An evil fire truck is extremely rare for Transformers, and it's even rarer for it to not be named Inferno or Sentinel Prime. Such a character hails from the infamous Power Core Combiners line, and his name is Smolder! I know what some people are thinking: "Surge, of all of the old lines you revisited, why go for PCC?!" My answer is this: I know the line sucked for the small size, crappy drones, and some figures either being shite or having fragility issues, but there were still a few gems worth keeping. On top of that, I was revisiting the Cyber Missions web series from 2010, and I'd rather rewatch its crappy CGI than deal with Cyberworld's writers begging to go "how do you do, fellow meme lovers?". Anyways, Smolder was in one of the episodes as an enemy of Bumblebee and Ratchet, and it ended with both he and Minicon Chopster getting EMP'd. I once had Searchlight and Backwind from the same line, and they sucked ass. Let's see if these two are worth keeping.
Here we have Smolder in his vehicle mode. Chopster is pegged on top as his cannon. This fire emergency brush truck is fairly genericized and thus could be any American model with a purpose like the one Smolder fools people into thinking he has. The sculpted details and paint apps are very good for a figure of this size, and I love the flaming Decepticon insignias on the back. Smolder makes for a clunky cannon on top, but for a Minicon who's partnered with a Decepticon, why would he care? Not so cool is the back bring hollow with the head and the baby blue ports in clear view.
Transformation is closer to how some carbots would turn into their robot modes: the front becomes the legs while unfolding 180, and the rear becomes the arms. Chopster's a case of straightening the legs out and folding the barrel away. The resulting robot mode looks appropriately monstrous and bulky for a Decepticon who turns into a fire truck. Some may find that the arms stick out way more than normal, and while you can tuck them in closer to the body, you lose arm articulation so leave them out for a Decepticon like him. Once again, the colors of the bot mode look pretty fitting for a Decepticon, but I am not a big fan of the baby blue posts for a figure like this; I know it's part of the gimmick and so kids can mess understand where the pegs go, but it would have worked better if they were safety orange; yeah it would still look gaudy, but at least it fits the fire truck motif somewhat. Worse still, the ones near the legs stick out awkwardly. Sucks those things ruin an otherwise cool design. As for Chopster, on one hand, I like the fact that he is everything piping and has a deranged smile on his face. On the other hand, fragility concerns be damned if this thing wears down. So far, nothing has cracked or broken on my copy.
Articulation consists of a ball jointed head, shoulder rotation, outward arm.movement, double jointed elbows (hinge and ball joint combo), ball jointed hips, thigh swivels, and hinged knees. Chopster can turn into a fire axe, which is said to be Smolder's favorite mode in Cyber Missions. Did you know he was going to be named Kick-Axe? Anyways, torso mode for Smolder is almost comparable to a T, with very wide shoulders as well as thighs that are pretty close to each other. Chopster's armor mode isn't that great either.
Smolder was later repainted as Stakeout, who is now an Autobot with an ambulance mode and has matching blues between the pegs and parts of himself. He has a pair of repainted drones each from the Combaticons (tank and APC drone) and the Aerialbots (helicopter and jet). Despite these military vehicles, they call themselves the Protectobots. Oh and you can see how rough the torso mode looks on the mold. The head is cool though.
For a thematically appropriate Studio Series size comparison, here he is between Ratchet and Bumblebee. While he was much larger in the series, not even the shrinkflation of current Transformers can help Smolder scale with these two. Sucks but at least the toy is still cool for the most part. Torso mode is weak and the alt mode is gappy from the back, but the plastic quality is good and his main modes still look good in general. I would like to see a whole new mold that is larger than this and trades in the combiner crap in favor of better engineering and articulation. If only Hasbro can do that, but they would rather do a dead Wheeljack & Windcharger set to milk dry ass 1986 movie.
Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
No comments:
Post a Comment