It might seem like a minor point in retrospect, but the fact that the first live action TransFormers movie had a character who turned into a police car, but was neither Prowl nor even an Autobot is both pretty significant and rather cool. Whenever a police car appears in TransFormers fiction, the automatic assumtion is that it'll be Prowl so, while Barricade was yet another new character created just for the film (who has nevertheless since been retconned into other continuities, by artists, the former Collectors' Club and, most recently, by Hasbro themselves), his presence subverted the expectations of the audience and the protagonist - Sam initially running away from Bumblebee and into the clutches of Barricade.
While he's had a few updated toys since the first movie's Deluxe class figure, the only other one I bought was the Human Alliance figure as none of the later Deluxes seemed like a significant improvement. When a Masterpiece version was announced, I was initially a little ambivalent because the HA version is almost a Masterpiece in and of itself... but when the first photos appeared online, I decided I'd give it a spin after all. It may not have a Frenzy figure, or an interior he could sit in, but is that really such a big deal?
Vehicle Mode:
The Saleen-modified Ford Mustang makes for a very menacing police car - it would look powerful even without the bullbars on the front, but they make it seem like a car designed less for plain pursuit as Chase HQ-style battering its quarry into submission. Every version of Barricade has had a pretty accurate vehicle mode, though the level of paintwork and intricacy/accuracy of the decals varies from version to version. This one is generally pretty good, and probably has a greater number of individual applications, but it still missing one or two of the decals seen on the Human Alliance toy - most noticeably the '643' on the front bumper. It does have the '9-1-1 Emergency Response' icon toward the rear and the shield behind the front wheel wells is more detailed than the version on the HA toy, but probably the biggest difference between the two is that this one has more visible seams. The worst is easily the split running through the side doors, where the seam is emphasised by the white paint over a mixture of black and transparent plastics. That said, these - plus the seam down the middle of the rear windscreen - would be the only clear indication that this isn't just a model car were it not for a few subtle discrepancies in plastic finish around the body of the vehicle and the heel spurs just visible under the rear bumper.
Paintwork is fairly minimal - white doors with (not super-reflective) silver 'POLICE' banners, headlights, tail lights and indicators, the number plate is more realistic versus the HA toy's '2PN-SLV' joke plate, and he even has some silver paint on the exhausts. While the windows reveal a jumble of robot parts rather than a convincing interior, it is nice that clear plastic has been used... though I suspect a tint of some sort would have made him look better, if a little less screen-accurate.
Naturally, being a Masterpiece, his bodywork isn't marred by any standard-sized ports for attaching weapons but then, his only accessory isn't even designed to be used in vehicle mode. This is just a very competent model of the Saleen from the movie, and has a fair bit of heft thanks to its few die-cast parts.
The most disappointing aspect - and something I'd initially not realised as the last Masterpiece car I bought was Hasbro's version of Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime - was that the wheels are all plastic, no more rubber tyres. It's almost understandable here, given the way two of Barricade's tyres turn into parts of his hands... but I can't help but be disappointed when something called a 'Masterpiece' takes such short cuts... particularly when the Third Parties, by and large, don't follow suit.
I must confess also that vehicle mode feels like a step backward next to the Human Alliance version (which I'll aim to get to writing about soon, honest!), not just because the doors don't open and there's no Frenzy figure to interact with. Those missing paint applications and the pretty perfunctory lightbar make it look a little rushed and incomplete for the Masterpiece brand.
Robot Mode:
I'm not certain whether it's the result of having this figure in my hands or if it's actually been an abiding impression since I saw the original movie, but Barricade is probably one of my favourite movie Decepticon designs, not least because it's essentially an extension - or perhaps perversion - of the Diaclone style of G1 toys, where the front end of the car becomes the robot's chest. It's a classic design, certainly, and Barricade both embellishes it and twists it into something more suited to an 'Evil Decepticon' look... overall, he looks quite similar to movie Bumblebee's '76 Camaro robot mode, just with more spiky protrusions, vicious, distorted angles, and wonky arm/leg proportions. The look is familiar, but alien and just nasty enough that you can know at a glance that, in spite of his police car vehicle mode, Barricade is a wrong 'un.
I quite like that they designed the lightbar to split and get angled somewhat like the CGI, though that appears to split the entire roof across the back, as exaggerated shoulderblades. There's also a small concession to the idea of disguising the panelly backpack in the form of a literal butt-plate that fold over the central section of Barricade's windscreen, though the inclusion of a protruding display stand mounting port in the middle ends up looking a little disturbing, and reminding me rather too much of that bit where Bumblebee pisses on Agent Simmonds...
Still, from most angles, MPM Barricade appears to be close enough to the CGI, particularly when posed. The warped section of bonnet is, of course, faked and hidden below the vehicle's actual bonnet, while the angled bumper sections are actual vehicle mode parts, and the difference is quite apparent. There's not a great deal of sculpted detail on the rest of torso, but largely because there's not a great deal of torso below the car parts making up the chest. The arms are a little bitty, not to mention full of holes in the forearms, but it takes a close examination to really pick out the shortcomings.
It probably helps that his paint job is fairly subdued - mostly unpainted black plastic and, aside from the white panels on his arms, remarkably few - albeit very effective - highlights in silver and metallic blue. But here's where some of the complaints about the MPM figure arise: many fans argue that the colour highlights should have been metallic purple (more in line with the original Deluxe) rather than blue, while others argue that it only looked purple because of the lighting in the scenes he appeared in. Certainly, I'd say that, while purple is the more striking colour, blue is probably more appropriate a secondary colour on a robot that turns into a police car... even if the vehicle mode shows no signs of either colour. Personally, my only complaint is the same one that comes up with so many TransFormers figures - the paintwork only ever covers the main surface, rather than extending over the edges. Thus, the black plastic of the door panels and the transparent plastic of the windows are both very apparent on the edges of each respective piece, since they are out in the open in robot mode. The former is no surprise and don't look too bad, but the unpainted window frame parts look very untidy - oddly, that issue was corrected by the Black Mamba KO version.
The legs are actually more colourful than they first appear, with paint applications on the inner thighs and both the inner and outer faces of the lower leg, but the large chunks of vehicle shell on his calves and the grey plastic of the lower section of the thighs act as quite a distraction, while the shin is wide and flat enough to obscure a lot of the details on the sides. The lighter grey plastic of the ankles and foot horns also looks a bit weird, but perhaps stands out less than the stark silver paint on the fingertips, which could have done with a darker, more gunmetal shade... preferably covering the hands entirely.
As mentioned, MPM Barricade comes with only one accessory, his spiky wheel weapon, which attached to either forearm by partially folding away the hand and tabbing the panel on which the wheel is mounted into what's left of the wrist. This gives it the look of a very elaborate circular saw or an arm-mounted threshing machine. The spikes are molded in grey rubber - likely due to safety concerns and the high probability of breakage - and they're not even that sharp, so it doesn't look or feel particularly realistic or dangerous... it honestly doesn't fit with the Masterpiece presentation, so I'd personally have preferred them to leave it out. Also, in the movie, the wheel is free to be passed between Barricade's hands while he's having his first punch-up with Bumblebee, so attaching it to a wrist mount seems like a bad idea... Perhaps this is an accessory to leave in its stand or, better still, back in the box.
The head sculpt is brilliantly detailed, front and back, and features quite a bit of silver and gold paintwork on the myriad small interlocking panels of the face, with his beady eyes picked out with red paint. I gather from some other reviews that the paint isn't applied correctly according to the CGI, but I think it works well enough. The error appears to be simply that some of the areas that should have been left black have been painted silver, and vice versa. There are also a couple of applications of metallic blue on the inner part of the crest, but they're really subtle and easily missed. The extensive paintwork on the face is certainly a nice contrast to the simplicity and generally dark look of the body. Barricade is instantly recognisable, and has one of the more human-like faces of the Decepticons from the original film, despite its weird shape and horns - which, now I think about it, almost seem like a development of the forehead crests on the likes of G1 Prowl/Bluestreak/Smokescreen. The biggest difference, of course, is how the head thins out below the pronounced cheek panels, into a narrow, goatee-like spike of a chin. Even more suprising is that the mouth actually opens - a neat feature I wish they'd incorporated into some of the G1-style MP figures.
There are quite a few similarities between this figure and the Human Alliance version of Barricade, though the arms in particular are vastly more intricate in their transformation, not least in the way they concertina into the elbow. The arms are a bit weird, in that they don't really peg in securely at the shoulder and the transformation joint there is weaker than the shoulder's ratchet joint, so it both sags a little and can be fiddly move. The thing that always bugs me about Barricade toys is the way the protrusion from the top of the shoulder is handled - the wheel is supposed to be up higher, where it would be less likely to clash with the side windows. The hinge that's there does allow them to swing outward slightly, but the tyre bumps into the edge of the wheelwell almost instantly. Everything below the elbow just a collection of overlapping panels, most of which don't tab together, yet they stay together pretty well. The torso ends up a little gappy, with the chest connected to the waist by a set of hinged panels, though it's all surprisingly secure. The legs are very similar to the HA version, even down to the way they compress in and down below the groin for vehicle mode, though the treatment of the rear bumper is very different. Probably the biggest improvement is in the accuracy of the chest, even though that involves some fake parts... and does lead to a mass of folded-up panels on his back. One point I'm not certain about is the positioning of the window wings, since they're on double-jointed arms... I tend to tuck them right in behind the shoulder joints, but I'm not convinced that's correct. The head reveal also strikes me as a little overengineered - with the ball-jointed neck being mounted on a hinge which is, itself, on a separately hinged flap leading from the chest. Thankfully none of those joints are floppy, so the head stays in place well. Also, transforming the bonnet according to the instructions leaves a massive hole where they head is stored in vehicle mode... however, at the expense of some stability in the backpack, the frontmost panel can be folded out to cover the space and make Barricade look a little bit less gappy, though it does make him look rather hunchbacked from some angles.
I can't complain too much about MPM Barricade's articulation - the arms have good range via all the joints one would expect, and the elbow isn't half as awkward as might be expected given the way it comes together. As mentioned above, the shoulders are far from ideal, but they do the job and he's able to hold various expressive poses. There is, of course, no wrist articulation, and the finger jointing is fairly simplistic, but it's sufficient. He has waist rotation, but it's very much restricted by the vehicle's windscreen. Thankfully the hips are a vast improvement on the Human Alliance version, there's a mid-thigh swivel, double-jointed knee, and even separate ankle joints for forward/back and side-to-side tilting. The leg joints are all pretty solid and stable and, with the inclusion of a few die cast parts, the feet are able to keep him standing upright, despite his natural tendency to hunch forward and the almost digitigrade arrangement of the legs.
Masterpiece Barricade was a figure I was really looking forward to and, maybe I'm not as choosy as I like to think I am, but he feels just right to me. The movie robot designs were always going to prove difficult to realise in plastic without sacrifices, but there are remarkably few significant sacrifices here. That said, the gaffes in the robot mode paint job - particularly the misapplications of silver on the head - are somewhat disappointing in something that describes itself as a 'Masterpiece Movie Series' figure, since surely the whole idea is to be as close to the movie as possible, within the usual constraints. Even the missing number from his bumper could often be explained by differences - inconsistencies, even - between some of the movie vehicles and their CGI robot counterparts but, while it is present in the movie, it's neither prominent, nor clearly visible for any significant length of time... Nevertheless, it's another omission on the official product that's fixed by the knockoffs.
It's interesting, in retrospect, that the original 2007 Deluxe class toy has stood the test of time in my collection, with the only other Barricade figures I've picked up beside this being the Human Alliance version and the whole new version from The Last Knight's toyline. The original toy wasn't that great, nor was it even particularly accurate... but none of the later Deluxe class toys were so much better that they warranted purchase in my opinion. This one was a must-have, though, as it improves on the HA version in ways that the Deluxe class Studio Series figure couldn't. The proportions are spot on and, while the details such as the shoulder 'wings' and the door parts sticking out of his back - not to metion the roof/windscreen panels stuck on his back - still aren't perfect, they're the closest to the CGI we've had - and are likely to get - in a transforming toy (though if that isn't a challenge to the Third Parties, I don't know what is - certainly the most significant improvments offered by the current knockoffs are entirely cosmetic and paint-based).
Of all the Barricade figures currently available, this is definitely the best - it's a good, hefty figure thanks to the use of die-cast metal for some key structural parts, the level of detail is excellent, it's poseable and dynamic... A few minor glitches on the paint job mean it's not perfect, but it's nothing so bad that I feel compelled to replace this with a knockoff. The one and only accessory is a disappointment, and I'd almost have preferred a Frenzy figure, but the one packaged with the Human Alliance toy makes a kind of sense that a similar figure packaged with this version of Barricade would not.
I'm trying to be very choosy with my Masterpiece figures, particularly the Movie Masterpieces, and have so far only picked up the VW Bumblebee, largely because I like the Beetle and enjoyed the movie, while I skipped on Ironhide in preference for the Studio Series version. MPM Jazz is definitely on my shopping list, but I'm still debating MPM Megatron, having seen it in person in the cabinets at Forbidden Planet in London quite recently. I'm keen to see what comes next for the line, but I don't see myself getting many of the figures because Studio Series, by and large, fills that niche adequately, and at a far lower cost. It'll take something like this - a figure that does things that couldn't be achieved at any other price-point - to ensure I pick up another Movie Masterpiece. I'm quite curious to see who gets to The Last Knight's version of Barricade first - Hasbro/Takara Tomy or the Third Parties...
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