Subsequently, back in 2016, the penultimate Subscription Service from the TransFormers Collectors' Club - amounting mostly to the Decepticons' Mayhem Attack Squad - was concluded with the second ever official figure of Impactor, this time created using the mold originally used for Combiner Wars Rook. Was the Club's attempt any better than Hasbro's?
Vehicle Mode:
Given that one of Impactor's defining physical features was a honking great cannon on his right shoulder, the Rook mold immediately feels "close, but no cigar". It's a heavy-duty military-looking vehicle, and it's purple with yellow highlights, but it doesn't quite look right for Impactor.
Even with all the weapons attached (and the larger pistol, borrowed from Generations/Legends Arcee, has been deliberately painted up to resemble the iconic shoulder cannon) nothing about this vehicle reads as something Impactor would transform into... Though perhaps it might have worked better had its release not been preceded by Mastermind Creations' Spartan, a Voyager-equivalent figure that turned into a tank, placing that shoulder cannon front and centre on the turret. Facing facts, this mold is basically a box on wheels.
Molded largely in purple plastic, the Club's characteristicly extensive detail paint applications are very much in evidence. Rook was no slouch in the paint department but, as usual, the Club has gone a few steps further to ensure this figure's premium look. For example, where Rook got away with unpainted black hubcaps because he was a SWAT vehicle, Impactor benefits by having all of his painted silver... though I'm actually surprised and a little puzzled that the wheels are still black - being (theoretically) a Cybertronian vehicle still, they could have been made to look metallic, as per toys of other characters from FoC, or translucent, just to make him look a bit more special.
The big downside to this version is that the use of pale grey plastic for the combiner peg and the shouders' transformation joints, and white plastic for the flap that holds Impactor's head, means that there's a far greater contrast between these parts - visible at the back of the vehicle - and the body of the vehicle than there was on Rook. The white plastic used for the bicep section of the arms - visible toward the back of the vehicle mode's roof - is surprisingly innocuous, though.
As mentioned, he comes with Arcee's larger pistol in matching purple and yellow, but also features both her smaller pistol and her two swords in addition to Rook's claw and missile launcher hand/foot part. When fully tooled-up, he certainly looks like a formidable rolling arsenal, and the myriad 5mm ports dotted around the mold offer many options of positioning most, if not all of his armaments. It does look a little odd to have human-sized equipment, painted in silver and highlighted by being inside a black-painted box, on each side of the vehicle, but it could be argued that he's actually lugging it all around for smaller 'bots...
Robot Mode:
Rook certainly has the bulk and the presence to work as Impactor, and the paint budget has been well spent, giving him his classic yellow 'boots', the red details on the knees, and the yellow panels behind silver 'bull bars' on his chest, all through clever repurposing of existing molded detail.
Since Impactor traditionally has only one hand, with a selection of attachments plugging into the other wrist (most frequently some form of harpoon), only the left fist has been painted, leaving the right fist somewhat obfuscated by the lack of paint. The forward-facing 5mm port of the base mold is then used to attach the claw, one of the Arcee swords, or the combiner hand/foot weapon. The 5mm grip port on the latter can then be used to hold one of the other weapons, but the closest this version of Impactor comes to his iconic shoulder cannon is plugging the purple-and-yellow handgun into the 5mm port on the outside of one of his upper arms via the peg on either side. It lacks the 'oomph' of the character model from the comics, but it's still better than Hasbro's own effort, which had to make do with Onslaught's crummy dual cannon. Any weapons not used can be stashed on his back - the side pegs on the swords just about fit into the wide horiztonal slots on the backpack, for example. Strangely, much like Wandering Roller from the Unite Warriors Galvatron set, there's a molding defect in the left hand's 5mm port, meaning it's too loose to hold any of the accessories.
The massive vehicle shell on his back is as wasted here as it was on Rook, and it's a bit of a shame the Club didn't forgo most of the additional weapons in favour of creating something that would clip onto the inside of the shell to give him his true shoulder cannon. Alternatively, they could have given him a different hand/foot gun, which could be wedged in there to give him a weapon upgrade.
The head sculpt is entirely new, and skewed more IDW than Marvel. At a guess, I'd say it was the IDW interpretation than inspired Mastermind Creations to call their version 'Spartan', as the helmet is very much like that of the ancient Greek warriors. This version is slightly less in that style, with more modest central crest, painted purple, cheek guards that protrude less, and vented 'ear' details on the sides of the head. The small panel line details on the dome, from the IDW design, are present, but emphasised with black paint on the front, and the orange eyes are rimmed with black, giving them a gaunt and sunken look. What's visible of the face is painted silver, but the most prominent detail is the very wide, straight mouth. Not one of the Club's finest head sculpts, but at least it's not BotCon Gigatron/Overlord levels of bad...
I've already written about Rook, and the only differences here are cosmetic, so I won't go into detail about Impactor's transformation or articulation. Suffice it to say, transformation is simple, and his articulation is surprisingly good, with the ankle tilts being a highlight of the mold.
What I shall do is my usual dissection of the bio card, dealing with its poor grammar, errors and oddities. It's starts out well, with Impactor's motto given as "You want a plan? Fine. WRECK and RULE." - absolutely perfect, and reads like something taken directly from the comics (Marvel or IDW, I'm not sure... but that's exactly the sort of thing Impactor would say). The opening paragraph is rather clumsy, though. I know what it's trying to say - that Impactor's exploits are widely known and used as morale-boosters for the troops - but it starts out by saying that these stories "rivaled that of any other robot involved in the conflict". Put aside, for a moment, that it should be "rivaled those of any other..." because it's discussing a plural (and I'll ignore the single 'l' completely because it's American English). It's just not communicating what it means to - "any other robot" would involve all troops, from the highest ranking officers to the lowest grunt... so, Impactor's stories wouldn't simply "rival" them, they'd be pretty much legendary. Then it says these tales "were once told in hushed tones in the darker corners of MACCADAM's Old Oil House, or among nervous troops awaiting their next assault." - making it sound as though they're from long in the past, and either discussed like old war crimes down the pub, or as cautionary tales for those lined up for the slaughter?
It fairs barely any better in the next paragraph, which deals with his abilities and equipment, getting off to a bad start with jargon, giving his top speed of "25 hics per breem". Now, I remember from the Marvel comics that a 'breem' was a measure of time, but I had to look up what a 'hic' is... and it's just a nonsense way of saying "kilometre". I find it baffling that the Club would choose to dredge up these ridiculous measures, particularly when G1 tech specs always dealt with real, human measurements. As far as his weapons go, the card appears to describe the hand/foot weapon as a "double-barrelled concussion cannon" when anyone can clearly see that it's a missle launcher (unless he was originally intended to come with a different sculpt of weapon!). Rook's claw seems now to be a "surgical grade Spark Extractor", and it mentions "dual superheated laser words", which I'm guessing was supposed to read "swords". Nothing is said of either pistol, despite one being painted to resemble Impactor's tradidtional shoulder cannon.
The final paragraph paints him as an utter vengeful psychopath... which doesn't make sense because the Wreckers are the crew that don't expect to survive. It seems unlikely that Impactor would feel any particular need to avenge the loss of either teammate or friend... It just doesn't fit his usual detachment.
Impactor was a decent way of rounding off Subscription Service 4.0, which had been focused on the Deceptions' Wreckers analogue. The choice of mold was as good as it could be, given what was available in Combiner Wars, but I can't help but think Impactor deserved something with a bit more... impact? Size aside, the biggest problem is the mold degradation that led to a useless 5mm socket on his left arm, though I've no idea how widespread this problem is... just that it was present on my copy of UW Wandering Roller as well. The additional weapons were a nice touch - very fitting for Impactor - but someone should have ensured his bio matched his loadout... Given he doesn't have traditional fists, including two traditional pistols seems a little redundant, and he really only needed the one sword.
Of course, Impactor wasn't quite the final figure in SS4.0... there was also the 'secret' additional figure for those who bought the full subscription... and I'll try to get to him soon.
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