I love it when a figure is relased and actually looks like the concept art that inspired it. Many times they make a lot of concesions to save money on parts or plastic and the little special details of the greatness of the concept get lost. Spinister looks pretty much on for one.

 

Yeah, it's a fun figure to mess around with but I'm surprised the fake cockpit underneath doesn't bug people more. It's unnecessary, and there should have been a split or alternate approach to the other leg. For me it totally breaks any realism for the alt-mode.

 

I wonder if they actually had this before the fan poll.

 

To me it looks like they had to choose a lower leg design that either leaned towards the character model , or the box-art. Either way we wee always getting one leg under the tail/body of the helicopter.

 

Cockpit underneath is laughable but all in all I think this figure turned out very well.

 

I'd assume some variation of a hidden cockpit is how an MP Spinister would be executed.

 

More than likely, I'd bet you'd be right.

Honestly the only gripe - nitpick actually - is I wish there as a way that the propellers did stick so far above. Other than that I'm glad he got an update.

 

Agreed. I just feel if either leg could be the cockpit that would make the the underside cockpit more justified similar to a WWII bomber type belly cockpit. But knowing its just there for symmetry bugs the shit out of me. And if they had gone with a split cockpit like these pics, why would that have been a bad thing ?

 

I'm genuinely amazed the cockpit legs ended up happening the way they are, you'd think this would've been more simple but who knows. I'm curious on the story behind this change, I hope John Warden tells us one day.

 

Pretty sure it came down choosing between the G1 toy/character model vs the box art. Both were options, probably of similar cost, pretty far into the design process, until such time that the trigger needed pulled.

FWIW I prefer what we got.

 

They even draw in the hollow legs and arms where they cut corners in quality.

 

I've been scrutinizing these diagrams for a few days and have come to the conclusion that the half cockpit legs drawn here cannot become the full cockpit at all on the toy as it is shown.

It would be possible, with a different transformation sequence to have half cockpit legs, just like the Combiner Wars toys' legs, but that isn't what is shown here, it would need different hips and leg parts.

So these new pics are definitely faulty from a design point of view. But the paranoid bit of me wonders if they were deliberately made faulty for the purposes of release to the public. The bit they wanted us to see was the legs, and the head. But that they held back a different transformation sequence and it's relevant parts.