that's a great pose i don't want to get him so temping.

 

Kill whom you love.

 

New episode up! Legacy Evolution Crashbar and Shrapnel!

 

I can’t quite remember how I wound up with my childhood Shrapnel. I suspect my paternal grandmother bought him for me, but it’s pretty fuzzy.What I do remember is how much I liked him. But we’ll come back to that. Another thing I don’t really remember is if I ever saw him in any of the cartoons. So few of the cartoons were shown on UK tv that I think I probably only saw maybe ten episodes of the cartoon, including the stuff I saw on VHS. My memories of Shrapnel in the comic were a little less vague but not much, a few scenes here and there in the US stuff and one fantastic sequence early on in Target:2006. Jeff Anderson made him look like a total and utter bastard. It was magic.

He’s an amazingly handsome little figure. I loved his face sculpt, the classic little Diaclone benign smile and wrap around shades. It’s funny, but despite being surprised by how small so many of them were, the Diaclone figures are the ones had the archetypal proportions and Shrapnel sure has them. There’s nothing lanky or stubby about him. It feels like he’s been designed with care and consideration. There’s so many things I love about this figure in ‘bot mode, from that amber cockpit, to his massive chrome antennas – so cool and and distinctive – to the little guns on the underside of his arm. His ‘insect’ mode isn’t a convincing insect, but as a freakish alien war machine it’s perfection. He has an incredibly premium look for a low price point figure. It’s no surprise that so many of us remember the Insecticons so fondly.

And so we get out second Insecticon of the Legacy line, and it’s my favourite of the sick, sad crew. And man, I cannot get past my disappointment with him. I’m sure it’s not just the hangover I’m battling with that’s making me see so many of the design choices as equal parts frustrating and confounding.

So, ok. That was an intense start, I’ll admit, so I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that Shrapnel is a perfectly fine and solid Deluxe class figure. He’s got all the articulation that we’d expect from a modern figure, he’s very faithful to the animation model, even down to his accessories and a fine head sculpt, all much like we’ve come to expect from out Generations figures these days. So what’s my beef?

It’s all in the details. While Kickback just left me with no questions, Shrapnel is all questions for me. Why are his biceps a different colour than the rest of his arms? Why don’t his colours match up to Kickbacks? With the purples and ambers not being quite the same I’m forever going to be distracted by a set that doesn’t quite match. Why make Kickback’s wings translucent plastic when you’re not going to carry that forward and make Shrapnel’s pincers the same? And, with my eye very much on those signature pincers, why does the whole figure just feel a bit…cheap?

Aside from a reasonably good leg transformation, I don’t think there’s too much to recommend the alt mode either. It actually highlights one of my other bugbears about him, which is that he just seems a bit too stocky. If there was a bit less torso mass, maybe it could have looked sleeker, and maybe there’d even be a slicker option for the arms.

There are things I like too. Things that feel like the sort of smart decisions I hope for from the design team. I like that the ‘extra’ guns can form the rear legs/lower wrist guns from the original toy. I like the choice to separate the panel that covers his face in beetle mode from the pincers themselves. I like that this gives the pincers a range of articulation. I like that I can achieve that rare weapon storage symmetry by plugging his gun in the tab in his back when in bug mode.

But none of that stops me being disappointed with the figure. And maybe this is the thing that moves these complaints from trivial to substantial for me; Shrapnel is my favourite of the three Insecticons. If there was one of them I really wanted to be done right in Legacy, it was him. And now I’m just sat about how much better he could have been for a few relatively minor tweaks. Maybe I’ll come to love him in time, or when this hangover passes. Whichever comes first, I guess.

 

Seek and Destroy

 

I saw this artwork and decided recreating it with my figures.

 

Peaceful Tyrant

 

Great use of background and forced perspective

“Megatron’s not dead. He’s in stasis. Shockwave has him in a secured zone at his base”
From Transformers: The War for Cybertron#9 March 2024 ‘Everything You Say Will Destroy You’

 

Like that grouping. I had named my Sparkless Seeker "Scrapstorm", which might not be PG in-universe.  

 

Begun the Machine Wars have


Creator and Creation


Jhiaxus to me will always be the Transformers equivalent to DC’s Darkseid

 

These guys have always struck me as the no-fun bros.

 

Weapons of the Gods

 

S.O.S Dinobots! 2/5 built so far!

 

"I lied!"
From TF:UK#78 'Target:2006'

 

Grindcore and Wheezel