For the most part, though, the Hasbro versions of the toys have been utterly disappointing, and I've tended to buy the Takara Tomy versions where I know I really want the character, picking up the occasional Hasbro release as a result of random whims, and usually at considerable discount. This is one such example, found for less than a tenner at TK Maxx, while killing time before seeing a movie with my best mate one weekend...
Vehicle Mode:
Farming equipment has never really been that big a part of TransFormers lore. 'Sensible' cars aplenty, construction vehicles, emergency services vehicles... but farming? That's just plain silly. What self-respecting alien robot, in the middle of a war, would disguise itself as a tractor? Particularly one who's billed as a big crime boss...
Robots in Disguise (2015) is an odd series - I won't even pretend to be following the TV show, but I have seen a few episodes, and it never seems to grow on me. Its choice for the Decepticons' alternate modes seems to be based on how they want the robot to look and, since they all have somewhat beast-like appearances, a robot with antlers necessitates... a tractor with a very basic hay rake (or the top half of a hay grapple) mounted on the front, apparently.
The overall shape of the tractor is easily recognisable, but the paint job is almost nonexistant. It honestly looks like one of those test shots, molded in whatever colours of plastic were available at the time, but given a perfunctory paint job just to give a vague idea of what the finished product should look like... It absolutely does not look like a finished product in and of itself. The majority of the vehicle is molded on a nice pearlescent blue plastic, but then the sides feature an irregular shape in black, filled with transformation seams that don't match the sculpted detail, created by parts molded in a different plastic. This section accounts for parts of the sculpted door/window detail and a weird protrusion above the rear mudguard, which is there to facilitate robot mode.
There are streaks of black painted on to the roof and bonnet, with the twin exhaust pipes protruding from the roof at the back and a couple of panels on the sides at the back also painted black. The front end features a couple of headlights and the front windscreen painted cyan, as well as a couple of protrusions from the front mudguards painted red, which are presumably meant to be indicators. The rear and most of the sides are unpainted, making the whole thing look unfinished and, to be honest, pretty terrible.
Thunderhoof's weapon can be mounted on the tractor's roof, but it actually looks like something that could have doubled as part of the tool on the front of the vehicle. It simply tabs in via a rectangular peg on the underside of what looks like a trigger guard... except the trigger appears to be at the front, facing backward, and nowhere near the grip - though this could simply be structural plastic, keeping the trigger guard safe from breakage when the tab is used to peg it into Thunderhoof's vehicle mode. For slightly more convincing storage, the gun can also peg into the underside, via a 5mm socket and another rectangular peg, both formed when the lower legs peg together under the front of the vehicle.
Robot Mode:
Head aside, Thunderhoof is probably one of the most normal-looking Decepticons in the TV show - the body and limbs are in approximately humanoid proportions, like most of the Autobots, with a very boxy, bulky upper body and fairly slim legs with incredibly long shins. Any mention of the lack of paintwork at this point is just stating the obvious - the only paint applications on robot mode that weren't visible in vehicle mode are those little touches of red on his kneecaps, the cyan on his lower shins and the black on the front of his hooves, with the sides left bare. Worse than that, however, is how little of the bare plastic is the right colour - the mudguards on his shoulders, his biceps and thighs should have been grey to look anything like the character in the show. I'm guessing the mudguards had to be blue as they're part of the same sprue as the rest of the vehicle shell but, really, this figure needed more colour - whether by using more than two different colours of plastic or simply by adding more paintwork.
As with most of this line, there isn't really any intricately molded detail - everything is built up using large, bold panels, which makes the lack of paintwork all the more disappointing. What little paintwork there is has often been added to the wrong details, again making him look more like an early draft rather than a commercial release.
I do like the way the vehicle's bonnet and roof interlock for robot mode, particularly as its seams are barely noticeable thanks to the way the sculpted panels were designed - some of the detail may not be accurate for vehicle mode, but it doesn't stand out too much, and adds a lot of depth to a robot that's basically all front, and quite slender when viewed from the side.
Weirdly, as far as the torso goes, there's probably more sculpted detail on Thunderhoof's back than there is on the front. The downside is there's still not very much - mostly what looks like vents - and the back view shows how hollow he is, both in that his back is empty space below the panel his head sits on, and in that the backs of his legs are ugly, gaping chasms. This is another of those figures where just being able to swing the wheels inward, into the spaces behind his shins would have solved most of the problems with his legs... but, since his shin is already formed from two separate pieces pinned together for transformation, this would have been impractical and difficult to accomplish.
Thunderhoof's gun looks like something out of a videogame, with pronounced, antler-like spines running along the top, what appears to be a vented barrel shround just below them, and possibly further venting right at the bottom of the front section. At the back, there are three protrusions which could be power cells of some kind - one large one at the front of the group, then a pair of smaller ones just behind. It's a very interesting design, but mine looks a little... puffy. The molding isn't as sharp and defined as I suspect it should be, possibly due to the type of plastic used. It feels very cheap and poor quality, kind of like a knockoff. The strangest thing about it is that it's so thin, largely so it can fit into the storage space between his feet in vehicle mode. The slight protrusion at the front, which I take to be the barrel, is comparatively tall and slim, with no hole or indentation scupted into the tip, making it looks more like a prop than a 'real' sci-fi weapon once it's placed in his hand. For storage, there's a convenient 5mm socket on his back, but having the gun hang down from there doesn't do anything to improve the look of him.
The head sculpt seems reasonably accurate but, with the typically minimal paint job, doesn't do Thunderhoof justice. The entire thing is molded in black plastic, with a patch of blue paint on the top of the central crest and in its triangular recess on the front. The face is painted silver, with the eyes picked out in red, but the rest is entirely unpainted. Easily Thunderhoof's most striking feature - and part of the reason I picked this up - is his fine set of antlers. They may not be precisely as they're represented in the cartoon - for one thing, they're all the same length and orientation, rather than being either progressively shorter or angled further back as they get closer to his head - but they certainly give him a unique appearance. Transformers may have had horns in the past, but never has there been a full rack of antlers.
While I tend to complain about the simplicity of most RID2015 transformations, and Thunderhoof is certainly fairly simple, he's also quite innovative. The long shins are accomplished by having the lower legs fold in on themselves, underneath the front of the vehicle, while the arms make up the back. Considering his head is formed from the hay rake, you'd tend to expect it to go the other way round, but the arms and chest both hinge out from the middle of the vehicle so, transforming him in each direction involves compressing one end of the vehicle while extending the other, and flipping the legs in between... Vehicle mode is nice and compact, rather than the usual RID2015 hollow mess... but robot mode ends up as the hollow mess instead, with a back that looks like most of him is missing.
On the upside, he does have the full, typical range of motion with remarkably few restrictions. The head is pinned in place, and swivels the full 360° unless his massive shoulders get in the way. These are on ball joints at the ends of short stalks protruding back and up from the torso, so they should have reasonable range, but the cuts for transformation end up in a rather unhelpful position. He can only raise his arms outward a little over 45° before they have to turn backward to go further, at which point they start clashing with his antlers anyway. Rather than having the traditional bicep swivel, Thunderhoof instead has a forward/backward swinging joint which, in combination with the ball jointed elbow, almost gives the impression of a double-jointed elbow with a swivel above the joint. In practice, it's not quite that effective, though, due to the limited range at the upper arm. The legs are more usual - ball jointed hips, mid-thigh rotation, pinned knee, with a joint mid-shin that's really just for transformation, but can be used in posing... it's not exactly an ankle joint, but nor is it entirely useless.
I have to admit that the basic model of Thunderhoof isn't at all bad... the trouble is, that's exactly what Hasbro released: the basic model. To release a figure like this - in two plastic colours, and with a paint job that looks completely unfinished - is mind-boggling. I know RID2015 is aimed at younger kids who most likely won't mind that the toy doesn't look much like his on-screen counterpart, but it still seems poorly executed. I'd say, even as a kids' toy, it's worth the discounted price I paid at TK Maxx, but really no more than that without additional paintwork. I've ended up buying the Reprolabels set for this, but even so, may end up replacing this figure with the Takara Tomy version eventually because it's a lot of fun despite its design shortcomings. It's certainly not one of the greatest figures of all time, but it's quirky and unusual, with a clever transformation into an amusing and unlikely vehicle mode... which counts for a lot, in my books.
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