And, like most TransFormers figures at that time, Bulkhead was made available in just about every size class. All of them had their shortcomings, but only one of them - the Leader class version - was anywhere near the right scale for the rest of the toyline. While the line as a whole wasn't overly concerned with scale - Bumblebee being one of the largest Deluxes, despite the character's diminutive stature on the show - I've always like to try to get the characters matching up as well as possible. While the Voyager class version of the toy was more accurate to the character's overall appearance on the show, even this Leader class version was technically undersized in robot mode... but it was the closest available.
Of course, 'best available' doesn't always equate to 'best overall', and it's not as if Leader class figures always made best use of their budgets back when they were all huge and packed with features...
Vehicle Mode:
Straight off, I'll have to admit that I made a few additions to his paint job straight out of the box, because there were so many obvious details left unpainted. I filled in the indents on his Autobot insignia button with silver paint, blacked out the side and rear door windows, painted the petrol tanks a dark, bronzy colour (not quite matched to the paint used on his front end, around the grille, but the best I was able to mix) and painted in the strips of exposed mechanical detail on the lower parts of the rear doors with both black paint and a dry-brushing of the bronze paint, to bring out the details a little better. The stock figure was just far too green, yet really only needed these few touch-ups to liven it up and 'finish' the job.
There are a few things that confuse me about TF Animated Bulkhead generally, and about this toy specifically. First and foremost, I don't understand - or rather, remember, since it's been so long since I watched the show - how/why he got himself a military vehicle as a terrestrial disguise when all the other Autobots were emergency vehicles of some sort. With regards to this specific toy, I don't quite understand why it got embellished the way it did, when Bulkhead never looks like this in the TV show. I mean, this is clearly some sort of armoured personnel carrier, and its colouration - let along the white star emblazoned on each side - clearly mark it as military, not police/SWAT. To take a vehicle like that and slap a couple of missile pods on each side - not to mention building up the roof with something that looks like a large, bulky hatch with a smaller hatch on top and a gun on each side, mounted right over an emergency lightbar - seems more than a little excessive. This mixed impression is exacerbated by vehicle mode's single light-and-sound feature, whereby a siren will sound as long as the Autobot insigia is pressed down, and the LEDs below the lightbar will flash (together rather than alternating between sides), continuing for a few seconds after the button is released. Military vehicles wouldn't tend to have emergency lightbars, or carry sirens, since both are features of civilian emergency vehicles. Still, it's a decent use of lights and sounds, but that kind of thing on a TransFormers toy always makes me wonder if it was aimed at the wrong demographic.
In terms of the sculpted detail, TF Animated toys were never the most intricate, but this Leader class figure skews a little closer to real-world levels of detail with all its rivets supplementing the few panel lines, more depth to features like the side doors and, my personal favourite, the complete roof, where the Voyager featured a great open valley in the roof between the robot's arms. There may be plenty of obvious seams on the roof, but that looks far better in my eyes than the absence on the Voyager class toy.
The large plastic wheels are arranged in such a way that their hubcaps, featuring a curve of a slightly beige gunmetal paint at the bottom of each, remain static while the tyres roll. It looks cool enough, but it's accurate neither to his Cybertronian vehicle mode (which ran on treads) nor his terrestrial vehicle mode, which had green wheels with metallic hubs. All the headlights are all painted in, and the slim, angry-looking, wraparound windscreen is a cloudy translucent grey plastic. The battery compartment is neatly disguised as a framed ventilation panel on the right side of the vehicle, with a matching design on the left.
Aside from Ultra Magnus (and, if you count a snowplough, Sentinel Prime) Leader class Bulkhead is the only TF Animated Autobot with any built-in vehicle mode weapons. The large protrusion over the cab - whose sole real function is concealing Bulkhead's head, since the toy's electronics seemingly prevent it slotting down into the cab - has a pair of guns (or possibly water cannon?) which can hinge back through about 180°, but the protrusion itself cannot rotate due to the way it's attached, so I'd imagine they're of limited use. The side-mounted rocket (or 'Air Torpedo', according to the packaging) launchers can each rotate a full 360°, but the missiles themselves are only clipped into place and can't actually be 'launched', which feels like a bit of a waste. It's not even as if there's a concealed weapon accessory somewhere that these missiles can be plugged into - the side-mounted racks are it. Then again, if there was some sort of spring-loaded mechanism for launching these missiles, I'd like to think they'd have been made of foam, like NERF darts, rather than rigid plastic.
Robot Mode:
I don't know how they managed it, but even the Leader class Bulkhead toy looks, by and large, more muscular and powerful rather than obese, per his animation model. Maybe it was intentional, deliberately presenting a plus-sized 'bot as something more positive - I mean, look at the flattened mainline release of TF Prime Bulkhead versus the more CGI-accurate First Edition - but he definitely ends up narrower than one might expect, and with an inwardly-tapering waist. I'd also suggest that his legs - while comparatively short - are still a little too long compared to his animation model, particularly from the knee down. Additionally, looking at him from the side, the hips are at least a centimetre further forward than his shoulders, and moving them back to match would have enhanced the appearance of his belly. The only available compromise - tilting him forward at the hips to improve alignment - makes his legs look shorter, but enhances his chest still further and starts to give him the appearance of being hunched over. In spite of the weird changes to his build, this still looks like Bulkhead, but a more toned version of him - perhaps a more mature version, more confident and self-assured, less prone to blaming himself for everything? Something more like TF Prime Bulkhead or live action movie Hound, in fact..?
Whatever it is, one initially has to wonder at how the chunky APC turns into this bipedal robot at all... and the whole TF Animated toyline did achieve some transformations that bordered on sorcery. Checking him out from the sides or back shows how much of this one has just been cheated, as the entire rear shell of the vehicle, including the four rear wheels, has been concertina'd down onto his back, the workings of which are now partially concealed by the vehicle's side door panels. It helps that the animation model gave the toy designers and easy way to deal with some of this shifting bulk, with those two large scoops of shell that stick up over his shoulders.
The comparison between vehicle shell and robot parts is where things get a little strange, because Bulkhead's shoulders and upper arms are devoid of sculpted detail, but then the forearms have strips of recessed mechanical detail, painted black, toward the elbow end... and the detail there matches that which is on show on the similar strips on the rear doors of vehicle mode. The rivet details apparent all over the vehicle shell are not reflected in the robot parts at all, making them suddenly incongruous. Bulkhead's feet are another source of mystery, as they seem to have retained his Cybertronian form's treads behind the armoured bridge/toe section. Based on the animation model, I'd guess that the bottom and back of the each foot is meant to evoke the two rear wheels from each side, with the tyres conjoined, but the sculpt features four separate wheels within curved frames bearing all the hallmarks of tank treads.
Another oddity is that the biceps, thighs and claws are molded in a pearlised beige plastic where, to my eyes, the animation model suggests either silver or gunmetal. The same colour was used for the vehicle mode's grille and the turret's cannons, but looked OK there as a minor variation to the military colourscheme, giving the impression of slightly dirty metal. In robot mode, it looks as though the plastic was badly aged straight out of the box.
Additionally, some other vehicle panels remain egregiously on show and, not being precisely related to any part of his animation model, end up negatively affecting the overall look of the figure. The vehicle's side-mounted missile pods are tacked onto the backs of Bulkhead's arms via huge, rectangular armour plates. This pretty much ruins the clean look of his slightly egg-shaped forearms and it's all in service of a gimmick that isn't a huge feature of robot mode - and didn't even look good in vehicle mode. It really feels as though the designers should have found a better way to handle either the panels or the whole missile pods idea. Along with these missile pods, Bulkhead has a couple of action features as part of his arms. The left arm has a claw which can be operated via a sliding switch on top of the forearm - slide it forward, the claw opens, slide it back, the claw closes - but it's pretty loose and doesn't offer any real grip. To carry one of his missiles, for example, it has to be balanced in his hand, and it's very difficult to balance anything between three claws that are in a fixed orientation within the wrist. The right arm features a buzzsaw activated by a spring-loaded switch, though it doesn't spin much and is prone to getting stuck because plastic just ain't that good for geared gimmicks like that (not to say it doesn't work well sometimes, but there's clearly something wrong with the execution here). Plus, given that the Voyager class version had a built-in, friction-launched wrecking ball in one arm and a strange 'uppercut' gimmick built into the other, it feels as though the Leader class toy got short-changed on its features.
That said, Bulkhead does have a total of four voice clips to accompany his robot mode 'animation' and lighting features. Pushing the Autobot insignia in this mode causes the head to turn to the left, as the brow lifts and the mouth opens. Lights in his shoulders, chest and head to blink yellow and, by default, he'll cycle through the three main phrases from the TV show: "Sorry, my bad", "Time for the big guns", and what I'm given to understand should be "You can do it, buddy", but the word 'you' comes out as a distorted whisper. The lights in the torso seem a little redundant (though very typical of the time), but the one in the head is terribly wasted. It's another yellow LED, set behind translucent plastic eyes which are covered with a surprisingly opaque blue paint. Thus, the rims of his eyes glow orange/red, while the eyes themselves appear black. It almost looks as if he's imbibed of some dodgy energon... or he's just demon possessed.
The head sculpt itself is pretty accurate to the animation model, but that was hardly difficult to accomplish. The steamshovel jaw is there, the hardhat-style helmet is there... the only weak points are that the face is molded in the peculiar beige pearl plastic and, while there is some black panel lining painted in around his eyes, it doesn't fully align with the sculpt. On the upside, the opening of his mouth is painted black, and he has the appropriate black striping on both his helment and his jaw, which is more than can be said for most other TF Animated figures.
As mentioned, a good part of Leader class Bulkhead's transformation is collapsing down the back end of the vehicle - the rear wheels fold in, the base slides up the back and then folds down against it, while the roof splits apart, each half rotating around as the underlying panel folds down against the back. The legs are stowed underneath the rear base, attached to a pelvic section that needs to swing forward to accommodate the front wheels and release a long peg the groin then plugs back into to fix it in place. The arms swing out sideways, below the side door panels, pegging into the sides of the cab once the top section is hinged upward, and the head is revealed simply by pulling up and splitting the turret on the cab's roof. This step also activates another lights-and-sounds feature - as the turret detaches from the roof, the transformation sound plays, and the lights inside the cab/torso start to flash. The roof sections tab loosely into the side door panels, which fold back to partially conceal the compressed sections on Bulkhead's back. It's a decent, fun transformation, but the fact that the head is covered over rather than involved in transformation - as it is on the Voyager class toy - all purely in service of the electronic gimmick, is hugely disappointing.
In some ways, Bulkhead is one of the better articulated figures in the TF Animated line - the shoulders rotate and swing out to the sides on 16-position ratches, though the outward movement is limited to around 90° in practice due to a slight misalignment of the detents and the extent of the slot in the top of the shoulder. The bicep rotates 360° freely - the right arm being quite loose on mine - and the elbow bends 90° on ratchets. The wrists are fixed, with articulated fingers being a feature of the left arm only. There's no waist articulation (though I suspect it could have been achieved), but the hips have an excellent range of movement both forward and back (limited only by the bumper/groin section at the front, since their backward swing is part of Bulkhead's transformation) as well as out to the sides, while the knees bend to 90° and have an unrestricted rotation joint... though the diabolical ankle articulation limits how useful any of that is. The feet can only really tilt down for transformation, and the joint is quite loose, but it is possible to balance Bulkhead in a variety of poses with a little fiddling. That's certainly better than either of the other two Leader class figures.
Headmaster Gimmick
Bulkhead is packaged with a hollow plastic rendition of Henry Masterson's Headmaster unit. This plugs in over the heads of all three Leader class molds and, while it doesn't unlock anything on either Megatron or Ultra Magnus, on Bulkhead it activates the fourth voice clip - Masterson himself shouting "Ownage! Total Ownage!" - and makes Bulkhead's LEDs flash red rather than yellow.
The design reminds me a lot of the helmet worn by Marvel Comics character Galactus, both being mostly purple, with large foreheads and horns coming out of the sides of their heads. There's a small amount of circuit detail sculpted into the inside of the larger blue panel, at the top of his forehead, but it tends to go unnoticed because the plastic is so dark, and its light piping so ineffectual. The face is part of the same piece of translucent plastic, but overpainted with grey, while the eyes are picked out in yellow. Being a TF Animated character, it's not a detailed face sculpt, but it does have a very wide, condescending smirk, as befits the character.
It's a neat little addition to the package, but I can't help but think it would have been even better if the other two figures had alternate voice clips which only became active with the Headmaster unit in play. The fact that the lighting effects on Bulkhead have barely any impact on this accessory also strikes me as very silly, considering the large panels of translucent blue plastic on the forehead. The lights on his shoulders are intended to illuminate the Headmaster's horns, though you'd only see it in very low ambient light.
I'd have to say that Bulkhead is, on balance, the best of the three Leader class molds offered by the TransFormers Animated line. He's fun to lark about with, decently poseable, his voice clips are appropriate, and the extra clip unlocked by attaching the Headmaster unit is a great bonus. He may not be up to the standard of more modern figures - particularly in terms of his leg/foot articulation - but I had much less trouble getting him to stand in my photos than I did with the other two.
In fact, while working on this post, I ended up replacing all my original images (taken around the same time as those for the other two) because I'd neglected to include the Headmaster unit back when I took them. It surely says something in the figure's favour that I wasn't overly frustrated that I had to re-take the new photos a couple of times. I first selected the wrong image resolution on the camera (borrowed from my girlfriend, and this was the first time I've used it properly) and then cocked up one element of transformation (not folding in his front wheels for robot mode)... But I didn't mind setting him up for the same photos all over again. Had the same thing happed with either Ultra Magnus or Megatron, I'm pretty sure I'd have decided to settle for the original pictures. Part of that, I guess, is down to him having a (slightly) lower centre of gravity... There's only about an inch difference in height between them, but the location of the electronics in proportion to his height is likely more significant.
The only downside to Leader class Bulkhead is that Hasbro should have swapped the hand gimmicks between the Voyager class figure and this one. The slide switch-operated hand and buzzsaw are neither as fun nor as character appropriate as the wrecking ball gimmick given to the Voyager. Bulkhead used his wrecking balls all the time in the TV show, but I don't recall him ever using a buzzsaw (admittedly, I do need to re-watch TF Animated - and may try to introduce my girlfriend to the series, since she's a fan of Weird Al Yankovic), and having all three fingers on his left hand operated simultaneously by a single slide switch, rather than individually articulated as per the Voyager, seriously limits their expressiveness.
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