The Kre-O line has been considered a mixed bag by many fans of the Transformers community. We have the fans who enjoy them as is, the fans who demand that the models be fully transformable, none of this build it and re-build it crap, the fans who could care less about the models and just want the Kreons and the fans who are indifferent to the whole thing.
As a lover of LEGO I have felt the pull of Kre-O, but I have always maintained that main lines should be collected first. That being said, I'm in a Kre-O kind of mood and am aiming to pick up everything from the past few years. (Yes, even Battleship, because those Kre-O sets look like real fun.)
So here's a review of the latest acquisition, my second Kre-O purchase and it doesn't even include a buildable model. (Well that transforms into a named Autobot or Decepticon at any rate.)
Considered to be the Kre-O equivalent of the LEGO Battle Packs from various Themes, the Cycle Chase is a wonderfully impressive looking set. If you buy more than one here's what you're going to wind up with as far as the basic contents are concerned. (And also to show off both versions of the build for Barricade's bike.)
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Officially priced at 12.99$ each and containing only 75 pieces there isn't a lot of bang for your buck if you pick it up full price. I saved aproximately 6$ by picking up both of these sets at one of the local Liquidation Zellers locations, at 20% off the set, while still a bit high in price for the piece ratio was to me, worth it.
Each set includes the parts to create one road barricade, one Dark Energon thingy (bonus parts for the larger Dark Energon Super Weapon.), a single transparent blue square tile with the Autobot logo in red (a curious and unnecessary inclusion in my opinion as it does not integrate into any of the models and can't be used anywhere else really. Were these meant to be Energon Cubes or something?) four Kreons, three Autotroopers and Barricade the evil Decepticon (who I think is based on his WfC/FoC character model rather than the film version.) and Barricade's wicked ride.
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Here are the Autotroopers. Each Kreon comes packaged individually in their own little baggy... I have a shot of that here somewhere...
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That's the extra Barricade, haven't opened him yet because I'm not sure if I'm going to keep him or sell him off to a Kreon enthusiast.
And as you can see by that shot, each one includes their specific accessories.
The Kreons are fairly standard, each Autotrooper is unique (although I mixed and matched the ones from my second set to add more diversity, I mean that's what you do with doubles of Kreons. Or Mini-Figs.
) there is a standard, basic looking Autotrooper, he comes with a small transparent blue pistol and a white cap. His standard facial expression is the open mouthed smirk.
Then you have the Autobot equivalent of a Seeker, with the plain white wings, again the standard blue pistol and white helmet, this one with a closed mouth smirk.
And last, but certainly not least, you also get a Autotrooper Commander. (Or I assume he's a commander, since his helmet has the center painted with a nice black stripe.) He comes with the door wings piece all in white (why not paint the windows metallic blue Hasbro?) a transparent blue smokestack that... well why does a car have a smokestack? And a much larger sized pistol, also in transparent blue... I know the smaller pistols in the standard size are pretty much identical to my Kreon Mirage pistol, but I don't own the original Kreon who first came with the larger gun.
His standard facial design is a scowling frown with angry looking optics. Unlike the others who's optic visors are all more laid back traditional happy-go-lucky Autobots.
If you're into the Troop Building of LEGO Mini-Figs Stormtroopers, Clone Troopers, stuff like that, the Autotroopers are right up your alley. They all share the same basic torso, so they are all uniform in design and paint work. Plain white and black colored plastics with a bit of red for the Autobot symbol and some gray as highlights.
As far as Mini-Fig style action figures go they are tops in my book. All of them have the exact same helmet and for the life of me I can't figure out which Autobot used it before. Probably because it resembles Hound's so much. And as we all know, Hound hasn't been made available yet in Kreon form. The wings and doors we've seen on past Kreons, Prowl and Starscream/Seekers respectively.
The little road barrier/barricade model that is meant to go with them is a pretty straight forward and simple little model. It's not really all that impressive to be honest, although it does include a type of piece I've never seen before. Kind of like a Guardrail or something, there are only two stickers in this entire set, one for the barricade and a Decepticon logo for Barricade's bike. Speaking of which...
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Isn't that a nifty looking piece of Kre-O construction? The bike includes two parts, a simple four piece chopper and a much more involved missile firing side-car. The bulk of construction with this model involves the side car, it can be built up into either a Side Car (d'uh) or a small attack drone which has four moveable legs. (Hopefully you can tell that in the picture.)
Hasbro's Kre-O team has really outdone themselves with this bike chassis. I have a couple of LEGO style motor bikes, they all have individualized chassis of course, but they don't always include a lot of sculpted detail work.
Barricade's motorcycle has detailed handlebars with all the necessary gauges sculpted in up top, and the place where Barricade stands (because he doesn't so much sit on it) looks like large foot pedals. There's even an exhaust pipe sticking out on one side. (Sorry about missing a few close-up shots of the bike's details, but I'm kind of novice when it comes to photographing details on such small pieces.)
The build for the side car uses almost every piece, as you can tell there's an extra black square connecting tile and (although not obvious) an extra 2x2 red tile piece that are not officially part of the model. (In order to use all the pieces I just fudged it where I could. The red tile fits nicely underneath the missile launching brick, but that black connecting tile is a bit of an eyesore and I'm thinking there's got to be a better way to conceal/incorporate it.)
Have I mentioned the missile launching brick yet? This is something that Hasbro has done much better than LEGO. Instead of simple flick-firing missiles you have an ingenious looking snap together launcher which uses a simple pressure styled system to launch the missile. This being my second Kre-O set ever I'm not sure if they were first introduced with the larger Kre-O Transformers of the first assortment or the Battleship line to be honest.
Now then, while I do find the model fun to play with and simple to build I do have a few concerns.
1) The connecting slots on the undercarriage of the bike chassis are extremely thin, they are obviously meant only to have the wheels attached for the first time I feel as if you were to repeatedly disassemble and disconnect the wheels from the frame you could snap the very hard and much less durable plastic favored by Kre-O/Hasbro. (Apparently Kre-O plastic is harder and less yeilding than the softer LEGO Plastics. Go figure.)
2) The Side Car, the model works as either one or the other realistically it should not be the case, however I say this because in order to disconnect the side car from the bike you have to use a surprising level of force to get those pegs out of those holes.
It's the same thing with the third wheel. I'm not sure if it's again because the plastic is harder and less flexible or it's an issue with clearance, but the wheel axle piece is a hell of a lot tighter to get on and off compared to my Kre-O Mirage axles. (You get two different styles of axles with this set, a singular black piece used to connect the side car to the motorcylce up front and a double sided gray peice which is thicker and used to attach the wheel and side car onto the back of the motorcylce.)
These two issues with the durability of the plastics makes me leery of reccomending this as a children's toy. At least one for children who are definitely going to want to build and rebuild the thing, and potentially snap the pieces causing them to become sharp and dangerous. While I enjoy the Kre-O idea, and I feel that the durability works in keeping the sets on a level similar to LEGO sets I am slightly concerned that perhaps with smaller pieces of this type Hasbro should rely on LEGO's tried-and-true method for ensuring that parts don't snap or break and can easily be taken apart for endless hours of buildable fun.
For older kids and collectors though who might be leery of taking apart the model once built, the bike is a great looking display piece and fun to have as part of your Kre-O display.
And as a bonus it is scaled quite nicely next to the larger robots...
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(Sorry about not showing them also next to him in car mode, but I just built him back up into robot mode before going to bed last night and while taking the pictures didn't exactly have the time to rebuild him again in car mode.)
Moving on to the last aspect of this set... Oh wait. The Side Car's alternate mode. It's fun and all I guess, but it's really little more than an excuse to include the build and re-build gimmick of Kre-O into such a tiny model. Although an interesting weapons emplacement, it honestly does not look like much, but I do find it quite a bit better for hiding the left over unused pieces, this time a gray colored square connecting piece, which you can hide on the underside of the emplacement.
Now on to Barricade and his Dark Energon Pieces.
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As you no doubt noticed the Dark Energon bonus pieces are not included in Barricade's indivdual baggie. The instructions show you to build the little, re-bar thing, or whatever that is in the above photo. It just sits around taking up space, it can't do anything or interact with the rest of the model. (Well it could, but it would look awkward and odd if you built it to look like that then just slapped it on somewhere.)
As you may have noticed I found an alternate configuration.
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In this configuration...
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You can attach it where the side car would ordinarily go and make a side mounted Dark Energon cannon. (Unfortunately it will not fit on the other side when the side car is attached to the bike, due to the fact that the sculpted in exhaust port prevents the weapon from attaching. Rather sad that.)
It also causes issues with stablity for the bike, as it tends to want to flop over to one side because of the uneven weight distribution.
Barricade is one nifty looking Kreon, though as I said before he is not based on his Movieverse design, he certainly looks more like something out of WfC/FoC or perhaps even Prime. He's got some nice painted details on his legs, not sure what they are meant to be, and a great looking chest design. The helmet is a re-use of Ironhide's if I'm not mistaken.
I like him, he's my first Decepticon Kreon and he looks great. He also has that transparent purple gun, which I'm not sure of the origins. (IE I don't know which Kreon used it before him in the solid black colors of the initial waves.)
And last, but not least, the Dark Energon torso piece. An interesting gimmick I suppose, unfortunately it suffers a bit due the nature of the torso design. By which I mean, while the box shows a glowing purple version of Barricade's unique torso design with all the painted details visible, the plain bland ordinary looking transparent purple torso that you actually get inside makes the figure look odd. And it also means that he isn't very aesthetically pleasing.
I'm also worried about loosening arm ball joints with constant removal of the arms in order to swap out for the torso. Personally I think Hasbro should have included transparent purple arms with the torso and solid black hands so that you wouldn't be faced with that problem. (Of course that opens the way for breakage concerns with transparent purple plastics.)
A few final things to note about the set.
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Compared to last year's designs Hasbro has definitely uped their game with the boxes, the better actiony set pieces and the all around more streamlined look of the boxes from these Quest for Energon sets are quite nice. Very much appreciated compared to the thicker and less attractive designs of the previous Transformers Kre-O outings.
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I also think the instructions are nicer looking for the smaller set. Mind you the instructions for Mirage are the only other one's I've actually got so far, but the fact that they included the piece count on the actual instruction sheet, and it all compacts and folds in together similar to how I've seen the smaller Battleship sets work over on Youtube, it just feels like a nicer presentation all around.
Mostly you're going to want this set for the Kreons, but the models you build with them are nice set pieces for your Kreons to interact with.
If you're going to do any level of large scale troopbuilding with this, and the as of yet found by me Decepticon Ambush/Vehicon Kreon set, I would strongly advize you to wait for a sale. (Or try to hit up Zellers during their liquidation, provided you still have some in your area that are recieving new cases to stock on the shelves.)
And now, to conclude our reveiw, here's some more shots of all the Kreons.
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And one final group shot of both sets together. In this one I swapped Barricade's torso just to show it off, hope you can see it. (And how bland/odd it makes him look without the painted deatil work like the box shows him with.)
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This set, solid 4 out of 5 for me, if it weren't for a few concers about potential breakage and tightness/clearance issues with the parts I'd definitely rank it higher. The Kreons alone are worth the price of admission.
