Early photos seemed to suggest he was rather simpler, and perhaps more traditional in his execution compared to his partner. Still, of the Bumblebee movie figures released up to this point, none had been without flaws, and there was no reason to expect any better from this one, right?
Vehicle Mode:
Along with Shatter, Dropkick adopted a very convenient muscle car disguise, being a 1973 AMC Javelin with modificaions to the front end (squared-off headlights, bumper reinforcement, souped-up engine popping out of the bonnet, possibly extra exhaust pipes running down the sides?), but the base car is actually strangely curvy for an American muscle car. The wheel wells are about average, but the very edges of the otherwise quite angular bonnet are raised to complement them, lending it an mildy sensual quality. It's almost as if the Javelin's designer was influenced somewhat by contemporary Corvette Stingrays, but wasn't quite ready to express it as fully as they might have done. Then again, perhaps it's just a common feature of early 1970s American cars - as I've said before, I'm neither a connoisseur nor an afficionado, so the finer points of their designs from this period are pretty much lost on me.
While Dropkick has a similar protruding supercharged engine, it's not quite so heavily modified elsewhere: no roof lights, no rollbars on the windscreen, and his paint job is a bit simpler - blue at the front, black at the rear, with no angled embellishments or stripes. All he has is the number 13 on the doors and a skull-and-crossbones motif above the rear wheel wells (slightly lower down than on the actual car, to avoid a transformation seam). The headlights and front grille frame are painted silver (though the inner, custom framework is rather sloppily painted), while the rear end has the lights painted in both metallic red and silver. It's worth noting that, according to some models of Javelin, the raised outer part of the silver-painted tail lights should have been painted red as well. Several other, smaller details are either unpainted or absent entirely, as has been typical of Studio Series. For example, the rear side indicators are sculpted, but not painted, while the front side indicators aren't even sculpted. The vents above the front wheel wells are unpainted, as are the two bonnet protrusions flanking the main supercharger intake. To my eyes, the bigger problem than the paint omissions is the mismatch between the blue plastic at the front end and the blue paint on the doors. The former could have done with being a shade lighter, even with its pearlescent sparkle, but the latter seems to have been applied on top of the glossy black paint, so it's darker than the plastic, and its shimmer doesn't quite match.
The wheels are entirely unpainted, but Dropkick's live action vehicle mode appears to have black hubcaps, so the only problem here is that the front wheels are attached via a blue clip protruding from the robot parts within, where the back wheels are clipped into a socket. Unsightly though it may be, it was probably unavoidable (except by painting) since the robot's shoulder ball joints are on the other side of each wheel.
Dropkick's weapon has a certain engine-like quality to its design, and there's a substantial space between the robot's arms on the underside of the vehicle but, for whatever reason, the designers of this toy felt that weapon storage would be better accomplished by clipping his gun to the car's spoiler and having it drape over the rear windscreen. Not the most elegant solution, though it does end up pointing marginally over the roof, so it's at least semi-practical, even if it might have been better placed as an afterburner or something like that.
If Shatter derived most of her vehicle mode structural integrity from the roof and tail end of her vehicle mode fitting around the parts of the robot, it's good to see that Dropkick is a bit more traditional. His doors open as part of transformation, but they peg into his arms and legs on the inside, while his legs tab into slots in the underside of the roof, all of which is pretty secure. The only problem with my copy is that the rear wheels barely move - they're scraping up against something, most likely the wheels are simply too close to the robot's feet.
Robot Mode:
If Shatter was the silver-tongued con artist of the Bumblebee movie, Dropkick was the laconic brute backing her up. From the very first, he expressed disdain for humanity (with the exception of liking "the way they pop" when he shoots them), and muttered his disapproval of Shatter's condescending to the humans, when killing them would have been easier... or more fun, at least. In toy form, Dropkick doesn't look especially accuarate to the CGI - particularly around the upper body - but he certainly looks every inch the bruiser.
The width of his chest is exaggerated in the toy because it uses the full width of the car without any of the compression in the middle or pushing back of the outer parts. Given that both versions of Shatter fake aspects of her chest to a greater or lesser degree, I think the presentation of Dropkick's chest is a decent compromise. He has the CGI's door wings in much the right place and, while everything from the front windscreen to the rear bumper are folded up on his back, it's a far less prominent or intrusive backpack than the car version of Shatter, with no floppy bits just waiting to fall off.
Dropkick remains shorter than Shatter, as is accurate to the CGI, with thicker, stumpier legs that are heavily armoured around the thighs and feature recreations of the vehicle mode's tail light as sculpted details on the shins. While there's some sculpted internal detail on the sides of the thighs, the only paintwork present is on the shins, where a dark gunmetal has been applied to frame the red and silver light details. Tech detailing on the calves is also unpainted, but what's there suggests that leaving the black vehicle shell panels in their vehicle mode position - running down the side of the calf rather than folded around it - is more accurate to the CGI. There is a small amount of the dark gumetal paint applied to the feet, just behind the main bridge plate, where it disappears under the ankle joint, though it does also run down the outer face of each foot in a very thin strip.
The arms fare a little better both in terms of sculpted detail and paintwork, with the black plastic of Dropkick's (surprisingly slender) upper arms supplemented by blue paint on the armour panels (again looking too dark against the blue plastic), while the mechanical detail on the forearms is picked out with the dark gunmetal paint. It's worth noting that the placement of a wheel at Dropkick's elbow isn't strictly inaccurate to the CGI, but it should be only a section of wheel within the elbow, rather than the whole thing sitting on the outside of it. Plus, there's a small amount of sculpted (and unpainted) detail on the back of the elbow that could be taken to represent the wheel section.
The belly section is entirely unpainted, which is probably the most disappointing aspect of the figure in a lot of ways - there's so much sculpted detail in the black plastic and, since that plastic is fairly glossy, it catches the light to a degree... but Shatter's waist (on both versions) is a metallic grey, and the CGI for Dropkick suggests a dark grey rather than black, although the lack of variation in colour does appear to be mostly accurate - perhaps as much another symptom of the improved visual clarity of the designs used in the Bumblebee movie versus those from the Bayverse as it is a symptom of Hasbro trying to keep their production costs down.
It's struck me, as I look at the Studio Series toys from the Bumblebee movie that, Cybertron sequences aside, the movie was mostly quite consistent in its handling of weapons - in that they transformed out of each character's forearms - where the Bayverse robots were each a rule unto themselves, and not consistent between movies - some had integrated weapons, while others carried guns, axes, swords, etc. Thus, both Shatter and Dropkick came with weapons that attach to their forearms in such a way as to imply their integration. However, where Shatter's weapons attach to the outsides of her forearms (car-form) or over her hands (jet-form), Dropkick's single blaster requires his hand to be folded away to expose a wrist tab for the gun to plug onto. Either arm can be used, and it's true that Dropkick was only ever seen to wield one gun at any time, but I'd nonetheless have appreciated the opportunity to let him dual-wield. As mentioned above, there's no paintwork anywhere on the weapon, neither to highlight mechanical detail, match it to the blue plastic of the arm, nor to indicate an impending blast from the barrel. It is very nicely detailed, with round section on the underside that harks back to the Thompson submachine gun's drum magazine. One feature that tickles me in particular is that the two prongs emerging from the barrel are placed at a slight angle to each other. I also very much appreciate that, while the gun is actually quite hollow, the gaping holes are visible only from underneath, where some Studio Series weapons have been pitted and hollowed out from the sides and end up looking rubbish.
I don't currently have the helicopter-form Dropkick toy, but it strikes me as strange that car-form Shatter got a battlemasked face that was barely seen in the movie, while it seems as though both Dropkick toys have pretty similar head sculpts, just mounted in a slightly different way and possibly molded in different shades of blue plastic. Based on the images I've seen, I think the paint job is better on this version - the face and a couple of strips running back over the temples is painted with the dark gunmetal colours, while the eyes are dotted with red paint - and it's all neat enough that it doesn't fudge any of the sculpted details. I might have liked some green (I'd even settle for AllSpark Blue, to be honest) to highlight his glowing 'mouth', and more metallic paint on some of the details toward the back of his head, but the little ridges scuplted in the three channels running over the top of his head manage to give the impression of paintwork where there is none, so it's truly an excellent sculpt. Given the different style of faces between the Bayverse Decepticons and those in the Bumblebee movie, its impressive to see a face made so clearly malevolent, without resorting to making him look like some sort of alien insect.
While car-form Shatter's transformation was a nightmare of loose, flimsy joints and panels clashing with each other, car-form Dropkick is far simpler, despite emplying some similar aspects. The head reveal is virtually identical, but that it uses the entire central section of the car bonnet, rather than the two thirds closest to the windscreen. The front and rear windscreens, roof and tail end of the car actually folds up less on Dropkick, yet ends up tidier and more compact, while the legs do very little transforming on either. Where Dropkick is more complicated is in the arms - which unfurl from the elbow, swing toward the front of the car and lay most of the length back down it to get the wheels in the right place - and in the myriad joints concealed within the robot's torso. Getting him back into car mode is first complicated by a very tough waist clip. Now, this is far better than letting it flop apart unintentionally, but since the belly plate is only 'hinged' by plastic nubs rather than a pin, it's inclined to pop out while trying to separate the belly from the groin. Next, the backbone of the toy is a series of hinges - two of which directly below the windscreen, another just behind the waist connection - which have to be arranged just so for everything to fit together at the front. Similarly, getting Dropkick into robot mode, it's important to remember to lower the car front over the raised wheels which hold the arms, rather than trying to plug the arms in from the side. It'll work with a bit of a struggle, but unplugging them that way will likely pop off the wheels due to the way they clip in. The back end of the car is mostly straightforward, though the angles of his upper and lower leg seem a little off until the roof, rear windscreen and the very back of the car are wrapped around them. Once you've done it a few times, it's all pretty easy, but you may find yourself wondering if the central part of the chest is mean to align with the inner edges of the bonnet sections at the top, or if it's meant to be folded down to close the gap between it and the uppermost part of the belly flap. Neither looks quite right but, on balance, I prefer aligning the top and leaving a gap in the middle of the chest.
Dropkick's general articulation is much the same as Shatter's, albeit with only a single joint at the knee, hip swivel rather than rotation just above the knee, and barely any hinderance to the movement of the legs since the remaining car panels are all out of the way. His legs swing forward easily enough, but will clash against the wheel wells folded back onto Dropkick's backside. Even so, their overall range of swing is about 180° front to back while, out to the sides, the shape of the ball joint only permits about 60° swing. The arms are quite similar, with the ball joint allowing a full 360° swing around the shoulder, but raising only 60-70° out to the sides. There's a swivel joint above the elbow, and the elbow itself bends the standard 90°. Due to the way the weapon attaches, the only articulation offered at the wrist is that which is used for transformation, but the hands technically tab into place for robot mode. There's no waist articulation due to the way robot mode comes together, and the head is on a ball joint. Despite being sunk quite deep into his shoulders (much like car-form Shatter), it's able to rotate a full 360° with only a little resistance from his collar once the head is tilted right down. Due to the back of the neck extending quite low down on the sculpt, he's able to look down a short way, but not up.
Given how poorly made the original Shatter figure was, I genuinely expected something to be horribly wrong with Dropkick but, aside from the typical folding up of car shell onto the robot's back, he's a fantastic little figure, certainly the best of the Bumblebee movie figures up to this point. It is frustrating that, despite all the clever ways the Third Parties have improved the transformations of movie bots, Hasbro and Takara Tomy are still, by and large, relying on the same patterns of just manoeuvring the robot's limbs under a car shell, though Dropkick does introduce some small innovations to that, at least. It's just a shame that they have the car's tail lights hidden on his back rather than actually finding a way to use them on the robot's shins. I'd be curious to see if this mold could be repainted into another character, much like Stinger was turned into the KSI Sentry, since his robot mode is technically quite similar to the old style Diaclone-derived G1 toys, with the head popping out of the bonnet, the arms connected to the front wheels, and those iconic door wings.
Probably the strangest side effect of owning this, the helicopter-form Drift and jet-form Shatter, is that I now kinda want to get my hands on the helicopter-form Dropkick figure, which currently tends to be fairly cheap. Due to my current work situation (read: the lack thereof), I'm not buying any toys at the moment, and it's unlikely to be high on my list when that changes. I don't want to have unrealistic expectations of it given that I know it's not great... Still, I can't guarantee it won't end up on my shelves eventually.
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