Universal Studios Evac

To kick off what I'm hoping will be a week of examining my Holiday Haul, I shall start with the odd one out - the only new and entirely unique character, since he was created for TransFormers: The Ride at Universal Studios Hollywood (and Florida, I gather). All things considered, it's a very clever move to create a toy based on such a character, but it has to be something pretty special to justify a premium price point ($24.95), even in the gift shop attached to the ride.

Galaxy Force Live Convoy

If there's one thing the TransFormers line doesn't do well, it's helicopters. Those rotor blades and long, thin tails invariably end up just hanging off somewhere awkward, and the overall shape tends to be in the region of a brick with a long, thin tail and rotor blades.

There have been exceptions to this rule, such as TF: Prime Airachnid and movie Blazemaster/Evac/Tailwhip, and even movie Blackout (to an extent - his tail hangs from his back) but, by and large, they don't work very well and tend to follow the same, fairly simplistic transformation schemes.

Back in the days of Cybertron/Galaxy Force, risks were taken with the robot designs, and the Voyager class helicopter Evac/Live Convoy did things a little differently...

N.E.S.T. Global Alliance Evac

Helicopters have had a raw deal in the TransFormers line for many years, and it's really only been in the most recent lines that this has improved in any significant way. Galaxy Force produced the excellent Live Convoy (coincidentally named Evac in the US/UK version of the story) and the original live action movie gave us the awesome - though undersized - Blackout.

Perhaps there's something about helicopters and scale, because this latest one - originally used as Blazemaster in the RotF line - is easily the smallest Deluxe in the entire line. Rotor blades may well fill most of the packaging and make them awkward to keep in scale, but this thing is pretty ridiculous...