Transformers: Kingdom Wheeljack is Something That Exists

Yes, yes. I know. Kingdom Wheeljack is just Earthrise Wheeljack in a new box. But it is how I got it, and this how it shall be titled.

The 1984 Transformers Wheeljack toy

Unlike a lot of the 80's originals, Wheeljack is a character I have some nostalgia for. I didn't have the original toy, but I did have the Actionmaster, and his evil counterpart Slicer. I did see a few cartoon episodes where he did stuff, and read a few of the later Marvel comics. Wheeljack benefited from fairly distinctive character model, and a role/personality that was simply "science/inventor guy", which meant a writer could easily find a role for him. Thus he created the Dinobots, any number of doohickeys, and most memorably to me, a comic appearence where he tended to the horrifically wounded Optimus Prime, in the minutes before his death. That last one doesn't get any nicer in context, so let's move on. While Wheeljack has definitely had his quota of new toys and tributes over the decades, he's a touch more malleable than most. The version we got in Transformers Prime was a swordfighter, not an inventor, while other versions take inspiration from Albert Einstein, Jamie Hyneman, and Steve Urkle. Part of that is undoubtedly the weak writing in 80's toy media, but the thing is, Wheeljack was very obviously replaced by Perceptor. Whom was a microscope, and thus more immediately convincing as a capital S Scientist. This left Wheeljack no unique selling point, and simply being a fast car amongst the Autobots wasn't enough. This is a bit of a shame, because if you look a bit harder, Wheeljack is not so much a nerd as a rally driver whom built his own car. While being it.

 

Wheeljack's original altmode was the Lancia Stratos Turbo, in a paintjob so specific you can find model kits of it. That's a rally car, and while I'm not knowledgeable on the topic, I do understand that its a somewhat more rugged affair that takes place outside of a purpose made race track. Rather than the bleeding edge of Formula One, Rallying suggests a more rough & tumble event, often using road legal cars. This modern toy attempts to capture the look of the original, while filing off the legally actionable parts of the design. The resulting car passes the squint test most admirably, with lots of paint and in-jokey sponsorship decals. Its nearly ideal as these things go, it avoids the common flaws like unpainted hubcaps, while working in a few 5mm ports in unobtrusive places. However, this general high quality does place what flaws there are into stark relief. There's a case of Visible Head Syndrome on the underside, something begging for a concealing panel, and an odd gap beneath the spoiler. Also, it feels maybe a touch bland with respects to play value. Its not bad by any means; it rolls okay, and it has weapon storage, but Earthrise tended to downplay the 5mm port thing and that's evident here. Maybe get some blast effects so he looks like he's rocket powered? What people, well, collectors/weirdos like myself, are likely to fixate on though are the translucent windows. These are a smokey sunglasses black, an element common to more modern takes on the character but not the 1980’s. Or they were aiming for original toy, and darkened the windows as there was little to see inside, I dunno. I personally think this is just fine, and there’s no reports of breakages as such, but chunks of the windscreen end up storing in the knees, and I wonder about the long term. Despite my nitpicking, its a solid car mode favouring the original toy visually.

 

 
The robot mode does better on the play value front, and similarly scores well on the squint test. He obviously favours the old Sunbow model here, but between the vehicle bits and the greebling its a not 1 to 1 update. I'll come back to that in the conclusion, but I will say for now that the only real visual weakness is the gappy lower legs. This is noteworthy as this is the first time Hasbro really tried to strongly match the G1 look, with the previous three(!?) attempts being remolds and thus having some compromises. I like his proportions and how his chest is formed, the vibe very much being there. Functionally its a step up too, with nothing to apologise for on the articulation front, the shoulders are good due to the conversion, and a full selection 5mm ports coming into play. The spoiler is also on a 5mm peg too, so you have some options, which is nice. His actual accessory is his missile pod, which can be handheld, but has dedicated tabs for the shoulder mount. This is absolutely fine, and I honestly don't think Wheeljack was ever really associated with a sidearm, but there is an absence of something to round things out. A wrench maybe? A sword? They could have gone the Cliffjumper route, and added in a one scene accessory. The Masterpiece version had a pistol. Otherwise, its a nice robot form, that does the vast majority of things well, and only one ignorable thing badly.

 

While working on this article, I slowly came to a realisation: this was probably the best, mass market Wheeljack ever made, it wasn’t quite the G1/Sunbow love letter I expected, but it also felt somehow off by a small degree. Its a solid performer in almost all ways, with most of its flaws falling into the category of personal preference or cut for the budget. Maybe this was meant to a more generic Wheeljack than a specific one, and it ended up in the very Sunbow Earthrise. Maybe something got left out; when they did Slicer with the mould, it did come with extra guns. Or maybe this was built along the same lines as Cliffjumper etc, and it just didn’t work out as well on those terms. And there is that Generations Selects version that is full Sunbow, removing the translucent plastic, but otherwise looking like a sidegrade. Given Hasbro’s habit of releases and iterative remakes, you’d almost think this was deliberate, but I digress. Regardless of which variant you go for though, and there’s a few, you're getting a good all-rounder here. And the package variant that is Kingdom Wheeljack is definitely something that exists.

Transformers: Earthrise Airwave Is Something That Exists

While I have both emotional baggage and philosophical objections in relation to the Earthrise line, there were bits of it I enjoyed. I'm predisposed to like the more oddball aspects of any given Transformers series, and these usually aren't the Primes and Bumblebees. Airwave is one such example. I recently took him out of storage, and having recently done a write-up on Magneous, I felt a retrospective was in order. Which would end being released much, much, later.

 

The 1989 Transformers Airwave Micromaster Playset

Airwave is a Modulator, and an example of Earthrise’s play pattern, the A.I.R Lock system. This was a spin on base playsets, the idea being that you could build up fortifications and roads for your toys to fight over. Airlock toys are usually identified by a specific connector on ramp pieces, which actually meant the gimmick had an uncredited introduction in Siege with Astrotrain and Omega Supreme. While examples of the gimmick were found at every pricepoint, deluxe Modulators such as Airwave were the banner bearers for it, an evolution of the Weaponizers from Siege. These were technically G1 characters, but not really. Most were based on Micromaster playsets, upgraded to have robot modes, but taking the name of the Micromaster that oversaw the playsets, whom were omitted, and shuffled into exclusives. The whole Airlock thing is basically forgotten these days, except as a minor feature of larger toys, and there's several reasons for that. First off, Hasbro only ever made two actual Modulator moulds in the deluxe slot, with Fasttrack being a Siege throwback. They honestly needed more, and maybe they should have been backwards compatible with Titans Return toys, whom had done something similar. Then came the matter of the little guys to go on the playsets, and this is where things objectively get a bit pants. This meant the Micromaster two packs, which were deservedly unpopular, and the new spin on Battlemasters. They took a pricepoint that was about little dudes that turned into weapons, and made them turn into transparent bits of road. Did it work out? Of course it bloody didn't, and even if the Pandemic hadn't kicked us all in our collective teeth, the idea was half-baked from the outset.

So, with Airwave here, I'm kinda writing about the best Modulator mould by default. It's a very small group, with a few exclusive repaints, and Ironworks had a few QC issues, but I admit there's not much in it. I'm starting with the robot mode here too, rather than the altmode, as he technically has 4 of those. So, robot mode. Airwave's robot mode look seems to have been made from whole cloth, not unusual by itself, but he is definitely unusual on his own terms. He resembles the love child of Shockwave and Seaspray; the former in the face and gunarm, the latter in colours and general dorkiness. Airwave has long legs, a torso like a pizza oven, decepticon badges for shoulder pads, and head with a mouthplate and 3(?) eyes. Keen-eyed readers will also recognise some minor pieces reused from Siege Brunt, specifically the hips and a flip-up peg on the chest. As a robot, its fairly distinctive, but also a little anonymous, which is kinda what you want for a potential army builder like this. Articulation is OK, but not great. There's ankle tilts and such in those lengthy legs, but the arms end up limited by the forearms interfering with the elbow swivel. He's a bit of a marmite, maybe? But its not without charms. 

 

 

Some unpegging and reassembly later, you get this airport setup, evocative of the original playset. Here the pizza oven chest finds use as a building or terminal, with his forearm gun now a control tower. The legs have folded out for a substantial runway, although, in what's gonna be a recurring weakness here, the arms are just kinda there being orange. Otherwise this fits well with any tiny jets you may have, and makes the best case for being a static location of what we're looking at today. 

 

The gun emplacement by comparison is kinda weak. Its got the form factor and appearance of the G1 version, but how you get there is radically different. The orange arms are sticking out and there's no obvious place for a Micromaster or ramp to get involved. It's also reliant on joint friction, so your mileage may vary. Moving swiftly on. 

 

 

The tracked aircraft carrier form is undoubtedly a highlight of the toy. The left arm comes good as the front end, those legs become a believable flight deck, tiny castor wheels come into play, while the torso passes muster as superstructure. It's not a great roller, but it is more clearly something than any preceding weaponizer and such. As other people have commented, it's like if Metroplex was a deluxe, and it's pretty good.

So, in conclusion, is Airwave worth your time? I'd say yes, for the most part. This toy was dealt a bad hand from the start. It's strongly connected to the failed Micromaster toys, which is a mark against it. It's also a substantive deviation from the G1 toy, and while I feel that's a net improvement, G1 accuracy is overdone, some may disagree. Less subjectively, colour choices do highlight weaknesses in the mould, and the toy may well have been better off with its hands switched. A big orange fist towards the front of an altmode breaks the illusion, ya know? Despite all that, there are good ideas here. Airwave is fun, that counts for much, and there's a few recoloured versions knocking about if that appeals.

Oh right, the armour thing that isn't in the instructions? But was in the instructions for Hothouse? OK, let's take a look at that too. I honestly didn't realise that this was thing until researching this toy, and maybe it has a bit of the fan mode about it. It is however something that exists. 

 

Transformers: Buzzworthy Bumblebee Creatures Collide Set is Something that Exists

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 :) 

Transformers: Earthrise & Me

I used to sell toys on the side. It was my hobby, and my attempt to run my own business. I can't honestly say it was a success, because we are talking in the past tense, but I gave it a good go over five years. I tend to be stubborn about these things, but I think I learned something from the experience. Skills, understanding of the fandom, understanding of Hasbro, and possibly of myself. The last Transformers line I dealt with was Earthrise, by which point the fun was going out of it. What follows is a discussion of that toy line, the impression it made, what worked, and what didn’t, from my point of view.

Context

Following on from Siege, War for Cybertron: Earthrise was the middle of the trilogy. Continuing the same trends as it's forebear, Earthrise promised G1 characters, this time in their Earth modes, with an almost "mini-Masterpiece" design. The initial response to it could be summed up as "yeah, those look really cool... wait...wait, you guys are doing the seekers AGAIN? Why did I buy that Prime then!?”. As I outlined in my Siege article, Hasbro had already done those characters the year before, so people got annoyed. It felt to some like they'd been duped into buying something when Hasbro had a better version on standby, which often was a limited release. Often, it was not the merely the same character, so much as the same engineering, but to be fair to Hasbro though, it might not be entirely their fault. Siege was seemingly hurried to market following the short-lived Power of the Primes, and then the other thing happened. Let us acknowledge the elephant in the room, Earthrise suffered a nine month delay due to the pandemic, a completely reasonable and understandable thing under the circumstances, which may explain a few decisions that Hasbro made. The line only did a year in general retail too, meaning that it just didn't last as long as Siege either. That said, there is a lot of inertia in toy manufacturing, so it's hard to say the extent to which Hasbro course corrected. The thing is though, if we take off our tinfoil hats, and put aside terms like "distribution woes" and "obsolescence", Earthrise does have an issue with consistency. When it's good, it's really good. Earthrise has a solid claim to having the best Optimus Prime, and the best Titan class, and does build on Siege's good points. When it's not, well, you get things like Arcee and what happened to the smaller price-points. If you can even find the toys...

The 2020 Earthrise Smokescreen Toy

Didn’t I buy this last year?

Something which is very notable in Earthrise is the ratio of 32 regular releases to 29 exclusives, including Generations Selects, significantly more than either Siege and Kingdom, and nearly as much as both together. As a majority of these multipacks covering characters like the Seekers, Earthrise technically has more contemporary exclusives than mass market versions of its toys, although Generations does tend to overlap, so it depends on how you count to an extent. There’s just less of it to go around, and its being reused on the same scale as Siege, which makes me wonder about last minute changes. Did a wave or two get reworked as Amazon fodder? Maybe not, this is possibly just a matter of stop-gapping, but it really wouldn't be a shock. The Modulator retools look like a wave 4 thing to me. Earthrise also does the same Generations Grab-bag thing Siege did, and as a result we get a lot of late G1 and 86-movie toys filling out the ranks. Its doing a better job than its predecessor did, if only because Earth modes are the norm, but the characters selected for the exclusives have to be some of the more desirable characters around, and notably, a lot of the ones with strongly defined Earth modes. It feels wrong that its easier to find a Quintesson than say, Prowl, Bluestreak, Ironhide, Ratchet, Ramjet, Dirge, Thrust and Runabout. Earth mode Bumblebee and Soundwave were also off being Netflix/Siege exclusives around this time, Siege having not actually gone away, thus ensuring comparisons would be ever present. Perhaps Hasbro thought that these toys may not sell as well immediately after their Siege iterations, as reused engineering was prevalent here, and so they scaled back, or just decided to maximise sales by making a big name a limited release? Whatever happened, the main line suffered as a result. The theme was undermined, the type of people who’d want the 1984 big names were now being frustrated by limited releases, and/or really annoyed at their Siege purchases, and assuming you were in a position to see Earthrise toys in person, the odds were it would be a less-desirable mass-market release. Obviously, I wasn’t Amazon, so this situation wasn’t great for my business at the time, but its not about me. Even if we hadn’t been dealing with a global plague at the time, all the while desperately looking for some escapism, this was a massive PR misstep, and I can’t stress that enough.

The 2020 Earthrise Arcee Toy

More Speculation

So, why might it have played out like that? I mean, yeah, the pandemic must have had some effect, and we must cut everybody some slack on that, but its not a blank cheque. Why did Hasbro arrange things like they did? Well, speaking as someone whom has sold toys as a business and dealt with wholesalers and such, I feel there is a point that I should stress for the unfamiliar. There is no internal difference between the assorted collector-aimed Transformers lines. Generations has been running since 2010 and its banner includes Studio Series and most exclusives; this is what things like product codes and shipping boxes tell us. It all bleeds together after a certain point, regardless of branding, so saying Earthrise followed Siege, or is better/worse than Siege is a little misleading. Siege and Earthrise are two peas from the same pod. Earthrise is functionally waves 6 to 8 of Siege, and if you view it like that, things start to make more sense. The two share so much in play patterns, engineering and price-points that they might as well be one thing, the only difference being packaging. For the record, Kingdom is a similar-if-nuanced situation, as while that continues the same thing, its hard to argue that beastformers aren’t a meaningful change. Furthermore, Hasbro is also a famously difficult company to source from, as their distribution tends run off a random number generator, and their thought processes can be a little inscrutable. So, the matters discussed in the preceding paragraph aren’t really out of character for them. They are, from a dispassionate point of view, trying to fill price-points. This viewpoint also explains the issues with theme I keep bringing up, as unrelated ideas get brought in to round out the numbers, and the habit of reusing stuff to save money. If anything can be said about Earthrise, its that it makes Hasbro’s business practices more noticeable, by giving the G1 fans exactly what they wanted, and then making it hard to buy. The difficulties I had in the basic area of having toys to sell, along with general pandemic uncertainty, were a large part of my decision to close my business. Not the only thing, and I’m certainly not blaming them, but it is what it is.

The 2020 Earthrise Exclusive Ironhide Toy

Engineering Heaven, and Engineering Hell

A few paragraphs ago, I used the words "mini-Masterpiece" in reference to Earthrise, and many of them were. We’re talking a high level of cartoon fidelity here, and often involved transformations. The poster boy for this is undoubtedly Earthrise Prime, but Cliffjumper was also an early leader in this trend. There’s definitely a lot of good in Earthrise, but there’s also more mediocre and outright bad. And with so many things, its often easier to write about the bad, than to highlight the good. As I’ve written previously, this “cartoon model” design approach would have a few unfortunate downsides, notably resulting in an Arcee so overtly flawed I almost can’t believe its from the same line. I really didn’t like the idea of ordering that one, especially in solid cases. New mould Earthrise toys often have a bit of a problem with partsforming, faux kibble bits, Q.C issues, troubling uses of translucent plastic, and prematurely ageing plastic from what I’ve heard. Moulds re-using engineering from Siege were largely OK if over-familiar at this point, but that didn’t stop some of them coming out worse in the process. You know how Earth mode Ironhide was an exclusive? Well, his earth mode was mainly a removable roof segment that went over his siege alt form, which still left his feet exposed, ruining the effect. Oh, and unpainted windows, and varying shades of red. Maybe some of these were exclusives because Hasbro knew it would be a harder sell otherwise…

The 2020 Airwave toy

Play Pattern Woes

Of course, while the partsforming and such were often merely minor annoyances, the real design failing was probably the A.I.R Lock system, which was a big part of smaller price-points, and is largely forgotten now. When I asked my twitter followers what Earthrise was like, this went totally unremarked upon, maybe I should have mentioned it? The basic idea here was to create base modes for Micromasters, with larger toys having connection points, the Weaponizer concept being reworked into Modulators which could form playsets, and Battlemasters playing a supporting role. Unfortunately, Micromasters in Earthrise were not a significant improvement over the Siege version, they didn’t quite commit, and this ended up spoiling two otherwise excellent play patterns. We only really got two Modulator moulds, and they were OK, but there wasn’t enough of them to really explore the concept, nor did they have the sheer mass required for a good base mode. We needed more and bigger. The Battlemasters were similarly limited in scope, and had the misfortune to be largely made of translucent plastic while turning into bits of road/shields. No matter how you spin it, that’s a worse idea than the weapon types they followed. As a result, the few new toys Earthrise had that weren’t heavily 1980’s, end up feeling like compromised curios. Definitely interesting, but it didn’t quite work. And I’d say this, as much as anything, took the shine off Earthrise for me as a collector, rather than a business man. I can take or leave G1 accuracy, what matters more to me is fun, and the edge cases. Siege had plenty of fun and edge cases. Earthrise had a bunch of G1 characters with very vanilla interpretations, and fumbled the bits I’m usually interested in.

Having dealt with the big picture stuff, let’s now look at the toys by price-point.

The 2020 Earthrise Slitherfang Toy

Battlemasters

Now, you can make the case here that the best toy here is one repackaged from Siege, Smackdown, although as retailer I wasn’t too fond of repacks. He’s a little robot minotaur hammer, whom serves as the Wreckers’ mascot, and he’s pretty great. Meanwhile, Rung is fine, and the three original moulds feature a lot of translucent plastic, while transforming into bits of road/shields. As noted, its a little hard to recommend those, but Slitherfang is interesting. Give him to Siege Barricade, he makes for a good colour match.

The 2020 Earthrise Daddy-O Toy

Micromasters

These followed on the same pattern as Siege Micromasters, I.e. half a team, an unconvincing weapon mode, and no real improvement over the original toys. If you’re not already onboard with Micromasters this is a hard sell for me. These were relatively easy for me to source wholesale, perhaps for that reason. Possibly the Hot Rod Patrol is your best choice here overall, given their relative competency, vehicle forms, and Daddy-O’s name. 

 

 

 

The 2020 Earthrise Cliffjumper Toy

Deluxes

Things begin to pick up a bit in the deluxe slot, but its not great, especially around wave 2. Arcee is there, as is the rather simplistic Allicon, and Smokescreen is standing around like some lesser-known member of the Jackson 5. That’s a dated reference, I know, but this is an 80’s tribute line. Overall, wave 1 probably offers the best selection of toys, and probably the best Cliffjumper ever made, faults included, although if you have a certain big boy, your mandatory purchase is Fasttrack. Meanwhile, Airwave is a personal fave of mine, and Runabout’s fake heelie-wheels are dumb. Seriously, they stick out in car mode.

The 2020 Earthrise Starscream Toy

Voyager

Another weak showing, the main attraction here is Starscream, whom is a pretty good, but clearly Classics inspired, iteration of the character. He’s very much in the Goldilocks Zone of mass-market toys, yeah, there’s improvements that could be made, but there’s only so many before you go over budget or make things less fun. The rest of the slot is decidedly less brilliant. Grapple had a problem where his pegs would break during transformation. Snapdragon had a similar issue with cockpit doors. The Megatron retool has more partforming than the Siege version and suffers from photodegradation. Meanwhile, the Quintesson Judge is modulator-adjacent, partsforming into a prison playset. Its…. Okay?

The 2020 Earthrise Optimus Prime Toy

Leader

Let’s not mince words, if this Optimus Prime toy hadn’t been a thing, the discourse around Earthrise would have been completely different. On the upside, it has many upsides. Its a mass-market, mini-masterpiece; it does an awful lot well, too many to mention. On the downside, it shares parts with the Siege version, and basically is a voyager with a box trailer that does very little. Its both a shining example of the positives in Earthrise, while appealing deeply to collectors, and of Hasbro’s business practices, while frustrating collectors. Otherwise, this slot ends up a bit thin. Astrotrain is back, and making actual sense this time if that’s your thing? Sadly, I just didn’t like Doubledealer in hand. He’s big, but feels off, like it needed another design pass.

The 2020 Earthrise Sky Lynx Toy

Big Boys

Possibly the area that Earthrise unashamedly wins, we have two toys whom definitely fall under the heading of Generations Grab-bag, but are just as definitely welcome. Sky Lynx is a quality update of the frankly bonkers original, which throws an actually good base mode into the mix. Scorponok is something I regret passing on, another quality update that makes him a double-headmaster. Both have reasonable claim to be the best toys in their respective, and immense, size classes. Part of that is probably the source material, and the lack of other versions, but generally I’d say these were more fun-oriented than some of the smaller toys. I mean, Sky Lynx is a cat-bird-dinosaur-robot sponsored by NASA. And Scorponok takes design elements from Japanese media, not just the G1 cartoon, while stealing Fort Max’s gimmick. That's genius.

The 2020 Earthrise Exclusive Deluxe Centurion Drone Toy

Exclusives

Sorry, we still have to talk a bit more about exclusives. Don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about the seekers etc. again, because aside from plonking big names into this category, there are a few more interesting choices. The Centurion Drone set serves as a vessel for all the accessories which didn’t make the budget on other toys, which is good, but to the point were the actual toy is secondary, which is a shame. A few moulds from earlier lines come back, such as Punch/Counter-Punch, whom didn’t get a wide release before, so that’s nice. There’s also some G2 stuff, such as Sandstorm, a Gobot in the form of Bug Bite, an “Alternate Universe Optimus Prime”. Or, more accurately, Dead Prime from the 1986 movie. Because we needed a toy of a corpse, apparently. Of course, you’re gonna have a hard time finding them for a sane price.

Conclusion

Earthrise is endlessly frustrating to me as a toy line, due to what might have been. We can chalk some of this up to highly unusual circumstances, but generally it feels mismanaged. The ratio of exclusives to mass releases is borked, there’s varying issues with quality control, everything near the Micromasters suffered, and there was a general lack of wow factor. But then again, it might just me associating it with some past disappointments. It got some things very right, much more right than the series average. Overall, Earthrise is the awkward middle child of its series, and while that’s not the same as saying its bad, it doesn’t look that great with its siblings on either side.

Transformers: The Legacy of Siege

So, after Legacy Impactor was announced, and the discourse that followed, I found myself thinking about War for Cybertron: Siege again. It was something I've thought about writing on before, what that toy line was, and what it proved to be. So, today, I talk about Siege’s legacy. Which, of course, isn’t the same as Transformers: Legacy, but does include the new Legacy line. Don’t worry, it will make sense.

Context

Coming under the Generations banner, War for Cybertron: Siege was advertised at the time, as well, a War For Cybertron, the first of a 3 part franchise set on the home-world of the Transformers. This wasn’t the first time they did this, but you might ask why not? Its fun. This was coming after the disappointing and truncated Power of the Primes line, too, it looked promising. Seemingly hurried to the US market in late 2018, early 2019 elsewhere, there was barely a gap between the two. Siege got a lot of respect for its play features, but also criticism for its muddy battle-damage look, and also a bit of a heavy focus on G1 characters. There was a lot of that happening at the time, with the Bumblebee movie going quite G1, and Cyberverse using similar cast. This was then shortly followed by Earthrise, and Kingdom, whom did many of the same characters again, often with iterative retools, reused engineering, and old toys in new boxes. The specifically Siege toys became repaint fodder, which happened in bulk for the Netflix cartoon, as well as more recent examples like TakaraTomy’s Premium Finish line and the aforementioned Impactor. As a result: Siege is reasonably described as a stopgap and a repaint mine. How many repaints, you ask? Well, I went and ran the numbers. I got out a spreadsheet, and trawled the wiki. Here are my findings.

Distinct Siege moulds: 49

Uses so far/pending: 161

Not counting: blast effects, unchanged TakaraTomy releases.

Assuming: ER Prime is a retool, but ER Smokescreen is not.

The 2019 Seeker 3 pack

The Generations Grab-bag

The thing about Generations and similar collector lines is that it can lack a strong theme. It's a melange of homage and updates, and the extent which there is a solid unified theme has varied over the years, even when going back further into the old C.H.U.G days. In the time of Combiner Wars and Titans Return it was notably strong, but more typically Generations operates as a grab-bag, usually a few big names, but with obscure stuff around the edges, and maybe some new stuff if we’re lucky. The thing about Siege is that it talks a big game about its theme, but when you actually look at, its all set dressing. Its actually a Generations Grab-Bag. We must ask ourselves the following: which toys in Siege explicitly and unambiguously have a Cybertronian vehicle form? And is this vehicle form distinct from their Earth form, or what might be considered their "iconic" appearance? I put it to you that only three-maybe-four moulds of the forty-nine actually started out as purpose built pre-earth designs. The rest were either late-G1 characters that were sci-fi vehicles in the first place, and/or characters fated to be released again in Earthrise 18 months later with a face-lift. The Starscream and Soundwave moulds are the only toys that actually tried to have new & alien vehicle modes, and not an especially good one in 'wave's case. You could argue Shockwave, but that gets a little muddy as shockers largely doesn't have an earth mode and isn't allowed to be a gun any more. The aforementioned Impactor is a similar case, he’s never had an Earth mode as a comic original, but then he does have that odd habit now of being repeatedly retooled into himself. Overall, Siege doesn't hit the same visual style as the conceptually identical War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron video game toys, which had gone hard on the alien-ness, so almost everything could fit unobtrusively into a "neo-G1" collection and truthfully many would not look that out of place as an Earth mode. And then Earthrise came along with functionally the same toys, but with a better defined cartoon look, and made a whole whack of stuff obsolete, often via exclusives which were hard to get. This understandably annoyed people. And then we got the Netflix branded Siege stuff, which cost a little bit more and tried to be more cartoon accurate…why? So, even if you liked the Siege moulds, they got obsoleted again, and if you missed them the first time, there’s now a confused market with a bunch of overlapping toys. Did the cartoon get delayed or something? Because this is an inelegant way to do things.

The 2019 Siege Sideswipe toy

The New Autobot Seeker

To illustrate my point of how generic a lot of Siege moulds are, I'm going to talk about possibly the most aggressively re-used toy of Siege, Sideswipe. It's a perfectly fine toy in most ways, and actually a favourite of mine. I am not especially a car fan, but that is not a Cybertronian altmode. That looks more like a legally distinct Lamborghini. Or any super car stand-in. Car modes such as these are the bread & butter of Transformers in general. The thing is, we already had a pre-earth Sideswipe, and that wasn't a great toy, but that a least that made an attempt to be alien. Siege Sideswipe fits in everywhere, because a specific style is harder to reuse. And then it got retooled into something more specifically G1 for an exclusive, as well as nine other things. The whole Cybertronian theme never was a serious effort. It was a stopgap. Siege exists mainly as a reset point for Generations, lessons learned from Combiner Wars etc, setting a new design standard and laying the groundwork for a repaint-based business model. Because if you didn't like the battle damage paintjobs in Siege, almost immediately you'd be able to get a cleaner version, and it would likely be a limited release too. And if you liked the dirt, well, there’s Netflix, innit? Why does Hasbro do this? Well, its basically a cost saving measure, and you can see similar things in their action figure lines. For example, with their Marvel stuff they get away with base moulds for the varying body types, call ‘em “Brawny”, “Skinny”, and so on. It makes a lot of sense, especially when certain characters recur. And since a lot of people like the G1 guys and try to have a complete seeker team, we were easy marks for it. Just look at Kingdom if you need more examples. The downside is that Transformers are inherently more involved as toys, so its more obvious, and you end up with a self-confirming loop. Only only certain characters sell, because that’s only what is sold most of the time.

Eh, that’s capitalism for you. However...

 

 

The 2012 FOC Sideswipe toy

The Legacy of Siege is not Just Repaints

So, if Siege failed to deliver on its theme, what did it deliver on? Play value, posability, and general quality. Siege toys were legitimate fun to play with, and added entirely news concepts to the brand. It popularised the use of 5mm ports for accessories, and while the basic idea wasn't new, the execution and standardisation was praiseworthy. Factoring into that was a revolutionary new style of Transformers, the Weaponizer, who made full use of those ports, and the toys were robust enough to take the added weight. These embraced partsforming to provide a toy whose job it was to be made of guns, and if you don't think that's fun, I can't help you. Finally, there the Battlemasters whom brought their beloved blast effects to the table. So, while the words Cybertron & Siege in the title were questionable, at least the word War made sense. And because I don’t want this article to be just about repaints, I’m going to talk about each price-point a bit.

 

The 2019 Siege Rung Toy

BattleMasters

Famous for the blast effects mentioned above, these were inexpensive little dudes that turned into weapons, and came with little translucent explosions. They were a joy. While this price-point would see a lot of variety with new characters, melee weapons and Rung getting his first toy, it was front-loaded with orphaned targetmasters to go with toys from Titans Return, in another example of the Generations Grab-Bag. Its a tragedy that Earthrise replaced them with ramps, and Kingdom dumped the idea entirely.

 

The 2019 Storm Cloud & Visper toys

Micromasters

There's no delicate way to put this, but these failed. The teams were cut down from four members to two, and given a largely unconvincing combined weapon mode. The individual toys meanwhile offered little posability or visual improvement over the late-G1 originals, and largely didn’t commit to the theme. Soundwave's menagerie also ended up here, and I don't know hard I should be on those as they just had to turn into a slab, but I'd say Laserbeak did alright, while Ravage was overfed. If you’re into Micromasters, they aren’t bad, but if you aren’t? Stick to Storm Cloud & Visper.

 

The 2019 Siege Cog toy

Deluxes

All killer, no filler. The toys featured here are notably consistent performers across the board, with the possible exception of Chromia, only marked by distribution woes and the occasional QC fault. Pick your fave, then pick a weaponizer, and you’ll have a good time. Add a Battlemaster for a fantastic time. Its mostly Autobots, but the Deceptions are a good bunch of chaps too.

 

 

The 2019 Siege Soundwave toy

Voyagers

This price-point is probably the one going the hardest on the whole “Cybertron is supposed to be a messy warzone” thing, featuring some big names, and most of them looking pretty sci-fi. Unfortunately, as characters like Optimus Prime and Starscream live here, successive re-releases and over-exposure makes the toys of this slot less appealing. They aren’t bad, but don’t pay too much. Notable exceptions include Apeface, whom has not been re-released, and the Megatron which I feel came out better than the Earthrise version. There’s also a Springer with the misfortune of following arguably the best voyager of all time. He’s OK though.

 

The 2019 Siege Galaxy Upgrade Optimus Prime toy

Leaders

At the time, many people felt that these were merely voyagers with more accessories, something typified by the Shockwave and later Astrotrain releases. Its not an unreasonable view, given overall design, and the general vibe of “biggish dude armouring up into bigger dude”. That overshadows the actual merits of the price-point though. The Ultra Magnus brought back the long-absent inner robot gimmick, and paid tribute to the 2001 RID version at the same time. Its nicer than all the subsequent versions, TBH. Galaxy Upgrade Optimus Prime brought a welcome bit of Unicron Trilogy to events, and you’d have to very grumpy not to appreciate the four-arms-but-only-one-hand super mode of Shockwave. And to bring up the matter of theme again, Astrotrain is a steam engine with a coal tender. On Cybertron. Just saying.

 

The 2019 Omega Supreme toy

Big Boys: Commander & Titan

This is a slot that I regret my own inexperience with. Jetfire and Omega Supreme where however well-received, so I assume they’re good if you can find them. Omega is currently unique, too.

 

The 2019 "Final Strike Figure Series" artwork

Concurrent Exclusives

Sorry, gotta talk about repaints again. There were 12 concurrent exclusive releases, of which 7 were multipacks, usually if 3 or 4 toys of the straight repaint variety. Generations Select had a further 9 solo releases, and TakaraTomy did a Nemesis Prime. As Starscream was present, this group included the seekers, and similar common repaint candidates and army builders. This trend would continue into Earthrise, and would generate much of the general annoyance discussed earlier. There was also more oddball stuff though, like the Powerdashers, a well-regarded toy-style Refraktor set. The Hot Shot repaint/retool is another personal fave here, but maybe don’t get Slamdance. He breaks.

Conclusion

Transformers in the modern sense largely starts with Siege, and its legacy is that of a bunch of good toys, basically ran into the ground. There’s not much actually bad in the line, as everything is fun to play with and holds up well. The problem is that it was immediately followed by Earthrise. Earthrise was certainly more pleasing to certain sets of the fanbase, and a worthy sequel, but it made people regret buying into Siege like an early adopter. More so after the Netflix business. The extensive use and reuse of Siege moulds, either as repaints or retools or suspiciously similar engineering, has devalued them. This is a real shame, as Siege is generally excellent outside of the Micromasters, and even they have an appeal. I actually kinda miss it, and hope Legacy can live up to it in every sense of the word.