I still don't get all the hate for this figure. Considering the other supreme class figures that have been released, I think this one is actually not bad. I haven't had any reall opportunity to mess around with this figure, but considering the other supreme figures we've gotten in the past, the price doesn't seem outrageous (at least not 99.92). It's not necessarily as good as primus or unicron, but it's still pretty decent.
For a few of the complaints:
It doesn't have individual robot modes
- I still am of the mind that devestator was a unique combiner decepticon, and the fact that there we did not actually see them transform in the film suggests that the individual parts weren't seperate robots, but were part of a networked intellegence that was devestator. More realistically for the toy however, this was a good compromise I think. Making the individual constructicons have to combine would probably have ended up creating some really poor toys for both the individual and combined modes. Particularly for mixmaster who forms the head, trying to stuff a robot mode, vehicle mode, and rather unique head into that cement truck would have not likley turned out very well. At the same time you'd probably end up with lots of scalling issues. One way to look at it if you can manage to look past the individual robots issue is to consider it to be like omega supreme, only with more individual vehicles. With omega you got a couple different linking vehicles in the energon one, but here you are getting six different vehicles.
The paint (or lack of) sucks
- What of this is any different than most of the recent movie figures? Leader megatron has what 3 paint apps and 2 colors of plastic? the fallen is green/red with orange wash? Yes, it's a more expensive figure, but supremes/ultimates haven't exactly had that much paint lately either. Look at the swtf vader death star that retailed at 80$. It's got a bit of white paint on the death star shell and some silver lining on the robot mode. Plus, it's maybe half the size of devastator. Even with liscencing fees being a part of it, I don't remember hearing quite the ranting I am about vader as I am now. Even ultimate bumblebee pales in comparison to the deluxe version for paint apps. It's sort of part and parcel with these larger figures and with hasbro lately when it comes to paint apps. Dev's is nothing horribly new, and to be honest I think they spent much more time putting molded details into it, so for me I would prefere that.
It doesn't look like the movie devastator
- To me, this one looks more like the film devastator. I think some could argue for either way since this one has different looking shoulders, but I think the proportions and the face are better on the supreme class one. To me the legends ez devastator just looks sort of annorexic
It's so expensive
- I think transformers in general have spiked a bit over the past year or so and hasbro is going to squeeze every penny they can out of their products. Look at the human alliance sub-line. They're great looking figures and all, but they cost 50$ a peice. Alternators were only 30$ and I'm sure there were all sorts of liscencing fees that they had to deal with for that line. Granted these ones come with a human figure and the skids/mudflap sets will come with an extra robot, but 50$ is still pretty pricy. Is it a high price? yes. It really is. But at the same time you're also getting a fair bit for the price both size/weight wise and scultping/engineering wise.
Articulation is crap
- I can't argue with this one since I haven't been able to play with it yet, but from what I've seen it's no worse than ultimate bb. I'll be able to comment only after actually playing with it some though
Other good points
- The only real 'gimmick' is that the mouth opens and it talks/lights up. That's it. Unlike ultimate bb there's no freaking huge backpack for electronics and motors to move the arms and make it talk. Similarly, what articulation there is isn't messed up by the gimmick (ie like bb's arm cannon)
And for anyone who thinks I'm just rationalizing, I'm not. If I were, I probably wouldn't have gotten 2 of them.
Also, I do respect other's criticisms of this toy, and it's always your money to do with as you please, but the
worst transformer? really?
