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Found these guys at Wal-Mart yesterday while picking up a new fan for the bedroom. (The thing's got a remote control, for crying out loud. I refuse to believe that anyone is actually that lazy. There are microwaves with remote controls, too. Don't you still have to get up and walk into the kitchen to put *food* in it, though?) Transformers seem to be selling really well at that store, too. The last time I was there was when I got Axer and Sideways a couple of weeks ago, and the shelf was stuffed full of Mega-level toys. Yesterday there were only a handful of cycle 2-packs left, a Sky-Byte, and a couple of the 3-packs. It makes me happy that the line is still doing so well. (I'd have been happier if they'd had Storm Jet, but I digress.) These are all recent enough toys that I wasn't really expecting any mold changes, and yet they've all got 'em. I'm beginning to think that somebody at Hasbro gets paid a lot of money to come up with ways to change the molds in ways that absolutely aren't required. /:) For Scavenger, the screw that originally attached his pelvis to his body was replaced with a permanent bolt. This makes a lot of sense, since it prevents his pelvis from inadvertantly being twisted off the screw after prolonged use. (I'm glad they made this change *after* I did the CybCon repaints, though.) Also, they filled in the "X" shaped indentation on the side of his right treads assembly. Obviously, this was done so that they had a flat surface on which to tampo-stamp his Autobot symbol. (When I was looking for a place to stick the rub symbols on the CybCon versions, I used the square panel on the right side of his vehicle body.) It's kind of disappointing that he didn't get two Autobot symbols. It would have made for some nice symmetry. The change to Nightcruz strikes me as entirely pointless. There were originally a pair of oval-shaped intentations on either side of each missile, along with a U-shaped strip that covered the tip of each missile. These details have been removed, so that the missile tips are more or less completely smooth. (They didn't do a *great* job here, since you can still see the last vestiges of the original mold design.) If they were going to make changes without any real reasoning behind it, why not do something *useful* like resculpting his robot face to try to make him a little different from Spystreak? (Actually, with my luck, if they did that they'd give him Anthrax's face. When Spystreak originally came out, I was amazed at his uncanny resemblance to my fanfic character Anthrax. The shape of the jet mode is very close, and the way the jet engines form the robot legs was lifted directly from Anthrax's transformation design. Of course, now they have to take it a step closer and make Nightcruz's *colors* similar to Anthrax, too. Corporate spies in every room, I'm telling you...) Mirage GT also got his missiles tweaked slightly. Originally, the business-end of his missiles had a round plate, designed to follow the contours of his head when he's in his normal vehicle mode configuration (with the robot head not visible). The plates aren't there on the RiD version, so the exhaust pipes don't appear as though they're really connected to anything when he's in non-attack mode. Of course, it's pretty much a moot point, since Mirage GT's official vehicle mode transformation seems to have his robot head facing forward at all times. (You'd think they would have done it the other way around. It's the Beast Machines Vehicons who are known for having "vehicle heads," not the RiD Autobots.) What isn't readily apparent, though, is the idea that his official robot mode may have been changed as well. Or, at least, it was intended to be. Mirage GT can't stand up properly in robot mode if you go by the instructions, since his right and left legs were swapped during assembly, and the components normally on the outsides of his legs get in the way when they're on the inside of his legs. What if, however, somebody at Hasbro decided that the toy would sell better if it weren't completely identical to BM Mirage, and came up with a new robot-mode design? Keeping the legs on backwards makes sense if you turn his waist and head around, and use the vehicle hood as his robot chest. Admittedly, you run into the same problem with his arms, since his missile launchers are now on the inside of his arms, but all you have to do is twist his forearms so that they're on the backs of his arms. Also, his thumbs are on backwards in this configuration, but that's no different than the official robot mode for G2 Volt. I think I like this look enough that I'm going to keep his legs on backwards and use this as his robot mode. (Of course, if Hasbro actually drew up new instructions and declared this to be his new robot mode, I'd balk at the idea and retain the original transformation. I guess I'm just a rebel that way.) Mirage is, by the way, the only one of the three toys whose paint mask was changed. Where the original toy had paint operations that closely followed the shape of his body parts, with stripes on his feet that matched the holes in the mold and painted parts that matched the panels on his legs, they completely ignored this for the new toy. Also, the panels on the front of his legs originally had an airbrushed effect where the painted parts "faded" into the plastic rather than the clear-cut borders on the RiD toy. Finally, they painted the piece inside his head that contains his eyes and the light-pipe, meaning that his eyes no longer glow when you hold him up to a lamp. Speaking of translucent plastic, the dark blue they picked for the toy was a bad choice, since it basically looks like black under normal lighting. So, for all intents and purposes, he's the same colors as Sideways.
More than anything else, though, these guys could really have used some tech specs to bring them to life. I envision Mirage GT, for example, as the Spychanger Mirage who used the defeat of Galvatron and crew as an excuse to finally ditch the rest of the Spychangers and go back to Cybertron. The story of how Scavenger defected to the Autobots seems like a missed opportunity, too. As for Nightcruz, well...I can't really complain that Anthrax got an official toy, even if I had nothing to do with its creation. :) - Zob |