Fans Toys Mercenary - Shrapnel

Insect mode is pretty neat looking. Just like Grenadier, this is a large and chunky bug that dwarves the Masterpiece Autobot cars. The mandibles do not have enough tension to hold an energon cube between them, but the legs are strong enough to support the weight of the figure plus at least one Autobot. I don't like how the hands are handled though. They loosely clip to the underside and easily come loose. I suppose there is some fun to be had with the mini people from the Masterpiece figures. 

I can't say that I enjoyed the transformation. Going to insect mode, I do like how the shoulders collapse into the chest, but I hate having to collapse legs by shoving thighs into calves because that means yanking on them for the reverse transformation. I also couldn't figure out what to do with the rod that the insect legs are attached to. Going back to robot mode was much simpler, but I couldn't figure out how to compress the bug legs as they were out of the box.

I love the robot mode. The head sculpt looks wonderful. His eye visor is a rich metallic red and his chest plate is a metallic yellow. The bug leg backpack doesn't bother me too much. It compacts pretty well, about on par with Badcube Claymore.

His head is on a ball joint and his shoulders are on a hinge and swivel. He swivels at the waist, biceps, wrists, and thighs. His fingers are single pinned. He has ankle rockers and feet tilt. He definitely has double jointed elbows, but I'm not entirely sure about his knees. They look like they should be double joitned, but I can only bend the knees at the one joint. His universal hip joints are strong enough to hold the weight of his die-cast legs. The insect mandibles can articulate as well. The shoulder pylons are on their own hinge.

For accessories, Mercenary includes a purple rifle, a chrome rifle, an extra set of insect legs, a translucent orange chest plate, a screwdriver, and three transparent energon cubes. Both rifles fit fine in his hands and use Masterpiece style tabs. I'm not going to be switching the chest plates. I did that on Grenadier, but when I wanted to switch back, I stripped the screw trying to get it back out. The screw itself wouldn't come out more than half way for some reason. Oh well, at least now I have an excuse to pick up the gray chest version of Grenadier. I won't be swapping the legs either since I'm happy with the longer, more articulated legs.

I'll be displaying Mercenary on my Masterpiece shelf. I love the look and feel of this figure. It's very weighty because of the die-cast parts. The Badcube bugs are great too, but they are not as hefty. Mercenary fits in pretty well with them. One set or another could be clones where the differences could be due to a faulty cloning process. Whatever excuse to put another set of Transformers on the shelf, right?