Thus, Kup became a futuristic, Cybertronian pickup truck and, bar his appearance in a BotCon set as a repaint/retool of Galaxy Force First Aid (representing a young version of Kup, a new recruit in the Elite Guard), his only other appearances in the toyline have been as a more traditional terrestrial pickup in the Generations toyline back in 2011 and a bulked-up repaint of a mold intended for Ironhide in the TFPrime toyline.
Titans Return went back to the original Cybertronian vehicle style, albeit perhaps more functional-looking (G1 Kup's cargo bed didn't look very useful, after all), but the colourscheme looked a bit too lurid for my liking so, coupled with a typically miserly paint job, the lacklustre weapons and a rather bland face sculpt, I decided not to bother picking him up. Then Takara Tomy revealed their Legends version, with an animation accurate desaturated colourscheme, several remolded parts (including a more grizzled face sculpt)... and a TargetMaster weapon too... So I decided to take the plunge after all.
Vehicle Mode:
While I'm normally one to prefer toy accuracy in terms of overall look and colourschemes, Kup is one of those characters who looked better on screen, with a less vibrant paint job. Early photos suggested that Takara Tomy's version would be shades of grey - which would have been taking things perhaps a little too far - but the end result, using shades from pretty much opposite ends of the teal scale, looks pretty decent. To be honest, the overall look of him isn't too far off the newer War for Cybertron: Siege aesthetic, particularly compared to the likes of Ironhide, so there's at least a little internal consistency in the overarching Generations line, even if it probably isn't intentional.
So, we have a Cybertronian pickup truck and, for the most part, it looks believable in that form. The bed of the truck is either artificially shallow (since it's the insides of Kup's shins) or it's the covered-over variety, but the pegs and ports available certainly seem to favour the first option. There are two 5mm ports and three sets of foot pegs for Titan Master figures - one behind each of the 5mm pegs, one straddling the two halves of the truck bed. This is one of the few occasions where Hasbro's pair of handguns packaged with the Titans Return Deluxe figure works better than Takara Tomy's TargetMaster, because it would be possible to mount both guns and have a couple of Titan Masters operating them while a third sits in Kup's cockpit. I'm not sure a fourth could be stood on the middle of the bed with the guns plugged in, but pegging Recoil into the bed and standing a HeadMaster/Titan Master figure behind it pretty much blocks off the central pair of pegs. Right at the back of the vehicle, on the tailgate, there are a couple of yellowy-orange paint applications for his tail lights but, otherwise, it's pretty plain back there.
The front of the vehicle is as you'd expect - plain and angular - only this time, Kup has a translucent blue, opening canopy over his single-seater cockpit. The grille and headlights are painted silver, and the hexagonal detail on his bonnet is painted in... A little overpainted, if you ask me, as the paler teal extends right to the windscreen rather than following the sculpted panel lines. This was probably to squeeze in his Autobot insignia, but that could have gone elsewhere - either the very front of the vehicle or on the windscreen itself - without deviating too far from the animation model. There are applications of pale teal paint around the front wheel wells and on the hubcaps of the front wheels, but nothing particularly intricate or interesting.
The midsection of the vehicle is where things get a bit weird. Where the Titans Return version is mostly squared off and uses a single colour of plastic with barely any visible paintwork, the Legends version features remolded parts that look exactly like the folded-up arms they are, and the differences in colour only serve to highlight this - most of all, the darker teal plastic surrounding his hands makes them all the more glaringly obvious than they are on Hasbro's version, which is pretty much all the same colour back there. Furthermore, Kup's feet stand out a bit too much, being the only instance of the pale teal colour past the front wheel well on the sides of the vehicle - they blend in far better on Hasbro's version.
It also cannot go without comment that the misassembly issue that plagued the TR version - whereby the panels covering his rear wheels were installed on the wrong sides of the vehicle, so the sculpted details don't line up with the surrounding wheel well - are present on this version as well, which is more than a little disappointing. Also on the downside, I do feel that a bit more of the pale teal paint could have been applied down the sides, carrying on from the front wheel wells, as the sides have ended up looking unfinished compared to Hasbro's effort. There's a load of sculpted detail - mainly panel lines or external compartment doors - which would have looked significantly better with just a touch more paint.
As mentioned above, Recoil and/or other TargetMasters can mount on the truck bed via one of the two 5mm sockets, but there's another socked on either side of the vehicle, just behind the front wheel wells. It feels a bit odd to only have one gun mounted on the truck bed but, if you have any spare TargetMasters, such as those packaged with many of Takara Tomy's later Titans Return adaptations, they can be installed here as well. In terms of Titan Master/Headmaster interation, the only gripe I really have with this mode is that the cockpit has a single, central 'seat', but it's easily large enough to accommodate two figures. It's also worth noting that opening the canopy has a habit of dislodging any Titan Master seated in the cockpit, as its corners nudge the front of the vehicle slightly out of alignment, even with the side panels pegged in.
Robot Mode:
It's interesting to see what a different paint job, redesigned arms and a whole new head do for this mold. Considering it was already much improved over the G1 toy simply by having leg articulation and losing the vehicle shell backpack, the curvy arms with their rounded shoulders make a massive difference to his overall Kup-ness. The protrusions from the tops of the shoulder are a little odd - they feel like they should be Titan Master pegs used in vehicle mode, but in that form they're pointing down, into the body of the vehicle. Still, I guess it means a spare Titan Master can be stood on Kup's shoulder, like a pirate's parrot, should you so desire.
While most of the front if his torso is a basically featureless windscreen, he makes up for this by having the detail of the front of his vehicle mode visible inside his body... Though it's debateable whether that's actually a good thing or whether it should have been hidden away a little better. He's remarkably tidy from the back, with two 5mm ports - holdovers from Hasbro's version, where Kup's two handguns could be combined and pegged in - and a wide, deep 'vent' detail just below, lending his back the appearance of a very basic retro robot face. On the downside, he does have large gaps in his plastic on either side of the body, and the back of his groin area is a mass of gaping chasms between structural plastic, with the 2.5mm hexagonal socket in a most unfortunate position. Out of curiosity, I had a look on Shapeways to see if anyone had made a 'butt plate' for this otherwise tidy figure, and was disappointed to see they had not... Several options for handguns (including a G1 style musket laser), replacement arms, even replacement faces... but no-one has yet decided to fill the void that is his arse. Even the backs of his legs - which are otherwise largely empty - are covered over by the vehicle mode's tailgate, with only smalls hole just above the back of each foot, and the fact that the tail lights are painted makes everything below the hips look all the better.
Paintwork generally is quite minimal, however. The very top and bottom of the vehicle mode's canopy are painted, with the paler trapezoid leading quite nicely into the thin section of matching plastic visible just above the waist joint. His 'belt' is painted black, with the internal 'buckle' detail painted yellow. Strangely, the black paint hasn't been applied to the two 'strap' parts leading off the buckle's frame, diagonally down to the hip, but it's still an improvement on Hasbro's version, on which only the buckle detail has been painted. The arms feature applications of pale teal on the squarer part of each shoulder piece and on the section of forearm between the elbow and the cuffs, as well as sunny yellow painted linework on the cuffs themselves. The kneecaps feature panels of pale teal, but the sculpted details of the shins is unpainted, where Hasbro's version has the recessed triangles painted yellow. The shin plates are actually the undersides of the truck bed, so I do think more could have been done with these, particularly given that Kup's shins were visibly grey on the animation model.
This version of Kup may not have the Hasbro version's twin handguns, but the supplied TargetMaster is a better than average substitute, and works as a good reference to the 1987 re-release of G1 Kup as a TargetMaster. Recoil is a very similar - albeit far better decorated - double-barrelled gun to the original and, while typically oversized versus the robot holding him, is at least more visually engaging than his G1 ancestor. Naturally, he can also peg into either of the 5mm sockets on Kup's back for storage, and doesn't make much of an impact there considering the Deluxe class figure's complete absence of backpack.
While I certainly think this version of Kup has a better - more Kup-like - face than Hasbro's, I have to say there's something a little off about it... It kind of reminds me of the Michael Myers mask from the Halloween movies, in that it's got all the facial detail one would expect... but the expression seems lifeless and false. The eyes are weirdly trapezoid with faint, unsettling vertical lines sculpted into them, and the mouth isn't quite sculpted into a smile, but it's certainly not a grimace... it's just... there... and a little too wide to be so flat... It's almost like someone wearing Kup's face as a mask rather than actually being his face. What makes that all the more weird is that the G1 Kup toy only hand half a head anyway, and, if it weren't for the HeadMaster's legs, this version would be much the same.
HeadMaster:
Kup's HeadMaster figure is, naturally, molded in the same plastic colours as the Deluxe class figure, but has a few paint applications of its own - the upper legs are molded in the darker teal, but the area of each leg that isn't part of a joint has been painted to match the pale plastic, and the head features a silver-painted face with a cyan visor.
I'm pretty sure than none of the HeadMaster's parts are unique, but it's an interesting coincidence that the head sculpt is quite similar to that of the included TargetMaster, and the sculpted detail of the body makes him a reasonable approximation of a miniature Kup.
TargetMaster Recoil:
While functionally identical to Windblade's TargetMaster Pointech, every part of Recoil is from a unique mold - even the upper leg parts, which look very similar. Good as he is - certainly one of the better takes on TargetMasters produced since the originals back in the mid-80s - the large gunbarrels hanging off his back and the limited articulation don't make for a particularly good mini action figure, while the very simple transformation - which leaves his arms just hanging down by his sides rather than having them pegged in somwhere - doesn't make for an especially convincing gun... though, in the hands of an old warhorse like Kup, Recoil manages to look a bit better than Pointech did with Windblade.
Largely molded in super-dark gunmetal plastic, he has applications of silver paint on his upper arms, shins and feet, while the translucent grey gun barrel part has a fairly extensive coverage in silver - down much of the upper surface of the barrels, the 'bridge' part between them is covered on its upper and lower surfaces, while the nozzles on the end of each barrel are partially covered.
His head sculpt is only simply detailed - tiny block of nose, miniscule slot of mount, cyan-painted visor - but it's good enough for a figure this size. Recoil is pretty decent overall, but I wonder if such accessories as TargetMasters should have been reserved for figures of Voyager class or above? If nothing else, it's sad to see that the TargetMaster concept has since taken a further step backward in the couple of years since Titans Return/Legends, since the legs of Siege Battle Masters, are jointed only at the hip.
I have to say that Kup's transformation is immensely fun and surprisingly involved. Rather than compressing the leg for vehicle mode the way any of the Combiner Wars figures did, the lower leg unfolds behind the shin plate, then swings out and round to plug into the sides of the cab, securing that in place, while the tailgate folds up and clips the inside of what was the knee to complete the rear of the vehicle. The cab, meanwhile, concertinas out from the waist, with the bonnet and grill folding out from inside the chest, behind the windscreen. I do feel that the windscreen could have been made a bit more opaque, to disguise the vehicle part a little more and to better resemble the G1 toy and animation model but, equally, I like seeing his headlights and grille inside his chest, and it's almost a nod to the live action movie aesthetics. Naturally, the lack of concealment for the arms has a detrimental effect on the vehicle mode, but it's still better than a jet that has a robot folded up on the underside.
Funnily enough, most of Kup's upper-body articulation comes from his transformation joints - the shoulders are both ball-jointed and on a hinge that can lift them up and bend them in toward the head, the elbows are double-jointed, the wrists can bend back on themselves, and the waist rotates freely a full 360°. All this allows for some very dynamic and expressive posing, and the joints are tight enough that he can hold any pose as long as he has good footing. The waist is comparatively loose, but not to the point that he feels like he'll fall apart, and everything below the waist is just par-for-the-course with the Titans Return line - ball-jointed hips, swivel joint just above the knee, just over 90° range in the knees, though mainly because it can bend forward very slightly, and no useful articulation at the ankle, but the toe can be tilted downward due to transformation. Naturally, the head has the standard Titan Master ball joint, and has no restrictions due to surrounding sculpted detail, but the fitting into his collar socket is very tight - hard to get in or out.
In a way, I've left (one of) the best Titans Return/TFLegends molds till last - certainly the last Deluxe class figure from this line currently in my collection - so it's a case of rounding things off on a high note. Legends Kup is a hugely fun figure despite his slightly off-putting face sculpt - dynamic, fairly stable and far tidier than the G1 original. Between the two versions, Takara Tomy's is vastly superior overall yet, in spite of its animation-inspired paint job, still ends up looking a bit plain and in need of a touch more colour. The TargetMaster figure shows that Hasbro/Takara Tomy were slowly refining the concept, but it's still in need of a bit more development to reach its fullest potential. I'd wager that the two 5mm sockets on his back increase his chances of being at least somewhat compatible with the Siege 'C.O.M.B.A.T.' modular weapons and Weaponisers, and he's quite similar in overall appearance to the likes of Siege Ironhide, so there doesn't seem to be any urgent need to replace him with another update.
Having Legends Kup in-hand, I started to regret buying Titans Return Hot Rod, as the Legends version (arguably) looks a little better - certainly less in-your-face red, more burgundy, with a translucent orange chest featuring sculpted internal detail - and comes with another TargetMaster weapon... I haven't replaced him yet, but still haven't ruled it out entirely, particularly since he's still quite reasonably priced... In fact, all things considered, it's a shame Takara Tomy hadn't started producing their TargetMaster figures when they released their version of TR Blurr.
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