TransFormers Legends (Titans Return) LG46 TargetMaster Kup (aka Chear)

Kup doesn't often appear in TransFormers toylines - coming from the latter part of Generation 1, and introduced to most audiences in the 1986 animated movie, he's never been one of the 'must have' characters. Much like Hot Rod and Blur, his original toy was a bit of a brick, designed to resemble the ridiculously stylised Floro Dery animation model, which took the TV show's habit of fudging the toys' transformation sequence and cranking it up to eleven because he (and/or the rest of the design team) were working from scratch rather than from existing toys and box art.

Thus, Kup became a futuristic, Cybertronian pickup truck and, bar his appearance in a BotCon set as a repaint/retool of Galaxy Force First Aid (representing a young version of Kup, a new recruit in the Elite Guard), his only other appearances in the toyline have been as a more traditional terrestrial pickup in the Generations toyline back in 2011 and a bulked-up repaint of a mold intended for Ironhide in the TFPrime toyline.

Titans Return went back to the original Cybertronian vehicle style, albeit perhaps more functional-looking (G1 Kup's cargo bed didn't look very useful, after all), but the colourscheme looked a bit too lurid for my liking so, coupled with a typically miserly paint job, the lacklustre weapons and a rather bland face sculpt, I decided not to bother picking him up. Then Takara Tomy revealed their Legends version, with an animation accurate desaturated colourscheme, several remolded parts (including a more grizzled face sculpt)... and a TargetMaster weapon too... So I decided to take the plunge after all.

TransFormers Legends (Titans Return) LG62 TargetMaster Windblade

(Femme-Bot Friday #53)

It seems a bit weird going over this figure again so soon after writing about the first version I picked up, but that's the sort of thing that happens when you decide to neatly bookend a series of posts about the same character when you have only a limited selection remaining... and it's inevitable when Hasbro continually cheap out on paintwork - and, occasionally, accessories - while Takara Tomy not only improve the paint job, but fix other omissions... and add bonus features into the bargain...

...And so we have a remix of the Titans Return Windblade which is not only a HeadMaster, but a TargetMaster as well, and that has to be worth a quick look, at least!

Titans Return Triggerhappy & Blowpipe

Back when it first emerged that the Titans Return toyline would largely comprise remakes of G1 HeadMasters and TargetMasters, all of which would come with tiny Titan Master figures (HeadMasters by any other name), and feature the enhanced articulation of contemporary figures, I honestly didn't see a great deal to get excited about. My initial plan was to get Takara Tomy's version of Blurr just to complete my '86 animated movie Autobots set (Classics Hot Rod, Kup, Wreck Gar and Grimlock, Thrilling 30 Springer, along with Legends Arcee & Ultra Magnus), but several other figures turned out to be fairly interesting and, almost before I knew it, I'd nabbed a whole bunch of the new Deluxes and Voyagers.

One such figure was Triggerhappy, a remake of the G1 TargetMaster who's no longer a TargetMaster unless you waited for the Legends version. G1 Triggerhappy was a bit of a train wreck, engineering-wise, and among the weirder designs that was deliberately not a terrestrial vehicle, so I was all set to not bother with it... Until I started hearing/reading comments from folks who'd gone out and bought him, to the effect that it was an awesome figure with a unique and surprising transformation.

Does it live up to all the hype?

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?

TransFormers Collectors' Club 2016/Combiner Wars Needlenose

And so the penultimate year of the TransFormers Collectors' Club's distinctly variable Subscription Service begins. Being an international member, I tend to get my Club figures about three to four weeks after US members, and this year's Subscription Service looks as though it won't be an exception.

It brings with it, just like this year's BotCon Set, a sense of the Club coming full circle: its first Membership Incentive figures were the five components of a Superlink/Energon-style gestalt, Nexus Prime, and so its penultimate Subscription Service is creating a new, Combiner Wars-style gestalt. More than that, just like all the figures from BotCon, this is not a Timelines set, it's labelled in every way as part of Combiner Wars.

When this year's set was announced, I was intrigued, but pretty ambivalent - and hadn't expected the massive glut of awesome Combiner Wars/Unite Warriors stuff that subsequently appeared - so I signed up eagerly. I don't know anything about the Mayhem Attack Squad, or the variation on Thunderwing - Thunder Mayhem - which they combine to form, but the idea seemed cool, and I liked the idea of building another Club gestalt.

Let's see how the first component looks...

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...

Masterpiece Rodimus Prime (with Offshoot)

There was a lot of enthusiasm surrounding the announcement of a Masterpiece Rodimus Prime, and when the first photos turned up, the buzz remained positive. A decently Animated-Movie-accurate robot mode that could switch between Hot Rod and Rodimus Prime by some simple-but-clever cheating, and which had the ability to transform into Hot Rod's futuristic sports car and - with the addition of a trailer - also into Rodimus Prime's Space Winnebago? How could it go wrong?

Classics Cyclonus

One of the best things about the Classics line is when it takes a character from Generation 1 which had a really terrible toy back in the 80s, and creates something that is both an excellent homage and a vast improvement. Cyclonus is one such toy. The 1986/87 version of Cyclonus could, theoretically, have been more poseable than it was - it had articulated knees, hips, shoulders and elbows, more than most TransFormers back then - but the joints were designed for transformation, rather than for movement.

This update, using the very best of current toymaking nous, manages to look better than both the G1 toy and animation model, while retaining all the design cues that make it Cyclonus... and even manages to improve on the old TargetMaster gimmick quite significantly.