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.

I don’t even have the wings popping off. I just wish his robot toes got out
of the way in beast mode, as they knew what 5mm was. And they also added
some integration with other toys.

He’s great. He could have been slightly better, but he is great.

> 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.)
>

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.

No, Sludge never had cassettes, but why should that stop him. He picks up
some like parasites, they sneak into the base…

>
> 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)
>

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.