Death's Head
14-12-11, 11:13 AM
Where would Hasbro be without the Cybertron Scout Class moulds? A question I am often brought to ponder as sure as night follows day, if there’s a catch all line like Universe or Generations, there will surely be an opportunity for an airing of what must be the most indestructible moulds on the planet. The Cybertron line, lest we forget, was a huge jumble of different types of Transforming robots. Some were big, some were small. Some were somewhere inbetween. Some were realistic vehicles, some were realistic animals, some were alien planet vehicles and jets, and some were just plain weird. They were characterised by three things: the Cyber Planet Key play feature, variation in the materials used and the brightest, boldest colours yet seen in a Transformers line. They were effectively, the twenty first century equivalent of the 1987 Headmasters line which also introduced boldly coloured, cheaply constructed toys to the Transformers line.
Along with Undermine and Backstop, Wreckloose made a return appearance to the world of Transformers in what appears to be Generations packaging, but doesn’t actually state it outright. Along with a bunch of repainted Mini-Cons, these turned up in American Big Lots stores as an exclusive. You know there’s something wrong with retailing when discount retailers are able to have store exclusives. Sigh. Wreckloose is a komodo dragon, and not a bad representation of one either. The Beast mode is nicely decorated, with a good choice of black and green. Only the questionable addition of brown fudges things a bit. As with most of the Cybertron era beast figures, Wreckloose is an organically styled robotic beast – in much the same way as the Beast Machines toys appeared. Plugging the Cyber Planet Key into the back of the dragon’s head causes two...I-don’t-know-whats to pop out. I think they’re supposed to be blade weapons, but they look like branches off a tree. This whole arrangement can be removed from the back of the dragon, making him a little more like the real thing. Thanks to some nifty joints, Wreckloose also has a good range of articulation and movement in beast mode. All of his legs move, his mouth opens and his tail can wiggle a bit.
The robot mode is where it goes wrong for the guy. Like a lot of the beast toys from this era, the organic beast form does not translate to a good looking robot. The legs, for a start are horrible, tapered pipe cleaners dangling off his waist. With them clearly forming the top and bottom half of the beast mode tail, this means that you have different coloured limbs. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but the sharp contrast between that phlegm coloured right leg and the black left leg does look decidedly off. A more sympathetic or graded colouration would have worked better. In case you hadn’t guessed, what with them hanging off the beast mode’s front legs, the hands and arms are formed from a quick rearrangement of the forelegs. It might be asking too much of a Scout Class toy, but it would have been good to see some imagination used to better conceal those robot hands. Still, does the job. The greatest fault of the toy is the unimaginative ‘split’ of the beast mode head to form the shoulders of the robot. It looks horrible with these great big flaps hanging off the side. Worse, because it is what it is, there’s no sculpted detail inside the beast head, leaving you with just two rather plain slabs of black with only the connector points to try and make something of this kibble which naturally they fail to do. A more successful arrangement would have been to have gone down the Beast Wars route of some asymmetry and have the beast head form an arm – you might as well have done given how unbalanced that ‘weapon’ makes the robot mode look – or just to have the beast head fold backwards down the back or to the front and the arms move out to the sides on a couple of panels. The robot head itself looks very good, although the use of bright orange on the horn is unfortunate. The weapon can then be plugged into the robot’s right or left arm as shown.
Wreckloose is one of those frustrating toys with one good mode to his name and one that’s a bit of a mess. Still, he’s a good size for a Scout Class figure knocking on for nearly Deluxe sized in beast mode and is one of the better beast figures from the Cybertron line. There’s some good articulation and movement in robot mode which does make him a great action figure. Just a shame he’s so awkward looking. If so much of that line wasn’t lost to the Cyber Planet Key engineering, I’d have bet we’d have had a much better looking line up of toys.
12721273
Along with Undermine and Backstop, Wreckloose made a return appearance to the world of Transformers in what appears to be Generations packaging, but doesn’t actually state it outright. Along with a bunch of repainted Mini-Cons, these turned up in American Big Lots stores as an exclusive. You know there’s something wrong with retailing when discount retailers are able to have store exclusives. Sigh. Wreckloose is a komodo dragon, and not a bad representation of one either. The Beast mode is nicely decorated, with a good choice of black and green. Only the questionable addition of brown fudges things a bit. As with most of the Cybertron era beast figures, Wreckloose is an organically styled robotic beast – in much the same way as the Beast Machines toys appeared. Plugging the Cyber Planet Key into the back of the dragon’s head causes two...I-don’t-know-whats to pop out. I think they’re supposed to be blade weapons, but they look like branches off a tree. This whole arrangement can be removed from the back of the dragon, making him a little more like the real thing. Thanks to some nifty joints, Wreckloose also has a good range of articulation and movement in beast mode. All of his legs move, his mouth opens and his tail can wiggle a bit.
The robot mode is where it goes wrong for the guy. Like a lot of the beast toys from this era, the organic beast form does not translate to a good looking robot. The legs, for a start are horrible, tapered pipe cleaners dangling off his waist. With them clearly forming the top and bottom half of the beast mode tail, this means that you have different coloured limbs. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but the sharp contrast between that phlegm coloured right leg and the black left leg does look decidedly off. A more sympathetic or graded colouration would have worked better. In case you hadn’t guessed, what with them hanging off the beast mode’s front legs, the hands and arms are formed from a quick rearrangement of the forelegs. It might be asking too much of a Scout Class toy, but it would have been good to see some imagination used to better conceal those robot hands. Still, does the job. The greatest fault of the toy is the unimaginative ‘split’ of the beast mode head to form the shoulders of the robot. It looks horrible with these great big flaps hanging off the side. Worse, because it is what it is, there’s no sculpted detail inside the beast head, leaving you with just two rather plain slabs of black with only the connector points to try and make something of this kibble which naturally they fail to do. A more successful arrangement would have been to have gone down the Beast Wars route of some asymmetry and have the beast head form an arm – you might as well have done given how unbalanced that ‘weapon’ makes the robot mode look – or just to have the beast head fold backwards down the back or to the front and the arms move out to the sides on a couple of panels. The robot head itself looks very good, although the use of bright orange on the horn is unfortunate. The weapon can then be plugged into the robot’s right or left arm as shown.
Wreckloose is one of those frustrating toys with one good mode to his name and one that’s a bit of a mess. Still, he’s a good size for a Scout Class figure knocking on for nearly Deluxe sized in beast mode and is one of the better beast figures from the Cybertron line. There’s some good articulation and movement in robot mode which does make him a great action figure. Just a shame he’s so awkward looking. If so much of that line wasn’t lost to the Cyber Planet Key engineering, I’d have bet we’d have had a much better looking line up of toys.
12721273