Sabrblade wrote:And to answer the Quickslinger question, Takara's Quickslinger is just "Sling" (Slingshot's Japanese name).
I don't have the box anymore to double check, but I could swear the Romanization on the Unite Warriors Superion box has the "Western" names for all members, including Slingshot. The Japanese script, if I recall, says simply "Sling," as you would guess. That's pretty much the norm for Unite Warriors (and Takara Generations/Legends) so far, Japanese name in Japanese script, English/Western name in English script.
Nemesis Maximo wrote:Okay, so Devastator is big. Like, obscene. I mean, in a good way, and I LOVE it, but it's definitely obscene.
I was worried about the color; a lot of the Takara stock photos depicted that yellowish green, and most of you know how I feel about the color yellow. I am indescribably relieved to look across my room and see a tasteful, stylish, non-fluorescent, limey neon green.
In fact, the only thing I don't like about him is his hands. Mixmaster's leg mode (including the foot) is even growing on me. And I can live without ball joints on necks. But his hands are so...basic. When a Unicron figure came out 15 years ago and still holds up against modern toy making standards, we should have fully articulated fingers on a toy this size.
But that's my only complaint.
He's big, he's green, and he's MEAN. I love him to pieces. The green is spot on. It kind of "glows" a bit in low light, believe it or not.
Everything about the gestalt transformation is fun, and everything fits together very solidly and securely once you figure out how to do it right. There are TONS of slots and tabs to fit to each other, creating a tremendous amount a stability for a modular figure of this size. Kudos to the Takara designers!
The Constructicons look fantastic together as a group in robot mode too. The stand-outs for me are Scrapper, Mixmaster, and Hook. Scavanger is pretty good, Bonecrusher is okay, hindered only by his G1 accuracy which creates a very bland color layout for him. Long Haul got the shortest end of the stick. If they could have given him more substantial arms, I could forgive the extra bulkiness, but he does look pretty silly as is. I put him in the very back for group shots and places the rest of the crew around him to hide his derpy proportions.
As for Devastator's hands, I have a theory. Hasbro commissioned Takara to create this Titan Class Devastator, as we all know by now. They probably had a target parts goal from the start, and losing individually articulated fingers is a great way to get the numbers down from the drawing board. It wasn't enough, of course, and Takara had to simplify a lot of arm joints before Hasbro was happy. For their own release, they rolled back the revisions, but probably didn't newly engineer anything. Thus, something that might have always been a compromise from the get go wouldn't get "upgraded," as there was no superior version planned before.
I found out something quite by accident when trying to show my nephew how to transform Hot Spot via FaceTime. HotSpot, and indeed all of the CW/UW combiner figures, does not have a screw holding the front and back halves of his head together. They just hold with friction. I neglected to tuck Hot Spot's head away when bringing up the shoulders and it popped off into two pieces. I was surprised (and delighted) to find no damage to the head. It just snaps back together.
)
(I paid sal parcel which usually moves the fastest)
[ Click to attempt signal recovery... ]
