Transformers Legacy eDgEloRd - AKA Tarn

 

Having previously described this guy as abusive in my yearly wrap up post of 2023, I've finally taken some time to tale some pictures of the guy.  In that yearly wrap up, I said

"OOoh, this is a tricky one.  I remember loving the look of him in pictures, and on the box and initially when I got the toy, but somewhere I came to the conclusion, he looks all right, but he just isn't very Transformer-y.  The lean robot mode does feel very comic book, but not quite Transformers.  The tank mode falls entirely into the horrible category of "Folded up robot, that makes a space tank" and while that is kinda Transformer-y, it's also lazy and disappointing.

I like Tarn for being something different, but also dislike it for the same reason.  It's weird, I'm not able to reconcile my feelings for him.  

What an abusive relationship we must have."

And I stand by that statement.  Now though, I would like to delve deeper into my thoughts.

Having recently played with the Fallen; Megatronus, I feel that these are very similar in many ways, but the Fallen fits in the Transformer look better than old Tarn here.

Robot mode is very skinny and lanky.

As you can see, he doesn't have much in the way of hindering Kibble bits either.  NICE.  And it looks pretty damn close to the comic book dude. 

Image stolen from the TFwiki which stole it from the More than Meets the eye comic book 08 Apparently.  

While I do love things like this (capturing the original image in a toy form) I still feel a bit meh on Tarn.  Maybe it's because I didn't read the comic books?  Or Maybe it's because his tank mode is a bit naff?

Maybe it's something else.

The actual robot looks pretty good.

He has powerful shoulders and a pretty slick looking chest Which is nice and symetrical.  That main chest piece is transparent plastic, as are his abs, so if you get lucky, you can make them glow?  I couldn't.

The Decepticon insignia is a mask apparently, which doesn't come off this guy.  I thought this was cool at first, but now I feel it's kind of try hard.  Hence my feelings that this guy is an Edgelord.  

Even his groin is pretty neat.  The joints are all free of stuff, which is nice.  One thing I was impressed about is the way the groin covers there work, they move with the hip joint, so you don't have flaps of plastic hanging over the groin everywhere. It's really neat!

You can get some good motion out of all his limbs.  The colours work well, the many purple bits and grey definitely give the impression this guy is a Decepticon.  The gold adds a bit of regal to him and generally sculpting wise and colour wise he is a very good looking robot!

His feet are big and chunky and give a good foot print and have an excellent range of motion at the ankles.  Forward and back flipping for  transformation and tilting.

Now let's check out that face!

It's very nicely moulded and has some good detail.  The eyes are transparent red and look like they have the possibility of light piping!

However, one will soon discover that while there is the possibility of light piping, it's so very remote and such a PITA to activate, it might as well not be there.  If you hold a strong light above a very specific tiny section of his head you can end up with something like:

Then, change the angle a little bit so you can get his face in shadow, but only a little bit you'll get something like this:

Mysterious!

Okay, that looks kind of cool, but it wasn't easy, or long lasting for that effect.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, he is pretty unhindered in the articulation department and he has a stand plug for poses when required, let's see what he can do!

You can take the cannons off his back if you wish.

Due to transformation joints you can get a really deep knee bend and his shoulders are pretty clear as well.  Although if you have him in a T-pose, there is some awkward over shoulder action!.

The fingers have a pin joint, so it is possible to have him gesticulate, or fistualate as you see fit.  The cannons from his back can be mounted in a variety of positions and ways too. I think this part of the line was meant to have "Energon Weapons" or something as the catch line, which meant combining weapon configurations. Maybe. Don't quote me on that, but Tarn's weapons can be held in a variety of ways.

Personally, I liked to have them left on his back, and maybe one mounted on his arm, ala Megatron.  AS you can see, they are compatible with effect pieces.

He's lanky and a voyager while lacking bulk.  Much of his voyager-ness is due to joints I think.  But size wise he isn't too bad with other modern Transformers.

The fallen (leader), Tarn (Voyager), Bonecrusher (Deluxe)

So robot mode is actually pretty satisfying, although he doesn't look very "Transformery," which is a feeling I get probably because he becomes a space tank.  It's hard to see what he looks like in vehicle mode.

Transformation...

Is not a good experience.

The head flips around to inside the chest piece (which often pops off) as do the chest tank pieces in the chest.  All these pieces just seem to conflict with one another and require a lot of careful timing and moving around so as to avoid the chest piece flying off into oblivion.

The chest piece

On top of that, we have a weirdly awkward amount of shuffling around of tank tread bits, panels and other pieces to form the tank treads on his arms and forearms.

The forearm has to kind of sit at a strange angle and then get covered with a tank tready bit, which actually sits under the vehicle mode... What is the point of that?

Then it's just a matter of flipping the legs over and plugging them into the back piece, which would've needed to be awkwardly moved back and rotated.  The end result is this:

Yup, that's a space tank all right.

There's quite a lot of blasty action on the laser guns and he has plenty of ports for plugging in other weapons and of course, there is the Blast effect options.

 

However, let's take a good look from top and bottom before getting too excited.

I see some holes.

Lookit them gaps, or should that be through...

I would like to draw some attention to the panels:

Why was so much annoyance set up to make these panels go here?  They're under the tank. Maybe stability?  Surely something like this would have been better up top to cover the gaps?

I'd also like to state how nice the treads UNDERNEATH the tank look.  Now let's compare them to the ones on the top.

Why are all these ugly pins not underneath the tank instead of full view from above?  I guess this keeps them on the back of the robot mode instead of the front, in which case, why rotate the treads at all?  It's just so ugly.

The process to get to this mode is not entirely enjoyable and to top it off, his hands are just hanging out at the back of the tank too.

Why is this mode so sloppy?

Size wise he is about as big as a tank size that you would want and bigger than your average deluxe car, so a decent size for what you pay for.

Also, I'd like to mention, there are no wheels on the bottom of the tank.  Just nubs.

Kinda disappointing really.

So in the end, the robot mode is really well articulated and a pretty fun toy, but for me it just doesn't look like a Transformer.  It looks like some 3rd party made up figure.  I guess though, considering it's source being a comic book character who didn't make it off Cybertron, that is a compliment to the designer of the toy.

What isn't a compliment though is the awkward and fiddly transformation and the gappy tank mode with the nicer looking bits hiding out underneath.

I guess if you really liked the character and were really into the comic, you'd be pretty happy with this dude.  Sadly I was neither and while I thought the look of the character was cool when I ordered it,  having it in hand, I found myself somewhat cool upon his actual form.

He just doesn't really fit that well with any of my other Transformers.

So my final superfluous rating:

Looks cool, but not like a Transformer, with an annoying Transformation and sloppy tank mode.