TRANSFORMERS TOYS AND MERCHANDISE SECTION

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Auntie Slag's review of: Warpath

Name: Warpath
Allegiance: Autobot
Function: Warrior
Sub-Group: Minicars
"A good shot is worth more than a good intention."

Thinks he is more impressive than his comrades do...likes to show off his sharpshooting. Boisterous, loud-mouthed...raucous sense of humour makes him welcome company. Vain----upset by even the smallest scratch in his gun barrel. Can go 30 mph over roughest terrain, hit a hex nut 1.5 miles away. Shoots explosives, thermal, cryogenic, acid, and sonic shells. Great strength but helpless if upended.
What rhymes with 'Bank' and is something every boy wants? that's right, a tank! Step forward chief gunner Warpath.

Already we're off to a great start. If you're gonna design a battle hardened war machine to impress the kids, its also worth giving it a cool name. You can't get much cooler than 'Warpath'. He's a large lumbering tank with more firepower than you can shake a small kitten at.

No, hang on a moment... unsurprisingly we've fallen at the first hurdle! and now here comes the vet to shoot the lame horse, what a tragedy.

What am I talking about? HE'S A MINIBOT! who in their right minds makes a glorious tank into a minibot? Why, an idiot of course! Fortunately Hasbro is populated almost entirely by idiots (especially in their ideas department), so its not like we have to look far for the explanation.

And those wonderful chaps at Sunbow aren't to be left out of the 'Dick for Brains World Championship' either. In fact, they're running neck and neck with Hasbro Corp. on this one, and together they effectively shoot down poor old Warpath's credibility before he's even had a chance to kill an innocent bystander. Between them, this unfortunate mechanoid becomes little more than a deeply annoying, tourettes spouting numbskull.

But wait, maybe I've got it all wrong? perhaps Hasbro and Sunbow are in fact subtle geniuses (bloody subtle, I'll give 'em that). Perhaps Warpath was simply an externalisation of their utter contempt for children wrapped up in a design we could purchase blithely:

"Lets design a tiny robot and give him a personality exactly like the little schmucks we're hawking him to! It'll be like our own personal little wheeze! Aha ha ha ha ha".

Of course they reckoned without the 'League of Extraordinary Fanboys'; a rogue militia of twenty-something TF nerds who will rise up and smash corporate Hasbro bigwigs when the clock strikes Prime in 2005. There'll be no replica Walther's and Browning's on that day I can tell you. *snarls like Vince Clortho*

That aside, it still doesn't stop Warpath from mildly sucking like a relatively inexperienced prostitute (how far can I go with this lame gag)?

So what's good about him? why read on, dear listener...

Vehicle Mode:
Yup, he's a tank. Small, yet perfectly formed. I'm still hugely impressed with how lifelike his tank mode is. He's not a cartoony squashed up car like Bumblebee, Windcharger and the others. In fact, he looks like a believable scaled down model of a real life tank, and would not look out of place amongst a battalion of little army men. His turret thing moves, and little plastic wheels transport him across the ground, because the tank tracks he possesses are merely imitation, and are moulded into the plastic surface.

This incredible miniaturisation is also Warpath's greatest weakness I feel. Here is a Transformer just begging to be made into a full sized robot, possibly incorporating added colour. Imagine Warpath scaled appropriately to sit alongside Hound? wouldn't that be cool? and wouldn't it be cool that if, by making him a larger robot, he could then have real moving tracks? removable camouflage? maybe even harmless pellets to shoot from his turret?

Instead, we have this, which is no bad thing, but if you ever listen to Tiffany's late 80's single 'Could've Been' (her less successful follow up to smash hit 'I Think We're Alone Now'), you'll know how I feel about Warpath, and why I'll be the first one at that building smashing down the door.

Still, while I'm here I may as well clutch blindly at straws and say that it's nice to have a cool, accurate looking design for a minibot. Euch, suddenly I feel so dirty… more so!

Robot Mode:
For every Backstreet Boys, there's an Aaron Carter. For every Picard there is a Janeway, and for every Springsteen there's a ****ing Bon Jovi. Warpath's robot mode cheerfully makes the list alongside these wankstains thanks to his stubby little arms that extend too far outward, and his conjoined brick-foot. Although having a cannon for a chest seems like a cool idea, in execution it lacks something. My Warpath prefers to spend his days in tank mode to escape derision from the other lifeless, soulless toy moulds he shares a box with in the eternal darkness.

However in fairness, I remember finding much fun in rapidly transforming him from tank to robot and back, largely because I was so entranced by flipping his head up and down and having a transformer who's body could actually swivel! Again, if only he had been a larger Transformer, his robot mode could have benefited immensely. As it is, you can give him a nudge and he'll trundle along for a short distance like a special ed student on roller skates, then he'll wait patiently until you do it again. Having separate feet would have helped with pose-ability, articulation and outright coolness of what is, according to the tech spec and stats, a rather funky guy.

Some transformers evidently were designed to look damn cool, others to be complicated, and more still to perpetuate some fat rich bastard MD's many illegitimate kids through military school. I find that minibots hold a fun fascination. The larger robots of the era were sometimes hard to handle, were easily broken and had plenty of parts you could lose even WITH 20/20 vision and a photographic memory. Warpath and his diminutive kin had large dollops of play value, with nothing really to lose.

Therefore, despite my bitching and moaning, Warpath comes through the review relatively unscathed. Provided you're not the type to chew away at his gun barrel, he'll do whatever you make him do with little style, but much aplomb.

Transformation: 4 - He's a little fiddly, moving his cannon chest backwards and forwards through transformation can be a little aggravating if, like me, you had a Warpath with relatively stiff joints and components. A friends Warpath was much looser, in which case the score should be knocked down to a 2.
Durability: 7 - Watch out for that turret. If something in your nature urges you to bite down on a shaft, repress it. Its far healthier to go on a mad rampaging bender with a machine gun in your mid-30's than be one of the select few who experiences serenity. If you've read this far it's sure to be a moot point anyway.
Fun: 7 - Little toy tanks little toy tanks, line 'em up, make 'em go boom, weeow! zipoing! zowie! However, if not for his little plastic wheels this would surely drop to a 3 rating. Simple things please simple minds, don't you forget about me when the Belfast child sings again. Film at eleven!
Price: 9 - sure to be had cheap almost anywhere. Check out eBay on any given day, he quite often sells there with a starting bid of a single pound coin and not achieve much more when the final whistle pulls the rat up the curtain.
Summary: 3 - Warpath really isn't going to set the world alight. He might never float anyone's boat, butter their muffin, stroke their pickles or any other tired euphemism I could hurl. He just is. And that's the thing, his job in this world is a small one, but he does it well. If nothing else, he'll augment a collection, or annoy your cat.

If you've really got something against donating your spare change to the emaciated, blind, war ravaged, blighted, diseased and terminally ill orphan children of Carbombya that live off the sour milk of a single old goat... then here's something to purchase and instantly forget about.