I ordered this guy through Hasbro Pulse the day I found out it was available. Still haven't seen them in stores anywhere.

So, we've gotten a surprising number of exo-suit toys in recent years. We got the PVC figure, of course, and for a long time that was the only one in existence. Then suddenly it was Masterpiece this or Buzzworthy Bumblebee that, and now there's a bunch of them. The worst of them is probably the second-most recent, the horrible stiff-legged, permanently-squatting Daniel that came with Leader-class Slag. But, now everybody can leave him at the bottom of their toy box and pretend he doesn't exist.

This version measures about 3.25" in height, pretty much exactly the same size as the Daniel Witwicky exo-suit figure that came with Masterpiece Bumblebee 1.0 back in 2014. Aesthetically, the biggest difference between the two is that the Masterpiece exo-suit is a light grey color with some blue-grey parts, while the Studio Series version is more like an off-white with a lighter blue-grey secondary color. Spike is generally a more solid toy, less fragile, with a more blocky build, and that appeals to me.

Also, it's odd that even though one is scaled with Masterpiece toys and the other is meant to go with neo-G1, they're both the same size. Masterpiece Autobots and Decepticons are a LOT bigger than neo-G1 toys.

Where the Takara toy is pretty complex, with lots of parts that twist and turn and flip to create the vehicle transformation, the newer Hasbro toy is simpler and more straightforward. Essentially, the legs collapse slightly and the arms fold up. They show the glass dome helmet turning sideways, which is technically correct, but it sure looks weird. The Takara version is slightly more accurate to the screen appearance of the vehicle mode, but I'm not sure if the insane number of steps required to get there are worth it. The Studio Series version is sort of like T-Bob from the M.A.S.K. toy line. It's an approximation of what you see on screen, but it's close enough.

The vehicle mode is slightly over three inches in length, and rolls freely on four wheels. Spike's head isn't articulated the way the head on the Masterpiece version is, so he can't look forwards as he's driving the way Daniel could. (The wheels in his legs just snap into place, and they're very noisy. They make little tiny plastic jingling sounds any time I hold or handle the toy. My cat swatted him off the desk as I was typing this because it sounds just like a cat toy.)

Spike also comes with two yellow blast effects, which can attach either to the arms for use as flamethrowers, or to the same parts in the vehicle configuration for use as thrusters. They're solid ABS plastic, not the rubbery PVC blast effects used throughout Siege, but they're compatible, albeit a little loose. They just don't have the rubbery grabby ability of the PVC parts.

It is possible to pop the legs off the single-pack Spike toy and put them on the pack-in Daniel toy, but at that point, why would you bother?

I think it was Evan Brooks who said on one of the Hasbro livestream segments that they didn't really start thinking about doing the exo-suit as a fully transformable toy, sold by itself, until after they had developed the non-transforming pack-in version of Daniel. We can forgive them for not being quite as forward-thinking, because even though the pack-in Daniel was an atrocity, the single-pack Spike figure is a thing of joy.

I bought two extra ones, with the intent of customizing them into Daniel (maybe using the head from the PVC figure) and Jessica Morgan, who wore the exo-suit in "The Return of Optimus Prime" parts 1 and 2 (not sure yet what I would use for the head). The possibility is strong that they will resell this toy with a different head as Daniel, so perhaps I should hold off on my custom idea for a while? On the other hand, I doubt we'll ever get an official Jessica Morgan figure.

Zob (not like I need more custom projects to do, of course)