But then Titans Return happened and, conspicuously, Hasbro's first order of business seemed to be releasing official products of all the characters the third parties had tackled, including the confused lupine Decepticon, sadly coinciding with a somewhat ridiculous price hike for Deluxes. Granted, they were still far cheaper than the third part efforts, but they were also smaller and vastly less complicated models.
No surprise, then, that after several months of not buying Titans Return Wolfwire (his original name now unavailable, it seems) on any of the few occasions I happened to visit my local branch of The Entertainer, I finally caved in an order him online (at a much lower cost) when he was no longer on their shelves.
Beast Mode:
Hasbro/Takara Tomy's designers certainly took a few leaves out of FansProjects' Function-X book when designing the new Weirdwolf, but there's also plenty that's new and fairly unique, if only because Hasbro's budget just doesn't allow for the same complexity as FansProjects' effort. It is nevertheless sleeker and more natural-looking than the G1 four-legged brick, while smaller, chunkier and more toy-like than Quadruple-U. I'm particularly impressed by the back legs, which are almost properly digitigrade, though don't quite have the range they need for a proper lupine standing stance.
The colourscheme remains the same strange contrast of a deep, sea blue/green and a warm, sunny yellow, with the head, haunch and tail being slightly off-white.The need for paint has been cleverly kept to a minimum by molding the blue and yellow parts of the shoulders so that they interlock with blue parts poking through gaps in the yellow to provide the necessary colour details - something I'd like to see more of in TransFormers toys. On the downside, there's a strange mismatch between the yellow plastics and paintwork - the upper arms, thighs and cockpit canopy use a brighter, richer, glossier yellow, while the main part of the torso, the groin and the upper parts of the elbow use a softer, more muted colour, almost a pastel orange, and the paint on the chest matches neither. Other paintwork seems to be limited to touches of white on the yellow parts of the fore- and hind-legs as well as on the cuffs of the fore-legs, and blocks of blue-green on the belly, either side of the blue-green plastic transformation hinge. There are also touchest of silver on the protruding parts of the haunches and a touch of red on the ridged mid-part of his tail.
I'm a bit confused by the beast head sculpt - while it looks a bit less boxy and very slightly more lupine than that of Quadruple-U (and certainly far better than the G1 monstrosity), it still doesn't look especially lupine, or even canine. The ears appear to protrude from its cheeks, and the peaked nose looks almost bat-like. The use of light-piping on the eyes, jowls and nose looks great if the light catches it just right, but the red plastic is cloudy, so the results aren't as crisp and dynamic as one might hope. I also quite like that it's used inside the mouth, but think that the teeth should have been painted - since silver has been used on the haunches and claws, it really should have been added to the teeth as well. That, at least, is one mistake corrected by the Takara Tomy version.
Weirdwolf comes with two weapons - a sword which becomes his tail in beast mode, and a hugely oversized cannon which can accommodate a Titan Master as an alternative to using the cockpit. While the former has one specific mounting point in beast mode, the latter can make use of no less than six potential positions. A couple of grooves are cut into the haunches to mount the cannon on his back, there are 5mm ports in his shoulders and hips, and there's another one on his belly. While I think the idea is to mount the cannon on his back, I do prefer the look of it underslung on his belly, and sticking out under his chin, as it becomes almost a concealed weapon in that position (and if his handgun had been more appropriately sized, it could have looked even better!). The shoulder ports would be ideal for a Titans Return remix of Energon Ravage's weapons.
Robot Mode:
Looking so much better than his Generation 1 counterpart - and, surprisingly, still quite similar to Quadruple-U, thanks to the large discs on the outsides of his knees - TR Weirdwolf has and excellent, if a little basic robot mode. All the expected details are there, from the bulky shoulders to the beast head just hanging off his back, and even the G1 toy's white door - which used to cover the robot's Tech Specs readout - is represented by both molded detail and paintwork. Of course, it's no longer functional - the whole chest opens up to facilitate transformation back to beast mode, and the compression of the torso means there's no room for the necessary gears, even if Hasbro ever intended such details (which, let's face it, they almost certainly didn't). His proportions are generally better than the G1 toy - no surprise - with his hips sitting in a natural position, rather than appearing to be halfway into his waist and, rather than having most of the beast mode's forelegs hanging off his wrists, this version has only the beast's paws... which are large, certainly, but aren't as intrusive.
With his simplistic transformation - basically, stand him up on his hind legs and plug in the head - there's virtually no newly-revealed molded detail unless you count the chest and the minimally detailed thighs. Some of what's there has shifted around, but that's about it. Still, it's all designed so that it fits in with both forms... and Weirdwolf's generally odd appearance makes him that much easier to update, I guess.
The distribution of colour is much like the G1 version, though the mismatch in the yellow paint and plastics is very apparent on his chest. There's virtually no additional paintwork designed to be seen only in robot mode - a couple of blue-green details on the chest, at shoulder level, and a couple of silver details (harking back to stickers on the G1 original) on the thighs. Most of the grey plastic is either collapsed into his torso or hidden behind it, so the only significant parts visible from the front are his head and his sword.
As with beast mode, there's a bit of choice over where to mount his weapons - the sword can obviously be held in his hands, but it can also be plugged into the 5mm ports now on the outer sides of his knees, for a 'sheathed' look that almost convinces simply because the ports are so high up on the knees and the pegs so far up the blade. Personally, I've found that the cannon doesn't fit especially well into the hands due to the ridges molded on the main peg... but, frankly, the cannon is so laughably oversized as a 'handgun' it's almost not worth bothering. It can be mounted on either shoulder but, even there, it just looks too big. I get that the idea of Titans Return is to make as many of the weapons as possible interchangeable in purpose, and I concede that Weirdwolf's gun would work well as a turret on a larger Decepticon's base mode... but, unless one of the side pegs is used, it couldn't then be occupied by a Titan Master as its 'cockpit' ends up on the underside of the cannon. The sword, meanwhile, ends up looking pretty terrible as, in an attempt to give it some girth as the beast's tail, it's basically constructed of small, angular pits, and there's no real blade edge. Even so, I think I prefer it's shape to that of both the G1 toy and Quadruple-U's slimmer, more harshly angular blade.
The head sculpt is curious in that it neither harks back the the G1 original nor the animation model - Takara Tomy's version took the latter route and looks a bit crappy to me... but then, I invariably dislike anything based on the animation models. I really like the head, and think it suits the model well as an update and development of the G1 version, but the paintwork is rather sloppy, particularly in the way the red paint of the face bleeds directly into the vertical details either side of the eyes. Additionally, the box art shows him to have a grey face and a red visor rather than the toy's two individually sculpted eye details, and also places a glowing red detail up on uppermost ridge on the box on his forehead.
Titan Master Monxo:
Or Monzo, as he used to be known... Quite how Hasbro lost the trademark on a name as daft as 'Monzo' is anyone's guess... It's now an app-based banking system rather than a Nebulan hardcase.
Monxo is reasonably true to the G1 original in terms of head and torso design and is one of the lucky Titan Masters to be cast in two colours of plastic - Weirdwolf's blue-green being used for the arms and lower legs, while the grey is used for everything else - but loses out by having absolutely no paintwork - a great shame as it means his own face details are difficult to make out. That said, following the example of the G1 version and painting his face the same red as Weirdwolf's probably wouldn't have helped that...
He can sit nicely within Weirdwolf's giant cannon, but I can't help thinking it then looks like a bath with a massive cannon sticking out of one end, because the recess is so deep it comes up to his shoulders. On the upside, at least it's not designed to be some sort of vehicle for the Titan Master... that would have looked ridiculous.
Transforming the Titans Return version of Weirdwolf doesn't seems significantly different from - or more complicated than - the G1 original: the wolf head still ends up on his back; the forelegs are still his arms and his feet still get flipped up behind the forearms, albeit with the robot hands now needing to be flipped out of his wrists; the thighs of the rear legs still become the shins of the robot... but on this latter point there's some much-improved engineering. Where the original toy bent its knees forward and flipped the wolf's lower legs out from behind the feet, this one has the wolf thigh/robot shin on a little arm that shifts it from its beast configuration as thigh to its robot configuration as shin, releasing or securing the wolf's lower leg as required. Particularly useful as the beast's lower legs have two joints ball joints of their own. The collapsing body is also a neat trick, simply accomplished and, in many ways, I think the designer of this toy has done a better job than those behind FansProjects' Quadruple-U, especially given Hasbro's budgetary constraints. It's interesting that the rotation of the robot's feet is a matter of preference for some fans - there are those who prefer robot mode to keep the beast mode feet, albeit with a large yellow heel spur, and those who use the intended configuration of yellow feet with the wolf toes as the heel spur. Either way works but, for me, the intended transformation looks more 'right'.
Some very smart decisions were made about Weirdwolf's joints: while the bulky upper arms might once have hindered the use of ball joints, the 'armpit' area is wide open and the actual ball joint is fairly small and on a long stalk, allowing for a very decent range of motion despite the large protrusions from the tops of the shoulders. The use of ball joints for the shoulders and hips also means the beast mode can be rather more expressive than some similar figures. It's not quite up with the best of Beast Wars, but it doesn't really have to be and, in some specific ways - additional poseability in the forelegs, three main joints in the hind legs, plus moveable paws on all four legs - it's actually better than BW. I've found that rotating the forelegs 180° gives the forepaws a greater range of movement without any significant sacrifice at the elbow - the only downside, in fact, is that the back of the bicep swivel joint is largely empty, so that small part doesn't look great. Amusingly, the stock photography of the Takara Tomy version uses this configuration, while the Hasbro version seemingly does not.
On the downside of the joints, one thing that keeps cropping up when people discuss TR Weirdwolf is that the hinge for the canopy over the Titan Master's cubby-hole in his torso has a nasty habit of breaking. Mine had been perfectly alright until I read almost an entire fan forum thread devoted to this phenomenon. After that, the moment I picked the toy up and opened the canopy, I heard the tiniest little snap and immediately saw that the left hinge had broken. Looking at the piece, it seems as though it had been attached to its sprue via the thin plastic loop that makes up part of the hinge, which strikes me as rather foolish, and bound to weaken that section of plastic... But what do I know? Thing is, if opening the canopy weren't integral to TR Weirdwolf's transformation, it wouldn't matter at all - I rarely have any Titan Masters sitting in their partner's cockpits - but since it's required to compress the body into its robot mode, this becomes a critical flaw in the toy, and not one that's easily fixed or avoided. With the transformation aspect being pretty integral to full enjoyment of the toy, such a frailty absolutely ruins an otherwise very well-designed and fun toy.
I suspect it would be reasonably easy to repurpose this toy - with a few remolded parts and additions - into a serviceable Titans Return version of Energon Ravage, or even a Lio Convoy... though I don't see Hasbro doing either anytime soon...particularly with the astonishingly awkward-looking TR Alpha Trion being repurposed into Takara Tomy's Legends Lio Convoy.
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