The Unlicensed Third Party Transformers Thread

[M'Kyuun]

7 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

The impression I got is that Mecha Invasion might be just one guy.  If he's doing all the designing and prototyping himself (and not paying himself for that work) that would reduce the cost, and make it possible to sell for for less and still make a profit.  There's also (technically) the reduction in packaging due to pairing them up.  Still, I think a lot of the pricing (especially by Fans Toys) is less "we need to charge this much to make money" and more "we're charging this much because collectors will pay it."

"Good business is where you find it."😄

[shazam]

 

[Chronocidal]

You know what.. why not.  It might make Starscream's body actually fit within more aircraft designs for a cleaner alt mode.  

[JB0]

7 hours ago, shazam said:

 

And lo did the shippers rejoice as at last Megatron has the trophy wife he deserves!

 

A Slipstream repaint of this would be interesting, but probably ain't happenin'.

[sh9000]

I think I will get this set for my Optimus.

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

 JGM-SKP01 Ferocy - my favorite combiner AND it's fun sized.  Yeah, I'm buying a set.

[mikeszekely]

1 hour ago, Valkyrie Hunter D said:

 JGM-SKP01 Ferocy - my favorite combiner AND it's fun sized.  Yeah, I'm buying a set.

They look really cute, but I hear that the people that did that Core-class gun Megatron are doing a Core-class Predaking (and Devastator, and maybe Bruticus and Menasor for good measure).  I'm holding out for those.

[26662]

On 1/8/2025 at 7:49 PM, mikeszekely said:

A few months ago, when I reviewed the first set of Mecha Invasion Constructions (set 2 is on the way, BTW), I said that I was like 75% sure that Mecha Invasion was Generation Toy.  But apparently they're not the only ones!  And you want to know the weird part?  After doing the Constructicons (well, technically after their Protectobots) GT split apart, and both of their offshoots are doing more Constructicons.  Given that I've already decided that I'm in for Mecha Invasion, MMC, and Hasbro's own Constructicons on top of already owning a bunch of other Devastators, do I really need another one?  Maybe not, but Scrapper's my favorite Constructicon, so I figured I'd at least take a look at Shovel Fighter, Dream Star Toys take on him.

Yeah, apparently Dream Star Toys is also a GT spinoff.  I didn't pay attention to them before because, frankly, the Aerialbots are one of my least favorite combiner teams and I wasn't interested in owning a set of super-stylized versions of them.  Ironically, with MMC's pending Constructicons filling my MP Sunbow niche the fact that DST's Scrapper is so stylized is exactly what attracted me to him.  With the shovel on his back, large shoulder wheels, and largely purple torso with green limbs, he's arguably more G1 than Mecha Invasion's "what if Bayverse was more G1-ish?" take, but the boxy nature of the actual G1 design has been given the more organic shapes of Don Figueroa's IDW-era work (though I should point out that this is NOT Scrapper's IDW design).  His size, heft, and gorgeous metallic paint give him more of a "premium" look and shelf presence than his GT and MI cousins.

I'm not without complaints, though.  One of my bigger gripes is the kibble on his back.  I mean, yeah, there's the shovel... that's part of Scrapper's design and I'm content giving it a pass.  But there's a second set of hinged up bits coming off his butt (it's actually the combiner joint).  I'm also not keen on his eyes.  There's no clear plastic on the back of his head so I assume that he has an LED and not light piping.  However, the instructions make no mention of it, so I don't know what battery or batteries it takes, and I don't know if there's a physical switch I can't find or some kind of magnetic one like the Mecha Invasion guys.

My other complaints are, somewhat interestingly, complaints I've had with GT's designs going all the way back to their original Devastator.  There are some bits of alt mode that simply do not lock into place in bot mode.  The most obvious one that's probably jumping out at you right away is the railing just sticking out of the sides of his feet, but another example are the ball-jointed calves that are just draped over the wheels.

While I've compared Shovel Fighter with his relatives, I know for a lot of people Constructor has been their Devastator for the last several years as the only "MP-scale" option.  Just thought I'd point out that Shovel Fighter is even bigger than ToyWorld's Scrapper.  He's closer in size to MP-44 (or your 3P MP Optimus of choice).

Shovel Fighter's sole accessory is this gun.  The sculpt is interesting, and it's got some nice copper highlights, but the bare black plastic is decidedly less premium than the figure holding it.

Shovel Fighter's head is on a hinged ball joint.  He's got excellent up/down tilt, some sideways tilt, and the requisite swivel, but he can also do things like crane his neck forward or recoil in disgust.  His shoulders are another one of those GT carryovers... see, they rotate on ratchets, no issue there.  And they move laterally, about 90 degrees if you move the shovel on his back out of the way.  But, just like GT's Scrapper, and just like MI's scrapper, the hinge for the lateral movement is in the torso, on the wrong side of the rotation, so he can't move his shoulders laterally while they're rotated.  It's irritating enough on cheaper figures, but with a price range between $120-$150 I'd expect better.  But I digress.  His biceps swivel, and his elbows are double-jointed and bend nearly 180 degrees.  His wrists swivel.  His thumb is on a ball joint at the base with two addition hinged knuckles.  His index finger is separate from the other three, which are molded as one piece, and the fingers all have three hinged knuckles.  His waist swivels, and he's got an about 45 degrees of ab crunch.  His hip skirts are on ball joints and move so his hips can go just about 90 degrees forward and backward on a soft ratchet, and over 90 degrees laterally on a stronger ratchet.  His thighs swivel, and his ratcheted knees bend 90 degrees.  Despite the hinged flaps over his feet, they don't tilt up or down.  He's got about 45 degrees of ankle pivot.

The handle on Shovel Fighter's gun has a small slot on it.  That slot matches a little tab on his palm just in front of his thumb, then you can wrap his fingers around the handle.  The connection seems nicely secure.

Shovel Fighter's transformation is fairly interesting in the way his arms end up underneath, the way his torso kind of turns inside out to form the cab, and the way his legs and feet also turn inside out to wrap around his body and form the back of the vehicle.  Interesting, but also kind of annoying.  The instructions aren't always super clear, and a lot of the transformation is splaying him out in a bunch of dangling bits, rearranging those bits, and not tabbing things together again until near the end.  That said, once everything is tabbed together the resulting vehicle is fairly solid.

I'm not an expert on wheel loaders and I don't know if Dream Star Toys had a specific model in mind for Shovel Fighter.  I've seen loaders from Volvo, Komatsu, and Hyundai that are similar but not the same as this guy.  It's believable as a real vehicle, though, with only a few seems and no obvious robot parts.  He's compacted in this mode; while still the biggest loader on my review table, he doesn't really dwarf ToyWorld's Scrapper in this mode the way he did in bot mode.  He may be too realistic, as the black railings are more annoying than helpful and I think we could have lived without them.

Shovel Fighter rolls just fine on big rubber tires, and there's four hinges between the truck and the bucket of his shovel.  There's a gap between his legs on the underside of the vehicle, and in that gap you can see a small tab in what was his chest.  That the bottom of his gun's handle fits into that tab, with the barrel pointing toward the rear.  It locks pretty solidly in place.

Interestingly enough, the instructions indicate that the gun should be removed for leg mode.  Yeah, DST's Scrapper isn't doing anything crazy like turning into an arm the way MI's does.  The leg mode isn't quite as solid as the loader mode; some of the tabs that locked things in place are deliberately undone, I assume to give the combined mode ankle articulation.   Note that this is the official transformation, but I'd imagine that you could probably find a way to position that kibble near the knee joint so that it's not just split open like a banana peel.  I do kind of like how the shovel folds up into something more like a robot toe.  And again, as big as Shovel Fighter's bot mode is, in leg mode it's the same size as ToyWorld's so I don't expect the combined Devastator will be much bigger than Constructor.

I think DST is facing a tough sell.  Most collectors are laser focused on cartoon accuracy these days, and chances are some of you are (like me) planning on buying XTransbots', Fans Toys', or MMC's Constructicons.  If you're in for one of those, do you really need another Devastator?  At least going with a more unique take on the Constructicons doesn't force them to compete directly... you could do one of the big three for your G1 Devastator and grab another one just because it looks cool.  But then, Mecha Invasion are arguably doing more creative things with their Constructions, all well selling them in packs of two for less than one of DST's.  And if you're like me and enjoy transforming and playing with your toys, the MI figures are definitely more fun.

That said, I bought Shovel Fighter because he looks cool.  No, he's not the most fun Scrapper to transform and play with, and no, he's not the most G1-accurate Scrapper, but he just looks really good.  If you just want cool robots to pose and look good on a shelf there's a lot to like here, I think.  Oh, and the next release from DST is their Hook, whose crane boom turns into a scythe.  I mean, I was going to just do Scrapper as a one-off, but now I'm thinking I might be in on the whole set after all.

The Dream Star constructicons look amazing.  I love their design, finish, and transformations. 

[sh9000]

Big Mac.

[Hikuro]

So....Big Mac is like what? 5-7 inches taller than a Titan class or the original? Where's the special sauce?!

[tekering]

4 hours ago, Hikuro said:

Where's the special sauce?!

Well, it's got ankle tilt... 😉

But yeah, I'd prefer a figure that looked more like Fortress Maximus and less like a lazy Metroplex retool. 😒

[mikeszekely]

7 hours ago, tekering said:

Well, it's got ankle tilt... 😉

But yeah, I'd prefer a figure that looked more like Fortress Maximus and less like a lazy Metroplex retool. 😒

If you're talking about the Has/Tak Titan, yeah, but if you mean Big Mac, it already does look more like Fortress Maximus and not a Metroplex repaint. It's even got most of the G1 toy's sticker details.

My biggest gripe with Big Mac is that he's too big.

[tekering]

36 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

it already does look more like Fortress Maximus and not a Metroplex repaint.

Yeah, that's what I meant.  It's larger, more posable, and distinctly GeeWunnier. 

38 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

My biggest gripe with Big Mac is that he's too big.

With Fort Max, I'd say the bigger, the better... depending on the asking price, of course. 😛

[sh9000]

5 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

My biggest gripe with Big Mac is that he's too big.

I skipped Generations Fortress Maximus so I might get this one.

[mikeszekely]

6 hours ago, tekering said:

Yeah, that's what I meant.  It's larger, more posable, and distinctly GeeWunnier. 

OK, I misunderstood you.  I originally read "I'd prefer a figure that looked more like Fortress Maximus and less like a lazy Metroplex retool" as a critique of Big Mac, not a reference to the Has/Tak one.  I definitely feel the same way.  I part of me wants to replace my Takara Metroplex with the Siyang Vladivostok for a similar Geewunniness.

6 hours ago, tekering said:

With Fort Max, I'd say the bigger, the better... depending on the asking price, of course. 😛

Well, especially if I'm going to have to pay a 145% markup due to tariffs, price is definitely a concern.  But after playing with a bunch of big combiners and Titan-class toys, no, bigger isn't always better.  I mean, 50cm, 60cm, 70cm, it's all still too small to be in-scale with Has/Tak's mainline figures, let alone any MP-style stuff, so I'd rather they just cap out around 45cm.  Big enough to convey that they're big, small enough to still work onto a shelf and handle without a team of assistants.

[mikeszekely]

You guys might have heard that there's another Devastator War going on.  I myself have reviewed, in the last two months, the entire set of Mecha Invasion Constructicons as well as Dream Star Toys' Scrapper and Hook.  While those guys represent some cool and stylized takes on the Constructicons I expect that there are quite a few people thinking, "yeah, that's nice and all, but I was kind of hoping for something with a bit more cartoon-accurate and with more modern engineering to replace Constructor."  Well, we're getting a few of those, too!  But which one is the right one?  With the way things are going I don't think I can realistically buy all six members from every set out there.  I can probably manage to buy Scrapper from every set, though (although 01-Studio and MMC's aren't out yet).  So the first one up will be X-Transbots' Ground Bite.

Out of the box, Ground Bite is making a strong first impression.  The colors seem spot on.  The proportions are good; he's not too wide, and he doesn't have the extra chunky limbs that ToyWorld's does.  He's got the tiered thighs and rib vents of the animation model, with silver, gray and red details on his chest and the stripes on his hip skirts that match the cartoon.  The round bits are present on his shins, and his head is on-point with a metallic red paint over translucent eyes.

With his shovel you'd expect him to have a bit of a backpack, and he definitely does.  However, it's pretty tightly compacted.  I mean, you kind of want the bucket to stand out, as I feel it's a part of the character's design, but everything else is pretty unobtrusive and you won't see it from a lot of angles.

Ground Bite comes with a lot of accessories.  There's his gun, which is maybe on the small side but otherwise cartoon accurate.  There's a pair of trumpets- one is for Ground Bite himself, the other is for Big Load, XTB's Long Haul who did come with one.  There's a chunk of partsforming Devastator thigh... I find it interesting that it's only the knee and thigh, and none of the hip/pelvis.  There's Devastator's chest plate.  There's a pair of green circular bits.  There's a sword that, if I'm not mistaken, Scrapper used to cut a car in half in the episode where they were making the Stunticons.  There's a plastic base piece, some stickers you can put on the base to make it looked like cracked concrete.

Ground Bite's articluation is pretty good.  His head is on a hinged swivel, which means no sideways tilt but he can look down a bit and up about 45 degrees.  His shoulders rotate and move laterally about 90 degrees, both on ratchets, and if you untab them from his torso you can even get a bit of forward butterfly.  His biceps swivel.  His elbows bend maybe 60 degrees or so.  His wrists swivel, and they're hinged so he can bend his hands back.  His thumbs have one hinge for folding them down over his palm, plus two hinged knuckles.  All of his fingers are hinged at the base with a second middle knuckle; the index finger is a separate piece, while the other three are molded together.  It strikes me as an atypical design for XTB, who usually do fully articulated hands with lots of ball joints, but if I'm being honest I prefer Ground Bite's.  Unlike earlier articulated XTB hands, these ones don't feel like they're going to fly apart on me.  Moving on, his waist has a ratcheted swivel, and he's got a little ab crunch.  His hip skirts move so his hips can go 90 degrees forward and one click short of 90 backward on a ratchet, and over 90 degrees laterally on a friction joint.  His thighs swivel, and his double-jointed knees (both ratcheted) can get a full 180 degrees of bend.  No upward tilt on his feet, but the toes can fold down 90 degrees.  They also swivel, which gives him a sort of unlimited ankle pivot.  If you're worried about it being like a fake ankle pivot, his heels also swivel so the bottom of his foot can remain flat, but they swivel independently of the front of his feet.

He can hold his gun or his sword the same way in either hand.  Tabs on either side of the handle plug into slots on his palms, then you wrap the fingers around it.  Aside from holding them, he doesn't seem to have any accessory storage in bot mode.

The trumpet works similarly.  There are tabs that fit into his palms, but you need to leave his hand mostly open so that the fingers can sit over the keys.  You can kind of wrap the fingers around the bottom loop of the trumpet, but the result isn't quite cartoon-accurate, not quite how a real person would hold a real trumpet, but somewhere in between.

One gimmick that doesn't require any accessories- there's a panel on Ground Bite's left arm that you can lift up to find molded computer details under.  It's a small shame they're not painted to help them stand out, but the entire gimmick is more "nice to have" than necessity, so I'm not going to ding him for it.

As for the green bits, you'll find that the wheels on Ground Bite's shoulders are basically tabbed on.  You can remove them (be careful doing so, the tabs are kind of thin), then replace them with the green bits.  This is mean to give him a truly Sunbow look, where Scrapper's wheels turned into round green lumps in the cartoon, if you're a hardcore cartoon purist.  It's something you might want to do if you plan on leaving him in robot mode or leg mode, but again those tabs are kind of thin and must be removed and swapped back to the real wheels every time you want to go to alt mode.

Speaking of alt mode... the transformation's actually pretty good!  I mean, XTB is still going to be XTB, so there are a few sliders and a few parts and panels that are a bit thinner than I'd like, but the engineering itself is pretty straightforward.  I think the most confusing part in the instructions are his legs, but once you've done it once or twice it's honestly pretty intuitive.

I think the end result is pretty good.  Yes, you've got some cartoon elements like the arms chilling on the sides and a bit of his silver thighs peeking out at you, but you've got realistic details like the exhaust and air cleaner over the engine, the bumper, grill, and taillights on the back, an open cab roof of the sort you might find on a actual wheel loader, and detailed, realistic arms connected to the bucket.

There's even a seat in the cabin, with a steering wheel and little levers for operating the shovel.

The tires are rubber, and the shovel can lift about this far.  If you turn him upside down, you'll find space between these green flaps, flaps that have tabs on them.  Collapse the barrel into the gun, and you can slot the tabs on the flaps into the sides of the gun to store it under the alt mode.

In a nod to the G1 toy, you can put the chest shield on Ground Bite's back.  However, doing so does require that you attach Devastator thigh, as the shield connects to it and not Ground Bite himself.

Speaking of, normally I don't like to cover the combined mode until I do my review on the entire combined mode, but since Ground Bite has to stand as a proxy for all of the XTB Constructicons, we have to take the leg mode into consideration now.  It's pretty typical Scrapper fare, with the shovel becoming the toes and his arms becoming the heels while the back end requires minimal transformation at all (basically just folding the air cleaner and exhaust back in and the cartoon round bits back out).  The steering wheel gets stowed away and the seat folds down, and the cabin kind of tucks in.  Some extra struts help hold the shovel in place, and panels fold out from the shovel to swap the realistic alt mode teeth with the two-toed look of the animation model.  However, I suppose a downside of the more realistic alt mode details is that the leg mode isn't particularly similar to the goofy animation model in the first place.

Of a more practical concern, while the thigh fits on tightly enough and does a lot of the heavy lifting in the leg articulation department, Ground Bite's waist does extend to give the leg mode an ankle pivot.  However, the extended joint is kind of small, and seems to have trouble supporting the weight of the leg above it.  The result is that the entire leg wants to lean backward.  Now, it's not enough to to cause him to tip over, and it's entirely possible that the weight of the rest of Devastator on it (and shifting said weight forward a bit) might make this a non issue.

It's clear, though, that it was on XTB's mind, because this is where the stand comes in.  You'll find a hole under each arm, and four across the front of the shovel.  These holes plug into pegs on the stand base.  Unfortunately, it's unclear at this time whether the base will be a helpful display piece of an unfortunately necessary one.

Given X-Transbot's reputation for spotty QC, I'm happy to report that Ground Bite is an excellent G1 Scrapper.  He's solidly built and well painted.  The robot mode has well-proportioned, strong sculpt that walks a line that leaves him very Sunbow accurate without being overly blocky and devoid of details.  He's also well-articulated and comes with plenty of accessories.  The transformation is pretty straightforward once you know what you're doing, and while the alt mode strays a bit from the simplistic animation model it adds a ton of realistic details while remaining broadly accurate.  If you want a Masterpiece Scrapper for your shelf Ground Bite is a figure I can easily recommend.

However, I think a lot of people are more interested in a Masterpiece Devastator than a Masterpiece Scrapper, and that's where things are a bit more questionable.  The relatively small joint in Ground Bite's waist that essentially becomes the gestalt ankle seems like it could be a weak point.  Time will tell if it's actually a problem, but a lot of collectors might feel like they have to make a decision now before figures start selling out.  Paired with a leg mode that's definitely toy-accurate but doesn't quite match the Sunbow design and I suspect there are (or will be) better options of Devastator.