Saturday, January 13, 2024

Transformers Legacy United Core Class Wave 1 review

In vanilla Legacy, we had a mixture of Pretender bots, repacks, and repaints. In Legacy Evolution, we received 6 Dinobots that combined like Dinoking in addition to the repaints. Now in Legacy United, we finally have more franchises represented, with  Tasmania Kid repping Beast Wars II, Energon Megatron representing the Unicron Trilogy, ans Bouldercrash somewhat homaging the Rock Lords (and whatever other rock monsters were in TF). Let's start the Legacy Evolution reviews with these little guys!


Here they are in their alt modes, with Tasmania Kid in his titular devil mode, Megatron in his Energomn jet mode, and Bouldercrash in a rocky motorcycle mode with three wheels, so maybe a tricycle? Not much else to say beyond the sculpted details being well made for each of them considering one is an organic animal, another is a metal vehicle, and the third is a rock!


The scale between Tasmania Kid and Lio Convoy is pretty good and should at least match their cartoon appearances and their old toys more or less. Though chances are, it's not the case if one remembers Lio is an Ultra Class figure.


The transformation is more or less similar to that of his old Basic Class figure, with the head halves becoming feet, the pretty insightful back kibble, and the way the hind legs become the arms of the robot mode. Speaking of, with the chest abs and pecs, the shoe-like head halves, Tasmania Kid looks on-point with the usual offerings of a Beast Wars character design, specifically Snarl since Takara renamed him as such for BWII. The only oddities I have to mention are how flat his hands are, making them work better for altmode than in bot mode.


His articulation is standard for the line, with neck movement, ball joints at the shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles. His tail weapon can be mounted on his arm if you want to give him a weapon of some sort. It's average but at least the figure looks good next to Lio Convoy. I wonder who else we'll get in the BWII series since we already got representation for BW Neo thanks to Magmatron. 


Up next, here we have Energon Megatron but without the tank weapon. It's a pretty faithful rendition of the original toy, albeit with a few missing paint apps as well as the translucent plastic that is now opaque. I do like how faithful the toy ended up being, but I can't help but wonder if this is a tease for a larger-sized version of the character.


Transforming him is nearly the same as on the original toy, though the thighs swivel rather than straighten with the spring-loaded knee-caps. Meanwhile, the arms don't jut out and they simply straighten out. That being said, the robot mode makes for a nice take on the original design from the Energon line, what with the wings, the dual cannon, the updated proportions to the G1 Galvatron design, this is one of the ways I like seeing G1 get homaged, where the designs take influence while stamping their own twists for their own identity rather than just try so hard to copy them to appeal to purists (cough Bumblebee movie). Honestly, if the blue was purple, he'd look like Buzz Lightyear in a way.


His articulation consists of the same joints we saw before from Tasmania Kid, but there is a neck swivel instead of a ball joint, and the thighs swivel. I really hate how the lower legs come off too easily, almost like they were either not molded right or there is flash on the joints. At the very least, he can use his weapon in its blade configuration and remove the cannons so they can go from pointing up to forwards while representing one of the gimmicks of the toy. Megatron is at least able to go well with his larger Armada self, though it is a reminder that the popularity of Armada casts a shadow over the reputation of the Eenrgon series.


And here we have Boulderclash next to Magneous. It's interesting seeing how we got rocky Transformers, but I have to ask: when will we get a Collaborative Transformer featuring Fred Flintstone's car?


Transforming Bouldercrash is pretty similar to the average cycleformer, which is expected for a toy this small. But as for the robot mode, I have to admit the head sitting higher up than it should is an overall oddity for the proportions. I do like the asymmetrical design cues added here and there that show how somewhat organic this design is versus the more sharp-edge robots. He certainly feels more nimble than the norm, though the back kibble has the usual front-end section of a motorcycle as well as a tail that should have been folded away in some way.


His articulation is the same once again, but there is a waist swivel to make his poses more dynamic. He can hold his weapon fine enough, and he looks like an appropriate sidekick next to Magneous. 


Oh and he has a third mode where he can be some kind of bladed weapon. Yeah it's nothing that grandiose, moving on.


Overall, this wave has been pretty solid for what we're getting. A new Beastie after not getting any rep for the series in the first two years of the Legacy line, an under-represented entry from the Unicron Trilogy's middle chapter, and a maybe Rock Lord that makes the United subline more interesting overall. They each have issues of their own, so all I have to say is that I do recommend them but do keep in mind that it may vary depending on tolerances or how their engineering turned out compared to past other figures.


Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐ and a half out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

No comments:

Post a Comment