Saturday 3 December 2016

Legends Chromedome & Titans Return Breakaway


Legends Chromedome

Legends Chromedome takes the Titans Return vesion, gives it a new face, and pairs it with a brown version of Titanmaster Nightbeat's drill/jet accessory.

Legends Brainstorm

Legends Brainstorm takes the Titans Return vesion, gives it a new face, and pairs it with a blue version of Titanmaster Brawn's gun/jeep accessory. It's not the first blue jeep in Transformers and unfortunately it has brought the disturbing image of Energon Strongarm back to mind.

Legends Chromedome

Chromedome has been tweaked for his Legends release, but only slightly. In car mode the bonnet decal has been reduced in size and the red flash on the side of the car removed. The elbow piece, which was brown breaking up the side of the car, is now cream, instead breaking up the brown on the top of the sides. The windows are completely transparent now allowing you to see inside. A layer of silver paint outlines the cockpit and helps highlight the Titanmaster inside. His Titanmaster Stylor has swapped the brown chest for grey so he more closely matches the original Chromedome's Stylor and has gained some silver paint on his forehead, blue painted eyes and and orange face, all of which are non contact surfaces when attaching him in head mode.

In robot mode the arms are now cream all the way down as are the hands which gives us a plainer looking, but more accurate to the original, toy. The feet too have switched from brown to cream all but confirming the feet, hands & elbows are on the same sprue. The front of the lower legs are now painted brown. The Titanmaster's faceplate has changed to give the head straighter sides.

You can see comparisons between the 1987 original, Titans Return & Legends Chromedomes in Alfes Blog Entry 2723.

Like the other three 1987 Autobot Headmasters, and the three Decepticons from the same year released so far, Chromedome come with an additional Titanmaster accessory. His is Moguru, a repaint of Nightbeat's jet/drill accessory. Legends Nightbeat himself is packed separately with LG-28 Rewind. The drill swaps Nightbeat's pale blue for Chromedome's more earthy brown and the yellow for red. Cream painted side panels and a gold painted drill bit complete the look which is a vast improvement on the original.

LG-32 Chromedome was released in Japan on Saturday 26th November 2016. Alfes has a gallery of the toy at Blog Entry 2722


Titans Return Breakaway with Throttle

Getaway is another character who has come to recent prominence due to More Than Meets The Eye. He's had another version previously, Wal*Mart/Asda exclusive Breakaway, a repaint of Cybertron Hotshot originally meant for the Universe 2 toy line.

A colour chart for Titans Return Getaway, and several other toys, was leaked in April 2016 revealing it to be a straight repaint of Chromedome with a new face. Hasbro then accidentally revealed Getaway, now under the name Breakaway again when product brought to Cybertron Con 2016 showed the toy on Hot Rod's cardback!

While Getaway has had a name change to Breakaway, albeit one he's used before, his Powermaster Rev has also changed names becoming Titanmaster Throttle. Now this I do have a problem with as Throttle was previously used as the name for Darkwing's Powermaster! He's a blue for red and white for brown colour swap of Stylor, Chromedome's Titanmaster and indeed those belonging to Brainstorm and Blurr, making this the FOURTH use of this Titanmaster. The only change here is a new face piece which looks to be painted grey with a yellow faceplate and eyes. The eye could do with another paint application to differentiate them from the jaw but original Getaway had the same problem.

Breakaway's car mode is very white. Very VERY White. We've got some grey on the bumper and engine block, what was an approximation of original Chromedome's tech spec reader door and now roughly fills in for his Powermaster. Thin red and blue stripes on the bonnet, larger details in the same colours involving the Autobot symbols at the rear of the sides. The rear of the car is coloured blue to simulate his missing spoiler. The weapons are now blue, to match the colour if not the shape of original Getaway's weapons, and attach to the top of the car better than Chromedome's do. The windows have been tinted purple and look nice but are a poor match for the painted pink/purple that forms the rear of the side windows.

There's a bit more colour in robot mode. The inherited Chromedome knees & upper legs are grey, matching the original, but the waist is blue and we suspect that's on the same sprue as the larger of the two guns. The chest is painted purple and yellow, simulating the original's car roof chest. The arms are white all the way down which looks a little plain. The original's were blue, which would have created problems with the car mode, and similarly changing the hands to blue would have changed the elbows, also creating problems in car mode. Blue paint on the interior arm surfaces might have been nice and there's very little contact with other parts that would have prevented this from happening.

For the first straight up repaint in the Titans Return line Breakaway is a little plain. It does the job but could have been better.

Breakaway was released in Titans Return Wave 3. In a change to the pattern established during Combiner Wars the deluxe case he was in isn't packed evenly with two of each toy. Instead there's just one of Breakaway, the cheap repaint, and three of Hot Rod with two each of Twinferno & Triggerhappy.

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