Breakdown
Stunticon Breakdown is the Lamborghini Countach of the Stunticon team so comparisons with Sideswipe and his brother Sunstreaker are inevitable.He comes in robot mode but we want to look at the car mode first. Fold the forearms up over the front of his arms and fold the shoulders down to his side forming the doors on the side of the vehicle. Fold the chest, neck and head back into his backpack. Fold the back pack up to form the front of the vehicle, there's a slot in the back of it which connects to a tab on the top of the rotating barrel of the combiner connector. Bring the lower legs up, via a bar connecting the inside of the lower leg to the knee, so the lower legs are inside the upper legs. Peg the legs together. Fold the windscreen into place.
The transformation is somewhat hindered by some interesting robot hips. More later....
The car mode is a pretty good representation of a Lamborghini without incurring the wrath of lawyers. It's an off white/cream colour with a red bonnet and black windows. It looks exactly as you'd expect it to! His hand weapon, a sword, has a tab on it which pegs into a slot in the side of his door.
Like all the Combiner Wars vehicles he comes with a way of mounting his limb mode hand/foot as a weapon and the obvious thing to do here is to plug the peg on it straight into the hole on it's roof. However there's a second vehicle use for the weapon. Turn it the other way up and bend the thumb down behind it. The thumb can then tab into a hole on the back of Breakdown's spoiler with two grooves on the underside of the weapon fitting around two tabs at the rear of his roof. This mounts the weapon further back and lower, making it look like Sunstreaker's Supercharger.
If I've one criticism of this mode it's that the rear of the car doesn't want to peg together seamlessly and there feels like there's a gap down the middle.
Reverse the transformation to return to robot mode. I like how folding the shoulders up locks the chest plate into position.
There's some interesting detail on Breakdown's robot mode. I like the chest plate because it folds down and mostly hides the combiner connector. However moulded onto it is what looks like a Police Car's Lightbar. I can see that in the Animation model but it's more pronounced here and is making me wonder if a VERY interesting repaint might be in the works. Other than that it's nearly exactly what I'd expect from a Stunticon,
Articulation: the ankles bend forward as part of the transformation. The knees bend and there's a thigh swivel. The hips are ball jointed and the waist turns. The head is mounted on a ball joint and there are ball joints at the shoulders. The upper elbow joint bends and the lower elbow joint is a ball joint.
As I said above the hips are "interesting" each hip ball joint pivots independently round a point in the middle of the waist. In vehicle mode they're as close together as they can be towards the bottom middle of his waist. Their maximum spread is the usual hip position opposite each other. However they can move up further than this on each side at a cost of lowering the position on the opposite side resulting in a very lopsided looking robot. It's a very odd joint.
As ever 5mm peg holes in the hand which allow him to hold his L handled weapon as a sword or a bladed gun. He's a decent enough robot who I'm sure we'll be seeing more of.
Breakdown also forms a limb for a Combiner Wars robot.
Leg mode: start from car mode, fold the windsceen back, fold the bonnet and it's contents back into the space where the windscreen was. Fold the combiner connector out flat as a foot and insert into the peg hole on the rear of the car.
Solid standard leg providing the thigh swivel, bending knee and turning ankle. Where the bonnet is bent forwards provides a nice level platform for Micromasters or Legion sized figures to stand.
Arm mode: start from leg mode. Remove the weapon and transform the rear of the car into the robots legs but keep the feet folded up. Tab the legs together. Insert the vehicle weapon into the hole in the rear of the car/bottom of the feet folded out as a hand.
All the Combiner wars limbs so far have provided us with a standard level of combined mode arm articulation: the arm turns at the shoulder and can be raised out to the side. The robot waist becomes a bicep swivel while the legs give it a double elbow and the peg for the hand wrist rotation. Here however the weird moving hips allow some elbow movement sideways which lets you use Breakdown as an arm side on, presenting a thinner more pleasing view from the front. The other thing that becomes obvious in hand mode is that the hand/foot/weapon is made from two different grades of purple plastic who's colouring doesn't quite match.
So decent enough in all modes. I'd gladly loose the odd hips though!
Sunstreaker
The first mention of a Combiner Wars Sunstreaker was in December 2015 when his name popped up on a set of store computer listing. At the start of March 2015 The Entertainer used a promotional banner on their website, a larger version of UK toyfair promo art seen in January, which showed the Autobot combiner with what appears to be the Dragstrip from Mirage limb as the left arm. Interestingly the repaints of Dragstrip and Breakdown appear to have effectively swapped their colour schemes to become Mirage & Sunstreaker!Future Repaints
Having got a Breakdown it's an inevitability that the Transformers Collectors Club will repaint it as G2 Breakdown like they did with the universe version.Most of the time a remould on a toy is to change it's appearance. However a remould to how this toy transforms would make the world of difference. I'd have the bonnet hinged at it's base, connected to the neck plate which is then connected to a hinge at the top, slightly covered by the windscreen. Result: a bonnet that will still fold back, for combined mode, but one that will also fold forward onto the chest to make Sideswipe. If you're doing Sunstreaker, you HAVE to do Sideswipe. That would then give us Red Alert as an EASY repaint and also things like G2 Sideswipe, Deep Cover and Clamp Down. Part of me thinks that Tigertrack wouldn't be worth doing but the thought of having TWO almost identical yellow Lambo that turn into different robots is quite tempting! See also red Diaclone Countach LP500S Super Tuning and Police Car Diaclone Countach LP500S Super Tuning and
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