Death's Head
08-09-11, 07:30 PM
Mudslinger and his drones the Destructicons are a motley crew. Whilst each of the drones has an armoured, Mad Max feel to them, Mudslinger sticks out like a sore thumb, being a Bigfoot style monster truck in lime green and blue. He also looks like one of those weird looking Hot Wheels toys that are rendered in a similar style.
The drones themselves are a nicely detailed and great looking bunch of toys, with the exception of the white crane truck, where clearly no-one could be bothered. Each of the vehicles contain weaponry or armaments of some sort. Although quite where the jet engines on the boxy little armoured van fit into this theme, I don’t know. Quite why these have been teamed up with the mismatched Mudslinger is a mystery. Mind you, I’m hard pressed to think of a suitable Decepticon PCC figure for these as it is. Anyhow, they are great for whizzing around on tables towards any Autobot foolish enough to get in the way.
Mudslinger himself is a mess. You can probably tell from the pictures that he’s not the best of the PCC line. Out of the ones I’ve bought so far, he’s easily poorest, trumping even the likes of figures I’d passed over; Backwind , Icepick and Sledge in terms of awfulness. Out of the box, you can see its all going wrong for the guy. Waxy, opaque green plastics, a nice head sculpt ruined by an engine intake sitting on his head making him look stupid, stumpy legs and huge great long arms with great big wheels hanging off them. Not to mention the gestalt head under the grill that twizzles about with no encouragement. With connector pegs sticking out all over the shop, he really does look horrible.
In fairness, monster trucks are difficult to get to work as Transformers. Even Mudslinger’s Micromaster namesake (and the Monster Truck Patrol) weren’t brilliant, what with their wheels getting in the way of everything, but they were a damn site better than this shambles. The wheels on the shoulders aren’t too bad, but slapping them on his forearms is a mistake. Inevitably compromised by having to feature a torso mode, its difficult to work out where they could have put the other set of wheels, but perhaps it wouldn’t have been so much of a stretch to stick them on his legs out of the way. Although he has an excellent amount of articulation, with joints allowing a considerable range of movement on his arms and legs, you can’t help but feel it’s wasted on this guy. He’s a little bit of a hassle to get to stay together as a truck too, the joints on the legs which require shifting forward a little to form the roof/cab are exceptionally tight (these come back to haunt you when forming the torso), and the arms a little fiddly to get just right forming the wheel base. The resulting vehicle, although feeling nice and chunky, looks like a Happy Meal toy and does not work well with the rusty hues of his drones. Quite what the designers were thinking of when they devised this colour scheme, I don’t know. Maybe the idea is to keep the drones relatively neutral in tone so they will work with other figures, who knows?
The final combined mode is disappointing. Again, this is mainly due to Mudslinger. The head folds up out of the grill, fine. But the joint used to give the head movement at the neck is way too loose, so he tends to end up swinging to the left or right very easily, particularly with the weight of those ‘ears’. The arms tangle up at the shoulders and don’t really clip anywhere which is annoying when you’re trying to clip the drones onto the shoulder pegs – which are on a separate axle to the various parts of Mudslinger’s arms. The legs are an interesting arrangement, but again, because the two-step joint inside the knees of the robot are so stiff, it’s difficult getting them into position. The robot feet/ cab halves should clip into place on some tabs on the legs, but mine don’t quite ‘click’, leaving you with some quite unstable legs. Clipping the drones on requires a little force too. Whereas on Bombshock, the connector pegs didn’t connect to the drones tightly enough, here it’s somewhat at the other extreme. The connections themselves are super tight, and there’s no way they will pop off these joints, but Mudslinger’s torso tends to crumple up into a twisted heap whilst you’re attaching them.
The resulting gestalt looks like a pile up. Whilst the drones will no doubt look better on another torso mode ‘bot, the two arms drones look a bit rubbish. Whilst the designers have had no trouble getting the drones right for the legs, nearly every one of the five pack teams suffers from these weird coat hanger like arms which make the Energon combiners look like works of art.
The Destructicons (ugh. That name. Did an excitable six year old come up with that?) are only worth picking up for the drones, which makes them an expensive purchase, and one probably not worth bothering with until an inevitable repaint with new torso robot rolls around.
674675676677678
The drones themselves are a nicely detailed and great looking bunch of toys, with the exception of the white crane truck, where clearly no-one could be bothered. Each of the vehicles contain weaponry or armaments of some sort. Although quite where the jet engines on the boxy little armoured van fit into this theme, I don’t know. Quite why these have been teamed up with the mismatched Mudslinger is a mystery. Mind you, I’m hard pressed to think of a suitable Decepticon PCC figure for these as it is. Anyhow, they are great for whizzing around on tables towards any Autobot foolish enough to get in the way.
Mudslinger himself is a mess. You can probably tell from the pictures that he’s not the best of the PCC line. Out of the ones I’ve bought so far, he’s easily poorest, trumping even the likes of figures I’d passed over; Backwind , Icepick and Sledge in terms of awfulness. Out of the box, you can see its all going wrong for the guy. Waxy, opaque green plastics, a nice head sculpt ruined by an engine intake sitting on his head making him look stupid, stumpy legs and huge great long arms with great big wheels hanging off them. Not to mention the gestalt head under the grill that twizzles about with no encouragement. With connector pegs sticking out all over the shop, he really does look horrible.
In fairness, monster trucks are difficult to get to work as Transformers. Even Mudslinger’s Micromaster namesake (and the Monster Truck Patrol) weren’t brilliant, what with their wheels getting in the way of everything, but they were a damn site better than this shambles. The wheels on the shoulders aren’t too bad, but slapping them on his forearms is a mistake. Inevitably compromised by having to feature a torso mode, its difficult to work out where they could have put the other set of wheels, but perhaps it wouldn’t have been so much of a stretch to stick them on his legs out of the way. Although he has an excellent amount of articulation, with joints allowing a considerable range of movement on his arms and legs, you can’t help but feel it’s wasted on this guy. He’s a little bit of a hassle to get to stay together as a truck too, the joints on the legs which require shifting forward a little to form the roof/cab are exceptionally tight (these come back to haunt you when forming the torso), and the arms a little fiddly to get just right forming the wheel base. The resulting vehicle, although feeling nice and chunky, looks like a Happy Meal toy and does not work well with the rusty hues of his drones. Quite what the designers were thinking of when they devised this colour scheme, I don’t know. Maybe the idea is to keep the drones relatively neutral in tone so they will work with other figures, who knows?
The final combined mode is disappointing. Again, this is mainly due to Mudslinger. The head folds up out of the grill, fine. But the joint used to give the head movement at the neck is way too loose, so he tends to end up swinging to the left or right very easily, particularly with the weight of those ‘ears’. The arms tangle up at the shoulders and don’t really clip anywhere which is annoying when you’re trying to clip the drones onto the shoulder pegs – which are on a separate axle to the various parts of Mudslinger’s arms. The legs are an interesting arrangement, but again, because the two-step joint inside the knees of the robot are so stiff, it’s difficult getting them into position. The robot feet/ cab halves should clip into place on some tabs on the legs, but mine don’t quite ‘click’, leaving you with some quite unstable legs. Clipping the drones on requires a little force too. Whereas on Bombshock, the connector pegs didn’t connect to the drones tightly enough, here it’s somewhat at the other extreme. The connections themselves are super tight, and there’s no way they will pop off these joints, but Mudslinger’s torso tends to crumple up into a twisted heap whilst you’re attaching them.
The resulting gestalt looks like a pile up. Whilst the drones will no doubt look better on another torso mode ‘bot, the two arms drones look a bit rubbish. Whilst the designers have had no trouble getting the drones right for the legs, nearly every one of the five pack teams suffers from these weird coat hanger like arms which make the Energon combiners look like works of art.
The Destructicons (ugh. That name. Did an excitable six year old come up with that?) are only worth picking up for the drones, which makes them an expensive purchase, and one probably not worth bothering with until an inevitable repaint with new torso robot rolls around.
674675676677678