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Hello, good morning. How may we confuse you today? Typisch Tag, Ja?
Recently (read: yesterday) I stopped by Wal-Mart and picked up some
Transformers: Armada figures. More specifically I purchased Armada Blurr
(a mid sized Transformer $10) and the Adventure Mini-con Team (a set of
3 small Transformers $7).
For those of you remember the original Transformers series, Blurr was
introduced in (or just after) Transformers: The Movie. He brought us the
lovely speed speech gimmick, ie "nobodydoesitfasternobodynobody." This
incarnation of the heroic Autobot comes to us in the form of a silver
futuristic racecar, vaguely resembling a McLaren F1 (formula racer). This
figure does a good job of returning to the Transfomers basics, where body
parts come from various body panels (unlike the more humanized bots of
RID). From the car mode the legs slide out nicely and the feet unfold both
forwards and backwards leaving Blurr with a stable, yet birdlike stance. His
front quarter-panels shift into his shoulders and his hood splits to become
the forearms/hands. The main body rotates up and joints to leave the bulk
of the car body away from his back in a backpackish form. He has two
spring powered rocket launchers that mount on the forearms in bot mode,
and mount on the rear of the car alt mode. The last thing to sum up this toy
is his Mini-con partner Incinerator. Incinerator is a small blue dragster
with a futuristic touch. As a gimmick Incinerator slides in the back of Blurr in
car mode to unlock Blurrs rear quarter-panels. These fold down into
"wings." Incinerator also snaps on to the backs of each rocket launcher and
allows the rocket to be fired.
The Adventure Mini-con team is made up of Ransack, Dune Runner, and
Iceberg. Each is around two inches long, and each has its own little
gimmick tied into a roller wheel in each chest. Ransack is a dark-green off-
road jeep. He has a winch in the front bumper that retracts when he is
backed up. He has the most simple transformation, requiring that you only
unfold his legs and flip up his hands. Overall hes fun, but his roller
wheel sticks out further than his drive walls which make him hard to roll around.
Dune Runner is a light green dune buggy with a light machine gun turret.
Again, he has a relatively simple transformation sequence, requiring a touch
more finesse than Ransack. However he does end up with little knee plates
that I find amusing. When rolled the center wheel causes the gun to strafe,
which is amusing. Finally, Iceberg is an orange tracked snowplow. He has
the most complex transformation sequence of the three, requiring that you
release his head from a compartment that makes up the cab of the vehicle.
His back half extends and rotates 180 to become his legs. The front half of
his treads become his arms. The only drawback is that he doesnt have
knees. His gimmick is that when rolled forward the right and left thirds of
the snowplow pulse forward and backward, essentially sweeping whatever
is in front of him towards his center.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Armada concept heres a crash course.
First, throw out all you know about previous Transformer Generations.
This takes place in its own universe. The Mini-cons fled Cybertron and
crash-landed on Earth, and remained inactive until some annoying human
kids found them and accidentally re-activated them. Now the Decepticons,
lead by Megatron, have come to Earth in order to capture all the
"Mini-cons" so that they can harvest the Mini-cons powers. The Autobots
followed the Decepticons to Earth in an effort to contain their war. For
more story line info support your local comic book store and pick up some
issues of Transformers: Armada.
Good day and happy hunting.
VF-XX
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