Generations Titans Return Sixshot & Revolver
The UK has an interesting relationship with Sixshot. He's one of the many 1988 toys that weren't released in the UK. He didn't appear in the comics, bar a mention in one letters column where someone said they'd seen one on a visit to the USA, and only makes a fleeting appearance in the Headmasters cartoon that was released on video here. Yet in the early/mid 1990s large quantities of him showed up as "grey imported" Chinese Toys. Of the Chinese imports he's significant because he wasn't sold here previously and he was available in quantity. I can remember seeing them in the Gamleys in Staines and in an ad in model mart. For more on Chinese Transformers in the UK see this thread on the TMUK forum and especially the link in the first post! The original Sixshot has been reissued twice: first in 2002 in it's original colours & box and then later in 2012 in a new posh box with chromed parts. This is the first serious attempt at remaking him.Like Twinferno he's another toy that was originally released in 1988 that wasn't a Headmaster or a Targetmaster so while thematically it makes sense for him to be associated with a Headmaster gimmick, there isn't an existing Headmaster, or Targetmaster/Powermaster, to associate him with. The name of his Titanmaster, Revolver, is quite clever because a fully loaded revolver would have six shots. In an additional slightly twisted joke the modelling on the small Titanmaster resembles Jack (Headmasters), a friend of the Headmaster Chromedome who Sixshot killed in the Headmasters cartoon. Folded up in head mode there's a further joke as Sixshot's head is wearing a headband with the kanji for six moulded into it!
Sixshot comes in robot mode. His box back shows all six modes in a circle follow that through Tank, Jet, "Submarine", Car & Wolf back to robot. There's a big difference between Sixshot and the other Titanmaster toys: you can safely ignore the Titanmaster gimmick if you want to, though one mode has a slight Transformation difference if you do. So start by removing the weapons and, if you want to, the Titanmaster within the helmet. Fold the front of the chest down and fold the helmet in. fold the black wings to the side of the chest back 90°, lining up with the slots in the sides of the body, and close the chest. Rotate the shoulder tops 90° so the wheels face you. Swing the tank treads on the upper arm round to the front. Turn the bicep joint 180° and fold the hands away. Fold the heel spurs down under the toy. Fold the legs back at the waist, knee & inside the leg, bringing them onto the robot's back. Tab the guns into the side of the ankles. The Titanmaster can sit in the cab under the weapons array formed by the legs.
Just like the original's tank mode. If I'm being picky the paired guns have gone from being vertical, folded out from inside the feet, to horizontal above the cab but that's relatively minor. The easiest set of Titanmaster footopegs to use is those on the tank reads but you can just about use the foot pegs on the wing bases here, and you can get to the ones on the wings if you fold them out slightly. This is also one of the better modes to use the base mode connectors on the wings to connect this mode to another Decepticon base.... which at time of writing means Soundwave but Sky Shadow is due in Wave 4. Having been two Autobot leader bases in Wave 1, it's nothing but Decepticons since with Overlord still to come!
Remove the white guns, fold the legs back and look at the underside of the tank. Turn each leg out to the side at the thigh. Fold the landing gear out of the lower leg. Fold each upper leg into the lower leg using the Combiner Wars car style knee joint and bring the legs together. Fold the black twin guns/heel spurs in, meshing with each other. Fold the side of the legs down 90°. Rotate the ends of the sides 180° so that the open face points down and the silver sloped face is on the top. Bring these pieces together to form the tip of the jet nose. Fold the shoulder tops in 90° so that the sloped edge is on the side and the wheeled edge is inside. Fold the wings back and rotate the shoulders 180°. Fold the shoulders down towards the robot's feet, front of the jet. Fold the wings out to the sides flat under the arms. Tab the white guns into the ends of the wings. Open the robot's chest and fold the tail fins out. If you're using the Titanmaster fold the head back behind the jet and sit the Titanmaster in the chest, if not leave the head where it is, but in both cases close the chest up.
Great update to Sixshot jet mode. If anything this one is better because it forces the guns top face forward and not wobble off to the sides.
"Submarine" mode: start by removing the guns and turning the toy over. Fold the tails fins and, if necessary, the head back into the robot's chest. Fold the beast head up 90°out of the toy and fold the wings up, closing round the beast head: there are tabs on the beast head that fit into slots on the wings to secure it. Rotate the robot's lower arms 180° at the bicep swivel. Separate the legs, extending the knee joint, and fold the landing gear in. Fold the front of the jet out to the sides 90°. Fold the twin guns out the front. Tab the lower legs together. Swing the very front of the jet nose round 180°. Tab the guns together to form a dual cannon and tab onto the front of the vehicle.
OK we'll start reviewing the vehicle as is. I'm not sure it makes a terribly great submarine. The wings round the head *could* be a conning tower but there's nowhere enclosed for the Titanmaster to sit. There's two Titanmaster seats just forward of halfway and another in the combined dual cannon. If anything this looks closer a boat than a submarine, with the wings forming the tail.
But really, *REALLY* we all know it's just his gun mode upside down! Us the wings as a gun handle, stand the Titanmaster on any of the four available posts. They've just turned it the other way up and given it a silly name to avoid a fuss!
Half way there!
Remove the guns and Titanmaster. Fold the wings out to the sides and fold the beast head in. Separate the front of the "submarine" mode, shortening the robot's legs at the knee again. Swing the arms round 180° at the shoulders. Pull the arms out to the sides so you can rotate the shoulder tops 180° so the Wheels there are on the outside and point down. Fold the tank treads onto the sides of the arms. Extend the lower arms by sliding them down bellow the elbow. Bring the arms in tabbing the wrists into the sides of the vehicle. Fold the wings down & forward. Open the wolf's jaw. Peg the guns onto the base of each wing.
The instructions show the car mode with the beast feet folded forward, and I suppose you could fold the twin guns forward too, but I prefer both folded back for a more streamlined look. Car rolls along nicely on it's wheels, no issues there. There's two Titanmaster seats again in this mode, plus a pair of Titanmaster pegs on the wing bases and another pair on the sides of the vehicle. Two more are on the wings themselves, but they're covered by the guns. This mode also has the base mode connectors facing out on the side of the wings.
Reversed, with the Titanmaster sitting in the cab on the rear of the vehicle, this mode almost looks like a piece of heavy machinery!
Remove the Titanmaster and weapons again. Fold the beast head out the back of the vehicle and fold the wings in towards the centre. Untab the arms, swing down 90°, fold the beast feet out and swing forward at the shoulder. Turn the shoulder tops in 180°. Separate and extend the legs. Rotate each leg out & down 90° at the thigh so the block on the side of the leg is underneath. Fold down at hip & knee and fold out the rear beast feet. Tab the guns together and peg onto the rear of the beast to form the tail.
As the wolf mode stands there's a big hole in the back of the wolf's neck. This can be filled either by a Titanmaster head or a Titanmaster sitting in the neck. There's a another seat in the combined guns at the base of the tail plus Titanmaster footpegs in the small of his back and base of his neck.
There's plenty of articulation here at hips, knees & shoulders but very little is meaningful as you need the wolf mode to stand up OK. The wolf head pivots at the base of the neck and the jaw opens: it could almost do with an additional pivot at the base of the head. It's certainly no worse than the original wolf and you can argue that it's better due to incorporating the guns which the original didn't.
Once more remove the Titanmaster and guns. Fold the wolf head into it's back. Fold the legs back at knee & hips and stand. Shorten he arms, fold the wolf claws back and the hands out. Open the chest, fold out the tail fins and robot's head. Insert the Titanmaster, if necessary, and peg the guns into each hand.
So out ninja Consultant has been returned to robot mode and he's doing a pretty good impersonation of the original Sixshot's robot mode. In most cases what people REALLY want from a Generations toy is the original, but with more articulation, and this toy effectively delivers on both counts. Ankles pivot to the side, knees bend, thighs rotate and there's universal hips. Head turns the full 360°. Effectively the shoulders just rotate but there's an odd joint in there, used in the transformations, which hinges the rotational part of the shoulder to much lower down the body giving you some extra, unusual, movement at the shoulder. Arms rotate at the bicep and bend at the elbow. The tail fins sticking out the sides of the chest may hinder the arms rotating at the shoulders but they can be folded away inside the chest as they were for most of the modes.
Criticisms: the crest of the eyes looks a little too big, 6mm worth of straight white plastic. some of the joints, especially the shoulders and his left, on our right, knee are quite loose. The combined cannon can only be held vertically, with the barrels on to of each other, not horizontally, with them side to side. This last point can be fixed with an adaptor for the 5mm peg holes on the underside but it would have been nice to see it work out the box, like Twinferno. Instead we have two short pegs close together that won't fit in the hands. The hands themselves are hinged at the top so an excessive amount of weight with make them bend back on the hinge. The shoulder will probably surrender first though.
But despite these this is a very good toy. It is the original, with more articulation and some extra features to accommodate Titanmaster thrown in. I've not owned a Sixshot for a very long time, despite almost rebuying a reissue a few times, but I don't feel I need to now I own this.
Sixshot is the only new toy in Titans Return Wave 3 Leaders.
Future Repaints
The obvious repaints for Sixshot are repaints of his previous toy. He has only one in Transformers, the Japanese Transformers Victory toy Greatshot, and it's quite possibly he is the target judging by this picture of prototype Sixshots with full faces seen at Cybertron con 2016. Sixshot has another repaint, but that's in the Japanese Brave toyline, which reuses several Transformers toys. He appears as part of Brave Police where he's called Shadow Maru.The name Sixshot was reused in Cybertron where he is a sandy coloured repaint of Shockblast.
The Autobot Sixchanger Quickswitch and his Japanese Transformers Masterforce version Sixknight are rough contemporaries of Sixshot. The only other sixchanger I can think of is Robots in Disguise Megatron. Now he might make an interesting repaint ....
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