Toy Review - Studio Series Dropkick

[SMHFConvoy]

The joints on mine were tight out of the box and loosened up a little through use. The vents on all the Dropkick's seem to be loose though.

I just put another Dropkick on lay-by to make into Whirl and I may need another for an Obsidian

[klystron]

Beat me to it, Gok.

Leader Blackout comes in at approx 1:77
SS Dropkick is approx 1:72

So pretty close.

[ComradeRenko]

Picked this guy up today and was pleasantly surprised. My biggest annoyance with the figure is the lack of any visible Decepticon badge. The back of the box clearly shows one on the nose of the helicopter, which becomes the robot's chest. It was the same with SS18 Bumblebee, no Autobot badge. In both cases I remedied the situation with the heaps of badges toyhax has supplied over the years. In Dropkick's case I put one where the box showed, and another one on each side of the engine cowling.

Is there some concern that labeling factions will interfere with creative play, or is it just Hasbro cheaping out on another paint application?

[GoktimusPrime]

My biggest annoyance with the figure is the lack of any visible Decepticon badge. The back of the box clearly shows one on the nose of the helicopter, which becomes the robot's chest. It was the same with SS18 Bumblebee, no Autobot badge. In both cases I remedied the situation with the heaps of badges toyhax has supplied over the years. In Dropkick's case I put one where the box showed, and another one on each side of the engine cowling.

Is there some concern that labeling factions will interfere with creative play, or is it just Hasbro cheaping out on another paint application?

Mate... this is my beef with Studio Series in general. Most of the SS toys don't have faction logos. Why?!? Sadly I don't have spare logo stickers lying around, but it really irritates me that most SS TFs don't have logos.

I don't care if it's more screen accurate -- just sneak a logo in somewhere on the toy. It has made me go back and look at a lot of the Bayformer screen models, and yeah... most of them don't have insignias!

[Raptormesh]

Picked this up for the vehicle mode and am pleasantly surprised how faithful it tries to be to the real thing.

[Sutton]

I'm really not sure who/what this toy is here for.

On one hand, on it's own merits, it's not bad. Give me a repaint as a Movieverse 'Vortex' etc and I'd be pretty excited. It transforms well and in an interesting way. Poseability is not bad but a little kibble-hampered.

But - as a Studio Series figure, it misses the mark on most of what's supposed to be important in this series. The robot mode bears little-to-no resemblence to the movie design (at least based on what we've seen so far), and scale wise it's a bit weird. Yeah, the copter mode is close to Blackout, but bot-mode scale is off to just about everything else. When they made Jazz, Ratchet and Bee at different sizes I thought 'fair enough, because scale etc'. But this just feels small because they're being cheap. It feels like it should have maybe been a voyager sized figure really (even if on the smaller end, like the SS Optimus).

I wonder if the massive variance in bot mode is due to a later design change in the movie itself - Bee appears to have had some changes made so it's not impossible. Bee's changes were fairly subtle though, whereas this is more like a different design with Dropkicks head (very firmly) attached on top.

Add to this, the odd fact that Shatter is getting a car mode for her Studio Series figure, and the line looks further confused. It's like DOTM all over again, where it was impossible to get all 3 Wreckers in the same scale, with their car modes aligned as either clean or weaponised. Will we get a second Dropkick and Shatter later on that features the other alt modes? Will that version have a more accurate robot mode? Shatter's bot mode seens to be a bit more accurate (in colour at least).

So....yeah. What is this thing?

[Raptormesh]

Maybe for people like me who doesn't even know who dropkick is or have yet to watch the movies but is stoke about a transforming Super Cobra :P.

[GoktimusPrime]

A good toy is a good toy regardless of how much it looks or doesn't look like its screen counterpart.

e.g. G1 Windcharger is, IMO, a better Minibot than G1 Wheelie despite the fact that Wheelie looks closer to his screen design than Windcharger. Similarly I find G1 Wheeljack to be a better toy than G1 Blurr and so on. And quite frankly I find G1 Reflector to be - in relative terms - arguably better than Siege Refraktor because with G1 Reflector you weren't given the same toy thrice.


↑
L: One purchase for 3 distinct figures
R: Buy the same toy 3 times

[klystron]

...but is stoke about a transforming Super Cobra :P.

This!

[Sutton]

Maybe for people like me who doesn't even know who dropkick is or have yet to watch the movies but is stoke about a transforming Super Cobra :P.

Yes, the helicopter mode is very cool. Not even mad the blades don't spin freely.