The Unlicensed Third Party Transformers Thread

[mikeszekely]

While I love Dr. Wu's Micromaster-sized Extreme Warfare line, I've been a little more lukewarm on his tapes.  His version of Squawkbox was a so-so Beastbox and kind of crappy Squawktalk that combined to make a pretty awkward robot.  His version of Slamdance fared a bit better, but between tepid reviews and the fact that the G1 toy never released in the US I opted to pass entirely on Dr. Wu's Decibel.  Perhaps they'd have quirks if they didn't have to have to worry about getting both an alt mode AND a combined mode out of a tiny rectangle?  Still, it's nice that the good Doctor is covering those late G1 cassette combiners, because who knows when Hasbro would get around to it?  It took them how long just to get a version of Buzzsaw out there, and we're just now getting Ramhorn (but only as part of a Target-exclusive package).  And speaking of tapes Hasbro's not getting around to, we're still missing two that weren't just part of the US G1 toy line, but characters that had screen time in the Sunbow cartoon.  So I'm turning to Dr. Wu once again for Brutality and Slaughter, his version of Slugfest and Overkill.

Both figures are lacking the cassette decals the G1 toys had, though there's a case to be made that it makes for more cartoon-accurate "robot" modes.  Then again, I think in the cartoon Overkill's biceps, thighs, and tail were white instead of blue, and like most Decepticons he had his eyes colored red in the cartoon, so they're still more toy-colored than anything.  Brutality is very similar to G1 Slugfest, with the most obvious difference being that his legs are more on his sides that directly under his belly.  Slaughter, meanwhile, stays mostly accurate to G1 Overkill but I feel enjoys an overall better shape and proportions than the G1 toy (ignore the fact that his tail is upside down, I fixed it later).

While the early Siege tapes ignored (or in Laserbeak's case, half-heartedly integrated) their accessories, accessories are kind of the good Doctor's specialty.  So naturally, this pack comes with all of the weapons needed for both bots.

Brutality doesn't enjoy a ton of articulation.  His head and tail can bend up, due to transformation, but it ways that break the sculpt.  His head is on a swivel, though, so he can tilt his head like he's confused.  All four of his legs are on ball joints that allow them to swivel at the hips as well as provide some lateral hip movement, but that's really it for him.  Well, it's not like the Siege tapes had the best articulation, either. 

Brutality's weapons have tabs on the sides that fit into the channels that the sliders for his dorsal plates use.

Slaughter, meanwhile, got all the fresh engineering and has much better articulation as a result.  No neck swivel, but he can look straight up and tilt his head down until his chin touches his chest.  His jaws open and close.  His shoulders are on ball joints that swivel and give him about 90 degrees of lateral movement, plus he's got hinged elbows that bend from 90 degrees the anatomically-correct way to 90 degrees the wrong way.  His hips are also ball joints for swiveling and some lateral movement, but not a ton, plus he's got a hinged knee and a hinged digitigrade joint.  And if all that wasn't enough, his tail actually has a pair of hinges as well, which don't have a ton of range but still allow you to get a little bit of side-to-side curl.

Slaughter's weapons have peg holes that plug into small pegs on his sides.

Brutality is one of the most convincing tapes we've seen so far, due to all of the molded details on both sides.  I think he can afford this luxury due to his pretty simple engineering; his head, tail, and dorsal plates transform exactly like the G1 toy.  Really, the only difference is that there's a flap on either side that reveals a gap.  His legs hinge into that gap and tab together before folding the flaps back down to cover them.

Slaughter is where all the engineering went.  His tail rotates 180 degrees and his head folds onto his back, then his entire body splits down the middle.  His limbs arrange themselves along the sides, with holes in his ankles pegging the legs in place using the same pegs the guns do for dino mode.  Finally, his tail splits down the middle and the halves re-fold at the edge of the "tape."  I'm using that word in quotes because he resembles a tape less than even Siege Ravage, with one side largely a white expanse of hollow gaps and the other clearly dinosaur limbs.  I'm not going to judge too hard, though, because that's been pretty par for the course not just for Wu but for Hasbro.  No one seems to care if they actually look like tapes, so long as we've got little rectangles that fit inside Soundwave and Blaster.

Wait... do they fit in Soundwave and Blaster?  For the most part, yes, though Brutality is cutting it close.  Aside from being right at the limit on height and width, he's one of the thicker boys.  I was able to work him in there, but I'd be worried about getting him stuck with the door closed.

End of the day, I think these are my favorite tapes that Dr. Wu has done, at least so far.  Uncompromised by a combining gimmick, these guys focus on being the best dinosaurs you can get out of tiny rectangles.  For Brutality that means fairly basic, very G1 engineering, but I'm not going to complain because he nails the look.  And for Slaughter we get a dinosaur mode that beats the robot/animal modes of just about anything Hasbro's done so far, and if the tape mode's a bit messy that's still par for Hasbro's course.  And at around $25 after shipping they're priced right around what Hasbro would charge for two Studio Series Core-class tapes, so what's good enough for Hasbro seems like it should be good enough here.  So yeah, if you're a fan of Soundwave and want to complete his collection of tape-bot minions, Brutality and Slaughter do a very good job filling Slugfest and Overkill-shaped holes in your collection, and I'd give them a recommend.

[M'Kyuun]

I like cassettes, so I'm a little biased, but I dig these guys. I really like the cassette bots that actually look like cassettes, a fleeting reality these days since Hasbro introduced the smaller scale, so Brutality, AKA Slugfest, hits a certain sweet spot for me. His bot mode is adorable- I particularly love the way his legs store within the tape mode. He's simple by comparison with most of Wu's previous cassettes, all of which had to do double duty as combiners, but he has his charm. Slaughter, AKA Overkill, eschews any pretense of looking like a real cassette, but as Mike mentioned, he makes up for it in spades with an impressive amount of articulation in a very small package. I wish his head was on a ball joint for more expressive poses, but as he is, he's a fun little dino-bot.

Speaking of little dino-bot cassettes, Wu's previous releases, Explosion, AKA Noizu and Supersonic, AKA Gurafi, did not make the most convincing of cassettes either, although their rectangular wafer modes aren't far off- neither have reel details which would've helped sell the notion. Where they fall apart, literally, is in their combination, which relies solely on Explosion's two hinged flaps, which do not have a much-needed "thoop" point for solidarity, closing over two small tabs on either side of Supersonic's robot torso. The connection is tenuous at best, relying on the merest friction and a prayer. It doesn't help that said un-thooped flaps host the hip/shoulder ball joints, which means you have to press in on the shoulders while manipulating the arms in combined mode (Impact Wave AKA Decibel). For something that should have been designed out of the gate to combine, of the three combining cassette teams that Wu has released, this one is the most poorly executed due to there being no other manner of solidifying the combination. It's disappointing, especially since the combined mode looks really good, has great articulation, nice paint apps, and convenient but wholly inaccurate weapon placements.  And, with the merest breeze or vibration, it falls apart into robotic bits that become two pretty decent mini dino-bots (Supersonic's wings are a bit on the thicc side, but at this scale, it's ok). Handling it while typing this, I still can't believe Wu didn't create a stronger connection, especially when the combination was the big selling point. Unfortunately, it's nicer to look at than to play with, at least in combined mode.

Edited August 9 by M'Kyuun

[sh9000]

DK-56A.

[mikeszekely]

I know the spotlight is on the XTB vs FT Devastator drama, but let's not forget that MMC is still in this fight.  And one of their reps was showing the latest prototypes...

Now, the flat green foot with the toe stub on the Mixmaster leg is cartoon accurate... but it's perhaps too accurate.  We do have confirmation that you do NOT need to transform it that way.

I did really like XTB's Scrapper (FT's wasn't bad in a vacuum, but definitely less good in my book).  But I'm thinking this is the set I'm going to go all-in on.

[tekering]

16 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

I'm thinking this is the set I'm going to go all-in on.

Going all-in on All-Built-In is all-good in my book. 👍

MMC's Combaticons and Protectobots have served me well. ☺️

[mikeszekely]

17 hours ago, tekering said:

Going all-in on All-Built-In is all-good in my book. 👍

MMC's Combaticons and Protectobots have served me well. ☺️

You know, it's kinda weird, but I loved Bruticus, and when Streetwise, First Aid, and Groove came out I thought they were all better than even the Combaticons.  But I wasn't a fan of the fact that I had to go back and consult the instructions on Hot Spot; he just wasn't intuitive enough to go on memory alone, and Blades was kinda weak.  So by the time I was finished I was less in love and more like, "I'm glad that's done."  But Defensor's never been my favorite combiner.  I'm a lot more excited for their Devastator, which looks like it's going to have some pretty crazy articulation.

@M'Kyuunwill be glad to know they don't just have ankle pivots, looks like they've got at least 45 degrees of upward ankle tilt.  And they both have way beyond 90 degrees of knee bend; Scrapper's pulling a full 180!

Lest anyone thing I only care about the combined mode, though, here's the unpainted prototypes in bot mode.

Of course I'll want to see them painted, but Scrapper's looking at least as good as the competition to my eye.  As for alt modes...

...that also works for me.  I dare say that Scrapper's looking much better than Fans Toys, and while there's some details I like on XTB's I think I prefer MMC's.  Really looking forward to these.

Edited August 31 by mikeszekely

[M'Kyuun]

On 8/31/2025 at 2:24 PM, mikeszekely said:

You know, it's kinda weird, but I loved Bruticus, and when Streetwise, First Aid, and Groove came out I thought they were all better than even the Combaticons.  But I wasn't a fan of the fact that I had to go back and consult the instructions on Hot Spot; he just wasn't intuitive enough to go on memory alone, and Blades was kinda weak.  So by the time I was finished I was less in love and more like, "I'm glad that's done."  But Defensor's never been my favorite combiner.  I'm a lot more excited for their Devastator, which looks like it's going to have some pretty crazy articulation.

@M'Kyuunwill be glad to know they don't just have ankle pivots, looks like they've got at least 45 degrees of upward ankle tilt.  And they both have way beyond 90 degrees of knee bend; Scrapper's pulling a full 180!

Lest anyone thing I only care about the combined mode, though, here's the unpainted prototypes in bot mode.

Of course I'll want to see them painted, but Scrapper's looking at least as good as the competition to my eye.  As for alt modes...

...that also works for me.  I dare say that Scrapper's looking much better than Fans Toys, and while there's some details I like on XTB's I think I prefer MMC's.  Really looking forward to these.

You're not wrong, Mike. I've long been a fan of MMC's work, and with this being my first glimpse at their all-in-one Constructicons, my bias is rewarded. This most certainly has to be the most challenging of combiners to do as an all-in-one given the amount of partsforming required on the original set and pretty much every set thereafter regardless of scale. MMC takes on the all-in-one challenge and I applaud them for it. If I didn't have so many life expenditures, or potentially pending ones, I think I'd be inclined to go in on this set to replace my old Toy World Constructor. Right now, I'm just looking forward to completing my Hasbro Devastator and I'll likely look at add-on kits for it to make improvements, so that'll be the extent of my Devastator expenditure for the foreseeable future. I'll enjoy this set vicariously via reviews, though. Cheers to those of you who get it, as I think you'll have a banger on your hands.

[pengbuzz]

On 8/31/2025 at 5:24 PM, mikeszekely said:

You know, it's kinda weird, but I loved Bruticus, and when Streetwise, First Aid, and Groove came out I thought they were all better than even the Combaticons.  But I wasn't a fan of the fact that I had to go back and consult the instructions on Hot Spot; he just wasn't intuitive enough to go on memory alone, and Blades was kinda weak.  So by the time I was finished I was less in love and more like, "I'm glad that's done."  But Defensor's never been my favorite combiner.  I'm a lot more excited for their Devastator, which looks like it's going to have some pretty crazy articulation.

@M'Kyuunwill be glad to know they don't just have ankle pivots, looks like they've got at least 45 degrees of upward ankle tilt.  And they both have way beyond 90 degrees of knee bend; Scrapper's pulling a full 180!

Ladies and gentlemen... Psy, featuring Devastator, performing "GANGNAM STYLE"!!!  (@ 1:55):

 

Edited September 2 by pengbuzz

[mikeszekely]

We're getting close to completing two Hasbro combiners now... I'm going to check out a local Target that might have Mixmaster tomorrow morning, and Entertainment Earth is shipping Fireflight and Skydive right now (as long as you order the entire wave of Deluxes, which means also getting Venin and Micronus Prime), so with luck I'll have Devastator and Superion complete in another week or so.  That said, despite being made out of five or six guys, they don't seem all that big compared to the likes of the new Studio Series 86 Megatron or Optimus, who stand roughly waist high to them.  One solution is to buy bigger combiners, but that can be a bit pricey.  The other solution is to buy smaller versions of everyone else, something I've been doing relatively inexpensively with Dr. Wu's Extreme Warfare line.  And I'm happy to say I got the latest set in, Leap and Pulse Gun.

Leap is the inevitable remold of Dr. Wu's Bumblebee into Cliffmumper.  That means most of the parts in red plastic are new, but all the black plastic parts and the engineering are carried over from Bee.  As far as remolds go, he's alright.  I mean, the face is a little off, and quite a bit of the black parts should actually be gray for cartoon accuracy (black is fine for toy accuracy).  They went to the trouble of painting the bumper on his feet, too, though neither the toy nor the cartoon have a black bumper.  Borrowing Bee's engineering means that, like the Hasbro toy, he's missing his spoiler on his chest.

I don't want to judge Leap too harshly, though.  I mean, black on the feet (though a grill, not a bumper), a lack of spoiler on the chest, and black limbs were all errors Hasbro made on their own official Earthrise figure, a figure that came first and was only later remolded to be Bumblebee.  I feel like I can cut Leap some slack when he's like a quarter of the size.

Leap even comes with an accessory: that bazooka he used one time in the entire G1 run.

Wu figures come in pairs, and Leap's partner is Pulse Gun, aka Shockwave.  As robots go, I think Pulse Guncame out a lot better, wiht a nice lilac-and-lavendar pairing and a pretty cartoon-accurate sculpt.  He even comes with a pair of black rubber hoses.

The main point of contention here vs Sunbow will, of course, be his backpack being a lighter color due to being made from the barrel instead of the butt of his gun mode.  Again, though, this is something Hasbro/Takara has done twice themselves, with bough the Siege toy and the MP (though the MP had a more cartoon-accurate cover to put on it and use as a stand in gun mode), so it's pretty forgivable on a figure that slightly shorter than the gun-mode accessory that comes with SS86 Megatron.

Leap's articulation is the same as Bumblebee's; ball joint head that can swivel and look straight up, ball-jointed shoulders that swivel and move 90 degrees laterally, hinged elbows that bend 90 degrees, no bicep, wrist, or waist articulation, ball-jointed hips that go over 90 forward and backward and nearly 90 laterally and provide limited thigh swivels, knees that bend 90 degrees, and feet that can tilt downward but not up and no pivots.  The bazooka has tabs that kind of wrap around his forearm, with a tiny tab inside that fits into a little slot that would hold his arm in place in alt mode.

Pulse Gun's head is on a hinged ball joint with basically no sideways tilt, but he can look downward a little and straight up.  His shoulders are hinged ball joints, mostly for transformation; they swivel and move 90 degrees laterally on just the ball joint.  His elbows are ball joints that bend 90 degrees and provide his bicep swivel.  No wrist or waist articulation.  His hips can go just under 90 degrees forward and backward and 90 degrees laterally on their ball joints, and he's got dedicated thigh swivels.  His knees bend about 60 degrees, which is a little limited, but he's at least got 90 degrees of ankle pivot.

Leap transforms exactly the same as Bee, which is to say his waist swings back and his knees bend the wrong way, his elbows bend the wrong way, then all the black parts get stuffed underneath while his backpack folds over his head.  The wheels fold out of the backpack and the sides of the car fold out from his feet.

Pulse Gun uses a method similar to other modern Shockwave toys; head head folds into the chest, the arms fold up over the head, then the backpack hinges up and covers his forearms to form the barrel.  The outsides of the legs form the grip while the rest of the legs form the butt of the gun... well, mostly.  On this tiny scale, there's still a pretty big gap between the legs, and it's partially filled with a flap from his back.

Aside from, as I mentioned before, Cliffjumper never having a black bumper in either toy or cartoon, I don't have much to complain about here.  It's a tiny, mostly Sunbow-accurate car.  I say mostly because Dr. Wu went to the trouble of painting the lights, which seems nice, until you remember that not only where the lights not colored on the G1 toy/toon but that the Porsche 944 had pop-up headlights, so no silver needed on the hood (and on the bumper it should be an orange turn signal above a white marker light, btw).  I'm nitpicking, though.

My criticisms for Pulse Gun's alt mode are a bit stronger.  As I said before, the legs have large gaps between them.  This is because, rather than have the sides of the legs simply move down and forward to form the grip the legs spin 180 degrees, so the outsides of the legs have to fold down from the inside.  So a panel in his back has to fold out, and it doesn't completely fill the gap, and what it does fill isn't the right color.  It's an extra waist, because that flap could have been his scope, but instead the scope is missing.  Then there's other things, like the visible ball joints, the visible sliders on the legs, the visible feet, and the fact that the grip doesn't actually lock in place.

On the whole, Leap could be better but I feel like it's pretty easy to forgive his flaws at this scale.  Likewise, Pulse Gun's alt mode is kind of half-finished, but the robot mode is super solid and, again, pretty forgiving at this scale.  And this price!  Even now with tarrifs to contend with, this two pack costs me about the same price as a single Hasbro Deluxe.  So, once again, if you're looking for tiny Transformers for one reason or another this set's an easy recommend from me.  Just be aware, this set comes in two versions.  There's this one, with a pretty cartoon-accurate color scheme on Pulse Wave but black limbs on Leap.  There's also a version that uses a slightly brighter red plastic and swaps the black parts with gray on Leap, but uses a much darker purple for Pulse Gun.  I care more about Shockwave, hence the set I picked.  It's really a shame that Wu couldn't have put the gray-limbed Leap with the Pulse Gun I wanted as "cartoon colors" and put the darker Pulse Gun with this Leap as "toy colors", but the Doctor really wants you to buy both sets.😒 

There's also a third version that I have on the way, it uses the Galactic Man deco for Pulse Gun and swaps Leap with Wheel Hub, aka Hubcap.

[Negotiator]

Seems like everyone finally got Mixmaster.  I did have the knee mods ready to go.  here's some before and after.

these are with the new knee joints installed that now center the lower limbs.  The color shade is barely noticeable to the naked eye.

 

[mark-1s]

That looks so much better. I don’t understand why they couldn’t just do that to begin with.

[mikeszekely]

Gonna wait and see what DNA might cook up.

[JB0]

I don't undestand why Dr Wu packaged a toy-inspired Cliffjumper with an utterly hideous toon-inspired Shockwave. It is a weird choice to mix 'em like that, even ignoring my visceral hatred of Shockwave's toon colors.

[mikeszekely]

3 hours ago, JB0 said:

I don't undestand why Dr Wu packaged a toy-inspired Cliffjumper with an utterly hideous toon-inspired Shockwave. It is a weird choice to mix 'em like that, even ignoring my visceral hatred of Shockwave's toon colors.

So that regardless of whether you prefer to or toon colors you have to buy both sets.😒

[JB0]

On 9/14/2025 at 8:05 AM, mikeszekely said:

So that regardless of whether you prefer to or toon colors you have to buy both sets.😒

Evil! 

[mikeszekely]

33 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Evil! 

They used to be worse!  At least this way you're still getting both G1 characters, just one cartoon-optimized and one toy-optimized.  There was a period where they were packing the G1 guy you really wanted with the repaint (usually Shattered Glass) that you really didn't want.  That's how I wound up with Shattered Glass Inferno (came with G1 Wheeljack) and Slicer/SG Wheeljack (came with Bulkhead).