Saturday 10 December 2016

Titans Return Titanmaster Fangry


Titans Returns Fangry

I've always felt that Fangry was the most popular of the 1988 Decepticon Headmasters amongst Transformer fans, although I personally thought Squeezeplay was a better toy! So it came as something of a surprise when Horri-bull and Squeezeplay were done in the first wave of Titanmasters and Fangry missed out till the third wave. But while their Titanmaster versions, Terri-bull & Crashbash, came packaged with accessories with no links to the original a bit more effort has been made with Fangry so maybe the wait was worth it.....

The Fangry Titanmaster figure uses similar colours to the original, a pinky purple and black, but doesn't quite get them in the right place. The original Headmaster had black legs and purple arms, body and head. The body is the same but everything else has been swapped round! A close look at the Titanmaster confirms it's identity even including the two slots on the face plate. His head mode meanwhile is pretty much spot on and here the choice of the black for the arms on the Titanmaster helps build a larger black head whereas the original configuration would have produced a purple stripe down each side.

Our first glimpse of Titanmaster Fangry at Cybertron Con 2016 wasn't that encouraging as it showed the big robot head looking out of the Fangry beast chest. Thankfully that was mis-transformed! The accessory comes in beast mode in the packaging with the Titanmaster figure. All it needs is to have the gun mode handle/second beast head folded up, and the wings folded forward to the sides, to reveal a space in it's back that the Titanmaster in head mode can be slid in with the rear of the head/Titanmaster's legs going in first. The legs fold down onto to pegs at the front of the toy and the wings & second beast head fold back all but covering the large head face from the rear.

The Fangry beast, once again a sort of upright wolf with bat wings, has been rendered almost perfectly but once again there's some colours that could have been changed. If they'd have gone with the original Headmaster's black legs the beast would now have a black chest. The now much larger wings are rendered in purple and they'd look better in black. His tail, previously his gun, is now a gun barrel for another mode. Arms move up & down independently while the legs are connected through the hips and move together.

Fangry has lost his larger robot mode but gained a second beast mode. Remove the Titanmaster head from the beast's chest and fold the wolf head into it. Fold the wings so they're straight out to the sides. Fold both arms and the legs forward 90°. Sit the Titanmaster figure so his feet are down the gap behind the beast head & in front of the wings.

This is the second dragon mode for a Titans Return Titanmaster and it works quite well. The handle sticking out the throat is odd but I suppose that could be a gun barrel as could the tail again.

For his weapons mode fold the Fangry beast head right the way back into the body, inserting the Titanmaster in dragon mode will have pushed it out a bit, the fold the dragon head back against it. Fold the wings down to the side. Turn the dragon over. Fold the dragon forelegs/Fangry beast arms back so they're either side of the handle. Fold the rear beast legs down beside the tail.

Like Crashbash's weapon mode Fangry also forms a triple barrelled weapons, with the tail forming one barrel and the Fangry Beast legs/dragon legs forming the other two barrels courtesy of holes moulded into the feet. It's quite a compact weapon and does the job. It would have made a nice pack in weapon for a Japanese Legends figure and in it's present colours would even have matched up well with LG-34 Wipe and allowed it to be eventually matched with the Fangry head.

Bar some minor gripes about colour placement on the Titanmaster and Fangry beast they've done a pretty good job here. He's the most similar to his 1988 counterpart than any of the five 1988 Headmasters done so far.


Future Repaints

I don't think we're quite done with versions of Fangry in Titans Return. I could easily see a remould of Twinferno, with a wolf head that splits in two down the middle to form arms replacing the two Dragon heads & arms, making a half decent deluxe Fangry.

Speaking of the Monsterbots ..... As well as Doublecross being done in Titans Return as the deluxe Twinferno, a new Titanmaster version of Repugnus was shown at New York Comic Con 2016, The leaves Grotusque who would be an easy remould of Fangry, just change the wolf head.

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