If anything, his disappointing portrayal makes me want him more. If they can't depict him properly, then I will, y'know what I mean?

 

Making a sneak attack on Long Haul.

 

Lovely stuff! But man Wreckage really needs a Voyager. I guess SS won't do non-screen stuff but if they do he and ROTF Lockdown should be priorities.

 

Yeah, I sorta feel that way about Devastator. I'll make up my own little scenes.

 

Just got Jazz and now I wait for Ratchet  

 

I'd like to know where you got that foam from? I recently started a legends scale collection mostly with Transformers Prime Cyberverse figures and my plan is to do what you did to take them with me on trips

 

I think a lot of us feel the same way. I never liked as a kid how Devastator didn't join the fight proper so if the stars align and I somehow complete him, I'll be sure to make him wreck havoc on the Autobot forces like he should have!

 

"When you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way, from your first cigarette to your last dying day..."
*click... click... click...*



Oh look, there he is.

So onto the Seeker B-squad and I'm afraid their only representative in my collection goes to ROTF Dirge, who stands in good company as one of a handful of movie toys that have graduated to main collection status, along with Mindwipe, TLK Barricade and DOTM Darksteel. And unlike Bayverse Starscream and his multicoloured clones Dirge actually takes some design cues from his G1 namesake. So G1 Dirge he is, to me at least.

Not that Dirge ever had much of a presence in the G1 cartoon. He usually just acted as a bit of extra Decepticon muscle, ready to show up and snarl angrily at whichever Autobot was actually going to carry the plot that week, something that he shared in the Marvel comics. Aside from being repeatedly blown up and then inexplicably returning alive and well next episode, there really wasn't much to say about Dirge, other than him being a gloomy old sod, and that was hardly enough to stand out in the slowly expanding Deceptiroster of 1985. If you'd asked me about him back when I was a kid, you'd get nothing more than a confused shrug. Dirge who?

So what's so important about Dirge that warrants adding him to the Snowflake Seekers? We-ell, like many people, I do have a streak of completionism in me that I sometimes fail to control, and that urge to have a 'complete set' of Seekers is a real one. But then, I don't have a Ramjet or a G1 Thrust, since there's no more moulds out there that do them justice (though I might cave and get a Classics Ramjet if I come across one at a decent price). And I have to admit after seeing pictures of ROTF Dirge I was hella intrigued.

All the classic Seeker hallmarks are there, albeit in homage form only. The shoulder intakes and chest cockpit are purely decorative, as the real things end up as his feet and right arm respectively. His face has that disappointing crinkly tinfoil look to it if you get too close, something that a few ROTF deluxes were saddled with, and is the only thing that really distances him from G1 aesthetics. He has the conehead on his bonce, but it doesn't quite have that bulky bullet feel to it this time around, since again, it's just decoration and not part of the alt mode. In fact, with the head tapering inwards at the neck, the cone feels more like a hat than a helmet, giving the unmistakable feel that Dirge has straight up joined the space clergy. Dirge for Pope!

Annoyingly though he has something that tends to pop up now and then in various robot moulds - sideways elbows. I'm convinced there's someone at Takara who honestly believes that the natural curl of the elbow is inwards. This means to have a more natural resting arm (and to put the missile launchers in their correct place) his hands need to be at right-angles to where they normally would be, so he's constantly snapping his fingers like he's in West Side Story. Well, he's always been one of the Jets. Haw!

Transformation is a faff, all told, and essentially amounts to wrapping a jet around his body; aside from his feet and right arm there's no real correlation between robot body and jet mode. But still, it's not the worst shellformer, and manages to be pretty kibble-free in his astonishingly great alt mode. Yeah, it's pretty well known that movie bots put the vehicle modes at the forefront as that was where the car sponsorship that funded the damn things came from... but this is a jet, and didn't even appear in the film, so it's just luxury. The jet nerd in me goes a bit doolally for this approximation of the old British Harrier jump-jet, and in sumptuous navy blue and gold he has a tremendously regal presence in the Seeker fleet.

So, British, dancing gangster, and religious. He's got a lot going on, old Dirge. I feel bad for overlooking him now. Dirge for cockney dancing space-Pope!

 

I have this scene in my head where when the railgun shoots at Devastator and he falls, all of his components transform into their bot modes and scatter down the pyramid. This would actually make it so the continuity error of the Constructicons being in the Egypt battle would make sense. You’d still have to switch some scenes around to make them after Devy is shot, but it could still work.

 

Aside for his evolving maniacal murder taste I guess those are the only physical changes he had

 

DIEEE OPTIMUS!

Soooo, almost the entire studio series line then?

I'm pretty sure that's what happened. The only one who actually got killed in that scene (in my head) was scavenger, hence why we don't see his body type around, while we still see a mixmaster, scrapper, and long haul after that.

 

Another shelf....

 

Utterly, utterly amazing figure.

 

Oh yeah my last Bday present came in the mail today So freaking happy to have my chunky boy lol. I didn't even expect Amazon to deliver on Sundays but hey I ain't complaining

 

Happy late birthday! Hope you enjoy him!

 

Well said. As someone shifting gears in collecting, I too am looking for an endgame. Don't think I'll ever stop collecting, but it'd be nice to find an "I'm finished" point and then trickle in a couple of figures that are simply "cool."

With that said, I just bought the DNA Designs upgrade kit for MPM Ironhide. I am REALLY looking forward to it and its improvements.

 

Same, except I would say with the possible exception of MPMs (although I doubt I would let myself go beyond the first film cast, if they keep on with it), I think the end of Studio Series is the end of my Transformers collecting as a whole. I've had a good run, but I have too many of these things, and I'm too sentimental that it would take a lot of self convincing to sell even one.