Tag Archives: legacy

Jan 24 2024

Transformers Legacy: Pointblank and Needlenose by Hasbro

I’ve made a commitment to myself to go back and take a look at some of the Transformers I missed spotlighting here last year, and there are quite a few of them! It’s also the only way I’m going to get much Transformers content, because I’m really not interested in too much Hasbro is doing with the brand right now. Anyway, I picked up Pointblank and Needlenose when they were first released and while I remember opening them, I guess I had something else going on because they wound up bagged and toted before I even spent any serious time with them. So let’s get these two Targetmasters out have a look!

The Legacy package design sure was something! I often gripe about how bland the package design got after the live action films, but I think this was a case of overcompensation. The colors are obnoxious and nothing about this look really screams Transformers to me. Also, these are the windowless boxes that expose the toys to the elements, meaning sticky kid fingers and boogers, so it’s safe to say I’m not a fan. And I still don’t know what the added Evolution moniker was all about. Anyway, both of these guys were G1 Targetmasters with Pointblank releasing in 1987 and Needlenose was out the following year. I would have been 16 and out of the Transformers game, but I did later own an original G1 Pointblank when I got into collecting Transformers in my 30’s. I never did own an original Needlenose, so let’s start with him!

Needlenose’s alt mode is a super sleek fighter jet with a fair amount of robot bits packed into his undercarriage. And that’s not a complaint, I always like to imagine these undercarriage constructs as just meant to be cargo pods or something. The dorsal section of the aircraft has some lovely sculpted panel lines and a pale gray and dark blue deco with some teal stripes and a Decepticon insignia printed on one of his stubby wings. The design sticks pretty close to the original toy with a horizontal stabilizer added to the tail fin and some short angled wings protruding from just in front of the cockpit. Also, the cockpit is painted orange, while I think the original’s was translucent orange plastic.

Not only is Needlenose a Targetmaster, but he comes with TWO little Nebulan buddies, Sunbeam and Zigzag. These are pretty standard stuff when it comes to these little fellas. There’s no articulation in the robot modes but these are impressive sculpts for such tiny figures and the paint is pretty damn good as well. The designs don’t stray too far from the original G1 Nebulans, and Sunbeam even has a gun sculpted in his hand, just like the vintage toy.

When transformed into their weapon modes, the Nebulans can be pegged in under Needlenose’s wings to give him some serious firepower. Sunbeam turns into a stocky purple cannon, while Zigzag becomes a black double-barreled gun. I’m not a huge fan of the asymmetry here, but it’s still plenty cool.

Needlenose’s transformation is a lot more clever than I was expecting. As always, I like to do these without the instructions and it was a tad confusing at first, but once I figured it out I think it’s pretty fun. The robot mode here is a fantastic update to the vintage release, recreating the general design of the chest plate, paying homage to the stickers down in the legs, and adding some great detail to the arms. Most of the deco translates from the jet mode but with some more purple added to the mix. The proportions are also perfect, and he has all the articulation I expect from a modern Transformers figure. Yes, he is basically wearing a jet on his back, but that’s been a favorite design trope of mine ever since the Aerialbots, and I love it here just as much. The jet does truncate a bit and I dig the way the wings angle back behind the shoulders in true Seeker fashion. The large phallic nosecone hanging down between his legs is maybe a bit unfortunate, though! Or maybe it makes him extra popular with the femmebots.

The head sculpt takes the likeness from the original toy and just polishes the heck out of it. I’m a big fan of the knight’s visor motif above his eyes. The yellow face is punctuated with red eyes and most of his face is dominated by a mouth plate. Hasbro did a great job on this one!

And of course, Needlenose can wield his Nebulan guns in his robot mode as well as his jet mode and he looks all sorts of bad ass while doing it. As far as I’m concerned, Legacy Needlenose is pretty much Deluxe Class perfection. He looks fantastic in robot mode, very good in jet mode, and he’s fun to transform and play around with. This figure represents the Hasbro design team firing on all cylinders! Now, let’s move on to Pointblank!

The Autobot Enforcer’s vehicle mode got a pretty big overhaul for this modern release, while still hitting most of the design beats from the original futuristic sportscar. I think the only things I kind of miss here are the spoiler/shield piece that filled in the gap in the back (more on that in a bit) and the flame deco on the sides, but otherwise I think this is a great update, that is more elongated and sleeker than his G1 version. The red plastic looks very sharp and the teal bits are a lot more vibrant than what I remember being on my original toy. There’s a good amount of sculpted detail in the body and the addition of the translucent blue canopy over the painted one on the vintage release is a huge improvement. Most of all, I just really dig how great this car looks parked along side some of the other recent Autobot cars updates like Kup and Blur.

Pointblank comes with the Nebulan Peacemaker who is the spitting image of his G1 counterpart only with a lot better sculpted detail and a few more paint applications. The black and red plastic looks great together and I’m really impressed at the paint on his tiny face and visor, as well as the panels on his shoulders and chest.

Pointblank can equip Peacemaker in his auto mode and this does help fill out the gap left behind by the absent shield piece. It looks very good and even allows for Peacemaker’s gun barrel to angle up so he can try to take out Needlenose or any other Decepticon fliers. But, it does make for an aesthetic departure from the look of the original toy, which may irk some people. In the end, I’m fine with it.

I did not find Pointblank’s transformation to be nearly as fun as Needlenose’s. There are some fiddly things to the engineering here, not to mention the pair of ball jointed door panels that seem to pop off so often, that I resort to just popping them off on purpose to get them out of the way until I’m ready for them. Still, when all is said and done, the final robot looks fantastic… at least from the front. The translucent blue cockpit cockpit looks great on his chest, the bold shoulders with forward facing wheels is a great design, and you even get the blue kneepads present on the original toy. But, he’s kind of flat when viewed from the side and he’s quite the eyesore from the back. You get hollow leg syndrome, unfinished panels with screws in the shoulders, and just a lot of rough stuff back here. It kind of reminds me of those old Hollywood studio sets where the buildings are only finished on the side facing the camera.

The portrait is fantastic, giving the Autobot Enforcer a stoic expression. The visor is a very pale blue, which was a good choice as the coloring on the original toy often struck me as not having a visor at all. The silver face paint pops nicely and he’s got a single fin cresting from the top of his “helmet.”

Naturally, Peacemaker becomes Pointblank’s weapon in robot mode as well as car mode, and while he is a tad chunky, he gets the job done. Even with all that nasty business in the back, Pointblank is still a very cool figure and a superb update to the G1 toy. He does suffer from a fiddly transformation, and those door panels popping off gets really annoying, but his two very solid modes help smooth things out with me.

Wow, I’m glad I dug these guys out and finally gave them their due, because these are both really great figures and just lovely updates. But, if you want me to pick favorites, I’m going to give Needlenose the nod as the better of these two figures. Overall, he seems a bit more polished and comes with two Nebulans instead of just one. I also like transforming him a lot more than I do Pointblank. But I’d still recommend Pointblank as a pick up, and these two have been chasing each other around my desk for the better part of a week now.

May 24 2023

Transformers Legacy Evolution: Scraphook by Hasbro

I have pulled waaay back on collecting Transformers, mainly because Hasbro has been drifting away from the G1 stuff in favor of other eras. And that’s fine! They’ve given me most of what I’ve wanted in terms of G1 remakes, and it’s time to spread some of that love to the collectors who are nostalgic for the Unicron Trilogy stuff. Plus, it saves me money so it’s a Win-Win. But, I do have a backlog of convertorobots that I have not checked out on FFZ, and I’m going to try to give them the spotlight here and there, even if some of them are pretty dated by now. I especially want to get to those Legacy Stunticons! But today I’m keeping it small and simple with a new Deluxe Class Junkion!

The Legacy packaging is kind of a mixed bag to me. It’s a lot more eye catching than some of the previous lines’ packaging, but it starts to melt my retinas if I look at it too long. I also have no idea what this Evolution stuff is all about. We’re still on the windowless packaging, and instead of a fully enclosed box part of the toy is open to the air so kids can put their sticky, disgusting fingers all over the toy before you buy it. I should note that Scraphook is an unusual figure in that he’s somewhat similar to the Weaponizers that we got during the Siege line. He does transform, but he’s also meant to be taken apart and mixed and matched with other toys. That’s probably fun for the kids, but it’s really not my bag. Anyway, let’s start with the alt mode.

Scraphook’s vehicle mode looks like a tow truck from a Mad Max film, and I am totally down with that! He’s got a delightfully drab deco of rust brown and dark gray, with a little orange to spice things up. The windows are all reinforced with armored vents, the front has some vicious looking ramming blades, the engine is exposed through the hood, there are some bitchin exhaust pipes on the back, and he’s got a spiked tire on the back, along with his big tow hook. Everything about this truck is just too cool!

Oddly enough, Scraphook’s alt mode struck me as being really small when I got him, but comparing it to some other Deluxes showed me that it really isn’t the case. I’ll do some comparisons at the end with another Deluxe Autobot tow truck, Hoist. Scraphook doesn’t actually come with any weapons to plug into his vehicle mode, but there are plenty of ports if you want to borrow some guns from another figure. All in all, this is just a great sculpt and a super fun vehicle that’s perfect for a Junkion.

Before transforming Scraphook, you have to strip him of some of his parts, and some more traditional Transformers fans may not be happy about that. But he’s not really a parts-former, because all of the stuff that comes off is just kind of extras. The parts include his two sets of exhaust pipes, his tow hook, his spiked tire, and his engine, which splits into two parts. You can omit all of these pieces and still transform Scraphook into his bot mode, but his robot mode is definitely enhanced by these extra bits.

And here he is all transformed and looking pretty damn good… and small! I may have been mistaken about thinking his alt mode was small, but his robot mode actually is pretty tiny for a Deluxe. Here, I’ve attached his exhaust pipes to his shoulders, put his spiked wheel on his left arm, attached his tow hook to the back, and we’ll get to the engine block pieces in a bit. Now, I really dig this robot mode a lot and just like his alt mode, it makes for a great looking Junkion. The robot mode casts off some of that rust brown and shows a lot more orange, which makes the figure pop a lot more in this mode. My only nitpick of the design is the long flat feet are kind of weird when viewed from the side or back. I do wish these folded up and tabbed into the backs of the lower legs. I think that would have looked a lot better. And keep in mind, there are sockets all over this guy, so what you do with those extra pieces is up to you. This is just my preferred look for him.

Scraphook has some pretty good poseability and thanks to some nice ankle rockers, he can keep those big slabs of feet flat on the ground in wide stances. My figure does have some issues with his elbows, which are simple friction hinges that love to pop off and are extremely loose. I can get his arms to stay bent for a while, but they will eventually flop down if given enough time. I’m not sure if this is a problem with my figure or the design in general, but at $25, it shouldn’t be an issue.

Hasbro went all out on the head sculpt for this guy. He’s got a rounded brown “helmet” with a pronounced mohawk-like crest in the middle I also dig that he’s got a plate bolted over his left eye. Scraphook also has some sculpted facial hair in the form of a mustache and goatee, which became all the rage after Transformers: The Movie. I’ve never been a huge fan of that, but it kind of fits with the Junkions, I guess. The face paint is dark gray instead of the silver we’re used to seeing, which is also pretty fitting for a Junkion. All in all, this portrait has a ton of personality and I love it!

The two pieces of his engine become handguns, which is pretty cool. Or you can socket these on his body in various places. Not bad!

And as I mentioned earlier, Scraphook is designed to come apart at the shoulders and knees. You can use this to mix and match with other compatible figures in either robot or vehicle modes. Like I said, this gimmick isn’t really my bag, but it’s probably fun for the kiddos. The connections stay put pretty well when fiddling with him in alt mode, but they did separate a few times while I was transforming him.

I like Scraphook, but I fall just short of loving him. He gets major points for great looking alt and robot modes, but his robot mode is way too small for a $25 Deluxe. Add to that the issues with the shoulders, and he just feels grossly overpriced. It’s also a shame that he doesn’t display well with the Studio Series Junkions, but having a tow truck about half the size of a motorcycle is a bummer. Yeah, I know. Transformers scaling has always been wonky, and that’s true. These are also from two completely different lines, so there’s no reason they should be able to cohabitate on the shelves, but with a design this cool it would have been nice to see him in that larger scale. Maybe I will pick up Crashbar to at least have another Junkion that scales well with him as a bot. This guy is also being remolded and repainted into what I believe will be the first Decepticon Junkion, so that may be worth a look too!

Apr 13 2022

Transformers Legacy: Blaster & Eject by Hasbro

The hot newness around the Transformers world is the Legacy series, but it really just seems to be a continuation of the previous lines, with a heavy lean in to the old favorite Generation 1 designs and a smattering of Beast Wars here and there. And in keeping with their sometimes irritating habit of recent redos, Hasbro is taking another crack at everyone’s favorite Autobot boombox, Blaster!

I say recent redos, but to be fair we last saw Blaster about five years ago in the Titans Return line, and it was about four years before that when he was released in Generations. Now, I wouldn’t call three Blasters in the course of about a decade overkill, but there are still other characters who are overdue for their time in the spotlight. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t I see this figure released in Kingdom packaging as well? To be honest, it’s getting hard for me to keep track of some of Hasbro’s releases these days. Anywho, Blaster comes in the colorful new packaging we last saw with Skids, and there’s still a big open window so kids can stick their disgusting little peanut butter fingers all over my toy. Also billed in this package is Eject, which is thankfully a cassette tape and not a Headmaster head, like we got with Twin Cast. Let’s check out the alt modes…

For a long while, Hasbro seemed to be ashamed of the old tape player modes. That was especially the case with Soundwave, but Hasbro seems to have gotten over it, as the last Blaster we got was a boombox, and so is this one. And because we aren’t dealing with any third base mode, this one looks pretty damn good. You get the red body with gray side speakers, a yellow tape door, and a carry bar up top. There are some non-working knobs, and a row of buttons, which can be pressed to open the tape door. There’s not much happening on the flipside, although as you can see, I have a few pieces that aren’t aligned perfectly, which just goes to show this is a fairly forgiving transformation. Colors aside, this looks a lot like the Emerson boombox I used to record songs off the radio with when I was a kid!

The tape deck is pretty small, but I still think it scales pretty well with the Netflix War For Cyberton Soundwave release. A figure, which I never got around to reviewing, but here’s a comparison, nonetheless. Personally, I think they look good together.

As I mentioned earlier, the tape door is spring loaded, and pops open when you press the row of buttons under it. At which point you can pull out Eject in his cassette mode. Eject is mostly cast in this beautiful blue transparent plastic, with some gray parts and gold trim. They didn’t really go overboard with any cassette tape markings, but you can clearly see the two tape reels as part of the sculpt. I wan’t a big fan of the days when Hasbro was turning the cassettes into bombs or data pads, or data discs. It’s nice to see them as cassettes again. The flipside isn’t very polished, and if you’re a goofball like i am and don’t turn the head around, you can see Eject peeking back at you. Let’s check out his robot mode, before getting back to Blaster.

Eject is a pretty cool little guy, and while some may have issue with the use of translucent plastic, I actually like it a lot. It looks gorgeous with the gold paint, and Eject’s proportions aren’t too bad for a little cassette bot. And thanks to some ball joints and rotating hinges, he’s got plenty of articulation too.

Blaster’s transformation is a bit more complex than his old G1 toy, but the principle is pretty much the same. The robot mode is clean and well-proportioned and looks great. You still get the tape door on his chest, the speakers on his lower legs, and I dig the way the carry bar splits and locks into the outside of his legs. Those hollow forearms are a shame, but nothing that’s going to ruin the toy for me, and he even looks surprisingly polished from the back, and includes a whole slew of ports back there so he can store his gun and a bunch of other stuff. They even hit a homerun with the head sculpt here.

Hasbro sculpted Blaster’s right hand so that he has a pointing index finger to allow him to push his own buttons and eject a tape while in robot mode. Seriously, can these guys not just activate eject internally? Why they gotta push their own buttons? Either way, it’s worth mentioning that Blaster has some serious ankle tilts, to keep them feets flat on the floor even in dynamic wide stances, and I sure do appreciate that!

Blaster comes with his very distinctive sniper-rifle style gun. There are plenty of Transformers out there who could get away with any old weapon design, but you can’t mess with this design. It just wouldn’t be Blaster without it!

And if you were playing with Transformers back in the 80’s, you know what a triumph it is to have a Blaster and a Soundwave that actually scale well together. Blaster is just a tad taller than that Netflix Soundwave. Just enough to keep with tradition, but not enough to make it awkward when you want to have them fight. And boy do they look fantastic together!

What’s one of the things that bug me the most about Transformers in the last ten years or so? Hasbro puts out a figure and I really like it. Then four or five years later, they put out a new version and it makes the previous figure, the one I was perfectly happy with, look like poop. That’s probably why my Transformers toys are the only aspect of my collection that I purge with some regularity. There are some older favorites that I keep, but even though the Titans Return Blaster is a distinctive figure with its own charms, now that this new Blaster has come along, I really have no need to keep him in the collection anymore.

Apr 1 2022

Transformers Legacy: Skids by Hasbro

What’s this? A new main line of Transformers? Well, at least that’s my assumption, that Legacy will be replacing the Trilogy of Siege, Earthrise, and Kingdom as the new Generations line, and what better character to launch this Legacy series than… Oh, it’s Skids. Ok, then…

Well, I do like the art design! Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, I like it better than what we’ve been getting. The character art has been phenomenal, but some derivation of the boring black package with generic font Transformers running up the side has been with us for a while. This is colorful and trippy and while the Legacy logo doesn’t really scream Transformers brand to me, I can get behind this. Unfortunately, like the packaging we saw in my Buzzworthy Bumblebee review, Hasbro has stopped using plastic windows to save the planet and now leaves the toy exposed to the elements, as well as the sticky fingers of children. I would much rather they just use a completely enclosed box, but whatever. Let’s start with Skids alt mode.

Ah, the Honda City Turbo. It’s a car I never heard of before meeting Skids, and one that I haven’t heard of since. I should go on record here by saying that I’ve never been a fan of Skids. He was kind of a non-entity in the Sunbow cartoon. Indeed, off-hand I can only remember him being in two episodes: Quest for Survival and Triple Takeover. Both are great episodes, but certainly not because Skids happened to be in them. His toy was released too late to be part of the original Class of 84 Autobots, but too early to be included with the hot newness of the 1985 roster. I do distinctly remember finding him in Sears and my Dad saying, “oh, a new Transformer?” You want him? And I said nah, and wound up getting something else instead. At the time, there was just nothing about him that made him desirable to me and he was one of the only Autobots in the 1984-85 line up that I never owned.

Skids is a box on wheels, and certainly doesn’t share the stylish contours of the vintage Datsuns or sexy Lamborghinis. But with that being said, this is a fantastic new version of the original car form. Hasbro didn’t go too far off the page with this one, keeping the same midnight blue body and the same red and white striping on the sides. The front grill is gray with yellow headlamps, and there’s an Autobot emblem on the hood. The windshield and front windows are tinted blue, and you get lots of nice sculpted detail, including quad exhaust, a gas cap, and the screen on the front and back bumpers. The back is a little bland, but all in all, this is a nice alt mode for what it is.

Skids comes with a few weapons, and these can be attached using any of the three ports (one up top, and two on the sides), if you want to weaponize this mode.

Transforming Skids is pretty intuitive and the resulting robot looks surprisingly nice. The front bumper chest and door-wings has always been my favorite look for an Autobot, and Skids wears them quite well. Yeah, the chest is sharply squared off, and reminds me a bit of Armada Red Alert, but I ain’t hating it. The rest of the figure is nicely proportioned, and adds some more red to the deco, both down on his feet, and smack dab in the middle of his robot cod piece. And when viewed from behind, he’s all closed up and polished to a shine.

The head sculpt is very close to what I remember the original toy looking like, although I’m remembering him with yellow eyes instead of blue. The silver face paint looks sharp, and he wears a slight expression of disapproval on his lips, like he just saw that Spike’s report card and he got a C- in Algebra.

For an Autobot who’s primary function is a theoretician, Skids does come with a lot of weapons. You get two silver blasters, one is a stout single barrel pistol, and the other is a dual barreled gun, which can combine together to form a pretty formidable looking piece of hardware.

You also get what I think is supposed to be some kind of Energon Ax, which can also combine with the guns in a number of ways to make, well… I don’t know what. The ax replaces the rocket launcher that came with the original toy, and I’m cool with that!

The only reason I picked up Skids was because he was a new figure in a new line, and I was excited. But in reality, Legacy appears to just be an extension of what we’ve been getting in the War For Cybertron stuff, which is pretty much what I’m looking for in my Transformers anyway. Change the packaging all you want, Hasbro, but you’ve been batting a thousand with your Generations Transformers lately, and I don’t want to see that change. As for the figure itself, Skids if great! I’m legitimately surprised at how happy I am with this pick up, and he’s going to look fantastic on my Autobot shelf!