Zobovor
2024-09-29 02:23:37 UTC
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PermalinkTransformers who has never gotten an official toy, so I'm very pleased
that Hasbro finally decided to sell us this guy! And there's also some
loser Hot Rod knockoff as well.
The front of the box features artwork printed in 1988 from UK issue
#168, illustrated by Jerry Paris, in which Flame metaphorically clutches
several of the Wreckers (Springer, Broadside, Ultra Magnus, Xaaron) in
the palm of his hand. The "Transformers and Action Force" logo is
retained, despite the fact that American consumers may very well have no
clue that it was the name under which the G.I. Joe comic book was
reprinted in the UK.
For anyone not familiar with the UK comics, Xaaron was the leader of the
Autobot resistance movement on Cybertron, and his team (including
characters like Impactor and Flame and Rack N' Ruin) had all sorts of
adventures that were completely separate from the stories told in the
USA. Eventually, when Simon Furman started writing the American stories
as well, Xaaron made his way into the comic book, eventually becoming
possessed by the spirit of Primus before being destroyed by present-day
Unicron.
(As a point of interest, a head-of-state or high-ranking official such
as Xaaron should actually be referred to as an "emir," while an
"emirate" would in fact be the territory ruled by the emir. But, such
things are easy to research and verify with the advent of the Internet,
but were less easy to do when Xaaron's character was created. Just ask
Michaelangelo some time why his name is misspelled!)
Xaaron's design is clearly cribbed from the design for G1
Megatron——specifically, he was inspired by the Hasbro toy version of
Megatron, which had the rounded barrel chest (ha, gun joke) and the odd
crown-like structure on his forehead. I think most of the fandom sort
of assumed that if we ever got a Xaaron toy, it would be based on a
Megatron toy in some shape or form, though Hasbro actually ended up
going in a very different direction... and it was a truly inspired
decision that really works on a lot of levels!
So, Xaaron is actually a remold of the Refraktor toy from the Siege
line. He's smallish (and way shorter than Flame), but we know from the
comics that he's roughly the same height as Bumblebee, and is way
shorter than Impactor, so it makes sense for him to be a shorter
Deluxe-class toy. Making him a Megatron remold would have made him
Megatron-SIZED, which probably wouldn't have worked out as well.
He's decked out almost entirely in yellow, with a light grey head and
biceps and upper legs, and a gold-painted pelvis and toes. (Note that
Xaaron tended to be colored a little differently in the British comic
book than in the American comics. In the U.S. stories, he was pretty
much yellow from head to toe, but this toy's color scheme is more
consistent with his U.K. appearances. I wouldn't be super surprised,
now that the tooling for Xaaron exists, if they did a redeco version in
all yellow at some point.)
His head sculpt and face paint deserve special mention here. For some
reason I've never fully understood, Xaaron has a rather unconventional
mouth design, and his upper lip and lower lip do not fully separate, and
are forever connected at two different points. But, it's an important
enough feature of the character's design that every single artist who
ever portrayed him in the comics retained this look. The head was
designed with this in mind, despite how utterly weird it is.
The character did not tend to be heavily-armed (and indeed, at one point
he wasn't even sure if he could still transform) but this is a toy line
called Transformers, after all, so the toy can do the thing. He comes
with four accessories, two tank treads that can mount to his lower legs,
a shield for his left arm, and a cannon for him to carry in his right
hand. It's almost laughable to see Xaaron so heavily-equipped (he
didn't have any visible vehicle-mode kibble in the comics) but you can
always leave these parts off if you want him to look more authentic on
your display shelf. He retains the blast effect konnection points from
the Refraktor release.
Xaaron was ancient in the extreme, and at one point he worried that
trying to transform to vehicle mode after not doing so for such a long
time might actually kill him. Let's hope that doesn't happen in plastic
form! His transformation to vehicle mode uses the same ideas as the
Refraktor toy, but with some new twists. You have to pop off all the
pieces, including the tank treads, before folding him up and tucking in
his head and arms and toes. The treads mount to his hips (using the
pegs that you would use to konnect three Refraktors together to form the
kamera mode) and then the shield and cannon connect together to form a
tank turret, which plugs into the top.
It's not a super convincing vehicle, but I suppose no more or less so
than the vehicle mode that had been originally konceived for Refraktor.
The vehicle cockpit piece that unfolds out of the robot chest doesn't
plug in very tightly, and tends to pop loose, but I'm not sure if that
problem is specific to my copy or whether it's a flaw in the molding.
It's very much a Legacy Skullgrin type of vehicle, with a pair of
obvious robot toes forming the front of the tank. The heritage skis on
the robot legs help to support the front of the vehicle.
Being a comic pack release, Xaaron has paint deco meant to suggest the
style in which the characters were inked in the comics. He's got
sweeping diagonal lines on his chest and legs, which are just about the
only clean panels on his body devoid of Siege-era greeblies. They also
decorated his tank barrel and the insides of the tank treads in the same
manner.
It seems like it would be possible to gather together three Xaaron toys
and combine them into a box. All the pegs and connection points are
still there, and I can get the toy to fold up into the proper
configuration(s) with no issues. Of course, he wouldn't have a camera
lens or flash cube or anything of that nature, so I'm at a loss as to
what the point would be. I'm sure somebody, somewhere, has ordered
three of these sets with the intent to form a Xaaron non-camera, but I'm
not going to be the one to do it.
Well, what a pleasant and unexpected surprise that Hasbro made a hard
pivot towards celebrating the interations of the characters found in
Marvel Comics! I find these to be quite delightful. I wouldn't object
to many more. I'd be perfectly happy with a purple Soundwave (which was
actually the original plan for this release, so I hope they still intend
to do it), or a red-helmet Ratchet, or a comic book version of Blaster
(complete with Batman mask), or a new, bigger Scrounge (perhaps made out
of Velocitron Cosmos) or Jazz or Starscream or Galvatron... or even a
hideous Megatron-Ratchet fusion, if they can figure out a way to still
make the toy transform into something!
FLAME
I didn't grow up on the UK comic book, only having read the issues after
discovering the larger Transformers fandom as an adult. But, my
understanding is that Flame was an Autobot scientist, and a staunch
rival of Xaaron, who wanted to repurpose Megatron's plan to transform
Cybertron into a war machine, only Flame would use it to explore the
galaxy. As a means to an end, he broadcast a signal which reanimated
dead Transformers surrounding his laboratory as zombies that would
attack on sight. A crack team made of both Autobots and Decepticons
arrived to stop him, and ironically it was the reanimated zombie version
of Impactor who finally managed to snuff Flame for good.
He is not to be confused with the Motorvators toy from Europe released
in 1991. Completely different Flame!
So this toy is a remold of the Studio Series "Gamer Edition" Megatron
toy from 2023 (which in turn is an update of the original Deluxe-class
2010 release based on the War from Cybertron video game). I don't own
the Megatron toy in question, but it looks like the robot head, chest,
and pelvis were modified to create the look for Flame, with the arms and
legs retaining their original design.
Flame's look as he appears in the comic book is impossible to not
associate with Hot Rod on some level. He's red and orange and yellow,
which were Hot Rod's signature colors, and he even has an orange upper
body with a yellow flame design on his chest and an Autobot symbol in
the center. Admittedly, we've seen how many so-called "original"
characters are just rip-offs of existing Transformer designs (Xaaron,
Straxus, etc.) but either this is the most egregious example of design
thievery, or it was done deliberately. I haven't decided which yet.
Flame transforms into what is described in the comics as a firetank,
essepcially a fantasy vehicle that's roughly built out of his robot
parts, with tank treads and a turret barrel. Of course, the comic book
designers didn't actually have to engineer the transformation in
physical space, so no toy that exists in three dimensions is ever going
to match the look for Flame's vehicle configuration with perfect
accuracy. But, this specific toy was a reasonably good choice for the
character, and it roughly captures his look from the comics.
The actual transformation involves the left arm folding up and tucking
away asymmetrically, while the right arm ends up on the top of the tank
to serve as the turret. The legs wrap around the sides of the vehicle,
and he's got these weird sideways hovertank treads. I had thought that
the kibble hanging off the top of his left shoulder would be integrated
into the vehicle mode in some way, but it's just for decoration and is
all hidden for the tank mode. Weird.
I had actually originally been planning to sell off Flame after he
arrived and just keep Xaaron, but he's quite visually striking, and I
seem to have acquired a collection of UK comics characters through
attrition or something. There have been hints that we might get a Rack
N' Ruin toy eventually, a toy I would quite like to have, so I suppose
it makes sense to keep Flame.
The two-pack was $54.99, which is slightly less than if you bought a $35
Voyager toy and a $25 Deluxe toy separately. These are fringe
characters who would have sold poorly in stores, so it was wise of
Hasbro to make them available online so that those who want them can
actively seek them out. But, I'm very glad that they continue to
manufacture the fringe characters, and I am always happy to add them to
my collection.
Zob (went to a local restaurant tonight I'd never heard of before that
is decorated in Star Wars and Transformers toys!)