Very nearly a year ago, Hasbro was offering the TakaraTomy versions of the Seacons through Hasbro Pulse. I said, "No thanks, $35 per Seacon is too much money, I'll wait for the Hasbro versions" but the Hasbro versions never came. And then the Seacons jumped to close to $100 each on eBay, and $35 started to look like a really good deal. Then Hasbro listed them again, because sometimes we get second chances in life, and I ordered everybody except Overbite, who has remained sold out since he was first offered.

I pre-ordered the lot of them in December 2020, but for some reason it took six months for Snaptrap and Skalor to finally make their way to me. Better late than never, I guess! And now I have enough Seacons that I can form a version of Piranacon, albeit one that's missing a sixth member to turn into his gun.

SKALOR

I've always loved the original Skalor. He was my first Seacon (possibly my first 1988 toy) and there's something delightful and adorable about him. He's easily the cutest of the group, in the same way that Rippersnapper is cute. Even though the Seacons followed the basic idea of the Scramble City interchangeable design, they were all significantly larger than earlier combiner team members like the Protectobots.

All the new Seacons reuse existing Power of the Primes assets, and Skalor is essentially a reshelled Blot. (For those keeping track, yes, Nautilator was also a reshelled Blot as well.) But, it's not really obvious at all when he's in creature mode. I tend to think of him as a fish monster, specifically what a coelacanth would look like if it could walk on two legs. Instead of standing upright like Blot, he stands with his body low to the ground. In this mode, he's got the same rear leg movement as Blot (hips and ankles) as well as articulated front claws and a moving lower jaw.

To transform him to robot mode, the tail pops off. That's a special surprise tool that will help us later. The legs are tucked and folded to serve as the fish back, so those uncurl. The robot arms are tucked under the fish head, fish head, roly poly fish head. At its core it's an incredibly simple transformation, doing very different things than the G1 toy but arriving at the same sort of place in the end.

In robot mode, the shared parts become much more apparent. Almost the entire robot mode is Blot recycled; only the forearms and robot helmet are new. But, the designs of both characters are similar enough that it doesn't seem like a shameless cash grab. I'm used to Skalor's shoulders being rounded, not squared-off, but aside from that he looks fine. The color mapping is very faithful to his G1 appearance. The fish head is on his back, this time, like a Sharkticon.

His tail piece has a swivel so that the entire center rotates to reveal a couple of gun barrels. He comes with two slime guns, which he can carry in his fists or can be plugged into the sides of his fish head. He also came packaged with a piece of the Piranacon sword (a long, skinny chunk of the blade).

Skalor can assume the shape of Piranacon's arm or leg as well as a free-standing weapon mode.

The toy's design is a little inelegant, partly due to it being a recycled Blot. The original Skalor had a lot of rounded curvature, and Blot was rather squarish, so combining the two ideas together results in a toy that's a mixture of both shapes. He's missing the cute fish scale texture on his back completely. But, he's very clearly recognizable as the character, thanks partly to the great color mapping. I theorized for a long time that the PotP Terrorcons could get reused as Seacons in some capacity, and I'm so glad that it ended up happening.

SNAPTRAP

So, I know they were asking a lot out of Snaptrap. He had to be made out of the Hun-Gurrr mold, but he also had to a) look like Snaptrap in robot mode, b) look like Snaptrap in snapping turtle mode, and c) look like Piranacon's body when he's combined. Snaptrap and Hun-Gurrr were very dissimilar toys during G1 so this was a tall order. They got close, admittedly, but you can tell this toy was the result of cost-cutting.

The toy comes packaged in turtle mode, with his legs splayed out like road kill to save space. All his various accessories are packaged in the tray next to him. The final assembly includes connecting the rear half of his turtle shell, which is detachable as per G1. The end result is... well, it's questionable.

The robot legs, which would have formed the twin dragon heads for Hun-Gurrr, are tucked away to either side this time. Hun-Gurrr's belly has become Snaptrap's back, so the rear legs are oriented differently, with the screws visible now, because the inside of Hun-Gurrr's legs have become the outside of Snaptrap's legs. There's an undercarriage assembly to which the turtle head and front legs are connected. The front legs are laughably small, and the turtle head is connected to an undercarriage hinge that is obviously and apparently not connected to the turtle body. This is his weakest mode, by far.

He's got his signature pom-pom guns, but they're detachable weapons and not fully integrated into the toy. You can mount his main atom smasher rifle on the top of the turtle shell as per G1, and the Piranacon feet double as gun batteries so they can mount on the shell as well. Snaptrap is very, very well-armed. Probably to make up for his tiny front legs.

Furthermore, this toy was designed during the Power of the Primes era, before the metal pins and rivets introduced in Siege that we've now come to expect for Earthrise, Kingdom, etc. Because of this, there are lots of detachable parts held on only with plastic pop-off hinges. The turtle head, the trap doors that form the front of the turtle shell, etc. They pop off a lot.

Transformation uses most of the Hun-Gurrr assets, with the rear turtle legs forming the robot arms, and the turtle-head-and-front-leg assembly collapsing and folding up to form the robot chest. The turtle front shoulders end up forming the pectoral "vents" of his chest, which is a rather clever design idea. Because the toy doesn't transform anything like the G1 version of Snaptrap, the pom-pom guns have to be removed from the turtle's back and reattached to the robot back to create the proper look.

As a robot, he can equip the rear half of the turtle shell as an arm shield, also per G1, and he can use the Piranacon feet as weapons (yep, this is a Power of the Primes toy all right... reminds me of Starscream and Elita One). He comes with a large black atom smasher rifle as well as a metallic pink painted incendiary sword. His shoulders have that same annoyingly stiff ratchet joint because they double as Piranacon's hips and need to be able to support the weight of six toys.

To transform him into Piranacon's body, you flip him upside-down (like Combiner Wars Silverbolt, and Power of the Primes Hun-Gurrr) so that the robot arms can form the super robot's upper legs, and the Piranacon head pops out of a hidden panel. The little bat wings on the sides of his head are on a hinge and can open up to give his helmet the correct profile. The super robot head seems smallish compared to the rest of his body.

The Piranacon feet have both forward and side-to-side rocking articulation, and they are meant to use a pair of Piranacon fists to plug into the back of each heel and stabilize them a bit. The main rifle has ten of the five-millimeter ports on the sides, probably so you can plug the individual Seacon weapons to it (á la Robots in Disguise Ruination), but I couldn't find a spot in the instructions that actually described this. I also didn't see assembly instructions for the Piranacon sword pieces, but it's not too tough to figure out (I can't actually build the full sword yet, since I'm still missing Overbite).

I'm sorry, but Snaptrap is awful. Even at the bargain basement Hasbro Pulse price of $65 (compared to the eBay price of closer to $100), you're paying premium pricing for a very, very lackluster toy. Silverbolt was pretty good, and Hun-Gurrr was okay despite having inherited all that recycled engineering, but Snaptrap is lousy. I get that the Seacons aren't important media characters and it was probably hard to justify creating all-new molds for them, but Snaptrap takes all the things I hated about Hun-Gurrr and manages to make them even worse. I would have bought him, regardless, because he's a neo-G1 tribute and I loves me some Seacons. But he's simply terrible. One of the absolute worst modern Transformers I've ever owned, hands down.

If I'd managed to get Overbite for $35 (which I didn't), I would have paid around $230 or so for a complete set of Seacons. A complete Piranacon is going for closer to $600 on eBay right now. That's right, he will cost you one HasLab Unicron. I totally get the desire to own all the Combiner Wars Scramble City tributes, but Piranacon's not worth that. Not when Snaptrap is so ruinously bad. And while I do still hope we get a Combiner Wars style Monstructor some day, and I am equally confident we'll see some mold recycling, I hope they put a bit more effort into it!

Zob (trying a new thing where I just pretend to be happy and hope that I'm fooling everyone)

Zobovor <zmfts@aol.com> wrote:
> Very nearly a year ago, Hasbro was offering the TakaraTomy versions of
> the Seacons through Hasbro Pulse. I said, "No thanks, $35 per Seacon is
> too much money, I'll wait for the Hasbro versions" but the Hasbro
> versions never came. And then the Seacons jumped to close to $100 each
> on eBay, and $35 started to look like a really good deal. Then Hasbro
> listed them again, because sometimes we get second chances in life, and I
> ordered everybody except Overbite, who has remained sold out since he was first offered.

They were never all available at the same time, which was annoying. I was
waiting for a box set, but eventually bought God Neptune just so I could
play along with this review.

I like the original God Neptune set more than the original Seacons — better
colors, and they are a Mexican Mariachi Band so they have at least some
characterization. The new ones seemed to have a slightly translucent white,
which made me hesitate.

> SKALOR

I never learned the names of the individual Seacons, or their white
counterparts, so I had to look ahead to figure out you meant Fish Guy.

> I've always loved the original Skalor. He was my first Seacon (possibly
> my first 1988 toy) and there's something delightful and adorable about
> him. He's easily the cutest of the group, in the same way that Rippersnapper is cute.

Which one is Rippersnapper? Anyway, Fish Guy is adorable. He has those
little fangs!

> All the new Seacons reuse existing Power of the Primes assets, and Skalor
> is essentially a reshelled Blot. (For those keeping track, yes,
> Nautilator was also a reshelled Blot as well.) But, it's not really
> obvious at all when he's in creature mode.

I have a small army of PotP Blots. Fish Guy does look different enough it
isn’t immediately obvious. If this toy was available at retail, I might be
tempted to have a small army of Fish Guys. A school, if you will.

> I tend to think of him as a fish monster, specifically what a coelacanth
> would look like if it could walk on two legs. Instead of standing
> upright like Blot, he stands with his body low to the ground. In this
> mode, he's got the same rear leg movement as Blot (hips and ankles) as
> well as articulated front claws and a moving lower jaw.

The fish head sculpt is really very nice, and has a lot of good painted
details. He does look like he has mutton chops though. The jaw joint is
firm enough I can have him bite my finger and dangle from it — that’s nice.

The dorsal fin is articulated, so he can raise it in surprise.

There is a screw hole on one side, and I am disappointed that it isn’t a
5mm hole. He also has 5mm holes further back, but if they have to have a
screw hole, they should make it functional.

> In robot mode, the shared parts become much more apparent. Almost the
> entire robot mode is Blot recycled; only the forearms and robot helmet are new.

I really loved Blot’s forearms. So, there’s that…

>But, the designs of both characters are similar enough that it doesn't
> seem like a shameless cash grab. I'm used to Skalor's shoulders being
> rounded, not squared-off, but aside from that he looks fine. The color
> mapping is very faithful to his G1 appearance. The fish head is on his
> back, this time, like a Sharkticon.

It’s big. Really big.

The tail gun is a little heavy for his wrists.

>
> The toy's design is a little inelegant, partly due to it being a recycled
> Blot. The original Skalor had a lot of rounded curvature, and Blot was
> rather squarish, so combining the two ideas together results in a toy
> that's a mixture of both shapes. He's missing the cute fish scale
> texture on his back completely.

He feels a lot like the Takara Computron dudes. A few large pieces glommed
onto other toys. Here the large fish head is on a three piece strut system,
and the tail is attached to the tiny peg hole used for some kind of figure
stand.

It works better here than it does on Drill Guy from Computron.

>
> SNAPTRAP
>
> So, I know they were asking a lot out of Snaptrap. He had to be made out
> of the Hun-Gurrr mold, but he also had to a) look like Snaptrap in robot
> mode, b) look like Snaptrap in snapping turtle mode, and c) look like
> Piranacon's body when he's combined. Snaptrap and Hun-Gurrr were very
> dissimilar toys during G1 so this was a tall order. They got close,
> admittedly, but you can tell this toy was the result of cost-cutting.
>
> The toy comes packaged in turtle mode, with his legs splayed out like
> road kill to save space.

God Neptune’s Turtle Boy comes packaged with the turtle head rattling
around in the box…

>All his various accessories are packaged in the tray next to him. The
> final assembly includes connecting the rear half of his turtle shell,
> which is detachable as per G1. The end result is... well, it's questionable.

He’s not great.

> The robot legs, which would have formed the twin dragon heads for
> Hun-Gurrr, are tucked away to either side this time. Hun-Gurrr's belly
> has become Snaptrap's back, so the rear legs are oriented differently,
> with the screws visible now, because the inside of Hun-Gurrr's legs have
> become the outside of Snaptrap's legs. There's an undercarriage assembly
> to which the turtle head and front legs are connected. The front legs
> are laughably small, and the turtle head is connected to an undercarriage
> hinge that is obviously and apparently not connected to the turtle body.
> This is his weakest mode, by far.

Don’t laugh at his tiny front legs, he gets sensitive about them.

> He's got his signature pom-pom guns, but they're detachable weapons and
> not fully integrated into the toy. You can mount his main atom smasher
> rifle on the top of the turtle shell as per G1, and the Piranacon feet
> double as gun batteries so they can mount on the shell as well. Snaptrap
> is very, very well-armed. Probably to make up for his tiny front legs.
>
> Furthermore, this toy was designed during the Power of the Primes era,
> before the metal pins and rivets introduced in Siege that we've now come
> to expect for Earthrise, Kingdom, etc. Because of this, there are lots
> of detachable parts held on only with plastic pop-off hinges. The turtle
> head, the trap doors that form the front of the turtle shell, etc. They pop off a lot.

Kind of unacceptable, really.

> Transformation uses most of the Hun-Gurrr assets, with the rear turtle
> legs forming the robot arms, and the turtle-head-and-front-leg assembly
> collapsing and folding up to form the robot chest. The turtle front
> shoulders end up forming the pectoral "vents" of his chest, which is a
> rather clever design idea. Because the toy doesn't transform anything
> like the G1 version of Snaptrap, the pom-pom guns have to be removed from
> the turtle's back and reattached to the robot back to create the proper look.

There is a nifty and pointless thing on the robot legs where you don’t have
to remove the Pom-Pom guns because a piece slides out and swivels around,
moving a hole from one side of the leg to another. If the guns ended up on
his legs in the end, this would be great. As it is though… a second peg
hole on the other side would be fine — and still not needed.

>
> I'm sorry, but Snaptrap is awful. Even at the bargain basement Hasbro
> Pulse price of $65 (compared to the eBay price of closer to $100), you're
> paying premium pricing for a very, very lackluster toy. Silverbolt was
> pretty good, and Hun-Gurrr was okay despite having inherited all that
> recycled engineering, but Snaptrap is lousy. I get that the Seacons
> aren't important media characters and it was probably hard to justify
> creating all-new molds for them, but Snaptrap takes all the things I
> hated about Hun-Gurrr and manages to make them even worse. I would have
> bought him, regardless, because he's a neo-G1 tribute and I loves me some
> Seacons. But he's simply terrible. One of the absolute worst modern
> Transformers I've ever owned, hands down.

I like him more than you do, but he has a lot of flaws. I do find myself
fiddling with that pointless bit on his leg, moving the 5mm hole from one
side to the other. He’s too skinny, and his turtle mode kind of sucks. And
parts fall off.

Objectively bad. But … eh, no but, he’s bad. Not Generations Cheetor bad,
but not good.

> If I'd managed to get Overbite for $35 (which I didn't), I would have
> paid around $230 or so for a complete set of Seacons. A complete
> Piranacon is going for closer to $600 on eBay right now. That's right,
> he will cost you one HasLab Unicron. I totally get the desire to own all
> the Combiner Wars Scramble City tributes, but Piranacon's not worth that.
> Not when Snaptrap is so ruinously bad. And while I do still hope we get
> a Combiner Wars style Monstructor some day, and I am equally confident
> we'll see some mold recycling, I hope they put a bit more effort into it!

On Saturday, June 12, 2021 at 4:05:41 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> They were never all available at the same time, which was annoying.

Yeah, that was unfortunate. I'm looking at probably paying $150 for Overbite on eBay now, which is absurd, but I'll do it. My perception of how much toys "should" cost has been heavily disrupted by collecting vintage G1 units. I'm more readily accepting of massive price inflation based solely on availability.

> I never learned the names of the individual Seacons, or their white
> counterparts, so I had to look ahead to figure out you meant Fish Guy.

His name was easy to remember during G1 because he had visible fish scales all over his body. It's less intuitive with the neo-G1 version.

> Which one is Rippersnapper? Anyway, Fish Guy is adorable. He has those
> little fangs!

Rippersnapper is the Other Fish Guy from the Terrorcons team; the grey and blue shark creature. During G1, he looked like he might have been designed by H.R. Giger because he didn't really have visible eyes.

> He feels a lot like the Takara Computron dudes. A few large pieces glommed
> onto other toys. Here the large fish head is on a three piece strut system,
> and the tail is attached to the tiny peg hole used for some kind of figure
> stand.

Yeah, I'd say that's an accurate assessment. Takara's very clever at taking existing toys and rejiggering them into new toys, but you're right... the parts feel tacked on in the same way as the Takara Technobots.

> There is a nifty and pointless thing on the robot legs where you don’t have
> to remove the Pom-Pom guns because a piece slides out and swivels around,
> moving a hole from one side of the leg to another. If the guns ended up on
> his legs in the end, this would be great. As it is though… a second peg
> hole on the other side would be fine — and still not needed.

I think that's the most clever aspect of his design. I've never seen anything like that on a toy before. And, like you said, it's almost entirely not needed, but it's still a cool design element.

> I like him more than you do, but he has a lot of flaws. I do find myself
> fiddling with that pointless bit on his leg, moving the 5mm hole from one
> side to the other. He’s too skinny, and his turtle mode kind of sucks. And
> parts fall off.

If this had been a weird, random redeco like Combiner Wars Cyclonus or the Hasbro retail version of Scattershot, it would be one thing. "Hey, we just figured out we could crank a couple of extra toys out of this mold. Wanna spend another twenty-five bucks a pop?" Cyclonus wasn't a must-have redeco, but I bought it, because why not.

I feel different about Snaptrap. This is, realistically, the only set of neo-G1 Seacons that we're ever likely to get. They're not exactly top-tier characters. This was Snaptrap's only real chance at a modern update, and they botched it. It's always going to be inadequate, and that's a real shame. I could probably add some metal hinges, like I did with Siege Starscream and friends, and that would solve the problem of the pop-off parts, but it won't solve the problems with the poor design.

You can transform Snaptrap into a sort of Hun-Gurrr mode, with two dragon heads that have no eyes or mouth, and it's still a better transformation than his official turtle mode.

Zob (has a feeling the Monster Pretenders are going to be the same way, when and if we get them)

Zobovor <zmfts@aol.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, June 12, 2021 at 4:05:41 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the
> Seattle Wombats wrote:
>

> Rippersnapper is the Other Fish Guy from the Terrorcons team; the grey
> and blue shark creature. During G1, he looked like he might have been
> designed by H.R. Giger because he didn't really have visible eyes.

Oh, Landshark Guy. Terror on Landshark Guy, not Seacon Landshark Guy.

Did they mold Seacon Squid Guy to be more of a guy than God Neptune Squid
Lady?

>> There is a nifty and pointless thing on the robot legs where you don’t have
>> to remove the Pom-Pom guns because a piece slides out and swivels around,
>> moving a hole from one side of the leg to another. If the guns ended up on
>> his legs in the end, this would be great. As it is though… a second peg
>> hole on the other side would be fine — and still not needed.
>
> I think that's the most clever aspect of his design. I've never seen
> anything like that on a toy before. And, like you said, it's almost
> entirely not needed, but it's still a cool design element.
>
>> I like him more than you do, but he has a lot of flaws. I do find myself
>> fiddling with that pointless bit on his leg, moving the 5mm hole from one
>> side to the other. He’s too skinny, and his turtle mode kind of sucks. And
>> parts fall off.
>
> If this had been a weird, random redeco like Combiner Wars Cyclonus or
> the Hasbro retail version of Scattershot, it would be one thing. "Hey,
> we just figured out we could crank a couple of extra toys out of this
> mold. Wanna spend another twenty-five bucks a pop?" Cyclonus wasn't a
> must-have redeco, but I bought it, because why not.
>
> I feel different about Snaptrap. This is, realistically, the only set of
> neo-G1 Seacons that we're ever likely to get. They're not exactly
> top-tier characters. This was Snaptrap's only real chance at a modern
> update, and they botched it. It's always going to be inadequate, and
> that's a real shame. I could probably add some metal hinges, like I did
> with Siege Starscream and friends, and that would solve the problem of
> the pop-off parts, but it won't solve the problems with the poor design.
>
> You can transform Snaptrap into a sort of Hun-Gurrr mode, with two dragon
> heads that have no eyes or mouth, and it's still a better transformation
> than his official turtle mode.

I wonder if a third party is going to churn out a CW compatible Snaptrap.
If people are willing to pay $65-100 for a crappy one, a better third party
one seems plausible.

> Zob (has a feeling the Monster Pretenders are going to be the same way,
> when and if we get them)

Aren’t they all basically Blot? Blot with hint of wings! Blot on all fours!

On Saturday, June 12, 2021 at 7:42:39 PM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> Did they mold Seacon Squid Guy to be more of a guy than God Neptune Squid
> Lady?

I don't believe so. Tentakil is vaguely feminine in shape (thicc thighs) without being overtly so.

> I wonder if a third party is going to churn out a CW compatible Snaptrap.
> If people are willing to pay $65-100 for a crappy one, a better third party
> one seems plausible.

I... actually wouldn't hate that.

> > Zob (has a feeling the Monster Pretenders are going to be the same way,
> > when and if we get them)
>
> Aren’t they all basically Blot? Blot with hint of wings! Blot on all fours!

You'd be just fine with that, wouldn't you? Another army of Blots in varying colors?

At least one of them (Wildfly) would be Cutthroat. But, yes, the rest would probably be Blot.

They would have to innovate something new to give us two monsters who can form the body together, like the Constructicons did. Because otherwise we'd end up with one great, big guy who formed Monstructor's body and it would throw off the look of the team as a whole.

Zob (it seems too early for them to be working on a Stunticons redo, especially when we haven't gotten all the combiner teams yet)

On Saturday, June 12, 2021 at 6:05:41 AM UTC-4, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> They were never all available at the same time, which was annoying. I was
> waiting for a box set, but eventually bought God Neptune just so I could
> play along with this review.
>
> I like the original God Neptune set more than the original Seacons — better
> colors, and they are a Mexican Mariachi Band so they have at least some
> characterization. The new ones seemed to have a slightly translucent white,
> which made me hesitate.

Tripledacus was made up of the Mariachi band. God Neptune was pirates.

On Sunday, June 13, 2021 at 1:33:25 PM UTC+2, Zobovor wrote:
> On Saturday, June 12, 2021 at 7:42:39 PM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
>
> > Did they mold Seacon Squid Guy to be more of a guy than God Neptune Squid
> > Lady?
> I don't believe so. Tentakil is vaguely feminine in shape (thicc thighs) without being overtly so.

Scylla is molded with different head, torso, arms and legs, so there is a difference.

Scroll through this review here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsmEhmCZ4iY

On Monday, June 14, 2021 at 4:07:39 AM UTC-6, Avaran wrote:

> Scylla is molded with different head, torso, arms and legs, so there is a difference.

Oh, wow. They really are different. I had no idea. Shows how much I pay attention!

Zob (never been accused of being observant)