However, when the 'Standoff Beneath the Streets' set turned up, it seemed like a good deal: two great figures from the Cybertron/Galaxy Force toyline repainted as G1 characters in a set which - I gather - paid homage to a particular IDW storyline. The only downside was that one of the characters, Springer, was traditionally a Triple Changer, but the mold used was not. 2007's BotCon Springer gave him a single, ground-based vehicle mode, Hasbro were now giving him his helicopter mode via the GF Live Convoy mold.
But, for me, the main event was the first re-use of the Noisemaze mold - one of the most interesting figures in the Galaxy Force line.
Springer
Vehicle Mode:
The most painfully apparent thing about this toy is how anaemic his colours are... Not just compared to the BotCon Springer, but compared to Live Convoy as well. The green paint and plastic are desaturated, the yellow is virtually a pastel shade... even the grey lacks any real commitment to its shade. All of it is so mid-range and lifeless. Most of it is honestly only a couple of shades off the eventual Generations Springer, but that just goes to show what a difference it makes to increase the apparent saturation and contrast. There's even a stark contrast between all the humdrum colours of the chopper's body and it's gorgeous translucent blue windows, which end up as the vehicle's most outstanding feature.
It also strikes me, looking at it now, that Hasbro could have done a far better job of choosing colour placements for vehicle mode. Live Convoy's colourscheme was fairly patchy but there was an attempt to blend between the different plastic colours used by adding small applications of matching paint on adjacent plastic parts. No such attempt has been made here, and each chunk remains very much its own colour. There are spot applications of yellow paint at various points but, while much of the top two-thirds of the vehicle's body is green, matching paintwork has only been applied to the translucent blue plastic of the windows, not the surrounding grey plastic, leading to quite a hard patchwork look to his appearance from the sides, exacerbated by the gaping holes around the robot's very visible hip and elbow joints. The green paint on the tail is at a strange angle, seemingly starting at the bottom of some sculpted panel lining at the base of the tail, aligning with the foremost point of the tail rotor section and ending at the base of the fin. On the left side, the paint is feathered while, on the right, the edge is sharp but rough. The grey on the underside of the tail looks as though it's intended to connect with the grey stripe at the rear of the main body, but the green plastic between them is not painted. One aspect of the paint job I appreciate is that, unlike a lot of the movie repaints of Galaxy Force molds, Springer's key slot is highlighted with yellow paint on the cabling and raised central point, with red paint added to the recessed trapezoid detail. Pale grey paint has been added to the ends of the exhaust pipes/missile launchers, while a mid-grey, matching the darker grey plastic, has been used for the vents at the front of the rotor section.
The push-button rotor action works quite well on this toy, though the mold's age shows somewhat in the fact that two of the blades are inclined to droop and clatter against the key, if inserted. The key activated gimmick works well, with the key staying firmly in place once inserted, as the launchers snap into their forward position. The right side launcher is inclined to fire when the gimmick is triggered, while the left side launcher sometimes struggles to latch onto its missile in the first place, but both fire their missiles a good couple of feet. What lets this version of the mold down - quite literally - is the landing gear. The feature is handled in a neat, if rather basic way, with the front wheels stowing in the underside of the helicopter, while the rear wheels fold down from the sides at the rear of the main body, but the latter joints are very loose, to the point where the wheels just don't support the weight of the helicopter.
On a whim, while writing this, I decided to test the limits of the winch - something I never thought to try on Live Convoy or Timelines/Shattered Glass Galvatron because the teather only extends to about 12cm/4.75". Turns out it can still function, retracting completely - albeit more slowly - under a load of about 50g. Adding just a few grams more leads the winch to stop retracting fully, so it's effectively limited to something about the size of a contemporary Scout class toy - even a current Deluxe would be beyond its capacity (with the exception of Earthrise Cliffjumper, who's precisely 50g without his weapon accessories).
Robot Mode:
The lack of contrast between the darker grey and the green on this figure becomes that much more apparent in robot mode. In some lighting conditions, the upper body can look one colour or the other, but seldom is the difference easily visible.
The only paintwork that really stands out anywhere on this figure is the yellow and the duck egg blue patch on the torso, the latter supposedly there to represent a cockpit canopy in the character model from the comics at the time. The mold itself is still pretty good, and the robot should be striking - not to mention slightly Gundam-ish - but this colourscheme makes him look so drab. There's a bit more pale grey - biceps and thighs - but it has so little visual impact on the whole that I wonder why they bothered.
Nevertheless, it's feels wrong to be too harsh on this toy - it's a repaint of a great original toy which was already three years old by this point and this did come out a full five years before Hasbro finally gave us a new triple-changing Springer in the Generations line. Plus, helicopters are notoriously hard to do 'right' as a TransFormers toy, and this was one of the few times it was done reasonably cleanly.
There are a few bits of mold flashing on the hinged arm that connects the key gimmick backpack to the body, and the clip that holds the backpack in place isn't very firm. The slider joint that reveals the head also feels a little floppy, but not so much that the head sinks down as soon as the backpack comes unclipped. Additionally, the upper legs seem to be quite wobbly, both at the hip and the knee, in terms of unintentional side-to-side movement, while the ratchet joints themselves are still pretty firm. Since all these parts are molded in the lighter grey plastic, it's possible that the material itself is as much of a problem as the age of the mold. The same year, this mold was repainted into Universe Blades, but BotCon Galvatron came another three years later, and I don't recall any similar problems with that.
He has the stock head sculpt, shared by every usage of this mold, but it works less well for Springer than it does for Galvatron. About the best thing about it here is the usage of the vibrant translucent blue for his light piping, which brings the face to life far better than the pale grey paint.
Ratbat
Vehicle Mode:
There was always something essentially bat-like to the design of Noisemaze's vehicle mode, and it's surprising to see how much of that survives the changes to the paint job. More than that, it's impressive to see how successfully the vehicle mode evokes Ratbat, specifically. The unpainted section of purple plastic that forms the nose of the craft manages to resemble Ratbat's face and pointed ears, while the windows and protruding gold parts of the robot's horns look like eyes and fangs, respectively. Applications of gold and black paint on the main body refer to the G1 cassetticon's black body and gold chrome accessories. The metallic paint is surprisingly flat - chrome, like on Noisemaze, would have been the prettier option, but Hasbro switched all of his chrome for silver paint for what they released as 'Sideways'.
The purple plastic has a quite stunning glitter component, so Ratbat really catches the light well. The black paint is utterly matte, so it doesn't match the black plastic especially well, but it's thickly-applied and, for the most part, very neat. There are only a couple of patches where it doesn't cover the purple plastic right to the edge or to the intended panel line. The metallic purple down the sides isn't as evenly applied - the righthand side looks mostly consistent, but several shades darker than the plastic (perhaps a white undercoat would have been beneficial?), while the lefthand side is nice and dense toward the back, but fades out noticeably toward the front, particularly after the five raised, angled details.
Overall, it feels very much as though this iteration of the mold has significantly less paint but, in terms of surface area covered, they're probably quite well balanced. This version uses quite a lot of black paint over large areas of purple plastic, and has fewer smaller applications - none of the areas of tech detailing on the cockpit area, or the smaller details on the wings have been picked out though, to be fair, even Noisemaze left quite a few areas of similar detailing unpainted. However, where the Galaxy Force toy used mainly black plastic, with highlights in orange (both plastic and paint), silver/chrome, a dull gold-ish colour and green, Ratbat sticks to the G1 character's black, purple and gold with the exception of the joints that connect the vehicle's wings to the robot's legs down the sides, and other robot parts visible only on the underside. The lack of colour variety is what hurts this toy the most, even though it's technically true to the G1 figure, which only offered silver and a marginally different shade of purple on the tape label side, with the gold coming entirely from its accessories. Even the segmented window on the top of the cockpit is framed with black paint here, where the GF toy used gold chrome for that one, single detail.
Having a built-in weapon suits this vehicle well and, while it's not quite the radar dish backpack G1 Ratbat had, it integrates nicely and the paintwork applied follows the pattern of the GF version for the most part, but uses the metallic purple for the framing on both the front end of the weapon and the key slot details. Ratbat's key is unpainted, translucent purple plastic, but there's a Decepticon insignia stamped on the front - entirely obscuring the sculpted insignia on the underside.
Robot Mode:
Even with the brighter colourscheme - and the majority of vehicle mode's black parts ending up on his back in robot mode - there's still something a little spooky about Ratbat. The cape-like draping backpack, the raised collar and wide shoulders leading to a slender body beneath the protruding chest, the spindly yet flared legs with their enormous knee horns, the skinny arms, the horned helmet, even the glittering purple plastic with dashes of gold across the shoulders present something of a classic sci-fi movie villain. One can imagine a costume like this turning up in the old Flash Gordon serials.
In this form, rather more grey plastic is revealed - the entire waist section, the inner parts of the shoulder joint, the forearms and the plate in the middle of the back. It's not as exciting an addition as one could hope for under the circumstances, but it does break things up a little, as well as easing the contrast between the purple and black plastics. The amount of gold paint visible is drastically reduced and, while Noisemaze has some silver paint on the intricate detailing of this shins and knee horns, plus orange paint on the small fins just above his feet, Ratbat's lower legs are plain purple plastic apart from the coating of black paint on the inner faces, all of which is covered by his wings in vehicle mode. The shoulders have the same paint applications as Noisemaze, just in the lighter, warmer gold paint, and the collar protrusions have more gold paint in place of the orange on the Galaxy Force toy. The thighs are unpainted, but the difference there is less apparent, since the knee horns pretty much obscure where they might have been anyway. The only other paint applications are grey and gold on the backs of the fists, which help them blend with the forearms in both robot mode and vehicle mode.
The weapon functions exactly the same as it does on Noisemaze, with a paler, more yellow translucent orange for the fan parts. Just for fun, while the GF toy displays an Autobot insignia by default, which swaps to a Decepticon insignia once the key is inserted, Ratbat starts with a Decepticon insignia, which then turns into a weird variant which reminds me strangely of Evil the Cat from Earthworm Jim due to the angular 'face' and what looks like a frill of long, protruding teeth. It's not a symbol I recognise, but TFWiki describes it as the insignia of the Ultracons - apparently a faction introduced in the Dreamworks comics, of which Ratbat was both founder and leader. Just like on Noisemaze, the key locks into place very firmly, though it's actually more difficult to fully insert on Ratbat. The gimmick triggers easily enough, but the key requires a firmer push to complete the job.
On thing I hadn't realised about the Hasbro toy versus the Takara Tomy version is that the horns have been very slightly modified. Noisemaze has a minute inward turn at the top of his horns, but these were shaved back for the Hasbro version. The difference is barely noticeable, even with the two figures side by side, so I'm really not sure why they bothered - TFWiki cites 'safety reasons', but I'm not sure how so minimal a difference could raise any concerns about the toy's safety. As with the rest of the toy, the paint job has been cut back, with only the outermost parts of the horns painted gold, and the rest of the helmet bare purple plastic. It looks unfinished compared to Noisemaze, but it also better resembles G1 Ratbat's robo-bat face, with the translucent mask clearly intended to evoke a wide-open maw, glowing with the aid of it's amazing light-piping. Perhaps they should have painted the forehead nubs gold, so they looked more like eyes, but it kind of works as-is.
It's probably an obvious thing to say at this point, but I absolutely love half of this set. Reusing the Noisemaze mold as Ratbat was an inspired choice, coming five years before Takara Tomy's Generations line reworked Scourge as an alternative - IDW-styled - humanoid Ratbat. I'm quite keen to own that version as well, since Scourge was a great toy, but this version is far more stylish.
Springer, meanwhile, is just a dull repaint of a great toy... and I now have a far better repaint of that toy in the form of BotCon Shattered Glass Galvatron. Since I have the Generations/30th Anniversary version of Springer - an actual Triple Changer - in my collection, both this helicopter version and the BotCon 2007 armoured car version now seem superfluous.
When I bought this set, it was primarily for Ratbat, and chopper Springer was always going to be a poor subsitute (hence my purchase of Warbot Defender when it arrived in 2010) intended to supplement the previous year's BotCon toy. Both of the single-form Springer toys have always been in my collection somewhat grudgingly, and they've only become more incongruous since the Triple Changer appeared in 2013. Plus, while Ratbat's appearance in both vehicle and robot mode is ideally suited to a story set on Cybertron, Springer's vehicle mode is clearly a terrestrial helicopter, so he doesn't look right representing part of the same continuity as the toy he's packaged with. The aesthetic differences worked in Galaxy Force because the story involved several different planets. Live Convoy was based on Earth, whereas Noisemaze was 'from' Planet X.
Probably the strangest thing I've realised while writing about these toys - or Ratbat, specifically - is that my Galaxy Force Noisemaze - a toy I've owned for about 15 years now - has two right biceps. I had never noticed before comparing the two directly, and clearly not while I was photographing the older toy, that he can't bend his left arm the full 90° because the bicep part has the elbow channel on the back rather than the front.
I love the Ratbat colour this set has and agree with your comments, Noisemaize is a top class Galaxy Force figure. I bought mine, kept Ratbat and sold off "Springer."
ReplyDeleteGreat toy at 50%