Beast Wars (Reissue) Scorponok

As a Collector who didn't become a Beast Wars 'fan' until long after the toyline had ended, the myriad reissues have been a great benefit to me. Much of my BW collection was obtained via the secondary market, but Takara Tomy's Telemocha reissues back in 2007 allowed me to pick up new versions of key characters featuring more TV show-accurate paintwork, and the Beast Wars Reborn set from the previous year even included retooled parts for greater accuracy.

Hasbro's more recent reissue strategy has been haphazard at best, trickling out random figures, with a strong bias toward recycling the same old G1 molds we've seen in previous reissue lines, but the decision to reissue Beast Wars toys - in recreations of their original packaging, no less - allowed for some more direct comparisons with their contemporary output in the War For Cybertron: Kingdom toyline... and, surprisingly, some of the new toys came off worse for that comparison.

One such example, in my opinion, is Scorponok. I've covered a version of the Kingdom figure in another post, so let's take a look at the original figure... or as close as one can get outside of the secondary market.

Buzzworthy Bumblebee: Creatures Collide 4-pack

By and large, the Buzzworthy Bumblebee line has been filled with products I have been perfectly content to live without: regardless of which line the toys are derived from, they have been mostly superfluous repaints. When it comes to the boxed sets, there have been far more misses than hits. When the Worlds Collide set came along, I ended up buying the Blackarachnia figure purely because she's a Femme-Bot and it was a decent reference to the original Beast Wars toy's box art, while the other figures were reportedly a mess of loose joints.

This second 'Collides' set was, at first, marginally more interesting. I wasn't overly fussed by the scarcity of the Netflix-branded Earthrise Bumblebee toy because, having already bought Cliffjumper, I knew it wouldn't be a patch on the Classics toy from 2006... But Goldbug was another matter, because I'm quite fond of the G1 Throttlebot, and he's sufficiently distinct from Bumblebee. Similarly, I'd passed on the TV show-inspired Kingdom Scorponok figure because I was disappointed by the look of it but, now I own a reissue of the original toy in show-accurate colours, a toy-coloured repaint of the Kingdom figure was potentially a fun comparison. Skywasp was a stupid/amazing pun, and so instantly interesting, in spite of the new mold's obvious inferiority to Generations Waspinator... Which left Ransack: a repaint of the Legacy Kickback figure that's barely an improvement on the G1 original, representing one of the 'Deluxe Insecticons' which, back in the day, had a wholly unique mold that was never made available in the UK.

So, when presented with this set at a RRP of £93, I turned my nose up and avoided it, even though that breaks down as four figures for slightly less than the price of four individual Deluxes. However, seeing it cut down to £45 at GAME, it seemed like a sweeter deal... But let's see how I feel about it with the figures in-hand...

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?

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.

TransFormers (Movie) Scorponok

Now, I'm going to be a little bit controversial with this one... Or not, depending on how you view the movies versus the toylines. In the movie, Scorponok was never depicted as a transformer and, if he was, it seemed likely that he'd transform between an Earth vehicle and a robotic scorpion thing. Hasbro's toy, however, transformed into something approximating a bipedal robot... just not very well... So I'm basically going to ignore that as far as possible.