This is technically part of the Velocitron assortment, but I've never seen it at a physical Walmart—I got mine from their web portal a few days ago. (I guess people are finding it in stores, from what I've read, along with Shadow Stripper and G2 Crasher or whatever they're called.)

Every once in a while, I take a step back and realize I spend way too much money on toys. It often happens when two or more of my pre-orders end up getting delayed, and then end up being released within close proximity to each other, and I've spent several hundred dollars in a very short space of time. Most of the time, it's stuff I really want. Occasionally I'll buy stuff I'm somewhat interested in, but it's not an absolute must-have for my collection, and that's when the buyer's remorse usually hits.

So Galaxy Shuttle was one of those non-essential toys that I felt like I could probably skip. I know nothing about the character except for the fact that he exists, and the Siege Astrotrain toy isn't especially well-suited to represent him since he's supposed to have a big ol' space shuttle cockpit on his chest, sort of like Super GoBots Spay-C. And, you know, Leader-class toys are fifty-five dollars now, and that's not nothing. So when I was ordering toys on Hasbro Pulse, I skipped this guy. And then had a mild panic attack when he was sold out, because the #FOMO is real. And ended up ordering him on Walmart.com, and the panic subsided. I guess the fear of missing out is more objectionable, in my mind, than owning a toy that I don't love.

Interestingly, Mark Maher of Hasbro reported that this toy only became a thing after he was poking around in the Astrotrain files and discovered, quite accidentally, that somebody had designed an alternate, unused head sculpt for the toy that nobody knew about. Apparently this is a thing that Hasbro does now—they always bake in an extra head sculpt when designing a toy, just in case they decide to use it later. But, discovering the Galaxy Shuttle head was complete serendipity, it seems. Kind of makes you wonder how many other alternate head sculpts were designed but went totally unused. I can think of a handful (Scourge as Senator Ratbat, PotP Cutthroat as Wildfly) but I'm sure there are many we have no idea about!

So where Astrotrain was mostly a dark grey with some purple, Galaxy Shuttle is almost entirely white with some black parts. He strongly resembles the Japanese release of Astrotrain, who transformed from a white space shuttle into a black train (Hasbro "reissued" that toy in 2004). So, this is in some ways a spiritual update for Astrotrain, except of course he has a different head sculpt.

All the things wrong with Astrotrain are still wrong with this toy. The back of the space shuttle mode looks unfinished, like it's missing panels or something. The shuttle nose is tiny compared to the rest, which wraps around it like it's bundled up in a thick blanket for the winter. Same with the front of the train and the massively oversized train-shaped coat it wears..

Guns, guns, so many guns. He comes with five weapons (four red, one red that's painted black, 'coz it's in disguise) and they can be attached to the toy in all its modes in various ways, or can be connected together to form a ridiculously large single weapon. The original Japanese toy had a single weapon, made of the space shuttle tailfin, so all the red-colored weaponry is kind of erroneous and doesn't help much with the color mapping to the original character.

The original 1989 toy was designed to be compatible with Micromaster Countdown, specifically the blue base component. So, the train car for Astrotrain became a blue-colored box, in an effort to replicate that look. I don't hate that they did this. All these semi-Countdown updates (Omega Supreme, Galactic Odyssey) without an actual, legitimate attempt at recreating his rocket base. Maybe some day!

This version of the character is kind of smallish (he's a huge character based on cartoon screen shots I've seen, and his G1 toy was closer to the size of Jetfire or Sixshot) but it's a fun update that isn't awful.

Zob (done with work until after Christmas... longest week of my life, let me tell ya)

On Thursday, December 22, 2022 at 4:00:15 PM UTC-8, Zobovor wrote:
> Occasionally I'll buy stuff I'm somewhat interested in, but it's not an absolute must-have for my collection, and that's when the buyer's remorse usually hits.
> I guess the fear of missing out is more objectionable, in my mind, than owning a toy that I don't love.

You can always sell this stuff off, even if you only get half price for it that's something. You get a certain amount of value from the toy in these reviews you do. Just let the ones you don't love go, take a 50% hit on what you paid as the sunk cost of getting to do a write up, and call it good. If you're gonna be a prolific buyer you've gotta be a prolific seller (unless you have infinite space).

> Interestingly, Mark Maher of Hasbro reported that this toy only became a thing after he was poking around in the Astrotrain files and discovered, quite accidentally, that somebody had designed an alternate, unused head sculpt for the toy that nobody knew about.

This lack of communication within the design team is costing the company. If time and effort is being put into creating designs that don't get used because the lead designer is unaware of them, then they're leaving money on the table. It's one thing if they don't execute on an alternate version of whatever mold because they don't think it's a good idea, but to be completely unaware that the work was done is completely another. To not make decisions because they don't know what designs they've got is at best inefficient and at worst incompetent. I'm surprised he admitted to events unfolding in that way. Makes 'em look like a bunch of dummies.

> So where Astrotrain was mostly a dark grey with some purple, Galaxy Shuttle is almost entirely white with some black parts. He strongly resembles the Japanese release of Astrotrain, who transformed from a white space shuttle into a black train (Hasbro "reissued" that toy in 2004). So, this is in some ways a spiritual update for Astrotrain, except of course he has a different head sculpt.

This really is white Astrotrain. Kudos to Hasbro marketing for exploiting the line's heritage to pull those weeb dollars.