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Sunday, December 21, 2008

2 Characters, 1 mold

Transformers Universe/Classics 2.0 began shipping earlier this year and was known about since last years Botcon. At the show they announced that they will be releasing Sideswipe and Sunstreaker as redecos of each of other. Fans rejoiced and I was satisfied. Of course much like catalogs "products may vary from picture" but after acquiring 2 (more on that later) of each figure I was surprised by the work that went into creating these figures.




It's car mode is based on 2 types of Lamborghini, the Gallardo and the Diablo, to avoid legal issues and it works. They even included a roof mounted rear engine similar to G1 Sunstreaker's for each of the twins, which is nice because it's can double as Sunstreaker's engine intakes a la his G1 mold or for Sideswipe, as his jet pack from the More Than Meets the Eye mini-series. Overall it is a very nice car mold that harkens back to the 1984 molds.



I won't bore you with details on how to transform them as you basically "unfold" the car into the robot. The really cool part is when you get to the torso. Depending on which way you rotate the legs, either the car hood or the the car roof will become the chest for Sideswipe or Sunstreaker. It's like Punch/Counterpuch from G1 but with better, modern technology. The engineering that went into this mold is amazing and quite possibly the best Transformer mold ever created. So it is possible to achieve a Sideswipe body with a Sunstreaker head and vice-a-versa. Of course you would have to pop off the hands and switch them or have a robot with upside down hands.



Of course if you're into the Japanese releases and have a spare Sunstreaker and Sideswipe you can just switch the heads and and make Tigertrack, which is what I did. Granted now I have a Classics/Universe 2.0 red Sunstreaker but with a little work I can convert him to either Clamp Down, Deep Cover or Red Alert. Or even a G2 version of Sideswipe, but I think I'll go with Deep Cover as he's mostly all black, which I can dye all the red parts with Rit Dye and mold new hands, lower torso and head in blue. Here's a quick digi-bash I did of Deep Cover.