Legacy Breakdown; A review

 

Here we are ladies and gentlethings, the last of the Stunticons has arrived!  Not only that, it is my favourite character!  Oh boy oh boy, the Legacy Stunticons have been pretty good so far and gotten some nice homage action going, I sure do hope they gave my beloved Breakdown the respect he deserves!  I mean, the vehicle modes are all pretty different, while I can easily accept using the same bas transformation schematic, surely, surely they wouldn't just use a repaint and call it a day right?

And sadly here I am talking about Legacy Wildrider.  Yep, Poor old Breakdown is a recolour of Wildrider with a slight remould of his calf pieces to make a different back of the car.  While I quite liked the vehicle mode of Wildrider, I found myself not so excited by the robot, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't amazing either.  It did the trick.  So I guess Breakdown must be the same.

Breakdown is packaged in robot mode and the package is nice enough, TT stickers notwithstanding.

With the callout that he is 4 of 5, despite being released as the last one in all territories.

Once you get him out of the box, you'll see he is Wildrider with a new head, new calves and a new chest piece.

Admittedly like this he looks all right and seems to tick enough boxes for me to accept him as Breakdown.  Once again, the bonnet of the car on his back can split apart like Wildrider's can, but once again, it looks pretty crap.

He come with two accessories.  A gun and a spoiler.  Make sure you don't lose them when opening the box.  I'll cover them in more detail a bit later one.  For now though, we're going to have a bit of a closer look at his body and the new bits.

I mentioned the guns now, mainly because the body images I took had him holding the gun.

The head looks pretty nice and seems to follow the trend of giving Breakdown a somewhat flat head.  The yellow eyes really stand out form the red face and generally the sculpt is pretty detailed and cartoony.  There is the option for lightpiping in the eyes as well, but the yellow paint manages to stop it from working.  The chest is slightly remoulded and has a little cross across it.  I really like the silver colour here, it manages to replicate the die-caste metal the toy had back in the G1 days.  The arms though are pretty plain however they do have some nicely sculpted detail in there.

The waist and legs are er, plain too.  Although the colours do match the character and because he has blue shins, it's not as bad as Dragstrip.

His legs and hips are pretty unhindered though, so that's good and overall his pose-ability is pretty fine.

Annoyingly though, despite ALL the other Stunticons having TWO glorious blasters with which they can bring the pain, Breakdown here only comes with one!   It looks kind of chunky and is slightly sad to look at, especially when comparing it with the nicely sculpted guns that the others came with.

He does come with his spoiler, which apparently becomes and axe by combining with the gun.  It looks like shit and nothing like an axe, and even having him hold it, man, it doesn't even look like a boomerang.  It's a totally useless piece in this mode.

There is also a plug in his back for flight stands, and with his poseable nature, he is a lot of fun to play with.  Since I've been working on this post, I've also discovered that the balance of the figure is pretty impressive and many one-legged poses can be made.  I did have a really convincing "this is Sparta" kick going for a while that was easy to set and so well balanced that it stayed that way over night! (Until I started playing with it again) No piccies though.

Now that I've kind of talked about the similarity to Wildrider, let's look at the main difference.  The calves.

The plugs behind his knees are the plugs for the spoiler in vehicle mode.  You see, the spoiler has nowhere to be stored while he is in robot mode.  It just hangs around on the floor, or is used for the limited release of Cordon.  POS.

Such a waste.  It really annoys me that the spoiler has nowhere to go, such an oversight.

Moving on, let's have a look at the Legacy Breakdown with the Unite Warriors one.  I did (and still do) love the vehicle mode of this guy.  But for now, we be looking at their robot modes.

Full disclosure here, the Legacy one looks a lot better than the UW one.  UW just seems a tad too fat n chunky for his own good.  Both head sculpts looks pretty good and square, so no complaints on either end there.

Hullo boyS.

He does manage to look pretty good with other Transformers though and the size seems about right.  He's also just generally good fun to pay with (just don't lose that spolier).

OkAy, now it's time to get to the good stuff 

Or is it?

Because it is essentially Wildrider.  That sucks a little bit you know.  If you take off the spoiler, it is, for all intents and purposes a white version of Wildrider.

What I do think is pretty clever though, is that the paint work on Breakdown's bonnet does manage to make the car look remarkably different to Wildrider.  However when you have a close look, they are quite plainly the same car at the front and from the bottom.  Under the bonnet is a place to stash the gun.  So the spoiler fits on the back, and the gun on the front, but not for ROBOT MODE!

In a way, I can understand why they went this route.

• It's cheaper than making a new mould.
• The look of the vehicle in the cartoon wasn't really all that Lamborghini looking.
• The car has to be a certain width to plug into the Menasor armour. (although I think they could've made a lambo fit within that width)

It still sucks though.

Because the back of the car has been remodelled the fake booster thing has gone, but It does give Breakdown some much needed individuality.

What annoys me greatly though....

Here we  go....

No Roadblastering, because the SPOILER takes up the only peg holes and there IS ONLY ONE GUN!

Now, it's Unite Warriors time.  I love the vehicle for UW as it's sleek, flat and futuristic.  Its not a lambo, but has the basic essence of one in there.

UW is one sexy ass vehicle, oh yes!

While Breakdown is a disappointment, I guess, it doesn't look too bad.  Essentially the vehicle mode is saved by the new moulding on the back, the (detachable) spoiler and the paint on the bonnet at the front, which works surprisingly well to make the bonnet looks less like Wildrider.  

The robot mode is fine and dandy, just nothing exceptional, which I think is what I said in Wildrider's review too.  However the oversight about the spoiler having nowhere to go is inexcusable!  

What seems extra baffling is that while one could claim the "budget" is the reason why Breakdown is so lazily executed, previously, a toy coloured version with a new toy based head was rumoured to being produced.  Surely that could have been skipped and the budget for this guy increased a tad?  All he needs is a differently shaped bonnet.

And another gun.

And somewhere to store the spoiler in robot mode.

So while I am glad to have Breakdown to complete the crew, I think he definitly got the short draw and with a little tiny bot of extra care could have been so much better.  After all, I remember thinking how awesome Dragstrip looked when they dropped the images, Drooling over Deadend's and Wildrider's vehicle modes, being blown away by how chunky and awesome Motormaster is, and then finally...

...seeing this wet fart that was scraped up and made into Breakdown.  Such a waste.

So, my final superfluous rating for Breakdown is

A lazy, slapped together, Friday arvo just before beer o'clock disappointment, who will happily add colour and live on the calf of Menasor where very few people will see him.

Just experimenting with some effect gacha thing I got ;)