All of which is to say that, of these two Street Fighter II crossover repaints, only one was entirely new to me... but the idea was certainly bonkers enough to get my attention, and I ordered both of the Street Fighter II X Transformers boxed sets as soon as they became available.
If you've ever wondered how an arcade beat-'em-up would translate into TransFormers toys, read on!
Packaging:
While there's nothing outwardly unusual about the packaging other than the branding, the box does contain a backing tray featuring one of the arenas from Street Fighter II. It's not quite the Studio Series display stand, since it's essentially just a screenshot from the game (or a mockup thereof) including both characters, their health bars, etc. but it's a neat touch nonetheless. The toys are packaged in action poses - Ryo/Convoy sort of readying a fireball, Vega/Megatron doing the Psycho Crusher - and they largely obscure the screenshot.
The back of the box features a chunk of text which, I'm assuming, explains the story of the crossover, along with modified Street Fighter II artwork, in which Convoy stands behind Ryu as the human unleashes a fireball. There are also details of the videogame characters, along with product shots of the toys pulling off the characters' signature moves. The sides of the box feature large, detailed product shots of both robots, along with smaller photos of the two vehicle modes of each.
Bottom line: the concept may be baffling, but the presentation is excellent.
Convoy [Ryu]
Truck Mode:
What we have here is basically a very white trunk and tanker-trailer combo... and I have to say it's really very boring. There's red paint on the front of the vehicle and on the hubcaps, and a black stripe running the length of the trailer on each side, featuring some gold Japanese script toward the back and a gold Autobot insignia toward the front, but none of the details have been painted in. The headlights are covered with red paint, the smokestacks are unpainted, and so much of this vehicle mode is bare white plastic, it looks unfinished...
It doesn't bode well but, even in this mode, it's fairly obvious that what little paintwork is present is wholly in service of robot mode. Even so, It feels like some of the details - the parts that would be bare metal or chrome on a real-life truck, such as the smoke stacks and the stepladders - could have been painted with either silver or gold, to break things up a bit. The truck's rear wheelwells could also have had a bit of paint added, to differentiate them from the tanker, since they're mostly concealed in robot mode.
He comes packaged with the same gun/seat and sword, the former molded in black plastic, the latter in a comparatively opaque, pearlescent swirly blue plastic. Either one can attach to either side of the trailer and, while the sword adds a welcome bit of additional colour to the vehicle, it looks as daft here as it does on Black Convoy.
Jet Mode:
And here we have another exceedingly white vehicle - this time an aircraft. Using the original nosecone, it looks a bit more futuristic than Octane, but also has the shorter, awkward, hinged-in-the-middle wings that were one of the less impressive things about TTS2007 Black Convoy... He looks slightly less plain that truck mode, but only because of the red striping on the wings and stabilisers at the back, while the main tailfin is unpainted. The shortcomings of the robot-centric paint job are made painfully apparent by the skintone paint and plastic visible below and behind the wings, since the insides of the truck cab reveal the robot's arms. The rear of the jet looks awful on pretty much every iteration of this mold but, given that much of it is taken up with the inside of the robot's chest plate, it seems ludicrous that they didn't add a little paint here, or on the booster-thing at the core of the tail.
The same issues with the weapons are present here, since they peg into the same two 5mm ports, and look utterly ridiculous.
Robot Mode:
Well, it looks as though Takara Tomy went for a full-on, sprite-accurate paint job, with little regard for the fact that this is actually meant to be Optimus Prime/Convoy effectively cosplaying as Ryu. Robot mode features plenty of locations where a bit of metallic paint could have been added but, just like his vehicle modes, it's largely bare white plastic. The groin area features some black paint, intended to represent Ryu's obi, and there are applications of a rather sickly skintone on the arms, fingers, feet and chest... though this latter application is broken up by the Prime's chest windows. The shoulders are only partially painted - I guess to evoke the torn-off sleeves of Ryu's gi - but the effect is hampered by the fact that the borders of the paintwork don't match any of the sculpted details. The red paint from the truck's front end is extended to represent Ryu's gloves, and I think that's about the only aspect of the paint job that works well.
Overall, it feels as though the concept really needed a few remolded parts to fully do it justice, since the paint applications just don't look right shoehorned into the original sculpt. Plus, I'm dubious about the decision to use skintone paint in the first place when, surely, a gunmetal would have been more appropriate to a giant robot Ryu. After all, Capcom's giant robot fighting game, Cyberbots, features a robotic version of Akuma - Zero Akuma - and he's very much metallic. I get that Cyberbots is a less prestigious title than Street Fighter II, but it certainly had a more believable representation of its robots.
Ultimately, what we have here is a representation of the characters that skews way more toward Ryu than Optimus Prime/Convoy.
HeadMaster Ryu:
Ryu is basically the stock Diac figure from every iteration of this mold, cast in white plastic and, like the main robot and despite the fact that the mold clearly represents a small robot - or, at least, a humanoid in a robotic suit - not a human martial artist wearing a white gi, it's nevertheless painted as if it's a human wearing white gi. The arms are painted with the same skintone as the larger figure, with red for the gloves and the outer faces. They did at least go to the trouble of painting his fingers and feet separately, and the head is quite extensively painted - black 'hair', red hachimaki, and then skintone slathered all over the face. Curiously, Ryu's obi is not painted on, despite the presence of reasonably appropriate sculpted detail.
Optimus Prime/Convoy's head is exactly the same as the Titans Return Voyager class figure as well, but with the helmet and eyes painted black, the battlemask skintone, while the antenna and the plate across his forehead are painted red to emulate Ryu's hachimaki. One really has to wonder about the decision-making on this toy...
Megatron [Vega - AKA M. Bison in the West]
Tank Mode:
Bearing in mind this was my first - and, so far, only - experience of the Titans Return Megatron/Blitzwing mold, and that I wasn't overly impressed by photos of either of those, much less the Megatron toy I eventually saw in shops, I have to admit that I've been somewhat converted by having the toy in-hand. It's immediately more eyecatching, even in tank mode, which is traditionally just a slab of plastic with sculpted treads and little plastic wheels. The combination of desaturated red and huge swathes of silver shouldn't work... but it's somehow perfectly ostentatious for a version of Megatron operated by Vega/M. Bison. Perhaps it's more appropriate to the terrible, classic Street Fighter movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia than anything Capcom themselves might consider canonical within their Street Fighter mythos, but it actually looks quite good.
As with Convoy, there's an awful lot of scuplted detail that hasn't been specifically picked out with paint, but the blanket coverage of silver on the front and rear of the tank, plus on the tip of the gun barrel and the large angled armour panels on the sides, somewhat makes up for the lack of finer detail applications. The only parts that aren't silver or red are the black-painted treads and the boxes on the sides of the turret which, for whatever reason, have been picked out with metallic yellow paint. One impressive aspect of the turret is that the sculpted details on the top are asymmetrical with, I think, a tiny spotlight mounted on the front at one side of the cockpit, and - somewhat bizarrely - a tiny sculpted hatch on the other. It's almost as if the designer was aware of the way a tank's turret would normally look, without being aware of the purpose of some of those details... I mean, that hatch is too small to accommodate a Titan Master's head, let alone the rest of 'em.
While there's certainly more extensive paintwork on Megatron than there was on Convoy - as well as more intricate surface detailing to the sculpt - I can't help but think a few more paint apps, here and there, would have benefitted this mode. I'm also a bit dubious about the two raised blocks on the front of the tank - I know they're the robot's heels... but couldn't they have been detailed to resemble lights, or something appropriate to the front of a tank?
Aside from the cockpit, this mold features a whole two pegs, set behind the turret, on which Titan Master figure can be stood... though it seems a bit counterintuitive to have anyone standing on the outside of a tank, particularly as there are no rear-facing weapons for them to operate.
While the treads are fixed, sculpted and painted detail, Megatron is able to roll - just about - thanks to a set of plastic wheels set within them. These are clipped into place rather than pinned and three of them roll quite nicely but, on mine, the rear wheel on the right side must have some mold flashing, as it scuffs as it reluctantly moves.
It may be a sign of mold over-use or simply the wrong type of plastic, but the turret on mine has a habit of sagging forward slightly, meaning the enlarged gun barrel has trouble clearing the raised chunks on the front of the tank. The turret mounting is tabbed firmly into place, but the plastic of the mouting does warp slightly when I push down on the back of turret to lift it.
He comes with Titans Return Megatron's weapon accessories - the enlarged gunbarrel for the freely-rotating turret, and the weirdly-shaped, sit-in secondary gun which can either be stored on the back of the vehicle or pegged on top of the gun barrel. Since this mold comes with a very effective turret cockpit for Vega/M. Bison (not to mention the barely-concealed jet mode cockpit), the sit-in gun seems a bit pointless - not least because it obstructs the view from the cockpit, and would be rather out-in-the-open in a combat situation. Plus, mounting a gun on another gun seems a little bit over the top, even for Megatron... Weirdly, the sit-in gun can also be pegged into the opening of the main gun barrel, extending the cannon further and giving it a finer, sniper rifle-style tip. This seems to be intentional - the 5mm peg on the back of the sit-in gun has a larger diameter, raised base with two tabs either side, which grip the outside of the barrel - but it does little more than weigh down the gun barrel even further.
I do find myself wondering, based on the level of intricate sculpted detail on the tank, if the designer of this toy went on to a more prominent role in the War for Cybertron: Siege line... I'm not sure I've ever seen so many tiny details and embellishments on what would normally be the fairly smooth surfaces on a tank's armour.
Jet Mode:
While the tank strikes a good balance between its red and silver parts, jet mode is predominantly silver, and looks all the better for it. The mold would never convince as a jet because of the tank turret hanging off its underside and the large chunks of tank - treads (and robot hands) plainly visible - stashed under the wings and protruding from the back, but the silver paint does wonders to highlight the silhouette of the jet when viewed from above. The plainer chest piece sported by TR Megatron is of great help here since, despite being one of the few large areas of red on the upper side of the jet and quite a significant interruption to the silver paint running the length of the jet, it doesn't stand out too much as it links with the silver on the front section and with the blocks of red paint on the wings.
I must admit that, regardless of the large and unsightly chunks of robot/tank below the wings this figure, objectively, offers a far better, more coherent jet mode than the Generations Blitzwing/Doubledealer mold since the wings are better proportioned versus the body, and the tail end looks more complete. It's not perfect, though - while the front end has some curvature on the jet intakes, but the back end is comparatively flat, with the exception of the recess square vents just behind the red panel. Where the jet engines would normally be indicated by bulges leading to the afterburners, here we have only panel lining on a flat surface, even though tank mode could easily have accommodated curved surfaces on its underside. Additionally, the rims of the afterburners are painted exactly the same silver as the surrounding jet body, so they don't stand out as well as they might, while the burners themselves may have benefitted by some sort of painted glow effect.
The central, red section of the jet's upper surface features the only other significant paint application - a blue T-shape, interrupted by a Decepticon insignia - which is actually part of the robot mode's paint job. However, along with the Decepticon insignia, this version of Megatron has Shadaloo insignias tampographed in yellow on each wingtip.
It should come as no surprise that there's no landing gear on this jet. While the tank gets by on four free-rolling plastic wheels to supplement its fake treads, jet mode makes use of three sculpted bumps on the top of the turret. They barely even resemble wheels and, if the large barrel attachment is in place, the front wheel doesn't even touch the ground because the barrel is slightly taller.
While jet mode has a fairly standard looking canopy over the cockpit - which can accommodate the Titan Master figure - the means of opening it is anything but standard. The entire nose lifts up, splitting along a seam which is fairly apparent from the sides. Whether a feature of the mold or due to the silver paint, it's an extremely tight fit on mine, to the point that I'm genuinely concerned about breakage every time I open it. I probably wouldn't bother were it not a required step in transformation, since the cockpit space accommodates the jet's nose in both tank and robot modes. Nevertheless, with the cockpit open, the Titan Master figure can be sat inside and enclosed within... though this, too, is a tight fit, since the figures shoulder span is barely smaller than the width of the cockpit. The canopy itself is a translucent greyish-pink and, like the original Megatron iteration of this mold, it's entirely unpainted, where the Blitzwing version had the framework painted in.
As with tank mode, there are a couple of options for attaching his weapon accessories - the larger barrel can be left attached to the gun turret on the underside, while the sit-in weapon can be pegged into the rear of the jet, between the afterburners, allowing its two smaller pegs to act as a clip between the two halves of the rear. Alternatively, the weapons can be pegged together and attached at the rear of the jet, below the nose of the jet or, in the alternative configuration with the sit-in weapon attached to the tip of the larger gun barrel, attached either to the turret or the underside of the nose. The lack of any weapon ports on the wings is the only disappointment here, though the effect can be approximated by pegging weapons into the robot's fists, or the ports on the undersides of the treads, just in front of them. In the former position, the sit-in gun's peg isn't quite long enough, and the two square pegs nearer the front of the weapon make it stand out from the side at an angle. In the latter position, both hang down below the level of the 'wheels'.
Robot Mode:
While the Optimus Prime mold isn't a great fit for Ryu, I can't think of another mold that would suit Vega/M. Bison any better - it has the videogame character's upper body bulk and his massive, armoured boots. All it's lacking is the bulbous thighs (more like TF Animated Blitzwing's jodhpurs) and a dramatic cape.
Based on the abundance of silver, it looks as though they've gone with the game character's more contemporary appearance - from SF Alpha/Zero onward - since his 'boots' are entirely metallic. In the original SFII, he was wearing black boots with shaped metal plates over the knees, shins and the bridges of his feet. As with jet mode, the fact that these areas are completely flat apart from the linework does the appearance of the legs no favours - a bit of a bulge down the shins would have looked far better, especially considering how slim his thighs are by comparison.
Silver paint also been applied to the cuffs and shoulders, but the effect of Vega/Bison's enormous armoured shoulder pads is lost due to the plain red shoulder joints on each side and the multi-panelled detailing of the forward face of the upper arms. It's not possible to get the jet mode's wings to do an imitation of Vega/Bison's cape, since there's no way to reposition them independently of the arms. Flaring it out looks more Seeker-ish anyway, so they're best left folded up against the sides of the turret on his back.
The rest of the paint job is fairly minimal - black around the waist and up the lower part of the torso, a metallic yellow frame around the middle of his upper belly, and that blue stripe on the chest plate is extended below the 'belt', tapering down to a point on his groin. This blue paint actually confuses me, now I think about it, because I can't quite see what it's supposed to represent... If it's the hems of his jacket, then surely it would spread out rather than tapering in? Or alternatively, it could have been applied to the inner and lower edges of the parts above the hip joints? And then, is that metallic yellow frame meant to represent his belt buckle? If so, it's position makes it look more like a huge decorative buckle on a waist cincher.
I'd have to say that the mysterious paint job isn't helped by what appears to me to be duplicated detail in the sculpt. The framed part on the torso is flanked by vented sections which would, traditionally, be the sum total of a G1-style Megatron's waist... but then the black-painted 'belt' section also features details that might represent a G1-style Megatron's waist, just more stylised and pretty much upside-down. The main chest plate is quite plain, with three indented vents on each side at the bottom, and the upper/outer corners being sculpted as separate plates with minimal detailing. The triangular details next to them are derived from the G1 animation model, while the blue-painted plate at the collar may represent the recessed section on the animation model and the original Walther P-38 toy, but it's far smaller than it should be if that's the case. Given its size, I'm assuming that here it's intended to represent the videogame character's collar.
But then, one thing that bugs me and amuses me in equal parts is the raised neck into which the Titan Master figure plugs. Since it's part of the jet mode's front end, it's fully painted silver, but the sculpt makes it look like a robo-polo-neck... though, again, that feels strangely appropriate to Vega/M.Bison.
One of the more mystifying additional features of all the Voyager class figures from Titans Return was the spring-loaded collar pieces that invariable fired of their own accord and proved difficult to push back into their stowed position. This mold avoids all that faff by putting the trigger button behind the chest plate, meaning one has to open the torso to activate the gimmick. Megatron's protrusions look surprisingly like those of the Seekers but, since this mold was designed with Blitzwing in mind, I'm guessing it's intended to evoke the G1 toy's structural plastic, either side of the robot's head. The other fun aspect to the trigger being behind the chest plate is that opening it reveals what appears to be the robot's internal structure... though it's actually just the underside of the jet's front section. It's cleverly sculpted with details across the top that complement the outer armour plate, while the visible part of the jet's nose is sculpted with angled robo-abs. There's even some scuplted detail on the inside of the chest plate, but I'm just tickled that, whether intentionally or not, they have evoked those cutaway diagrams of Cybertronians (by E.J. Su?) that accompanied some of IDW's earliest TransFormers comics, and led to things like Action Toys' UM-01 Ultimetal Optimus Prime.
Megatron can wield his two weapons individually, in his hands, pegged into his arms or even his shoulders but, clearly, the intention is to have them pegged together and mounted on one arm (ideally his right) as something vaguely resembling his G1 Fusion Cannon. The fact that the back end is also supposed to function as a seat for the Titan Master figure significantly reduces the combined weapon's effectiveness, and the slim-but-tall protrusion housing the 5mm socket on the forearms makes for an awkward-looking connection. The cannon appears to stand out way too far from his arm. It's a real shame, because the large barrel section looks awesome, but for its very gappy underside and, while that's concealed as long as the cannon is mounted the right way round, the empty 'seat' at the back makes it look as though something is missing, and the weapon only really resembles the G1 toy's repurposed telescopic gun sight in silhouette.
It's also noted in this mold's entry on TFWiki that the stubby gun barrel left on the turret on his back can actually be removed (with great effort) and stuck into one of the 5mm sockets on his shoulders for a representation of the G1 animation model's 'gun barrel behind the shoulder' look. This part is held in exceptionally tightly, and I don't think the extra homage is worth the trouble of pulling it out.
Much as I didn't like this mold in its original form of the G1-styled Titans Return Megatron, it did have an excellent head sculpt tagged onto its Titan Master figure, and it works surprisingly well as Vega/M. Bison. It doesn't quite have the same jawline or cheekbones, but it certainly has the scowl. Like Convoy/Ryu, the face is painted skintone inside the red helmet, but Megatron's eyes here are white - I guess to emulate the unearthly glow of Vega/M. Bison's eyes due to his 'Psycho Power'. This version does away with Megatron's unibrow and instead has a blue patch across the front of his helmet, referencing the brim of Vega/M. Bison's military cap. The underside is painted black, but a thin strip of his brow remains skintone. At the centre of the brim is another tampographed Shadaloo insigia - in yellow, just like those on his wings. This definitely works well as Megatron, decorated to pay homage to Shadaloo's leader... Though the idea of Megatron paying homage to a human seems a little unlikely...
HeadMaster Vega:
Sporting a simplified version of the larger robot's paint job, Vega appears to be wearing a suit of armour styled after his military uniform, with a squared-off helmet replacing his cap. He has his fully silver boots, full-forearm gauntlets and shoulder armour, and a black vison - a simpler, far neater paint job than Ryu got.
The mold used is the same as TR Megatron's standard Titan Master, Doomshot, with a chest reminiscent of G1 Blitzwing, but everything else fairly nondescript and generic. Mine has a slightly loose right shoulder - not to the point where it pops off at the slightest touch, but certainly loose enough that it can pop off unexpectedly while posing.
Megatron's transformation between his three modes is fun and fluid, as well as being rather more structurally sound in each mode than the Generations version released five years previously. There are a few sticking points, though. First and foremost, the legs are a bit of a pain. Since they use hinges to compress into their vehicle mode configuration, the backs of the lower legs have to open out to accommodate the feet at the thighs, but the position of the hinge means the flap is never entirely out of the way, and the flap on one leg will clash with the other. The feet, in particular, have to scrape past the angled section of the flap. Then, collapsing the legs requires the same tab that solidifies the knee to peg into the front of the hip joint while, at the same time, another tab behind the kneepad has to peg into the slot at the bottom of the groin, and that can be quite a struggle. With that out of the way, everything else tabs together quite easily... in tank mode, at least.
Jet mode comes with problems of its own, as I've found that the arms no longer tab in as securely as they did when I first got him out of the box. It's worse on one side than the other, but it seems to be due to the hole in the outermost tank shell part being rather loose, and the shoulder peg being both angled and not quite long enough to reach the robot's fist on the other side of tank shell. Additionally, the aforementioned stiffness of the cockpit joint leaves me thinking that something is going to break eventually. I'm reasonably impressed by how well the jet's wings fold away in robot/tank mode, as well as the fact that they can be extended, like Seeker Wings, for a different look in robot mode... though it does make me wonder why this mold hasn't been repainted as Starscream yet. I'm not entirely convinced by the shoulders on two counts. Firstly, the joint is effective, but the way it comes together leaves it looking quite ugly. Secondly, the upper arms bulk out by having the tread sections fold out and round onto the side of the arm, but the hinge is quite loose, these panels don't tab into place. Worse still, the plastic wheels are left on show, along with a quite hollow vent-like section on each arm. The use of red plastic both for the arms and the wheels disguises them somewhat on this mold, but they stood out horribly on the original TR Megatron.
While the shoulder joint is unsightly, it offers excellent articulation - while it can't rotate a full 360° (something short of 270° by my estimation, going back a little more than 90°, but making close to 135° forward/up) due to clashing with structural parts on which the wings are mounted, the pinned joint at the top of the shoulder means he can raise his arms out to the sides by about 150°. Another pinned joint, just above the bicep rotation joint, can bend out about 90° due to transformation, though this does bump part of the shoulder mass out of the way. Bicep rotation is completely unrestricted, but the elbow bends only the standard 90° and there's no wrist rotation. Transformation doesn't seem to have allowed for waist rotation, but the legs can swing forward/back through more than 180°, the thigh rotation joint is unrestricted and the range of the knee is over 90° if you take into account its short range of forward bend. It can manage even more if the lower leg is unpegged at the knee, since the knee joint forms part of his legs' transformation, but this does affect his stability. The feet, unsurprisingly, have no movement except for transformation, but his soles are at a slight angle, so he only stands properly with his legs spread slightly... Whether this helps or hinders dynamic posing, I'm currently undecided... The jet's stabilisers and fins are attached to his ankle and can be used to supplement his almost worthless heel stubs, or folded up against the sides of the legs.
Megatron is the clear winner in this set... and I have to admit I'm kind of doubting my decision to stick with the Generations version of Blitzwing over the Titans Return version... The Decepticon Triple Changers got a bit of a raw deal in Classics - both Octane and Astrotrain were undersized and quite poorly done, while Blitzwing failed to materialise at all... then the Generations one had a rubbish face-change gimmick and the floppy shoulders. Titans Return ended up doing all three of them, but Astrotrain looked terrible, so I didn't get him - or any of the repaints. On the strength of this, TR Blitzwing is objectively better than the Generations version, if only because its vehicle modes are a bit more realistic, less Sci-Fi. Convoy/Ryu exemplifies why this crossover - in the form produced, at least - was a terrible idea. He's plain, the skintone paintwork looks awful, and the mold just isn't poseable enough for a martial arts character.
Both figures could have used a lot more paintwork - there's an awful lot of detail to the sculpts that could have been highlighted - Megatron in particular seems to have many layers to his armour plating, and even a few indications of exposed inner workings. A few applications of a darker gunmetal, to complement the silver, would have done wonders... but also a few spot applications to either figure in additional colours could have added to the impression that these are giant robots emulating the look of the videogame characters. Even ignoring the bizarre choice to use skintone paint anywhere, the crossover favours Street Fighter II rather too much, if you ask me.
Still, they're both kinda fun, in their own way... and, while I don't now feel overly compelled to acquire the TR version of Blitzwing (really, I only got Octane because it's the first halfway decent Octane toy we've ever had - I don't think any of the Triple Changers should have been turned into HeadMasters), I'm certainly happy to have one iteration of the mold in my collection, even if only as part of a - possibly misguided - crossover event.
No comments:
Post a Comment