APC Toys Night Countess

(Femme-Bot Friday #82)

Way back in 2016, a 3D printed figure based on the TransFormers Prime character Airachnid turned up on my Facebook feed, courtesy of (seemingly former) YouTuber Daimchoc. Given that Hasbro's own Deluxe class toy was an absolute travesty, any new figure based on that character didn't exactly have a high bar to clear, but this looked to be phenomenal, even in its grey/white prototype form. A painted sample appeared not long afterward, looking incredible and, from the moment I first clapped eyes on it, it has been on my Want List, even though obtaining it seemed unlikely given its provenance. Then again, stranger things have happened...

Imagine my surprise, then, when APC Toys revealed images of their latest TransFormers Prime figure earlier in the year and, rather than being just another minor upgrade to an official TF Prime toy, it was that very 3D printed custom figure, fully painted and very much on the way to a full production run. The moment it became available, I put in my order... And, precisely 30 days later, it arrived, straight from China.

Is this new, Third Party take on the other alluring Femme-Bot Fatale actually any better than Hasbro's? Let's take a look...

MetaGate G-01 Haiku

I have quite a few excellent Third Party figures in my collection now, with an increasing number based on movie characters, and in a loosely Masterpiece-adjacent scale. Considering the couple of Hasbro-produced, Deluxe class figures of Age of Extinction Drift that I own are less than stellar, the announcement of a Third Party MP-analogue version certainly piqued my interest... And the fact that it was to be a triple-changer, taking both his Bugatti Veyron and futuristic helicopter modes into account, seemed like a tall order.

Add to that, the creators, MetaGate, were previously unheard of, and suddenly launching themselves toward an eager - and frequently highly critical - fandom with such an ambitious debut project. There have been rumours - as there were with DX9's La Hire - that Unique Toys have had a hand in this figure's creation but, so far, there appears to be little or no concrete evidence of that.

However, it quickly became a figure I was intent on acquiring, and the recent sale of my Game Boy Color game collection gave me just enough breathing room in my finances to risk taking a punt on a stunning-looking figure from an untested company. I preordered from Iacon.Store at the start of September, and it arrived a little over three weeks later... so, let's take a look at MetaGate's inaugural offering, and see how it compares to the output of some of the more established Third Party figures.

Universe 'Standoff Beneath the Streets' Springer vs. Ratbat

Hasbro used to release quite a few multipacks of TransFormers toys, but I didn't tend to pay much attention to them. Either I already had one of the figures in the set in one form or another, or at least one of them was crap (witness the sheer number of multipacks that included a variation of the awful Armada Sideswipe mold).

However, when the 'Standoff Beneath the Streets' set turned up, it seemed like a good deal: two great figures from the Cybertron/Galaxy Force toyline repainted as G1 characters in a set which - I gather - paid homage to a particular IDW storyline. The only downside was that one of the characters, Springer, was traditionally a Triple Changer, but the mold used was not. 2007's BotCon Springer gave him a single, ground-based vehicle mode, Hasbro were now giving him his helicopter mode via the GF Live Convoy mold.

But, for me, the main event was the first re-use of the Noisemaze mold - one of the most interesting figures in the Galaxy Force line.

Studio Series #45 Drift (Helicopter)

Drift's sudden and unexpected appearance in Age of Extinction had at least a modicum of fanfare because Paramount had somehow convinced Ken Watanabe to lend his voice to the character. He ended up with little to do, as the scripts still gave the majority of the dialogue to the human characters - pretty much all he did was spout some haiku, argue with Crosshairs and Hound, and fawn over Optimus Prime.

The big surprise was that, during a couple of sequences of the movie, he transformed not into his much-publicised Bugatti Veyron vehicle mode, but a sci-fi (possibly even Cybertronian) helicopter. It wasn't mentioned, let alone referenced as being unusual in any way, it was just another throwaway bit of CGI trickery in a movie series that had already stopped giving a damn about consistency.

Hasbro's response was to release a separate One Step Changer for each vehicle mode, and repaint Dark of the Moon Skyhammer as a Voyager class companion to their Deluxe class Veyron Drift. I don't think anyone actually expected to see a Triple-Changer movie Drift toy, but none of the available options really looked a great deal like what was (briefly glimpsed) on screen...

Cue Studio Series, with a new take on helicopter Drift, derived from the (not especially well-received) helicopter Dropkick mold...

Hunt for the Decepticons Tomahawk

I don't know what it was about the live action movies, but they led to a greater variety of attempts at turning helicopters into robots. Where toys that came before (and since) tended to follow a certain pattern that invariably led to large chunks of tail or cockpit just hanging off the robots' backs, the movie lines brought us the likes of Evac and Skyhammer (and, admittedly, the original Blackout, who followed the traditional pattern).

But where those were clearly of the movie aesthetic, Tomahawk occupied a strange middle-ground - sold as part of the extended RotF toyline, but closer to the more fanciful, sci-fi look of Classics/Generations and, like Skyhammer, made to accommodate the c-clip weapon accessories that debuted in that line.

Studio Series #08 Blackout

Blackout had the distinct honour of being not only one of the first Cybertronians seen in the first ever TransFormers live action movie but also one of the first to be turned into a toy. Back then, he was a comparatively small, Voyager class figure and, like most of the first movie's toys, his robot mode bore little resemblance to what was seen on-screen. It was a decent toy which ended up getting reworked into three other characters - Grindor (a straight repaint), Evac and Whirl (Autobot repaints with a new head and a raft/gun accessory in place of Scorponok) - as well as getting a 'Premium Series' repaint which was basically just made using a darker-coloured plastic for the bulk of the helicopter parts, and with a few new paint applications (mainly battle damage) at the expense of some of the original detail paint.

He was then, sadly, one of those characters who didn't get an updated toy - probably because he was killed off in the first movie and Grindor was killed off in the second - meaning he rapidly became quite archaic in comparison to later movies' toys.

Cut to 2018, and the Studio Series line reveals a new, Leader class Blackout figure, which came out in the same wave as Grimlock. Large, super-detailed, and vastly more accurate to the CGI, it seemed to be everything we've wanted from a new interpretation of Blackout... but is it all it's cracked up to be?

Power of the Primes Battleslash & Roadtrap (aka Duocon Battletrap)

One thing post-Diaclone Generation 1 got right was its constant innovation within the concept of 'TransFormers'. Even when the toys these innovations delivered were objectively crap, and ridiculously simplistic compared to the sort of thing Takara had originally produced, it was the toymaking technology, not the new ideas, that let them down.

Combiners, HeadMasters and PowerMasters were all prime examples of this, as Hasbro's more recent reboots of the concepts have clearly proven: components of each gestalt have had reasonable vehicle modes and fully articulated robot modes, while the gestalts themselves are also fully articulated. HeadMasters and PowerMasters may have been boiled down to a single core concept for Titans Return, but each has delivered fully articulated 'bots in five different size classes, with varying degrees of compatibility with the mini-figures.

Power of the Primes has not only developed the Titan Masters concept further, but reintroduced another old G1 concept... Starting with the Duocon Battletrap.

I'd considered splitting this into three separate posts - Battleslash, Roadtrap and finally Battletrap... but I figured that'd just take me too long to complete... So here's the full set, all in one!

TransFormers Collectors' Club 2016/Combiner Wars Spinister

As with the first two components of Thunder Mayhem, I know very little about Spinister... which is amusing, considering he's apparently characterised as a bit of a 'mech of mystery'. The G1 Double TargetMaster is here reimagined as yet another reuse of the Alpha Bravo helicopter mold, with the same stock weapons and the same Generations TargetMaster guns as Needlenose, just with different paint jobs.

So far, so blah... are we already seeing a downward trend in the 2016 Subscription Service figures?

DotM Mechtech Skyhammer

If you ask me, one of the best things - if not the best thing - about the original movie's toyline was the part made up of characters who didn't appear in the movie. It seems like a strange thing to say, but the robot cast was pretty small and, with a history and a catalogue of characters as awesome as TransFormers, it would have been remiss of Hasbro not to take advantage of it, even if most were straight repaints. There were fewer for Revenge of the Fallen, and there were characters who appeared in Dark of the Moon who, nevertheless, were not released as toys by Hasbro... But it did manage to continue the tradition of releasing a few wholly new characters who didn't appear in the movie.

Nice to know Hasbro gets its priorities right...

Combiner Wars Blades

Pretty much the moment images of the Slingshot-substitute Alpha Bravo appeared online, everyone knew he was Hasbro's way of delivering Blades and, most likely, Vortex by reusing parts from an existing mold. Considering both Hasbro and Takara later released Slingshot as a repaint of Firefly, one has to wonder why they bothered... but I guess it gave them a non-critical character on whom to test the Combiner Wars Helicopter mold.

So, let's kick off the Protectobots with the first major mold re-usage in the Combiner Wars series...

Combiner Wars Alpha Bravo

The wild-card in the set, Alpha Bravo is a whole new Aerialbot, replacing - temporarily, at least - Slingshot from the old Generation 1 character roster. Being a helicopter, he was also quite a blatant hint that the Protectobot Blades was on his way and, knowing Hasbro, set to be reused - likely with minimal, if any alteration - as the Combaticon Vortex (a move confirmed at this year's BotCon, when testshots of the Combaticons were first revealed).

Naturally there was a massive fan outcry when Alpha Bravo was revealed - not least over his nondescript name - which may have led to the repurposing of Firefly as 'Quickslinger'... but was it at all necessary, or is this a decent replacement for the loud-mouthed Aerialbot?

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2011 (Timelines) Shattered Glass Galvatron

Shattered Glass was a somewhat predictable idea, but executed surprisingly well... and Fun Publications certainly know how to milk a cash cow. Despite the focus of BotCon 2011 being the extended TF Animated story of The Stunti-Con Job, they saw fit to thrown in a couple of off-theme attendee exclusives. One was a bizarre repaint of the Classics Seeker mold as Action Master Thundercracker, while the other was an utterly glorious addition to the Shattered Glass line-up - Megatron resurrected, once again, as Galvatron!

TransFormers Animated Megatron

Over the years, Megatron has been a fairly unimaginative parade of tanks, dinosaurs and dragons, with a few oddities that tended to be a bit crap. The first - Voyager class - iteration of TF Animated Megatron took the road less travelled (at that point) and turned him into an awkward Cybertronian flying machine, taking his look from the TV series and crafting a vehicle mode which, as far as I can recall, never appeared in the show. When it came to the Leader class figure, Hasbro had something a bit more concrete to work with, since Megatron actually adopts a terrestrial disguise when he finally arrives on Earth...

...Not that it's really much of a disguise...

Generations (30th Anniversary) Springer

I'm pretty sure I remember Hasbro announcing, some years ago, probably at a BotCon, that they weren't planning on making any more Triple Changers after Classics Astrotrain and Octane/Tankor, largely because they were prohibitively expensive to engineer...Of course, based on Classics Astrotrain and Octane/Tankor, that was a good decision, because the passage of time hadn't radically improved their ability to design such things.

Naturally, a certain section of the fanbase was up in arms... How could Hasbro neglect such characters as Springer? Sure, they've released toys called Springer... and so has the TransFormers Collectors' Club... but they've always had a single alternate mode, making them nothing but contentious 'fakes'.

In the meantime, companies like FansProject announced and then produced the likes of Warbots Defender (AKA Springer) and Assaulter (AKA Broadside), proving that, hey, making triple-changin' robot models wasn't so tough after all. Also during this time, the artists behind the comics published by IDW created some wonderful new designs for our old favourite characters... and so, for their 'Thrilling 30' lineup, Hasbro surprised us all with Voyager class updates for Blitzwing and a very Nick Roche-inspired Springer.

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...

TransFormers: Prime Airachnid

The TransFormers brand doesn't have many proper femme-bot characters, and even fewer femme-bot toys. Aside from Arcee, the next most prominant must surely be Blackarachnia or Airazor from Beast Wars. They have tended to pretty strong characters and, where they've been turned into toys, they're generally pretty good...

...And then comes Airachnid, the chilling yet alluring predator from TF: Prime...

TransFormers Collectors' Club 2008 Members Incentive (Timelines) Topspin

(Members Incentive Monday #6)

And so we come to the penultimate component of the TransFormers Collectors' Club Members Incentive gestalt, Topspin, based on the Stormcloud/Blackout mold from Bruticus... Meaning the component parts of Nexus Prime are basically Aerielbots and Combaticons - neither of the Constructicon Maximus parts were used. It also means that all but Landquake and the Torso component are flyers...

TransFormers (Movie) Blackout

One of the first TransFormers to be seen in the live action movie, Blackout set the tone for the look of the Decepticons. He was a new character invented for the movie, though he exhibited some characteristics of Soundwave (jamming radar/communications, carrying a 'minion'), so he was an easy fit into the mythos, even if the creation of new characters when such a wide and varied selection from the multiple continuities already existed did raise concerns about the movie.

There was something very ominous about the silence of the MH-53J 'Pave Low' as it made its first appearance, being led to the SOCCENT Forward Operations Base by the resident humans, who hadn't the faintest idea what they were allowing into their fold... Blackout was one of the first movie toys I bought, and the vendor assured me I would not be disappointed.

Energon Bruticus Maximus

AKA... erm... Bruticus... just Bruticus.

It is perhaps fitting that this, the final Energon Gestalt, gets a bit more detailed treatment than the other two... though I've already seen that some photos are technically missing... the two choppers don't get their square-on views, and there aren't that many of the fully-formed Bruticus. Oh well...

I picked up the whole set in one hit - highly unusual for me, considering it wasn't the boxed set - at Auto Assembly 2010, largely because I really wanted one version of this or another to go with my on-order Crossfire upgrade set, and the repainted, RotF-packaged version wasn't available. This is a far more garish set, and possibly won't suit Crossfire's muted tones... but I'm willing to take the risk. And if it turns out that I can pick up the repaint later, I've got the original Energon set as a backup. I call that a win-win situation, personally.

FansProject WB001 - Warbot Defender

Or Springer, by any other name...

Considering he was one of the key players in the animated TransFormers: The Movie back in the 80s, it's surprising that the character hasn't appeared more often in the toylines. Then again, he was a Triple-Changer - transforming between Helicopter, Armoured Car and Robot modes, none of which were particularly effective back in The Age of the Brick. Since then, the character has been applied to more 'normal' two-mode TransFormers - a Legends Class Osprey from the original (live action) movie line, a TransFormers Collectors' Club/Botcon figure (repainted from Galaxy Force Exigeyser/Cybertron Defense Hot Shot), and in a 2-pack including a reprinted Marvel Comic (repainted from Galaxy Force Live Convoy/Cybertron Evac, along with Ratbat repainted from Galaxy Force Noisemaze/Cybertron Sideways). This means he's been a helicopter, and he's been an armoured car... but not in the same toy... and it seemed unlikely that it would ever be thus again.

Until the awesome FansProject announced their Warbot Defender: even from the blurry shots of the grey pre-production prototype, it was obvious that this was Springer... and that he would once again be a Triple-Changer. Not only that but, with contemporary toymaking nous at their desposal, they've improved upon the original in many impressive ways.