Got my cartoon-colored versions of Hound and Thundercracker from Hasbro Pulse today. It's my day off, so I get to do whatever I want, and that means wasting time talking about some toys that I love.

AUTOBOT HOUND

As a toy being marketed as from The Transformers: the Movie, Hound as a character choice is questionable. He's certainly not prominently featured in the film—he basically gets one moment where he's exiting the shuttle along with Sunstreaker and Optimus Prime, and that's it. But, he's technically in the movie, so that's all the justification they needed, I guess!

But, sure enough, the box art showcases Hound as emerging from Prime's shuttle, which is indeed the single scene in which he appears. This is an officially-licensed product by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, whose Jeep logo appears on the back of the box.

Hound hasn't been pressed into service nearly as many times as other toys like Hot Rod or Starscream. We got the G1 version, of course, and then we got the Takara reissue in 2004. For whatever reason, Hasbro never produced a reissue version themselves, so this is the first time they've made the G1 toy available for sale in like 38 years. He comes strapped down to the inner cardboard tray, with six items wrapped separately in tissue (his handheld gun, shoulder launcher, turret gun, gas can, spare tire, and a sprue with three missiles).

Armchait pundits were trying to analyze stock photos and were making determinations like his lack of die-cast metal, plastic tires instead of rubberized, etc. You can't tell these things from a photo. In fact, his physical composition is identical to the G1 release—rubberized tires and die-cast parts included.

His color scheme is inspired directly by the G1 animation, which is rather different from the original Diaclone-era toy. He was originally a deep army green color, with chrome headlights and side mirrors and hubcaps, but this release uses a pale olive green, what I would normally describe as Leonardo-colored, which matches his animated look more closely. His engine block is a very light green shade as well, which is accurate and correct to his colors from the cartoon.

Naturally, the proper way to equip him in vehicle mode is to plug the turret gun into the trunk and attach the spare gas canister and spare tired to the rear section. The handheld gun and shoulder launcher don't have a place to go when he's a Jeep. He's got some limited functionality in this form—his windshield can swing down, and his seats can also fold down.

Transformation is the same as it was during G1—the legs extend, the rear section flips down to form his massive feet, his tiny little Terrorcon arms are hidden behind the front wheels and swing down once the wheels are out of the way, and the head automatically pops up as the front section is flipped down to form the chest. The juxtaposition of the short, stubby arms with the cartoon colors is a bit odd—you see the animation colors and you almost expect the toy to be properly-proportioned.

His handheld gun fits in either hand, and the shoulder launcher mounts behind either shoulder. (The functionality of the launcher has been gutted—the missile fits in very tightly, and does not launch.) In the cartoon, Hound carried a very short handheld pea-shooter, which was a misinterpretation of the foreshortening used for the gun in his original artwork, which looked stubby because it was pointing almost directly at the viewer. The actual rifle is almost two and a half inches in length, more than half his height of four inches. You can leave the gas tank plugged into his toes if you like, but there's no really good place to put the spare tire or turret gun when he's in robot mode.

This release has no consider-applied stickers, but what it does have is a bunch of paint applications that really help to make this look a lot like cartoon Hound. In the show, Hound had these distinctive yellow stripes on his pelvis and wrists, which the G1 toy didn't actually have (there were stickers there, sure, but they weren't yellow stripes). The robot face is also painted the same light green, and he's got blue eyes. Parts are also either painted or made of different plastic to try to match his cartoon color-mapping (the black forearms are painted green, as are the tops of the toes and fronts of the lower legs). It's honestly decorated as closely to the cartoon show as they could have possibly managed.

This is the sort of project I used to do all the time—take a G1 toy and try to paint it into the cartoon color scheme to create a stronger fidelity between the official merchandise and the media. It's exactly the sort of thing I would have done myself, if I had a spare G1 Hound and wasn't worried about my Testors model paint getting scraped off during transformation. I can't believe that there's an official Hound toy that looks like this. It's beautiful, and it's a true representation of the character as he appears on the show that the G1 toy doesn't quite manage in some ways. I imagine some people won't consider this a vital addition to a "true" vintage G1 collection, but it's a celebration of the animated series, so I absolutely love it.

THUNDERCRACKER

As with Starscream's box, the package art for Thundercracker is showcasing the Voyager-class Earthrise toy, not any iteration of the G1 toy. The illustration of the jet mode even shows a clear and obvious five-millimeter peg hole in the top of the fuselage, which this toy most assuredly doesn't have!

Thundercracker came strapped to the inner cardboard tray in the same manner as Starscream was—like an upside-downed winged, armless conehead derp, and all accessories except for the main wings and launchers wrapped in tissue. It was covered in so much tape that I needed scissors to get into it. Thirteen parts came spilling out—rudders and tail fins, robot and jet-mode missiles, fists, landing gear, and Megatron gun-mode parts.

The instructions for Thundercracker don't mention how gun-mode Megatron can be mounted to his jet undercarriage, but it's still a thing you can do. (This is slightly disingenuous, as Thundercracker was never shown to be entrusted with carrying Megatron as a gun. Starscream and Soundwave and even dopey Skywarp have all held that honor, but never Thundercracker. But, it seems silly not to include the gun parts since they already exist.)

So, the jet mode is kind of gorgeous! The original G1 toy from 1984 was cast in a dark, glittery blue plastic, which ended up translating to a much lighter sky blue for the cartoon. (It's weird how inconsistently they translated these plastic colors for animation. The G1 versions of Thundercracker, Optimus Prime, and Huffer all had close to the same shade of blue plastic, and yet all three characters ended up looking radically different in animation.) The actual finished toy is an even lighter shade of blue than he appears on the package art or the box photos, which I like. It's a very pleasing sky blue, lighter than the blue typically used for neo-G1.

But, here's something weird. He doesn't match the blue used for the cartoon Starscream reissue at all. Starscream's blue is darker and much more turquoise. I thought they would have color-matched Thundercracker to the colors already established for Starscream, so they could appear as a cohesive unit on a display shelf together, but this didn't happen.

Where the 1984 toy had a black nosecone and black rings on the fronts of the launchers, they're blue for this version. His silver metallic body frame has been changed to a glossy light grey, and honestly it's very pleasing to the eye. Once you get him into robot mode, you can see that he's got gauntlets that are painted grey, differing from the rest of his black parts (tail fins, feet, head) which is correct for animation. He uses the Very Long Missiles from the 2003 reissue, for both robot and jet mode (and the box photos get it right this time).

It looks like the plan might have been, at one time, to color the black panels on the sides of his robot arms blue, but on the final version they've been left black. No consumer-applied stickers for this toy, but he's got the same new paint applications as the cartoon Starscream—the helmet vents are painted black, the face is painted light grey with red eyes, the knee vents are painted, and the tops of the feet have a light grey painted box.

I didn't have any assembly issues with Thundercracker's tail fins like I did with Starscream, so that's a molding error that looks to have been caught and corrected.

Theoretically, you could still use this version of Thundercracker in a display of vintage G1 toys, if you wanted a lighter blue jet to represent one of the generic background Decepticons appearing in the "More Than Meets the Eye" cartoon pilot (there were several of them in varying shades of light blue, none of them meant to be Thundercracker).

Again, this is exactly the sort of fan toy repaint I would have come up with myself, and there was a time when I was collecting Decepticon jet parts specifically for that purpose. It delights me that Hasbro made this an official toy. It's gorgeous!

I'm sure a cartoon Skywarp is inevitable at this point, but where do we go from there? The problem with marketing these as The Transformers: the Movie toys is that they couldn't really get away with doing any of the generic Decepticon jets. But I will honestly buy any of the unnamed jets they would care to produce, especially if they're the purple guys who chased Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, or the one colored like Onslaught from "Five Faces of Darkness" (he's my favorite, because of reasons).

On Friday, April 21, 2023 at 2:10:39 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> This is the sort of project I used to do all the time—take a G1 toy and try to paint it into the cartoon lor scheme to create a stronger fidelity between the official merchandise and the media.

Yeah it's crazy how much these retro redecos remind me of your repaint projects. I used to have a strict preservationist sort of attitude to collecting and I felt like painting original G1s was toy blasphemy or sacrilegious. But you really won me over after a while. Now Hasbro's doing what you tried to show us could be done all those years ago. I almost kinda expect a co-branding on these packages with the ZMFTS! logo.

On Tuesday, May 2, 2023 at 12:56:02 AM UTC-7, Evil King Macrocranios wrote:
> On Friday, April 21, 2023 at 2:10:39 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> > This is the sort of project I used to do all the time—take a G1 toy and try to paint it into the cartoon lor scheme to create a stronger fidelity between the official merchandise and the media.
>
> Yeah it's crazy how much these retro redecos remind me of your repaint projects. I used to have a strict preservationist sort of attitude to collecting and I felt like painting original G1s was toy blasphemy or sacrilegious.. But you really won me over after a while. Now Hasbro's doing what you tried to show us could be done all those years ago. I almost kinda expect a co-branding on these packages with the ZMFTS! logo.

I agree! I feel like Zob was doing this very thing ... oh ... 20 years ago, or more? (Zob, I hope you're feeling suitably ahead of your own time!)

I really want this Hound repaint, especially, I hope these toys show up in Canada.

JB

On Tuesday, May 2, 2023 at 11:31:09 PM UTC-4, Joseph Bardsley wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 2, 2023 at 12:56:02 AM UTC-7, Evil King Macrocranios wrote:
> > On Friday, April 21, 2023 at 2:10:39 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> > > This is the sort of project I used to do all the time—take a G1 toy and try to paint it into the cartoon lor scheme to create a stronger fidelity between the official merchandise and the media.
> >
> > Yeah it's crazy how much these retro redecos remind me of your repaint projects. I used to have a strict preservationist sort of attitude to collecting and I felt like painting original G1s was toy blasphemy or sacrilegious. But you really won me over after a while. Now Hasbro's doing what you tried to show us could be done all those years ago. I almost kinda expect a co-branding on these packages with the ZMFTS! logo.
> I agree! I feel like Zob was doing this very thing ... oh ... 20 years ago, or more? (Zob, I hope you're feeling suitably ahead of your own time!)
>
> I really want this Hound repaint, especially, I hope these toys show up in Canada.
>
> JB

Zob's actions do truly impact the fandom. Like how I can't watch Countdown to Extinction without hearing the Seinfeld bass line in the scene where the Cons are squabbling over the duty roster...