Titans Return Rumble

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Rumble

Reusing the same toy as both Autobot and Decepticon robot cassettes has become a bit of a thing in recent years as Fall of Cybertron Rumble & Frenzy became Rewind & Eject in 2013 and then the following year second edition of the Transformers Subscription Service turned United Rumble & Frenzy into their Eject & Rewind. Here the favour goes the other way.

Rumble was first seen at Toyfair 2016 and immediately caused some concern when Rumble & Laserbeak official images showed Rumble with same head as Rewind. What had happened is Rewinds picture from the Wave 1 Official Images had been reused and New Rumble & Laserbeak images were later issued. The same fate also befell Ravage, who used a recoloured Stripes official picture even though he had a new, slimmer, head. Amusingly the wrong Rumble image does pop up on the rear of his packaging!

New head aside, Rumble is a simple recolour. Grey becomes red. The black of the lower portion of the upper arm, chest wheels & gun, becomes a *slightly* different red while the rest of the black stays the same. The flat chest detailing is changed to resemble Rumble's original chest so that the robot mode, which is the one that matters, is a top job. The tank gets a red turret & gun now which is OK and the tablet becomes black, with red slides. The sticker on the tablet feature some information about seismic imaging which is clever.

I think I like this toy better as Rumble than Rewind. The black & red works well in contrast. My one worry about it is how it's packed in the Wave 2 case: he's 2 per case so is packed shorter than Laserbeak or Ravage, who are 3 per case. He's the only one with a humanoid robot mode and, to date, the only one with no known Japanese Legends release yet, so he'll be in demand. As it is the current Legends Wave 1 is sitting, badly, and Legends is the only size class not to reach Wave 2 on UK shelves. I can see a scenario where Wave 2 arrives late, because of Wave 1 sitting, and Wave 3 (Bumblebee, Sharkticon & Kickback, absolute gold, three new moulds) DOESN'T come out here.

I think if it came to a choice I'd rather we DIDN'T get Wave 2 than Wave 3.

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Future Repaints

Rewind as Eject and Rumble as Frenzy are obvious no brainers. At the time of writing neither is scheduled, or strongly rumoured, for either Titans Return, in the west, or Transformers Legends, in Japan.

Original Rewind has also been used as Flipsides, Rosanna & Solarbot. At push he'd make an OK Scrounge to pair with Blaster

Enemy is the other possible Decepticon robot tape repaint though I'm sure there's a few more cartoon variants out there.