Zobovor
2024-11-02 17:42:55 UTC
Reply
PermalinkTransformers toy they were producing, so I had to be choosy. My
collecting strategy was something like this: I wanted at least one of
every type of Transformer so I could experience the play pattern, and I
usually made my choice based on how much I liked the aesthetics of the
design and/or how much the character depiction spoke to me. (For
example, Brainstorm was a creative genius so I found far more of an
affinity with him than the belligerent Hardhead. Easy choice.)
When the second batch of Decepticon Headmasters came out in 1988, I
disliked how they lacked flip-down panels to hide their tech specs
meters. So I think I rejected Fangry almost immediately because of the
way I assumed his upside-down tech specs panel would still plainly
visible in his transformed mode. (I was wrong, as it turns out!) A few
years later, he would become a prominent and fairly significant
Decepticon in Marvel Comics and I found myself wishing I'd gotten him
instead of Squeezeplay, but of course by then it was much too late.
I do just want to take a moment to really appreciate the fact that we
live in a world where I can think of any Transformers toy I want and,
assuming I throw a sufficient amount of money at eBay, I can have it
delivered to my mailbox within a few days. That's absolutely
mind-blowing. I think back to the times when, as a kid, I knew that
once a toy could no longer be found on the shelves of Toys "R" Us or KB
Toys, it was all over. You'd missed your chance forever. At twelve
years old, I could never have dreamed of this massive worldwide network
of computers that allows toys to change hands and travel across the
country or even across continents to arrive at my doorstep. We are
truly living in blessed times.
(I actually thought I was going to be talking about Joyride this month,
since I got as far as purchasing one and having it in my hands, but he
had reproduction resin parts that the seller didn't know about, so I
ended up returning him for a refund. So we'll look at him some other
time!)
So, Fangry is a bipedal wolf creature, with a dog-like head and a pair
of large, grey wings. Well, really, he looks more like a kangaroo.
Like Doublecross, he's mostly mechanical in nature but he's also got
some organic-looking elements, as there is a furry texture on his
creature head and arms and legs. One supposes the syntho-organic nature
of the Pretenders may have seeped its way into other character designs.
He's mostly a fuschia color that is very pleasing to my eyes, accented
with black for the wolf head and arms, and grey for the lower legs and
wings.
He was made to be very simple and very durable. His creature legs
cannot move at all, and they're permanently fused together at the feet
with a plastic rod, ostensibly to prevent them from snapping off. Early
toys like Bonecrusher or Inferno didn't need anti-breakage measures like
these, but Hasbro was clearly targeting a younger age group by this
point. His creature arms are on a clicky ratchet, so there are about
seven fixed positions they can take before the wings interfere with
their movement. The head can't move in any useful way, and the tail
(actually formed from the robot forearms) can wiggle up and down a bit,
but that's just about all he can do in this form.
As an aside, there's an interesting note in his tech specs about how his
tail can "convert into a compressed air cannon" even though his handheld
weapon isn't actually incorporated into his beast mode at all. One
supposes that since Squeezeplay and Horri-Bull both have tails that
become weapons, eit her Bob Budiansky assumed Fangry's toy also did this
when writing his tech specs, or else at one early stage the toy was
indeed designed to do this. You can plug the gun into one of the robot
fists and make it an extension of the existing tail, but then it's
asymmetrical (since both fists cannot hold it at once) and absurdly
long. There are other places you could potentially attach the gun (the
side of the creature leg, or the backpack formed by the robot legs) but
the ammo magazine from the gun interferes with this sort of placement.
Fangry's belly panel opens up to reveal Brisko, his trainer and
Headmaster partner. The cockpit is oddly roomy. Brisko wears the same
black and purple colors, and like all the Nebulans from 1988, is much
shorter than a 1987 Headmaster partner.
To transform Fangry, his wing pack pops off and the backpack unfolds
into the robot legs, which like the creature legs are permanently locked
together with a plastic bar connecting them, at both the knees and the
ankles, which feels terribly redundant and unnecessary. (The toy I got
has a very stiff hip joints, and I have to unscrew the creature arms
just to get the hips to move. I'm going to have to play around later
and find out if I can modify him somehow to fix this, maybe by trimming
down the springs or something.) The creature legs stay affixed in
position, and the creature tail splits in half to become the robot arms.
Brisko folds in half to form the head, which plugs in place.
His robot mode is a bit smaller than I'd been expecting, for some
reason. He's only five inches at the head, the size of a modern-day
Deluxe, making him the shortest Headmaster I own, shorter even than
Squeezeplay. His robot functionality is quite limited. The creature
arms hang from his hips, the wolf head is hanging off his butt, and the
creature legs are permanently poking up in the air. His shoulders can
only swing out to the sides, as required by the transformation, so his
elbows are essentially the only useful articulation he's got. The hips
will move forwards in tandem, as will the knees, but that only gives him
the ability to sit down on his own butt-mounted wolf head. But, the
bright green paint used for his face and eyes really pops, giving him a
little bit of a Halloween-themed vibe.
He can carry his ion pulse gun in either of his hands, and the wing pack
is meant to mount specifically to his left forearm as a shield. The
wing pack, incidentally, is absolutely essential to completing this toy,
and it tends to sell by itself for $75 or more. He's a little
top-heavy, and stands up better when he's using his gun as a
counter-weight.
They make the character look much cooler in Marvel Comics. They draw
the creature mode all threatening and scary, and not at all like a dopey
kangaroo. Oddly, they reduced the detail level on his robot head
considerably, and just draw him with a cube-shaped helmet. The actual
toy has got details, man. There was no reason to make him look like one
of the Blockheads from the old Gumby animated shorts.
Well, I've been hunting for Fangry for a long time, and I'm glad I got
one that's in good shape, complete, and with great stickers. The
stubbornness of his legs perplexes me, but that seems to be a problem
endemic to his design, and I'll get that figured out eventually. I paid
$129.99 for him, which is higher than prices were in 2020 when I
originally built my vintage G1 price list, but it's to be expected that
prices will have gone up after society recovered from the pandemic and
are no longer desperate to sell things just to survive.
Horri-Bull is the last Headmaster I need, but he's going to be very hard
to find unbroken, and I expect I might end up paying around $200 or more
for him. He might join the list of toys I'll probably save for last
(like Roadbuster and Vroom and some others) just because of the
exorbitant cost.
Zob (he's angry, and he's got fangs, so he's Fangry, y'see)