Heinlad

I figured for the sake of it I'd take a few shots of one my favourite Transformers toys of all time. Heinlad is one of the most unusual toys from my personal collection and is culturally unique to the Japanese market he was released unto.

Poor Laslo

Not much love for Laslo the pigman here. Although any fans of the character have a good army building oppurtunity with this Toys R Us bargain bin offer.

Another Man's Junk(ers)!

Broken toys can have a new lease of life by donation of parts towards the restoration of other figures.

A broken figure can also contribute towards a custom project and creativity.

If you have broken toys. Don't throw them away. For these 'junkers' could prove useful to another.

REVIEW: Breakaway, (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)

Joining the Autobots from the skies is Top-Gun flyboy Breakaway. Breakaway is part of the first wave of movie sequel toys and appears as a playable character in Activision’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen video game. The character name was also used for a chocolate biscuit brand in the 80’s, which I often had in my packed lunch for school.

Back on topic…

Breakaway moonlights as a desert camo-coloured military jet with cybergliphics marked on the wings and tail. The jet looks sleek, and compact; and it holds together well. The jet can also be folded out into a Veritech style gerwalk mode, but it is not an official conversion.

Breakaway is easily comparable with different generations of jet-based transformers toys in the way this figure is designed and how it transforms. The robot form however is a slightly different take on a ‘jetformer’, although different concepts from past moulds are given a nod to, almost like a bricolage as it were.


In robot mode Breakaway most notably has his robot head exposed from within the cockpit of the jet. The window hatch can be lifted up to reveal the robot face or can remain down like a protective screen. The robot face itself is almost like a mixture of flying goggles and an oxygen mask both adding to the jetfighter theme of this figure. As an extra feature, Breakaway has a narrow Gatling gun over his forearm, much like a G1 seeker weapon. The Gatling gun can rotate via the Mech Alive gimmick but isn’t anything special. On the walking side of things Breakaway’s feet boast a set of 4 toes on each. Rather than the ‘norm’ of having square or triangular feet, Breakaway shows that Transformers can have toes too, especially since they have had fingers in most designs.

Like with other past jetformers, the craft wings also double up for use in robot mode. For Breakaway, his wings and tail make up a small hang-glider like formation on his back.

A slight downside on this toy for me is the colour scheme. The primary desert storm shade is fine but the chav blue and wasabi green in places don’t blend in at all. In fact, they insultingly clash towards a well designed toy mould. This toy did not adopt a G2 Aerialbot scheme, but this is still unforgiveable.

On the brighter side, there is said to be a darker variant of the toy available as well as upcoming Thrust and Dirge repaints. If like me you don’t like the Breakaway mould with wasabi on the side, there are other fruity flavours on the horizon.

Overall, Breakaway is a decent figure with a different innovative approach to a robot mode. Got to love those toes! The choices of secondary and tertiary colours are indeed bad, but they don’t entirely ruin what is a fun and novel figure.

REVIEW: Rampage, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

One of the outstanding disguise themes the Revenge of the Fallen movie and toyline both offer is that of the Constructicons. Or rather construction vehicle themed Transformers under the Bayformer design. These so-called Constructicon toys are packaged as normal Decepticons without the additional fanfare to say they are a special unit.

Alongside Demolishor, the other construction vehicle to crop up in the first wave of movie sequel toys is Rampage.

Rampage in toy form is a warm-yellow bulldozer and somewhat flung from his coloured red movie appearance. Resemblance good or not, Rampage is actually very cool. Much like his unicycle-like comrade Demolishor this Transformer has a different take on a robot mode.

Escaping from the traditional norms of a humanoid robot form for a Transformer, Rampage has four legs. With this approach and proportion, Rampage could possibly be some kind of centaur or maybe an Andelite (ref: Animorphs). What also stands out on Rampage are his bulldozer treads which drape down each arm like extra-long coat sleeves. These ‘coat sleeves’ both mark for a pair of deadly whip like combat weapons. The toy based on Rampage’s Beast Wars namesake also has a rubber treads from claws feature, but was never used like this. It would seem that with the Revenge of the Fallen toyline most weapons are already attached to the Transformer robot (i.e Sideswipe, Breakaway etc) and Rampage with his ambidextrous tread whips is no exception.

The bulldozer mode is tough and sturdy the way it should be. This vehicle form is also detailed and moulded well to attention. There’s nothing more to comment on apart from this mode doing its job looking like a bulldozer and a well made one at that. The bulldozer parts all play their part in making up the deadly robot mode when folded out into robot form.

Rampage with his four legs can be difficult to stand. This is because the legs are thin and hoof like. Sometimes either of the two front legs don’t stay stood up properly making this figure feel slightly table like. This is one of the traits of this toy that requires a bit of patience.

So what, this version of Rampage isn’t a gestalt limb? This building site badboy also has a third mode in his arsenal. This additional mode is a jackhammer drill and possibly scale wise useable with bigger figures to handle, since it won’t stand alone. Unlike the bulldozer form, the jackhammer looks less like an Earth-based power tool and more like a Vehicon hover mode. Having both alien and Earth based alt modes, is something that hasn’t been done before with the Triple Changers concept as far as I am aware.

In conclusion, Rampage may not be movie accurate in appearance but is a decent enough construction vehicle Transformer with a little extra wow factor and originality. Rampage’s different quirks make him quite novel and outstanding compared to most deluxe sized figures. All round this is a fun toy to own if you can tolerate its occasional baby deer like standing problems. One figure not to be missed.