by Wolfman Jake » Tue Jul 31, 2018 12:30 am
- Motto: ""A mountain with a wolf on it stands a little taller."
-Edward Hoagland"
- Weapon: Retractable Mecha-Fangs
So, I just had the change to open up my Amazon Blast Off figure. I thought I'd give a few thoughts on it, being that I also own the Unite Warriors version of this mold as well as the UW-EX version in Movor/Shuttler:
It's a very nice toy homage of G1 Blast Off. It holds together well, but not perfectly. It's still a core to get the top tail fins to really hold together fast. They just don't want to snap together snuggly and leave a bit of a gap between them. Many of the same issues with the Unite Warriors release of Blast Off are still present, like the loose head joint and the back halves of the shuttle being a bit tough to get to stay together seamlessly. This may very well be a "Your Mileage May Very" situation. So far, Movor/Shuttler has been the best release of this mold in terms of quality control, at least in my experience.
Another issue with this release comes from the fact that Hasbro decided to use the toy configuration instead of the cartoon configuration for robot mode, meaning that the arms in shuttle mode face the wrong way, exposing their hollow parts. You can turn the arms around to hide that, but then the arms won't tab into the sides of the shuttle and the tops of the wings like they are supposed to. The arms will pretty much stay in place regardless, though, thanks to some tight joints, but it's up to you how important that step in the transformation is in terms of functionality or aesthetics.
If you're like me and you already have Unite Warriors Bruticus and are wondering how well this Hasbro Blast Off works combined with the other Unite Warriors Combaticons, you'll be pleased to know it all works rather well. The brown Hasbro used coordinates VERY well with the greenish-brown highlights used on Onslaught. They're not exactly the same shade, but they are close, and they look great together. The hand-foot-gun doesn't quite match the other ones in the UW set, since Hasbro opted to paint the "meat" of the hand silver. It is exactly the same mold as the UW version, though, so you can just use that one instead if you want to use the Hasbro version as a limb. The chest plate on Bruticus of course doesn't match Blast Off's coloring, so you loose the "illusion" that it's made of his shuttle wings, but being that the wings are obviously there on Blast Off's "sleeve" anyway, it's not that big of a problem. The dark gunmetal gray and the tan coloring of the chest piece of UW Bruticus also don't clash, in my opinion, with the dark brown Hasbro Blast Off. Those colors don't seem to really go with anything else on the figure, but it still works fine. Personally, for better or worse, I'll be sticking to the Unite Warriors Blast Off for now, but I do like having the option of the Hasbro version in case I change my mind in the future. If anyone would like, I could take some pics later of Unite Warriors Bruticus with Hasbro's shuttle Blast Off.
Wolfman Jake - Spendin' the day howlin' away.