I guess if Hasbro is going to continue to diversify the character selection, then I'm done buying entire waves of toys. Shrapnel was the only one from this batch I was excited about. (Do we call this Legacy wave five, or Evolution wave two? No idea.) The other Deluxe toys from this wave were Animated Prowl (zero interest), Crashbar (an off-screen Junkion motorcycle) and Crosscut (the red-wheeled knockoffy-looking silver version of Skids). I suppose I might pick up the motorcycle and the knockoff at some point in the future (it's highly probable the Junkions will form a combiner), but I decided that ordering four Shrapnels would make me happier than ordering the entire wave. (Two from Hasbro Pulse and two from Big Bad Toy Store, and BBTS was the first to ship!)

It's worth mentioning that he's reclaimed his original name finally, so he's Shrapnel and not Skrapnel or Sharpshot or any of that nonsense, nonsense.

So, the Insecticons were among the tiniest Decepticons during the G1 cartoon—only Soundwave's cassettes were smaller. Making the Insecticons at a Deluxe scale would have worked well if they'd made them small Deluxes, like they did with Cliffjumper and Huffer. I wonder if maybe somebody didn't get the memo, or else maybe Hasbro isn't focusing quite as strongly on scale as they were during the John Warden days. So, the new Insecticons are arguably slightly too big. But, I guess the alternative would have been to make him too small, and then throw in some random water skis or something to justify the price point, and it's always a little silly when they do stuff like that. Astrotrain doesn't need a box, and Blitzwing doesn't need Hulk hands.

Anyway. Shrapnel is five inches tall in robot mode, fully twice the size of the G1 toy. His cartoon model was a fairly literal interpretation of his 1985 Hasbro release, so there isn't a huge disparity between the G1 toy and his cartoon look. He's reasonably accurate to his animation model, though they greebled up the surfaces with value-added detail. They reduced the size of his antennas with respect to his body—the antennas on the Legacy toy and G1 toy are the same size, despite the G1 toy being half the height! Probably the biggest divergence from his original look is that his biceps and fists are black, whereas the G1 toy's arms were entirely purple. The upper legs are painted grey, in an effort to match the unpainted grey vinyl hips as closely as possible. They matched his plastic colors and paint colors to Legacy Kickback, so there's an authentic visual synergy amongst the Insecticon team.

Shrapnel has the same translucent yellow chest canopy (the cockpit for the driver figure, during the Diaclone days) but as with Kickback, it doesn't open on the Legacy version. The cockpit itself is curved, matching the contours of the curved upper chest area. I'm not sure why they made it rounded, since the original Shrapnel toy was an exercise in geometric angles. I think perhaps it was a misinterpretation of the pentagon-shaped chest canopy, which might appear rounded if you weren't familiar with the shape of the G1 toy. It's not a tragedy, by any means, but it's a change.

Shrapnel's Evo-Fusion gimmick includes the laser guns that normally mount to the underside of his forearms, also serving as the legs for insect mode. On the Legacy toy, these parts pop off, and can connect to his handheld gamma ray detonator to form a longer rifle. Evo-Fusion is a gimmick only by the broadest stretch of the imagination (it's basically "parts can attach to other parts," which is a staple of every Transformers toy line) but at least it's better than making random pieces out of fragile, translucent plastic for no good reason, other than to serve an artificial gimmick. He can also equip C.O.M.B.A.T. gear, with peg-holes in his feet, legs, his back, the backs of his shoulders, and his forearms.

Shrapnel's handheld weapon is made of purple plastic but painted metallic silver, everywhere except for the gun handle, the peg hole on the back, and the tip of the weapon (so you can attach blast effects, if you can remember where you put your box of Siege toys from 2019, without the paint sticking to the rubbery plastic; blast effects can also be plugged into the tips of his antennas and the tips of his purple arm-guns). They could have probably left the gun purple, since that's the color of the weapon he carries in the cartoon (it was likely based on an early G1 prototype before the vac-metal was applied). But, painting it silver matches the G1 toy more closely. There's some buzzing online (ha, insect joke) about how several people have gotten a Shrapnel with two left insect feet. I don't think there's actually a left or a right foot at all, but rather it's the result of the mold parts mating badly, resulting in uneven "toes" on the insect foot. It's the same thing that infamously happened to Golden Disk Jackpot's head.

He's decorated with a lot of paint applications that evoke the consumer-applied stickers on the G1 toy—the yellow on his toes, the blue rectangle just below his neck, the silver-and-red on the backs of his legs. It's authentic to the 1980's toy, and it adds visual interest, but I admit that it bugs me (ha, another insect joke). I would prefer a cleaner look without painted details that look like toy stickers, but I suppose we'll have to wait for Takara to do Masterpiece versions of the Insecticons before we get that.

So, his transformation is so close to the G1 toy. If you own the G1 toy, you already know how to transform the Legacy toy, more or less. The toes fold down, the legs tuck in (with opening panels rather than sliding parts), the antennas close together to hide the robot face. At this scale, they can do little tricks like getting the robot fists to tuck away (not strictly necessary, as you can see his little hands poking out in insect mode in the cartoon). Robot legs lock in place, and robot arms have locking tabs as well (rather than relying on the tightness of the arm screw as during the G1 days, which would often become quite loose). It's a very solid form when it's all put together. The instructions say his handheld gun can mount to one of the peg-holes on his robot legs, but I like it as an undercarriage weapon.

Shrapnel turns into a stag beetle—what used to be called a lamellicorn but is now properly referred to as a scarabaeoid. He's four inches long at the head, nearly 5.5" long with antennas. On the Diaclone toy, the rounded shoulders of the robot mode were meant to serve as the eyes of the insect mode, though it loses something in translation on the Legacy toy. His front insect mode legs are silver plastic, not yellow, which is authentic to the cartoon look. Also, the insect mandibles are a separate piece than the panels that close together to hide the robot face, so you can move the mandibles (howm, howm) without revealing the robot parts. Those panels are kind of hard to open back up when switching back to robot mode, though. In the past, I've always relied on the insect antennas as an easy lever to grasp.

It's clear Shrapnel will get a redeco as Chop Shop at some point, given the similarity of the two in their insect mode (and the existence of the Kickback-as-Ransack redeco as a precedent). His color mapping is a bit different than Shrapnel (he's maroon with orange feet, upper legs, and fists) and ideally I'd like to see him get a remolded robot chest in addition to a different head sculpt. But, time will tell.

I'm very pleased with Shrapnel overall. He's arguably the definitive modern update for the character, betterand more accurate than the previous Legends-scale effort. Can't wait for Bombshell, my favorite Insecticon!

Zob (also finally got to watch Finch on Apple TV, so that was fun, too)

On Friday, March 17, 2023 at 11:41:57 AM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:

> There's some buzzing online (ha, insect joke) about how several people have gotten a Shrapnel with two left insect feet. I don't think there's actually a left or a right foot at all, but rather it's the result of the mold parts mating badly, resulting in uneven "toes" on the insect foot. It's the same thing that infamously happened to Golden Disk Jackpot's head.

Oh, so I opened my other Shrapnel and it actually *does* have a left and a right foot. I don't think they were ever intended to be different from each other, though. It's still likely the result of the parts mismatching when they were molded. But, evidently he does come in both flavors.

Zob (carry on, citizens)

On Friday, March 17, 2023 at 11:41:57 AM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:

> I decided that ordering four Shrapnels would make me happier than ordering the entire wave.

So, I like to play this little game sometimes where I will order a toy I want from multiple online retailers. Frequently, the ship window can vary by a month or two, or more, so I will simply let Hasbro Pulse and BBTS and Amazon fight it out to see who gets the product to my doorstop first, and then I'll end up cancelling whoever ends up missing the boat.

I wanted four Shrapnels total (one "real" Insecticon and three clones) so I ordered six. I got the first two from Big Bad Toy Store earlier this month. Then it was just down to Hasbro Pulse and Amazon. Well, those cheeky bastards must have been onto me, so they conspired to ship at the same time, and I got packages from both Hasbro Pulse and Amazon today, each with two Shrapnels inside. So now I have to figure out which among them is going to give me my money back, because I really don't need six of them!

Zob (play stupid games, win stupid prizes, I guess)