Hmm, I may have to keep on posting Transformers on a Thurday, got a bit of a backlog. Anyways, one of these days, I need to write
about the "Buzzworthy Bumblebee" line. As the name implies,
this is a line entirely about the very-very over-exposed Bumblebee
character, although it's since become more of catch-all for various
exclusives and reissues. As you might imagine, this has given me
repetitive strain injury from rolling my eyes, but then something
magical happened. I saw Iin a shop one of the Buzzworthy multipacks
on discount. Deep discount. A pack of 4 deluxes originally 90 odd,
sold at 45, and finally reduced to £12.98.
Obviously,
I said yes to that. I was thinking it was daft not to, and if I
didn't like any of it, gifts/donations were an option. Now, I could
do an in-depth breakdown of each toy here, but I feel that would get
boring pretty quickly. These are principally repaints of better known
characters/toys, and the cadence of the discussion would be quite
similar for each. So, I'm going to try to keep this to a paragraph
for each before tying it all together in the conclusion.
Not
making the best first impression, Preadacon Skorponok is the
weakest of the set. He's a 90's toy colours variant of the modern
Kingdom toy, rather than a separate character, so not a huge amount
of creativity going on, and the basic execution wasn't great in the
first place. The robot mode is fine, a good approximation of the CG
model with an optional head based off the old "mutant head"
gimmick. He's not doing much of the 5mm port thing, but he is using
in his claws for a set of decorative missiles and his Cyberbee. His
beast mode legs are kinda just there, but the scorpion tail is
articulated. The bad stuff starts with the transformation, which I
found counter-intuitive, finicky, and ultimately doesn't do a great
job of hiding the robot bits. One entire leg ends up stowing into the
tail, not actually concealed, and it hampers the tail articulation.
His head meanwhile sticks out on the underside. Also his joints are
on the loose side, tolerances seem a bit off with this one, and a lot
of him is translucent plastic. That said, the scorpion mode did grow
on me, this being one of those toys that ends up appearing bigger in
altmode, and there's some nice organic texturing on the bug bits. I
don't think I can honestly say that this a great toy. I find myself
comparing it to a RID 2015 warrior class toy which did the scorpion
thing better, while the deco is outside of my nostalgia bubble and
not especially interesting. Mind you, he's far from the worst in
modern Generations, and I can see myself displaying him with the
spare head.
Predacon
Skywasp is obviously a Waspinator in new colours, although it's
slightly more creative than the above. The colours are taken from a
cancelled exclusive, by way of a Diaclone-inspired Botcon toy with a
name too generic to trademark so they made him a beast wars tribute
to Skywarp. Waspinator was possessed by Starscream that one time, and
has had jet modes, so it's not really a stretch to have another
seeker involved. As colours go, it's definitely striking with those
blood red wings and eyes, but when it comes to wasp mode this doesn't
do much for the organic realism. Wasps can be all kinds of colours,
but not this specific scheme. I took a moment to check. Your mileage
may vary on that point though, it certainly doesn't look bad in wasp
mode, just toyetic, and that may be what you want. Otherwise, I'd say
the basics are here, with little to apologise for. There's
siege/Legacy standard articulation, a splattering of 5mm ports, more
than most beasts in Kingdom, weapon storage, and an alternative
humanoid head, as another nod to the mutant face thing. It's just
with Waspinator, things got swapped around for the TV show, and the
mutant face is considered his usual one. There's been a few
Waspinator remakes over the years, and I don't quite know where this
sits in the rankings, but this seems decent. I mean, I'm not a fan of
the robot bits in wasp mode, but lots of beast formers have that
problem. Less subjectively, one wing likes to pop off and there's a
few cut marks that stick out.
Ransack
is the most modern of the toys here, the largest overall, and perhaps
the one with a disproportionate amount of the paint budget, as
there's an awful lot of translucent plastic painted over. Ransack is
actually a G1 original, one of the larger "Deluxe"
Insecticons, but you'd be forgiven for not knowing that. The toy
wasn't a Takara original, and that seems to have meant no cartoon or
comic appearances in the 80’s, or much after. Ransack here is a
headswap pretool of the much better known Kickback, something which
the Legacy release telegraphed with two otherwise inexplicable sword
accessories. Ransack therefore looks an awful lot like Kickback in
both modes, and only becomes more so if you apply the alternative
head. (Said head goes unmentioned in the documentation, and seemingly
exists as a toy-accurate head for Legacy Kickback.) Due to a quirk of
design the robot mode and bug mode head are the same thing, just at
different angles, so the rounder head is doing the heavy lifting
here, although the swords do become a butt extension for bug form. As
the mould is basically a 1983 design upscaled and given modern
joints, Ransack isn't doing anything especially clever, but they
aren't failing at it either. There's probably a third party
"not-Ransack" out there that more faithfully updates the
80's original, but in so far as headswaps go, this is entirely
acceptable. Decent robot mode, three weapons, not quite the right bug
mode, but close enough.
And
finally, after a trio of bugs, we have a beetle. Autobot Goldbug was
undoubtedly the most desirable of this set, although as a retool of Earthrise Cliffjumper, also the most familiar to me. Who is Goldbug? Well, he's
Bumblebee after an emergency repair job and reassignment to the
Throttlebots, which obviously didn't stick, but I did have that toy
back in the day. The point of interest here is the fully licenced
Volkswagen Beetle car mode, which like the boombox version of
Soundwave seems to be under some sort of exclusivity arrangement.
This is only the second time we've seen this specific toy released,
while the original Cliffjumper variation has seen five releases. As a
base mould, Cliffjumper was pretty good. A shame about the back-end
of the car being a partsforming bit, but pretty good regardless. This
means that Goldbug benefits from a strong foundation, I.e. a
pleasingly involved transformation and a huggable shape, but if
you're not a big Herby and/or Throttlebots fan it's more of a
sidegrade than a slamdunk. The new vehicle bits omit 5mm ports, a
tangible loss, with the instructions presenting a decidedly
compromised alternative for weapon storage. Goldbug retains the
modular bazooka/waterski/twin-blaster/random-greebly thing, and as
fun as that is, it's very specific to Cliffjumper. Mind you, it looks
great in gold, caramel, black, and blue, and the play value is there.
Definitely worth a look, but it's very easy to overpay here.
I
mean obviously, I didn't. But looking at the eBay listings, a
few people have.
The Spare Head Three...
Conclusion
As
I lucked out as got this set for 13 quid, it's honestly a little
difficult to judge it from any sort of value-for-money metric. I
could have had any single one of these for that price and feel quite
happy about it. Hell, it was reduced from £45, and that's an
objectively good deal as deluxes go for 25 each these days. That
leaves broader creativity commentary, and whether or not something
has an overt problem. On the overt problem front, only Scorponok has
issues. He's not terrible, the vast majority of Generations isn't,
but with his engineering and QC, he's in the "fine for now"
tier. In terms of grander commentary, I'd say this demonstrates the
issues that can occur when moulds are designed to be a specific
character, but then reused for different ones. If you do a new head
and new paintjob, or if the character is somewhat generic like a
seeker, you're usually OK. That largely isn't the case here. For
example, Goldbug, as mentioned, has the same accessories as
Cliffjumper. These were based on memorable scenes in the Sunbow
cartoon, so great for the mould original, but Goldbug never used
them, and truthfully Cliffy-J didn't use them more than once.
Maybe some small arms for all the other minibots would have been a
better call? You could also make the case that Goldbug doesn't
actually match his character model; and given how anal-retentive
Earthrise was about such things, it's noticeable. You can make
similar observations about the other three.
Ultimately,
the Creatures Collide set is a multi-pack through and through.
There's one you probably want most, but also one you don't, with two
you're probably neutral on. As the toys are generally good ones, your
choice will likely be based on your budget and how it fits into your
collection. I got absurdly lucky with the price, and that three of
the moulds were new to me. Regardless, the Creatures Collide set is
something that exists.
Also, the week after? I heard Game was offering this has as part of a "2 for £20" offer. Because of course it would :)