My package(s) from Hasbro Pulse showed up today (I get free shipping, so I make them ship everything separately... makes it easier for me if I need to cancel an order later on). I'm convinced that Transformers as a brand doesn't even exist at retail any longer. Needless to say, I haven't seen this wave in stores anywhere.

I wasn't actually interested enough in Armada Hot Shot or Scraphook to spend money on them. Maybe I'll have a moment of weakness later during a dry spell. Who knows.

BREAKDOWN

As I've said before, Breakdown is technically a Legacy Evolution toy, but they deliberately packaged him with the older Legacy trade dress so that mint-in-box collectors could have a set of Stunticons whose packaging all looked the same.

Breakdown was one of my favorite Combiner Wars toys, given that he came much closer to achieving cartoon fidelity than his brothers. It's ironic, then, that the newer version of him is arguably worse in some ways, rather than being an improvement. It's almost like Hasbro saved the worst Stunticon for last, so by the time he came out, you'd already spent $175 on the other four, so you basically had to buy him to complete Menasor whether you actually liked him or not.

So, Breakdown measures about five inches in height. He's largely a retool of Wildrider, and shares the same robot legs and arms. The pelvis and chest design and head sculpt are new. During G1, all the Stunticons were unique designs, but it was actually Breakdown and Dead End that were the most similar, since they shared a transformation scheme. The most distinctive elements of Breakdown's cartoon design are his trapezoid-shaped upper torso, the weird truck grill thing on his chest, and the off-center Decepticon symbol on his chest. This toy doesn't capture his look as closely as most modern attempts tend to. He should have wheels on the insides of his lower legs, wheels on his shoulders, and a pentagonal-shaped pelvis with a five-sided vent shape. This toy has none of these. Despite that, he's not awful. He looks like the character, just not as closely-inspired as I'd expect from Legacy.

He carries a puny little gun (cream plastic but painted black), but Hasbro said that the reason he doesn't have two blasters like the other Stunticons is because he got a spoiler piece instead. He can carry the spoiler like a boomerang, but it makes much more sense for car mode.

His transformation is pretty much like Wildrider—the head and fists tuck away, the legs fold up. The gun stows under the hood, and was evidently deliberately made puny so there would be room for it to tuck away. The spoiler mounts to the back of the car mode. (They seem to have fixed the instructions, which were incorrect on Wildrider and showed you doing things to the toy, like breaking it, that you're probably not actually supposed to do.)

As a car, he's just under five inches in length. He has new vehicle elements near the rear of the car mode (a different set of peg-holes for the spoiler, some Lamborghini-esque vent shapes) but aside from that, he's a cream-colored Ferrari. It's disappointing that he's just Wildrider in the wrong colors, rather than something approximating a Lamborghini Countach. The color scheme helps it to read as Breakdown, especially that distinctive cream color with the bright red hood, and the spoiler marginally helps. But, I'm disappointed that Hasbro shelled out the money to design all-new molds for Armada Hot Shot and Scraphook (characters I've either never heard of or don't care about), and yet decided to make Breakdown a cost-cutting, money-saving release. I hope the third-party guys do some replacement parts or something. Even if it's just a replacement hood, that's better than nothing.

I've been able to *form* Menasor for a while now, of course, but this is the first time I've been able to *complete* Menasor. It's a little anti-climactic, to be honest, since you just stuff Breakdown behind one of the existing leg frames, and he's mostly obscured from view.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm disappointed with Breakdown, and I wish he were more authentic. I understand the reasons why cost-cutting is sometimes necessary, but this was shaping up to be THE definitive update for the Stunticons.... and it arguably is, for at least four of them. But Breakdown upsets me a bit. We deserve better than this.

NEEDLENOSE

During Kingdom, it seems like Hasbro was hiding all the important accessories at the bottom of the cardboard inserts. Well, they must have realized we were wise to their game, so now they're tucking the accessories off to the side. Needlenose has five plastic parts wrapped in tissue, so if your count is less than that, recheck your tissue paper!

For years now, Hasbro has been putting Needlenose in various fan polls, as a possible character to produce next, but he's always lost out to more popular characters like Springer or Tracks or somebody. We were at a point where Hasbro had reportedly lost faith in the character, and was going to stop trying to work him into the neo-G1 line-up. But, we got Spinister, and we got Quake (sort of), so it makes sense to finish off the team. And, really, it's about time!

In robot mode, Needlenose stands at about 5.75" in height, and is predominantly a medium grey color with a blue pelvis and lower legs, and purple arms and toes. His helmet is painted a darker grey color, with red eyes and a yellow mask. It's a look that's authentic to the G1 toy, and his upper legs even have sculpted detail that suggests the consumer-applied stickers on the 1988 version. The teal paint on the front of his shins is also meant to evoke the stickers on the G1 toy.

To complete assembly of the toy, you attach the blue tail fin piece to Needlenose's back, near his head. His Targetmaster partners, Sunbeam (purple) and Zigzag (black) also need to be put together, by attaching their respective gun barrels. It's worth mentioning here that Sunbeam and Zigzag pioneer yet another new type of Targetmaster design—not what we got during Siege, not what we got with the last double Targetmaster who came with guns (Scoop in 2014), and not what we recently got with Pointblank and Peacemaker. They're extremely similar to the G1 design, essentially a solid block of plastic plus the articulated gun barrel. They're just taller, about 1..75" instead of being less than 1.5" like during G1.

Also, the sculpts for Sunbeam and Zigzag are kind of amazing. Very authentic to the original versions. Sunbeam still has his little purple gun in his left hand, and Zigzag still carries a tiny sword and shield. If this more simplified style of Targetmaster is the only way to include pack-in Nebulan partners at the Deluxe price point, then I'm all for it. Zigzag is actually made of purple plastic (he came off the same sprue as Sunbeam, and Needlenose's arms, probably) but is painted glossy black almost in his entirety.

Back to Needlenose—he's got a full range of articulation, including a swiveling waist. The backs of his lower legs are a bit hollow, but that's a minor thing. His mask doesn't move, unlike G1, so you can't do expressions like Sleepy Needlenose or Super Surprised Needlenose. He can equip both Targetmaster guns, one in each hand, or the can stack on top of each other as they did during G1. The only thing they can't do is have Sunbeam stack on top of Zigzag and face backwards, since Zigzag has a foot platform in the way.

He's C.O.M.B.A.T. compatible, with five-millimeter peg holes in all the right spots to wear a Weaponizer as armor. The only spots for blast effects are on the tip of Sunbeam's single barrel, and the two cannons on Zigzag's double-barreled weapon mode.

I expected transformation to be more or less like G1, but actually it was quite tricky! The robot arms fold in on themselves, and tuck into the gaps within the legs, but everything has to tab together just right, and it took me a while to figure it all out. It's ingenious once you get it all together, but there was a bit of a learning curve.

As a jet, he's a bit over six inches in length, with a wingspan slightly bigger than four inches. He's close to being an F-16, the same jet he was during G1, but he's got a couple of extra canards on his tail fin, probably to skirt past licensing requirements from General Dynamics (though people have theorized the tail fin also might be a pretool for a Windsweeper remold, which I could definitely get behind). Each of his two Targetmasters can mount to the underside of his wings. He has no landing gears of any kind.

Needlenose is designed to plug into the Leader-class Skyquake, in the style of the Scopemaster toys from Europe, suggesting he might be on the slab to be retooled into one of the small Predator jets eventually.

This is honestly a killer homage to a fairly obscure heritage character. They did such an exceptional job at capturing his look in both robot and jet modes, and the Targetmaster guns are just icing on the cake. A lot of Targetmaster characters in recent years haven't come with guns in the package at all (Crosshairs, Spinister, etc.) so it's great to see them finding a way to do it finally.

Zob (glad I picked up my G1 Needlenose last year, since I'm sure prices for the vintage edition are going to skyrocket now)

On Tuesday, February 7, 2023 at 8:22:30 PM UTC-8, Zobovor wrote:

> Breakdown was one of my favorite Combiner Wars toys, given that he came much closer to achieving cartoon fidelity than his brothers. It's ironic, then, that the newer version of him is arguably worse in some ways, rather than being an improvement.

I think they have to deliberately sabotage their Lamborghini robots' alt modes in extreme ways so the cars don't resemble the real deal unless they're officially licensed. Combiner Wars lambos were little more than rolling wedges and the earth mode Sideswipe mold has that greebly middle section with no spoiler. I bet they just can't do a close-to-real alt Lambo or the lawyers will be on 'em.

(I found a beautiful Lego Countach at Wal-Mart the other day and fell in love with it. It's bone white and way larger than the Legacy Stunticons but close enough to stand in as Breakdown if I squint a little.)

> It's almost like Hasbro saved the worst Stunticon for last, so by the time he came out, you'd already spent $175 on the other four, so you basically had to buy him to complete Menasor whether you actually liked him or not.

Or maybe they're saving a properly scultped version for some other release down the road. Like how initially Combiner Wars teams came with out-of-left-field new 4th limb members nobody asked for or cared about, then they released the proper guy. I am still hopeful for a Selects Legacy Menasor giftset version with a proper Breakdown and changes to Motormaster's plastic so it won't yellow right out of the box. I heard there was a recent very limited Legacy Menasor giftset with all the retail releases packaged together with a box and Menasor pin. Maybe that was a test run and a proper giftset is on the way. Maybe Takara is planning something. Who knows.

On Thursday, February 9, 2023 at 11:30:44 PM UTC-7, Evil King Macrocranios wrote:

> I think they have to deliberately sabotage their Lamborghini robots' alt modes in extreme ways so the cars don't resemble the real deal unless they're officially licensed. Combiner Wars lambos were little more than rolling wedges and the earth mode Sideswipe mold has that greebly middle section with no spoiler. I bet they just can't do a close-to-real alt Lambo or the lawyers will be on 'em.

What I don't get about this is that Dead End comes very close to looking like a Porsche 911. Wildrider sure looks like a Ferarri 308 to me. Maybe there are very minor differences that are technically allowing them to skirt licensing regulations, and that's fine. To me, all the recent cars have been close enough to be satisfactory. So, it's hard for me to imagine that Chrysler (who owns Ferrari) or Volkswagen (who owns Porsche) were wiling to play ball with Hasbro but Audi (who owns Lamborghini) wouldn't budge. And what about the Masterpice versions of Sideswipe and Red Alert? Surely those were licensed.

> I found a beautiful Lego Countach at Wal-Mart the other day and fell in love with it.

I have no business buying that LEGO set, but I've seen it and I want it.

> Or maybe they're saving a properly scultped version for some other release down the road. Like how initially Combiner Wars teams came with out-of-left-field new 4th limb members nobody asked for or cared about, then they released the proper guy.

I really hoped we were past all that nonsense. But, maybe they're planning something. Like, in a couple of years, they sell another wedge-shaped Breakdown with no spoiler, so you can stick the Legacy spoiler on the wedge-shaped Breakdown and finally build a complete version of him.

Realistically, though, I think if anybody is going to save Breakdown, it's going to be the third-party guys with some new car body parts for us to install. (And they'll have to do it all over again when Hasbro gives us G2 Breakdown...)

> I heard there was a recent very limited Legacy Menasor giftset with all the retail releases packaged together with a box and Menasor pin. Maybe that was a test run and a proper giftset is on the way. Maybe Takara is planning something. Who knows.

I think that was an Asia market exclusive, if I remember right? Hasbro knows about the problems with Motormaster yellowing, and there's circumstantial evidence that they pulled him off the market early to address the situation. So, we might see a second production run at some point down the road, perhaps. Like Sky Lynx and Rodimus Prime, there's not a lot of ways Hasbro can dress up Motormaster like a different character, so it makes more sense to just do a straight rerelease.

Zob (always said I would only buy the He-Man characters from my childhood, and yet I own a Frog Monger now)