TFcon had a pair of Gobits for their convention exclusives this year, who were redecos of iGear's Miniwarriors. Van Guardian is a redeco of Hench, inspired by the Gobot Van Guard. Van Guardian actually has an unexciting deco. It's a great homage to the original Gobot, and nicely executed - the problem is that the original Gobot had copious amounts of grey, which does not lend itself to a particularly exciting deco. To the design's credit though, he does have some red elements which break up the grey and black, and Reprolabels did some excellent stickers to bring more life to the design, if that's your thing. (On an aside, the Reprolabels feature some nice TFcon vanity plate labels and a "believe" bumper sticker featuring Roswell - nice touches!) As with Roswell, this was my first experience with the mold. Van Guardian is a nice, stocky little robot with a mean looking shotgun as a weapon. He packs in a decent amount of articulation and is quite fun to fiddle about with, and you can get some good poses out of him. A cool side effect of the 5mm port in his roof means you can plug him into the display base included with Roswell for jumping poses, which gives you a few more display options. Overall, Van Guardian is not the most exciting looking toy ever, but he makes up for it by being a fun toy to fiddle about with. Unlike some third party releases, he doesn't feel overly fragile - he's got that solid "toy" feeling going on, which I personally find to be very inviting. He also looks great as a part of a pair with Roswell, or with other Gobot inspired characters like Fracture and Bug Bite.
Want to see more of Van Guardian? Be sure to check out the official TFW site gallery! Van Guardian (TFcon 2013 Exclusive) - iGear - TFW2005.COM
