Death's Head
06-11-11, 08:45 AM
One of the odd things about the Universe line was that it threw up two sets of Constructicons. Well, it’s not that odd when considering the backstory of the 2003 Universe line – Unicron and Primus pulling Transformers from across myriad dimensions to duke it out – but it still seems curious that we end up with large and small versions of the same characters. Not that I’m complaining, given that these Micromaster sized figures are cool.
Long Haul is, as ever, a large earth mover style dump truck –o ne of those absolutely enormous ones that you see in quarries doing stuff like trundling about with heavy loads of debris. Scale is out of the window for the toy as he is of a comparable size to his team mates to facilitate combining into Devastator, but he is nicely detailed for such a small toy. Paint applications are limited to a few splodges of purple for the grill and cab windows, Decepticon insignia and various robot parts. Being a Decepticon construction vehicle, the rest of him is rendered in apple green. The vehicle rolls smoothly and is a nice little piece, although he can’t tip the bucket on the rear.
Transformation is pretty basic as you’d expect for a Transformer of this size – none of this over complicated nonsense that plagued the Minicons and later Legends figures. The sequence mimics that of the 1985 Long Haul with the legs formed from the rear of the truck and the cab rotating through ninety degrees to reveal the torso of the robot. His flips up from the back of the cab and the arms fold around from behind the front wheels. These are slightly obscured by the large front wheels and he can’t move them past these wheels so they just sit by his sides. A bit unfortunate, but spares us that slightly rubbish looking arms with wheels attached look that the likes of Mudslinger had to put up with. His head is perhaps a little big, but anything smaller would no doubt look silly. Again, this is nicely detailed and a daub of silver paint brightens him up.
As with all the Micromaster combiners, Long Haul works exceptionally well as a figure in his own right and doesn’t bear any of the hallmarks of compromise normally associated with gestalt limb-bots.
11971198
Long Haul is, as ever, a large earth mover style dump truck –o ne of those absolutely enormous ones that you see in quarries doing stuff like trundling about with heavy loads of debris. Scale is out of the window for the toy as he is of a comparable size to his team mates to facilitate combining into Devastator, but he is nicely detailed for such a small toy. Paint applications are limited to a few splodges of purple for the grill and cab windows, Decepticon insignia and various robot parts. Being a Decepticon construction vehicle, the rest of him is rendered in apple green. The vehicle rolls smoothly and is a nice little piece, although he can’t tip the bucket on the rear.
Transformation is pretty basic as you’d expect for a Transformer of this size – none of this over complicated nonsense that plagued the Minicons and later Legends figures. The sequence mimics that of the 1985 Long Haul with the legs formed from the rear of the truck and the cab rotating through ninety degrees to reveal the torso of the robot. His flips up from the back of the cab and the arms fold around from behind the front wheels. These are slightly obscured by the large front wheels and he can’t move them past these wheels so they just sit by his sides. A bit unfortunate, but spares us that slightly rubbish looking arms with wheels attached look that the likes of Mudslinger had to put up with. His head is perhaps a little big, but anything smaller would no doubt look silly. Again, this is nicely detailed and a daub of silver paint brightens him up.
As with all the Micromaster combiners, Long Haul works exceptionally well as a figure in his own right and doesn’t bear any of the hallmarks of compromise normally associated with gestalt limb-bots.
11971198