As promised last week, I’m pressing on with my look at the first wave of Deluxe Class Titans Return figures. I already checked out the two Autobots and now I’m going to start in on the Decepticons. I went with Scourge first, because I was always a big fan of this guy and his Sweeps. Also, the last time Hasbro took a crack at him (back in 2011 in the Generations line) he turned out pretty good, albeit with some big departures from his G1 roots. I’m anxious to see if this time they can bring it all the way back home.

Here’s the package. Again, it doesn’t stray too far from what we’ve been seeing from the Combiner Wars. As expected, Scourge is now a Headmaster and his little robot buddy is named after G1 Scourge’s Targetmaster, Fracas. Scourge is packaged in his robot mode and secured by one million of those damned plastic wires. Or maybe only five or six, I can’t remember. As you may have already guessed, I’m starting with his alt mode.

Straightaway, this is a much better homage to the G1 toy and Sunbow design than Generations Scourge. The close-but-no-cigar stealth bomber alt mode is gone and in its place we have a flying space boat that is very much like the old Scourge I know and love. There’s an adequate amount of sculpted detail here, including panel lines and vents, and the multiple shades of blue are right on point. I’m pretty sure the official configuration of the top of his tower is to have the elongated end point backward, but I prefer it to point forward, making it more gun like with the red bit at the other end serving as a thruster. You get a little silver paint here and there and a nice, bold Decepticon emblem printed right on top. Granted, there’s not a lot more to say about this mode, but it makes me a happy old TransFan.

Fracas is a tiny blue robot with an upside down face sculpted on his back… I wonder what that’s all about, eh? You get a little paint on his legs and some surprisingly good paint on his minuscule face. He has articulation in the neck, shoulders, hips, and knees and a giant screw in the middle of his chest.

Scourge’s cockpit is concealed under the gun tower toward the back of the boat, and yes to open it, I have to swivel my gun configuration around to the proper way. I guess there’s a reason it’s supposed to be pointed to the back, but I don’t care! The canopy hinges forward and allows for plenty of room for Fracas to sit while still being able to close and secure the canopy. There are also a couple of pegs toward the nose of the boat that allows for other Headmasters to stand. I pulled out the individually packed Apeface to demonstrate.

Scourge also comes with a double barreled weapon that can be pegged onto the alt mode in a few different places, allowing for a Headmaster to sit in it and operate the gun. There’s a socket for it right in front of the cockpit, which again requires me to spin my tower gun configuration to the back, dammit! You can plug it into the gun tower and make a triple-barreled gun emplacement, although at this point things are starting to look a little ridiculous!

You can also attach it to either side, but if you want to put a figure in it, you’ll have to un-tab the panel and flip it up. I’m a little disappointed that there isn’t a socket on the bottom of the boat. I think it would look great positioned just under the nose of the vehicle. So, as simple as it is, the vehicle has some fun play options. Let’s see how the robot mode turned out…

Hell and yes! Scourge transforms quickly and easily and the result is a magnificent homage to the G1 robot mode. He showcases those rounded aesthetics that were introduced in the 1986 movie designs and his proportions are perfect. His wings aren’t quite as shapely as his Sunbow appearance, but they get the job done, and if you want a cleaner look you can fold them in and out of the way. I actually think they look fine, particularly from the back. Also, from the back view you can see that Scourge has a second configuration of fully finished legs and feet pointing backwards. I wonder who those are going to be re-purposed for, hmm?

In terms of coloring, Scourge hits all the right points, but he shares the same notable lack of paint apps as Blurr did. You do get some detailed silver panels on his chest and lower legs, which simulate the stickers on the original toy, but apart from that his front is just a whole lot of blue with a the lighter blue showing on his wings and lower legs. From the back, however, he does show off a lot more color. All in all, I think the coloring here looks fine.

The head sculpt here is absolutely fantastic. Scourge features his iconic metal mustache and the silver paint on his face is very sharp. Fracas holds together perfectly and the fact that this noggin is a little Transformer all to itself isn’t really evident at all from a cursory glance. From this view you can also get a better look at his sculpted abs and some of the sculpted panel lining in the robot mode.

And yup, you can swap in any other Headmasters you want. Here I have him wearing Apeface. It’s not something I’ll ever do again, but I suppose it makes for a neat play pattern for the kids. Can I say now that it’s a shame we probably won’t get proper bodies for the single-packed Headmasters. A head as good as Apeface really deserves his own proper body. If only we had some third-parties out there to step in where Hasbro drops the ball.

The gun from the top of Scourge’s cockpit can be un-pegged from his back and used as a nifty little hand gun. You can also have him wield the double-barreled weapon or again convert it to a tri-barrel gun. For display, I’ll likely stick with the smaller weapon as a gun and keep the larger one pegged into his back or just put it off to the side.

Titans Return Scourge is an interesting study when compared to his namesake from five years back. I had lots of nice things to say about that figure when I got him, and he still has plenty of good points, but as far as a proper G1 update goes this new one blows him away. Transformers becoming outdated is a common issue with collecting these guys, and while Scourge will indeed be replacing Generations Scourge on my shelf, it doesn’t mean I’ll be dumping the old figure. It still has a place in my heart and now he has a place in a tote out in the storage. So, yeah, three figures into this wave and they’ve all been gems as far as I’m concerned. I’ve got just one more to look at before I take a quick pass through the the two assortments of individually packed heads and then moving on to some of the newer releases!

Ahhh, I can’t tell you how great it feels to have brand new content for Transformers Thursdays again! Today I’m continuing my look at the initial wave of Deluxe Class Titans Return figures with one of my all time favorite Headmasters from the G1 days, Hardhead. Hardhead was one of the handful of Headmasters that I managed to collect about 15 years back, before unloading them all for whatever my next big obsession was. I later replaced him with Toyworld’s unfortunately named homage, Hardbone. Now, I’ve come full circle back to Hasbro again.

I’ve been getting my Deluxes online and the cards have all been beat to hell. It’s no biggie, because I’m over this packaging design. You know what else I’m over? These damn plasting straps they use to secure these guys onto the bubbles. What was wrong with the white string? The white string was easy to deal with. These little things go everywhere and I hate them. I’d rather get the figure rattling around a little in the package than have to deal with these. Anyway, rant over. Hardhead comes packaged in his robot mode, but as usual, I’m starting off with his alt mode.

There’s no beating around the bush here, this is straight up G1 Hardhead. Oh, there are a few minor changes, like the cockpit being a bit further back, and that gray plate, which I assume is some kind of access hatch, being closer to the front, but he’s still a futuristic green quad tank with black treads and a big gray cannon. The coloring here is achieved mostly through the plastic, with not a lot of paint apps showing in the vehicle mode. Nonetheless, the deco is great and instantly invokes the original toy.

The only gripe that comes to mind is that I consider Hardhead too small to be a Deluxe Class figure. He’s a tank with a lot of firepower and I feel he should be bigger than someone like Blurr, who despite being a sportscar, is actually longer than Hardhead. The issue is by no means a deal-breaker, as there’s something appealing to me about having most of the characters scaled in one size class, but it’s certainly going to irk a number of collectors out there.

For some reason, Hardhead’s little head buddy has been renamed from Duros to Furos, otherwise he’s exactly what you might expect: A tiny green and gray robot. As we saw last time, his legs are fused together, but are hinged at the hips and knees, and he has articulation in both his shoulders and his neck. And yes, if you turn him around, there’s a giant face on his back. The only paint work on the front is his little face, which is surprisingly well done for such a tiny bot.

Furos can sit comfortably inside Hardhead’s cockpit and the canopy closes perfectly.

There’s some other points of interactivity between the little bots and Hardhead’s alt mode. The back part of the cannon opens up to reveal a chair, and if you peg Hardhead’s rifle into the top of the gun, you have an extra gunner station. There are also pegs on the front treads to place some more of the little buggers. I’ve called in the individually packed Headmasters, Clobber and Loudmouth to help illustrate. Like I said last time, I love these extra little play features that Hasbro is including in the designs here. Size notwithstanding, everything else about this alt mode gets high marks from me. Now, let’s check out that robot mode…

Hot damn, I’m loving these figures! There’s nothing terribly complex or amazing about the transformation here. Hardhead’s front treads become his arms, the back treads become the legs, and the body of the tank folds in two places at the middle to form the front and back of the torso. Flip the pelvis plate down and you’re good to go. The cannon can be removed, but it doesn’t have to be for the transformation. It lands behind his right shoulder pointing straight up, but you can angle it forward to make it more useful and I really like having that option.

Like Blurr, there’s a ton of great sculpted detail on this figure and he’s perfectly proportioned. Unlike Blurr, there’s actually a lot going on with the coloring here. The robot mode shows a lot more black and gray, and a little of the green, but you also get some very nice yellow and paint around his pelvic area and some tiny Autobot insignia on his shoulders and again just above his waist. I love that they have the gray chest plate, which in the G1 toy folded down to reveal his stats when the Headmaster was plugged in. And speaking of which, Furos forms an absolutely perfect head with a great sculpt and terrific paint.

Once again, all the heads are interchangeable. If you were with me last week, you know this isn’t a play mechanic I plan on using, because I have a lot of familiarity vested in these characters and swapping out the heads kind of ruins that. Nonetheless, here’s a shot of Hardhead’s body wearing Clobber as a head. Damn, I left one of the arms askew. Oh well, he’s a pretty shitty head anyway, what with all that unpainted off-white plastic. Be warned, Clobber, you will not fare well when I get to reviewing the individual head packs.

As we already saw, Hardhead comes with a big green rifle, but sadly only one. If I ever find him on the pegs and on sale, it’ll be real tempting to pick up a second so that I can give him his proper G1 twin gun armament. And again, other than size that’s really the only complaint I have about this guy. In robot mode, he still feels under-scaled for the character. He’s no taller than Blurr, but he does at least have a slightly bigger upper body build, which makes him look a tad bulkier.

I loved Blurr, and that goes double for Hardhead here. He’s a relatively simple figure, but I’m at the point in my Transformers collecting, where I can appreciate the more simplistic engineering. I don’t want them too simple, but I’m not a fan of the overly complex figures anymore. Hardhead is quick to transform and loads of fun to play with. The joints are a little looser than my Blurr’s, but not so bad that he can’t hold his own weight. But besides all that, he’s a near perfect homage to the original figure, and that is what I’m digging the most about Titans Return so far. And that wraps up the two Autobots of the first Deluxe Class wave. Next time, we’ll start in on the Decepticons.