Monday 19 June 2017

Siege on Cybertron Pounce


Seige of Cybertron Pounce

I'll freely admit I was looking forward to Pounce, a toy I loved the original incarnation of. Straight out the box it's obvious they've done a decent job updating it. A lot of the purple has gone, replaced by white on the front legs and lower rear legs. The only purple that's left is more cerise now and is paint covering a new panel, moulded in blue, covering the back of the robot's upper legs in beast mode, with the tail, now blue, hanging off that. Behind the head is a moulded depression for a Titanmaster to sit in. The beast articulation has been significantly improved with the front legs jointed at shoulder & knee while the rear legs bend at hip & knee. The only thing he's really missing are the holes to mount weapons on the shoulders but since he doesn't have any weapons that point is a bit moot.

Transformation: fold the beast head back. Rotate the robot head 180°: it needs to be reversed and facing straight for the beast head to fit snugly over it. Fold the front lower leg forward onto the front of the upper leg which is then folded back 90°. Fold the compacted legs up 90° onto the beast's back beside the head which in turn swings the robot's arms out from under the beast. Fold the blue tail end back onto the cerise tail base. Straighten the rear legs. Fold the rear lower legs into the rear upper legs and straighten to form the robot legs. Rotate each leg 180° at the thigh. Stand.

I find the robot mode here very interesting: he's exactly the same size as Fastclash and there's plenty of evidence that one is a retool of the other but I'm struggling to find many parts that are identical. The chest has a lot of detail in common but they're distinctly different piece: Fastclash features a fold up chest panel which becomes a seat for a Titanmaster with a slot for the Titanmaster's heel spur on the waist. Here the chest is a solid unit with a Decepticon symbol at waist level. The legs and arms are completely different while the shoulder joints, which fulfil a similar function on both toys by swinging in across the chest, are almost identical bar the detailing on the front. The only parts that are definitively the same are the ball joints in side the hips which stretch up into the waist causing the waist to split in two in a manner not used by either transformation!

Basic articulation is identical to Fastclash: ball joints at elbow, shoulder and hip, thigh swivel, bending knee and rotating head. Design is fab, looks just like the original but, like Fastclash, I'm missing the guns.

I loved the original Decepticon Clones and I'm liking this new one a lot too. Give me his brother Wingspan now!

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