Every two weeks, Seibertron.com brings you a Top 5 list related to all things Transformers written by
me, your fellow editor. And Va'al swoops in from the left, takes the list, and shapes it in his image. First day.
Taking over from
william-james88 for this session, I thought about turning our attention to one of the weirdest and least explainable (until Simon Furman in IDW) features of the Transformers lore: mass shifting. Tinkering with some of the figures below, I pitched the idea to the resident listicler - what are the best toys that change size drastically between modes, faithfully and painstakingly representing the mass-shifting quirk in plastic? It took us some thinking, as we kept running short at 3-4, but we may have cracked it, and we're spanning a lot of lines, too!
5. ROTF WheelieIs this a good figure? No. Does it conjure up good memories? No. But it is part of the best toy line from the live-action movie series (so far) and it does a fantastic job at starting from an admittedly hefty remote controlled car, to become almost Voyager scary nightmare of a spiky robot. The actual class? Deluxe. But don't remind him.
That said, the robot mode is also nightmarishly lanky and spindly, and carries a lot of the issues of the live-action designs in its feet, limbs, and general...
everything, so I wouldn't exactly recommend tracking it down at this stage.
4. MP Hot Rod
As big as the smaller cars in the Masterpiece line - though not the smallest - the second iteration of the
Captain Rodimus/Hot Rod compacts a towering robot into the speedy, flashy, flamey douche we all love to hate. Despite still being a little too big to make it into the Ultra Magnus trailer in play-mode, it's small enough to look positively tiny compared to its previous figure, and not that much bigger than the original!
But switch to robot mode, and you have something really much larger, in comparison. It does fit nicely with the likes of Ultra Magnus and Optimus Prime, but may annoy some fans in its comparison to, say, the Datsun clones or the Lambor army. You do get fishing equipment included though, so your Rod can hold a rod - rodception.
3. RID/TAV ThunderhoofWe've all heard the tale: Tiny Tractor Turns into Toweringly Tall roboT. That's what you get with Robots in Disguise Thunderhoof, at least when compared to other
Deluxes Warrior class figures in the same line. Not only is it a great little farming vehicle (one of the very few, if not the only one), adorably blue, and plodding along in the fields.
But as soon as you unfold every single part of the vehicle into its limb configurations -- hoo boy, do you have a tall, dark, and handsome, mean lookin robit. He towers over several of his class in the RID line, and is probably the first or second best of the entire run (Bisk/Thermidor is somewhere in there too), and he's just *so* different in size between the two modes, you might almost not even notice how hollow he has to be to pull that off.
2. Prime FE BulkheadVoyager class, bulky but relatively compact green SUV, complete with wrecking ball port on the back, limited release in the First Edition wave, and extortionate secondary market prices. Bulkhead is a mean, green, looming, booming machine.
From that Wreckin' ball, you get a baller Wrecker - something later canonised in the IDW comics too, as the last generation of the team before it's disbanded entirely - which may not make up for the size in height, but it is *hefty* all round, and sacrifices nothing for its look. Who says round can't be intimidating?
1. ROTF/Animated LockdownI placed both on here, as the Revenge of the Fallen figure is a stellar piece of work, and based on its cartoon counterpart - but Animated is the real star of the show, as the first entry onto the toy scene. The class? Deluxe. And the vehicle mode does a good job of keeping it at that, nice and tidy in its spiky green and black murder muscle car.
The robot mode, however, is HUGE. Like, super tall, almost Voyager scale, and without any hollow or thin or particularly lanky parts, as the aesthetic of the show and toyline allowed for proportions to work their way with stronger lower limbs and looming hunches. In Lockdown's case, it was also super fitting.
Honourable mentions:
- MP Soundwave/Soundblaster
- Cybertron Primus
- Universe Unicron
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