SDCC Combaticons – Blast Off

I’m starting off the five Combaticons with the one I thought I was going to like the least.  It turns out I was wrong, I sure do like SDCC Blast Off:

I do want to go on records stating that I agree with what like 95% of the people are saying – he should be WAY darker brown.  Swindle already has “tan” or “carmel” or “beige” or whatever you want to call it down, and technically so does Vortex, but we’ll get to that.   The G1 Blast Off was a dark, DARK brown and I think SDCC Blast Off would have looked nice.

That being said, one of the biggest concerns I had was his head sculpt.  I kept seeing stock footage that looked kinda….”monkey-ish” and the real thing, while a bit oval, doesn’t really look that bad.

In fact, the more I spend time with him, the more I like it, but boy, that face-plate needs to be silver for sure.  Too bad he’s an exclusive and I won’t be touching him with anything but gentle fingers….that sounds bad.  Whatever.

I stated a few posts ago that I’m a give fan of exaggerated proportions on robots, and wow, Blast Off has some HUGE shoulders, and that works just GREAT For me:

And speaking of shoulders, we get to Blast Off’s “REAL” issue, the only complaint I really have on him.  See, like I stated with Jazz, I really like that Hasbro’s trying some new techniques with joints and transformations, but take a look at his shoulder construction:

While this allows a game accurate placement of the shuttle rear on his shoulders, the two cross joints SEVERELY limit his articulation.  If I were a kid and wanted to play with him, it would annoy me more, but seems he’ll spend most of his time displayed in a single pose, I really can’t complain too much.  Again, its a new idea, and I appreciate the effort, but they need to figure out some way for more movement.

That’s really the only complaint I have with Blast Off.  He comes with two pistol-like guns which he can hold, or attach to his forearm…or both:

Pow, POW.

Of course, he also continues my slow steady decline into obtaining duplicate characters, which I swore I never would do, until all this awesomeness was dropped on me.  Fans Project “Explorer” was my first new figure I bought when I started collecting again and here they are, side by side:

Fans Project Blast Off is far better G1 colored and I’ve always loved his head sculpt.  But soon he will be outnumbered by 3 Hasbro Blast Offs, so he better watch his back.

Now on to his Alt mode, the shuttle:

I, for one, like his Shuttle design.  Its far less “jet like” than other figures so it distinguishes itself as a ‘shuttle’ and the purple highlights are a nice touch.   I would point out that this Blast Off  is lacking any Decepticon sigil anywhere.  At first I was thought “WTF?” but then after further inspection, where the hell would they put one unless it was tampographed into the details.  I mean, the guy’s all pipes and fins and panels.  I would add a sticker, but again, exclusive, so no-no.

Here’s Blast Off with ‘Bee for size:

Now…I was debating whether to do this now or later when I do Bruticus, but I decided now would work.  We’ve all seen the lank-tastic arm mode that Blast Off comes boxed as.  Well, Arkvander over at Mostly Transformers Redux – figured out this transformation:

Frankly, its just better.  I mean, you really don’t notice anything until he’s connected, but yeah, just better.  The only issue is Blast Off’s head has to be sticking out, but if you turn it to the back, you really won’t notice unless you’re looking at Bruticus’ rear end, and why would you do that anyway, you perv?

Arkvander’s technique also allows for some superior articulation, at least outwards:

For getting at those hard to reach Puny Autobots…

I’m working the kinks out of a pseudo-flamethrower/gun mode as well, like we’ve seen in the videos – I’ll put that up with Bruticus’ review at the end of the week.

So yeah, I came into Blast Off thinking I’d hate him, and actually like him a lot.  Next up is Vortex, who flipped that scenario around a bit (let’s be clear, I do NOT hate Vortex) – more on that tomorrow.

I’m going to slip in the two Asia Exclusive guys in here too, just to break things up.  I need to do CliffJumper first, but I’ll get to Swerve by mid-week/Thursday-ish.

Stay Tuned!

 

QUICK EDIT – For a look at how Blast Off SHOULD have been colored, check out Cheat’s Tweaks here.