Generations Selects Legacy: Evolution Antagony

Femme-Bot Friday #90

These days, even now I'm back in full-time work, impulse buys of TransFormers toys are few and far between, because my abiding impression is that overall quality has dropped substantially versus toys from a few years ago. Where a new figure is a remake of an earlier Generations toy - especially something like the Kingdom Waspinator mold feeling like a cheap knockoff of the 30th Anniversary toy - I'm even less inclined to pick up the newer version.

However, Legacy Inferno was the first new toy of the Beast Wars character since the 1997 original, which I've never owned, and Antagony was a BotCon 1998 exclusive repaint as a Femme-Bot, which I've also never owned... The new toy appeared to be such a hopeless simplification of the original, losing most of its impressive features, so Inferno was among the majority of Legacy toys that I skipped.

And yet... when I happened upon Generations Selects Legacy: Evolution Antagony - ostensibly a limited edition repaint by Hasbro themselves - at a branch of Game inside a Sports Direct in Eastbourne, that old impulse arose. Could this be another case of buyer's remorse? Let's take a look...

TransFormers Legacy: Evolution Deadeye Duel 2-pack - Kaskade vs. Javelin

(Femme-Bot Friday #87)

It struck me in the afternoon of January 1st that, as of this year - and, more specifically, yesterday - Femme-Bot Friday has been a feature of this blog for ten years. That being the case, I thought it appropriate to try to post something special... which might have been easier if the franchise had offered a greater quantity of worthwhile Femme-Bots. It would have been wonderful to hit FBF#100 for this anniversary, but that could only be achieved by re-posting Femme-Bots that I'd posted about before FBF became a thing.

And, while it would have been ideal to celebrate 10 years since I kicked off this feature with a post about Flame Toys' Arcee model kit, I haven't yet taken sufficient photos for that figure (lack of time, motivation and daylight over the last few months being largely responsible), so we're just going to have to make do with a Legacy: Evolution versus set that - miraculously - pits two unique Femme-Bots against each other. Little did I know, before I started writing all this, but this set actually refers to a specific story in the IDW comics, though the two featured characters don't exactly face off.

Is this unprecedented boxed set worth the investment? Well... That's an especially astute question, given my opinion of Hasbro's current output...

Legacy On Clearance - AKA Not An Unboxing Post VI

Aside from occasionally voicing my disdain for the enervated mess that is TransFormers Legacy, I've not had a lot to say about the toyline because I'd bought just two products featuring Legacy branding, and one of those had it playing second fiddle to the Buzzworthy Bumblebee brand.

Nevertheless, there have been occasional announcements that have piqued my interest... at least until I apply a cost/benefit analysis and decide that I don't want to pay Hasbro's current prices for the quality of product they're pushing. One of these announcements was the Deadeye Duel 2-pack, featuring a retooling of the Bumblebee movie Arcee toy. Unfortunately, the other figure in the set was an extensive retool of the Power of the Primes Moonracer/Novastar and War For Cybertron: Siege Lancer/Greenlight figures (or, more accurately, a minor retool of Siege Chromia/Nightbird) which made its £50 price tag far less appealing. That mold was bad enough back in Power of the Primes... that they're still using it more than five years later is just embarrassing.

Once in a while, I'll pop back to the Hasbro Pulse website and have a quick look at the new offerings and, on one such visit, I noticed they now have an 'Outlet' section... which appears to be where their shelfwarmers go to die. I think, by now, the majority of my Pulse purchases have been discounted, either with the help of one of their coupon codes or in a seasonal sale, so finding Deadeye Duel on sale for £22.99, I figured I might as well put some birthday money toward it... After all, that's two Deluxe class toys for less than the current price of a single Deluxe class toy.

Granted, I already knew one of them was going to be crap, but that's still a (small) discount on the figure I actually wanted.

I'm still not convinced that the mixture of figure styles really works for Legacy, but we'll see when I do the full write-up.