Posts tagged with "legacy" - 1
Posted August 4, 2023 at 2:21 pm

Look, nobody liked Strongarm in 2015's Robots in Disguise cartoon because she was a cop, they liked her because she used the strict following of rules and procedure to help her cope with a universe she otherwise had trouble socially engaging with!  Let's just focus on that second part instead of the part about how the Autobots' whole deal in that cartoon was incarcerating various wayward individuals who all shared the visual coding of being subhuman animals.  

and with that out of the way

I am super into this Transformers: Legacy: Evolution toy of Strongarm!  She's a retool of Legacy Elita One, who was already a favorite toy of mine, so of course Strongarm is already going to be up my alley.  To tell the truth, she's an entirely new sculpt from the waist up, sharing only some transformation similarities.  (And some parts in her shins are new.)  Her new shoulders are sculpted in a way that lets the front hood/wheel pieces sit cleanly over them, plus the're on hinged arms that let them maneuver to and fro to accommodate different poses.  Though this is ignored by the instructions, she now has the ability to fan out her truck mode's doors into little wings.  

Legacy Elita One was a good choice for retooling into Strongarm because she was basically already Strongarm-shaped, with her big boxy boot shins and general un-Arcee-like proportions.  Even so, Strongarm's new parts widen her torso and give her bigger, boxier forearms.  She's literally got stronger arms.  Strongarm's head is even a little smaller than Elita One and Minerva's, but not too much smaller -- you want Strongarm to fit in amongst the rest of the Legacy toys, while acknowleding that every single humanoid character on Robots in Disguise was kind of goofily pinheaded.  

But by far the best thing about Legacy Strongarm is how much of the paint budget is dedicated to decoing her head.  Like, luxurious numbers of paint operations.  I wonder how much paint her case assortment mates don't have just to make this possible.  I mean, usually a Transformer's head has only the face and eyes painted, plus maybe a token bit of forehead decoration, but Strongarm also has the line of blue that traces around her face and chin, the extra blue lines on the tips of her ears, the additional six lighter-blue marks on the front of her ears, the three blue lines that travel over the top of her noggin, her lips... it's a lot.  And yet the rest of her doesn't feel underpainted.  A lot of care was put in here.  

Definitely several steps up from the original Warrior Class toy, which kind of felt like it fell halfway into blue paint once and they felt it was done.  

Strangely satisfying for a toy that has somebody else's legs.  

Posted July 2, 2023 at 10:21 am

This is it, the realest Devcon that's ever been made!  Back in the early BotCon days, they flirted with at least two potential Devcons -- one from Machine Wars Mirage (which I made a custom of) and one from Energon Slugslinger, and then in Later BotCon days they actually did make one from Generations 2011 Scourge.  I mean, it had a new weird-lookin' duckface but it was made.  And then there was that bizarre Platinum Series Sweep with the retooled Devcon face??? what

But now Hasbro has actually gone and done it and made a regular retail looks-like-the-character-model Devcon!  Legacy Devcon is a heavy partial of Studio Series 86 Blurr, and when I mean "heavy" I mean he only keeps the feet, thighs, and some minor interior joints. Everything else is new.  He even transforms a little differently, in that his arms don't switch positions on the torso anymore, and the only kibble now hanging off his forearms are some tiny wings.  

He comes with three accessories: his arm-mounted blaster and two vehicle mode thrusters.  The instructions show you stowing them on his back in robot mode or plugging into his blaster, but they're perfectly sized to fit inside his leg cavities.  Keep those suckers there.  

The Transformers Generations lines continue their adherence to animation scale, keeping Devcon at Smokescreen height.  He's actually a fraction shorter than Blurr due to the retooling, and that's good.  Being taller than Smokescreen would be *adjusts glasses and pocket protector* less accurate.  I know your brain tells you that Devcon's a bigger guy but your brain is wrong.

  

Posted July 2, 2023 at 12:03 am

Amazon has an exclusive Transformers subline this year (called a "capsule" by Industry Insiders and also toy nerds) that's got some pretty inside-baseball stuff!  We don't know about most of the line officially yet, but the first two sets of toys are starting to ship from Hasbro Pulse.

The first to get to me is the Senator Shockwave and Data Clerk Orion Pax two-pack!  Yeah, that's right, before he was a one-eyed gun-armed logic lord, before he was cosplaying as a centaur, and before he was a one-eyed gun-armed logic lord again, he was just a regular-ass senator on pre-war Cybertron.  But (spoilers!) he ran afoul of the deep state or whatever and they punished him as an example by setting his brain to Logic Always All The Time and removing his face and a hand.  Would Hasbro ever make a toy of Shockwave from before he looked anything like Shockwave?  Apparently they would!

Senator Shockwave is a retooled (called "a partial" by Industry Insiders and also toy nerds) Siege Seeker/Starscream, with his shellformering wings removed and replaced with a pair of boxy thrusters.  Also he's got a new head (obviously), a new chest panel, and new little wings to plug into his arms.  The changes do help evoke Senator Shockwave pretty well, but there's a style clash between his rounded new parts and the boxy Siege robot they retooled him from.  He's no longer a shellformer, though, so that's pretty cool!

Data Clerk Orion Pax is a retool of Seige Hound into an early IDW Orion Pax design by Guido Guidi that was sort of the basis for the Thrilling 30 Orion Pax of... ten years ago.  Dang, I'm old.  That Orion Pax design was partially inspired by Don Figueroa's Stormbringer pre-Earth Optimus Prime design, and so through a happy little accident the toy also looks like pre-Earth IDW Orion Pax.  I mean, a little.  He's smaller and doesn't have the little double-barreled guns on his forearms and he doesn't have a mouth, but there's a correlation there.  

The set also de-cops IDW Orion Pax, because, yeah, in that version of the story, Optimus Prime started out as a police officer who eventually realized... hey, this is a corrupt system I'm working for!  Instead, this set establishes Orion Pax as his Aligned/Transformers Prime pre-war occupation, that of a data clerk.  

Anyway, this Hound-derived Orion Pax has a bunch of new parts (chest, head, windshield, feet, shins) and comes with an axe and Hound's rifle and "spare tire" piece.  Pax transforms the same way as Hound did, so he's not like Senator Shockwave's escape from land.

A NOTE: If you order this from Amazon, they seem to have mixed up the Shockwave/Pax and the corresponding Ratbat/Megatron sets?  The item numbers and prices are switched, and folks who ordered Shockwave/Pax from Amazon are receiving Ratbat/Megatron instead?  So, uh, look out for that.  I mean, if you order both, you'll be fine, but if you only wanted one set, there might be some imminent returning about to happen.

Posted June 25, 2023 at 12:04 pm

Every other couple years, they make a slightly larger Beachcomber.  There was the original, then a pair of Beachcombers done at "we make toys as big as the current smallest size class" size, and now we're in the age of "we make all our Transformers to strict cartoon robot mode scale!" And so enjoy your newer, larger Beachcomber who's Deluxe Class but a bit small for a Deluxe Class car.

There's not a lot new to do with a Beachcomber.  They all transform roughly the same.  This time, his seats and the front of his roll cage folds up into his heels.  Some panels open and then collapse back around the rear of his legs.  The arms just peg onto the sides of the car mode, like always.  

Beachcomber gets a rifle made out of his vehicle mode's front stuff.  Just peg that behind his arm so you can't see it.  

The biggest attraction here is the PVC.  Beachcomber's wheels are rubberized PVC (with ABS hubcaps), so he rolls pretty well.  Beachcomber also comes with a little bird that's also sculpted out of the PVC.  The bird sits on a 5mm peg that can fit into a 5mm port, or it can use the 3mm port sculpted into the bottom of the 5mm peg to sit atop a 3mm peg.  

Most modern TFs have 3mm pegs or 5mm ports, so you can have fun with that.  Attach a bird to Unicron.  

Anyway, he's Beachcomber, and he's at scale.  


Posted January 15, 2023 at 1:09 pm

It's been 20 years, and we've yet to get a good Lio Convoy toy.  The original was awkward and cumbersome and transformed into a lion with the worst rear legs, and was also extremely popular in the North American fandom at the time because it looked more like Optimus Prime than that dumb Optimus Primal who turned into a dumb monkey instead of a way cooler lion the way an Optimus Prime should.  And it was a tragedy, because for all Lio Convoy's faults, it was Beast Wars II Galvatron who was the true MVP of the two new toys Takara had created at the time.  But Lio Convoy righted all the horrendous wrongs Optimus Primal had perpetrated on the newly-adult fandom, so that dude was all the rage.

The Robot Masters adaptation of the Lio Convoy toy into a smaller form was reportedly an improvement on the design, I've heard.  And then there were roughly 30 billion redecoes of other lion toys like Leobreaker into Lio Convoy colors (which is the first time we got the "Leo Prime" moniker for the character), which were all of varying success.  And then there was Masterpiece Lio Convoy, which... honestly, I'm not sure how, but it's the worst one.  (Okay, I know how.  In the BWII cartoon, Lio Convoy's beast mode fleshy cartoon anime lion head shifted into an angular robotic head in robot mode, and since Masterpiece tries to be Faithful At All Costs, MP Lio Convoy became this clusterfuck of trying to fit two whole lion heads into that poor dude's right shoulder.)  It was so bad and we haven't gotten a new Beast Wars Masterpiece in the years since, that I've kind of assumed that it killed that portion of the line.  We might have a Rhinox by now if that thing hadn't happened.

Anyway, Transformers: Legacy: Evolution Beast Wars Universe Maximal Leo Prime (phew) has brought us a new attempt at the character!  And it's... good????  I mean, it's a low friggin' bar, but even judging it against Transformers toys in general, not just the Lio Convoys, it stacks up admirably.  It's got a lion mode without garbage hind legs and with existing forelimb biceps, it's got an interesting transformation that cleverly reconfigures that lion shape into an anime-styled robot mode, and it has a few gimmicks tucked in as well. 

The toy comes with four small little barrels which you can plug into various ports in his mane.  The two top ones can remain plugged in there while those panels fold back in for lion mode (or be unplugged and be used as handguns), and the two side ones can stow inside his back.  Additionally, as with the original toy, long X-Men Wolverine-esque claws can fold out of the lion forepaws and augment the robot mode's arms.  And, hey, the left chest panel still opens to reveal an Energon Matrix.  And it's painted!

Leo Prime is honestly painted pretty well.  The detail-less lion face can give you a false impression, but you get pretty much everything else detailed perfectly.  After taking photos of the guy stock, I added some black paint to the lion face and he's basically perfect.  (The eyes themselves are nylon and so couldn't be painted by the factory anyway.)  

I adore the more realistic lion face.  The cartoony anime face never did it for me, and the more realistic portrayal helps Leo Prime fit in better with, say, Kingdom Tigatron or any of the other Beast Wars guys in Legacy.  Admittedly the giant paws remain cartoonish.

While this is clearly the Best Lio Convoy Toy Ever, there are still some things that fall short.  The lion mode is useless in anything other than a standing pose, really.  It's not jointed well enough to do a believable attack pose.  I do miss the original's "push the forehead button in and his jaw puppets" action.  And, yeah, the lion face could have used the black lines, even if the eyes themselves couldn't have taken factory paint.  

But it's a toy that's excellent enough that I'm actually excited about it, despite my lukewarm feelings for the character itself.  It's just a nice lion toy!  We've had lions before, but, like, they're rarely any good.  And most of them are the worse toys of this guy.  A solid recommendation from me.

Posted January 8, 2023 at 1:00 pm

Hello!  This is attempt #2 at Modern Poseable Hot Shot!  Let's see how this guy does.

See, there's an integral problem with making Armada Hot Shot, But With Joints.  Armada Hot Shot transformed in a certain way that doesn't really.... allow for real arms?  Like, he's a sports car, and his arms are layered on top of his torso, and they really only swung out to the sides because, like... there's no room for additional jointing, and this also means his torso is absolutely flat.  So if you want to give him real arms and a real torso so that he doesn't look like Pancake The Robot Man, you have to... change things?  A lot?  And the more you change things, the less he looks like Hot Shot.  

The first attempt at Armada Hot Shot But With Joints, Universe (2009) Hot Shot, tried to reinvent him pretty hard.  It gave him a vehicle mode that was shaped more like an actual car (an Audi TT to be precise) and it did all sorts of crazy shellformer stuff that resulted in him having arms, sort of.  I mean, sure, he had arms, and those arms articulated... but not with the amount of panels piled on them from every direction.  The toy, despite all its joints, was immobile.  (also the feet were extremely loose, making it difficult to stand the thing, but that's a separate issue)  

And so attempt #2, in all honesty, has a pretty low hurdle to succumb.  Legacy Evolution Armada Hot Shot comes back to do Armada Hot Shot Again.  But good this time, we hope!  And for the most part, it succeeds!  The good news is, its arms are finally absolutely free to move about.  Nothing is attached to them.  If there's panel-y backpack stuff, it's tucked away.  And he's got a waist rotation joint, at long last, which honestly seems like heresy in connection to an Armada Hot Shot toy.  Also unlike the previous new Hot Shot, he's got his axelzooka again (but not geared to a Mini-Con nor does it fire anything).  He's also stolen Jolt's gun one more time, but that's really the cartoon's fault for stealing it first.  His feet do fold out like the original toy's, but there's no chainsaw stuff sculpted on there.  Driving claws?  Sort of.

The downsides are his forearms are a little anemic.  They have to be, because so much is being crammed into that middle section of the car, but the result is a Hot Shot that's not quite his expected silhouette.  He had big punchy arms, and now he doesn't.  The roof of the car, instead of hanging off the underside of his forearms, is now on the back of his legs.  This is out of the way of his arms!  It's not out of the way of his knees, though, and in order to bend those knees more than 30 degrees, you gotta fold those car roof halves out of the way.  (The car windows are still sculpted on the insides of Hot Shot's forearms.)  

But otherwise, hey, yeah, it's finally an Armada Hot Shot that functions well as an action figure.  It's an odd existence, since his entire appearance was originally wholly dependent on being a platform for various gimmickry.  He looks the way he does because the play pattern came first.  But now here's that design but with ankle tilts. 

Something gained, something lost.  

Posted September 5, 2022 at 11:26 pm

Last time, we talked about Override, and today we're talking about Legacy Deluxe Class Elita One (spelled "Elita-1" on the packaging because Hasbro doesn't care about parsing Transformers names correctly the way I do), so we're going from Lady Transformer With Head Hat On Car Roof to Lady Transformer to Head Hat On Car Roof!  Those lady Transformers sure like putting their head hats on car roofs!  Elita's is removeable (and isn't her actual forehead, unlike Override's) and can plug into anything with a 5mm port.  It's just there to make her vehicle mode look more like her animation model.

Though technically it makes her vehicle mode look more like... fan art of her animation model?  For decades, we didn't have access to Elita One's actual animation model (and we only see the front of it in her one episode), so at least one enterprising fan artist took a crack at it, and arrived at a very short car mode that... this toy seems to be based on?  It was only in the past year or so that we've been blessed with an actual animation model and the... much more elongated actual car mode Elita One was designed to have.   I mean, both the fan art and the actual model have the head hat on the roof, but, like, dang.  Hasbro.  Check your sources.  

This is the first Elita One toy to be based on her animation model while also transforming into a car!  We've got a retool of Starscream from back in Power of the Primes, and that became a jet, and I still adore that toy, but this Elita One is getting back to basics.  She's a car!  She's a car with her forehead on the roof.  The forehead on the roof is important.  Did her Power of the Primes jet mode have her forehead on the fuselage?  No!  

After that weird half-step of Netflix's Elita One, it's also nice to have an Elita One who, like, looks like Elita One.  Her torso's actually got sculpted detail that looks like her!  She's got her collar and the T on her tummy, and the crotch fangs... it's all well-appreciated.  She does borrow Netflix Elita One's shoulders, but that's fine.  And also her legs ... become the actual back of the vehicle, rather than being slim lady legs that tuck underneath somewhere?  That's more than fine!  It's off-model, but it's way preferable.  I love some good stomping boots.  One Arcee is more than enough, we don't need a second lady Transformer that piles the entire vehicle mode on their ass just so that they can have shapely calves.

Elita One comes with two rifles: one that's based on her pistol from the cartoon, but elongated into a more substantial weapon, and one that's Minerva's.  Elita One is going to be retooled later as Minerva, with a new headsculpt and presumably released as a Walgreens exclusive.  (they like their medic Transformer exclusives)  So that Minerva weapon's built in.  Elita One's backpack also has two configurations for this reason.  You can bunch it all that car hood stuff up behind her, out of sight, or you can extend the outer thirds into taller shoulders that kinda-sorta-mostly remind one of Minerva's taller car door shoulders.  A similar silhouette, if you will.  I'll use that configuration on Minerva, while keeping Elita One's backpack compact.  

My only real complaint about this toy is... it's not tall enough?  Elita One is, like, Ironhide height, while this toy is regular Autobot car height.  A weird misstep after years of hitting scale at any cost.  And it's not like she's smaller to synchronize with Minerva -- Minerva's Ironhide height, too!  She stood next to Perceptor once.  Anyway.  I dunno.  

A very satisfying Transformer, regardless.  She's a female Transformer but, like, with vehicle mode parts that become her limbs.  whaaaaaaaaaat?????

Posted September 3, 2022 at 12:30 am

Legacy Velocitron Override has an interesting conceptual history.  Always a Walmart exclusive, originally she started out as a retool of Studio Series '86 Hot Rod.  Basically, everything above the waist would be new.  It would be Override with Hot Rod legs.  For this Walmart-exclusive toy, four new molds were budgeted, replacing four of Hot Rod's presumed 9 or 10.  

But what if, Hasbro/TakaraTomy designers dared to dream, what if: Rather than giving Hot Rod four new molds to make him half-way Override, would it be... possible...?  to get an entire Override figure out of those four new molds?  Four plastic colors.  Fewer than a Deluxe (6-7 molds).  Could an entire be toy be somehow extracted from retool budget?

And the answer is: apparently!  Legacy Velocitron Override is just four plastic colors: White ABS, black ABS, red nylon (unpaintable), and translucent red!  Just four!  And despite this, is she still a good toy?

The answer is: surprisingly so!  It's a very satisfying toy of Override, whose original Transformers: Cybertron toy is probably the line's lowest point.  She didn't hold together very well!  Her torso, which was a zigzag of springloaded hinges, would just flop open.  And the toy couldn't stand.  It was back heavy, and had very little heel to speak of, and so she'd just pitch backwards if you looked at her funny. 

The new Legacy Override takes very strong notice of these two massive weakpoints and spends lots of engineering capital addressing them.  First, the torso is held together by a number of slots and tabs, enough to keep things in place.  And secondly: they put some dang heels on this thing to keep the toy stabilized.  It's not gonna fall over.  

All of the Cyber Key-activated gimmickry is gone.  (though there's still a sculpted slot for one in the back of her gun)  But that's fine, because it didn't really work well for Override in the first place, and this toy addresses everything wrong and fixes it.  It's no longer key-activated or spring-loaded, but it... works?  It's not annoying?  That's a win.

There's also some neat tricks to make the robot mode look better.  The torso compresses using some levers and sliders to make sure Override compacts into a more slim humanoid racing shape (and more closely matches her media appearance).  The middle portion of her hood folds across the back of her legs instead of adding to her backpack.  And there's also the expected level of articulation -- waist rotation, wrist rotation, those fabled ankle tilts, the works.  

It's an attractive, engaging toy!  

I mean, it's a 4-mold Deluxe sold for Voyager price, but I like it more than I would have the original retooled Hot Rod intent, so I suppose that's still a win.

Override is exclusive to Walmart!  And she's not shortpacked (there's even some full cases of her), so she shouldn't be that hard to get ahold of.  

Posted June 28, 2022 at 1:38 pm

Look, I'll take a billion rehashes of 1984 guys if it means we get one (1) faithful toy of Jhiaxus.  And good news!  There have been, and there is one!  Hot dang.  

This is where I put that "It's been 84 years" meme from Titanic.  Jhiaxus was a villain invented solely for the Marvel Generation 2 comic book, right?  His name is literally "Gee, axe us" because they didn't expect the series to last more than 12 issues, and it didn't!  The Generation 2 book was, of course, about how some Transformers were having sex the Bad Way, and their sin created an off-product vengecloud, and ... wow, okay, this sounds pretty iffy when it's all written out like that.  Jhiaxus was the leader of this actual Bastard Race of Transformers, which was off Cyberforming innocent planets, doing some widescale genocides, plural, while Optimus Prime and Megatron were busy alternately sleeping for 4 million years or playing video games.  Anyway, Jhiaxus's path intersects with Prime and Megatron's, and he's like Hey, I'm New Hotness, Fall In Line, Grandpas, and Prime and Megatron were like LOL no, and then Jhiaxus kicked both their asses, and then the vengecloud ate him.  

That was his original incarnation.  Since then, they've tried to do other things with him in other continuities, usually resulting in him being.... a scientist?  Sure.  "Scientist" is the job they give non-Megatron Decepticon leaders these days when they have to coexist in a story where Megatron must remain the default Decepticon leader.  Shockwave?  Scientist.  Thunderwing?  Scientist.  Jhiaxus?  Scientist.  Ratbat?  ... politician...?  Sure.  

Not sure why it's taken so long to make a toy of this Sex Monster Fascist!

I mean, they've tried a few times, sort of.  Back at the turn of the millennium, they painted a Beast Machines Jetstorm gray and orange and called it Jhiaxus.  Eight years ago they retooled Armada Starscream halfway into Jhiaxus and then colored him like the orange Beast Machines guy.  But this-- THIS Jhiaxus -- this toy is... an actual Jhiaxus!  Properly scaled versus other toys!  Looks like Jhiaxus!  In Jhiaxus colors!  

In robot mode, he makes a great Jhiaxus action figure.  All his joints have a pretty wide range of motion.  Jhiaxus doesn't have double-jointed elbows, but his arms do bend in on themselves more than 90 degrees.  And he's got... articulated hands?  Usually they save those hands for the toys that have to hold a Matrix, but Jhiaxus is one of the few bad guy leaders who never once gave a shit about the Matrix.  Nope, this toy just has articulated hands just to make me happy.  So far as I know.  Maybe he'll get retooled into somebody later who needs opening hands, who knows.  Jhiaxus's scalloped green bat wings are supposed to be folded in for robot mode, but I say keep those babies spread open.  Jhiaxus does not keep himself smaller for anybody.  He manspreads.  

Jhiaxus's design has always been, essentially, Starscream's original toy but beefier.  He's got the cockpit chest, he's got the, uh, vent... pectorals, he's got ONE of Starscream's shoulder intakes, including the toy's sticker detail there.  Jhiaxus's head has Starscream's ear vents AND the jet nosecone Starscream's toy had sticking out the back of the skull.  Wings were on the back, tinier wings were on the legs, the whole deal.  Jhiaxus was a Starscream who didn't skip Any day.  Not Leg Day, not anything.  So, unsurprisingly, Jhiaxus transforms kind of like a Starscream!  Chest becomes cockpit, legs become the rear of the jet, wings flip to where wings go, arms go... somewhere.  (They go underneath.  Don't look too closely.)

And it's a pretty okayish jet mode!  This is definitely the weak point of the toy.  I mean, it's not BAD, it's just not as phenomenal as his robot mode.  And, honestly, this is as good as it was gonna be, if we're rightfully prioritizing the robot mode in this toy's design.  Do you know what his jet mode looked like in the comics?  It looked like his torso with wings.  Absolutely no where for arms or legs to go.  So tucking those arms underneath and putting the legs in the back is probably the best you could do without just yanking parts off.  

He comes with two rifles.  These rifles are not pictured.  The pictured rifles (to the right) are from a Nonnef upgrade set for Siege G2 Sideswipe.

ANYWAY I'm very excited this toy exists.  I've wanted one for literally half my life.  And I'm old!  So that's a long time!!!

Posted April 6, 2022 at 11:13 pm

First of all, I'm going to come right out the gate here and ask why the instructions, photography, and promotional material all show Kickback's translucent energon weapons attached to his wings.  I mean, yes, they *can* attach to his wings.  There's slots specifically for that and nothing else.  HOWEVER.  

HOWEVER.

This is not their real purpose.  These two translucent energy weapons COMBINE and PLUG INTO THE INSECT MODE THORAX because they are THE ABDOMEN.  This is the insect mode's abdomen.  Kickback has no abdomen otherwise.  The combination of extra pieces and plugging into the back of the insect mode (there is a combination of a peghole and a guided slot only for this purpose) is what completes the insect mode.  But nothing mentions this!  Nothing!  It seems IMPORTANT!  Attaching them to the wings?  BAD.  Why is this what they advertised?  I don't get it.

ANYWAY

No no no wait.  I'm not done.  Do you REALIZE what this MEANS that his sword things are made out of halves of his abdomen?  It means HE HAS ASS SWORDS.  HE BEATS YOU TO DEATH WITH HALVES OF HIS OWN BUTT.  This is GREAT.  This is INTERESTING.  This is worth my attention.  

Otherwise, this is an extremely standard Kickback toy.  He transforms very simply (essentially exactly like the original toy but with a flap to cover up the robot face in insect mode) in like five seconds, tops.  He looks like the cartoon.  If in the cartoon he weaponized his own buttcheeks.  

He's bigger than he should be?  Transformers since the beginning of War for Cybertron: Stege has been very good at making toys be the correct size relative to each other.  But Insecticons are, like, Mini-Vehicle size.  I checked!  I watched many cartoon episodes to make sure the scale chart got this one wrong!  Yet Legacy Kickback is regular Deluxe Class size.  Kinda beefy, really.  Hasbro could have gotten away with selling us a smaller toy for our money.

And yet they give us this large-ish toy with even larger ass swords. 

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