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: Siege Soundwave Spy Patrol #2

It can hardly be disputed that the War for Cybertron toyline took a lot of its cues from Generation 1. The whole thing was pitched as (yet another) reboot of the very origins of TransFormers, but set in the time before Optimus Prime led the Autobots away from their home planet. More than that, though, the line saw the reintroduction - much to my chagrin - of the Micromaster size class along with the continued downsizing of toys in the existing Leader, Voyager and Deluxe pricepoints. While the Voyager class Soundwave wasn't packaged with any Micromasters, Hasbro's strategy of releasing them as 2-packs neatly mirrored not only the G1 Micromasters, but the card-backed releases of the original Cassetticons.

The only Micromasters I bothered picking up initially were Laserbeak and Ravage, comprising the original 'Soundwave Spy Patrol' set, but when a second Spy Patrol later emerged, featuring Rumble and Ratbat, I had that awful, sinking feeling that I was about to part with some money to obtain another pair of sub-par remakes of G1 classics. Strangely, this proved not to be the case initially, since the second Spy Patrol set seemed to sell out everywhere, almost instantly... There were sources overseas, but I didn't feel like paying over the odds and then risking import fees...

 

Cut to almost two years later, when I found a UK-based eBay seller offering them at a reasonable price. No need to ask what happened next, right?

War for Cybertron: Siege Soundwave + Spy Patrol

Long-time readers of this blog may be aware that G1 Soundwave (& Buzzsaw) was the very first Decepticon toy I ever owned so, while I don't end up buying every iteration of the character, I do have a strong nostalgic connection to that particular physical form. Thus, when a Soundwave toy enters my collection, it tends to happen very much with reference to how it makes me feel versus the original. For example, Music Label Soundwave - who has been my Classics Soundwave for over a decade - was a decent reworking of the original, albeit on a smaller scale and with a poorly executed MP3 player gimmick installed. TF Prime Soundwave took an entirely different tack, and put the original character into a sinister, spindly new form. I didn't bother with the Titans Return version as it lost too much of what makes Soundwave Soundwave in service of the line's HeadMaster and base mode gimmicks...

...But here we have a new Soundwave for the latest chapter of Generations, taking the character back to his pre-G1 state, but not taking any cues from the War for Cybertron videogame and instead focussing on his G1 appearance, but with what passes for 'a fresh spin' at Hasbro these days.

I knew going in that I wasn't going to like this toy, but I'd had £30 of Forbidden Planet vouchers in my wallet since last year, and no clue what to do with them, so I took the opportunity to pick up this toy - and the 'Soundwave Spy Patrol' set of Ravage and Laserbeak - for next to nothing... And since I don't feel that one has much value without the other, I'm going to write about them together.

FansProject Causality CA-01 Warcry

The first entry into the Crossfire offshoot, Causality, was a simple repurposing of the other half of FansProjects' Energon Bruticus upgrade set, Munitioner (aka Swindle) based on Micromaster Growl and not, as I'd assumed, a G2 Swindle-inspired repaint - thanks to Colbey Hopper for pointing that out! I'd stopped collecting by the time Micromasters rolled around, and only even saw any back when some were rereleased in the Universe line, around the time Cybertron/Galaxy Force was doing the rounds.

But, if the homage is lost on the likes of me, is a standalone remake of a third party combiner limb replacement still worth having?

Generations (30th Anniversary) Swerve & Flanker

Back when I first started collecting TransFormers toys, the bigger toys tended to be birthday or Christmas presents, and the vast majority of my own purchases were the likes of the Mini Autobots - small, affordable, carded vehicles with simple transformations into dinky little robots. Up until the 1986 wave, there were few I didn't pick up, but Swerve was one I didn't bother with as he was a rather dull repaint/remold of Gears, who wasn't one of the best from the original 1984 lineup.

These days, of course, we have IDW turning all sorts of terrible G1 toys into super-cool characters, just so Hasbro can release new, super-articulated updated toys, and Swerve seems to have become a fan-favourite among IDW's readership. However, rather than release today's Mini Autobots on their own, Hasbro have started including TargetMasters, so Swerve is partnered with Flanker, a mis-named, mis-coloured G1 Micromaster reference

Generations (30th Anniversary) Tailgate & Groundbuster

I can't remember the last time I actually bought something in Forbidden Planet other than the occasional book or DVD. I fondly remember visiting that shop, back in its earlier days, and finding some amazing TransFormers stuff, from Robots in Disguise Megatron and Ultra Magnus, to my very first Binaltech model, Smokescreen. When they moved the Shaftesbury Avenue, the premises were slicker and more spacious (it was all too easy to trip over stock in the shockingly crowded old place!), but the quality and variety of stock interested me far less over time. For many years, they haven't stocked any TransFormers toys that weren't available - cheaper - at Toys'R'Us, and most of it wasn't even imported stock.

I do still visit occasionally and yesterday, being my wonderfully geeky girlfriend's birthday, was one of those occasions. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found something new and interesting... A Generations toy that isn't (yet?) available in the UK elsewhere... and which came in US packaging. The pricing was fair, too - approximately what I'd expect to pay for something in this size class these days - so I decided to part with £11.99 for an update to a G1 toy that I never owned and his 'TargetMaster' partner...