OK, bare with me with this one. This
is gonna be one of those articles where I talk about the wider
context of a toy more than the toy itself. I fell down a rabbit hole
on this one.
Scrounge's wiki picture
Scrounge
is a lesser-known character from the Marvel comics, one of a
number of "non-toy"
characters created by Bob Budiansky.
Bundiansky’s
work isn't as well-respected as Simon Furman was,
whom took over and wrote the popular bits later on, but the man
hasn't tanked his reputation like Furman did. Scrounge was an Autobot
whom remained on Cybertron, an eager to please spy whom hung around
with the dark and brooding take on Blaster. He ran-afoul of the
similarly non-toy Lord Straxus,
and was sacrificed on the altar of drama. Aside from being noteworthy
for being an early & lasting death in Transformers media,
Scrounge was notable for his altmode. He turned into a wheel. Not a
unicycle or owt like that, a simple, self-mobile, wheel. Oh, and he
has a special arm designed for surveillance. Nobody at the time, and
indeed after, thought this guy was gonna have a toy. Obviously,
that changed, but it took a
long while.
The 2016 Combiner Wars Computron toy, that's the lad in the upper-right
Advance
thirty odd years. The time was 2016, and Combiner Wars was coming to
a close. As the name implies, this line was about combining robot
teams, and we were eating good. Possibly too good, as every mould was
aggressively reused, and there was another problem. Hasbro and
TakaraTomy were treating the toys rather differently. Hasbro was
remixing and expanding teams rather than doing straight G1, while
TakaraTomy was going full Sunbow G1 and modifying toys towards that
aim. It wasn't exactly difficult for them to do this; Japanese
Transformers releases are basically subsidised by Hasbro and the
Western market, so unless we're talking about Masterpieces, risks and
costs are lesser for them. While these were aimed at the Japanese
collector market, which has its own character versus the West,
Geewunners of course loved the TT versions, the discourse on this no
doubt inspiring some silly things in the years ahead, but the
Japanese versions broke the play pattern in the name of accuracy.
Most combiner teams had received an additional Legends scale sixth
member, which TakaraTomy ignored and shuffled off to act as filler
elsewhere. The full ups and downs of East versus West are too lengthy
a topic to go into here, but it arguably peaked with the Technobots.
These were a latter G1 combiner team, of relatively modest fictional
presence, whose main claim to fame was being created by Grimlock
during a brief case of Super-Intellect. He got better. However, things played out a
bit differently in Japan, whom made Transformers cartoons for longer,
and the Technobots were somewhat more of a thing. Thus Hasbro and
TakaraTomy took radically different approaches to them. Hasbro was
more toy-based than anything, while TT used different moulds
with new toolings on top of that. Which is better? I honestly don't
know, I own neither, and haven't really handled either. I lean
towards the Japanese version simply on the amount of effort put in, it doesn't use the flawed Brawl mould either,
but there's a discussion you can have there, clearly. And a big part of that discussion is, well, our review subject.
This,
after some 500 odd words, leads us to Scrounge. He was promoted, and
presumably resurrected, to the sixth member of the Technobots. And he
brought a seventh, Cybaxx. This is because Hasbro got a bit creative
for the Technobots, swapping out the hand/foot guns for new combiner
kibble, and threw in the 2014 vintage Cosmos toy as a sixth member, which also brought a seventh.
Suffice to say, the resulting Scrounge toy was the highlight of the
set, which I eventually acquired for a realtively cheap but non-trivial sum. On
with the write-up then? Err, no. We have to talk about Cybaxx first.
Who the cinnamon toast fuck is Cybaxx then? Well, imagine my utter
surprise to find out that he's another Budiansky
creation according to the wiki, actually Boltax by another name. One
more easily trademarked apparently. Boltax was similarly another
yellow dead dude, whom invites a really lengthy tangent about the
Underbase storyline, a method to kill off a bunch of characters to
make room for new toys. No, not the 1986 film, but close. Boltax was
the caretaker of a functionally magical repository of Transformers
knowledge, the Underbase, and was brutally killed by Megatron. Boltax
had however become part of the Underbase beforehand, so it was less
that he died so much as his puppet was destroyed. Later fiction from
Fun Publications would resurrect him as Cybaxx. As to why Cybaxx is
here? Well, the Cosmos mould came with a Micromaster called Payload,
actually Blast Master, another legal thing, and I presume somebody
remembered that Boltax was presented as a winged chap in yellow, and things flowed
from there. Now, like the majority of the Thrilling 30 Legends
partner dudes, Cybaxx is a quite simplistic but largely inoffensive
chap. These are basically an upgraded accessory for the larger
figure, so Cybaxx has a meh shuttle mode, a fairly decent gun mode,
and a robot mode with two points of articulation and no fist holes.
He's definitely got more going on than say Needlenose's guns,
although the base mould is somewhat mid-tier in comparison to his
tiny kin. Furthermore, this guy has precisely two paint applications
and thus is extremely yellow. He's not bad, but he's not why you are
here.
A comic panel of Boltax's Puppet, sourced from the wiki.
Scrounge
meanwhile, to finally get to the main event, is also very
yellow. He's got more paint on him, with three different colours no
less, but we are still in ice lolly territory here, and the deco
layout is fairly close to the original. As mentioned, Scrounge is
based off the Thrilling 30 Cosmos mould, which is both a good fit for
the Technobots as sixth member and a flat-out good toy in the first
place. As far as Scrounge is concerned, becoming a UFO is a win. It's
a fine upgrade, maintaining his fundamentally wheelly nature while
gaining the power of flight. The lad got lucky, he so easily could
have been one of those spring-loaded data disks from Fall of
Cybertron. It's a nice sculpt, lots of good surface detail, guns up
front, some engines and a tailfin out back. This is a modernised take
on Cosmos' alt mode, not perfectly circular, but not the cutesy
proportions of the recent Legacy toy. Aside from whooshing it around,
there's a couple things you can do. Cybaxx can bolt on the front, and
you can then bolt them on Computron as a shoulder shield. Not bad for
a toy that predates the modern trend for 5mm ports, although not
hugely exciting. Or safe, now that I come to think of it. Where the
UFO suffers though is directly on the underside where the robot bits
are, and where the new head sits. It's smaller than the original and
rattles.
The
robot mode is where we see more pronounced differences from Cosmos,
Scrounge having but one plastic colour, different shoulder decos, and
a new head. The phrase "faithful to a fault" does come to
mind here. Yes, the 80's comic did block colour him in yellow, but
having a secondary colour would have helped. The head, meanwhile, is
based off the more recent IDW version, and understandably isn't like
a 1d4 in shape. On the plus side, the above is purely in the realm of
subjective complaints. As far as robots made from discs go, this is
basically ideal, and a good match for any comparably sized modern toy in
terms of articulation and play value. He's got some well-placed balljoints, a swivel neck, a waist, and a few transformation joints you
can make use of. There's oddities, sure, he's got a difficult
altmode, but he's nicely posable, a heroic look, and has a gun
friend. Oh, and the engines form a rocket-pack, gotta love that.
Doing
the write-up for this guy was a bit of a trip, as a fell down a wiki
rabbit hole and reminisced about old fandom arguments. Basically, the
toy is a good one. I had Cosmos in the first place so I kinda already
knew that, but handling Scrounge was like having the first impression
all over again. So, he and Cybaxx are worth tracking down, although
doing so is gonna be a right pain in the arse. That's why I leapt on
the toy when I saw it. Combiner Wars sets tend to be serious money on
the secondary market, and people aren’t like likely to part with
the adorable wheel chap. What else can I say? Well, the colour
choices at play here make me wonder how the multi-pack was budgeted.
What came first here? The toy, the character, or the need to justify
a mono-coloured repaint? I don't know. I'll leave that to the better
informed. But certainly, Combiner Wars Scrounge and Cybaxx are
something that exists. Let's end on some glamour shots.