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Friday, November 1, 2019

Friday, March 9, 2018

TFC Toys Red Knight - Braver

I'm not sorry to see TFC Toys stop making their Old Soldiers line in favor of their combiner lines. I can always count on them to fill out my CHUG shelf with interesting figures. TFC Toys Red Knight does nothing differently than Raging Bull though. It is essentially a repaint/remold.

Although I like the shape and retro design of Red Knight in vehicle mode, I definitely liked Raging Bull's vehicle mode more. Painted details are sparse, relying on translucent plastic for head and tail lights. The racing stripes are cleanly applied, but could have used another layer to make them pop more. A robot head and torso are clearly visible in the undercarriage. His rubber wheels sometimes get stuck on his wheel wells and are prone to splaying out.

Transformation is virtually identical to Raging Bull. The double-hinged rods in his legs can be a bit confusing to line up properly. The panels on the inside of his lower legs are always coming undone. Unfortunately, the peg of his right fender sheared off the rod and screw it was attached to. It doesn't fall off because of how his windshield holds his backpack in place, but I'm not sure how this will affect the combined mode. Because of the broken piece, I didn't try to go back to vehicle mode. The Transtector gimmick is as cumbersome as before and not as effective as Masterpiece Star Saber.

Robot mode has the same stylized aesthetic as Raging Bull. His red light-piping is very effective. As expected, the revealed paint applications provide visual interest and are cleanly applied. I still do not like the feet. Being made of two separate ball jointed parts really makes positioning the feet very finicky.

His accessories include a pair of rifles, a sword, alternate headlights, sideview mirrors, a windshield wiper, an alternate head, and a combiner part. The rifles are the mirror images of the ones that came with Raging Bull so we can now form two complete feet with parts that will presumably coming with Wildhunter. The sword is identical to what came with Raging Bull. Unfortunately, the sideview mirrors just keep falling off. I could not get the windshield wiper to peg into place either. I didn't even bother with the headlights.

Like with Raging Bull, the alternate head is for those who don't want to deal with the Transtector gimmick. As before, the figure is a tiny little thing that forms the lower half of his face. It has swivels for his arms and legs. He does fit inside the cab of the car, but it does require cracking open most of the vehicle mode to get him inside. Since I'll be combining the final set, I'll just use the non-transforming head and leave everything the tiny figure in the box.

I'm not sure where I'm going to display these Trinity Force figures yet. I'll wait and see what the combined form looks like in comparison to Star Saber. For now, they'll stand on my CHUG shelf, next to other similarly sized 3rd party figures.