has even had waist rotation before.  And all the standard Stege articulation is present, including waist rotation, ankle tilts.... shoulders.  You can get some dynamic movement out of him.

Cybertron Defense Hot Shot was known for his double cannons mounted on his shoulders, but Hot Shot's two cannons do a poor job of recreating both of them.  They can recreate ONE of them pretty well, if you combine them.  And so, whoops, I have two Stege Hot Shots, and one is borrowing the other's weapons.  I am now sated.

Until more Hot Shots come out, anyway.  Dang, do you know there's a Rescue Bots Academy (Series 2) of those blind-bagged figurines you find at Meijer or Kroger?  And there's TWO Hot Shot figures in that.  It's been reported exactly once in the United States and zero other times.  That shit needs to saturate the market.  Or at least eBay.  

So, yeah, he's Ratchet, he transforms into an ambulance and a medical bed, he's exclusive to friggin' Walgreens, but according to the website his function is "engineer"???  And Red Alert is apparently the doctor?  Look, I dunno.

Stege Ratchet is a heavy retool of Stege Ironhide!  It's not immediately apparent, but a whole lot of him is different.  I mean, their toys are still essentially the same, but Ratchet's sculpting been resurfaced pretty extravagantly.   It's just hard to tell since, you know, the two toys have the same silhouette and also Ratchet is mostly white so details are washed out.

But it's nice to see the extra mile here.  Ratchet also comes with a giant repair arm with two potential attachments -- a laser scalpel and a wrench.  The repair arm/scalpel is based on the one inside the original Ratchet toy's trailer medical bay.  The wrench is there because Robot Doctor/ENGINEER APPARENTLY, also I guess you could hand it off to Nautica if you wanted.  Considering Ratchet's one of the bigger Deluxe Class toys in Stege, it's nice to see him with all this extra stuff regardless.  Is it because he's an exclusive?  Maybe.  (Though I suppose regular retail Ironhide came with that giant hammer.)  

Ratchet also has a third mode, a medical bed thing.  It's basically a half-ambulance half-robot deal.  It's not terribly convincing.  But it's there and it didn't need to be, so I'll shrug and like it.  This is actually where a lot of the new sculpted tooling comes into play -- there's a series of tools and monitors on the back of Ratchet's arms that don't make themselves apparent until this mode, where they're finally facing upwards.  It's all unpainted white plastic, though, so you have to pay attention.

I don't know what's going on with the deco?  Like, okay, I get why he'll have a white helmet black chevron forever and ever because of the fucking cartoon, but why is the rest of him?  Ratchet tends to be solid white, sure, and there are ways to break up that white with some red.  The Marvel comics gave him a red helmet and red hands.  The cartoon gave him a red pelvis and red hands.  This toy... kind of randomly paints red rectangles on him.  It's not a very cohesive look!  You think, oh, maybe this deco comes together in vehicle mode, but it doesn't.  It's just as random there.  What was going on?  I dunno.

Anyway, I painted the helmet red on my Ratchet almost immediately.  It makes the weird deco choice look a little more cohesive, since there's a red focal point that isn't a rectangle on his thigh.  

I will not be painting his white hands red because those white hands will be going to Crosshairs when he comes out in a month.  The Rebirth colors, yo!  (I will then be painting Crosshairs's black fists red before giving them to Ratchet, obvsly.)

Deco aside, Stege Ratchet is a pretty good Ratchet!  He's dynamic in all the ways Stege toys tend to be dynamic -- by which I mean he's a pile of boxes you can pose very well.  He's also one of the few Stege toys that, you know, actually looks unapologetically like a Cybertronian vehicle.  He's not a Lamborghini with the serial numbers filed off, or a Freightliner cab with a hat.  Ratchet's a wheeled spacebox.  

A wheeled spacebox who needs his helmet painted red, gaddangit.