Legends Convobat

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Convobat

I like repaints. Every review I write I include a section at the bottom entitled "Future Repaints" where I try and guess what the toy I'm writing about will be turned into with a few splashes of paint and maybe a couple of new/remoulded parts. I frequently include Beast Wars characters for anything animal related but very seldom get rewarded. As soon as we saw Mindwipe I thought "you might get a decent Bat Optimus Primal out of that" but seeing as the basic bat is Optimus Primal's lesser well known form the suggestion was more a shot in the dark.

Blow me if E-Hobby only went and took us up on the idea! The toy was announced on 5th August 2016 and during the period the toy was available to order from E-Hobby a number of promotional comic pages were issued :

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

In addition more promotional images were released via Twitter but it wasn't until promotional images of the next E-Hobby exclusive were released that people noticed that Convobat was missing his tail element, which is included with the forthcoming Magna Convoy.

To make up a new version of the Optimus Primal bat TakaraTomy have taken the Titans Return Mindwipe body and repainterd it a grey & blue. Blue is used for the upper arms, hands, waist and upper legs. The body is blue too but doesn't look it due to a large amount of grey paint on the chest to make it resemble the original basic toy's bat head. It's squared off but I can see what they are doing. All the rest of the toy is now moulded in grey with the exception of the clear bat chest door which is now clear orange. Red highlights on the knees, forearms and body remind you that the Optimus Primal bat was originally meant to be a new beast version of 1984's original Optimus Prime.

In order to give the toy an Optimus Primal style head, the repainted Mindwipe body has been paired with a blue version of Sentinel Prime's Titanmaster Infinitus. I'd been wanting to see this part in blue since I first same it on Sentinel Prime and it works very well as an Optimus Prime head, albeit a slightly angular one. The same Titanmaster will serve a similar purpose as the head of Legends Lio Convoy, the Japanese repaint of Alpha Trion.

The package contains a second Titanmaster head, Megalligator which is a green version of Galvatron's Titanmaster Nucleon. This is meant to to act as the head of Alligator Megatron, the toy which was originally packed in a VS Pack with Bat Optimus Primal. However here's no body for Megalligator included but his green does perfectly match Legends LG-22 Skull and his Titans Return version Skullsmasher.

The original Optimus Primal was armed with a pair of swords and in order to mimic this Convobat is paired with the swords from Transformers Prime Wheeljack which, when not in use, can peg into the holes on the wings.

Like the Legends deluxe toys which were originally Headmasters Convobat is paired with a Titanmaster accessory. His is Ape-X Arms a new repaint of Titanmaster Apeface's Ape/Jet accessory in the colours of Optimus Primal's final Beast Wars form Optimal Optimus. It's a nice repaint but it is broadly similar to Rarigo, the yellow repaint of Apeface that came with LG-30 Weirdwolf.

This is a top toy package. The deco on the main figure really brings the mould to life in a way that Mindwipe didn't for me. Love it, it's a great toy and I'm very pleased to own one.