Legacy Deadend, A Review

 

Deadend was my second favourite car of the Stunticons, the reason?  Well it all stems down to his go-fast stripe that ran along the top of the car.  Damn, that my friends was the absolute PEAK of top class 80s car coolness.  It immediately elevated the ranking of a car in my mind.  A Lamborghini Contache with a stripe like Deadend's would have me dying from too many nerdgasms I suspect. 

Now with that imagery freshly planted in your minds, let's take a wee gander at Deadend.

The box is pretty standard, nice artwork, covered up by Takara's stickers and with very nice colours, they're dark, but still pretty neon looking.  I do like the boxes.  Deadend is stashed in robot mode and since this is "plastic free packaging" (aside from the stuff that keeps the artwork safe , but we won't talk about that) you can freely poke him as you see fit.

Deadend is secured by a piece of cardboard, so only his chest can be seen.  It looks a bit like he is rising out of a pool of electrical energon, or something.  It's a bit weird, but I like it.  The back sticker covers up other toys available, because (I'm assuming here) Japan doesn't do the waves thing, so something might not be available yet.

Getting him out of the box, we can see he is a pretty average looking robot.  By that I mean, he looks as one would expect. This is a good thing.

Paint work is Ok and the colours match well.  Overall he is fairly slim when looking from the sides, which ain't too bad since he has a car bonnet attached to his back.  Sadly though his calves look very unwieldy.

His head sculpt is based on the G1 cartoon look and looks like an engine.   It's also very similar to his Unite Warriors toy head too.  I like it.  The three colours manage to work well with one another, the orange mask, purple eyes and charcoal helmet are a good combo.  

Movement wise he has a swivel, so it can only turn left and right, but that's fine for this size.

The chest is pretty simple but well balanced for colour.  The little brown bit in his stomach is the button to snap him in half for Menasor.  I like that the managed to move the wheels up to his shoulders, as they aren't there for vehicle mode.  It's a pretty neat robot mode really.

The waist is also pretty neat too, the hips articulation is hindered by the waist area though.  The joint at the top of the thighs is blocked by the hip/crotch piece.  No high kicks here ladies and gents.

The legs are where things get a bit iffy though, while I do like that they included (unpainted) fake wheels on this inside of his shins, his feet are formed by the car spoiler = teeny tiny tootsies.  This doesn't hinder his balance at all, it just looks like he has no feet....  

oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, o-ohh.

From the side though, as you can see in the photo above, he has some PHAT CALVES.  You can still get a close to 90 degree bend out of the knee, but when compared to his fellow Stunticons, it just isn't all that elegant looking.

Posability is pretty good and in a erm, flashback to another era.... effect parts can be applied to his guns.  He does have a plug for a flight stand, but it's far too shallow to be useful with Bandai's stands...

He does have a bunch of ports on him, some in his shins, and some on the underside of his fore-arms, but there is nowhere to store his weapons.

If we bust out other Deadends, we get something like this:

Looking Okay TBH, I don't think I really prefer one over the other so far...

Transformation is similar to Dragstrip, as they share many design elements.

What I do like is his shoulders detach from the chest, and join up together under the bonnet, and to me, it looks a bit like they form an engine for the vehicle mode.  On Dragstrip, these parts were the front wind scoop thing.  It's pretty easy once you get used to it.  Going from car to robot though, well, I can never easily unpeg the legs for some reason.

Vehicle mode is pretty nice.  All the robot parts are pretty well hidden and we have a really nice version of Deadend in a pseudo Porsche 928.

While the front looks pretty tight and nice, the back, ew the baaack...  

It should work well and clip together, but it just doesn't.  If you faff around with it, you can get the back window piece to clip in properly, and maaybee you'll sort out the gaps on the rear fender, but the moment an atom even slightly glances in the tiniest of directions, anywhere, then BAM, pieces will unplug and bits will pop out of place.

Other with this figure have said that just plugging the heels of the robot mode into the legs properly will fix this problem.

They are full of shit.

It doesn't, as fate will move that atom and POP. 

There is always a gap somewhere.

The left side is plugged in properly, the right is not. There are no gaps for now, if that right side gets plugged in, gaps will form.

Deadend does have a bit more to give though, so moving on from terrible gappiness of a frustrating nature, he can be Roadblastered up and his guns can be plugged on the back.

Just be aware, that this will make things POP.  I like it though and I think it's important for the Stunticons to be armed like this.  The guns do manage to cover some of the gap forming though, so that's a plus!

One thing I noticed through taking these pictures was his stripe is actually different sizes from the bonnet, to the roof, to the trunk.  At first I was all like "aaww c'mon man", but then I learnt that the G1 toy stickers were different sizes too.  So, good on them!

He looks pretty nice with his fellow Deadends too.

I still feel that Unite Warriors Deadend missing his stripe was a major oversight.  And Hasbro doesn't quite manage to get away with that ugly grey block on the side either...  I do think the Legacy one definitely has  the best vehicle mode and being able to properly weaponise his vehicle mode makes it just that bit better.

So in summary, Deadend here isn't too bad.  But the cracked back of the vehicle and the terrible feet definitely hold him back form being better.  I'm not  too disappointed, but not terribly impressed either.

My final superfluous rating for Deadend:

He will add some colour to Menasor

They're the wrong trousers Gromit!
I mentioned that Deadend and Dragstrip share the same schematics, and you can swap their pants around.  It looks a bit like this.