Dave's Transformers Generations Rant: Deluxe Wave 6 Scourge (Recon Jet) Sergeant Kup (Pickup truck) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/Deluxe6 As noted in a few other reviews lately, the Generations/Reveal the Shield distinction is blurry to the point of nonexistence. While Cyclonus and Rodimus in movie-based colors were released under the RtS trade dress, Scourge and Kup are Generations. Eh, whatever. This wave was initially padded out with reships of four older Generations toys, it's possible we'll get a later assortment that blends these two with one or more new figures, or just ships four of each of these two to a case. Still, after two waves in a row where most or all of the new characters were retools or redecos, two entirely new molds are nice to have. CAPSULES Scourge: In that now-stereotypical Hasbro way, they did a good job evoking the G1 robot mode while using a totally new vehicle mode...and then deliberately picked colors that ran counter to the original, d'oh. Still, it's an interesting new vehicle mode, a cool (if only partially documented) transformation, and an okay robot mode. Recommended. $11.99 at Target. Sergeant Kup: No, he doesn't have a Cygar. Yes, an aftermarket one is already available from at least one outfit. This isn't a "wow, you want to get this!" toy, but neither does it seem to have any significant flaws and it's a pretty good design. Like Kup himself, a solid if unspectacular addition to your force. Recommended. $11.99 at Target. RANTS Packaging: Same as wave 5. Each of the two new figures has the other as a co-sell, so the others shipping with them may just be leftovers. DECEPTICON: SCOURGE Altmode: Recon Jet Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (3) Previous Name Use: G1, BW, RiD, Universe, Cybertron Previous Mold Use: None Gimmick: Blasters combine to form battle rifle Function: Hunter Motto: "Go. Hunt. Kill Autobots." Little is known about the origin of the immensely powerful hunter known as SCOURGE. He rarely speaks, and never reveals his secrets. Few who encounter him survive to tell the tale. Most often, he descends on his target from the sky, lays waste to all who oppose him, and disappears back into the darkness of space. STR 10 INT 9 SPD 9 END 10 RNK 8 COUR 10 FRB 9 SKL 8 Avg 9.125 "Little is known," in other words, "we're not going to say if he was made from an Insecticon or a jet." :) Packaging: Two rattan strings hold the vehicle mode into the blister. His combined blaster weapon is held into the tray by a secondary shell piece. Vehicle Mode: The package calls this a recon jet, but it's a lot more like the sort of lifting body one-stage-to-orbit shuttle used for Sonar of the Armada Air Defense Team. Although, a friend pointed me at the Boeing X-48B, which looks pretty close too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-48B (although Scourge has the wingtips bent down rather than up, and has two large engines and an intake-less third central thruster rather than three smaller ones). Note, the X-48B is only 21 feet wide, but is a concept test for a manned 240 foot wide plane. So, with a wingspan of 7.5" (19cm) and a length of 4.5" (11.5cm), it's either 1:34 scale (in line with most Deluxe cars) or almost 1:400 scale (plays well with some of the SWTF starships). I'm inclined to call it 1:34, with Scourge being deliberately unmanned, a nimble hunter rather than a lumbering transport. The windows are just painted on details in that case, rather than functional, but the X-48B has fake windows too. :) Mind you, the appearance of the landing gear argues for the 1:400 scale, or at least something bigger than a 21' wingspan (and bigger than the X-48A, too). The dominant color is white with medium blue as a major secondary color, rather than the light blue that dominated G1 Scourge. Most of the toy in this mode is white plastic. The thrusters and central rear are mostly bright blue. The landing gear and middle thruster are medium gray plastic. The underside gets a little more complicated, with some robot mode plastics showing through. A dark faintly teal blue is used on some hinges, while a more purplish dark blue is used on the chunk where the front wheels are attached, as well as on part of the other hinges. Bright blue paint fleshes out the section between the thrusters to make it more uniform, and is used on the leading edge of the middle third. It doesn't continue onto the outer thirds, though, and the cutoff is a trifle abrupt. The central six windows are painted gloss black. Metallic red is used for the blaster tip in the center rear (the head-mounted blaster in robot mode), and is also visible on the main thruster intakes. There's some white details painted on the sides of the thrusters, and a purple with silver outline Decepticon symbol printed on what becomes the left side of the chest (rear top between head and thruster). Dark gunmetal paint is used on the interiors of the thruster nozzles. Articulation is about what you'd expect for a lifting-body style jet: just landing gear. There's non-rolling landing gear that folds outward from the underside, four wheels on a side very close to the center of gravity, plus a tail wheel that comes out the back. Unfortunately, the tail wheel doesn't fold back far enough to let it rest level with the line of the main wheels, even when I apply Excessive Force. The toy rests stably on just the main wheels, though, so if you don't like the nose-down posture that the rear wheel imposes, just leave it undeployed. [Later note: others have reported the wheel can fold back all the way, so I may simply have not applied enough Excessive Force.] There's 3mm rod segments on the underside near the center back. They end up mostly blocked in robot mode. The top of the central blaster (robot head) is also a 3mm rod, and the smaller gun can be attached to it in a move reminiscent of how Fracas (Targetmaster Scourge's partner) attached in vehicle mode. Undocumented Feature: While the head pops up one click for robot mode, there's a second click available that lets it rise up enough to fully expose the face in vehicle mode, an homage to the animation model of G1 Scourge, which sometimes had the robot face showing up in vehicle mode. Note, however, that the rear landing gear wheel is mounted on the same chunk as the neck, so when you pop the head up the wheel vanishes. Clicking the head up to the middle position does help with the weird rear wheel issue, though. Transformation: In broad strokes, it's fairly simple. The nose section extends and separates into legs, rotating so that the "roof" becomes a buttcape. The engines become arms, as is obvious from seeing the claws as jet intakes. And the head rotates up while the wings spin around to rest against the back. But, while the wings are rather disappointing in the sense that they officially don't do any more than that despite a bunch of folding joints (mainly made to let them open up for weapon storage), the arms are another matter entirely. They could have gone with a fairly simple nunchuck-extension to reveal an elbow joint, then slide out the hands. But instead there's a complex dance of rotating bits that feels like you're turning the cylinders inside out and backwards before ending up with arms that have some character to them. And that's pretty impressive. Getting back to the wings, after a fair amount of mucking about I finally found what I think is the intended design for them, rather different from the one in the instructions and on the package photo. Not all of the pegs and tabs involved hold as solidly as I'd like, but it does do a better job of evoking the G1 cape effect. http://www.dvandom.com/images/genscourgecape1.JPG - front view http://www.dvandom.com/images/genscourgecape2.JPG - rear view http://www.dvandom.com/images/genscourgecape3.JPG - side view One place where a design feature becomes a bug, at least for me, is that the slickness of the vehicle mode and the firmness of connections means that if you don't have strong fingernails, it's really hard to pry the wings open. And the feet are a bit tough to deploy as well. Once you've done it a couple times to smooth off any rough spots, though, it's not as hard to get either to start moving. Robot Mode: As far as the mold goes, it's a pretty good homage to the G1 animation model, although obviously there's not much they could do to make the wing/cape look like it did in the cartoon. However, the extensive white and the lack of light blue does keep it from really looking "right" in the same way that the original Universe Cyclonus failed to match up. Of course, the natural progression would then be that Japan gets a version that's much closer to the animated color scheme, but has random chrome...and then three or four years from now we'll see a store-exclusive in the correct colors in America. ;) 5.25" (13.5cm) tall. The wingspan depends on whether you follow the instructions or the alternative configuration I showed above. The "official" wingspan is about the same as in vehicle mode, but if you unfold everything it ends up only 5" (13cm) wide. Bright blue plastic ends up on the head, chest, pelvis, shoulders and forearms. Silvery gray plastic forms the collar area (but not the big popped collar pieces, which are bright blue), the hands and the main part of the bigger gun. The two darker blue plastics make up most of the joints. The barrel of the big gun and most of the small gun are made of the dark teal-blue plastic, and the grip of the small gun is the purplish dark blue. The lightpiping is clear colorless plastic, with blue paint over the eyes but not opaquely. Everything else, including the upper arms and thighs, is made of white plastic. The white paint of the thrusters is now on the forearms, and the face is mostly painted white as well. The claws are metallic red rather than pink, and the metallic red is also used on the kneecaps and the tip of the head gun. Gunmetal paint is used in details on the shoulders, bits on the chest and abdomen (not matching the gray plastic very well), and for the mustache and beard. As mentioned earlier, the Decepticon symbol ends up on the left chest. Scourge's head is on a ball joint, and his 80s-style popped collar doesn't impede the range of motion. The waist turns on a swivel, and is generally not blocked. The shoulders are kind of complex, but come down to an up-down hinge and a swivel. Raising them too much at the hinge looks bad, though. There's swivels just above the higne elbows, and the wrists swivel. Unlike Cyclonus, there doesn't seem to be any way to attach a weapon to the stump of a retracted hand. The hips are ball joints, and both of ones on my copy tend to pop off during transformation. The stiff swivel just below each ball joint tends to contribute to that problem. The knees are hinges and can bend backwards a little. The ankles are restricted ball joints on the end of struts with a little big of hinge range, so the feet can be kept flat through a fair range of stances. To compensate for the big backpack, it helps to stand him with knees bent backwards as far as the kneecaps will allow, so that his feet are planted further back. The two guns do vaguely evoke Fracas, but do not combine into any sort of robot. The smaller gun has a 3mm clip at the back, and the rear of the bigger gun's sight is a 3mm rod, so they can combine into a bigger gun. Or you can mount some other borrowed weapon on the larger gun. The 3mm rods from vehicle mode are only accessible if you follow the directions on transforming the wings, and even then they're not exactly in a great spot. The smaller gun can be worn on top of the robot's head, but looks kinda doofy there. Overall: The color choices are a touch annoying, and the wing-cape doesn't hold together very well, but otherwise it's a pretty good toy that feels right for G1 Scourge. A good companion to Universe Cyclonus and Galvatron. AUTOBOT: SERGEANT KUP Altmode: Pickup truck Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (3) Previous Name Use: None (Kup alone was G1) Previous Mold Use: None Gimmick: Exhaust pipe becomes laser musket Function: Soldier Motto: "That reminds me of a time...." SERGEANT KUP is the oldest soldier any of the AUTOBOTS know. Even before the war he was a career military 'bot, dedicated to defending CYBERTRON against all threats. His long service has supplied him with an endless array of war stories, which he never hesitates to share with his comrades no matter what else is going on. STR 7 INT 7 SPD 5 END 10 RNK 8 COUR 9 FRB 5 SKL 4 Avg 6.875 Why does he have such a low Skill? It's not like this is a copy of his G1 stats, after all. Given the loose way Autobot command is set up, Kup is probably the functional equivalent of a Major or even a General. But he was a Sergeant when things dropped in the pot on Cybertron and the old defense forces fell apart, and no one's gonna tell him any differently now. He doesn't want to be an officer, he works for a living. And other military cliches along those lines. Packaging: Two strings hold the truck mode into the blister, one holds the laser musket. The musket's C-clip is folded back so it's not obvious. The photo on the cardback disagrees with the instructions in the positioning of the door panels on the robot's arms. Neither configuration is exactly elegant, but the version in the instructions blocks the elbow range a little less, and brings the C-clip rods to the top. Vehicle Mode: While the original Kup attempted to predict what a pickup truck might look like twenty years in the future, this is more of a 2011 re-imagining of a 1950s pickup truck. So while it has lines that evoke things like the old Fords, it also has some very modern lines to it, much like the PT Cruiser blended retro with new. The dominant color is a desaturated faintly greenish blue, with bits of silver, black and a dark gray. The bedliner is a darker dull cyan. 5.5" (13.5cm) long. If this is meant to be about the length of a F-150, then it's between 1:36 and 1:40 scale. Almost the entire body shell is made of desaturated greenish blue plastic. The windows, headlights and taillights are colorless clear plastic. The bed liner is a darker cyan-green plastic, the right and left thirds of the front bumper are dark gray plastic. I'm not sure if the side mirrors are dark gray plastic or just painted that way, the dark gray paint is a very good match. The wheels are black plastic. The passenger side tailpipe and the support for the driver side tailpipe are a plastic color that's a little greener than the main body...probably intended to match, but missed by a little bit due to the difference in plastic composition. The driver side tailpipe itself is formed from the gray plastic of the musket. The front grille is painted silver, and there's silver behind the headlight plastic. The rear quarter bumpers are painted gray in a very good match to the front bumper plastic. There's a red Autobot symbol painted in the hood ornament position. The foglamps are painted dull orange, and the posts on the side windows are painted a good match for the body shell plastic. The overall result is pretty dull, but that fits the idea of an old soldier. About the only thing I'd add would be clear red paint on the taillights, since they're currently just clear and that looks wrong. The liftgate in back does drop down thanks to a transformation joint, although if you don't hold the bed down parts of it will lift up. The front wheels have some wiggle room thanks to the way they move for transformation, but if you turn them too much they just grind against the fenders. Other than the wheels being a bit wobbly, it holds together very solidly in this mode. The musket stores on the underside, but it can be pulled out and the C-clip used to attach it to the roof. The rifle itself is a matte gray plastic a bit lighter than the bumper, and the clip is that same "not quite right" green-blue used on the passenger side tailpipe. The end is narrower than 5mm, but the hole down its center is the right size for the peg in a Mini-Con port, so you can stick a Mini-Con on the end of the barrel. Sort of like a WWII-style grenade launcher conversion, only it shoots Mini-Cons at the enemy. There are two 3mm rods on the roof, just far enough back that the musket handle can rest behind the cab. There's also two rod-shaped segments along the bottom of each door, but the musket can't be mounted on them without becoming a skid on that side. They're for robot mode. The bed is the right size for Lego minifigs to mount up and act as gunners for the roof-mounted musket. It's a little too small for the octagonal gun mounts that come with some Star Wars troop-building Lego sets. Transformation: It's a bit tricky to get the first part popped open, since it IS so stable. The rearmost bit of the cab folds down to make kneecaps on the bed section, and it's a bit tricky getting the side panel pieces in just the right position to go into their slots. The really hard part about the transformation to robot mode, though, is that you need to lift up the hood and I simply don't have strong enough fingernails for that. I had to get out a knife to pry it up. There's an automorph spring mechanism that pushes the front fenders inward at the abdomen. Robot Mode: While the actual hood and windshield are folded up as the backpack, the robot mode features a fake version of them on the chest, including a little bit of window collar. While a lot of these little details match up with the G1 animation model, the general outline (other than the head) doesn't really come all that close. The front fender pieces on his torso sides make it look like he's got a big furred collar going on, and his boots are rather outsized. The shoulders do match up a little better with the G2 comic design for him, though. And he does share sagging shoulders with the G1 toy. Don't get me wrong, other than some issues with positioning the wheels over the shoulders, it's a pretty good-looking robot mode. It just doesn't scream "Kup" to me the way that, say, Reveal the Shield Perceptor's robot mode evokes the original. 5.5" (14cm) tall, the color mix adds in more of that not-quite-right blue-green as well as a bunch of light silvery gray, and a number of prominent dull orange accents. The body shell's dark cyan plastic is also used on the head, forearms, pelvis front plate, kneecaps and boot insides in addition to the actual vehicle shell parts still visible. The duller dark blue-green from the tailpipes (which seems to be a more flexible plastic, better suited to things that will be under stress) is on the shoulders, elbow joints, torso central core, and the rest of the pelvis. A silvery light gray is used on the hands, upper arms, thighs, and the struts for the front wheels and for the roof. Colorless clear plastic is added for the lightpiping and the collar window. The darker gray plastic is used on the immediate collar area and on some struts that use springs to squeeze the front fenders to the torso sides. The eyes are painted a medium transparent blue, a refreshing change from the recent trend of opaque eye-paint. The face and the tops of the feet are painted silver. The middle center chest is bluish silver with a red Autobot symbol printed in the middle. The belt front is painted gloss gray. Vaguely keystone-like shapes on his belt buckle and shins are painted dark orange, and there's rectangles of that color on the forearms. While all canonical versions of Kup have the forehead emblem on his helmet unpainted, I think it might've looked a little better if they'd put some orange on that too. The head is on a restricted ball join. It looks like the collar is meant to snap into place, but the relevant tab is a little too short, so Kup can look down by simple swinging the whole head-and-collar assembly forward. There's no waist articulation. The shoulders are ball joints on the ends of struts, and the struts don't lock into place, resulting in a tendency to slump. Unfortunately, the front wheel struts are attached to the backs of the shoulders, so they're pretty much always at least a little bit in the way. There's upper arm swivels, hinge elbows, and an extra inward-bending hinge below the elbow for transformation. Add in the wrist swivels, and you get just enough arm articulation to let Kup hold his musket two-handed, with the off hand cradling the barrel. Standard balljoint-swivel-hinge arrangements on the legs, although the knees only bend by about 60 degrees away from straight. The ankles have a full range swivel front to back thanks to transformation joints, and some side to side swiveling as well. The hands are made to hold 5mm pegs. There's two 3mm rods each on the door panels attached to the forearms, and the two roof rods are now on the backpack to hold shoulder-mount weapons. The non-rifle tailpipe ends up above the left heel, and not really sticking out enough to be useful for anything. Overall: Unless you're already a Kup fan, there's not really anything about this toy that screams "buy me!" but neither does it have any serious flaws. A good, solid toy. Dave Van Domelen, finishing up just before his hasbrotoyshop.com order of a bunch of other new stuff arrives.