Transformers: Age of the Primes Sureshot is Something that Exists

  

I am in no way a completionist. Some Transformers lines I go very heavily into, but generally I only pick up things that are interesting or cheap. Recently though, I gotta say Hasbro hasn't really been doing either. Studio Series is dull. Age of the Primes tried, but seemingly only made one Prime I liked. Cyberworld is at least doing some oddball stuff, but the play pattern doesn't do it for me. Which is the reason why you've seen more third party, collaboratives, and retro Transformers of late, rather than anything "mainstream". Where does Sureshot fit into that? Well, I kinda got fixated on him. Not necessarily because he's good or bad, or that I have a prior attachment to the character. But more because he'd be worth talking about if, and only it, the price was right. At TFN, it was, and so here we are. Read on to find out if he's any good, what the word bellwether might mean.

This article is a sequel to my write up on Needlenose, and the wider issues with targetmaster type toys. I didn't like that figure, I've parted with it, as I felt the designers had tried to turn a cheap and cheerful meal into gourmet food, to mixed results. Spoilsport here, Sureshot's targetmaster, shows few signs of improvement in the time since. He is a straightforward sidegrade to the 80's original in function and articulation, if noticeably hollow. We can have a discussion about toy design versus the assorted character models, if that's what matters to you, but that’s not what I’m doing today. For now, let us agree that this is very-very 80's. But at least he's not made of paint chipping, and has more than one step in his transformation. He is otherwise inoffensive, is not unattractive, and I am perhaps being unfair with my comment about the years since. This set seems to have been twice delayed since Legacy United, so maybe this was designed around the same time. The wiki suggests that these delays may be due to Sureshot's obscurity, but let's put a pin in that for later.

So, is the main event also an 80's sidegrade? No. That would be so weird as to be interesting. Sureshot is recognisable as a modern deluxe with ankle tilts and 5mm ports in the usual places, with the usual animation model bias and looks. He does however feel slightly subpar in terms of build quality. Part of that are some paint imperfections on my example, but let's not hold that against it. Most of that feeling comes from a plethora of hollowness and the plastics used. One review I watched compared this to a Thrilling Thirty release, and I don't think that's unfair. Sureshot does not have a torso so much as a chestplate, which means he only looks solid directly from the front, a flaw worthy of a lesser Cyberverse release from 2012. The colours don't help either; Sureshot is mostly in tones associated with cheese and that looks a bit cheap.  Yellow is always a bastard of a colour to work with, and while it's pretty good in places, the red leicester legs needed something to break them up. Faithful to a fault. But then, there's the spoiler segments, that peg rather loosely into the shoulder ports and thus are a nuisance in both modes. There's also messiness on his back where car bits end up, a product of a fairly novel transformation, which I honestly kinda like. The resulting vehicle form has the same sort of flaws as a robot, but gets the fundamentals right. It's not an especially solid affair, but given that this is akin to a futuristic Baja Buggy I'm more inclined to forgive the gaps. Its not good, especially with the arms out back, but its doing the job, and there was stuff done to get there. So, we have a toy that looks the part in both modes, does the basics OK, but it seems absolutely every corner they could cut, they did. Also, my photography is shit today, I apologise. I think its the yellow.

Is this the same as me saying I dislike it? No, I like better than Needlenose because it does what a Transformer should. Like two distinct modes, an actual transformation, and decent articulation in robot mode for use with an accessory. Where he differs is in the build quality and design compromises, and to be fair, that seems to have become the recurring issue for modern targetmaster types. Sureshot isn't as obviously bad as Quake, he still feels sub-average. The question is why? Could this have been delayed as it had obvious problems, and Pointblank turned out so badly? Was this the victim of repeated budget cuts? Or was this simply the designers not being their A Game to this release? All sound plausible. But there's also the wider context of 'Merica, tarrifs, and oil prices. This is the sort of thing that happens in Transformers every decade or so, a periodic shift in complexity along with inflation. Just in this case it's in opposite directions. We have been here before.

Sureshot is a bellwether, I feel, a trendsetter. The proverbial coalmine canary, a sign of things to come. I suspect that he may represent the average deluxe standard going forwards. Once all the retools and repacks are done, and there's been a lot lately, there may only be toys like this one. That's not terrible, as Sureshot actually gets a lot right, but this is not happy thought. What probably is terrible, is Sureshot's retool Joyride. They've taken an already-questionable deluxe, and turned Spoilsport into a powermaster, loosing any weaponry in the process. And it looks like this.

 

Fucking hell.