I keep buying toys of this character that I don't care about, from a version of the comic book that I didn't grow up on. I really do think something may be wrong with me. (What it comes right down to, I think, is that I'm lazy and that it's a lot of effort to scroll through my many, many orders with Hasbro Pulse to find which ones I want to cancel. They've improved the list marginally, but it's still tough to find specific orders. But, that's an excuse. I guess part of me still wanted this toy, or else I would have tried harder to cancel the set.)

COMIC UNIVERSE IMPACTOR

It's interesting that almost every alternate continuity is getting its own special name nowadays. Hasbro is basically saying that the cartoon continuity is the "default" universe, aren't they? I mean, it's not like they're selling Velocitron toys like "G1 Cartoon Universe Cosmos," after all. It's understood that these are G1 characters unless they specify otherwise. My, how the tables have turned.

Specifically, though, this is the Marvel Comics version of Impactor, distinguished from the original Siege Impactor or the Decepticon Impactor or the Netflix Impactor somehow. For one, he's got an all-new head sculpt. This one is a dead ringer for his UK comic book design, far moreso than the Siege version. Is Impactor really an important enough character that they keep having to tweak his toy's design slightly until they finally get it right? Evidently. (Personally, I'm interested in seeing an authentic Emirate Xaaron toy some day. At least he actually appeared in the U.S. stories.)

In addition to the different head sculpt, Impactor has a modified shoulder cannon (it's packaged as a separate accessory this time) as well as a different chest panel, both of which are simplified with fewer details, and enjoy greater fidelity to his UK comic book design. His color scheme also got a makeover, with a brighter, purple that's more on the red side of the spectrum (like the color used for G1 Hun-Gurrr) and a yelllow that's more mustard-like (pretty much exactly what was used for Creatures Collide Goldbug). I don't own any original UK comics—I have some Titan Books reprints, and I can look up online scans of Impactor as easily as anybody else, so it's hard for me to say for sure what color he really needs to be. I'm certainly not intinately familiar enough with the character to be able to say that this shade of purple looks right on him but that this other shade of purple does not.

It's been a while since I've handled any version of this toy, so I'd completely forgotten his transformation. I managed to puzzle it out again.

I guess he looks as good as any version of Impactor has a right to look. I sort of wish they'd leave this character alone. He's had four separate releases, which is incredibly generous for this relatively obscure UK bloke. I still wish we'd gotten a Gutcruncher redeco instead. He wouldn't have felt quite as redundant.

SPINDLE

The spinosaurus isn't a dinosaur I learned about as a kid. It's weird to think of it as a "new" dinosaur despite all of them living millions and millions of years ago. I don't think most people knew about spinosaurus until Jurassic Park 3 came along, and he was featured as the main dinosaur baddie in that film.

Spindle is a retool of Paleotrex from 2021, and iterations of this design got used a few times as Skelivore and Transmutate. Gustavo Wombat was right when he said the mold isn't holding together well these days. I can't even pose the toy without having it fall apart in all sorts of ways. The right claw is especially bad, as the wrist just slips right out of the mushroom joint as soon as I try to move it. The waist connection, the leg connections, they're all incredibly loose. Paleotrex didn't have this issue.

Where early Fossilizers were colored in muted tones that generally suggested they were made out of bone, or fossilized stone, this toy uses the same purple-and-gold combination as Impactor. Like Gustavo said, it helps the two toys feel like they belong together when Spindle is in a weapon loadout configuration, but taken alone, it's a weird color scheme for a dinosaur skeleton.

A while back, somebody on Twitter posted a picture of a piece of Spindle connected to a piece of (the unreleased) Masterdominus to build a new combiner head, so it's clear they've come up with yet another unofficial combined form. I'm sure we'll hear all about it at some point.

So, yeah. The notion that Spindle comes apart obviously isn't unexpected, but the toy falls apart even in ways that aren't meant to and isn't useful, so that's a bit of a let-down. If they're experimenting with new plastics that have different tolerances, they need to account for that and tweak the tightness of the peg-and-hole assembly system to compensate for that. Impactor ends up being the better of the two toys by default, and I wasn't even that excited about him to begin with.

Zob (definitely didn't order Bulkhead, so at least I know he's not going to show up)