...Then there were the crazy names, like Goshooter, Black Zarak, Blue Bacchus, Road Caesar, Killbison... and, of course, Godbomber.
As well as being its own TransFormer - or Partsformer, at least - Godbomber was an upgrade set for Super Ginrai... but while Super Ginrai was released outside Japan in a simplified form as PowerMaster Optimus Prime, the add-on set didn't reach the West until the Commemorative Series set in 2003. For this release, Godbomber was renamed Apex Bomber and packaged with the fully retooled Japanese version of PowerMaster Prime. Whether Godbomber was originally skipped because it wasn't fully compatible with the earlier, cut-down Western market PMOP or simply because Hasbro were concerned that the name might offend religious types, I've no idea... but it's abundantly clear that there's no Titans Return version because TR Powermaster Prime uses too many parts from Combiner Wars/Legends Ultra Magnus - particularly the feet - which make him incompatible with the Legends version of Godbomber. The only compatible option from Hasbro's toyline was Magnus Prime, released as part of the Seige on Cybertron boxed set (though, as far as I'm aware, this never made it to UK retail).
Lucky I'd bought Super Ginrai instead, then, right?
Vehicle Mode:
For me, the biggest problem with Godbomber is that he doesn't really have a vehicle mode of his own, he's effectively just an additional trailer for PM Optimus Prime/Super Ginrai... and even in this excuse for a vehicle mode, it's clearly just a jumble of ill-fitting parts. It wouldn't be so bad if the colour distribution made any sense, but it doesn't. On the sides, there's the grey lower section made up vaguely-metallic grey-painted blue plastic at the back and a flap of grey plastic with blue stripes and an Autobot insignia, all of which is designed to match the trailer on Super Ginrai as closely as possible and which looks fairly reasonable. Above that, however, there are chunks of blue in the middle of each side, each of which features a yellow-tipped fin on top. Between these, Godbomber's black and silver missle launcher is wedged rather awkwardly. There's a silver cockpit at the front and a pair of large, poseable red wings at the back. It actually looks like several different vehicles - or parts of vehicles - combined to make this, since it makes so little sense.
Then again, I say it doesn't have a vehicle mode of its own, but it does have that cockpit section on the front, with headlights and a bumper below it. I gather it was a vehicle in its own right in the accompanying anime, and the details like the headlights and rear indicator lights certainly support this, but it still looks like a weird box on wheels. There's no clear purpose to the vehicle, and it's not clear whether the wings imply flight capability, if they're just there for show, or if they count as additional weapons thanks to the nozzle parts on the wingtips.
The cockpit can comfortably accommodate three Titan/Head/Prime Master figures, not least Godbomber's own, nameless HeadMaster, and the later-released boxed set of God Ginrai included HeadMasters Minerva and Cab to sit alongside him in the cockpit. As well as the cockpit, there are quite a few Titan Master pegs dotted about the vehicle mode - two on the blue sections of roof at the front, two more on the missile launcher (which can also accommodate a Titan Master inside its main bulk, thanks to a hinged opening) and one on each of the wingtips.
There's also a staggering number of 5mm sockets (four visible on each side, another two at the back, two on the roof of the cockpit, one on the back of the helmet, plugged into the rear of the missile launcher, as well as one near the front of the launcher) and 5mm pegs (one either side of the launcher, one on each of the shoulder joints, visible at the back of the vehicle) for attaching additional weapons from other figures. Actually trying to attach things can be fiddly, especially with the sockets on the blue side panels, simply because those don't attach very securely to the surrounding parts.
Robot Mode:
I'm really not sure what to make of this as a robot mode because, just like the G1 version, there's a strong sense of Godbomber as an individual being an afterthought to his role as an upgrade for Super Ginrai. His chest features a fair bit of detail, but it's all quite shallow. The paintwork lifts some of it, but it's still flatter than the original. The overall proportions are slightly better than those of the original, and he's nowhere near as brick-like - his arms and legs are identifiable and separate parts of his frame, rather than being virtually immobile extrusions from his central mass.
One thing that puzzles me about this figure is that his back carries the part of him that is (arguably) more chest-like, and it would be simple enough to reconfigure this version to use the cockpit as his chest. In the name of G1 accuracy, though - not to mention keeping the more impressive chest for the combined robot - he ends up with a flat, mostly grey chest. The groin area is painted silver, with a curious red box in the middle (not a feature of the original), while the arms and legs are more consistently coloured, in two shades of blue, where the original had red shoulders, and its legs were vertically split between blue and grey plastic parts. On the one hand, this means his robot mode is a lot more coherent, even though his vehicle mode isn't... on the other hand, it does leave him very blue. Sure the lower legs feature red blocks and black feet, the arms have the yellow wing tips poking out of the forearms, and the simple fact that two shades of blue plastic are used means he's visually more balanced than the original, but I can't help but think this is one of those figures that would benefit by having a few more paint applications or even some stickers.
The next bone of contention is that the forearms are largely made up of space - they're simply armour wrapped around a small extension from the elbow joint. They don't like to stay in place as the 5mm peg on the inside of the forearm panels doesn't fit particularly deeply into the socket coming off the elbow. There's a tab-slot connection supporting it on the opposite side, but that's not especially secure either, and the panels account for only three full facets on the forearm. The 'inside' part has a tiny flap that doesn't tab into anything, and so tends to swing inward further than it should be, exacerbating the hollow look of the forearm.
One clever feature of this figure - which, in theory, might increase its play value - is that the section of the leg from the knee down connects to the thigh via a standard Combiner Wars jointed peg. This not only means that Godbomber has a ratcheted rotation joint above the knee, but that he can replace his lower legs with any Combiner Wars figure. This is referenced in the accompanying comic by having Curse Armada Thrust and Trickdiamond combining with a 'spare' Godbomber, along with (I'm assuming) Shattered Glass Minerva as replacement HeadMaster. I've not seen a translation of the comic, so can't really make sense of what's going in, but it clearly shows this as an intentional feature.
Godbomber's missile launcher can be mounted on either shoulder and can theoretically be directed left, right and upward thanks to a hinge at its base... however, it's a very weak hinge, just clipped in place, so it has a tendency to sag. Inserting the sword blade into the slots on the underside mitigates the droop somewhat, but the joint is still very loose, and the protrusion from the base of the blade means the launcher will no longer tilt upward very far. Alternatively, the blade and hilt - stored just behind the missile, which slides into the launcher from below using a mushroom peg - can be combined into a large, thin sword which can connect to either hand via a tab on each palm and sockets on both sides of the hilt. Given the way his hand is articulated, he doesn't hold it very convincingly, and the blade is very much inclined to disconnect if you so much as look at it wrong. I'm a little puzzled by the inclusion of a sword, as the original G1 toy doesn't feature one... Perhaps it's something from the cartoon? I'm in two minds about both weapons. On the one hand, I might almost have preferred a spring-loaded missile launcher, rather than the rather weak, hollow brick of a launcher and its tiny slot-in missile, and forgo the sword entirely. On the other hand, the launcher does provide a handy space for storing the HeadMaster while he's not being used in the combined God Ginrai mode. Then again, a spring-loaded missile launcher wouldn't have added a great deal to the figure's play value and the sword - while prone to collasping - can be wielded by Godbomber or God Ginrai alongside the missile launcher.
As with vehicle mode, there are several 5mm sockets and a couple of 5mm pegs available for attaching any spare accessories one might have lying around. Sockets appear on the outsides of his calves, two on each forearm (though I'm dubious about the usefulness of those on the yellow-tipped wings), the backs of the large, red wingtips, then there's an additional socket on the left side of his chest (in the centre of the blue cross), another two on his crotch plate, the one on top of the launcher and the one on the back of his helmet. The pegs are on the sides of the launcher and the outsides of his shoulders, the latter looking very much like Armada-style Powerlinx pegs.
The HeadMaster figure included is one of those - like Overlord and Sixshot - that only really forms the robot's face, with a separate helmet making up the bulk of the head. Unlike those, however, Godbomber's helmet is an entirely separate piece, stored on the back of his missile launcher in vehicle mode, or on the combined God Ginrai's back. The face is molded in grey plastic and the only paintwork is a dash of cyan for his eyes, while the helmet - which kind of reminds me of Inferno thanks to the arrangement of its crests - has a small block of yellow in the central crest. The expression is very bland and it's not a very detailed face... Silver paint may have improved it, not to mention making it a bit more G1-accurate, but the grey works well enough.
Base Mode:
Honestly, I feel that a lot of the Titans Return 'base modes' are poorly realised and surplus to requirements. I get the idea that it's cool to connect smaller figures to the likes of Fortress Maximus or Trypticon to enhance their base modes and increase the size of the 'city', but most of the Leader or Voyager class figures suffer from the addition of a base mode as they end up bulked out in some quite unsightly ways. Godbomber's base mode is barely different to his vehicle mode - the rear wheel sections detach from the bottom of the vehicle and reattach, upended, to the wings, spread out to the sides. This leaves the base connectors flapping out to the sides at ground level, making for a not-ideal point of connection with Super Ginrai or, I'd imagine, any other figure's base mode. Worse still, since the two parts now supporting the wings were the most structurally sound part of Godbomber's vehicle mode, base mode is particularly flimsy.
Given that G1 Godbomber didn't have a base mode, this feels like even more of a pointless addition, and I'm sure the designers could have done more with the vehicle and/or robot modes had they not been required to create a base mode. It's not even as if there's a great number of points for Titan Master/Headmaster interaction. There are the three seats in the cockpit, pegs on the wingtips and on the blue sections of roof, but with the latter being so inclined to disconnect, its probably best not to try using any of them.
The 5mm sockets fare a little better, but those on top of the cockpit become unreliable as they more or less require the cockpit to be closed to be fully effective. He does gain a couple from the towers propping up his wings, on the robot's heels, which jut out from the front of each tower.
Godbomber, by and large, doesn't transform, he simply breaks apart and reconfigures from one mode to the next. Some of those parts that don't need to detach for transforming from vehicle to robot mode will probably do so simply because they don't connect very solidly in the first place. Partsforming follows the pattern of the original, but some of the 'improvements' - made for the sake of both fitting the Legends Super Ginrai and simply upgrading Godbomber in and of himself - leave him floppy and unstable in all three of his own modes, as well as having a negative impact on the stability and overall integrity of God Ginrai. In particular, the short pegs that connect Godbomber's forearms onto a small block just below his elbows aren't a very snug fit and have a tendency to disconnect themselves while moving him, while the 'torso' is just a couple of hinged plates on the back of the 'vehicle' mode's cockpit.
I appreciate that Takara Tomy tried to make Godbomber a well-articulated figure in his own right, but the ratchet joints at the shoulder are so stiff, they're less inclined to move than the peg-and-socket joints that are supposed to keep the shoulders connected to the torso. The forearms fall off if you so much as look at them the wrong way and, while the wrist articulation is impressive - rotation and tilt, the latter mainly for transformation - the joint seems to be positioned too far to the outside of his forearm. Additionally, the ratchet joints at the hips are extremely stiff, while the pinned joints where they connect to the inside of the chest plate are comparatively loose, though not to the point of making him unstable, just that attempting to lift the legs forward or back almost feels as though the chest plate is going to break. The lower hip/knee rotation joint is very much the standard Combiner Wars joint, so it has fewer stopping points on its ratchet than any of Godbomber's other joints, making it very tricky to make subtle adjustments to his legs for some poses. On the upside, he does have ankle tilts... though these are pinned and, on mine at least, not especially firm.
God Ginrai:
Where the original G1 toy took two bricks and combined them into an even bigger brick, the Legends remake is fully articulated. At first glance, it looks impressive and imposing, nicely upgraded and possibly a little reminiscent of Galaxy Convoy (or rather, Galaxy Convoy was, at the time, very reminscent of an upgraded G1 God Ginrai). However, the feet are an even bigger problem on God Ginrai than they were on Super Ginrai. While the ankles on mine didn't seem desperately bad on the individual, Leader class 'bot, connecting Godbomber's parts to their soles highlights and exacerbates their issues. The additional foot bulk means they need to move into postions that Super Ginrai's ankles just can't support well, and the legs end up looking completely daft because of the comparatively tiny thighs, massive shins and enormous, clodhopping feet. Additionally, with quite a bit of Godbomber now on Super Ginrai's back, he's substantially more back-heavy and inclined to slowly lean that way - and eventually topple backward - without careful posing.
The upper body looks great from the front - although the wings look a little odd, mounted so high over his shoulders - but viewing him from the sides or the back reveals the jumble of Godbomber parts unused by this form. Admittedly, they've done a fair job of trying to get it all to peg together, and find a home for Super Ginrai's guns, but the backpack ends up rather fragile, and Godbomber's helmet will fall off with very little provocation. On the upside, the armour parts connect to his upper body very firmly, and the arms look great, despite the need to extend the forearms to connect the additional armour - somehow it doesn't seem to affect their proportions too badly.
The missle launcher mounts well on either shoulder, but the hinge on the base is still utterly floppy, and barely supports the launcher except at about a 40-45° angle, at which point it sort-of locks into position. It really needed a more comprehensive joint, preferably with some kind or ratcheting. The sword is all but useless, though: not only is the blade very much inclined to slip out of the hilt, but God Ginrai's fists don't grip the hilt adequately.
One worrisome aspect of his transformation into God Ginrai components is the way his chest splits and then has to rotate 90° outward on one of the many hinges that comprise the long, slender arms connecting the front of the armour to the back, as the Godbomber chest plate halves are very thin plastic, and the hinge they're meant to fold out on is both very tight, and pinned to a piece that is very squared-off at the point where the chest plates are meant to fold over them. Once it starts moving, everything's fine... but the initial stages feel as though it could break at any moment.
Possibly the most frustrating thing about the solo release of Godbomber - aside from its overall flimsy nature - is that Takara Tomy released a boxed set God Ginrai, featuring several cosmetic improvements to both figures, just a little over six months after this toy hit the shelves, thus making this one (and probably the original solo release of Super Ginrai) pretty much redundant. It's not entirely rare that I'll regret one specific purchase, but I'm fairly sure that it's an entirely unique situation for one regrettable purchase to make me regret another, earlier purchase as well, as a result of a boxed set released so soon after the original.
I suspect that, had I actually checked into user opinions of Godbomber before purchasing him, I probably wouldn't have bothered because I like Super Ginrai on his own. It's therefore equally unlikely that I would have bought the boxed set version simply because I already owned the original Super Ginrai. Had I not been so hasty in buying Super Ginrai, I would certainly have picked up the boxed set version for the cosmetic improvements (largely chromed parts, but also Ginrai got translucent windows for his cab)... but that may well have ended up being an even greater disappointment. Ultimately, I bought Godbomber out of curiosity rather than because it felt like a necessity, something to 'complete' Super Ginrai... Though a sense of nostalgia about the G1 figure, and the fact that I wasn't able to create the combined robot back in the day, certainly played a part.
It's quite sad, in a way, to see that TransFormers toys can still be too ambitious for their own good even today. Godbomber in and of itself is marred by loose connections, its base mode might be fun for kids intent on building enormous, interconnected TransFormers cities but is otherwise pretty crummy, and putting God Ginrai together exacerbates the shortcomings of both figures. God Ginrai appears less hollow than Godbomber, but the smaller robot's exploded torso - residing on the combined mode's back - looks exactly like the jumble of unused parts it is.
Not to say Godbomber isn't a fun toy, just that the fun is mitigated by the fragility of some connections, the awkward, almost conflicting joints and the increased back-heaviness it passes on to Super Ginrai... and that's just the stock figure... I've still got the Perfect Effect upgrades, including Ginrai Prime, to examine at a later date.
The "Shattered Glass" Minerva is actually the Legends version of Nightbeat, just FYI
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info, Andre - much appreciated! I really need to look into the comics and find the translations.
DeleteOf course, having Minerva/Nightbeat represented as a HeadMaster within TF Legends makes it all the more sad that there wasn't an official Deluxe class Titans Return/TF Legends Nightbeat figure, or a Minerva repaint...