Still, I figure it's about time to get on to them but, rather than split them into two further posts, I've decided to lump them all together in one, just for (my) convenience.
And, just so there are no surprises, the characters are named per their G1 toys rather than the G1 TV show, so Rumble is the red/black one. I don't care about the arguments - to me, the toyline (and Bob Budiansky's bios) are correctly assigned (though I concede that Sunstreaker and Sideswipe's bios were switched, most likely because their Diaclone colourschemes were switched). Others are free to name them as they see fit...
Rumble & Frenzy
Cassette Mode:
It's actually surprising how much Rumble looks like his G1 ancestor in tape mode. Of course, it's not really that difficult: they're both boxes with sculpted tape spools. Naturally, the silver foil labels on my original are well on their way to peeling off, but they were initially a bit more impressive and detailed than the silver, blue and black paint on this version. The lines here don't seem as crisp, and all the of text is missing. While the spools are painted, the little window is solid black, so the overall effect is slightly less effective than on a figure created more than 30 years ago. That said, the seams are vastly less pronounced on this version because the paintwork lines up better than the myriad tape face stickers ever would.
The back, meanwhile, looks virtually identical, except that the chest/groin details are painted rather than chromed... though hopefully that will make them a bit more durable in the long run. The changes to the way this figure works are more obvious from the back - with the arms laying across the full width of the tape and the silver-painted feet folded down the outsides.
Frenzy, meanwhile, clearly derives his colourscheme from Rumble in the G1 cartoon because he's two shades of purple rather than two shades of blue, and even the 'darker' shade is comparatively pale and flat - it's a stark contrast to Rumble's vibrant red, and leaves him looking pretty dull. His 'tape label' is identical to Rumble's, just plain silver and cyan, but his tape spools and tape window are unpainted purple plastic, so he's a little less convicing.
It's worth remembering that the Masterpiece cassettes are the same size as the G1 versions, so this microcassette alternate mode would fit in a G1 Soundwave (not to mention Soundblaster or Blaster) just as well as it does the Masterpiece version.
Robot Mode:
The original G1 Rumble and Frenzy were surprisingly good figures for their size - their proportions were believable (with the exception of a ridiculous thigh-to-shin ratio), their arms were articulated at the shoulder (sort of - it was a combination shoulder/bicep joint) and the elbow, and they had dedicated weapons they could 'hold' or mount on their backs via the tape spool holes. They were also - in the UK, at least - the only microcassette TransFormers that turned into humanoid robots, since Blaster, Eject and Rewind never arrived on these shores.
These versions... Honestly, I don't think they look quite so impressive, and it's not just because of the lack of chrome and sticker detail. The upper bodies are enormous, with large, cuboid arms and tiny hands. The chest seems overly broad, with a narrow waist and extremely thin thighs. The lower legs and feet are pretty good in size and nicely detailed, but seem overly bulky when viewed from the sides. The robot-specific detail paintwork is very simplistic - gold on Rumble's chest and groin, while Frenzy again follows the animation model by featuring silver paint rather than gold. Both feature a small Decepticon insignia on their belly, and an attempt has been made to mimic the shin stickers of the original toys, but it's very minimal - the appropriate metallic paint on the raised 'knee' block, with the 'vent' panel below painted cyan on Rumble and yellow on Frenzy.
The guns are interesting - designed to resemble those provided with the G1 toy, but wielded as they were in the TV show. That is to say, rather than slipping over the forearms, they peg into the fists via a short, unpainted handle. They have 'fins' on the top, in reference to the G1 toys' wrist clips, as well as full-sized 'wings' on the sides, giving the impression they could double as a jetpack when mounted on the robots' backs. I do find it a little strange that the designers felt it necessary to give the guns two different handles, hinged at the base so they can be quickly switched between the one for the hands and the one for the tape spool sockets, but I'm sure they had their reasons.
Unlike the G1 versions of these characters, both come with a pair of piledrivers which can be used to store the handguns, or can attach to his arms (hands stowed, elbows bent, arms raised and plugged into the large slot in each piledriver), but the hammers don't really extend far enough. The figures have to have their legs bent almost as far as they can go while maintaining balance on their feet, and the hammers still don't quite touch the surface they're on. Sure, he can be leaned forward so they're actually balanced more on their piledrivers than their feet, but that kind of defeats the purpose... and it feels as though the extra millimetres of piledriver required have been sacrificed so the guns can be stashed inside when not in use. As well as being extensions of some kind for Soundwave's micro-cassette recorder mode (power packs?), the piledrivers can be carried on the robots' backs, though they then become more prone to falling over backward. Of course, Frenzy shouldn't have piledrivers, as his special ability wasn't causing earthquakes and his bio specifies that he need only "roll his drums to produce a high-pitch, grating sound of 200dB"... so I guess the two sets are present to cater to both sides of the great RIRFIB/RIBFIR debate...
The head sculpt is very much modelled on the animation, so it's much more squared-off than the G1 toy's... but it's still an excellent sculpt. Given how thin the plastic piece it's on actually is, it's a remarkably deep and detailed helmet, the face looks suitably angry, and the paintwork - silver for the face, metallic red for the visor - is sharp and looks great on both.
While I very firmly consider this to be the red/black one to be Rumble and the purple one to be Frenzy, I concede that the latter's colours match Rumble as he's depicted in the G1 cartoon more than they do Frenzy as the G1 toy appeared - dark blue and cyan. Nevertheless, as far as I'm concerned, it's still a symptom of the same colouring error in the cartoon.
I think the most significant difference between these two and their G1 counterparts' transformation is the removal of the spring-loaded deployment of the head. The arms no longer have to bunch up and force the head down into the chest cavity, as it just rotates 180°, then flips down into a square hole in the robot's back. The arms then simply lay down across the top of the cassette, while the legs do much the same as always, just with a few more joints - the thighs compress into the back of the lower leg - and with the feet simply folding up against the shin rather than compressing back into the ankle/heel. It's a clever bit of engineering though, in some ways, perhaps not as clever as the original, given that they were made about 30 years apart.
If the transformation isn't a particularly huge leap forward, articulation certainly is - Rumble and Frenzy are smaller than a contemporary Legends class figure, but just as poseable. There's a mixture of ball joints - shoulders, hips and ankles - and hinges - elbows, upper and lower thigh/knee joints - giving a very impressive and expressive range... plus, the head can rotate and, due to the transformation joint, also tilt upward to compensate for whatever kind of leaning he has to do while using his piledrivers. The range of the ankles is a little limited - to be honest, I think they may as well have been hinged - but the only real downside is the lack of a waist joint... seemingly because the designers deemed it more important for the waist to extend about a millimetre and a half. They're very dynamic figures but, thanks to their miniscule heel spurs, very prone to tipping over backward if not carefully posed. On the other hand, they are perfectly capable of standing on one leg, so they're pretty stable in and of themselves, as long as they're able to stand on one full footprint. I do find that the hip ball joints are prone to popping out, as they're quite tight... and it sometimes feels as though the pinned hinges in the upper leg could break as the plastic is so thin.
Rumble and Frenzy are both excellent figures, worthy updates of the G1 toys, and yet I don't much like playing about with them. While my originals have become a little floppy with age and wear, these two updates didn't feel as sturdy straight out of the box. While I'm not overly concerned about breakage - at least in part because I'm so reluctant to try posing their legs - I have to wonder what state they'll be in thirty years from now, and how they'll compare to 60 year old G1 toys.
Ravage
Cassette Mode:
Just like his G1 ancestor, MP Ravage is a black microcassette with a silver painted label. He doesn't have any blatantly obvious leg parts due to his new transformation, so the tape face looks pretty coherent, with only minor panel lines visible within the silver painted areas. Just like Rumble and Frenzy, the text is absent from the tape label, and the window doesn't show any tape detail. He looks pretty plain on balance, though not to the extent of the 'capture mode' of the Classics/Universe version packaged with Hound. The back of the tape is an absolute disaster, though, with the robot's legs doing a painful-looking robo-yoga pose, the head split across the bottom... and rather large open spaces just behind the front's tape spool details. I like that they chose to integrate his missile launchers... but they are rather small...
Robot Mode:
I've yet to pick up a Ravage mold that I don't at least find cute - even the Revenge of the Fallen knife-kitty is cute in its own way - but one thing always bugs me: the head sculpt. I kind of have to blame my father for this, as he thought G1 Ravage was a greyhound, and pointed out back in the 80s that the head is entirely the wrong shape to be anything feline - mainly it's too long - and certainly doesn't look like a jaguar. This one... really doesn't fix that issue in any significant way, but it's more to do with the length of the neck than the head. The head is actually not bad, though still a little long of snout for a cat... but that neck is getting toward giraffe length. The strange part is that, somehow, it doesn't look that weird in the context of the whole robot mode. I mean, sure, compare it to literally any feline on Earth, and the neck is at least four times longer than it should be... but Ravage is a robotic jaguar from a planet of sentient, shape-shifting robots, so the rules are a little different... One has to assume...
The build of the rest of the body is exceedingly slender - there's a good chance my father would assume this too is a greyhound going by the (very slight) size difference between the chest and the belly. The legs are mostly pretty slender but convincingly shaped, with the rear thighs being oddly square exceptions. This is disguised to a small degree by the fixed placement of his missile launchers on the upper thighs, but the simple fact that they are fixed parts of this thighs means they're only ever pointing forward at whatever angle the rest of his hip is at. The front legs are a bit more believable, except for a rectangular panel on the inside of each, which sticks out in front of the knee joint. The body is arranged in a tense, ready-to-pounce sort of position, but there's very little of it, and his tail is just a rod of plastic sticking out of this rump, just like the G1 original.
While most of his tape mode paint job is concealed in this mode, he does have unique paint applications of his own - grey on the legs to emulate his G1 animation model rather than the toy - but it looks rather bland. His eyes are picked out in red, but are quite difficult to see, and the only other paintwork is the silver on his missile pods... Sorely disappointing.
There's not even much to be said for the missile pods - they're too small (at least, when compared to the G1 toy's accessories) and blend in to his grey legs a little too well. What little sculpted detail there is looks OK, but I hate the way the boosters on the back end literally blend in to the tops of his legs - they're only half sculpted... Even the version packaged with Classics Hound had complete missile pods - miniscule and unpainted though they were - and, aside from having fewer joints, was at least as convincing.
The head sculpt is actually pretty nice and well-detailed for its size - it reminds me quite a bit of a hugely miniaturised Alternators (Jaguar XK) Ravage. Naturally, being made up of two halves split down the middle, there's a bit of a seam and , for whatever reason, the designers/engineers elected to make the nose a separate piece, leaving a surprisingly bold seam around that part alone. The only paintwork on the head, as mentioned, is on his tiny, beady eyes... I wouldn't necessarily expect the teeth to be picked out on a figure this size, but it would have been nice to see a little extra colour to make some of the sculpted detail a little more punchy.
MP Ravage has a far more involved transformation than his G1 predecessor, but I'm not necessarily sure that's a good thing. I like that he ends up slightly bulker - certainly more three-dimensional - than the older G1 cassette, but he seems too skinny in robot mode, and his microcassette mode is a bit of a disaster that never quite seems to line up properly for me. The fact that the nose is a separate piece that has to rotate back into the inside of his head is baffling, when they could easily have simply truncated the snout to make his head appear a touch more feline.
Despite having more joints, I'd say MP Ravage's poseability is little, if any better than the Classics version released a few years before, let alone the G1 version. He has full foreleg articulation, with ball-jointed shoulders along with pinned 'elbows' and ankle joints. The neck can raise and lower at the base with about 75-80° range, but he can't look to either side due to the way the head/neck section transforms. Where it starts to look less impressive is the hind legs: the hips can rotate, but on an exceptionally tight, somewhat squeaky joint that leads into the transformation joint embedded in each missile pod. His digitigrade back legs have the requisite upper and lower joints as well as an ankle, though the left hind leg on mine is utterly floppy and won't support his weight on its own or for a 'pouncing' pose. The tail is also, technically, articulated, but it's really just for transformation.
Laserbeak
Cassette Mode:
Back when I first wrote about MP Soundwave and Buzzsaw, I wasn't overly impressed with the original condor cassette's alternate mode... Whether it's the change of colour - the greater contrast between the silver and red, versus silver and yellow - or simply a softening of my opinion, I'm not entirely sure... but Laserbeak actually works pretty well as a microcassette. Certainly, he retains the odd breaks in the red parts of his 'label' due to the way it fits into his wings, and he has some fairly prominent seams within the silver areas... but he and his mold-mate are the only ones in the set to feature the tape spool measurement marks, even if there's no tape sticker/paintwork in the 'window' between the spools.
Also, one has to admire the tidy way the robot folds up, even on the reverse side. I'd have to say that this mold is my favourite of the MP microcassettes, if I had to pick one based solely on its alternate mode.
Robot Mode:
And so we finally get to the cowardly interrogator (according to the G1 tech specs) who somehow became the go-to spy bird in the G1 cartoon... And this is probably one of the few figures where I don't mind that it looks more like the G1 animation model than the original G1 toy. I mean, let's face it, the G1 toy still stands up as an excellent TransFormer - the only problem is the partsforming of the weapons. This is a new spin on the toy, it looks sufficiently different to be perhaps a different species of Cybertronian bird-bot while not totally outclassing the original. It's almost less stylised because the head looks more bird-like, rather than having bird-like detailing forced into a cuboid block, and the subtle angle sculpted into his scrawny neck almost gives the impression of additional articulation. Plus, having his weapons perfectly integrated into both modes is seriously cool, even if they could have done with being a bit larger.
While, just like MP Buzzsaw, he lacks the tech detail wing stickers of the original toy, he does at least have the correct colourscheme - a good, bold red to complement the silver and black. Where Buzzsaw has a yellow beak, Laserbeak's is gunmetal, but both have yellow eyes and, of course, Laserbeak has the same concealed camera in the top of his head.
One of the best features of this figure is the slot on the base of each foot that allows either Laserbeak or Buzzsaw - or both - to perch on Soundwave's arm or shoulder via the long tabs protruding from each. This one small detail, I think, makes MP Soundwave - the Hasbro package, with all his minions bar Ratbat - one of the best Hasbro releases since the line re-emerged for its 20th Anniversary, and easily one best Masterpiece packages to date.
Laserbeak's transformation and articulation are obviously identical to those of Buzzsaw, even down to one foot being a little floppy on mine. It's a nicely designed figure and well executed... but now, looking back on this point in the Masterpiece line, it's clear that it had already started devolving into the bizarre levels of attention to the animation models, and I dread to think what a Masterpiece Soundwave would look like now, let alone his minions.
Ultimately, this is one of those times when Hasbro's version of a Masterpiece completely outclassed Takara Tomy's. The (almost) full complement of minions, plus the toy-accurate yellow visor on Soundwave, fun transformations across the board and great-looking robot modes. I'm a little baffled that Takara Tomy even considered releasing the cassetticons as two separate Masterpiece packages. To compound that error by making Ratbat available only as part of their MP Soundblaster package was ridiculous, and deprived the Hasbro set of Soundwave's final minion - who appeared more frequently in the G1 cartoon than either Frenzy or Buzzsaw.
While prices for both the Hasbro and Takara Tomy packages have become typically inflated on the secondary market, cheaper knockoffs are readily available. I can't speak for their quality but, as a G1 fan, I feel that the Hasbro package is definitely worth owning at a reasonable price.
I'll have to make a mental note to never split up a review like this again - taking about four and a half years to finish off writing about the contents of a single box is ridiculous, and I probably would have done a far better, more enthusiastic job of it at the time I wrote up Soundwave. I said at the time that I was surprised that MP Soundwave turned up in the UK, let alone as this 'complete' package, far superior to Takara Tomy's staggered release. The only downside was that Ratbat never did get a UK release, as the Soundblaster repaint didn't come to Toys'R'Us. That said, I did eventually get both Keith's Fantasy Club's Badbat and the Encore re-release of G1 Ratbat... neither of which I've written about yet because neither of them are that interesting. The former is a floppy mess, the latter looks nothing like a bat... and, while I don't think the MP version is that great either, it at least looks a little more bat-like.
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