Zobovor
2024-10-25 16:32:36 UTC
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Permalinkone. $55 a pop is insane for mediocre toys that I consider utterly
inessential for my neo-G1 collection, especially when I've also been
collecting TMNT Ultimates as well, which are the same price or sometimes
even higher.
But, I saw that the walmart.com portal, of all places, was selling
Bludgeon (by a third-party seller) for only $30, and I thought that was
reasonable so I bought him. Ideally, I'd like to get the Alligaticon
eventually as well as G2 Megatron, but I'm not going whole hog on this
series like I am with TMNT Ultimates (or whole rhino, for that matter).
So, Bludgeon is around eight inches in height at the top of his helmet.
He's arguably too big to interact with anybody except Super7
Banzai-Tron. He doesn't scale with anything except other Super7
Ultimates. As a frame of reference, the Pretender shell of the G1 toy
is only around 5.5" tall, so this version of Bludgeon is crazy huge.
He's modeled directly after the details of the G1 toy, just upscaled and
improved with better articulation. The original Pretender shell was
only equipped with swivel shoulders and that was it (his upper legs were
a solid block), so the added articulation is a welcome upgrade. He's
got highly poseable shoulders, elbows, wrists, a neck joint, hips,
knees, and ankles. The samurai armor "skirt" sort of gets in the way
and doesn't allow for a wide range of leg movement, though, but it's
better than zero, which is what he had in 1989. They also redesigned
the upper body armor slightly so that the samurai armor can fit around
it during posing, if you choose to raise his arms all the way to the
sides.
The helmet is not really designed to sit directly upright on his skull,
and way too much forehead is visible if you try to make him wear it this
way. I think it's actually designed to tilt slightly forwards, which
covers the forehead and exposes more of the back of his head. It's not
obvious this is the way it's meant to go, though. The helmet does not
lock in place at all, and will fall off any time I try to pose the head.
His colors are not a perfect match to G1, but they're approximately on
the mark. He's a brighter orange that's more on the yellow side of the
spectrum, accented with a darker orange for his samurai armor and a
maroon color for the arms and helmet. The grey saddlebags (which were
only there during G1 to make the Pretender shell fatter, to make more
room for his inner robot) have been reimagined and hang more gracefully
off his hips.
He comes with an upscaled facsimile of his original laser rifle, but
Bludgeon as a character in Marvel Comics was known for his swordplay, so
he gets a large blade as well as a smaller one. Both have their own
removable sheath, which can plug into a spot on his back or either of
his hips. He's also got an upscaled copy of the tank turret for his
inner robot, which the G1 Pretender shell wore as a shield. The turret
gun is supposed to come off so it looks more like a shield and less like
a piece of a tank, but on the Super7 version, there's no other place to
put the turret gun. Also, it kind of makes me wish that they'd sculpted
the rest of the inner robot and thrown that in as well. It reminds me
of those Hero Mashers toys where they would sculpt, like, the forearm of
Cliffjumper or Ultra Magnus but not bother to do the rest of the
character. The turret also doesn't stay attached well, and falls off at
the slightest provocation.
Bludgeon has an alternate helmet of a slightly different design, and I'm
having trouble placing its origins. Maybe it's meant to represent his
G2 look, which deviated a little from his original character design. He
also gets a different head sculpt with an open skull mouth and angrier
eyes, with red pupils instead of the vacant skull eye sockets. There's
a chunk of wiring that can plug into the bottom of the head, and it's
most likely meant to represent the scene from the TRANSFORMERS:
GENERATION 2 comics when Megatron destroyed Bludgeon to reclaim
Decepticon leadership, with Bludgeon's remains doing the "alas, poor
Yorick" bit. So, it's basically intended as an accessory for the Super7
G2 Megatron figure.
He comes with a gun-gripping right hand, a sword-grasping right hand, a
sword-grasping left hand, a closed right fist, and a left hand doing a
two-fingered martian arts pose.
I love the look of this figure, but it's so limited in terms of what it
can do. You can't fiddle with it much without parts constantly popping
off, and the samurai skirt precludes most of the more dynamic poses.
He's basically designed to sit on a shelf and look pretty. But, I guess
he's still less expensive than an authentic G1 Bludgeon (which can sell
for $300 or more) so it's a good option if you want to own the character
without completely breaking the bank.
Zob (used the carpet cleaner downstairs for the first time after being
at the new house for three years, which beats the hell out of the condo
days when I was using it once or twice a month)