by Wolfman Jake » Tue Nov 03, 2020 3:01 pm
- Motto: ""A mountain with a wolf on it stands a little taller."
-Edward Hoagland"
- Weapon: Retractable Mecha-Fangs
I opened up my Earthrise Sunstreaker and Trailbreaker last night, so I'll give some thoughts on each. First, both of these are amazing figures and are keeping the "Mini Masterpiece" feel of the War for Cybertron Trilogy cranking along.
Sunstreaker has a very familiar transformation in many ways to Earthrise Wheeljack, with some key differences, such as how the legs are handled. I love that the car roof chest is real. It may be large compared to the G1 character model, but it doesn't look out of proportion to the rest of the figure either. The difference in yellows is definitely much less drastic in person and really just amounts to the difference between yellow plastic and yellow paint. The painted parts are obvious because they are painted THICK and glossy to prevent bleed through of the black plastic forearms or the clear blue plastic window pieces. I think the biggest issue with photos is not the yellow paint, but the yellow plastic, which gets washed out really badly on camera, but looks fine in person. I also think that painting the headlights on the bottom of the front bumper is a genius way to handle the feet without making it overly complicated. They hide just fine in car mode. This is a good use of "faux parts." It's also nice that the rear engine block doesn't have to come off at all for transformation between modes. I wish that Sunstreaker came with a gun accessory, though. The engine block doesn't cut it, since it's part of the robot mode silhouette and should stay on his back, and because it doesn't even peg into Sunstreaker's hands securely. You can mount it to the holes on the forearms snugly enough, though. Overall, Sunstreaker is great and looks cool with his Countach brother Sideswipe standing next to him. The one thing that has me a bit worried about use over time of this figure is that there is a LOT of tight snapping together of pieces of the clear plastic hood of the car when converting between car and robot mode if you want everything to sit nice and flush with minimal gaps. I hope that won't cause the plastic to break over extended use. Even when applying the needed pressure and making sure everything snaps together, my root top won't sit perfectly in car mode, either rising up a bit in the front or the back, seemingly teetering on something in the middle.
Trailbreaker is fantastic. I knew what to expect from the Earthrise Hoist mold, but Trailbreaker I think wears it better. The black coloring helps a bit with the arms peering through from the undercarriage of the truck. The new piece for the robot back/topper for the truck bed works pretty seamlessly. Trailbreaker looks almost kibble-free in robot mode, honestly. The tolerances on the 5mm holes are better, so I can get the hose nozzle attachment to come on and off the fists so much more easily than on Hoist. Everything snaps very neatly into place too. All the panels line up to make a very pretty alt mode with minimal gapping. It's too bad they couldn't have re-engineered the "wings" to fold away to give us a perfect cartoon model silhouette, but I understand that would have taken a LOT more doing to fix the way the shoulders work too.
Overall, I'm very pleased with these two figures. I don't think I'll need a new Sunstreaker or Trailbreaker (or Hoist, for that matter) in my collection for a VERY long time.
Wolfman Jake - Spendin' the day howlin' away.
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