Victorion (short review)
Positives:
+ Colors are nice and complimentary
+ Unified color scheme looks good in all modes
+ Lots of remolding
+ The sword
Negatives:
- Pyra Magna is underpainted and cheap feeling
- Box art flat out lies about paint applications
- Those damn helicopters
- Rust Dust, aka WhY mY sh0ulDerS HuRT? v2.0
I found Victorion on AWD for $60, which overcame my resistance. It was just damage to the box, which I'm not keeping anyway. I think it's worth that, though it is not without flaws.
The best thing about Victorion is the color scheme and new paint applications. I love the muted green color, and it goes well with the red color. I would have preferred a more "brick" red color, since the characters are supposed to be associated with rust. This red is too bright and shiny to pull that off. That said, the colors go well, are not eye-bleeding like the prototypes, and (for the most part) don't look toy like.
The cars and helicopters look glorious. If that amount of quality had been consistent across the set, I would recommend it without reservation. Unfortunately, that's not the case. But let's spread some love first.
The cars and helicopters are all a nice mix of the red and green. The helicopters are mirrors of each other, while the cars each sport their own decos. The glossy red, muted green, and silver all look consistently great. All of them have Cybertronian writing. That isn't really a thing for me, but any attention to detail is nice. On the robot body parts, they also have a flat red which is not as nice as the shiny painted red, but it doesn't look out of place. Paint and balance are good in both modes -- no robot looks overly monochromatic or unpainted. These parts of the set are really great, and as much as I dislike the Alpha Bravo helicopter mold, this is the best they've ever looked.
Pyra Magna, on the other hand, looks like she was late to the party. Mostly flat red with some shiny red accents, Pyra Magna looks plain in vehicle mode though decent in robot mode. The flat red makes her look more like a toy and the plastic feels lighter and flimsier, to the point that it barely feels like a Transformers toy. The wheels are cheap and the rims are unpainted. At least that is consistent with the rest of the Voyagers, but it's baffling here in a special gift set. You can see a lot more paint and variety in robot mode. In torso mode, however, it's monochromatic and cheap looking and feeling plastic. The bright red used on the chest is an eyesore, and the flat black and flat gray is boring.
Here's where I also point out that the box art flat out lies to you. On the very box it came in, the flat red chest pieces are obviously painted, as are all the flat grey pieces, including the combined shoulders, hands, feet, and ladder assembly. What should be the star of the show looks underpainted and plain. The red, green, silver combination really works, which is also why it stands out that a bunch of parts should be silver but are boring flat grey.
And Rust Dust. Ah, Rust Dust. I thought my hate would be reserved for the helicopter mold I loathe so much, but it's you that takes the cake. Originally Groove (where it kinda sucked), and then Wreck-Gar (which I refused to buy), this mold looks weirdly proportioned as both a motorcycle and robot. Two strikes. It also forms the chest piece, which you kind of need since Victorion's chest otherwise is plain and boring. (Yes, I said that about a female combiner. Deal.)
I wanted to have Victorion match the box, which was different than how I handled Groove on Defensor. Mine is "upside down" from how it's pictured on Victorion. I looked at the instructions, which are tiny, and I couldn't figure it out. I peered at the box. I googled it. I found two sites that had managed it, but complained of how it didn't want to stay on. I tried a bunch of different things, none of which worked even halfway well.
Surely, I thought, that for this fan-created-gift-set-first-all-female combiner that they would have gone with something that actually works. Sadly, no.
I watched three reviews on YouTube. The first two didn't even try: they went with the upside-down way I had my Defensor. The third had it the "correct" way, and I watched as it (1) fell off and then (2) the reviewer had to fiddle with it extensively to put it back on.
Basically, this is a total design failure. There are tabs, posts, and locks, but getting one will often push one of the the others out of alignment. Then it falls off because it isn't a very secure connection since Rust Dust itself gets in the way unless you have it exactly right. Even when you do, the posts don't fit snugly and the whole thing will pop off on its own, hastened whenever you change Victorion's pose. So, for those of you keeping score: looks goofy as a motorcycle, looks weird as a robot, and is a pain in the ass as a chest decoration.
I remember Hot Spot and Defensor being solid. Pyra Magna feels cheaper and does not seem to peg together as well. The chest doesn't want to lock on the shoulders, the robot arms (now on the back) don't want to stay attached to the shoulders either, and moving one of Victorion's arms will typically dislodge one or both shoulders from the front or back.
Once you get the whole thing together, and then fiddle with it to put all the tabs back and put Rust Dust on again, it's actually nice. There really is something to be said for a unified color scheme. It is striking and the balance of the different colors is really quite good.
There are a couple of odd things. The feet, which were sculpted for this set, don't really fit the helicopter molds . It works, I guess, but it just looks bad since they don't look like they go in the given area. And this is the configuration on the box. Also, those damn helicopter blades just flop all over the place.
The sword. I could write a whole review of this. The sword is great, for the most part. There are a couple of pieces that should be painted silver and aren't. Looking past that, the sword is engineered amazingly well. The whole thing has multiple tabs and locks and it is practically a little design puzzle.
And then I look at Pyra Magna and Rust Dust, and I go: what the hell, guys? You way over-engineered this awesome but basically superfluous sword, and you don't even spend half the effort on the core of your combiner. Where is this kind of engineering on Pyra Magna, so you can move Victorion's arms without dislodging and untabbing the torso? Where is it on Rust Dust, that piece of garbage? Where is it on the cars, whose back sections untab every time you reposition the arms or hands? I mean, come on.
I am just utterly, utterly baffled by the sword. Mostly great, except the unpainted parts look like shit. A total design triumph...on the least important part of the combiner. And to top it all off, Victorion doesn't really even hold the sword -- it goes in a hole in the body of the hand, not the fist. It's...weird. Victorion can hold the sword, but it's not solid or secure. There's even a peg on the sword -- had there been a hole on the inside of the hand instead of on top of it, Victorion could have had a solid grip holding it in her hand. I just don't get it.
It sums up Hasbro in a nutshell, I guess. They can do absolutely amazing things, and then they make baffling decisions that totally undermine themselves and their products.
Final words: Not worth $100, no way, and they should be ashamed for charging that when they're all reused molds, the QC is most definitely not there, and the box friggin' lies. That said, it is an impressive and ambitious set of figures, and there are a lot of things that go really right with it. I would like to see more unified combiner sets, since the end result is pretty striking.
I am glad I have it, though I'm sorely tempted to add some paint to Pyra Magna and poster tack, nail polish or Future (or all three) to Rust Dust.
ed up. RID and Generations both. 