Of course, by the time it arrived, I realised my error... but the original TFPrime Vehicon mold is still one of my absolute favourite TransFormers toy, so another iteration of that - repainted with the idea of it being a higher-ranking version of the Decepticon cannon fodder - can hardly be too great a disappointment, can it?
Vehicle Mode:
So, yes, the original TFPrime Vehicon makes for a gorgeous vehicle - it's a hearse-like box of a car, but weirdly elegant yet threatening. In this new colourscheme, it looks less like a vehicle for a funeral and more like the sort of concept car Rolls-Royce might make in the year 2050 if they decided to move into muscle cars. Stunning as the original paint job was, the silver paintwork all over this car gives it an unexpected beauty. It's not the most intricately detailed of vehicle designs, but the metallic paint brings it all into sharp relief, and cleverly disguises the visible joint pins on the 'door' panels.
There's also a curious familiarity to the paint job - factor in the darker, gunmetal strip down the bonnet, and this version of the Decepticon drone looks to be a homage to G1 Bluestreak. Even the touches of red - and I particularly like the red-walled tyres - are on-brand for the Autobot gunner. The red paint applied to the small, angled recesses on the front almost look like eyes... In fact, I'm sure it reminds me of a particular character, but can't quite place it... Possibly a much-simplified movie Crankcase? While there's no Decepticon insignia on the raised plate on the front of the vehicle, he does have the typical TFAdventure code sticker on the bonnet. There's also no paintwork beneath the colourless, transparent plastic of the headlights, in the 'cracks' that spread out from them on the sides of the vehicle, or the recessed strips across the back. No surprise that the tail light details aren't painted - not sure I'd even noticed them on the original figure - but the lack of any coloured strips at the back is a disappointment. The grille details on either end of the front bumper has been painted glossy black to make it stand out better, and the spoiler has, for some reason, been painted the same gunmetal colour as the raised section on the bonnet... Not sure why Takara Tomy felt that was worth highlighting, but there we go. The other oddity is that the sculpted rear window detail is overpainted with silver... making me wonder if perhaps the colour guide was misinterpreted, and the window was supposed to be painted gunmetal, with the spoiler painted silver to match the rest of the vehicle.
One really cool thing that I hadn't noticed on the standard, troop-builder version is that, viewed from a certain angle, the robot's folded-up shins and feet actually look like seats on the inside the car. It's a pretty specific angle - anything too far off my front shot, below, ruins the illusion, but it does almost look intentional: the toes form the head rest, while the insides of the shin represent the seat back and sides.
As with the original, the standard, non-Micron blaster is included and can peg into the sides of the car above either of the rear wheel wells, or clip onto the front just behind either of the headlights. Like the vehicle, it's painted silver, so it looks pretty cool and blends well with the vehicle (perhaps a little too well for my camera), but it's a surprisingly tight fit using the clips on the front of the vehicle.
Robot Mode:
It's always a little disappointing, when a figure's vehicle mode has been lavishly painted, to find that the robot mode is just... grey... Granted, there's a sort of metallic/pearlescent swirl to all of it, but it's still ultimately pretty grey... and very uniform. The standard figure had the benefit of its super-dark purple shell being broken up with brighter purple highlights, not least the substantial purple paint applications on the chest. There was also silver paint - and a Decepticon insignia - behind his smokey translucent chest window, while this figure - with its meagre applications of red paint on the shin vent details - looks like a refugee from the TFPrime/Arms Micron line, with all the stickers missing.
Even a bit more variation in plastic colours would have helped, but the different types of plastic used for the joints and the larger, non-articulated sections is almost indistinguishable except by texture. It's possible a very slightly cooler grey was used for the more mobile parts, but that may simply depend on the ambient light as I look at it. This is probably the closest I've got to one of those grey plastic test models they use for online product reveals. That said, light plays on the plastic in some very interesting ways, and from some angles, the raised panels just above the feet look as if they're painted a different colour to the main part of the shin.
What's all the more annoying is that there are obvious places where additional paint - be it red, gunmetal or silver - could have been applied. The torso in particular would benefit by having a few touches of metallic paint to emphasise the detail, or some red paint either behind the chest window or in the angled strips below the chest, as it tapers back in toward the waist. These may have emphasised the figure's similarity to Rom the Spaceknight, as noted in this figure's entry on TFWiki, but I wouldn't call that a bad thing. Perhaps in some alternate universe, this is the sort of thing you'd get if a Dire Wraith corrupted one of the Solstar Order..?
As with vehicle mode, the weapon can be wielded in a couple of ways - the 5mm peg toward the back can be slid into either hand, or the clips can be used to attach the gun to the robot's forearm and, just like with vehicle mode, it's a ridiculously tight fit on both sides. It does look very good this way, though and, again, blends with the robot very well, to look as if it has actually transformed out of the forearm, since it's painted silver to match.
The head sculpt - identical to the standard Vehicon - features a translucent magenta visor rather than the original's purple but, like the rest of the robot's body, is entirely unpainted and looks pretty flat. It's not that the sculpted detail is in any way fudged by overuse of the mold, just that silver paint really sharpens it.
Obviously there are no changes in either transformation or articulation between this and the standard ground Vehicon, and the only issue I have with this version compared to the others is that the minor auto-morph gimmick (where the head deploys automatically when the car's back plate is pulled out and swung down onto the robot's back and then stows when the action is reversed) is a little on the loose side, and the neck part rattles around more than on any of the others I own.
While I'm certainly disappointed with this figure in terms of its sparsely-decorated robot mode, it's still a very good mold, and it's nice to have a version of it that stands out on the shelf. It also certainly hasn't dampened my enthusiasm for the Jet Vehicon General in the Arms Micron line, since that one features additional paintwork, stickers and variation in plastic colours as well as another version of the Igu Micron in a matching colourscheme.
This is a rare failure in Takara Tomy's output... but then, TransFormers Adventure in general doesn't seem to have been as good as it could have been. Really, the only true failure was putting all the effort into vehicle mode, leaving nothing for the robot. With a few more touches of colour, this would have fully realised its concept... and I'm honestly wondering whether the issue here was the toy's paint budget or just that it was perceived to fit TF Adventure better with a less elaborate paint job.
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