Exclusive releases are part and parcel of the Transformers experience, and usually I'm not fussed. Exclusives have this habit of either being things that don't interest me, dont justify the mark up, or end up on discount somewhere. With Legacy United, we even saw former exclusives get used as late wave filler. I gather that exclusives are particularly annoying if you collect seekers too, but I digress. Of course, eventually Hasbro does put out an exception, like today's subject. Carnivac and Fisitron come from a very similar place, creatively speaking. That is a comicbook writer, the kind that becomes a TFNation regular, taking a character with basically no fictional appearances and creating a fan favourite. The Primes, Megatrons, even the Brawns of the franchise have de-facto tenure and are unlikely to allow much creative freedom to a writer. The successes of Transformers comics, and their deep love by the fan base, are often due to some utter rando being selected for the spotlight. Carnivac and Fisitron, while separated by decades and continuities are absolutely two such Transformers. And good choices for exclusives, as they have dedicated-but-small fanbases.
Of the two, Fisitron is undoubtedly the best known, to the point of getting his own tributes in later fiction. Fisitron, not Fistytron as my brain insists on parsing it as, is actually Ironfist, the name change dictated by the MCU. I'm just gonna call him Ironfist from now on. Ironfist was the audience avatar for the highly regarded The Last Stand of the Wreckers, arguably the best comic miniseries ever associated with Transformers, and a top ten Transformers media candidate overall. It's difficult to express just how big a thing that was, do read it. Ironfist's fate was to be a massive fan of the Wreckers Autobot team, think an actually heroic Suicide Squad style group, or more precisely the ABC Warriors, and then suffer the reality of that. He has a bad time of things to say the least, but really you have to read it.
This new Ironfist is a bit if a mélange, if only for it's foundation. It's a remould of the Legacy Detritus toy, itself a retool of the pretty good Siege Hound making it something of a Cannonball situation. Mould degradation is becoming a concern at this point, this being the 7th use of it, but mine seems fine. The altmode has been modified to make it an enclosed cab, while the accessories have been replaced with a decorative approximation of his old Lightformer Cannon gimmick which splits into three bits. As this is an exclusive/limited release there is a bounty of paint applications, too much on the gun, tending towards IDW colours with the head being a highlight. The jeep altmode inherited is a good match for the original toy, although the robot proportions are more conventionally heroic than the somewhat dumpier build of his most famous appearance. So while he's not quite as Last Stand as I would prefer, he's a superior remake of an already great mould.
Carnivac by comparison is much older, both in print and in plastic. I'll admit that I had to go check the specifics of what he's done, and while he's actually done more than Ironfist, he's not on the same tier of popularity. He was a recurring character in the UK comics I read as a kid, actually joining an Autobot splinter faction for a time with a few former-Wreckers, although there's continuity issues with that material. Much later on, he turned up in the sequel to Last Stand of the Wreckers, in another splinter faction that I won't describe, and very recently in those new Energon Universe comics. Carnivac's main trait is to be a wolf, both literally and metaphorically. He's a Decepticon with a wolf altmode, and a wolf's mindset. A bad guy to fight, but not automatically a foe, and given that Transformers is often Good versus Evil, that's interesting.
A more pressing question may however be "Why is he that colour?". Well, he was a Pretender Beast, you see. The original toy had an outer shell in the style of a big organic wolf, while the inner robot was was some louder in colour and a bit simple. Pretender toys were like that, and modern remakes have frequently tried to split the difference between the shells and the robots therein. This release however favours the inner robot, but taking design cues from the Marvel comics.
It does this by remoulding the Titans Return era Wolfwire, changing the titanmaster, whom is called Survivor, after that splinter faction I mentioned, and replacing the accessories. As it's an older deluxe, it's not quite as nice as Ironfist, but it's still a solid design, and the mould has been used far less frequently. It also removes the questionable materials that the previous releases were infamous for, an unambiguous improvement. The wolf mode is however largely unchanged, using paint to suggest the visor rather than actually sculpting one. He's not as good as Ironfist overall, and not as extensive as a remould, but is undoubtedly the best use of this mould, and it works well for the character. Nice paint job on the titanmaster too.
All in all, the set is a great example of an exclusive. It uses good moulds well, making effective changes where appropriate, and doesn't skimp on paint. It also helps that it is based on comics and latter-day G1, rather than the more over-exposed parts of the brand. It's not a perfect set, but other than totally new toys, I don't see how Hasbro could done much better. Assuming that no horrible QC issue or design flaw manifests, consider this set as having my full endorsement.
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