Here's another fine example of me forgetting about a perfectly good toy for far too long... So long, in fact, that I acquired and wrote about the Masterpiece version of the figure more than three years ago, and that was ten years after this toy was released! Worse still, this blog was already in full swing when this toy came out, so I really have no excuses... I wish I knew why I neglected the last three Human Alliance figures in my collection... But, other than the blog getting off to a very slow start, I can't imagine what stopped me.
But let's not dwell on old mistakes and, instead, enjoy the process of revisiting a toy that had been stuck in storage for far too long. I was a massive fan of the Human Alliance concept... still am, in fact, and it's something I hope Hasbro will eventually revisit at some point in the future. Barricade was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting aspects of the first live action movie, being a Decepticon who transformed into a vehicle which, in an ideal world, is intended to reassure people, make them feel safe and protected. Barricade is, of course, the antithesis of that idea... but I don't think they really played into it as much as they could have, and then he disappeared until the third film, then again until his refit in the fifth.
The original Deluxe class toy was very much a product of its time, with all the shortcomings that implies. Let's see how this version of Barricade fares, being not only a product of a different time, but a different and much more advanced toyline.
On the surface, there's really not much to differentiate between this toy and the original Deluxe class toy from the 2007 movie... Both are accurately-reproduced and fully-licensed Saleen S281 Police Cruisers, a vehicle which is itself a customised 2004 Ford Mustang GT. Both are molded largely in black plastic, as one would expect, with clear, colourless plastic for the windows and white painted doors. Much the same police decals and paint applications are present, though this version has a few more. Both toys are even fairly similar in size, which seems miraculous given the increased size of this one's robot mode. The most significant difference, obviously, is the raison d'être of the Human Alliance line - a reasonably accurately-modelled interior (in front, at least) with space to seat the included non-transforming (unless you count his 'storage' form) Frenzy figure.
So, the smaller differences are key here. HA Barricade features the number '643' tampographed on the front and rear bumpers, where it only features on the front bumper of the Deluxe. Where the Deluxe has a blob of silver paint on the outside of the transparent headlight shells, this one has silver paint on the sculpted headlight detail behind the shell. The Decepticon police badges on either side are larger and more extensively detailed here, the 'POLICE' label on each door has a much bolder black outline, and the indicator lights on the rear wings are painted in, though the additional '643' just behind the bottom corner of the door and the 'EMERGENCY 911 RESPONSE' decals are still absent here, despite more space being available for them. At the back, this version has its numberplate painted in but, rather than accurately reproducing the movie vehicle's numberplate, this one has a little joke: '2PN-SLV', referring to the phrase "to punish and enslave", written above both of the rear wheels. On the spoiler, the word 'POLICE' is stamped the opposite way round to the '643' on his roof, and the lightbar is somewhat more intricately detailed, with darker red and blue translucent paint over the extremities, and opaque silver paint on the central section. I'm not entirely sure the shape and style are entirely screen-accurate, but it does the job. This version of the Saleen patrol car also has what appears to be a protruding petrol cap in grey plastic... which is actually a button to activate a play feature not available in vehicle mode.
Inside the car, the dashboard details are somewhat perfunctory - just a few dials behind the pinned, turnable steering wheel, what appears to be a glovebox on the passenger side - and the seats are fairly plain but, compared to other HA figures, the interior is otherwise very clean, with no obvious signs of robot parts like Mudflap's Gatling gun, Bumblebee's hands, or Sideswipe's whole spine. You can just about see the tips of Barricade's head sticking out through a convenient slot below the dashboard, but even that is done in such a way that it could be mistaken for a mounting clip for police equipment, such as a radio, computer, or gun.
Barricade is also notable for being about the only Human Alliance figure that can effectively deploy his weapons in vehicle mode, possibly in reference to the extending headlights/blades used very briefly, just before he transforms in front of Sam in the first movie. What you get here, though, are a couple of blasters on hinged arms. These are mainly intended for a particular feature of robot mode but, personally, I think they look far more sensible in vehicle mode.
Overall, considering this came out nine years before the Masterpiece figure (though only eight years before the first dedicated Masterpiece Movie figure), this was a masterpiece in its own right and, already owning this, I almost didn't see a point to making the 'upgrade'. Even today, vehicle mode looks fantastic, and the play value of being able to seat the included Frenzy figure inside Barricade cannot be overstated... Though Frenzy is perhaps a touch oversized, being precisely the same height as the human action figures supplied with other HA toys.
Robot Mode:
While his vehicle mode might rival the Masterpiece version of Barricade, the Human Alliance toy's robot mode, admittedly, has its fair share of shortcomings... Though, given there were nine years between the two figures, and their overall similarity, he still holds up well today and, to be completely fair, several of the HA toys had issues in their robot modes.
The main issue here, compared to both the original Deluxe class toy and the later Masterpiece, is that HA Barricade's proportions are all over the place. His legs and arms are slim and gangly, over-long and made with far too much grey plastic. That this grey plastic has a slight brownish tinge doesn't help, either. The arms possibly wouldn't look so bad if they weren't sticking out from the body on almost 1/4" of extended shoulder. It's far more clearance than the arms need, and ends up making his chest look undersized, despite its bulk versus the lower body. As long as the bumper is properly angled, the chest-to-waist-to-leg transition doesn't look too extreme, but those arms still look as though they come from a larger-format figure.
The sculpted detail on the upper arms is remarkably good considering how little depth of plastic was available - the entire bicep area makes up the base of the car below the car mode's seats, with even more (somewhat waffled) detail sculpted onto the backs of those seats so that the figure even looks quite good from behind. The details on the insides of the front wheel is similarly fairly detailed considering the small area available, though the additional mass of the car shell left attached to it makes it look much more bulky, and reduces the impact of what little detailing is there. The legs are a bit odd, in that the thighs are small and quite heavily detailed, but then the lower legs are a lot longer than they should be, with substantially less intricacy in the sculpt, possibly due to the way they transform. The flaps on the thighs are larger and squarer than those of the MPM figure, but at least they're present.
On first impressions, the robot's paintwork is rather disappointing - possibly a side-effect of the extensive coatings of white paint on the car's doors. The upper arms, legs and pelvis are largely made up of the darker, brownish-grey plastic and mostly unpainted. There are applications of pale metallic purple on the biceps and over the front of the pelvis, with smaller touches on the sides of the thighs and the outer corner of the lower sections of the lower legs. Silver paint has been applied to the fronts of the thighs, but that's the last of the paintwork this figure has. One thing to note is that a lot of fans complained about the use of metallic blue paint on the MPM figure, claiming that the CGI indicated that purple was the appropriate choice. I'm honestly not sure that's the case, or if it's more the case that Michael Bay's distinctive visual style distorted the colour. Depending on the images you might view, there are suggestions that the colour should have been a super-dark blue, but that the pearlescent quality of the vehicle paint may have made it appear warmer - more purple - in certain conditions. Regardless of which colour is correct (and, given this is a police vehicle, blue would seem more likely than purple), the shade used here is far too pale... but I wouldn't want to complain too much, given the overall dearth of paint applications for robot mode.
Barricade's main gimmick is that one wheel can spring out of its mounting on his forearm, at the push of the petrol cap, allowing the blades to be extended from it. This spiked wheel can now spin freely, but its effectiveness is reduced by the fact that simply handling it will normally cause some of the blades to move out of position, because they don't lock in place. It almost feels as though it should have been set up so that deploying the wheelspike weapon automatically spins the wheel but, since the spikes have to be manually extended, that wouldn't really have been practical without extensive additions to the engineering of the gimmick. This also means that the Human Alliance toy only has one hand, because there's nothing else at the end of his arm with this weapon stowed.
In terms of interacting with Frenzy, the smaller figure can be folded up and fitted back into the engine block cavity, with his arms left extended out to just-about grasp the handles on the two blasters which fold out from below the front of the vehicle. Alternatively, by transforming Barricade's right arm into very nearly its vehicle mode configuration, then folding out the dinky triple-barrelled blaster on the inner face, Frenzy can be perched in the seat as its ostensible operator... though the seat is much too far back for that to look even remotely convincing. There are also pegs for Frenzy's feet in Barricade's backpack but, where other figures actually have shoulder-mounted weapons for their drivers to operate, Barricade has none. Finally, a peg in the palm of Barricade's hand is probably intended for use with the actual human figures, so that he can grip them via the port on their backs. It's possible to do that with Frenzy as well, but it wouldn't make as much sense.
Probably the most surprising thing about comparing this toy with the Masterpiece is how different the head sculpts are. In theory, the same reference was used - after all, this figure came came out two years after the movie was released, and the MPM came out nine years after that, so they're both more accurate than the Deluxe class toy, yet still different. Neither appear to be entirely correct in their paintwork - likely, again, because of Michael Bay's inimitable style and habit of boosting the saturation and contrast of the film. Consequently, while Barricade's head appears to be mostly made up of super-glossy black panels, with maybe some dark gunmetal parts, the toys have invariably used a mixture of gold and a rather stark silver. Of the two, I think the paintwork of the HA version is more accurate to the movie than the Masterpiece, if only because the Y-shaped crest on his forehead is painted silver, where the MPM had the 'monobrow' painted silver instead. Both have the majority of his 'mask' painted silver, though rather more silver has been used here, while the MPM extends its gold paint application out onto the cheeks, and adds silver on the chin. The overall head sculpt here seems taller, and he has additional spikes pointing down from his 'cheekbones'. One intriguing difference is in how the two figures achieve the head and jaw articulation. The MPM has a ball joint inside the back of the head and a hinged jaw. This one has a ball joint extending down from the lower jaw part, into a socket in the neck, and the main part of the head is hinged to allow it to raise away from the jaw. The eyes are light-piped, but it's clear, colourless plastic overpainted on the front with translucent red paint, so it's not as effective as it could have been.
The funny thing about Barricade is that every single version of him that I've owned has had an eerily similar transformation - the legs and feet come out of the back of the vehicle, the arms come out of the sides, and the front compresses back and down to connect with the pelvis. The only significant differences are in the smaller details... which has been something of a common theme. Here, for example, the lower legs bend back on themselves via a mid-shin hinge, and the feet rotate 180° between vehicle and robot mode. Where the MP figure rotates the rear of the car 90° then folds it around the calves, this one simply separates the outer part and swings it forward, round to the outside of the knees. The arms pull out from the sides of the vehicle, as normal, but then swing round on a hinge that lifts the shoulder joints up and forward, more or less in line with the neck. Similarly, the legs swing out from below the pelvis, but only by about 45°, which has a significant effect on his articulation. The arms themselves are largely identical to the MP version, but for a few absent parts - such as the forearm gap fillers. The car's front wings staying as a single part that doesn't bend out quite so much as they do on the MP, and the car's doors remain whole on the robot's arms, with two sections of the car's bonnet playing the role of the door sections popping up from behind Barricade's head, which then simply folds up from behind the dashboard. While the bonnet remains otherwise intact, and thereby less accurate to the CGI, the front bumper and bullbars reconfigure slightly so that at least part of the torso looks sort-of right. The roof of the vehicle does very little other than getting out of the way of everything else and tabbing very securely into the folded up legs for vehicle mode. Another little feature that's most easily accessible during transformation is that Frenzy can be folded up and stashed behind the grille. This is essentially the same arrangement as for his use of Barricade's guns in robot mode, but with the arms folded back and tabbed into his feet. One observation I have, related to his transformation, is that it would seem most logical to open the shins out to their fullest extent, such that the lower half butts up against the black plastic section of the vehicle's rear that sits on his calves... but Barricade's appearance in the movies suggests his legs are almost digitigrade. This look can be achieved but, while it helps makes his legs seem less lanky, it has little benefit to posing... on which subject...
I mentioned above that the transformation of Barricade's hips has an impact on his articulation... and that's a bit of an understatement. Whereas the Deluxe class toy has ball-jointed hips, this and the Masterpiece have separately hinged joints for forward/backward movement and outward swing. However, where the MPM figure has the hip joints set perpendicular to the thighs, this one has them at about 45°. The upshot is that bringing his legs forward turns the thigh outward, and swinging the legs back turns the thigh inward. There's a thigh rotation joint which counters this to a degree - with the assistance of an above-the-knee rotation joint - but it still looks awkward and unnatural. The weirdest thing is that I cannot see a reason for this arrangement of the hips. There could easily have been a cutaway in the sides of the pelvis to allow the hips to swing up into a more natural position and to allow for more natural articulation. It would also make his robot mode look slightly less gangly overall. The foot can also rotate and tilt up/down for transformation, which is helpful to ensure optimum balance, but the design of the feet is not conducive to a firm footprint, since there's a little nub on the inside of each foot, just in front of the heel, that makes it almost impossible to plant both feet firmly unless the legs are as straight as they can effectively get, and the fold-out 'toe' on the opposite side isn't especially helpful either. This is largely because standing 'straight' basically requires the knees to be bent to near enough their fullest extent, or he ends up looking knock-kneed. Barricade nevertheless has reasonable waist rotation - about 45° in total, though I gather the joint can be modified to improve its range - his arms swing a full 360° around the wide shoulders, and almost manage 90° out to the sides as long as the shoulder flares are kept out of the way of his head. The elbows bend to about 135° thanks to the placement of the joint, there's a 'bicep' rotation joint just above the elbow, and the right hand features hinges at the wrist and the knuckles, with an independent joint at the base of his thumb. Due to the gimmick, he doesn't have a left hand, which is a little disappointing. The head is on a ball joint, but it's curiously mounted - the socket is in the neck rather than the head, and the ball is connected to Barricade's jaw rather than the main part of the head, as mentioned above. Also worth mentioning that I took the Masterpiece figure off the shelf for a quick comparison while I was working on this post... and his joints haven't lasted anywhere near as well as those on this toy.
Frenzy:
The main advantage to Frenzy as a Human Alliance figure is that they were able to mold him entirely in soft grey plastic (with a nice, vaguely metallic sheen), and only needed to paint in the eyes... but, as with the Deluxe class toy, they got the colour wrong, since his eyes in the movie were blue, not red. Most of the other figures required at least two colours of plastic, and extensive paintwork... Of course, the lack of a human face means no need for painted human facial details, which tended to be one of the most disappointing - not to say downright ugly - aspects of the other Human Alliance driver figures.
In terms of sculpted detail, it's an improvement on the mini-figure packaged with the Deluxe class toy in pretty much every respect, but still quite sparse and simplistic due to the type of plastic used. The arms in particular are cleverly designed to incorporate the dual forearms - one with guns, one with grasping hands to clip onto Barricade's steering wheel or the blasters that fold out from under the bumper.
Articulation is also great, with unrestricted rotation around the shoulder, pretty much a full 180° of lift out to the sides, as well as joints to tilt the head and chest back for transformation into his 'storage mode'. The hips can rotate a full 360° and swing through 180° front to back. The knees are fixed at a touch over 90° and there's obviously no tilt on the feet, but the digitigrade ankle joint can swing through at least 200°, again due to the necessities of his simple transformation. Assuming one can align both feet, getting him to stand, even in a dynamic pose, is rarely a problem.
Weirdly, I'd say the only problem with this figure is that he's just too large - basically the same height as any of the other HA drivers... That's obviously to be expected, and the whole Human Alliance concept just wouldn't have worked had Frenzy been made to scale with Barricade's vehicle mode. Other than that, I'd say he's easily the best driver figure out of the whole line - certainly the easiest to pose and stand unaided.
When I wrote about HA Jazz, back in 2011, I was of the opinion that he was the best of the line but, looking at Barricade now, I'm very much inclined to reassess. The bottom line here is that, even today, almost fifteen years after his release, and in spite of the avoidable shortcomings in his leg articulation, Human Alliance Barricade is an excellent toy. I would go so far as to say that he, more than any of the others, perfectly embodies everything that was great about the very concept of the Human Alliance toyline. If it weren't for the weird 45° angle of his hips, he would certainly exceed the Masterpiece version in terms of playability. Sure, he could have done with less grey-brown plastic and a hell of a lot more paintwork but, as a mainstream toy, originally sold at a fraction of the cost of the MPM figure, he was certainly a worthy alternative. Of course, having been given a comparatively limited release, he tends to be pretty expensive these days, and I gather there are a lot of knockoffs out there.
While, inevitably, HA Bumblebee got four separate releases, Sideswipe and even Skids were deemed worthy of a single repaint each, but Barricade never was. His only other appearance was in an Asian-territory exclusive boxed set with the Dark of the Moon/Human Alliance Soundwave figure in 2014.
It's a real shame that the Human Alliance concept ended up getting watered down, leading to fewer full-sized, movie character-based figures and loads of smaller, more generic and repaintable figures in later waves. I think, these days, I might even be on board for more G1-based toys if Hasbro decided to make them Human Alliance - after all, it would be taking the toys full-circle, back to their days as Diaclone mech with little pilot figures... And, with the G.I. Joe Collaborations figures of Megatron and Bumblebee ending up so crappy, perhaps a smaller scale - and a new, more experienced design team - could make that crossover concept work.
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