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interests / alt.toys.transformers / Zob's Retro Review: Firecons Cindersaur, Flamefeather, and Sparkstalker (1988)

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o Zob's Retro Review: Firecons Cindersaur, Flamefeather, andZobovor

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Zob's Retro Review: Firecons Cindersaur, Flamefeather, and Sparkstalker (1988)

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Subject: Zob's Retro Review: Firecons Cindersaur, Flamefeather, and
Sparkstalker (1988)
From: zmf...@aol.com (Zobovor)
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 by: Zobovor - Fri, 26 Aug 2022 02:48 UTC

Transformers had been a runaway success for a number of years, with each new year's product line bigger and more innovative than the last. I think that 1988, though, was the first year Hasbro chose to scale back. Headmasters were smaller. Targetmasters were smaller. And we got some of the cutest Decepticon babies ever, the trio known as the Firecons.

Hasbro had introduced the Monsterbots in 1987, toys which had a push-button sparking gimmick. They all had built-in flint strikers, similar to the ones found in cigarette lighters, but with no fuel to ignite the sparks. In the interest of scaling back, they retained the gimmick for the 1988 product line, but installed it into much smaller toys this time. The Sparkabots and Firecons were the opening price point toys for that year, retailing at around $3.99.

(It's worth mentioning that in 1991, Mattel produced a Rollerblade Barbie fashion doll with a similar gimmick, but ended up having to recall the doll. Some girls accidentally discovered that hairspray was easy enough to ignite using the flint strikers built into the doll. That was essentially the end of the era of cold sparking toys. (They've done it a few times since then, including an assortment of Age of Extinction toys, but the sparks were entirely encased in plastic.)

CINDERSAUR

Where all the Sparkabots were vehicles, the Firecons are strange animalistic creatures whose precise species are not always easily identified. Cindersaur could be a dinosaur of some kind, if his name is any indication. He's mostly purple with a yellow tail and claws, a silver-painted horn and eyes, and a grey painted underbelly. The horn on his nose is prominent, suggesting a dinosaur, but he has a frilled head almost like a lizard or a dragon.. His tail is adorned with dorsal spikes, and his arms have three claws each. He's designed so that he can stand up almost completely upright, with his tail helping to support him, or he can lay down on his belly after you make the necessary adjustments to his head and arms.

If you pull his feet back and lay him on his belly, you can push him along a desktop on his rubberized wheel. This drives the flint spark mechanism and causes him to shoot yellow sparks out of his mouth. (My toy still sparks a little, but you really have to get the wheel going fast.) Due to the way the toys were designed, it's common to find them with the paint scratched off their bellies due to repeated use.

To transform Cindersaur to robot mode, you fold the tail up, fold the creature head back, and reveal the robot face (painted green) by opening up the ridges on his back (he's the only Firecon without wings), which separates into his robot arms. It's not a complex transformation by any stretch of the imagination.

As a robot, he's about 2.75" in height. His head is permanently recessed into a heavily armored chunk, almost like Wheelie. His arms don't work at all. His legs are mounted to either side of his body, like Quickswitch. It's just not a very appealing design. But, it was the low price point offering, so they had to keep it simple for the kids (and also because the body housed the sparking gimmick, so all his moving parts had to work around that somehow).

Cindersaur is perhaps most notable for having accidentally killed Sparkstalker while Bludgeon and his team of Decepticons were conquering planet Klo near the very end of the Marvel Comics run. Cindersaur got an update during Power of the Primes in 2019, a redeco of Dinobot Slash.

You can tell that, by this point, Bob Budiansky had grown tired of writing personalities for these characters. Cindersaur's on-package biography is practically a satire of early Transformers tech specs—he only burns things so he can find his way home, his brain circuits are fried from inhaling too much smoke, he likes to barbecue Autobots and drink volcanic lava, etc. It's goofy.

I will say that, as a kid, I had limited allowance and couldn't possibly hope to collect the entire toy range. A character's personality was often the deciding factor in which toys I ended up buying. Cindersaur didn't appeal to me at all as a kid. He sounded like a serious loser.

FLAMEFEATHER

Flamefeather is predominantly a medium blue color, with a white tail and claws and a yellow-painted beak and eyes, and a light blue painted underbelly.. Flamefeather is clearly a bird creature of some type, given his name, but he has clawed arms in addition to having wings. So, that's a little weird.

Unlike their toy commercial and Marvel UK comic book appearances, these guys do not have Decepticon badges on their belly. Indeed, they all seem to have been designed with rub symbols in mind, since they all have a square-shaped indent on their left legs. Instead of the rub symbol, however, they got regular old Decepticon insignia stickers.

All these guys share the same basic transformation sequence. The biggest difference with Flamefeather is that he's got the large grey wings, so his robot arms are a little bit easier to grasp and manipulate.

As a robot, he's got a white body, blue arms and legs and head, and a green-painted face. He shares the same basic, weird body shape with Cindersaur, and he looks like he probably waddles to get from one place to another.

Flamefeather got to be part of the Transformers: Generation 2 toy line in Europe in 1994, and he got a crazy redeco in purple and green and translucent orange. A true Halloween Horrorcon. The see-through plastic allowed you to see his sparking gimmick a little better, but the toy was notoriously fragile, like a cheap flourescent water gun that you could get at Kmart.

According to his biography, he's another big-time loser. He was expelled from the Decepticon Military Academy for violent behavior, and he can't go for a minute without flying into a rage. Cutthroat, Birdbrain... all the Decepticon birds are like this.

SPARKSTALKER

I actually already owned a Sparkstalker toy, but I think I got it at the thrift store or something years ago. I can't really recall. I've had him since the Beast Wars days. He's broken, missing his tail, so I had to replace him for The Collection with a captial "C." And then I accidentally bought another Sparkstalker, because I was doing some fast and furious eBaying and forgot which Firecons I had already purchased, so there's another one coming. Maybe I can take one apart and figure out how the flint striking mechanism works.

So, the last of the trio is a magenta color with two white tails, white claws, yellow-painted mouth incisors and eyes, and a deep purple painted belly.. His wings are grey, and are swept back and angular. He's kind of insect-like, with mouth pincers and arms that are pointed like the forelegs of a preying mantis. All the mouths of the Firecons are wide open, so the sparks can shoot out their mouths.

His transformation is the same as the others. His robot mode is essentially the creature mode standing up on its two legs and then turning away from you. As a robot, he's got magenta arms and legs, a white body, and a sky blue painted face and eyes. The blue eyes kind of make him look a little like an Autobot. He essentially has zero points of useful articulation. He can bend back on his legs a little, if he wants to look up and address a slightly taller Decepticon comrade.

Sparkstalker is the guy who accidentally got incinerated in Marvel Comics issue #79. We didn't see it happen, but Krok reported to Bludgeon about it happening. He's the smart guy of the group, an expert in hacking and cryptology, but he's ineffective as a warrior because he can barely light a campfire, let alone melt an Autobot. Another loser.

Sparkstalker also got a 1994 release during G2. His European redeco version was a translucent red, with a purple body and bright green wings.

I feel like these guys should have all had white as a uniform secondary color. Cindersaur looks like he used to be white but that he's yellowed really badly over the years. I know that's not the case, but the shade of yellow matches "white that's turned nasty" pretty much exactly.

Well, there's definitely a reason I never bought these guys as a kid. I was getting older (I was 12 years old in 1988) and yet the toys were getting more childish and simplistic. 1988 was the year I bought the fewest Transformers toys—I had Powermaster Optimus Prime, Darkwing and Dreadwind, Doubledealer, the Seacons, and Quickswitch. I think that was it. The smaller, silly toys just didn't interest me.

With that said, I'm super nostalgic about them now, and I proudly welcome them into The Collection, and they will go in the museum in the den.

I paid $15 for Flamefeather (this is about typical for a loose specimen), $10 for Sparkstalker, another $10 for ANOTHER Sparkstalker (yeah, I'm dumb sometimes), and $4.95 for Cindersaur (this is far less typical, and you never see G1 toys this cheap these days... I got lucky). My main concern was that they all had good paint and didn't have scratches all over their stomachs. A working spark gimmick was nice, but not vital, since I just plan to display these guys, not play with them.

Zob (got another toy coming in the mail, too, and he's one of the two hardest-charging dudes the Decepticons have got)

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