Got this guy in the mail yesterday, but I've been busy building Detolf shelves (got three of them assembled now; it just doesn't get any easier) and cleaning all my G1 toys with Q-Tips (I mean, if I'm going to put them in museum-quality displays, they really need to look the part).

Can I just reiterate how much I love that we're finally getting great, big, huge, Geewunriffic and cartoon-accurate Dinobot toys? I want to find whichever Hasbro employees were responsible for this idea and just kiss them full on the mouth. Which I don't think they would like, but that's neither here nor there.

He comes in the package with the dinosaur head-and-neck assembly packaged as a separate piece, and requires a one-time assembly.

I can't get over how big this guy is. I mean, I've already got Grimlock and Slag, so you'd think I would know what to expect, but it was still quite a shock. (That's one of the fun things about not having a window box. Dramatic toy reveal!) He measures about 8.5" at the head as a robot. Studio Series Arcee comes up to his waist. Goldbug comes up to just above his knees. Due is massive. He's an absolute unit.

His color scheme is basically perfect. Nice, vibrant red for the chest. Metallic grey for the arms and legs. Silver painted deco for the robot face and the outside of the wings. (Could have used it for the inside, too.) A not-quite-black for the upper legs and helmet and fists, which is correct for animation. He's so gorgeous.

I know that Hasbro said they had made sure to use the same colors for Slag that they had on Grimlock, to ensure the team would look unified. They didn't quite do this with Sludge, since they're using metallic silver to represent the parts on the G1 toy that were vac-metal chrome. For Grimlock and Slag, they used a pearlescent white instead. I wish they had been more consistent. It will be less of an issue with Snarl (he didn't have any silver chrome), but for Swoop, I wonder if they will do the silver metallic paint for the wings, or go back to the pearlescent white. I hope they do the pearlescent, because it's more 'toon-accurate.

The toy has been widely reported to suffer from loose legs in robot mode, with people even posting tutorials on how to repair the joints and make them tighter (usually consisting of cutting apart a Q-Tip and stuffing the piece into the hollow plastic that makes the knee joint ratchet) but I don't seem to have this issue with my copy of the toy at all.

His articulation is great. His head is on a restricted ball joint so it swivels, his shoulders can rotate and pivot out to the sides (with sculpting inside the joint that suggests "interior muscle-cables," which I love), he's got a bicep swivel, double-jointed elbows, swiveling wrists, a swiveling waist, hips that swivel and pivot to the sides and rotate, soft-ratcheting knees, and ankle tilts.

No pegs for blast effects, and minimal C.O.M.B.A.T. compatibility (he has holes in the sides of his shoulders and under his feet, but nothing else). He's not that kind of toy.

During G1, most Dinobot toys came with a sword, a missile launcher, and a handheld rifle (but Swoop got two launchers and no gun). Typically, only one of these weapons was assigned to them in the show. Sludge got to carry his missile launcher, which was a two-tone weapon in black with gold trim, so that's faithfully duplicated here. It looks like it has a trigger to launch a projectile, but it doesn't do that. The barrel does accept five-millimeter pegs, though, which includes missiles and some blast effects.

Transformation is familiar in some ways and wildly unexpected in others. The robot arms actually become the back dinosaur legs, not the front, and his upper torso has to contort itself a bit in order to make this happen. AS with Slag, the robot feet get tucked away and are replaced with a pair of faux robot feet in order to form the hump on the dinosaur's back. The wing halves close together as you might expect, though I had trouble with them popping off a lot. The robot toes end up poking out of the dinosaur's belly and nearly hit the ground. He also ends up with a huge recessed undercarriage area that almost makes me feel like I did something wrong. It feels like the robot feet were meant to tuck into this gap at one stage in the toy's design, but if you do that, the panels don't line up right and you can't utilize the weapon storage. So, I dunno.

By the way, I will not refer to Sludge as an apatosaurus. When the character was created, he was a brontosaurus. That's what he turns into.

Dinosaur mode is, of course, massive and beefy. Stretch out his neck and he's like thirteen inches from the top of his tail to his nose. He's not quite five inches at the top of his back. He's tremendous, in the best sense of the word. I wasn't expecting the visible chunk of red robot chest near his hindquarters, but I find it acceptable and not wholly inauthentic (you could see a little of the robot chest on the G1 toy, too). In the past, I've decried the way some of the modern toys lack the artistry and grace of the G1 styling, but Sludge has a lot of the rounded curvature I associate with the original 1984 release, especially in the head and neck area.

As a brontosaurus, his jaw can open, his head can pivot up and down, his neck can swivel back and forth at the mid-section, and can also swing up and down at the base. His front legs can swivel and the ankles have some movement as well, while the rear legs enjoy all the same articulation as the robot arms. You can stow his weapon under the dinosaur mode belly, sideways, but it pokes out rather obviously.

Unlike other Dinobots in this size class, Sludge didn't come with a little partner. Hasbro said that they had originally included them partly as a failsafe measure against anticipated cost increases. When costs did indeed jump up a bit, they were able to drop the partner character from Sludge instead of sacrificing any engineering on the actual toy itself, since the partner character was part of the initial cost assessment.

The wings popping off is probably the most annoying thing about the toy. I think I'm going to run a metal pin through each one, and then he'll be nearly perfect.

Despite some minor flaws, overall I'm very happy with this guy. I wouldn't mind seeing some third-party weapons (the black rifle and the sword) to help complete him. (There's already a third-party kit that includes a pair of cartoon eyeballs to reenact Sludge's encounter with Devastator in The Transformers: the Movie, which is of course awesome.)

Zob (hopefully the decision to expand the scope of Studio Series to include non-movie characters will allay concerns when they come out with Studio Series Snarl, who is absent for most of The Transformers: the Movie)

> By the way, I will not refer to Sludge as an apatosaurus. When the character was created, he was a brontosaurus. That's what he turns into.

Well, it seems like science starts to support it again, so you're in luck :)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/back-brontosaurus-dinosaur-just-might-deserve-its-own-genus-species-science-180954892/

Zobovor <zmfts@aol.com> wrote:

> Can I just reiterate how much I love that we're finally getting great,
> big, huge, Geewunriffic and cartoon-accurate Dinobot toys? I want to
> find whichever Hasbro employees were responsible for this idea and just
> kiss them full on the mouth. Which I don't think they would like, but
> that's neither here nor there.

Please do not sexually assault the fine Hasbro and Takara employees. Just
send them explicit letters offering yourself to them.

> He comes in the package with the dinosaur head-and-neck assembly packaged
> as a separate piece, and requires a one-time assembly.

That’s the same type of clip that the Sharkticons use… Sludge’s
slot-and-groove is slightly narrower, so you can put a brontosaurus head on
a Sharkticon, but not the other way around. And it really doesn’t integrate
well.

And the colors are jarring. The Sharkticon animation grays translate into
toy grays, while Dinobot animation grays are toy silver plastic.

> I can't get over how big this guy is. I mean, I've already got Grimlock
> and Slag, so you'd think I would know what to expect, but it was still
> quite a shock. (That's one of the fun things about not having a window
> box. Dramatic toy reveal!) He measures about 8.5" at the head as a
> robot. Studio Series Arcee comes up to his waist. Goldbug comes up to
> just above his knees. Due is massive. He's an absolute unit.

Suitably large. I am wondering how he compares to BW Ultra Optimus Primal,
but don’t feel like digging him out.

> His color scheme is basically perfect. Nice, vibrant red for the chest.
> Metallic grey for the arms and legs. Silver painted deco for the robot
> face and the outside of the wings. (Could have used it for the inside,
> too.) A not-quite-black for the upper legs and helmet and fists, which
> is correct for animation. He's so gorgeous.
>
> I know that Hasbro said they had made sure to use the same colors for
> Slag that they had on Grimlock, to ensure the team would look unified.
> They didn't quite do this with Sludge, since they're using metallic
> silver to represent the parts on the G1 toy that were vac-metal chrome.
> For Grimlock and Slag, they used a pearlescent white instead. I wish
> they had been more consistent. It will be less of an issue with Snarl
> (he didn't have any silver chrome), but for Swoop, I wonder if they will
> do the silver metallic paint for the wings, or go back to the pearlescent
> white. I hope they do the pearlescent, because it's more 'toon-accurate.

I like the silver paint so much more. I do wish we got toon and toy color
variations, so I wouldn’t have that pearlescent plastic on my others.

And the animation ones should be gray, not the pearlized gray, for most of
the body. (And then I would have to buy them since they look like
TF:Animated)

> The toy has been widely reported to suffer from loose legs in robot mode,
> with people even posting tutorials on how to repair the joints and make
> them tighter (usually consisting of cutting apart a Q-Tip and stuffing
> the piece into the hollow plastic that makes the knee joint ratchet) but
> I don't seem to have this issue with my copy of the toy at all.

Mine is fine too.

> His articulation is great. His head is on a restricted ball joint so it
> swivels, his shoulders can rotate and pivot out to the sides (with
> sculpting inside the joint that suggests "interior muscle-cables," which
> I love), he's got a bicep swivel, double-jointed elbows, swiveling
> wrists, a swiveling waist, hips that swivel and pivot to the sides and
> rotate, soft-ratcheting knees, and ankle tilts.

Articulation good. On random sculpting details… I love the ribs. Open a
front panel in bronto mode, and just enjoy the mechanical ribs.

> No pegs for blast effects, and minimal C.O.M.B.A.T. compatibility (he has
> holes in the sides of his shoulders and under his feet, but nothing
> else). He's not that kind of toy.

That really is a shame. I get that they are different toy lines, but
Dinobots with Fossilizers would be great. Being able to cover Dinobots in
weapons in both modes would be awesome. But no.

Yes, I play with my toys this way. I did just try to swap parts with a
Sharkticon after all.

There are a few exposed screw holes on the bronto neck that are 5.1mm or
so, just large enough not to accept weapons. He does hame 5mm spots on his
rear bronto hips (robot shoulders).

> During G1, most Dinobot toys came with a sword, a missile launcher, and a
> handheld rifle (but Swoop got two launchers and no gun). Typically, only
> one of these weapons was assigned to them in the show. Sludge got to
> carry his missile launcher, which was a two-tone weapon in black with
> gold trim, so that's faithfully duplicated here. It looks like it has a
> trigger to launch a projectile, but it doesn't do that. The barrel does
> accept five-millimeter pegs, though, which includes missiles and some blast effects.

I do like that.

If I had my way there would be spots for Titan Masters to ride him, more
spots for blast effects, peg holes for weapons, and while we’re at it make
him a headmaster. In my ideal world, Hot House or someone could plug into
spots on Sludge’s dino mode and become a roving battle platform manned by
micromasters and/or minicons.

Hasbro needs a few more people who play with toys, rather than just
carefully match toys to animation models. Getting characters to look right
is important, but getting toys to be 10% more fun would be good too.

(PotP Dinobots have a few peg holes that allow building silly things on
them — mount the prime master guns, etc… but now we have so many more
things to build with and bigger toys… and no way to build on the bigger
toys)

Anyway, his beast mouth has a gun thing that might be blast effect
compatible, although it looks a little short. I don’t have any effects
handy right now. (I’m not a huge fan of them… but compatibility is so
simple to add that they should be doing it whenever possible) (I like them
well enough, but I have to hide them from the cats)

Weirdly, his gun’s handle is a hair larger than standard, so he can hold
other figures guns but they cannot hold his — using Kingdom Prowl for
comparison. So his gun fits snugly on the bronto neck screw holes, but is
too big for the rear hips robot shoulders spots.

> Transformation is familiar in some ways and wildly unexpected in others.
> The robot arms actually become the back dinosaur legs, not the front, and
> his upper torso has to contort itself a bit in order to make this happen.
> AS with Slag, the robot feet get tucked away and are replaced with a
> pair of faux robot feet in order to form the hump on the dinosaur's back.
> The wing halves close together as you might expect, though I had trouble
> with them popping off a lot. The robot toes end up poking out of the
> dinosaur's belly and nearly hit the ground. He also ends up with a huge
> recessed undercarriage area that almost makes me feel like I did
> something wrong. It feels like the robot feet were meant to tuck into
> this gap at one stage in the toy's design, but if you do that, the panels
> don't line up right and you can't utilize the weapon storage. So, I dunno.

I would so much rather have the toes life up and hide away in that spot.
And weapon storage anywhere else.

> By the way, I will not refer to Sludge as an apatosaurus. When the
> character was created, he was a brontosaurus. That's what he turns into.

He was created from a children’s book in the cartoon, wasn’t he? He’s
clearly a brontosaurus. And Grimlock is a tail dragger.

> Dinosaur mode is, of course, massive and beefy. Stretch out his neck and
> he's like thirteen inches from the top of his tail to his nose. He's not
> quite five inches at the top of his back. He's tremendous, in the best
> sense of the word. I wasn't expecting the visible chunk of red robot
> chest near his hindquarters, but I find it acceptable and not wholly
> inauthentic (you could see a little of the robot chest on the G1 toy,
> too). In the past, I've decried the way some of the modern toys lack the
> artistry and grace of the G1 styling, but Sludge has a lot of the rounded
> curvature I associate with the original 1984 release, especially in the
> head and neck area.
>
> As a brontosaurus, his jaw can open, his head can pivot up and down, his
> neck can swivel back and forth at the mid-section, and can also swing up
> and down at the base. His front legs can swivel and the ankles have some
> movement as well, while the rear legs enjoy all the same articulation as
> the robot arms. You can stow his weapon under the dinosaur mode belly,
> sideways, but it pokes out rather obviously.
>
> Unlike other Dinobots in this size class, Sludge didn't come with a
> little partner. Hasbro said that they had originally included them
> partly as a failsafe measure against anticipated cost increases. When
> costs did indeed jump up a bit, they were able to drop the partner
> character from Sludge instead of sacrificing any engineering on the
> actual toy itself, since the partner character was part of the initial cost assessment.
>
> The wings popping off is probably the most annoying thing about the toy.
> I think I'm going to run a metal pin through each one, and then he'll be nearly perfect.

On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 12:48:19 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> If I had my way there would be spots for Titan Masters to ride him, more
> spots for blast effects, peg holes for weapons, and while we’re at it make
> him a headmaster. In my ideal world, Hot House or someone could plug into
> spots on Sludge’s dino mode and become a roving battle platform manned by
> micromasters and/or minicons.

I guess I'm not surprised they eventually abandoned the Titan Master mini-pegs, but I am surprised they were so quick to abandon the pegs for blast effects. I mean, Siege wasn't that long ago.
> Hasbro needs a few more people who play with toys, rather than just
> carefully match toys to animation models. Getting characters to look right
> is important, but getting toys to be 10% more fun would be good too.

Well, you could argue that Studio Series has a little bit of a different focus. It really does place an emphasis on screen accuracy over play value (except for the Scourge/Sweep toy, which was clearly meant for Kingdom or something from the get-go).

But, yes, I'd say that generally I would agree with you. The more things a toy can do, the more enjoyable it is. But I would add as a caveat that once gimmicks interfere with articulation or accuracy, it becomes a zero-sum game. They take away something I like just to inject something value-added into the toy.

> He was created from a children’s book in the cartoon, wasn’t he? He’s
> clearly a brontosaurus.

Don't think there was a children's book involved. Hound took some scans from the local fossil museum and seemed to extrapolate from those what the real versions must have looked and sounded like (yes, his holograms made dinosaur noises). So, blame the guys who built the fossil skeletons, I guess.

> I want a shield that covers up the gap in his belly, and I want to find a
> few toys that can hide in that space — a little Dinobot version of the
> Trojan Horse. Just eyeballing it you should have room for a couple of
> cassettes.

Check Big Bad Toy Store for the Sludge upgrade kit. It comes with the shield you want, plus some cool blast effects and some Looney Tunes eyeballs for his big scene with Devastator.

> This is the first of the big Dinobots that I loved. Maybe it’s the silver
> paint. Or maybe it’s just that parts didn’t pop off.

It's funny how you had pop-off parts with Grimlock, but I didn't. And now I get pop-off parts for Sludge, but you didn't. It's also funny how much something like that can shape one's perception of a toy as a whole.

Zob (has zero pop-off parts)

On Thursday, August 4, 2022 at 8:55:24 PM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:

> The robot toes end up poking out of the dinosaur's belly and nearly hit the ground. He also ends up with a huge recessed undercarriage area that almost makes me feel like I did something wrong. It feels like the robot feet were meant to tuck into this gap at one stage in the toy's design.

So, today I got the Sludge upgrade kit from Nonnef Productions which does address this specific problem. The kit includes their first upgrade with a metal pin assembly! There are several snap-together parts from which you can build new feet for Sludge. The old ones just pop off, so no disassembly with a screwdriver required. The toes looked yellow on Twitter, but the final version is a metallic gold that matches the rest of the toy almost perfectly. Each new foot has a folding toe section so you can finally stuff his toes into that empty slot, which I'm sure was how the toy was originally designed. Hasbro probably made his toes all one piece and eliminated a moving joint to cut costs. With this upgrade, you do lose the weapon storage, and there are no peg-holes in the bottom of the feet, but that's a small price to pay.

The Sludge kit also comes with tiny pieces of gold plastic (actually attached to the feet!) that you can stuff into the knee joint to make the ratchet function a bit tighter. Mine wasn't awful before, but I do see an improvement. You do have to take apart the upper legs with a screwdriver to install these parts. There are also grey fillers for the screw holes in the brontosaurus neck.

He's also got his black electron cannon as per G1 (two-piece snap-together assembly)and his energo sword (three-piece snap-together assembly; I got red, but there's going to be an orange blade version available soon) and also a gold missile for his rocket pod (it's a really close match to the gold-painted barrel).

Basically, just a cool set that improves the toy quite a bit. I paid $19.99 for the kit, which is a bit more expensive than typical Nonnef kits but it's also a lot more ambitious with more parts than usual.

Zob (and now Sludge is a $70 toy! Whee!)

> Zob (and now Sludge is a $70 toy! Whee!)

Hasbro's stock is in free-fall, and expecting fans to shell out extra cash for upgrades to incomplete/unfinished figures with inconsistent levels of QC seems like it might be a factor.

On Monday, October 17, 2022 at 10:06:45 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> On Thursday, August 4, 2022 at 8:55:24 PM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:
>
> > The robot toes end up poking out of the dinosaur's belly and nearly hit the ground. He also ends up with a huge recessed undercarriage area that almost makes me feel like I did something wrong. It feels like the robot feet were meant to tuck into this gap at one stage in the toy's design.
>
> So, today I got the Sludge upgrade kit from Nonnef Productions which does address this specific problem. The kit includes their first upgrade with a metal pin assembly! There are several snap-together parts from which you can build new feet for Sludge. The old ones just pop off, so no disassembly with a screwdriver required. The toes looked yellow on Twitter, but the final version is a metallic gold that matches the rest of the toy almost perfectly. Each new foot has a folding toe section so you can finally stuff his toes into that empty slot, which I'm sure was how the toy was originally designed. Hasbro probably made his toes all one piece and eliminated a moving joint to cut costs. With this upgrade, you do lose the weapon storage, and there are no peg-holes in the bottom of the feet, but that's a small price to pay.
>
> The Sludge kit also comes with tiny pieces of gold plastic (actually attached to the feet!) that you can stuff into the knee joint to make the ratchet function a bit tighter. Mine wasn't awful before, but I do see an improvement. You do have to take apart the upper legs with a screwdriver to install these parts. There are also grey fillers for the screw holes in the brontosaurus neck.
>
> He's also got his black electron cannon as per G1 (two-piece snap-together assembly)and his energo sword (three-piece snap-together assembly; I got red, but there's going to be an orange blade version available soon) and also a gold missile for his rocket pod (it's a really close match to the gold-painted barrel).
>
> Basically, just a cool set that improves the toy quite a bit. I paid $19.99 for the kit, which is a bit more expensive than typical Nonnef kits but it's also a lot more ambitious with more parts than usual.
>
>
> Zob (and now Sludge is a $70 toy! Whee!)
Just found a GoBetter foot assembly kit that unfolds to form dinosaur belly filler. Also some leg fillers and the face kit.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=691531832541858&set=pcb.691532139208494

On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 8:41:28 AM UTC-6, Ob1k...@att.net wrote:

> Just found a GoBetter foot assembly kit that unfolds to form dinosaur belly filler. Also some leg fillers and the face kit.

So the focus here doesn't seem to be to tuck in the robot toes at all, but rather to close up the gap in the underbelly. It's a different fix for a different problem. I guess it depends on whether it's the toes poking out or the gap that bothers you more.

The eyeballs are goofy and silly and I kind of love them.

Zob (need to find a way to get the eyballs to hover just above his head, though... probably involving magnets, or fishing line, or witchcraft)

On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 9:58:01 AM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 8:41:28 AM UTC-6, Ob1k...@att.net wrote:
>
> > Just found a GoBetter foot assembly kit that unfolds to form dinosaur belly filler. Also some leg fillers and the face kit.
> So the focus here doesn't seem to be to tuck in the robot toes at all, but rather to close up the gap in the underbelly. It's a different fix for a different problem. I guess it depends on whether it's the toes poking out or the gap that bothers you more.
>
> The eyeballs are goofy and silly and I kind of love them.
>
>
> Zob (need to find a way to get the eyballs to hover just above his head, though... probably involving magnets, or fishing line, or witchcraft)

The toes are closer in to the body, so they don't stick out nearly as far.

For the eyes you're just going to need micro drones hovering above his head..