That said, the Superlink/Energon Shadowhawk/Divebomb mold really ticked my fancy because it managed to do both its avian beast mode and its robot mode in a convincing, innovative way, without wasting the bird's wings as the robot's backpack the way so many other avian TransFormers have.
BotCon 2006's Dawn of Futures Past boxed set was one of the things that got me into the idea of joining the Collectors' Club and possibly, eventually venturing across the pond to a BotCon. While the boxed set was awesome in and of itself, I did also covet a couple of the attendee-exclusive souvenir packs. Since I wrote about the boxed set and one of the attendee figures, Tigatron, almost nine years ago and I still haven't found an affordable Megatron/Waspinator (the former appearing every so often for something in excess of a thousand pounds, while the latter has recently turned up on eBay for over £500), I figure it's about time I wrote about the other bagged pair I currently own...
Beast Modes:
Yet again, I'm messing things up by writing about a limited edition repaint of a mold before the mainline version... and I own both an Energon Divebomb and a Superlink Shadowhawk Cosmos Type, because the mold really appealed to me... evidently just not enough to write about either one sooner.
Still... What we have here is that cool mold used to represent Buzzsaw and Laserbeak in an alternative Cybertronian form, seemingly no longer functioning as Soundwave's minions in the far-flung future of their homeworld. Buzzsaw is a curious butterscotch colour, rather than his cartoon-referencing bright yellow or G1 toy-style gold. Laserbeak, meanwhile, uses a strange red plastic, bordering on orange, which has an almost neon look in some lighting conditions. Since neither hit quite the right primary colour, both end up looking a little odd. Both also appear to have a metallic flake or pearlescent quality to the coloured plastic, though it's far less apparent on Laserbeak.
They share common paint applications - in terms of both colour and location - in blue/purple, grey and bright green on their bodies and the details of their beast beast head/neck, along with black paint on their wingtips, the mid-wing turbines, and the short black comb on top of the heads. Where they start to diverge a little is on the wings as, while both have translucent blue plastic for their 'feathers', Buzzsaw features block applications of orange paint, while Laserbeak has gold paint in the same locations. Similarly, Buzzsaw has been given a black beak, while Laserbeak's is gold. Given that the body has sculpted details at the rear which resemble the G1 cassetticons' boosters, it's a bit of a shame they didn't add a bit of silver paint to them, to make a more direct G1 reference.
One of the coolest features of this beast mode is that the wings and legs are at least slightly poseable. The wings can be raised on their ball joints, closed up via a hinge in the turbines, and swung forward/back via what becomes the robot's knee joint. It's not the most elegant or natural wing articulation one could hope for, but it's certainly better than we've had on virtually every other winged beast TransFormer, from the original BW Airazor, through Silverbolt and Tigerhawk, to more recent entries like the TF Prime Beast Hunters creatures. The feet are attached to the body via ball-jointed 'hips', with further hinged joints allowing the legs to swing slightly forward, and the feet to close up, as if preparing to attack.
Both come with the same Energon accessories - an Energon star each, and a pair of of curved Energon blades - both molded in translucent blue. The star attaches over the recessed Predacon insignia (tampographed over the sculpted Deception insignia inside a transparent dome, held over from the original uses of the mold) at the back of the body, between the boosters, while the blades attach to the sides of the bird's neck, almost like a second pair of wings. This pretty much continues the tradition of beast-former birds having their weapons knobbled in their alternate modes, though they do look pretty fearsome nevertheless.
Robot Modes:
Despite the awkward proportions of robot mode, there's something both charming and clever in the use of the bird's wings as the robot's legs - from the front and back they look fairly normal, albeit with massive horns on the kneecaps. From the side, they still look quite effective, just with massively oversized lower legs and rather awkwardly-placed knees - the sculpt suggests that the thighs should extend lower than they do, particularly considering the position of the pinned joint is at the approximate halfway point down the leg. With the legs straight, all looks fine... but the moment they're posed, the bizarre construction of the legs is laid bare.
The use of the beast mode's head as the hands - with the bird's flanks making up the rest of the arms - isn't entirely unique. A similar trick was used on on TransMetals Cheetor, though I think the effect is rather better here, as the halves of the beak aren't pretending to be anything other than pincers. There's sculpted detail on the inner faces of the forearms, but it's quite shallow and would have benefitted by having a few paint applications, since the arms are quite bare except for their beast mode paintwork, which is now mostly on the rear face of the forearms. There's also an oddity with the legs in that FunPub decided to skimp a little on the paintwork on the vents at the back of the wings, so the grey paint appears only on the inner face of the thighs rather than the outer face. Then again, you'd have to be looking at the figure from behind to notice that, so perhaps it's not a problem.
Probably the biggest flaw in this figure is that nothing is done about the beast mode's legs and feet - they just hang off the back of the the robot's shoulders, looking very much like spare parts. Given that they are mounted on the shoulders rather than the torso, there's not a great deal that could have been done to fold them away without adversely affecting the robot's articulation, but they can't even fold flush against the arms. One would think that each one having a ball joint and two pinned hinges would present more options than it actually does... And I can't help but think they missed a trick by not molding the heel claws into the shape of guns, since that would have given them a pair of Predator-style over-the-shoulder weapons in robot mode.
The Energon weapons included can either remain on the sides of the beast's neck - placing them on the backs of the robots' forearms, kind of like integrated, curved tonfa - or get plugged together to form a huge, double-ended blade/throwing weapon supposedly called 'Energon Raiden', which is basically as long as the robot is tall. They're nicely sculpted, almost looking like wings themselves, and each blade features a pinned socket on one side that would allow it to be attached to a larger robot's Mini-Con port, activating a gimmick, if they're not being wielded by Buzzsaw or Laserbeak.
Since these two figures were available as a bagged pair at the show, rather than being part of the boxed set, they were never going to get unique head sculpts... but I tend to think that the default Energon Divebomb/Superlink Shadowhawk sculpt is perfectly adequate. There's a certain beak-like quality to the battlemask, and the face almost seems like a callback to the original Beast Wars Airazor - if only that v-shaped crest on the forehead had been extended back to match the fin sticking out of the back of the head. As with the paint applications on the torso, the heads are painted identically - black for the armour, blue/purple for the battlemask and either silver or gold for the eyes (they're so small, I find it difficult to tell).
One of the reasons I'm so fond of this mold, and felt compelled to buy these G1 homages back in the day, is the unique transformation. The robot's entire groin area unpegs from the torso and swings forward to accommodate the arms, which straighten out to the sides, then swing down via hinges placed just below the robot's head, inside the torso. After that, it's just a case of choosing a configuration for the wings - extending the wingtips via the hinge in the turbines reveals the translucent blue 'feathers', while the robot's feet automatically shift into position as archaeopteryx-style wing-claws. The birds' legs work well for beast mode, but look a bit like an afterthought just hanging off the robot's shoulders. Whether it's down to the age of the mold (only two years old by the time of this BotCon reuse, to be fair) or the materials used, there are a couple of floppy transformation joints on mine: the groin on both figures doesn't peg in very well for robot mode, and Buzzsaw's left shoulder sags slightly.
Considering the age of the mold, it doesn't fare too badly in terms of articulation. Both of mine have seemingly 'lumpy' ball joints on the hips, meaning they don't move as smoothly as they should, but the legs are able to swing through a range of at least 180° forward and backward, and out by about 90°. There's no thigh rotation, and very little twist via the hip joint, but the knee does the standard 90°, and the feet can tilt upward due to the way they are repurposed as wing claws in beast mode. While I had no trouble standing Energon Divebomb or Superlink Shadowhawk, something about the legs on these two requires that I tilt the ankles slightly to get them to stand without falling over backwards. The joint isn't very solid - the feet are just clipped on, rather than being pinned - but it's sufficient to support figures this size. There's no waist articulation, and the head is on a simple rotation joint, but the arms are well served with 360° rotation at the shoulder, a pinned joint that takes the arms 90° out to the sides (basically for transformation), and ball-jointed elbows that allow 360° rotation and 90° bend, hindered only by the pegs on the right forearm.
By today's standards, this is an underachieving mold but, for its size, back in 2004, it was one of the better designed and articulated figures in the Energon line, looking like a more significant advance on Armada than the likes of Battle Ravage. Repurposing this mold as pre-Beast Wars, future Cybertron versions of Soundwave's minions was an inspired choice, since the Beast Wars TV show had featured a bipedal Ravage, also seeming to operare independently of Soundwave.
I seem to recall I managed to acquire these at a pretty reasonable price not long after the show... but that's 14 years and several computers ago, so I can't be certain exactly what I paid. Looking on eBay today, there was a seller in the US offering the bagged pair for almost $500... which is extortionate, however cool the idea and regardless of the limited run (500 sets were made, according to TFWiki). Even when I bought these, I didn't think they were anything special (I was more pleased to get my hands on Shadowhawk Cosmos Type, to be honest, and that was just a Japanese import!), just a cool addition to what's still one of my favourite BotCon sets.
No comments:
Post a Comment