Unique Toys R-09 Red Destroyer

The moment I learned that Unique Toys were planning to develop Stinger for their line of Masterpiece-analogues, my curiosity was piqued. After all, this was a nonentity who dissolved into a flying cloud of metal cubes rather than transforming. When the first grey prototype images appeared, I was instantly hooked. My experience with Unique Toys products thusfar has been uniformly positive: their engineering has always been clever without being overly complex and their QC has yet to disappoint. However, in terms of screen-accuracy, particularly on their head sculpts, they've never been 100% on the mark, which resulted in some of their more recent figures later being 'fixed' by cheaper knockoffs.

Their strategy for this figure was to cut down on paint applications to reduce the retail price as far as they could, in the hope that people would buy the original rather than wait for a KO, and they teased the release of a Camaro Bumblebee with much the same robot mode as additional motivation - the suggestion being that the reception of Red Destroyer will determine whether the yellow Camaro goes into production. Their paintwork has almost always been considered lacking by fans and, coupled with the eyewatering prices of some figures and inaccuracies in their sculpts, they've given the KO merchants ample room to make improvements in the past. Dialling things back even further seems like the worst decision to me. As it turned out, they revealed images of the Camaro remix within a month of Red Destroyer shipping.

But let's see how Red Destroyer stands as his own product, before anyone has the opportunity to reverse engineer it and produce a cheaper option.

Packaging:

First impressions actually aren't that great, surprisingly. Unique Toys boxes have certainly been declining in their quality since Peru Kill and Dragoon. While the cardboard itself is still good, the matte finish isn't in any way embellished by spot UV varnish or holographic backing, like those previous releases. The quality of the photography is well below par, the design is utterly pedestrian, the English text is an absolute mess of poor spelling, wonky spacing and odd capitalisations. Furthermore, the two included Collectors' cards are pretty crummy compared to those of previous figures, both in terms of design and, again, photography. The Tech Specs analogue has much the same spelling errors as Red Dasher's, while the product shots with Nero - their AoE Galvatron - are washed out and poorly staged. The inclusion of a ghosted version of the proposed yellow Camaro mold on the back of the box doesn't help, as it takes up space that would have been better used by additional product shots, showcasing the articulation of this figure.

The figure itself is packaged in robot mode within a plastic bag, held securely by a plastic clamshell, with all the accessories in a separate, resealable bag. He comes with the expected parts - that 'claw' cannon that's strangely reminiscent of Megatron's arm cannon from Revenge of the Fallen, and two pairs of missile launchers, each unique to vehicle or robot mode - as well as six spare blades for his 'wings', in case of loss or breakage of those he comes fitted with. The weirder inclusions are a yellow version of the Stinger/Battlemasked head - suggesting they intend to release their Camaro Bumblebee figure with the usual, ugly Bayverse Bumblebee head - and an unpainted, red plastic version of the forearm blades packaged with Red Dasher... a weapon that Stinger never uses in the film.

For further cost-cutting, rather than printed instructions, the back of the box is emblazoned with two QR codes, linking to transformation videos on YouTube and bilibili, while a sticker on the bottom doesn't even get the name of the toy right, listing it as UT-DUMB (their Skids analogue), even though it carries the correct designation of UT-R09 right next to that!

Perhaps even worse than that is the hazard text printed on the back, which appears to have been two separate blocks of Chinese mistakenly blended together following their translation into error-ridden English. I've included a photo below, but I suspect it was intended to read as "Choking Hazard: This product contains small parts. Harmful or fatal if swallowed. Be careful when handling, this product contains parts which are sharp. May cause injury. Avoid storing in hot, humid places with extreme temperatures, or in direct sunlight. Misuse of this product can result in injury."

Vehicle Mode:

Among the many fun things about the TransFormers franchise is the way it can introduce one to real-world car brands that one might otherwise never encounter, much like the Mitsuoka Orochi, the beautiful oddity used for the Alternity Decepticon Seekers back in 2010. Tangentially, perhaps the most significant of Michael Bay's dubious contributions to the brand through his portion of the movie franchise was the greasing of the wheels necessary for Hasbro to get contemporary licensed vehicles - not to mention several concept vehicles - into the toyline and, as a result, a movie 'character' whose alternate mode is the sublime Pagani Huayra. I've said before that I'm not exactly a car person, but I'd never even heard of Pagani Automobili S.p.A. until the buzz surrounding Stinger revealed that he was not, in fact an McLaren.

Of course, it comes as no surprise that Pagani is an Italian company. The country that spawned iconic brands like Ferrari, Lamborghini and Lancia - all manufacturers whose vehicles have become TransFormers toys, licensed or not - as well as the likes of Maserati and Alfa Romeo. Pagani, though, is relatively new - founded in 1992 - and, to be blunt, specialises in performance cars for the super-rich. Just to add to the pretentiousness of the brand, the Huayra is named after a South American god of wind, and only 100 were ever made... Which kind of automatically makes Red Destroyer (and, to be fair, Studio Series Stinger and KSI Sentry, to a lesser degree) feel like a Lucky Draw figure.

The design is quite beautiful and - to my eyes, at least - sufficiently distinct from McLaren that I've never quite understood the confusion. The short nose, long back, shallow, dome-like cockpit and the doubled-up arrangement of the headlights are all characteristic Pagani design elements. If anything, it's closer to the Mitsuoka Orichi with most of the 'wrinkles' and embellishments smoothed out - still alien, but less disturbingly so. The modelling of vehicle mode seems to be mostly accurate, even down to the leaf-shaped wing mirrors, which are molded in rubber to prevent breakage, and the panel breaks are mostly well-concealed. It's missing all the Pagani markings, naturally, and recessed details like the vents behind the front wheel wells and either side of the cockpit are present, albeit shallow and without their own paint applications. Doorhandles and panel lining is mostly absent on the car shell, though details like the window frames and windscreen wiper are present.

I need to say, straight off the bat, that my photos don't do the red paint justice. For some reason, it's come out far lighter, less rich than the burgundy my eyes see, and the pinkish shimmer doesn't come across at all well. Nevertheless, they do convey what a stunning bit of engineering this figure is, even showing improvement over recent figures like Red Dasher, let alone the seven-plus year old Peru Kill. The head- and tail lights are picked out in silver within darker gunmetal frames, the lozenges set across the vents behind the front wheels are picked out in silver. The rest of the paintwork is a super-dark gunmetal or charcoal colour, with a silver stripe separating the two colours on each side of the car... Although, on my copy, the final part of that stripe is missing on the righthand side, below the tail lights. Not something I mind, but it suggests a slackening of UT's quality control. It reflects somewhat poorly on them, given their early statements about deliberately cutting the paint budget on Red Destroyer in an effort to avoid the situation they've had with previous releases, of which cheaper knockoffs were produced surprisingly soon after UTs original became available... The whole idea of skimping on paint to keep costs down didn't strike me as the right answer, considering one of the features almost consistently offered by the KOs has been... a better paint job.

Something I very much appreciate about the Third Parties is that some of them still do wheels 'properly' - that is, in this case, we have pinned and painted die-cast wheels with rubber tyres. It feels like such a small holdover from the early days of Generation 1 (or, more accurately, the original Diaclone toys), but it's been so long since Hasbro have done so, even on their Masterpiece figures, that it feels significant. The use of solid plastic, semi-painted wheels only occasionally looks good, but always feels cheap... and the hollowness of the wheels on the likes of Masterpiece Movie Bonecrusher is all too obvious.

While UT have followed the pattern of their more recent MPM-analogues by omitting any vehicle mode storage/mounting for his robot mode weapons, Red Destroyer comes with a pair of missile pods,  which can be mounted on the front of the car, via a socket just in front of the front wheel wells, . They're unpainted, molded in black plastic and, to my mind, a little undersized versus what was shown in the movie... but they're a nice inclusion nonetheless.

Robot Mode:

For context, this is where Unique Toys' output usually gains its most mixed reviews, and it's already clear that Red Destroyer isn't going to break their unlucky streak on that score. This figure absolutely flubs several aspects of the robot's CGI design - the pelvis, for example, features a couple of hinged panels that should have been part of the inner thigh, but were mistakenly attached to the sides of his groin. In all honesty, I don't see that it matters that much but, given the way these parts fold up for vehicle mode, I'd suggest there may have been a valid engineering reason for separating them from his legs.

But, in a lot of ways, that seems to be one of the least issues some folks have had with the sculpt. To be perfectly honest, given that Age of Extinction was in cinemas back in 2014, it's surprising how wrong Unique Toys got Red Destroyer's chest. The impression of it is there, and some of the details are close enough, but the overall shape and the way different sections pass over and around each other to form the robot's torso is visibly off... and there's honestly no clear reason why that would be. The fact that his chest doesn't protrude as much as it should at the top is most likely due to the way it has to fit into vehicle mode, but the shallowness of the detail sculpted into the panels that make up the sides of his torso, and even the piston detail on his belly, is fairly typical of UT and one of the other complaints frequently made against them. It feels, in part, like a fanart reintepretation of Stinger that just isn't different enough to come across as deliberately different.

The limbs, meanwhile, are very nicely detailed with sweeping, curved armour panels and hints of interior mechanisms while, given the way the figure's lower legs are formed - out of myriad concertina'd panels from the sides of vehicle mode - they come out looking remarkably solid and cohesive. It may not be strictly accurate to the CGI, but I particularly like how the vehicle's tail lights are visible around the knee. For me, it's proof that this robot can turn into a car, where the CGI model simply became a cloud of flying pieces that coalesced into its desired form. Also noteworthy is the amount of detail sculpted into his back, considering how rarely people tend to look at a figure from that angle, and the fact that it's attached to the inside of the figure's windscreen. Hasbro and Takara Tomy's engineers really need to start paying attention to the way Third Parties like UT are tackling the car shell to minimise the backpacks on their figures.

At the end of the day, though, what really lets Red Destroyer down is the paintwork... or, rather, the lack of it. Robot mode features a mixture of unpainted plastic and parts that have been painted either red or black/charcoal to match their surroundings, with a few small applications of silver and dark gunmetal. Unique Toys made it clear, well in advance, that they were intentionally paring down the paintwork on this figure to reduce their production costs but, with Red Destroyer in-hand, it's clear that was the wrong decision. I don't believe for a moment that a few extra paint applications here and there would affect the final pricepoint so adversely that people would have been put off, but it's very clear that some potential buyers have been put off by the miserly paint budget. They've absolutely fallen foul of the old Hasbro mistake of using black plastic - and even some black-painted die-cast metal - to represent bare metal and, shiny though most of it may be, it really lets the figure and its detailing down. Where UT have got elements of the sculpt wrong, a touch of paint could have mitigated their errors, but things like the exposed gears in his joints, and even smaller touches like the missing lights in his chest and the red on his fingers, would have made a huge difference. I can understand not bothering to pick out the red slivers of armour on the backs of his thighs, but I'm convinced I saw strips of silver along with the red on the outsides of his thighs during at least a couple of the brief action sequences Stinger featured in. Red Destroyer may have more paintwork than the likes of MPM-14 Bonecrusher, but his paintwork is not even up to the standard of MPM-3 Bumblebee, and Takara Tomy have recently re-released that nine-year-old figure with "a new premium paint deco", at an inflated pricepoint.

As previously mentioned, Red Destroyer's accessories are a bit weird, to be honest. Aside from the spike wheels that plug into his back (and which, unlike those of Hasbro's toy, are not detachable for use as weapons) the vehicle mode missile racks and the forearm-mounted claw-cannon, he comes with a pair of accessories that can mount on his forearms which look to be a combination of blades and missile launchers. The latter function seemingly in reference to that part in AoE where Bumblebee hangs upside down off a bridge and launches volleys of small missiles at Galvatron... but this seems like a misunderstanding of the CGI - and the concept of visual foreshortening - because the missile launchers are actually built into the back ends of Stinger's vambraces. These are present on this figure, and even feature painted missiles, while the missiles sculpted on the underside of the blades are unpainted. Worse still, the way the blades mount means the missiles can't be pointed forward - they're always pointed toward his own hands, so he would have to hold his arms out, rather than ahead of himself, to launch the missiles forwards. Then, as if it couldn't get any weirder, he also comes with a single copy of the blades packaged with Red Dasher, which is molded in plain, unpainted red plastic. I'm not aware of Stinger ever having deployed a blade in his brief on-screen existence, and this thing feels like a bit of a waste... though perhaps it's a reference to the dual blade-thing packaged with KSI Sentry? Whatever purpose it's supposed to serve, it plugs into the vambraces, but looks cheap and silly... So I just put it back in the box without bothering to photograph it installed.

The head sculpt is... interesting. It's certainly better than Hasbro's version in most respects, but there are still glaring errors in the design. The back of the head features a flaring armour panel at the base of the 'skull' which, as far as I can tell, is part of the robot's collar in the CGI, not part of the head. Given the way the neck is jointed, this doesn't have a huge effect in its range of movement, but it does leave the sculpt, overall, looking strange. Amongst the many complaints levelled at Unique Toys, their habit of delivering an inaccurate head sculpt seems to be the one that frustrates the most... but, in all cases I've seen so far, they do a good job of capturing the impression of the heads/faces. You know exactly who you're looking at, even if some of the details are wrong and the sculpt isn't as intricate as it might have been. Unique Toys also only provided a masked version of Stinger's head, seemingly because this is the version that got the most screentime in Age of Extinction. The four-eyed, unmasked face was visible for just fractions of a second so, while I might still have preferred that to the Bumblebee repaint Unique Toys provided with this set, it's no surprise they didn't go the extra mile. Like the rest of the figure, paintwork is at a minimum: just a handful of small applications of a super-dark gunmetal/charcoal paint on either side of the large, central stripe over the top of the head, and then the visor is painted with a bright, acidic green. It's nicely glossy, but I can't help but think a pearlescent or metallic sheen would have helped his optics stand out better.

I've raved about the ingenious simplicity of Unique Toys' engineering on Peru Kill and Red Dasher, as well as DX9's La Hire, but I'd have to place Red Destroyer closer to the Dragoon end of their scale of complexity. Most of it is intuitive, and it certainly shares some engineering motifs with Peru Kill and Red Dasher, but the lower legs are far more complicated than either, while not being quite so tricky as those of Dragoon. Mainly, it's the fact you have to feed parts of his chest in underneath his shins while transforming him into vehicle mode strikes me as rather too fussy and potentially unnecessary. Other than that, the way the arms collapse in under the bonnet is surprisingly smooth despite the myriad joints involved and the need to arrange the shoulder armour/vehicle's front wings just so in either mode. The legs, meanwhile, follow a similar pattern to Red Dasher and La Hire, while also presenting a masterclass in collapsing great swathes of vehicle mode panelling into the calves, and the knee collapse is a neat variation on a common system, shortening the legs just a little to better match the Huayra's proportions. There are several parts where small panels have to almost pass through each other but, for me, the most frustrating aspect is the set of four stars that sprout from his back: the individual teeth are small and sharp, some of them are ridiculously loose, and folding them all in and out requires the wheels be rotated on their frames. Oh, and there's also the fact that the head isn't actually attached to the body... and one of the heel pieces just loves to fall off at the least convenient moments during the transformation process. On top of that, the vambraces are only held in position on his arms by a single tab/slot connection which is rather too loose to be effective. They and up popping out and attempting to transform all too easily while trying to pose the arms.

One area UT seem to be constantly improving on - albeit incrementally - is the articulation of their figures. Peru Kill seemed fantastic at the time but, in retrospect, some of its joints are a touch clunky. Dragoon is mostly great, but the lack of range in his ankles can make posing a chore. La Hire and Red Dasher are closer to what I would consider 'ideal', but still not without faults... and Red Destroyer is exactly the same. The shoulders can rotate a full 360°, but the joints have to be finagled to navigate the wheels around protrusions from the torso and the spike wheels on his back. Due to the way the arms transform, he has no bicep rotation, but the double-jointed elbows lead into forearm rotation, which works just as well for the most part. The wrists can rotate a full 360°, narrowly avoiding the tips of his vambraces, but can also tilt to improve clearance. One of this figure's biggest surprises is that the hands feature wholly independently jointed fingers and thumbs. Each finger only has two joints, but the thumb also has a ball joint at the base. Waist rotation is hampered by the 'spring' things that come out of the upper thighs on ball joints, but they can be folded back to improve the range. He also has an ab crunch joint but, to be honest, I'm a bit wary of it because it's a single hinge between two rather thin plastic panels. The hips are just as limited as the waist by those 'spring' pieces but their range of swing from front to back is substantially more than 180°. It's the hips' outward swing that is compromised, whatever position they're in, because the upper part of the thigh bumps into the torso at about 10-15°, and the hip swivel can't do much to help that. His knees are double-jointed and can get quite a way beyond the standard 90° but, once again, Unique Toys have allowed the feet to become the most contentious part. Not only are the ankles' up/down tilt joints frustratingly tight, but the outer heel spur generally doesn't touch the ground and the inner spur has a habit of popping out, while also being jointed in such a way as to make the 'foot' part surprisingly difficult to line up flat with the ground. By comparison, the lateral tilt is amazing - easily reaching 90° but, like the ab crunch, the joint feels alarmingly delicate. However, the lack of ankle rotation, which has never been a common feature, even on Third Party figures, seems far more problematic here, since the feet will only ever point straight ahead of his shins. The spike wheels on his back are very well jointed in terms of their 'stems', but the fit of the spikes themselves, effectively on c-clips, is inconsistent - some hold their position well, others flop about as if they're barely attached. Thankfully, spares are included in case any are lost during transformation or posing. The head is another sticking point for me. It's detachable (to facilitate the head swap on the Bumblebee retool, Buzz Guardian) so it's possible to rotate it 360°, but the shape of the head means it requires some fiddling, and the connection is comparatively loose and shallow, meaning it's all too easy for his head to slip off while only trying to move it. On top of that, they put in two joints to tilt the head up and down, but no means of tilting it from side to side. I can't help but think it might have been better for the collar piece itself to act as the junction between the neck joint and the head, since that may have allowed the head some lateral tilt. On balance, he is great fun to pose, but the lower half of his body feels less freely dynamic than the upper.

I have to admit I'm still not 100% sold on Red Destroyer. Part of me really wanted to instantly love it so much I'd want to buy Buzz Guardian without hesitation, just because the audacity of the applying the same engineering to a completely different vehicle mode is precisely the kind of thing I love about TransFormers. In-hand, not only is Red Destroyer's transformation a touch too frustrating on a couple of ostensibly small points, but the images of Buzz Guardian suggest that the problems with Red Destroyer have been compounded by new issues, like sections of vehicle mode that were left sticking out of his back (which, by all accounts, happened over the objections of the figure's designer).

That's not to say Red Destroyer is bad - it certainly isn't - just that Unique Toys' most consistent mistake still hasn't been addressed. Peru Kill and Challenger came out in 2018, four years after Age of Extinction, and fans complained that too many elements of the robots' designs were inaccurate to the movie characters' CGI. Dragoon and La Hire came out in 2019/2020, just two or three years after The Last Knight, and fans complained that too many elements of the robots' designs were inaccurate. Nero came out in 2021, seven years after Age of Extinction, with much the same reaction. Desperado, 2022, eleven years after Dark of the Moon, same reaction. Red Dasher, 2024, thirteen years after Dark of the Moon, same reaction. Dumb and Dumber, 2024-2025, fifteen years after Revenge of the Fallen, same reaction. Each figure has been excellent in and of itself, but they each fail as ideal Masterpiece Movie-line analogues. In many cases, these figures have spawned knockoffs which brought increased sculpt accuracy to the figures, as well as improved paintwork.

But now, eleven years after Age of Extinction, Unique Toys have elected to reduce their paint budget - something that was already a sore point among fans - so they can sell their latest figure at a lower price point... This hasn't stopped the fans complaining, it's given them something more to complain about. Red Dasher's sculpt - particularly with the most important features, the head and chest - is inaccurate to the CGI, for no discernible reason... and, on top of that, the paintwork is severely lacking. The emphasis on black and red gives almost Hasbro vibes. Buzz Guardian has only amplified the complaints about the mold, because the lighter, brighter colourscheme emphasises that the upper body is too narrow, the mechanical details lack depth, and the head sculpt is closer to the concept art than the final CGI... From a movie that was released almost twelve years ago.

Even so... even though I am, to a degree, disappointed by certain choices Unique Toys made with this mold, I maintain that their output should still be considered among the best the Third Parties have offered. If only they were as detail-oriented as they are mechanically ingenious, their figures would probably be the most consistently highly-regarded Masterpiece-analogues out there.

Red Destroyer is a fantastic figure in and of itself... it's only lacking as representation of the hyper-detailed movie CGI of Stinger. However, given that Stinger was really a nonentity in the movie - devoid of character, without a single line of dialogue in his sub six-minutes of screen time in a movie that ran to almost three hours (unless you count "Stinger... Coming online," in which case Stinger must be considered a Femme-Bot), that's really not something I, in all good conscience, can hold against this figure, or Unique Toys. At the end of the day, it's still a great-looking robot that turns into a phenomenal representation of the Pagani Huayra, with engineering ingenuity and mostly fluid articulation that far exceeds Hasbro's own Masterpiece Movie line. There's a sense of entitlement among TransFormers fans when it comes to Third Party figures... but the same level of criticism never seems to be directed at Hasbro, the owners of the IP. They get a pass on inaccurate transitions from movie CGI to transforming plastic toy because they have to work to stricter guidelines and tighter budgets (albeit with massively larger production runs and greater resources), while Third Parties seemingly have to offer perfection, despite their wholly independent status and shorter production runs. Perhaps UT's habit of flubbing the details is a deliberate effort to be less flagrant in their IP infringement. They're not likely to admit it, are they?

...And I think I may have just talked myself into buying Buzz Guardian...

The other thing, of course, is that Unique Toys might consider applying similar engineering to their own take on the KSI Sentry, creating another new head sculpt to accompany either this Pagani, the Camaro, or perhaps even a Chevvy Trax SUV from AoE. Given the chilly reception that Buzz Guardian has had, than now seems highly unlikely.