Dave's Transformers Generations Selects Rant: Earthrise batch 1 Decepticon Exhaust (retool of Wheeljack) Greasepit (retool of Ironworks) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeSE4 The first Generations Selects batch to use Earthrise molds. I ordered them at the same time as the Centurion retool of Brunt, but the Fan First Friday reveals are a mix of "available immediately" and "pre-order". https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeE1 - Wheeljack and Ironworks CAPSULES $20 on HasbroPulse.com, similar prices on a few other online stores. Decepticon Exhaust: Original mold recommended. This is a pretty good homage to "Marlboor" from Diaclone, and lacks the transformation part-popping issue I had with Wheeljack. Recommended. Greasepit: Original mold mildly recommended. This is sufficiently different to be worth getting, and this is the sort of toy where having more increases the play value of each. Mildly recommended on its own, recommended if you already have Ironworks (in an inversion of my usual "do you have it already?" tiered recommendations). RANTS Packaging: The same basic brown cardboard box with faux spraypaint deco and a sticker sealing it closed and saying what toy is inside. Same interior as the Siege Selects. Instructions are grayscale plus teal accent. DECEPTICON: DECEPTICON EXHAUST Assortment: WFC-GS11 Altmode: Race Car Transformation Difficulty: 18 steps Previous Name Use: No U.S. (Japanese use in 2015) Previous Mold Use: Gen:WfC Exhaust is the canonization of the Diaclone "Marlboro" deco of the G1 Wheeljack mold, appearing as a Masterpiece redeco in 2015 and then in several 3P toys. The Diaclone skirted very closely to the edge of trademark violation, with "Marlboor" instead of "Marlboro", but for both the 2015 Masterpiece and this toy the deco has been changed to avoid being too close to the Marlboro packaging motif, out of an abundance of caution. And nothing even like "Marlboro" on it. Packaging: Five ties on the robot, one on the shoulder weapon. There's no sigil on the instructions, but they have the weird faction symbol also seen on the toy...it's like an Autobot symbol mixed with a Decepticon symbol and a skull. TFWiki says this is the Mercenary symbol, and it's distinct from the "death metal skull tattoo" symbol seen on the Quintesson-aligned toys (which were originally going to be Mercenary faction as well, but looks like that changed). Color Swaps: Almost none, and the one that does change makes things worse. The two white pieces inside each foot are now black, which results in a pair of black rectangles on the hood of car mode. The shoulder struts and neck holder also change to black plastic, but those changes don't impact vehicle mode. Paint Apps: The face, visor, and top helmet crest are painted silver. The chest is painted dark red for the roof over the smoky clear plastic, with the air scoop being white with a gray Mercenary faction symbol. The shoulder weapon is painted black except for the 5mm peg and the warhead poking out the front. There's no paint on the fronts of the "wings" on the back. There's red on the shins and arms as part of the vehicle colors, which I'll cover below. The overall effect is that it doesn't QUITE look like Wheeljack even at a distance, but it's close. In vehicle mode, the effort to Not Be Marlboro led to being not much of any pattern. There's a bit of this, a bit of that. The chest roof is darker red than the dark red paint creating a sort of X shape seen from above, if you lopped the top quarter off the X. Some thin stripes parallel the lower (front) legs of the X and zig backwards along the front sides. Another thin strips parallels the first thin stripe on the side, then angles back to to along the edge between side and top. There's also a thin red stripe along the bottom edge in front and most of the sides, thickening into a bar just ahead of where it stops completely at the rear fenders. The spoiler has slightly brighter red paint stripes at the edges. Much of the rear is matte black, and the vent in front is matte medium gray. There's gloss white paint on the bit of each side ahead of the rear wheels, in the same way Wheeljack has it, but with the lower half adding red. The wheel hubs are painted light gray. Most of the original decals have been replaced for "not getting sued" reasons. The front edge on the driver's side has "BANDIT" in white on red, I presume that's meant to replace Marlboro as the main sponsor. Bandit is repeated in red letters on the driver's side spoiler, while the other side has "EXHUAST" (sic) in red inside an oval. The doors have the same decals printed on them. Front top is another EXHUAST in an over, but now black. Behind that is 598, the only Diaclone-era decal remaining. At the rear, on the white painted part of the side, is an outline 7 with a pair of black dice rolling on either side. The bottom edge has Decepticon spelled out phonetically in Japanese (De I Se P Te I Ko N according to my translation app), and then a crown with "ROYAL" in the band. All of this is in black ink. Mold Changes: He has a new head, with the mask up over his eyes, based on the original Diaclone variant's head. It's made of black plastic, and has the sort of wings on the sides based on the Diaclone one, but small enough to fit inside the chest cavity for vehicle mode. Other Notes: I didn't have any trouble with the front window bits popping off during transformation, either they fixed the tooling slightly, or I got a bad copy of Wheeljack. I had a little more trouble getting the back end aligned, though. [Later note: others report serious problem with part- popping, so I guess I just got lucky.] The stubby shoulder launcher does appear to be inspired more by Masterpiece Exhaust's than by Wheeljack's original shoulder weapon, suggesting this retool was planned from the start. If you're inclined to add more paint to this toy, my main recommendations would be silver on the warhead, and red on the underside edges of the top and middle visor slats (as seen on the Masterpiece version). Painting the wings blue without also making the windshield blue wouldn't quite work, IMO, and the windshield is too dark to convincingly make blue with Tamiya clear paint. (You could also make the wheel hubs red to match the Masterpiece, but I kinda like the more subdued gray.) Overall: An obscure bit of fan bait, pretty well executed. DECEPTICON: GREASEPIT Assortment: WFC-GS12 Altmode: Gas Station, Ramp, Battle Station Transformation Difficulty: 12 to Gas Station, 16 to Ramp, 16 to Battle Station (also 11 to turn robot into components, a first step in the other modes) Previous Name Use: G1 Previous Mold Use: Gen:WfC The original Greasepit didn't really get much characterization or screen time, just being a ripoff artist and having a "blink and you miss it" appearance in Transformers Zone. Okay, he also had a few short appearances in the Dreamwave Micromasters series, but the less said about that comic the better. Personally, I find amusing that they retooled Ironworks as Greasepit, because back in 2005 I did a couple of "Only Human" drawings for an AllSpark Art Challenge: I. Ron Works, and Clarice Pitt. Yeah, I R63'ed Greasepit. And it does mean that I tend to headcanon Greasepit as female as well. Packaging: Seven ties on the robot, one on the rifle. The instructions have the canonical way to make the Ironworks tower communications station, confirming that I guessed right. :) The ramp is a long section of ramp with a small gas station blocking one end. Neither the Weaponizer mode nor the overpass shown in Ironworks's instructions are here, they focused on more options, which is nice. Color Swaps: Light gray becomes a slightly lighter and cooler shade. It's only really obvious if you connect Greasepit's and Ironworks's ramps together. Black splits up into three colors. The pelvis, feet, and the tip of the gun are golden yellow. The shovel arm and pegs on the shovel and under the shovel are light gray. The torso sides, non-joint parts of the left arm, main part of the gun, shins, and left biceps part are medium blue. I think the shovel itself is also light gray, but it's completely painted over. (A flashlight shines through it in a way that suggests a lighter color, but it's definitely painted and therefore probably not made of yellow plastic.) Paint Apps: The robot head is unpainted to let the plastic color be the helmet, with a purple face and light blue visor. The grille bits on the shovel chest are also painted purple. The right forearm is almost completely covered in blue paint, except wrist peg and the socket on top. The feet are similarly painted over in blue, except for the sockets on the undersides. The toes also have light gray stripes painted on them, down the center of the tops of the feet. The shovel is completely covered in golden yellow paint. Much of the body of the rifle is painted bright red. A small purple on white Decepticon symbol is printed on the front of the left upper arm. The tops of the torso have stickers for the gas station windows. Mold Changes: The hook is gone, replaced by a golden yellow gas pump piece that acts as a sort of hatchet hand (in-package the pumps are on the top side, but the instructions show them rotated to the bottom in more of an axe blade position). It has a 5mm socket at one end for attaching to the wrist, and a 3mm stud at the other end. It also has a pair of nonstandard pegs on it for attaching to the gas station mode. There's also a blue plastic sign that's painted bright red except for the pegs on the back and the lower right. It has a sticker with "SUPER GASOLINE Z-1" and a zooming car printed on the front (basically the same sticker as G1 Greasepit had for the sign). The sign is slightly larger than the left upper arm on which it is pegged in the standard robot mode, 32mm wide, 13mm tall (not counting the peg), and 5mm thick. The back is a square grid of holes 5mm across, so it can be stuck reasonably securely onto a 5mm peg as long as there's clearance for the 5mm peg on its own backside. (So it can't be placed centered on the chest in robot mode, but it can go centered on the right wrist peg.) Other Notes: Color-wise, it splits the difference between Greasepit the Micromaster and the colors of the fuel depot. While they didn't retool the head to look more like G1 Greasepit's, the colors match up (plus the extra visor color). The new modes merit descriptions of their own. Gas Station Mode: The core is the same as Ironworks's construction site, but the crane plugged into the base (wrist into the side of the torso piece, shoulder peg into the ramp's 5mm socket), with the sign on top of that, and the gas pumps going into the edge of the right side ramp (viewer's right with the station facing them). While the details aren't there, the crane does give the feeling of the carwash attached to some gas stations. Too bad they couldn't really do anything about the back of the head stuck between the windows, though. I suppose a 3P outfit will eventually make a front doors piece to snap over that, using the 3mm studs on top of the windows. The slots for the gas pumps are present on Ironworks as well, an example of pretooling. Here's the two base modes stuck together: http://www.dvandom.com/images/greaseworks.JPG Ramp Mode: Not really sure what they were aiming for here, and the instructions meander a bit...they put some pieces together, then take them apart and reverse them in a later step. By moving the pelvis/hips piece to another spot, I got better stability, though. The whole thing is about 10" (25cm) long in the intended mode. I found that this was more of a starting point for tinkering, with several alternate builds working out better than the official one. Tower Mode: Substantively the same as the one described and pictured in my Ironworks review, but it uses the new accessories in the lowest level, sticking the gas pumps onto the hip peg that doesn't have the crane-and-gun piece. And sticking the sign on the side of the crane. Overall: A few changes make for a satisfyingly different toy, especially since they split up the build ideas for the mold across two sets of instructions. Definitely worth picking up if you liked Ironworks or have nostalgia for G1 Micromaster battle stations. Dave Van Domelen, took a couple nibbles out of the to-be-reviewed pile while his students endured the final exam.