Buzzworthy Bumblebee: Creatures Collide 4-pack

By and large, the Buzzworthy Bumblebee line has been filled with products I have been perfectly content to live without: regardless of which line the toys are derived from, they have been mostly superfluous repaints. When it comes to the boxed sets, there have been far more misses than hits. When the Worlds Collide set came along, I ended up buying the Blackarachnia figure purely because she's a Femme-Bot and it was a decent reference to the original Beast Wars toy's box art, while the other figures were reportedly a mess of loose joints.

This second 'Collides' set was, at first, marginally more interesting. I wasn't overly fussed by the scarcity of the Netflix-branded Earthrise Bumblebee toy because, having already bought Cliffjumper, I knew it wouldn't be a patch on the Classics toy from 2006... But Goldbug was another matter, because I'm quite fond of the G1 Throttlebot, and he's sufficiently distinct from Bumblebee. Similarly, I'd passed on the TV show-inspired Kingdom Scorponok figure because I was disappointed by the look of it but, now I own a reissue of the original toy in show-accurate colours, a toy-coloured repaint of the Kingdom figure was potentially a fun comparison. Skywasp was a stupid/amazing pun, and so instantly interesting, in spite of the new mold's obvious inferiority to Generations Waspinator... Which left Ransack: a repaint of the Legacy Kickback figure that's barely an improvement on the G1 original, representing one of the 'Deluxe Insecticons' which, back in the day, had a wholly unique mold that was never made available in the UK.

So, when presented with this set at a RRP of £93, I turned my nose up and avoided it, even though that breaks down as four figures for slightly less than the price of four individual Deluxes. However, seeing it cut down to £45 at GAME, it seemed like a sweeter deal... But let's see how I feel about it with the figures in-hand...

Packaging:

Since this is the first time I've bought a Buzzworthy Bumblebee boxed set, rather than just one specific figure sold separately on eBay, this is the first time I've actually had a Buzzworthy Bumblebee box in-hand... and it's actually pretty good. While this is technically a Legacy release, and bears the Legacy branding, it's presented in the Buzzworthy black and yellow only, rather than as the full-colour logo used in the main branch of the the line. The image on the front follows the pattern of Legacy's heightened, oversaturated electric neons, but it's framed by the more plain, sober and angular Buzzworthy template which, somewhat bafflingly, includes images wrapping around the lefthand side showing a nonspecific Arcee, Siege/Earthrise Mirage and, I think, Cyberverse Optimus Prime. Presumably they're emphasising that Buzzworthy covers multiple continuities but, to my eyes, it just looks inconsistent.

While it is nowhere near as inconsistent and patchy as something like the Age of Extinction packaging, the contrast between the Buzzworthy colours and the Legacy-style illustration is quite jarring, and I'm constantly frustrated by the excess of fonts in use. Granted, the Buzzworthy Bumblebee branding is a logo in its own right, derived from the style of the Bumblebee movie's logo, Legacy's branding is possibly my least favourite of all TransFormers toylines, and the TransFormers logo itself is obviously a necessity, but the addition of another font just for the name of the boxed set and its four individual figures seems rather unnecessary to me.

The back of the box features product shots of all four toys in their robot and alternate modes, and the top of the box features hexagonal holes and headshots over each of the figures, in lieu of the traditional plastic windows, but this exposes the plain cardboard backing the figures are tied to, inside the box, which makes things look a bit cheap. There's also one feature of the set that, for no obvious reason, goes completely unmentioned on the outer packaging... but we'll get onto that when dealing with the specific toys involved.

As is often the case with these boxed sets, the instructions for each figure are arranged on a single fold-out sheet, which is printed in black and orange. My preference would have been for separate sheets... though that's possibly only because it would facilitate offloading the figures I don't want via eBay.

Goldbug

Vehicle Mode:

Let's get this one out of the way first, mainly because it's the one I was most interested in. I've been saying for some time (at least since I picked up Studio Series Offroad Bumblebee) that I had no intention of picking up any more Bumblebee figures unless they were significantly different from - and ideally improving upon - those I already own. Probably the only reason I felt as though I wanted a Goldbug figure was that I liked the idea of Goldbug: Bumblebee, rebuilt both physically and psychologically, such that he's stronger and more confident. I suspect that may have resonated with 13-year-old me, back in 1987.

This toy is essentially Earthrise Cliffjumper's engineering rolled into the licensed VW Beetle shell, and it works precisely as well as you might expect. I liked Cliffjumper, because that was the first time in years that the character (my first ever TransFormers toy) was sold as an ostensibly unique mold, rather than simply as a Bumblebee repaint... pretty much since Generation 1, in fact (unless you count the Energon toy, which was clearly closer to being Beachcomber, and later repainted as such). However, rather than just being dull yellow plastic, Goldbug has a glossy gold-ish coating (on most of his parts, at least - more on that later) over the shell of the car.

Considering the original Goldbug used quite a cold, shimmering 'gold' plastic, and the unpainted plastic here is quite warm, and very much more what I imagine when I think of gold plastic, I'm surprised they bothered painting any of the car shell... but I guess that it was needed for the translucent plastic parts. That said, all things considered, Hasbro were surprisingly sparing with this mold. The majority of the roof is a separate piece of opaque, painted plastic, so it's only really the window frames that have been painted in.

The windows are a very dark, smoky translucent grey, almost to the point where they needn't have bothered with translucent plastic at all... but then, these days, I'm starting to think Hasbro should just stop using translucent plastic entirely. The bumpers are separate pieces of unpainted grey - alarmingly rubbery - plastic, and the wheels, naturally, are black plastic with the VW-branded hubcaps painted silver. The headlights are also painted silver but, other than the gold-ish paint required to cover the translucent plastic parts, that's the entirety of the paint job. The indicators - front and back, lamps and frames - are completely unpainted, and the numberplate doesn't even have a block of white, let alone any text. Perhaps more crucially, Netflix Bumblebee had the VW badge on the bonnet picked out in silver... Goldbug does not. In terms of making this version look special, it's very much a case of one step forward, two steps back.

As is to be expected, Goldbug comes with the same accessories as Cliffjumper and Bumblebee, and they can be attached in exactly the same way for the 'hydrofoil' mode. What this mold lacks is the roof port, so it's not possible to mount the assembled cannon. There's a way to attach it inside the rear section, with it raised up on the robot's arms to present the robot mode/shield mode connection peg to plug into the back of the folding accessory, as a sort of 'Stealth Force' armed vehicle mode... but, honestly, it looks stupid: vehicle mode's continuity is wrecked, and the gun is far too long to make sense. In many ways, Goldbug's vehicle mode does not make me regret passing on Earthrise Bumblebee.

Robot Mode:

While gold plastic, even today, is enough to strike fear into the hearts of many Collectors, the substitute used here, for almost all the robot parts that aren't visible in vehicle mode, is virtually butterscotch-coloured... and I find myself wondering if it tasted the same. Strangely, while the gold-ish paint is warmer than the colour of the original Goldbug and of the base plastic of the car shell, the bare plastic of the robot parts is warmer still. Goldbug's shoulders and pelvis are molded in black plastic and painted over with more of the gold-ish, but without the super-glossy finish. Pretty much everything else bar the head and hands is now molded in the warm gold plastic.

Naturally, the only sculpted robot detailing appears on the arms and legs, and it's all identical to Cliffjumper, so there's really nothing new to say about robot mode, generally, but that he looks chubbier due to the design of the Beetle's roof. I don't think anyone would have been expecting unique limbs on this. For the G1 Throttlebot purists, it is possible to attach the rear section of vehicle mode with the bumper pointing down/back, to emulate the 'hooded' look of the G1 toy but, honestly, I think he looks sufficiently close with the bumper pointing up. Plus, the more accurately-angled the 'hood' is on this version, the less of a connection the peg has with its socket.

Weapons-wise, there is nothing new to report... except perhaps that the instructions suggest a means of attaching the folding piece to his shoulder, with the socketed gun plugged onto the front, for a shoulder-mounted cannon. I don't recall this being suggested in Cliffjumper's instructions, but he certainly has the facility - a slot on the top of the shoulder matches the tab on the folding piece just as well as the slot on the side of the shoulder. This almost makes me wish that the Earthrise Battlechargers were based on this mold/engineering rather than taking baffling cues from the awful Sunstreaker/Wheeljack setup. I have found some of the connecting pegs to be fairly loose on this set of weapons - not to the point where his bazooka doesn't hold together, but it's certainly far easier to peg it together and pull it apart.

The head sculpt was the main draw here, because I'm a huge fan of G1 Bumblebee's toy head, and so am constantly disappointed when Hasbro continually produce toys with heads designed to resemble the ugly, puffy animation model that was never the same size or shape in one scene to the next. In that specific respect, Goldbug may not have been much better off, but pretty much every instance of a contemporary Goldbug - the 2008 BotCon Shattered Glass version and the 2021 Hasbro take on the same - has had a reasonably well-designed sculpt with the something approaching G1 Goldbug's ridged battlemask. Hasbro's version takes most of its cues from the Timelines toy, giving him round 'goggles' and a nose, along with a segmented battlemask. This version has the entire battlemask (and his nose) painted silver, and the goggles in cyan, where the earlier SG versions only painted the flatter central portion of the mask and red goggles. It's not perfect... but it's certainly better than another cartoonish Bumblebee... I do wish they'd gone for a proper visor, though.

Naturally, transformation is functionally identical to Cliffjumper, though I have found that the roof/window section is much harder to fit into place in vehicle mode on this, possibly as a result of that section being redesigned. There doesn't seem to be the same level of clearance versus the bonnet sections on this mold.

The main effect of having this toy in-hand is that I'm now wondering why Hasbro haven't retooled Cliffjumper into most of the other Throttlebots. Searchlight would only really require the addition of the extra rack of lights to the front of the bonnet, while Chase and Freeway would require reshelling entirely. Rollbar and Wideload might need more extensive re-engineering, but I'm pretty confident it could be done. They've done other individual Throttlebots in the past, but if there's one thing I would genuinely like to see from this interminable stream of G1 reboots, it's a complete set of Throttlebots - ideally with Wideload made to an appropriate scale.

Goldbug is decent enough, but the butterscotch-coloured plastic used for the robot parts feels a little cheap, and the paintwork on mine appears to be incomplete (beyond the fact that it's simplified versus Netflix Bumblebee, with no specific applications for the VW logo, the door handles, the windscreen wipers or the tail lights):

The front of the distinctive bonnet (making up Goldbug's feet) is fully painted...
the bit in front of the windscreen, which folds into the chest, is bare plastic

The front of the car is all nicely painted, but the gold thins out over the wheel arch
and is entirely absent behind it, showing more bare plastic.

It's not enough for me to return the set and ask for a replacement, but it's certainly disappointing to find that the main draw of the set has such obvious QC issues. Whether it's the nostalgic factor that Cliffjumper was the first TransFormers toy I ever bought, or just that this is ultimately yet another Bumblebee analogue, much as I like Goldbug - and I genuinely do - I still prefer Earthrise Cliffjumper.

Ransack

Beast Mode:

G1 Kickback was the first Insecticon I bought, so I feel like I should have been more excited for the Legacy version than I was... but then, I'd already skipped on the updated Insecticons that appeared, one at a time, through the chapters of the Prime Wars Trilogy because, as an adult collector, I just have no place for silly things like Insecticons. Remaking them as soon as this, regardless of the increase in size class, feels superfluous.

The overall presentation of the figure is somewhat lacking versus the better-known trio of Insecticons. Molded largely in black plastic, with a very weird, semi-translucent and soapy yellow plastic for some parts of the limbs and, bafflingly, an entirely different (and much better-looking) yellow plastic used for the antenna, supplemented by an ill-matched yellow paint on the pelvic area. It's so ill-matched, in fact, that the paint on the hips doesn't even match the paint on the pelvis itself, and neither match the colour or sheen of the larger weapon accessories (more in which later). The wings and upper body (robot's chest) are molded in translucent plastic, with the wings tinted orange and the upper body panel a smoky, brownish-grey, seemingly with some metallic paint on the inner face... but, since the Legacy mold has done away with the opening chest feature of the G1 toy, there's no easy way to verify this, since the body is entirely pinned together. Sculpted detail is fairly minimal and, obviously, geared toward evoking Kickback. The one thing I am genuinely impressed by is the asymmetrical detailing of the wings. Where the G1 toy stuck to cybernetic - gloriously chromed! - detailing on both sides, this version has the veiny, segmented detailing of insect wings on the inside, with the angular, robotic detailing on the outer face... and the translucent plastic here shows it off from every angle. This toy really needed a bit more colour... and the original certainly had both additional touches of yellow and red, and a few blocks of silver breaking things up. Even just adding more yellow paint, on the central section of his lower torso, could have helped him look more like his G1 ancestor.

Probably the simplest way to describe this figure is that it probably feels very much like a pound shop knockoff of the Legacy Kickback toy... though, since I have no personal experience of that toy, it may be that I'm being too generous. The base Kickback mold has been retained, but the insect head has been entirely redesigned to look like a completely different kind of grasshopper... and therein lies the problem. G1 Ransack was a wholly unique Insecticon mold - one of the so-called 'Deluxe Insecticons', taken from a toyline that apparently went unreleased when the company that developed it got bought out by Bandai, who then it licensed to Hasbro. Ransack was specifically a robotic locust, and very slightly more accurate to the real-life creature by being modelled with the long abdomen absent on Kickback... so what we have here instantly looks low-effort by comparison.

That said, the 'twin sword' accessories packaged with Kickback are included here - molded in clear, colourless plastic and overpainted with opaque yellow - and the idea behind those is the peg them together, then stuff them up the robot's bottom so they resemble a very slim abdomen... It also serves to prevent waist rotation in beast mode, which is very handy considering how strongly inclined the waist is to rotate. However, the robot's legs are so thick this abdomen is barely visible from most angles anyway. This feature would have been far more effective if the swords plugged in to the front of his pelvis, rather than the back. The crazy thing is that, according to the toy's designer, this feature was added to the mold specifically for this otherwise underwhelming repaint. It is possible to get a better result by angling the back legs down further than is ideal, but this causes a significant issue for the beast mode weapon mounting.

On which subject, it's no surprise that Ransack comes with the same weapon accessory as Kickback, a rather perfunctory take on the original G1 Kickback's futuristic Tommy gun, left unpainted in black plastic. It pegs into the robot's back in either mode, with the magazine slotting into a cutout section, and leaving it underslung in beast mode, and thereby pointing slightly downward if the body is angled to make the sword/abdomen more visible. Of course, it's not necessary to mount those accessories as Ransack's abdomen. They can be tabbed into the outsides of his wings to make them larger and bulkier, or pegged into the sides of the black section of the back legs, the bulky lower part of the middle legs, or the shoulder.

The red paint on his compound eyes is a welcome break from the black and yellow used pretty much everywhere else, and the new antennae, located on the top of his head, are pretty cute, but one of them doesn't seem to rotate very well, and sits at a slightly different angle to the other. In every other respect, the head - or what's visible in beast mode, at least - is pretty nondescript.

Robot Mode:

The impression that Legacy Ransack is just a KO Kickback is all the more prominent in robot mode, since G1 Ransack's build was so different. This is essentially Legacy Kickback, in fewer colours, and with a frankly dull new head... There's no new paintwork or sculpted detail on show because this is one of those transformations that can be honestly described as 'standing the beast mode on its hind legs', so I genuinely don't know what to say about it... I was pleasantly surprised by certain aspects of beast mode, but robot mode offers nothing unexpected, not a single thing that isn't a minimum requirement these days.

Weapons-wise, there's the black Tommy gun that looks nothing like G1 Ransack's gun. The abdomen/wing accessories can be wielded as swords (not a great look thanks to the yellow paint) and, if you don't feel like holstering his gun on his back, the raised 5mm ports on his forearms are able to accommodate the protruding magazine admirably well (almost as if they were designed to do so!). Alternatively, the swords can be pegged into these sockets to function as defensive weapons, or with the handles pointing forward, possibly representing gun barrels. They can even be left on the wings but, since that leaves their hollow interiors on show, that's probably the least effective use for them in robot mode.

The head sculpt, as mentioned, is pretty dull. Where Kickback has a silver-painted brim over the unpainted visor on the upper half of his face, leaving a silver-painted nose, mouth and chin visible, Ransack has a band of red for his visor and an unpainted, black, fairly square and featureless battlemask over the bottom of his face. The only significant differences between the two characters' head shapes are than the armour around the bottom of Ransack's 'face' is taller and protrudes slightly further forward, there's a prominence from the top of his head, which features a block of red in a recess on the front, the antenna are on the back of the head rather than the sides, and the bug eyes are larger and painted red... So those few applications of red paint are carrying a lot of weight in terms of visual impact.

I've complained bitterly in the write-ups of some other toys, over the last five years or so, that Hasbro could (and should) include alternate, toy-accurate head sculpts as accessories... and that's kind of what they've done here. While the Ransack head is installed when the figure first comes out of the box, they've also included Kickback's head... But it almost seems as though this head is included as a toy-accurate alternative to the Legacy Kickback head, since the visor on that one was given a coating of red paint, per the animation model.

Transformation is functionally identical to the G1 toy, even down to the robot's arms/insect's forelegs and the way they combine. The only differences are that this version attains more convincing elbow articulation, and features a switch-around for the robot's hands versus the insect's middle leg claw, the robot's feet are separate from the ends of the insect's back legs, which have ball-jointed 'feet', and there's a flap used to conceal the robot's face in beast mode, that folds down on to his back in robot mode.

I would have to admit that one area in which this Legacy mold exceeds the G1 original is in articulation... but surely that's the absolute least one could and should expect from a remake that arrived thirty seven years after the original. The standard ankle tilt is present, and reaches pretty much 90° - far more than is needed - while the knees bend the regulation 90° (coming to a stop a hair before the protruding spines from the insect leg hit the thigh), the thighs can turn a full 360°, and the hips can swing through about 180° forward-to-back, and a touch over 90° out to the sides. Waist rotation is unrestricted, the wings and arms can rotate a full 360° around the shoulder, with the arms able to go slightly more than 90° out to the sides. Bicep rotation is unrestricted, despite the upper arm being made of two largely separate insect legs, the elbows bend to about 150-160°, and there's even a kind of wrist articulation due to transformation. Tilting the hand down for a sword-wielding pose has the side-effect of bringing an insect claw out of the forearm, but works fairly well. The head is on a ball joint, but only tilts a tiny bit in any direction... however, the antennae help with the expressiveness side of things.

So, basically, the robot mode articulation is nothing special, but the fact that it translates so thoroughly to beast mode is both unusual and impressive, and I almost feel inclined to be generous as a result. The front pair of insect legs are hinged to stand at about a 45° angle, but will (reluctantly) bend forward to 90°, while the second pair have their own upper joint that moves in 45° chunks, plus the robot's elbow joint to allow the foot to lay flat, and the pairs of legs on each side can make use of the robot's shoulder joint and the bicep rotation joint for lateral movement. The back legs can make full use of the hips and thigh rotation and, while there's a natural stopping point for the yellow ends, they can be pushed past that point for a full range of about 180°. The ball jointed feet are only really able to rotate around the ankle or fold back against the leg for transformation, but that's still better than pretty much any other Kickback toy can manage.

Another bonus to this update of the character is that the head is rather more mobile, even in beast mode, with the face covering in place... Not that Ransack's largely featureless black noggin needed its face covered... Even the couple of degrees of tilt available to the head is enough to give him a touch of character, particularly when coupled with the rotatable antennae, and would be more than adequate to simulate eating in a stop-motion animation.

If this version of the Legacy toy is anything to go by, I'm really not missing much by not owning Kickback. It's probably about the same size as the G1 original, maybe slightly larger, but the added articulation alone doesn't make it a must-have, and barely elevates Ransack above my initial impression that it's effectively a pound shop knockoff of the original. In this specific case, the inclusion of an alternate head feels like adding insult to injury, especially if it is intended for Kickback.

Skywasp

Beast Mode:

Continuing the impression that Legacy molds are cheap knockoffs, Skywasp - based on the Kingdom Waspinator mold - absolutely feels like a cheap, cut-down version of the 2014 Generations/30th Anniversary toy. The body of the wasp isn't too bad, and it even improves upon both the Generations toy and the original Beast Wars toy by giving the head a bit of articulation - the head itself can tilt up and down, the mandibles move, and the antennae can rotate. The overall sculpt is not bad, albeit a little soft in places, but that abdomen - molded in black plastic, with gold stripes painted on - looks pretty fearsome... and I have to admit that looking at a wasp abdomen that well-designed, at that size, set off an unexpected twinge of anxiety for me.

The wings eschew the Generations toy's lever-operated, geared flapping, keeping only the simple ball joints, common to both the previous toys. They're molded in a lovely, bold translucent red - none of the crappy pink that often ends up being used on contemporary Scourge/Nemesis Prime toys - and, while nicely detailed, they feel too thick and heavy, while the veins are far too bold. They have an excellent range of movement, but still can't quite fold back against the abdomen.

Where this toy ends up failing utterly - even as it improves upon the 2014 version in one crucial respect - is the underside. The robot's arms fold in neatly enough, and are far less obtrusive than those of the Generations toy, but the lower legs and feet hang down further, and the feet can't fold in flush with the beast's thorax because the robot's elbows are in the way, sticking out too far in front of the ankle joints. And then there's the wasp's legs... which honestly look like they were styled after some sort of cute, chubby cartoon insect that wore Mickey Mouse-style gloves. Neither the Generations toy nor the Beast Wars original were especially true-to-live in their limb sculpts, but they at least gave the impression of segmented legs with comparatively vicious claws... The legs here are far too thick, looking more like clumsy extrusions from a hot glue gun, tipped with hands that make it look as though this wasp wants to wave happily and give people a high five (OK, four) with all six legs simultaneously.

In common with previous versions, the robot mode weapon stashes at the tip of the abdomen, so it can't be used in this mode, even if there were any available 5mm ports... and it doesn't even have a particularly prominent stinger... Not that that's necessarily a bad thing... I can imagine even this toy would make me feel a little ill if the stinger nub was longer and sharper.

Robot Mode:

Ugh... This one is actually upsetting.

In robot mode, it absolutely is just a cheap KO of Generations Waspinator, with certain changes only serving to make it more frustrating to handle. The main problem is that they've switched the arrangement of the insect legs and exaggerated their fixed poses such that they're constantly interfering with everything. Sure, he has only one leg on each arm, and they're still mounted on mushroom pegs, but they stick out further and look awful. Two legs on the side of each shin, given the way they're bent, means there's not a single position available to them that doesn't get in the way of the arms or the insect legs mounted on the arms, if not the wings as well. Making matters worse, the Generations toy had the single legs mounted just above the ankles on ball joints, meaning they could not only be rotated to run up the leg, they could also be folded in against the leg, minimising their impact on articulation, and looking generally cleaner... It's like the designer of this version just didn't think about what they were doing... and that's even before you remember the silly, chubby cartoon hand on the end of each leg.

It's a shame, because the black and purple colourscheme, supplemented by touches of gold on the thighs and chest, actually looks fantastic. The translucent red wing/cape works very well, and is complemented by touches of red on his shoulders... That said, in common with other figures in this set, there's very little robot-mode specific paintwork. The shoulders are painted glossy black, with additional blocks of the same paint on the forearms, but the lower legs are completely unpainted. Given that this is supposed to be a Skywarp homage, I would have preferred for almost everything to have been molded in black plastic with purple accents either painted in where appropriate (shins, feet), or for fewer parts to have been molded in purple plastic. It certainly seems as though at least two different types of purple plastic have been used here - leaving aside the softer, matte-finish plastic of the insect legs, the hands and heel spurs are a slightly different in sheen and shade. While Skywarp would traditionally have silver accents, I quite like the gold used here and, while I like the translucent red, I'm not sure it was the most appropriate choice, since Skywarp features no red in his usual paint job.

The sculpted detail is largely softer and more simplified versus the Generations toy, but it certainly takes a lot of cues. The type of detailing is similar, but where the groin on the earlier toy is fairly slim and features the impression of layered armour angled downward, this version has something that looks almost like a leaf, with the suggestion of upward-angled panels. The 'horns' on the knees are splayed more widely and seem proportionally larger, but the raised section between them comes to a stop just before they start to protrude. The claw-like pattern wrapping round the lower legs is more extensive, and no longer looks like claws, more like exposed pipework, almost as if it was designed for this figure from memory rather than real-world reference to either of the existing Waspinator molds.

Skywasp's weapon is absolutely pathetic. Obviously, we can't expect spring-loaded missiles like those of the Beast Wars original, but the Generations toy had a simple transformation for the stinger blaster, where the stinger itself flipped 180° within the tip of the abdomen. This one is a simple, solid chunk of plastic with a perfunctory gun barrel sculpted into the otherwise hollow underside... and even that barrel has been hollowed out to save on plastic. The fact that it barely protrudes below the abdomen shell section is pretty crummy, but a simple touch of gold paint on the gun details might have helped bring it to life a bit. It also seems as though the gun is designed to wrap around the hand to a degree, as if it's trying to suggest that this abdomen section suddenly grows out of the robot's forearm... This is a somewhat similar effect to the way the blaster in the Generations toy covers part of the hand, but it's more extensive here.

Ultimately, about the only good thing about this toy is the head sculpt... but even that is just a cut-down version of the Generations toy - almost identical in its detailing, but smaller, and not as sharp. Granted, the translucent red plastic that makes up the back of the head is less obtrusive than the cloudy, colourless light piping of the older Waspinator, and the addition of red paint for the antennae and the upper 'mandibles' on the sides of his head livens things up a touch, while the black frames to his eyes and the gold central crest are actually a significant improvement on the basic green and yellow of the Generations version of Waspinator... Though, overall, I don't think the paintwork is as extensive or as intricate as on the Kingdom version of Waspinator.

As one might expect from a cut-down version of the Generations toy, transformation is somewhat simplified... though it's not without its fiddle-factor. The things that - ahem - bug me the most are that the robot's torso - the chest in particular - doesn't tab together in any way, shape or form, and the two halves of the insect head are very much inclined to slip back together as they don't clip into place once split to form the robot's chest. The arms stow underneath the head and thorax, which is all nice and neat, but they don't peg into the body very securely, and the hands have to be in a very specific orientation to make them fit at all. It might have been more helpful if the hands themselves had connected to a 5mm peg on the thorax, rather than relying on a smaller, separate peg and socket. The pelvis swings through 180° between beast and robot modes, much like the Generations toy, but here it's on a rotating hinge rather than a ball joint, and it only tabs in securely in beast mode. Throughout transformation in either direction, the beast mode legs are almost never not in the way. Getting Skywasp back into beast mode is otherwise mostly quite smooth, though the robot's legs are intended to tab into the underside of the abdomen, just below the robot's knees, and then a pair of forked tabs are supposed to slip over tabs on the forearms, but neither are especially secure connections, and just a slight twist of the waist joint - which is not specifically restricted by any transformation step - will unseat both sets of tabs... And it strikes me that waist rotation was likely left off the Generations toy precisely because it would reduce the structural integrity of beast mode, as it does here. Another frustration is that getting the mounting for the beast mode head to stay on the tiny tab on the front of the thorax can be problematic, and the slightest nudge can knock it off... That said, it's still more secure than when it's serving as the robot's chest.

Robot mode articulation is fine, up until the insect legs start getting caught up with each other. The joined pair on each calf can only rotate about 180°, and the best option seems to be to turn them back as far as possible, such that the longer parts are pointing up, as if he's waving forwards with all four of his chubby mittens. Those on his arms are also best served by turning them so the feet are pointing upward, giving maximum clearance. He has all the standard, contemporary points of articulation - ankle tilts, 2-part feet, knees that can bend through almost 180° for transformation (albeit with the insect legs getting caught up with the robot's arms and their own legs). The hips are hindered by the abdomen, such that he can only really kick forward (a little over 90°) and out to the sides (another 90°, butting up against the mandibles on his waist), but I was actually pleasantly surprised to see this mold has an upper thigh swivel joint. The waist joint theoretically has a full 360° range, but the beast head and mandibles clash with the pelvis, causing the chest to lift up and out, since it doesn't actually peg into the body. The arms can swing round a full 360° at the shoulder (assuming the insect legs don't get in the way) and 90° out to the sides. Bicep rotation is only hindered by those insect legs, the elbows bend a touch under 180° due to transformation, and his wrists can rotate freely. The head is on a ball joint that can rotate a full 360° and which offers some expressive sideways tilt, but it can barely tilt up or down due to the design of the head and its short neck. The ball joint facilitates easy switching of the stock head for the supplied alternative... Which is basically the original Beast Wars toy's non-mutant head, cast in purple plastic, with red light-piping for the eyes, gold paint for the face, and metallic cyan for the 'bat wing' ears. This, at least, is not a potential swap-out for Kingdom Waspinator, as the colourscheme is all wrong. I'm all for alternate heads, but this one in particular is not one I'll be using... I didn't like it on the original Beast Wars toy and, despite the sculpt being quite detailed, it's really no improvement.

Of course, the idea that this is a Skywarp homage at all is thrown into doubt by the small fact that this colourscheme is precisely what was used for the cancelled 2003 Wal-Mart exclusive 2-pack of Transmetals Waspinator (mostly black, with purple, red and gold) with Nightprowler... a grey and yellow repaint of Beast Wars Cheetor, which Hasbro has referenced separately with the 2022 release of Legacy Nightprowler, using the Kingdom Cheetor mold. This colourscheme was also used by the TransFormers Collectors' Club, for the 'Parasite Waruder' from the BotCon 2015 exclusive toy add-on sets.

Scorponok

Beast Mode:

And so, finally, we come to the other toy in the set that I was mildly interested in... Though I should qualify that by adding that I decided to get the Beast Wars reissue Scorponok, cancelling a preorder for the Kingdom toy, because the new version ended up looking a bit crap in robot mode.

Beast mode is another story, and it's actually quite an impressive rendition of a scorpion, at least from most angles. The carapace is quite softly-sculpted - much like all too many of the Kingdom/Legacy beasts - but the hinges are sensibly placed between individual plates of sculpted armour, ensuring it all looks as clean and coherent as possible. While the original Kingdom release used a colourscheme based on the character's appearance in the TV show - something on which the BW reissue followed suit - this toy is based on the colourscheme of the original Beast Wars toy, and thereby makes Ransack look like the odd one out, being the only character using predominantly yellow and black, where both Skywasp and Scorponok primarily use red and purple to supplement the majority black plastic.

The tail isn't quite so well jointed as the Beast Wars toy, and obviously lacks its spring-loaded lever gimmick, but its main problem here is that transformation plugs one of Scorponok's robot mode legs into the underside of the tail, with his heel spur protruding as a little black spike about halfway up. The uppermost section, accounting for two tail segments and the stinger, is articulated separately, allowing it to curl forward and back on a hinge, while the stinger itself is on a ball joint. My eyes may be deceiving me, but it appears that the line of six raised nubs on either side of the final tail segment have been picked out with a very dark, metallic charcoal paint.

The legs certainly do better than on the original BW toy, though they're still pretty weird, all being joined on a single hinge at the body, with ball joints at the first knuckles. The front and back legs on each side have their own ball joints, but it seems as though the designers felt the middle two didn't merit such lavish treatment - at either side of a single ball joint, the middle pair of legs on each side is joined, with the ball peg coming off between the top segments and the socket between the lower segments. A closer inspection of the underside suggests this may have been a move borne of budget constraints, since the lower segments appear to have the vestiges of individual ball joint sockets. The sculpt of the legs - while perhaps not entirely true to life (scorpions normally having just two pincers per leg, not three chubby fingers) - is comparatively detailed, vastly more impressive than the likes of Waspinator/Skywasp, and clearly the result of a different hand in their design. While rigid below each ball joint, the sculpt features defined and softly-textured segments, the middle two on each leg carrying a group of three rounded nubs, possibly as reference to the spines present on some scorpions' legs.

The claws seem rather cumbersome, far too large at their widest point, and tapering off to the tips far too quickly, making them look disproportionately short and fat. It's understandable given that they need to be able to contain his missiles and cyberbee, but it ends up making them look rather comical. They seem to use similar colour of plastic to the stock Kingdom release, but they're actually slightly translucent, with a cool sheen that seems to be part of the plastic - since it's apparent on all parts cast in that colour - but looks almost like a spray-on finish.

The beast mode head sculpt is vastly more realistic than the BW original, albeit still much simplified and softly-detailed compared to a real-life scorpion. The main 'fangs' look nothing like a real scorpion's chelicerae, and are painted metallic purple, while Scorponok's eyes are picked out with small blobs of red paint, giving him quite a fearsome look. I'm not sure whether the robot's shoulders, poking out around the chelicerae, are supposed to represent additional 'mouth' parts, but they don't look entirely out of place, at the very least.

The main problem here is that the robot's head is plainly visible below the beast head, tucked in between the robot's chest panels along with one of his legs, which then pokes out of the back, below the tail. These do more to help beast mode stand up that the beast mode legs, whose ball joints, while not loose, are nowhere near tight enough on the stock figure to support the toy's weight.

Robot Mode:

The very first photo of Kingdom Scorponok in robot mode was enough to make me cancel my preorder for the figure. Seeing it in action, in later photos and video reviews, merely confirmed that I'd made the right choice. The figure is a blocky, disproportionate mess in robot mode, and this alternate version has precious little going for it thanks to its cut-down paint job.

The body looks far too square, and appears to stop prematurely, before abruptly presenting the pelvis and legs, making him look squat rather than stocky, when both the CGI character from the TV show andthe original toy look comparatively tall and lean, with a broad upper chest and shoulders. About the only upside to the torso is that, while it lacks the contrasting highlight for the 'jewel' embedded in the middle of his chest, it is picked out with the metallic charcoal paint, which is also sprayed over the lower half of the torso andover the pelvis, granting it a far more visible sheen than the bare black plastic would offer.

In and of themselves, the arms and legs look OK... and could probably pass for both being intended for a figure in the same scale, were it not for that blocky torso. The translucent purple pauldrons have their spikes picked out with metallic charcoal, and there's a spray of metallic purple over the dappled texture and vent-like detailing of the forearms, supplemented by more metallic charcoal paint for the spikes on the outer faces. The red plastic at the wrist is a little jarring, and something of an eyesore, but it can be concealed through clever angling of the arms and pincers. The legs come out the worston this repaint, because paint is precisely what they're lacking. The Kingdom version had gold paint on the raised armour detailing that runs down the middle of the shins, from the knee to the foot, along with darker purple paint on the band running around the leg just below the knee joint, and on the tips of the feet. This one has bare plastic all the way... though, admittedly, even that looks fairly nice, since the plastic's built-in sheen shows off the texture of the lower legs.

Naturally, the Kingdom/Legacy mold doesn't include the spring-loaded features of the original Beast Wars toy, so Scorponok's armaments are a bit of a disappointment as well. Each claw features the standard, hexagonal 5mm socket used throughout the War For Cybertron series, and allowing all manner of accessories to be plugged in. What's included in the set is a fused pair of missiles attached to a single5mm peg, painted red and adorned with Maximal insignias (not a mistake - it's referencing the CGI in the TV show) and an extremely perfunctory 'cyberbee' with a 5mm peg coming off its rear end. To be fair, it is decorated with a surprising amount of paint (metallic purple on the wings, yellow and metallic purple stripes on the abdomen, and a stripe of metallic charcoal on the head, running from the antennae to the mandibles), and the sculpt isn't terrible overall... it's just so small and underwhelming when compared to the massive, spring-loaded cyberbee of the original toy. I think the missiles are the biggest disappointment here, since the original had two independently spring-loaded missiles, and there is sufficient space inside the claw to have been able to include two separate missiles here... Worse still, the fused pair provided are also hollow on one side.

The stock head is a very clear reference to the Beast Wars TV show, and looks pretty good in terms of its sculpt, but coupling the gold visor with plain white paint over the sour expression on the jutting lower half of his face looks rather crummy and softens its already vague detailing. In addition to the TV-show inspired head sculpt, this figure is packaged with the head that debuted with the Legacy release Kingdom repaint - and BotCon 1999 homage - Sandstorm. The head swap on this one is easily the most difficult of the set, since the socket on either head is pretty tight, and they seem formatted to only come off in a particular way. On the upside, the alternate head adds more red into the mix, with yellow-painted eyes peering out of the black 'gas mask' presenting a very welcome contrast. I can't help thinking, though, that the colouring and the design of the alternate head end up making it look like some kind of fetish mask.

Scorponok's transformation is just one more disappointing aspect of the toy. I like the idea of one leg folding into the tail, and I like the idea of the other folding into the underside of the scorpion's body but, in practical terms, the former completely negates the tail's articulation below the final, uppermost hinge, while the latter makes the toy look untidy and unfinished. The robot's chest is left open to accommodate this 'spare' leg, with the foot pointing back, directly below the robot's pelvis, at the base of the tail. It looks as though the foot is intended to peg into a notch in armour at the top of the other lower leg, but the plastic would need to flex beyond its limits to make that happen. Alongside that, the robot's head only tilts down into the chest by about 45° so, as mentioned above, it's never properly concealed, despite minimal clearance from the surrounding chest panels. Conversely, the beast mode head can be a little tricky to deploy because it folds fully and quite tightly into the inside of the beast mode's dorsal plates, and that panel has to be opened as far as the hinge allows to ensure the necessary leverage. Clipping the robot's pelvis into place in either mode can be a little fussy (I believe this was the cause of the problems a lot of people had getting the chest to stay closed in robot mode), but the main problem, regardless of which way you're working, is that the ball jointed beast legs somehow conspire to always be in the way, no matter what you're trying to do.

All the expected joints are here, starting with ankle tilts that travel close to 180°, though the asymmetrical arrangement of the feet means that, while the toes can tilt up and down on both feet, the heel spur of the left foot is fixed, and thereby less useful for posing. Transformation also allows super-deep knee bend, unrestricted thigh rotation, hips that swing almost a full 180° forward-to-back, but a touch under 90° to the sides due to the beast mode legs being in the way. The waist only rotates about 40° in either direction due to his backside butting up against the based of the tail. The shoulders can rotate a full 360°, and the arms can lift out to the sides by near enough the regulation 90°. Bicep and wrist rotation are unrestricted, and the elbows can bend almost 90° forwards or backwards, and then the claws open asymmetrically - the larger half moving less than the smaller half, yet achieving almost a right angle between them at their fullest extent. The head is on a ball joint, but it can only manage 360° rotation and a small backward tilt due to the design of either head.

I definitely didn't lose out by ordering the Beast Wars reissue version of Scorponok rather than the much-anticipated Kingdom toy and, given that I ordered it at a substantial discount, it ended up only costing a couple of quid more. There are some great ideas in the engineering, but the toy has ended up feeling half-baked and untidy. It doesn't exactly look like a cheap knockoff - if anything the opaque black and translucent plastics look better than the opaque grey and purple of the Kingdom version - but almost everything about the toy feels like a cheap knockoff. Had the sculpted detail been sharper throughout, and if they'd worked out a way of giving him better proportions, it could have been far better. As it is, it's a great advert for the Beast Wars reissue.

Transforming him back to robot mode while writing this, one of the protruding mandibles on the stock head snapped off having got caught between the chest panels. This appears - in part, at least - to be because they're attached to the front half of the head, while the bulk of the curved armour piece that sweeps down from the 'ears' is on the back half of the head, slotting in between the front half of the 'ear' and the tip of the mandible. Granted, I'm a layman when it comes to toy design, but this seems like a structurally unsound approach. I'll probably try to repair it at some point, but it's unlikely to hold any better, so I'll probably stick with the alternate head from now on.

So, in summary, I would imagine that, had I paid the full price of £93 for this boxed set, I would have felt thoroughly ripped off. Even at half its original RRP, the set feels disappointing and lazy. It doesn't help that I have older and vastly superior versions of a couple of these toys, but two of them genuinely feel like knockoffs in-hand, and the other two are mediocre at best. I almost didn't bother getting Ransack out of the packaging because he looked so bad, and the original Kickback version of this mold was hardly inspiring to begin with... and yet that's the only one that came anywhere close to actually impressing me.

Scorponok turned out to be precisely what I'd expected from the mold - a decent, if rushed-looking beast mode coupled with an awkward-looking, poorly-proportioned robot mode - but the breakage on the stock head, during a normal transformation, was ridiculous. Skywasp hits the right notes in terms of his colourscheme and his pun name, but that's the best I can say about him. Ransack... looks and feels like a pound shop knockoff in official TransFormers packaging because his yellow plastic is grainy and appears translucent in a way that doesn't look entirely intentional, while what little paintwork there is - a scant handful of applications in a predictably poorly-matched yellow - is inconsistent between his body and his accessories. Objectively speaking, the four figures are possibly worth the £11-ish each of the discounted price... but the variation in quality between each of them and the obvious QC errors are cause for concern.