Monday, November 30, 2015

X-Transbots Andras - Scourge

I was not a big fan of the way Scourge looked, preferring the original Seeker design. However, it's great that there aren't six different repaints of the same character.

Spaceship mode is fairly accurate to the cartoons, but it reminds me of a giant, blue slipper. It's unfortunate that there are so many screw holes on each of the tail pieces to allow for the light-up gimmick. I'm not a fan of putting batteries in my figures so will never use it. The darker blue nubs are also prone to falling off. The vents near the front can pull out. There is storage for the rifle.

Unfolding the wings involves a lot of flexing plastic to untab everything. Don't force anything and watch for hinges and tabs to be free and clear before extending or rotating the wings out of the way. Despite being careful, stress marks appeared on some of the hinges. His head needs to be pulled up on a pole and pushed back down, but the motion is incredibly stiff. The feet weren't bad at all. Maybe I got lucky. Have the calf folded out at 90 degrees; this gives the largest opening. By folding the toe on top of the heel spur, you can then push from behind the entire foot assembly through the opening. Just take care because, while the foot is made of die-cast, the hinges and assembly are made of thin plastic. Don't forget to fold down the tops of the calves and rotate the landing gears out of the way before trying to snap shut the calves. I have not tried going back to spaceship mode.

Robot mode looks fantastic. I'm not a fan of the old man face, but it is accurate enough to the cartoon. I wished there was metallic paint on the eyes or light-piping instead of a light-up gimmick. The wings give this figure an impressive silhouette and don't impede his waist rotation. The paint application is sparkly with metallic flakes.

His head can swivel side to side, but there is no up and down. If you move the entire platform his neck is on, you can get some upward motion while breaking the aesthetics of the figure. His elbows are double-jointed, but his knees are single-jointed. He swivels at the biceps, wrists, waists, and thighs. He has a decent amount of toe, heel, and feet articulation to give steady poses. I'm not a big fan of the incredibly tiny ball joints found on the individually articulated fingers and thumbs. The right thumb wasn't connected and fell out of the forearm compartment when I opened it to flip out the hands. There were already stress marks on both thumb joints. The wings can be placed in a variety of positions thanks to several ratcheted joints.

His accessories include a rifle, a Nebulon, a flight stand, a pair of shoulder joints, and a connector piece for Apollyon's mace. The rifle uses a Masterpiece-style tab and is prone to falling out when you're moving his arms or wrists. I absolutely hate this system for weapon holding. Unlike Apollyon, Andra's shoulders are fine so I don't think the extra shoulder joints are for him. If they are anything like the replacement joints I previously received, I would rather just use floor polish to stiffen up Apollyon's shoulders because those new joints were incredibly tight. I would rather have loose shoulders than a broken ones.

Rimfire is a quite disappointment in rifle mode. He does not look good at all. As a mini robot, he's actually pretty well articulated. I'll probably just have him standing off to the side.

As a display piece, Andras won't disappoint. He feels improved in quality over Apollyon, but suffers from a finicky transformation because of clearance issues in a bunch of places. Stress marks and paint chips appeared or were already present in some of the joints, especially in the wings. I'm hoping Fans Toys won't disappoint with their version, in which case, Andras will be regulated to be Sweep Two, Six, or Seven.











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