War for Cybertron: Kingdom/Golden Disk Collection Mutant Tigatron

Looking back on the War For Cybertron Trilogy, now that we're entering the second year of Legacy, it is quite easily apparent that it was a troubled toyline from the very start. How much it was affected by COVID-19 is anyone's guess but the line, as a whole, was an occasionally glorious trainwreck, with little in the way of consistent direction, particularly when the Netflix series is included in its context.

Siege was a toyline that didn't live up to its promise and which ended before it really got started. Its accompanying show didn't feature half the molds or characters available, yet introduced some who weren't represented on the toy shelves. Earthrise was yet another in Hasbro's seemingly interminable series of 'true' G1 reboots, yet half the expected characters wound up in the Studio Series '86 line, while the animated series was a continuation of Siege that had zero connection to the toyline beyond certain specific figures. Kingdom, meanwhile, was seemingly cobbled together from the end of Earthrise and a Beast Wars anniversary toyline which has continued into Legacy without ever properly acknowledging Beast Wars, or its anniversary, and the Netflix show kept the same old Siege CGI for the Autobots and, while it introduced some of the Maximals, most of the Predacons were absent.

So it seems strange that Hasbro chose to further muddy the waters by creating several unrelated boxed sets, all of which featuring either repaints or minimal retools. The Golden Disk Collection would have been an easy pass for me, in its entirety, were it not for Hasbro's decision to make Terrorsaur part of the set rather than a mainstream Kingdom toy. This one was only of mild interest to me, because the original Tigatron figure was unexpectedly good... but, at £32, Mutant Tigatron was a figure I decided I could live without. However, as part of Hasbro's Advent sale in the run-up to Christmas 2022, they dropped his price to just £16... and I found I could no longer resist.

War for Cybertron Trilogy Covert Agent Ravage/Decepticons Forever Ravage

Every so often, even now, a set of TransFormers toys comes along that has the potential to get me excited. Whether it's something new and unique, or simply a repaint into a favourite character, Hasbro sometimes manages transcend the current mediocrity of their products... and this was once such set.

It excited me because I was interested in the Beast Wars Metals Jaguar - the 1999 Japan-only retooling of Transmetals Cheetor into the Tripredacus Agent seen in the three-part Season 2 finale of Mainframe's seminal Beast Wars television series - but the toy, frankly, looks a bit crappy and, these days, tends to be very expensive on the secondary market, with some sellers asking over £350 for the boxed figure.

Hasbro's new version, released in 2021, didn't quite hit all the right notes for me and, at its full asking price of £49, was an easy pass. However, during their Advent Calendar sale, they dropped the price by 50%, and I felt almost obliged to order, just to have a version of such a fantastic reimagining of G1 Ravage, even though the accompanying part of the set would be possibly the fourth copy of the actual G1 Ravage toy that I've owned.

But was it a worthwhile investment, even at half price? Read on, and find out!

War for Cybertron: Kingdom Tigatron

Much as I object to the use of Kingdom - the third and final chapter of the much-vaunted War for Cybertron Trilogy - as a perfunctory 'celebration' of Beast Wars in lieu of a dedicated toyline, I have to confess that I've been at least somewhat impressed by a number of the Beast Wars figures who appeared in the line.

Cheetor, however, was not one of them... poorly proportioned and with a rather sad axe/whip formed from his beast mode tail as his only weapon, he didn't seem that much better than the awful mess of a Universe toy from 2008. Given that the original BW Tigatron was a simple repaint of Cheetor, I wasn't holding out much hope for a Kingdom Tigatron to be much better. When it was announced that he would not only be a unique mold, but a Voyager class figure rather than just another Deluxe, my hopes started creeping back up again. When photos were eventually released, he looked - not to put too fine a point on it - almost like a completely different figure. Sure, the engineering was similar, but the additional size clearly allowed for refinements of the engineering, resulting in a figure that was objectively far better looking in both modes.

Of course, this being a Hasbro release, it wasn't without its fair share of controversy... because he ended up - somehow - being voted Figure of the Year in Hasbro's 2021 Hall of Fame, despite not being (widely) available until late January of this year. While that may have been a promotional coup, generating significant 'buzz' for the figure, many fans resented the inclusion of something only a select few had handled at the time of the awards, having acquired it by questionable means.

Mine arrived mid-January, and I've given myself plenty of time to familiarise myself with it... So let's take a look at Tigatron to see whether or not he truly deserved the award, and if he's as significant an improvement on the Beast Wars original as some of his Kingdom contemporaries.

Galaxy Force Dark Ligerjack

There's something a little bit sad about Galaxy Force Ligerjack. Obviously the character is one who, having been defeated in battle, obtained an upgraded form - supposedly through the power of the key, according to the cartoon, though that's not a feature reflected in the toys - but also the toy itself is only part of what it should have been. Designed from the start to combine with Galaxy Convoy or Master Megatron/Galvatron as a new arm, his original design included fingers and thumbs for this additional mode, and the key gimmicks were rather more extensive. Evidently too costly for the final toy, these additional features were removed, leaving gaping holes and rendering the arm form a bit useless.

My reason for not buying standard Ligerjack was mainly that I disliked his colourscheme... so, naturally, when the 'Dark' version was announced, it made it onto my want list immediately.

Revenge of the Fallen Ravage (Legends)

Continuing my recent theme of ten-year-old movie toys and - finally - completing the write-ups for my collection of Revenge of the Fallen toys, here we have the second mold made of Ravage, yet another G1 character who got a bit of a raw deal out of that movie.

The Decepticons' master spy, a renowned lurker-in-the-shadows, got turned into a shiny, bare-metallic cyclopean robo-kitty whose contributions to comic relief far outweighed his few awesome moments of action. Rather than sneaking into the N.E.S.T. holding facility to steal their Allspark fragment, he went in all guns blazing and essentially provided a distraction for the weird gestalt known as Reedman, which he had merely deployed by coughing his component ballbearings down a ventilator shaft. His only other significant contributions were delivering Scalpel to the captive Sam Witwicky (anyone else find it odd that Soundwave ejects Ravage, then Ravage ejects both Reeman and Scalpel, without any indication of how either got inside him?), and then getting his spine ripped out by the tail when it went up against Bumblebee during the climactic battle of the movie.

His Deluxe class toy proved to be disappointing, in that it had only a perfunctory alternate mode - dubbed 'Re-entry Mode' and supposedly representing his 'missile' form after Soundwave shot him down to Earth - and a colourscheme that was more G1 than movie. After about a year - and a couple of repaints - Hasbro released a completely new mold, in the smallest current size class. There were two positive signs on this version - first and foremost, his colourscheme was very much movie-style bare metallic. Perhaps more interestingly, its alternate mode was based on the fish/submersible form Ravage was given in his concept art, but which didn't make it into the movie.

Is it possible that a tiny Legends class figure is better than a Deluxe?

Perfect Effect PE-DX05 'Beast Muscle' Leonidas

Every so often, a Third Party release comes along that has my attention from the very first images. There's no real pattern to it, but there's frequently a connection to my earlier collecting habits.

One of the stranger examples is this - Perfect Effect's pre-Beast Wars reimagining of Lio Convoy. Granted, I'm a fan of the original, and I love the Collectors' Club's 2015 Membership Incentive version, but this is a version of the character who transforms into a robotic lion... which basically doesn't make sense in the context of Beast Wars... or, really, any TransFormers continuity.

But when has that stopped me buying something potentially awesome?

NB: This post has been sitting in my drafts for well over a year... Nothing unusual for me, in the grand scheme of things but, in this case, there's a very good reason...

Beast Wars Telemocha Series Tigatron

All things considered, mold reuse was not especially common in Beast Wars... at least, not in the sense of repainting one character into another. Even in those cases, it wasn't repainting one species into another. Reusing Cheetor's mold to represent a white tiger - which tend to be native to Bengal, while Tigatron patrolled the arctic zones in the Beast Wars TV series - seems strange, although it's suggested that he was intended to be remolded slightly.

Beast Wars Telemocha Series Cheetor

Every line of TransFormers needs a headstrong, action-hungry kid-appeal character who starts off completely arrogant, insubordinate and consistently bites off more than he can chew, but grows not only to respect his Prime but the rest of his team as well. Lately, that's been the Bumblebee role... but in the Beast Wars, another yellow character fulfilled the same purpose...

Classics Hound with Ravage

It might seem strange to pair an Autobot with a Decepticon in a single Deluxe package but, as any fan of the Generation 1 cartoon will tell you, Hound and Ravage have... history. There's also the small matter of size... much like his Generation 1 self, Classics Hound is a bit on the small side. He compares better to his fellow Deluxe Autobots than G1 Hound did to his, but Hasbro clearly felt that something was lacking so, not only does he have an attachable weapon, but he has his long-time nemesis along for the ride as well.

Beast Wars II Lio Convoy

Strange how things change... When I first saw this thing, I thought it looked pretty daft. Then again, I thought most if not all of Beast Wars looked daft. Once I'd warmed to the idea, and started collecting Beast Wars toys (mainly through eBay or the re-releases), I really wanted Lio Convoy... That same lion's head on one shoulder that I'd ridiculed a few years before suddenly looked awesome. The first version I managed to find, however, was the downsized Robot Masters version and its black repaint... Though it wasn't long till I found the original...

Revenge of the Fallen Ravage (Deluxe)

It was quite daring of the live action movie franchise to include a character like Ravage. As one of a few G1 characters who appeared very regularly in the TV series, Ravage has a fanbase with certain... expectations. His character has remained fairly consistent throughout his long history (and between continuities - he's appeared in Beast Wars, after all), and he's never had to suffer the ignominy of becoming comic relief... His reputation as being the sneakiest Decepticon, their most perfect spy, has never been called into question (except perhaps in the pilot for the G1 cartoon)...

...Until now. And I'm not talking about Shattered Glass Ravage, either.

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2009 (Timelines) Razorclaw

Some of the extras offered at BotCon 2009 seemed a little... out of keeping with the Wings of Honour theme. Indeed, one pair - Razorclaw and Elita-1 - was essentially a rounding-off of missing figures from previous years: 2006's Dawn of Futures Past and 2008's Games of Deception respectively.

Dawn of Futures Past told of the events immediately prior to the beginning of the Beast Wars TV series, with a terrorist calling himself Megatron, and his crew, running off with an artifact known as 'The Golden Disk' (possibly the same gold LP that was sent out into space with Voyager), and Optimus Prime sent in pursuit with his ragtag crew. Bizarrely Fun Publications later released a 2-part movie on the internet, called Theft of the Golden Disk, which explained the events leading up to DoFP. Talk about doing things backwards. The comic featured all the characters who were part of the boxed set that year, and the Attendee Only extras, such as Megatron (based on the Galaxy Force First Gunner mold). At the very end of the comic, the story shifted back to 'the present day', and the final frame showed Razorclaw, leader of G1 gestalt group the Predacons, looking pretty darned fearsome, and based quite obviously on the Galaxy Force Ligerjack mold.

It was quite an obvious fit - both had lion heads on their chests, after all - and the popularity of the Predacons led to a reissue of the entire G1 team in a Predaking boxed set from Takara Tomy. Strangely, though Fun Publications did not release this form of Razorclaw as a Club Exclusive and, if I remember correctly, stated at the time that they had no intention of doing so.

Cut to 2009... we've already seen Hasbro repaint and remold the Ligerjack mold into Leo Prime (one version of which was coloured to reference Beast Wars Lio Convoy), and the Legends version of the mold had been repainted as Razorclaw... Was there room for another full-size repaint of this much-maligned mold?