Stunticons Breakdown, no pun title.

The Stunticons are probably my 3rd favourite combiner of the original toys.  What I did really like about the Stunticons is they really promoted the personality aspect of  Transformers as all the Stunticons have some sort of personality disorder.  I’m going to start my series of reviews with my favourite vehicle from the team,

Breakdown!
Good old Breakdown.  His name fits him so well, it’s a car problem, as well as one of his abilities, as well as a personality thing too.  Very nice.

I’ve always loved his vehicle mode, the Lamborghini-esque style of him is the very same reason I have bought the Masterpiece Sideswipe toy in various iterations about 4 times.  Because Lamborghinis just look AMAZING!  

 

Breakdown’s Vehicle mode um, breakdown?

Unite Warriors Breakdown is a stylised Lamborghini this time though and while nicely different, manages to retain the same features in vehicle mode.  That is, a flat, low car with sharp lines.  The way it all flows from the low front bumper over the roof and across the low lying spoiler is amazing.  It’s all very fast and sharply 80s looking as well as being able to roll rather nicely too!  This toy’s vehicle mode aspect is a great success!

Colour (heh), breakdown.

His colours in this mode are very nice, with an obviously cream tinge to his whiteness, broken up with the black windows, red bonnet and blue lines on the side.  Rather nicely the lights are silver painted, giving him a sexy, modern LED headlight look.  No grill paint, but he doesn’t really have a grill as such.  On the bumper is a nice mix of silver and blue, which plays into his transformation and looks a little bit like spotlights, when we take into account the LED nature of the lights.  I was glad to see TT going as far to paint up some hubcaps on this guy, as they just add the little bit of extra colour on the side.  The rear also looks nice with rear lights.  One of things I rather like to actually, as it makes the vehicle seem more realistic.

All the paint applications are very crisp and well applied.  I rather like the amount of Decepticon insignias this guy has.  The big one on the red of the bonnet breaks up the colours nicely, although I personally prefer the slightly off-centre one of the G1 toy and the ones on the sides manages to break up the abundance of cream plastic.  

Looking at him from above though, man there is a lot of cream plastic there and oddly it doesn’t bother me that much, the black windscreen manages to work well and the side windows point to the rear well stopping the cream colour from overwhelming the vehicle mode.  Only just though, any less and it would have been a problem.
 


Accessory, breakdown.

Annoyingly though, and I didn’t know about this until after I had the set, TT changed Breakdown’s big purple gun,  which will become a hand\foot for Menasor.  The photos I originally saw had the gun mounted over the rear of the car, in a  rather nice homage to the guns the original toys came with.  They gave the vehicles a menacing look which was opposed to  the Autobots who generally couldn’t wield weapons as vehicles (aside from the Omnibots).  I was really looking forward to this.  
 

 

In one way I can see why they did it as now Menasor is a bit more symmetrical, but the new version of the foot gun doesn’t clip in the same way as it did before.  It can be roof mounted, but that doesn’t look as cool as the rear mounted gun looked.  A shame really as I was rather looking forward to that little gimmick.  You can also mount his sword gun on the side of the vehicle as well for some drivin’ an’ cuttin’ if you feel that way inclined.  This doesn’t look too bad.  But not really great either.
 
Transformation brea-  Okay, I’ll stop that stupid joke now.

What I was rather impressed with was that it seems that most of the Stunticons have similar transformations to their G1 selves.  What I liked about Breakdown was that his legs foldout sideways in a very nice G1 fancy-tickle kind of way.  The way the bonnet folds back is another one.  Sadly the head and chest assembly can be a bit messy with a tab on his combiner joint that doesn’t go into anything, so the panels his head is on float above the chest piece.
 
This is however covered up nicely with  a slightly fiddley, but finally effective shoulder piece rotation that gives him a very solid looking chest.
 

Robo-colours!

The end result of the robot mode is, well, plain.  Colours from the front consist of blue, cream and silver.  I’m glad to say that his face is painted red.  Without stickers on this guy though, you are faced with a big block of blue on the shins,  from the knees up to his waist and then a nice combination of blue and silver on the chest which nicely combined the look of the G1 toys metal chest.

From the back, it’s a cream-festival.  Unless you plug his hand gun in the bonnet.  Which I do, as it is a nice storage attempt, but can make him a tad back heavy.
 

Hey there good looking!

Overall sculpting is nice , but some paint somewhere to bring out the  detail a bit more wouldn’t have gone astray.  Articulation is pretty good as he has lots of relatively unhindered joints around the place.  

• Ball jointed shoulders,
  
• ball neck which is hindered by the square sculpt of his head.
  
• ball and hinged elbows, which due to transformation allows a very deep bend.
  
• Ball jointed hips, with a strange slidey section so the hips can be angled a little bit.  This hinge is a bit odd as if not arranged well can make the robot look like it’s got a super weird skinny waist.
  
• Swivel jointed waist Great for mega-robot appendage making!
  
• Hinged knees and ankles.

 
 

With all these joints you can put him in many many poses and it’s rather fun.  I must admit I think he looks fairly tubby though, quite at odds with his sleek fast vehicle mode.  But he can feel a tad floppy at times, especially when you are messing about with his legs due to the funky hips.

Probably the part I love the most is his face sculpt.  His mouth is a little open and his eyes are wide, which ends up with a permanently surprised look on it.  I really do love it very much!   It’s also rather hard to photograph.
 

Final BREAKDOWN

da da da daaaa, da da da da daaa
I rather like Breakdown, His vehicle mode is very similar to his original figure and the transformation also has a few nice little throwbacks to the original toy as well.  I do fin it interesting that while the Stunticons generally have the same transformation schematic to them, old Breakdown here is the most different.  Perhaps that is why he looks a little chunky.  Generally he is nice, but as to whether I’d buy him as a separate figure, without the combiner thing as a gimmick….  Hmmm, probably not.  I’d expect a bit more from him in that case.  However with the intention of completing Menasor, he is well worth a purchase and decently fun!