Sigh, I guess I should do Deadend…

Continuing on with the Stunticons joy is the never ending ray of sunshine that is Deadend.  Deadend was the original base for Wildrider, so this will look mostly at the colours and head sculpt.
Let’s goo!




Vehicle mode.

Well, much like Wildrider, he is a generic looking expensive sports car.  In maroon no less.  It’s a rather nice colour that is bright and pretty cool and I prefer it to Wildrider’s grey.  However it is also rather plain.

Dead Colours
 

The G1 figure had a very nice racing stripe starting at the bonnet and ending at the boot (or vice versa).  This one is lacking that and I think he’s poorer for it.  On the front we have the silver sexy lights, a Decepticon logo on the bonnet, a nice metal grill, silver hubcaps, black windows and orange tail lights.

There is nice usage of the grey from his legs at the back of the vehicle to break up the red, but then it is a bit of an odd place to have that colour, it probably would have been better to have that area maroon too, but I kind of like it as it is.  The windows are black but are painted exactly like Wildrider’s and there we have the crux of the problem.
 

Deadend is just too similar to Wildrider, or Wildrider is too similar to Deadend.  In vehicle mode they are so similar, it’s ridiculous.  It’s almost like they are brothers or something.  I realise that with Wildrider being a retooled Deadend, this was going to happen anyway, but that just reinforces the need for Deadend to have the all important speed stripe.


One curiosity though is that if you flip his vehicle mode over, there is some grey painted on around the combiner joint.  But when transformed, this paint gets covered over by the chest plate.  It’s only noticeable as the underside of the car, or the back of Menasor’s leg.
 



 
Changing to robot mode, but what’s the point?
 



Having a similar transformation to his original toy, just like the other Stunticons is nice.  I covered it with Wildrider though, so I won’t go into this one too much.  You can still make the silly flight modes, and I notice that Deadend doesn’t suffer the stress marks on the roof flip section like Wildrider does, which must be a plastic thing, as the tension feels about the same.
 
I’ll leave a nicely coloured chassis at the end!

Deadend here wants to leave a nice shell when the eternal shutdown comes and at this rate he certainly will.  His head consists of a nice metallic paint that matches the plastic of the same colour very well.  His torso consists of a nice mix of light grey, metallic grey and an eye pleasing combination.  His thighs use the nice metallic grey plastic as do his hands.  His lower legs and arms use the maroon of the vehicle mode with the bronze stripe down it.



Deadend has the same unpaintable plastic issue that Wildrider has, but without any paint down the side, it’s barely noticeable.  On top of that, the plastic colours match almost perfectly!
 


What I find rather clever is the subtle use of black on the inside of the shoulders.  It reduces the amount of maroon that would be a tad overwhelming, detracting from his head.  Nicely done.

NOW he has his all important stripe.  But now with the colour difference from Wildrider’s grey mass to Deadend’s mix of grey and maroon, he doesn’t really need it.  I find this quite odd, as looking at Wildrider and Deadend together, it appears that Wildrider has more paint applications than Dead end has.
 
 
 



What a nicely sculpted robot!

The only difference in sculpt between Deadend and the Grey One is the head.  Deadend’s head is nice and helmet looking with a rather sexy purple visor as eyes.  I really like it.  

Generally his robot mode looks very nice and plays well with others.

What a nicely articulated robot.

Once again, the same as Wildrider, so I am just going to copy some text.
Articulation on this body is just delightful, many, many joints in all the right places and most of them have no trouble turning!  YAY.

• Ball neck, hindered by the shape of the square head, no up looking for this guy.
  
• Ball and transformation based hinge jointed shoulders.
  
• Bicep swivel.
  
• Hinged wrists and elbows.
  
• Swivel waist
  
• Hinged hips
  
• Thigh swivel
  
• Hinged knees.

In Deadend’s case, the sculpt of his head really hinders his up movement.  With WR, you could get a little teeny tiny up to it.  Deadend has NONE.

What a bunch of crappy weapons.

Weapons are the same as WR too.  Yup Crappy exhaust pipe and handfoot gun and they look just as silly on Deadend as they did with WR.  I guess Deadend understands why he has a crap weapon.  What’s the point of having a good one anyway, everyone will shutdown in one-way or another.

Summary, but does it really matter?

So Deadend is actually pretty nice.  Well, in robot mode anyway as his colours and head sculpt manage to make him his own bot and I will say that I really, REALLY like his robot mode.  Everything feels really nice and looks good.

The vehicle mode on the other hand just looks too boring.  Without the stripe to separate him and Wildrider, they just end up looking too similar to each other, which is a shame, since we are led to believe that Deadend was designed first and Wildrider is supposed to be second.
 
Still, he is somewhat needed for the Stunticons and manages to look rather nice with his team buddies.