Zobovor
2024-12-10 22:45:29 UTC
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Permalinkundoing work that I've done, meticulously and with care) so it was a
pleasant surprise to find this guy waiting in my mailbox when I got
home. (And this time it actually *was* a surprise, since the eBay
seller shipped it without tracking information, for some odd reason. I
love getting things in the mail, but eBay sends delivery notifications
to my phone that kind of spoil it a bit.)
Anyway. Like I've said before, when I was a much younger Zob, Action
Masters were, for me, a celebration of the 1984-85 characters who had
been mostly forgotten by Hasbro for a few years. I didn't pay much
attention to the new characters introduced in 1990, because I didn't
love Rad or Banzai-Tron or Gutcruncher. I loved Starscream and Jazz and
Soundwave. This means pretty much all the Action Masters introduced
that year are completely new to me. I've never even seen Sprocket in
person, much less actually handled him, until today.
So, the Sprocket figure itself is 3.75" tall, and he's got more skinny
proportions than a lot of other Action Master figures. His legs,
particularly, are surprisingly lithe and narrow, and I think this was
done with the intent of selling the idea that he once turned into a
flying vehicle. He's molded in black plastic for the body and lower
legs, and white plastic for the head and arms and upper legs. He has
orange as an accent color, painted on his forearms and knees and toes,
and also yellow on either side of his boots. The sculpted cockpit in
his chest suggests an aerial vehicle, and he's got little winglets
jutting from the backs of his shoulders that also supports this idea.
The general fandom concensus seems to be that he was once a helicopter,
and I can't say I disagree.
The vehicle he drives, the Attack Cruiser, is a rugged 4x4 vehicle,
vaguely Jeep-like. It's about seven inches long, pretty much the same
dimensions as the Attack Cruiser that came with Wheeljack. It's dark
green in color, with light blue seats and some gold-colored parts. The
gold, thankfully, doesn't seem to be of the crumbly variety, unlike
other toys from G1 that suffer so badly from Gold Plastic Syndrome.
The vehicle has two gold missiles which, according to the instructions,
are meant to mount on the fins near the rear of the vehicle. There are
three-millimeter pegs on the missiles that go entirely unused, but it
seems like they were designed to plug into the sides of the vehicle,
near the back. There are two holes that seem to be included
specifically for this purpose. There are also a couple of vestigial
holes near the front engine, but the missiles don't fit. I wonder if
the shape of the missiles, or the vehicle, changed during development
and so these peg-holes went entirely unused (and thus were never
precisely machined to fit the missile pegs). Even Sprocket himself
can't grasp the missiles because of the way his arms are bent, making
him (I think?) the only Action Master with no handheld weapon to call
his own.
His tech specs mention both the magnetic rockets as well as, supposedly,
the fact that he's armed with two photon rifles. The tech specs tend to
only explicitly describe features and equipment of the toy, further
suggesting something was eliminated during the planning stages.
The vehicle can transform into a helicopter mode, called a "hovercopter"
in his tech specs. The front engine flips around to reveal a pair of
cannons, and the rear chunks of the vehicle swing forward, revealing a
fold-down fin on each side. All four wheels fold inwards and stow
beneath the undercarriage ("Energon? Where we're going, we don't need
energon!") and the helicopter tail swings up from the rear of the
vehicle, with bright orange helicopter blades that unfurl for flight
mode. The finished flight mode is about 11" in length, with a 10"
wingspan. The blue fins seem to be the most fragile piece, and they
seem to be the parts most frequently missing from the Sprocket vehicles
on the secondary market.
The only sticker my toy appears to be missing is his Autobot symbol, but
I just so happen to have picked up an incomplete Sprocket sticker sheet
a while back, thinking I might just make use of it some day. How's that
for foresight, eh? There seems to be some confusion about where his
symbol is actually supposed to go. Most people seem to put it on his
chest, but a strict reading of the sticker application map seems to be
pointing to his shoulder. It's kind of hard to say. (I even checked
his TV commercial appearance, but in the animated segment, he's not
drawn with a symbol at all.)
So, I had been watching an auction for an incomplete Sprocket, missing
one of his missiles. I saw a single auction for a lone Sprocket
missile, which I gobbled up for $10, knowing I'd need it if I won the
auction. I ended up getting him for $46, which feels like a fairly
reasonable price. So often, I get a toy that's broken or defective
somehow, and then I have to go shopping for replacement parts, but
that's not the case this time. Sprocket's going directly in the display
case. And now that just leaves Over-Run and Gutcruncher to complete my
set of Action Masters released in the USA!
Zob (seriously, you don't just redo work right after I literally JUST
DID IT this morning)