By Loran
While it’s taken them a few years to get to this point, the Classics/Universe/Generations line has been doing a pretty good job giving us casts from the original cartoon. We’re only a few characters away from having the entire 1984 product lineup, with characters from 1985 and 1986 not as close, but on their way. I’m really glad they’ve been doing this, since I was born the same year G1 toyline ended in the US and never had a chance to get those toys. Now I’m able to get those characters at long last, in the form of much cooler and more poseable toys!
With I think just one or two exceptions, we now have all the characters first introduced in the 1986 movie in Classics form. Scourge here is one of the most recent. It’s great to finally see the Unicronian tracker get an updated figure that’s not a Botcon exclusive, and a new mold to boot.
Scourge’s vehicle mode is a… futuristic space bomber? It’s kind of hard to describe. It’s like a souped-up Stealth Bomber. As weird as it looks, though, this is one of the cleanest planeformers I’ve seen in quite awhile; he doesn’t suffer from aircraft undercarriage! It’s a huge step up from the original toy’s bathtub mode, but it actually retains the silly head in the back which yes, can pop up just like in the cartoon. He also has two 3mm clips on his underside.
His totally awesome plane mode comes at a bit of a price, though… this transformation was NIGHTMARISH the first time around. Holy crap. It’s very unique, though, and I’m really happy to see slide-out fists again, and I love how the fists form the vents on his engines. It’s a bit of a challenge, but it’s certainly different.
This robot mode is almost perfect. While the wings are a bit less demonic than his G1 counterpart, he’s pretty much spot-on. He manages to take the best parts of the character model and give him some great modern touches. The first time I transformed Scourge, I made the mistake of not extending his shins out all the way… it led him to look pretty stumpy. Whoops.
Scourge’s head keeps his silly head laser and awesome facial hair-let’s be honest, without these, he just wouldn’t be Scourge. He has light-piping, but… it got kind of messed up. His package shows him with red light-piping, but the toy has blue light piping? The heck? They could’ve at least painted the eyes red…
He includes two guns that can combine using the 3mm clip system, and can actually be stored inside his wings! These… kind of annoy me. They look just like Fracas, his Targetmaster buddy! Why didn’t they give him Fracas, like how Cyclonus got Nightstick? I really wouldn’t mind as much if it weren’t for that. A little consistency would be nice!
Scourge has average poseability. His hips are constructed weird, and in order to make him properly kick, you have to swivel the legs to the sides a bit. His arms, while they may look weird, offer enough joints to even it out. The big silly feet give him plenty of stability.
With the release of Scourge, all three of Unicron’s original heralds have been released in the Classics style. While he has a more solid transformation than Cyclonus, I actually find myself liking Cyclonus more, but that doesn’t mean Scourge is bad by any means. He’s a great figure, and is a definite must-buy. If you see him at our store, pick him up, or heck, buy a few and make a Sweeps army!
I guess I should get a Universe Galvatron for completeness sake…
You probably know this by now, but just in case – in the above pics, Scourge’s head transformation isn’t quite complete. Pull up on his head hard and you’ll reveal a neck. =)