TFARCHIVE FORUMS

Robot Basil Z.
Allegiance: Heroic Eliminators.
Function: Construction/Hotelier
Don’t be alarmed, it’s only my wife laughing.

Robot Manuel X.
Allegiance: Heroic Eliminators.
Function: He doesn’t have one.
When do I get to see the sailboat?

Note: Both these convention exclusive toys have very extensive bios that are written, as the names suggest, as a spoof of Fawlty Towers. However, let’s face it, they’re to all intents and purposes unofficial versions of Twin Twist (Basil, the black one) and Topspin (Manuel, the yellow one), in particular their look in IDW’s Last Stand of the Wreckers comic. So their personalities basically boil down to “Mentally joined twins who died horribly”. For the rest of this review I’ll be referring to them by their “Proper” Transformers names as that’s who I think of them as and I laugh in the face of copyright.

2013 was a big year for the British Auto Assembly convention as it saw the event have its first even exclusive toys in the shape of repaints of Mech Ideas third party Jumpstarters. Topspin was available to order before the convention, and fiendishly Twin Twist was unveiled on the day (based on the original email announcing Topspin the idea had been to have each of them available at different conventions; i.e. you’d have to go to both to get the pair. As they were both in Auto Assembly branded packaging this presumably isn’t happening now).

This prompted everyone who’d brought the former to get the later as no sane person wants just the one Jumpstarter. The colour schemes are apparently based on some version released on a far flung foreign land like Brazil, or Wales. But thanks to the power of imagination I like to tie into the Wreckers comic by thinking Topspin is glowing yellow because he’s just been plugged into the Aequitas chamber and the energy is flowing through him, whilst Twin Twist has turned black because he’s just been horribly killed in the Spark Extinction Chamber.

For those not at the convention, or without the power of imagination, these toys are available in the more traditional Jumpstarter colours as well. Based on pictures they seem to have more paint apps but are perhaps undone by the original toys having slightly dull schemes.

[EDIT: But now, you can choose for yourself as this review includes pictures of the regular colour scheme that have been donated by the poster Denyer]

It’s also worth noting that, bar the colours and bits of kibble, these are identical toys. Hence the joint review.

Alternate Modes:

The two Jumpstarters must have presented a bit of a headache for Mech Ideas. For all their unofficial status and invented back-story these are aimed squarely at the mad Transformers fan. No, even worse than that, the mad Jumpstarters fan who is prepared to spend forty odd pounds on new versions of the characters. Obviously the target demographic is going to want as faithful a reproduction of the two boys’ original looks as possible, just updated with modern manufacturing techniques.

The problem is of course, that the original Jumpstarters have terrible, terrible alt modes. The sort the first wave Pretenders point and laugh at. So poorly designed that when Bob Budiansky needed an Autobot who turned into a drilling machine for The Bridge to Nowhere story he made one up rather than sully his hands with Twin Twist.

It must be utterly soul destroying to be a competent toy designer trying to recreate that look on purpose. The poor sap didn’t even have the advantage of people coming up with Third Party Predacons and Stunticons as there’s at least the option there of coming up with alternate modes that are more faithful to the real life cars and animals they’re based whilst still keeping the feel of the original character designs. But when it comes to a Cybertronian hover craft things Topspin is the one and only in the whole world, there is nowhere else to look for inspiration for him.

Still, if you like Jumpstarters that much, these boys do the job. Of the two I prefer Topspin, the more vibrant yellow and red make for a more exciting toy and the flat pancake design is more convincing as a flyer than a drill, especially as Twin Twist has rather dinky little drill heads.

The main differences between the two toys, other than the swapping of the drills (which can spin) for air intake valves (which also spin, if that’s your bag) is that Twin Twist has (non-moving, more on that in a second) caterpillar tracks on his underside whilst Topspin has a rather cute pair of wings and a couple of stickers to represent a cockpit.

Whilst the alt modes themselves are a little underwhelming, the fully loaded accessories do somewhat make up for it. The two guns (which, in a nice touch are different for each toy) can plug into the top, whilst the hammer can either disassemble and fit under the back of the toy as a sort of engine (though this leaves you with a piece that doesn’t seem to have anywhere to plug) or also be placed on the top. This presumably works as a sort of tank barrel. This means you can set the two toys up in at least three different variations and ensures you can create surprisingly diverse looks for them that helps hide the fact it is essentially the same toy.

One flaw though is that the design doesn’t have little wheels on the underside. This isn’t such a problem for Topspin as the ideal way of playing with a jet based Transformers is to wave him about in the air making “WOOOOOOOOOOOSH” noises. It does however hurt Twin Twist as all he can do is sit there, you can’t enact the traditional way of playing with a land based Transformer by running him backwards and forwards on the carpet making “GRRRR GRRRRR GRRRRRRR” noises.

Technically this is just a minor problem as this is firmly aimed at people who won’t be doing that sort of thing (and I only spent five minutes or so waving Topspin about), but it’s one that could have been so easily avoided it actually winds up quite annoying.

However, if you love Jumpstarters, both the vehicle modes are absolutely perfect.

Robot Mode:

One of the joys of faithfully updated Jumpstarters is the transformation is nice and straightforward, though not as basic as the originals (because the only way you could make it more basic would be to create Action Master versions) it still flows easily and is fairly intuitive. It’s only let down slightly by the tabs that need to be lifted to release the hands being a little stiff. Other than that though, it’s basically just a case of unfolding the legs and slipping the waist down under the chest. Even with my big fat sausage fingers I could manage it.

The resultant robot modes are where the two toys come into their own. Whilst they’re fairly straightforward they do perfectly capture how the two characters looked in Wreckers. These are two chunky bruisers you can see handling the rough stuff whilst properly popular characters like Springer can save their energy for thinking up cool one-liners.

Whilst Twin Twist keeps the black and grey look, Topspin adds some light grey on the legs that help break up the almost G2ish bright colour scheme. Again, I prefer the brightness of the later, but Twin Twist does have a nice serious look that works for someone I like to think has just been horribly tortured to death. To further add to the dead ‘bot look he also comes with an alternate face that perfectly represents his torture at the hands of Stalker. However, I must admit I haven’t been brave enough to swap the faces as I was worried about breaking the head due to finding the default face too firmly held in place.

Both toys are extremely poseable and can crack all sorts of nice action poses. They can either hold the guns or they can be kept on their backs in the same place as vehicle mode. Both characters also come with a massive hammer, which seems completely random as neither has, to the best of my knowledge, ever been especially hammer-associated. Still, it looks pretty cool and it’s possible to balance it on their back between the two shoulder pieces. This means that, again, you can create two quite distinct looks for them.

Whatever weaknesses are present in the vehicle modes are more than compensated for by the fun of the robots, in terms of something to pose on the shelf with the other Wreckers they pretty much work perfectly.

Transformation Design:

Well thought out and manages to be simple whilst still having a couple of fun bits thrown in. Only let down by extreme stiffness in a couple of places.

7/10

Durability:

Very much an “Adult Collectable”, whilst it’s not going to break into a million pieces in your hands all the joints can pop off fairly easily (though in the case of the head that’s needed to carry out the face swap) and I can’t see them standing up to the rigors of actual-child play. Still, if you want something your sprog can have fun with that’s unbreakable by human hands, that’s what the cheap as chips originals are for. If used as the intended display pieces you shouldn’t have any huge problems with these two.

6/10

Aesthetics:

The robot modes are great, the two colour schemes work well and there’s some nicely thought out accessories that help make the two otherwise 99% identical toys feel like individuals.

However, the rubbish alt modes do let them down. Though if you’re the mad Jumpstarter fan this is specifically aimed at you can comfortably round up the figure to a full 10 as a mildly crap not-really-anything alt mode is exactly what you want.

7/10

Articulation:

No problems here, every single pose you could possibly want Topspin and Twin Twist to do is more than achievable. Whether it’s a cool action stance or being propped up dead against a wall they’re more than capable of it.

10/10

Price:

Well, they were originally £45 each, which is pretty fair for a Third Party convention exclusive toy. How much they will cost in the future will really depend on how many of these things Mech Ideas and, their partner at Auto Assembly, Sensible Collectables has left over. The below score is based on it staying about the same, if you’re reading this in the future and they are now worth more than an in-box European Overlord do adjust accordingly.


[The price of the regular versions seems to be £60 for the pair at the time of writing]

8/10

Overall:

Well, if you love Jumpstarters (there’s probably a drinking game if the number of times I’ve said “Jumpstarters”) these are the toys for you. Anyone else may well be put off by the alternate modes, but for this Wreckers fanboy the fun of the robot modes coupled with the pleasingly mental colour schemes more than makes up for that and has made them into a fun addition to my growing LSOTW shelf.
Now, someone hurry up with that Third Party Impactor. Or “Robot Sybil Y” as he’d no doubt be called.

8/10

A bit of a long one I'm afraid. But be gentle with me, it's my first time.


A selection of pictures (just feel free to use whatever looks best, I'm no David Bailey when it comes to photos. Indeed, I'm barely David Belamey...)

Annnnnnnnd just for fun:

Just a quick tip for photos. Grab an A3 piece of white card from Staples (or any office supply store) and curve it up against a wall. With less to try and process you'll get crisp photos and it gives it a nice background [/goes back to lurking]

Ah, I've often wondered how you all managed your white backgrounds. I'd vaguely assumed people made their own carefully constructed studio spaces. learning it's just a bit of white paper has destroyed the magic (whilst at the same time being a useful tip).

If they're unusable I can retake, though ideally (as I am lazy) it'd be nice if I'd get away with it this time.

Nah, s'okay. People use non-paper background all the time.

Although however many years of taking photos of toys, I've never really considered using A3 paper...

White paper and take the photos in daylight without a flash is definitely preferable (I know mine are usually crap and done with editing, having not been around in daylight).

Speaking of which, have retrieved my camera and will get pics of the blue ones when I'm in this week.

I use two bits of white chipboard I found in the coal bunker of a 200 year old workers's cottage I rented for a couple of years in the Buccleuch Estate afew miles outside of Thornhill, Dumfries & Galloway.

I have only used sunlight once because, well, I live in Scotland.

Nice review - I am actually a little tempted by the regular versions of these guys as the Jumpstarters hold a very sentimental value for me - however, the G1 toys are two of the worst Transformers ever so I shed those ages ago...

Pics.

edit: Incidentally, most online retailers seem to stock the pair for £60.

I have edited my post to both acknowledge Denyer's pics and the price of the regular version.

Unless there is a real need for me to retake the pics, I have to say this one is done.

Will try to dash off a quick separate review of the regular ones.

Denyer wrote:Pics.

edit: Incidentally, most online retailers seem to stock the pair for £60.

Those do look very nice... And I can live with £30 quid a pop / £60 total for the two. But do I wait for Hasbro to make new Deluxe versions - is that ever likely to happen?

inflatable dalek wrote:So poorly designed that when Bob Budiansky needed an Autobot who turned into a drilling machine for The Bridge to Nowhere story he made one up rather than sully his hands with Twin Twist.

HA!

Do they really come with a tortured face? Out of curiosity... can I see? Just the face if the toy proves too fragile to swap it...

numbat wrote:Those do look very nice... And I can live with £30 quid a pop / £60 total for the two. But do I wait for Hasbro to make new Deluxe versions - is that ever likely to happen?

Stranger things have happened, as there were those Marvel Iron Man / Hulk / Cap figures that were essentially just the original Jumpstarter mould... but they'd be more aimed at younger hands than anything like Classics/Generations, at a guess.

edit: http://www.seibertron.com/events/galler ... ent_id=250

Blackjack wrote:HA!

Do they really come with a tortured face? Out of curiosity... can I see? Just the face if the toy proves too fragile to swap it...

http://thefwoosh.com/2013/02/mech-ideas ... mpstarters

http://i.imgur.com/vRtCnKh.jpg

May as well just post here...

* * *

Mech Ideas Demolition Crüe Apex (DC01) and Geminus (DC02)

Back in the day, UK writer Simon Furman decided out of necessity to mix toy characters that weren't likely to star in the US Marvel comics with original creations, and created the Cybertron-based Wreckers elite special ops team in contrast to the fairly peaceful and less militaristic Autobots on Earth. First appearing in Target: 2006, a string of equally popular stories such as Legion of the Lost / Meltdown! and Time Wars followed. In recent years, they've been back in IDW continuity thanks to the creative talents of Nick Roche and James Roberts, in a tale about propaganda and the realities of war (although there's lots of explosions too) -- Last Stand of the Wreckers.

Wreckers have, unsurprisingly then, been a favourite subject for third-party designers. Notables include Fansproject Warbot Defender (Springer), Assaulter (Broadside), and a recently shown Roadbuster homage... the as-yet-unreleased iGear Presser (Impactor) and the upcoming Mach 5 Gauntlet (Ironfist)... and probably a bunch of other stuff I've missed. Most of those have been larger than the deluxe-class scale these Topspin and Twin Twist homages are aimed at.

Skipping over the Ruination gestalt (a redeco and remould of Fall of Cybertron Bruticus) on the official side there's an excellent 30th anniversary voyager-class Springer that's been released recently (as of August 2013) as well as an upcoming voyager-class Whirl, plus figures of non-Wreckers characters popularised by James Roberts such as Skids, Trailbreaker, Swerve, Pipes, etc. The comics love is being brought, and it's all a very virtuous circle... memorable fiction inspires loving renditions in plastic inspires ouroboros.

Speaking of which, I hope someone's working on a suitably Senior-esque Rack'n'Ruin.

Alternate Modes

The land/water speeder and drill modes strike a happy balance between being authentic to the originals and serving to make possible the real attraction: the robot modes. But sticking with the alt-modes for a bit, a decent attempt has been made to make one design support two functions, and as Topspin's isn't meant to be a flight one despite the tiny wings (moved further to the back of the alt-mode on Apex than on the 80s design) it comes out well.

Accessories are plentiful, with a couple of guns each plus a wrecking hammer. The guns display or store well in either mode, and although there isn't anywhere obvious to peg the hammers in robot mode if they aren't being held the hammer head can be removed from the stick so it may be possible to improve something better than resting it between the shoulder-blades created by the back parts.

The transformation is fairly straightforward from vehicle to robot, although since everything lines up precisely (mostly with notched pieces rather than tabs) it can be trickier getting back to vehicle mode. Looking at the promotional image from Mech Ideas the design has obviously gone through a thoroughly modern process and existed in CAD format during development. As I'll come back to shortly, not being subject to the same restrictions as official designers means that edges don't have to be rounded to quite the same extent.

There aren't any wheels, but as these are aimed squarely at adults and don't have pull-back-and-go motors or primitive auto-transform mechanisms either I think we can let the designers off. It'd just add to costs unnecessarily.

Robot Modes

Very very nice. These are in scale with current deluxes such as Fall of Cybertron Brawl and Starscream, which means they may come up a bit short against Classics and Generations figures released a few years previous. How much you love the designs will probably depend on how much you like the Jumpstarters as character concepts, as the Cybertronian alt-modes mean there aren't realistic parts evident as kibble on the robots.

Unlike the original toy, Geminus's drills aren't hidden away in his legs when in robot mode, but follow the Nick Roche design of switching them onto the shoulders in the same way that Topspin has seeker-like aerial mode bits. I'm not sure if it was included in later batches, but a further shout-out to Last Stand of the Wreckers (and further confirmation this isn't an official product, if there were ever any doubt) is an alternate Twin Twist head so that you can recreate your own torture scenes.

The plastic feels very good quality, allowing for tight but fully functionally joints and crisp detail -- the only thing I'm really at all worried about is Apex's wing points, although likewise some of the parts are thin on one gun sculpt and on the trigger fingers. It wouldn't be possible to release these figures to a retail market without some modifications and probably removal of detail. Looking inside the right leg cavity there appears to have been pressure applied removing parts from a mould, as there are slight stress marks -- but it's not noticeable in the normal course of things.

Articulation is excellent -- balanced without getting over-complicated -- and includes novel sideways rocker joints in the ankles. There are at least twenty points of articulation apiece here despite only the heads being ball-jointed... and frankly I think ball-joints are overrated because they mostly lead to frustrating attempts to make panels line up on shellformers. I realise the ball-joints are probably required for health and safety purposes and so that parts can detach and be re-affixed, but thankfully third party manufacturers don't need to be concerned with that sort of thing.

There certainly aren't many official toys you could give a giant hammer to and expect to get two-handed poses out of.

Other Notes

Thought has also gone into the packaging -- the clamshells are designed to display in alt-mode form, but allow the cards to slide out and be replaced, and the stat blocks are colour coded to include different readings for the robot and alt modes. I'm not particularly keen on the profile bios... it's nice that they reference each other, and I like humour in my fluff, but hate robots being given human binary gender roles.

Geminus and Apex have also been released in black/white and red/yellow redecos, as 2013 Auto Assembly UK convention exclusives -- and I think TFCon has a similar deal. These adopt either the Antex Argentinian G2 colour-schemes of Robot-Man-X and Robot-Man-Z, or the Estrela Brazilian Salt-Man X and Salt-Man Z, mixing and matching depending on torso colour. For more on this, see http://www.fredsworkshop.com/vjump.html and there's a review of two of the redecos elsewhere on this site.

If you haven't considered third party figures before the quality control is good and these are an excellent place to start, with two characters that are unlikely to get official homages faithful to the originals.

mechideas.com doesn't appear to be working, but they have a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/MECH-iDE ... 5591810782

Transformation Design: 8/10 - there's definitely a correct order to follow.
Durability: 8/10 - you wouldn't want to drop Apex, due to the wings.
Fun: 9/10 - the barrel it is full of monkeys.
Aesthetics: 10/10 - extremely faithful to source media.
Articulation: 10/10 - couldn't ask for more at this size point.
Value/Price: 8/10 - for limited run third party stuff, £30 apiece isn't bad.
Overall: 9/10 - no reservations about recommending.

* * *

(Official art attached below, plus the four pics from before?)

edit: Once the camera's recharged will have a shot at a Wreckers group pic.

Very tempted to buy the regular versions... didn't notice the lack of ball joints until Denyer pointed it out. They look pretty damn good, and one of the few third-party offerings that actually really look like who they're supposed to be. Admittedly the Jumpstarters aren't the most unique designs out there, but still.

Also, uploaded both reviews.

Ta. Will take a shot with the other head rather than thieve whoever's pic.

All groovy.