You know what? Let's talk about another Japanese-inspired retool of questionable providence. Because what are diminishing returns?
In 1999, TakaraTomy, although it was still just Takara then, introduced Beast Wars Neo, a small fill-in affair covering a gap between seasons of the Western-led Beast Wars franchise. Whereas the other fill-in, Beast Wars Second, was almost entirely repaints, Neo was almost entirely new stuff, some altmodes not seen before or since. There was a penguin, a bunny, a horse, a time-travelling tanuki and, of course, Longrack. Longrack was a giraffe, and a regular feature on the tie-in anime. I'm hazy on the specifics, many are due to language issues, but they had me at "giraffe", I'm usually on board for unique transformers, even though the whole Beast Saga isn't my usual thing. Advance 7ish years, and Cybertron/Galaxy-Force is in full swing. I'm calling it Cybertron/Galaxy-Force here as things got rather complicated around this time, with Hasbro and TakaraTomy not agreeing on stuff. Functionally, there's not much difference as far as the actual toys go, but there's a great potential for pedantic tangents. Cybertron is the Hasbro release, named for the Transformers homeworld, Galaxy Force is TakaraTomy's stuff, to keep it simple. Seemingly as a late addition, the decision was made to retool the Hoist/Super-Grap mould from Armada into a new version of Longrack. This wasn't an obvious choice for two big reasons though. The first and most obvious, was that Hoist didn't have a beast mode, and the second was that Hoist already looked like a completely different beastformer entirely, Dinobot. Hold that thought, we'll be back to him later. So, already this is first-rate article fodder, and we've only just started. They had an obvious route for a popular repaint, but no, they went even more obscure.
The 2006 Hoist Toy (With Refute)
Here's the bigger picture, Cybertron had a lot of product, and towards the end, there were increasing numbers of toys that didn't appear in the show proper. Four of these were actually retools of Armada era deluxes from two lines earlier, which were also homages to characters from other continuities. We got these initially as Japanese exclusive two packs, Buzzsaw vs Blurr and Longrack vs Runabout. Two of those are fairly well-known to western fans, with Buzzsaw being a homage to Beast era repaint, and Longrack being, well Longrack. I've got no actual evidence for this, but my gut tells me that TakaraTomy took the lead on this little project, because of this character selection, the versus format, and that these turned up on screen as crowd fillers. There's a whole bunch of reused moulds and "non-show" originals that Takara just passed on, but they released these, and they came relatively early in the life of the line, the wiki putting it at wave 3.5 of 8. So, Longrack went from giraffe to sci-fi excavator vehicle, but in one key respect, this made perfect sense. Both toys had a ridiculously big, spring-loaded arm gimmick. But then it gets even more complicated, as when an older mould was brought back, they changed it, the mini-con partner being absent in favour of a Cyber Key. While in some instances this was a simple matter of adding a mini-con port to the key itself, thus avoiding changes to the main toy, the updates to Longrack and his versus kin were somewhat more involved. Here, rather than just omitting the little partner dude, the spring-loaded mechanism was replaced/modified with one that aligned fully with the Cyber Key play pattern. Plus a new head etc. One wonders if the moulds in question were in need of some repair, and they went the extra mile. That they went as far as they did is however curious. This wasn't Combiner Wars, and substantive changes to a toy for re-release weren't a common thing at all at this stage. Or maybe they just wanted it to match better? Who knows? Longrack's character model did turn up on screen, but did F-all of note. Maybe there were plans to do something with him, I dunno. Hasbro even went on to release Longrack twice in their markets, a similarly strange action as Beast Wars Neo lacks a Western release to this day. I am unable to parse a a satisfactory reason for all the above, other than the possibility that someone important liked Beast Wars Neo, saw the beastformers Galaxy Force already had, and made it happen. And then Cybertron needed more toys for the shelves, and the rest is history.
So, what's he like as a toy? Well, the basic Hoist toy sits in a bit of an odd place relative to his kin, in that Armada tended to place gimmicks before articulation, but Hoist had it the other way around. The big punchy arm thing was its only mini-con activated feature of note, this was little more than a locking mechanism. Once you used the little dude, you could put him to one side, like a key. Or a Cyber Key. Was that the original idea? They wanted a mould that easily fit the play pattern? Of course, this re-engineering technically makes Cybertron Longrack the worst iteration of the mould, as even the best Cyber Key still ends up being worse than any functional mini-con, which is a toy in its own right. Fortunately, you can just leave it and forget its there. The retooling also has the effect of harming the look of the vehicle mode, as the new handle is not symmetrical with the other side, as the previous one was. It's easier to use, but it's clearly a later addition. The vehicle is also a bit of a marmite in general, to be fair. It's not really trying to hide the head or other robot bits, but is this really a disguise? Hold that thought. Right next to Dinobot. The robot mode is however more of a slamdunk, interestingly asymmetrical this time with a nice head, and attractive colours. He's big too, having a presence akin to a modern voyager. Articulation is, as noted, present and comprehensive. Longrack has 19 points of articulation due to his transformation, featuring toe joints and even ankle tilts a good decade before it was fashionable. The punching arm is obviously a bit of an anomaly, but this can rotate into the bargain. The mould has a lot of big industrial feeling ratchet joints, thier limitations adding character, and hold up well versus modern toys. The major quirk however is that it lacks actual hands. The right has fingers to approximate a hand, but it's limited by the mini-con post there. This can help out with the Skyboom Shield from Armada, but otherwise isn't too handy, as hands go. The overall effect is of a toy with one very strong robot mode, a fairly basic vehicle mode, and a gimmick that uses maybe a quarter of its parts count. So, I'm not going to pretend Longrack is for everyone, but its not just about the toy...
OK, so what is the real reason why Longrack is fascinating? Well, it's rendering of a beast era character in its pre-beast form. You see, mostly, when a Transformer took on an organic-looking beast mode, this only happened on organic worlds, not their home of Cybertron. Therefore characters like Optimus Primal and the Axalon crew would logically have vehicle modes not seen on screen. This version of Longrack personifies such a concept, he is not merely a beastformer that now has a vehicle mode, its how Longrack would have looked before Beast Wars Neo. Yes, it's just a homage with the same name, but the intent is clear. And, for all intents and purposes, this is the only mass market toy to try such a thing. True, we've had two video game tie-ins and Siege to explore Cybertronic vehicles, but beast era characters? Nope, its just Longrack here and his wavemate Buzzsaw, and arguably a third of POTP Optimus Primal. However, Botcon came to the rescue in 2006 with what was possibly their greatest single success, a set of vehicle mode Beast Wars characters. This of course featured the Longrack mould with the Hoist head as Dinobot, along with several other Cybertron series toys. Of course, it is functionally impossible to get this second hand. Cybertron Longrack would then go on to be repurposed as the Neo Longrack, and would be receive a complicated, miscommunication-inspired, double-homage in Transformers Animated.
The 2006 Darksyde Dinobot Toy
Do I have a point? Well, I just kinda like Longrack, and I wanted to write about a Cybertron toy, and found it was all the more complicated than it first appeared. Check him out, if you can.
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