Since I was not a follower of the IDW comics, this was a semi-reluctant purchase for me. I'd picked up the Club's Chromedome from the 2014 Subscription Service selection because the head sculpt was cool and it was made using the TF Prime Wheeljack mold, which had been one of my favourites from that toyline.
But, in the back of my mind, I was dimly aware that an IDW-style Chromedome was somehow incomplete without a corresponding Rewind and, since that was one of the other figures from the same year's selection, I tracked one down just to complete the couple.
I can't remember now whether I bought this before or after I picked up the TransFormers United Rumble & Frenzy set at TFNation in 2016, but one would surely have contributed to my purchase of the other. Thing being, on the surface and aside from the obvious physical similarities in their G1 selves, this is a particularly curious choice for one of Blaster's cassettes... Let's find out why.
So, yes, it's a tank. I can almost see the logic that turned Frenzy and Rumble into tanks, not least because they're Decepticons and that's become almost the default vehicle mode for 'difficult' characters being produced outside their usual context, but primarily because the former was a warrior and the latter was a demolitions specialist. Tanks are, let's face it, ideally suited to both functions. Eject's function was 'Electronic Surveillance' - making him a counterpoint to Soundwave in some ways - while Rewind, here, was an archivist. Function certainly didn't dictate form in this instance.
Nevertheless, I can see why the Collectors' Club took the easy route of adapting the most current Rumble and Frenzy into Eject and Rewind, since it meant they could get away with simply remoulding a single head between both figures and leave the original Cassetticon details in place. It's their usual strategy, it's cheap... and it more-or-less works with a better hit rate than Hasbro have managed with their own exclusives, specials and 'capsule programmes' since.
Rewind makes for a fairly striking tank but, in a lot of ways, his colourscheme in vehicle mode is too little different from Rumble - predominantly black and red. There's less red here, certainly, with the G1 character's grey and gold taking greater prominence, but the fact that it's all applications of red paint - which end up less visible in robot mode - make it wasteful and all the more incongruous. The gold paint use is strangely cold and, while it's clearly metallic, it comes across as fairly flat and dull... Then again, since it's applied to the guns and the treads, that's appropriate enough.
Robot Mode:
Rewind certainly looks more like Rewind in robot mode, but he's just as clunky and skinny as the two Decepticon tanks/Cassetticons, with massive amounts of bulk on his upper body supported by stick-like legs. It feels as though the red paint which made vehicle mode that little bit more striking was considered less appropriate to robot mode, as most of it is either disguised by transformation, or simply left hanging off the back of his shoulders.
The gold paint on his chest is applied in almost an inverse pattern to the Rumble/Frenzy figures, which only vaguely resembles the original G1 toy's chrome applications... and, really, therein lies the biggest problem with this as a premium exclusive. Neither G1 Rewind nor Eject were as extensively decorated as Rumble and Frenzy. Where the Casseticons had dedicated robot mode stickers on their legs, the Recordabots showed off bare plastic, and only had stickers for their cassette forms - there aren't even any Reprolabels upgrades for the original figures. This has largely carried over the the Collectors' Club version, albeit with some grey paint on the shins and the feet as a perfunctory attempt to break the monotony. Silver would have been preferable, but grey is admittedly more faithful to the G1 toy, and it's also used to highlight the pipework on his chest. To be fair, even the TF United figures didn't fully replicated the G1 toys' stickers with paint, but they were at least a little bit more interesting that this.
The head sculpt is perhaps a little less bland than the one on the G1 toy: it's certainly more three-dimensional, and isn't hollow at the back. It follows the IDW character model in that it tapers slightly inward from top to bottom, where the original spreads out, into something that looks almost like a large collar. The proportions here are far less extreme, leading to a more streamlined appearance, yet the battlemask and visor have a lot more character to them. He also has the head-mounted camera introduced by the IDW character model. Overall, it's not the most interesting sculpt, but I'm certainly glad the Club didn't opt to base the head design on the hideous G1 animation model. In terms of paintwork, to my eyes, the red of his battlemask doesn't seem to match the red on his tank panels, seeming to tend almost toward purple. This struck me as a little odd, given that the images I've seen of Subscription Service Eject appear to show the same orange paint used for his battlemask and a couple of details on his lower legs. The visor is painted with a metallic cyan, rather than following the G1 toy patterns of painting the entire 'face' red, or the horrific animation model, which would have left the battlemask unpainted, with red across the visor... perhaps with dots of metallic blue for the eyes.
By and large, I'm all for thoughtful, intelligent reuses of decent molds to supplement a toyline, and that was the Collectors' Club's bread and butter for slightly more than a decade. This one, I'm in two minds about. On the one hand, it was only fair that Blaster's pair of humanoid cassette minions got new toys, particularly considering at least one of them was quite prominent in the IDW comics at the time, and the TF United Rumble/Frenzy mold was certainly the logical choice. On the other hand, it wasn't a great mold to begin with and, while Hasbro and Takara can get away with depicting Frenzy as having piledrivers - since that's certainly how he was presented in the animated movie - extending that to Rewind and Eject doesn't work at all. Sure, their repainted cannons are just as suitable to represent adhesion rifles and electrical overload guns, respectively, but the piledrivers - and their hair triggers - become nothing more than ugly and frustrating kibble.
Still, Chromedome has his Conjunx Endura, and perhaps that's the most important thing:
No comments:
Post a Comment