Uncle Cybertron Toys
I just spent $37 on Transformers. All things
considered, there have been much worse expenditures
for my wallet. One of these days I am going to say
"screw this" and purchase every damn Cybertron toy
that I don't own because they are so much fun.
Back to the topic, the items are sold in
two-packs (Longhaul+Hightower and
Bonecrusher+Scavenger), who combine to form
Constructicon Devastator. These four bots are
repaints of 4 toys from the Robots in Disguise line.
This line came stateside in the year 2000, and was
based of the Japanese line Car Robots. The four RID
Gestalts were released as autobots complete with
horriffic paint jobs. I had no desire to own a green
dump truck and an orange crane so I initially passed.
But seeing these 2 sets in Target in the classic
decepticon green and purple cried out to the inner
chid in me and I knew I had to have them. The
original G-1 Devastator was such a sweet toy. I never
had one as a kid, but I distinctly remember a friend
of mine got the G-2 version which was re-released in
the early 90's. If someone so much as breathed on him
he fell to pieces. It was such a Sysephisian
endeavour just to keep him on display.
I could just tell this set was going to kick all
sorts of ass, despite the fact that Mixmaster and the
other robot were missing from the lineup. Robots in
Disguise had another Gestalt that I bought when it
first came out consisting of three trains. Something
about train transformers really appeals to me. I
highly sugggest taking a look at the Astrotrain
prototype- he retains his status as a triple changer
and changes from a futuristic shuttle to a bullet
train and is simply breathtaking. Anyway, I got the 3
train Gestalts, Rapid Run, Midnight Express, and
Railspike and together they formed one of the best
Gestalts ever, Rail Racer.
After freeing each decepticon from their wire
twist prisons, I broke out the instructions. This is
where my day went south. You see, Takara decided it
would be a great idea to resurrect its "scramble city"
mechanic. This means that Longhaul, Hightower, and
Bonecrusher can be used for either the left leg, the
right leg and the lower back of the Gestalt. Three of
the 4 robots have FOUR different transformations, with
Scavenger having two. That is FOURTEEN different
transformations that these guys have. Simply put, the
instructions look like something out of a mechanical
engineering text book. Throw in tiny pictures with
only vague allusions of what a person actually does to
change these things, and you get 45 minutes of
uncertainty. I still haven't figured out how to get
them all together.
In conclusion, this is proof positive that Takara
and Hasbro does not make these things for kids. There
is no way in hell I would have spent 15 minutes as a
kid trying to decipher the instructions, especially
when Inspector Gadget was on.
Posted by charlie on March 30th 2006
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