Revenge of the Fallen Ransack

It's often said that aircraft don't make for good vehicle modes for TransFormers toys... and with evidence running from G1 Silverbolt to the very latest incarnation of that same character in the Age of the Primes toyline, and even the Masterpiece version of movie Starscream, it's hard to deny. However, there have been rare treats, such as Generations/Reveal the Shield Lugnut, and Third Party companies have worked wonders with movieverse designs, let alone their own unique creations.

So, where goes Ransack fall on this spectrum of achievements? Buckle up, flybots... we're in for a wild ride!

Vehicle Mode:

If someone had told me, back in the day, that there would one day be a reasonably convincing biplane TransFormer, I would have been incredulous. It's always seemed hard enough for Hasbro to create convincing robots out of more contemporary aircraft with just two wings. Handling two pairs of wings would surely result in disaster... Even the most analogous Third Party attempts were rather chunky yet, upon initial inspection, Ransack has a surprisingly clean and convincing vehicle mode. The wings aren't overly chunky, they're connected via supports that are basically as thin as the scale and material would permit, and are attached to a fuselage that is suitably simple and compact.

What's more, the paint job might be quite sparing for its time but, for these days, it'd be positively opulent. Most of the plane's nose is painted a greenish gold which, while it somehow skips the cockpit section between the wings, continues and quickly tapers down into a line which then doesn't quite make it all the way to the tail, where it's applied to the edges of the empannage. The protruding engine is nicely detailed and fully painted silver, and the upper wing has a 'weathering' effect applied to supplement the two stylised movie Decepticon insignias. Most of the tail is covered with dark gunmetal paint, with red on the flaps, which makes for a nice emphasis to the sculpted panel lining.

Below the lower wings are twists of metal - which form the robot's arms - upon which are mounted the vehicle's weapons. On one side, he has a pair of machine guns fed by twin drum magazines, while the other carries a pair of small bombs. To my mind, this figure would have benefitted by having both of these weapons mounted on 5- or 3mm ports rather than being pinned in place, because the wings are a terrible place to mount weapons on a biplane - unless perfectly mounted and calibrated, they can't be accurately aimed from a cockpit sat between the wings. There's more than enough space on the underside of the fuselage to peg in the bombs and, while there was probably no practical way to mount the guns in front of the cockpit due to the protruding engine (and the large transformation hinge directly behind it) the guns would have made more sense underslung behind the propeller, or mounted on the upper fuselage for a rear gunner sat behind the pilot.

Due to the vagaries of molding small plastic parts, the main tail section never quite lines up properly on my copy, and the fuselage doesn't come together very securely, but the biggest disappointment is that the landing wheels are non-rolling, molded as part of their struts, which then don't have a fixed position in vehicle mode. Oddly, it looks as though the wheels were originally planned to be separate and pinned - the mountings have round holes on the insides - but this was likely budgeted out.

Robot Mode:

Unusual as Ransack's vehicle mode may be, his almost skeletal robot mode is the perfect complement. This is easily one of the weirdest, most gangly-looking TransFormers toys ever created, and yet there's also something very familiar about his shape and engineering: the arms unfurling from the undersides of wings and legs made out of the tail section are a clear homage to the original G1 version of Powerglide, but with a more movie-like spin on his construction and appearance.

Unsurprisingly the bulk of his wings ends up hanging off his back as a cape, but it actually suits him for the most part, since the wings on this type of aircraft were invariably just fabric stretched over a wooden frame. Coupled with his overall skeletal appearance, the cape gives him a melodramatic, horror movie vibe that's quite novel in a TransFormers toy, especially one from the live action movie franchise. The colour doesn't work so well, and the painted weathering is all on the back of the figure cleaving the bare, sickly beige plastic on view from the front, but it otherwise looks quite cool, and the cape gives the illusion of more bulk on his skeletal frame.

Being so slender, robot mode isn't particularly detailed in terms of its sculpt or paintwork. The dropped nose looks very awkward and only reveals a silver-painted grille on Ransack's chest. Both the propeller and the arms tend to clash with the landing wheels, and there's no 'good' position to leave them in to mitigate this. Similarly, shifted panels of fuselage flop around on his hips, not locking into any position or angle, and revealing thighs which are skeletal to the point they're barely there between the ball socket hip and the pinned knee joints.

As mentioned in the vehicle mode part, Ransack's weapons are built onto his arms - the machine guns on the right, bombs on the left - and his hands aren't built to hold anything else. Looking at it from a post-War for Cybertron perspective, this seems like a huge missed opportunity, but it was perfectly normal for the time and, structurally, probably makes most sense. Separate, hand-held weapons weren't really a thing with any Scout class toys at this point.

Ransack's head sculpt is essentially a robotic skull wearing the plane's engine as a hat, completing the picture of a Terminator cosplaying as a biplane. The head itself is weirdly small - certainly smaller than it needed to be to fit into the cavity in his chest - which gives the engine hat a comically oversized appearance. The sculpt is surprisingly detailed for its size, but it's size limits the depth of the detail. While the face is largely unpainted, the grey plastic has a metallic sheen, so the silver paint on the 'hat' and chin plate aren't doing all the heavy lifting, particularly with his beady, bulbous eyes picked out in red, staring out from under the brim of his 'hat'.

As Scout class figures go, Ransack's transformation is unique and fairly interesting, not least due to the asymmetrical legs, which close up to form the bulk of the fuselage and the tailplanes. The tail then rotates 90° before folding up below the wings on his back. The nose folds up, with the head tucking into it, then the upper wings basically straighten out, swing forward and clip into place over the cockpit, with the tips of the lower wings secured by plugging them into the robot's elbows once the arms are folded up and the hands attached to a peg on the underside. It's all smooth, simple and efficient, though there are a couple of aspects where a stopping point would be helpful for the sake of stability in robot mode. I do find that the upper wings won't fully tab into the plate they're mounted on, but this seems to be a tolerance issue with their transformation joints. The most problematic aspect of his transformation is that the arms peg in so securely - at the elbow and wrist - that unpegging them sometimes causes the entire arm to pop off at the ball joint shoulder.

Scout class figures invariably used to suffer in terms of articulation, with those from the Revenge of the Fallen lines generally coming out as the least compromised. In terms of actual joints, Ransack seems pretty good in theory. The ball-jointed shoulders have great range and aren't particularly inclined to pop off through posing, the elbows can swing freely backward and forward, until the weapon on the forearm butts up against the upper arm. The waist can rotate freely, the movement of the ball-jointed hips is only hindered by the plane's landing wheels and the folded-out chunks of fuselage flapping around weirdly. His knees can bend almost 90° backward and forward, and then the feet are somewhat articulated due to transformation. The downside is that they are completely asymmetrical, making him quite difficult to stand in a stable pose. The right foot can tilt forward/backward and inward/outward, while the left foot can tilt forward/backward as far as the tail fin will allow, or rotate around the ankle.

In retrospect, I can't understand how I managed to forget all about Ransack. Not only has the figure been at the front of his shelf - largely due to his diminutive stature - but he's also one of the more interesting toys to come out of the Revenge of the Fallen line. Based on a throwaway detail, glimpsed all too briefly in one of the movie's many largely improvised exposition dump scenes, he's derived wholly from concept art rather than CGI. As a result, he almost feels more like a figure from the first movie's experimental expanded universe of toys. Then there's the alt mode... and it's struck me, writing about Ransack now, that he makes an excellent toy biplane... and, let's face it, that's not a common thing these days. Random spacecraft all over the place, any number of sleek jets ruined by clunky robot undercarriage, but a simple biplane would rarely figure in any contemporary toyline, let alone TransFormers. There was just one repaint of the Ransack mold, as Divebomb - essentially the Red Baron, but a Decepticon - and, in retrospect, I wish I'd picked him up as well.