A prime example of this would be Wreck-Gar, who was given an entirely new origin story - no longer leader of the Junkions, a race of transforming (and partsforming) robots which evolved separately from those of Cybertron - he was, instead, the innocent creation of Sari Sumdac's AllSpark key. Introduced with no idea of his own identity, his occasional appearances served to develop his character, though I seem to recall his fate was left very open-ended.
Vehicle Mode:
Since the TF Animated incarnation of Wreck-Gar transforms into a refuse truck, he's basically a box on wheels... and, at first glance, there's not a great deal more to say for him. He appears to be suspiciously light on paint applications, too. The lack of scuplted detail is fairly typical of the TF Animated line, where everything is bold angles and smooth surfaces but, while the paintwork is certainly minimal, it's been applied quite strategically... albeit strangely in some cases.
The refuse container at the back has four bold grooves running up each side, and the shallow of each has been painted with a darker metallic grey than the surrounding plastic. The 'gate' at the back has been painted matte black, and all the tail lights are painted red... which is rather odd in the case of the lower, squared-off set, since they're molded in translucent blue plastic. Similarly, the front grille has been painted black within its metallic grey plastic frame, and the translucent blue plastic headlights have all been painted yellow... Here, the plastic behind the paint gives it an almost electric appearance, though this has been greatly exaggerated by my camera. Given that the plastic has been painted over, I don't understand why the lights were made as separate pieces, let alone molded in translucent blue plastic. Even the vehicle's windscreen is dark, charcoal-coloured paint over the orange plastic of the cab shell. However, to me, the strangest aspect of the paint job is the descision to place his Autobot insignias on the sides of the cab, where they're normally concealed be the lifting forks in vehicle mode, and entirely concealed in robot mode... then again, was Wreck-Gar ever formally accepted as an Autobot in the TV show..?
While the model itself is fairly basic, it does have a couple of fun features. When I first picked him up, I though the 'gate' at the back might open but, while it is a separate part from the rest of the shell, it's completely fixed in place. The top of the shell, meanwhile, has a slider switch which deploys or conceals the two weapons he wields in robot mode, though they're all but useless in vehicle mode. At the very front of the main shell, protruding forward past the cab, are the vehicle's functional lifting forks. These are articulated at their base, and able to raise 90° at that point, but the coolest feature of them is the spring-loaded and geared slider switch on the top of each arm, which raises and extends the forks. It might have made more sense if one switch operated both forks simultaneously, but that would have required that both were connected... and, unfortunately, the robot's body sits directly between them. The forks themselves are mounted on mushroom pegs, and so they can spin around... but there's no real reason to do that, and they're hollow on one side.
The big difference between this toy and the animation model is that, in the TV show, the refuse container was open on top - the forks being used to lift kerbside bins up to empty them into the truck's container - but the concealed weapon gimmick necessitated an enclosed container, which then makes the forks redundant. Similar vehicles in the UK have the lifting mechanism at the back, and refuse is emptied directly into a compactor, located where the black-painted 'gate' is on the rear of this vehicle. I've honestly never understood why any refuse vehicle would have its lifting mechanism at the front, as that brings the risk of things falling off and damaging the cab...
Robot Mode:
The toy's designers have done a phenomenal job of capturing the look of the robot in all its curvy, weirdly-proportioned TF Animated glory, from the enormously wide chest/shoulder span to the narrow waist, slim thighs and flared lower legs, he might as well have jumped out of the TV. The chest is accurate, even down to TF Animated's stylistic choice of avoiding parallel lines in things like the grille (though, in the TV show, they were parallel in vehicle mode). Since the miracle of animated mass-shifting is not possible with
real-world plastic toys, Wreck-Gar ends up with a substantially larger
backpack than his cartoon counterpart. It sticks out quite a way and
makes him extremely back-heavy, though his loading forks can be employed
for additional support should all else fail.
Since the vehicle mode's front makes up the bulk of the chest, there's not much call for additional sculpted detail elsewhere. There's minimal linework on the arms, legs, hands and the sides of the waist... and that's pretty much it. The shoulders feature large sculpted 'screws' which are also painted silver, and end up looking quite authetic, if disproportionately large. Paintwork generally is also pretty minimal, with incomplete bands of orange paint around the forearms, just in front of the elbow, as well as black paint on the sides of the waist and the kneecaps. That latter application also is incomplete, with the tops of the kneecaps left as bare orange plastic. According to the animation model, the feet should have been the same reddish colour as his shoulders and hip skirts... but then, he should also have had three sculpted 'toes', and the front section of the toy's feet is perfectly smooth.
True to his initial appearance in the TV show, he has no Autobot insignia in robot mode... though I can't help but think there was a missed opportunity for a three-faced, rotating section on the blank upper, central section of chest - one face remaining blank for vehicle mode, one featuring a Decepticon insignia for the brief period he partnered with Lugnut, and an Autobot insigia on the last.
Wreck-Gar's weapons are a pair of Energon-blade-like weapons, molded mainly in translucent blue plastic and overpainted with silver and orange on the upper surface. These can plug into the fixed hub of the wheels closest to his elbows via pegs which fold out from the underside of the blades, but they don't extend very far beyond the ends of his fists (and are more or less level with his extended fingers) so they don't seem particularly useful as weapons. They can also be pegged together, back to back, to create something that looks more like a shield, which might be more practical. It's been a while since I watched the episodes of TF Animated in which Wreck-Gar appeared, but I don't recall him using weapons at all, so these are almost a bonus feature.
The head sculp is fairly basic, even by TF Animated standards, and is basically a large, orange box with a face slapped on the front. It's styled somewhat after an old-style portable television, with a large handle on top, and a short, rubbery aerial sticking up and back on the left side. The face is very true to the animation model, with its super-elongated chin and angular facial 'hair', somewhat resembling the voice actor at a certain point in his career. The lopsided forehead and cheeky grin give his face a lot of character, but the light piping is a little disappointing, as it's serviced by a thin strip of translucent blue plastic on the back of the head, only barely above the level of his backpack. This means that, unlike a lot of other light-piped eyes, the light source has to be almost directly behind Wreck-Gar's head to make any impact... and the plastic must be either unusually dense or somewhat smoky, as the illumination isn't great under the best of circumstances. The dials to the left of the face and the lamp above his forehead are nicely painted and stand out well. Since the sculpted detail is so deep, the absence of the bold linework of the animation model isn't as apparent here as it is on some of the other figures, but the flat plate behind the face probably could have done with some framing. The brim of his helmet casts quite a shadow over the flat background to the head, but the head overall still just looks like a block of orange, and the reddish protrusions from each side really needed their front-facing details highlighted with some panel lining, at least, if not a different colour as well.. They might alse have been a little larger, in the sense of extending further out from the sides of his head... but the animation model seems to have been a little flexible on that point.
There's no getting away from the fact that Wreck-Gar is pretty much the worst kind of shellformer the toyline has ever produced... and it's all the more surprising considering some of the technical marvels that came out of the TF Animated line. Essentially, the entire robot is concealed within or below the refuse container and the cab's roof/windscreen. These lift up off the base of the vehicle once the arms are swung out to the sides, allowing the robot's legs to straighten out and deploy his feet. The shoulders then hinge forward to bring them to the sides of the chest, and the head can be swung out from the underside of the vehicle. The front wheels then collapse into the cab roof/windscreen section, which then collapses into the refuse container, when then attaches to the robot's body as a huge backpack. There are clearance issues folding the front wheels into/out of the cab roof/windscreen section, and occasional problems getting the refuse container to close back over the legs for vehicle mode and, on mine, the cab shell doesn't clip fully into its vehicle mode position, but it's a remarkably clean and simple transformation... but then, it's basically a robot action figure folded up inside a vehicle shell, so that's to be expected.
As with most of the TF Animated line, articulation is good, with the shoulders able to rotate a full 360°, the arms swing almost 90° out to the sides and rotate a full 360° mid-bicep. The elbows bend a little less than 90° due to the bulk of the forearms, and his fingers are hinged at the knuckle, moving as a single unit (though the fixed, protruding thumb would make holding anything a little awkward if he had any hand-held accessories). He has a waist joint, but its movement is heavily hindered by the hinged arm which attach to the backpack. The legs can swing a little over 90° forward, but there's barely any backward swing thanks to the backpack. However, thanks to the hinged panels on his hips, the legs can swing a little over 90° out to the sides as well. Just below the hip joints are unrestricted thigh rotation joints which, on mine, at least, are a little loose. The knees look as though they should be - and perhaps, at some point in the toy's development, were - double-jointed, but it's just that the upper part of the knee joint connects to a fixed black stalk protruding from the lower leg. His feet are made up of fold-out 'toe' and 'heel' parts, but neither are particularly good for load-bearing in an action pose unless they're fully deployed. The head, despite being on a long neck, is still just mounted on a swivel joint whose range is limited by - you guessed it! - the backpack. I think a ball joint going into the base of the head would have been a huge improvement, allowing for some quizzical tilt. While the hip and knee joints aren't exactly loose on mine, the weight of the backpack does make it difficult to get a dramatic pose out of Wreck-Gar. He can't even stand straight due to his back-heaviness, instead having to adopt the 'superhero pose' where his thighs are angled back, then the lower legs angled against them so that his feet can be closer to his centre of gravity. That said, while posing him for my photos, I never once had to use the loading forks as supports.
Wreck-Gar was one of those toys that was fairly difficult to find in shops - either through his popularity or lack of stocks - and one that I really wanted to like. While Weird Al Yankovic's portrayal of the character was, perhaps, not quite as good as Eric Idle's version in the animated movie, I'd blame that more on the character's writing than the voice acting... Though he did seem to shout almost every line, at least to begin with. Wreck-Gar was, I think, rather underutilised in the TV show, so his character arc was a little patchy - going from accidental new-born, barely sentient robot to sidekick to a human villain, to enthusiastic Autobot, to Decepticon, to Autobot again, but there was a sense that it was all played for laughs rather than intended as genuine character development - after all, he seemed to have virtually no self-awareness, and generally just repeated whatever words were last spoken to him. The toy is similarly disappointing - it's as accurate to the animation model as plastic can be (albeit missing a few paint applications), but it feels as if more could have been done - not least to conceal the lifting forks and shrink the backpack a touch in robot mode.
I almost hate to say it, but I think I may have preferred Wreck-Gar to have been a Leader class figure, with electronic lights and sounds to compensate for the simplistic transformation and oversized backpack... A couple of voice clips and light-up eyes may have made all the difference.
No comments:
Post a Comment