(JULY-2013) Armada Era Toys - Reviews and Favourites

[griffin]

Unicron was pretty neat for that time (after having fully rounded planets like Primus and Darth Vader, it just looks like a flat tire). Starscream was one of my favourites, and was recoloured at least four times by Hasbro.
Demolishor and Megatron were good in their alt-modes, but had some flaws.
HotShot and Cyclonus were flawed in many ways. So were Blurr, Smokescreen, Sideswipe, Hoist and Thrust.

Red Alert had so many accessories, it was like a Gen1 toy.
Jetfire was pretty good, without too much being sacrificed for its combiner mode.
Tidalwave was also very good, but the Hasbro colours were odd with no explanation.

Scavenger was an odd one - it was an Autobot, but clearly homaged a Constructicon (in both name and colours). The gimmick turned it into a brick too.

Optimus (superpants) was well thought out, with its auto-transforming feature.... and having the ability to mix and match with combiner elements (something that Energon would later feature as its own gimmick).

The Minicons were quite impressively engineered figures for their size. And each 3-pack had a theme or gimmick, like combining.
It was a shame that the Dark Saber wasn't translucent like in the product images... which was always a tease for me.
It was probably the only redeco I felt was necessary too, based on the story.
Laserbeak was another tease, as the promo images had it coloured black like a cam-corder, but just before it went into production, the colours were changed to fluro orange, due to it's (very vague) gun mode.

Armada gave us a few new interesting characters and concepts...
Wheeljack - An Autobot who joined the Decepticons. (the name was given to a Decepticon because the designer at the time - Aaron Archer - thought it sounded too evil to be an Autobot name).
Sideways - A headmaster with two heads - one for each allegiance, as he was a doublespy.
Overload - Technically was also a Headmaster, as the main robot was basically an exosuit for the Minicon Rollout. I'm not even sure if Overload was sentient to begin with.
Beast Wars recolours - towards the end of the line, several Beast Wars toys were redecoed into this line, with Minicons, because the series was so popular and Retailers wanted more product. This also led to the concept of the "obligatory redeco", that has become another legacy of Armada to this day (to pad out a line, and to reduce the cost of each mould).

(Can you tell that Armada was certainly one of my favourites...)

[GoktimusPrime]

Unicron was pretty neat for that time (after having fully rounded planets like Primus and Darth Vader, it just looks like a flat tire).

Yeah but compared to Primus Unicron was a more ambitious and technically difficult challenge because it's based on a G1 cartoon model that transformed from a ball to a buff humanoid. The G1 prototype transformed from a round ball to a round robot. The Beast Wars prototype had a more rounded planet mode, but was more kibbly in robot mode and it exceeded budget so badly that its RRP would've made Fortress Maximus look like pocket change (that was the main reason why it was cancelled -- Takara couldn't get the toy to conform to an affordable price point).

Primus was developed as a toy first, so designers had far greater liberty because there was no preconceived look for the robot mode. If anything, the robot mode's look is a significant departure from that of G1 Primus... but that's probably cos they didn't want him to look like an overgrown Rodimus. Darth Vader/Death Star has the same challenge as Unicron, if not arguably more challenging because the robot mode has conflicting colours with the planetoid mode. But boy is he one massive shellformer!!

I think Unicron is a very well designed toy for what it is. Trying to give it a round planet mode with a pre-defined robot mode and also giving it Mini-Con gimmicks and making it fun to play with.

It was a shame that the Dark Saber wasn't translucent like in the product images... which was always a tease for me.
It was probably the only redeco I felt was necessary too, based on the story.

That's why I got the Japanese version (I got the Hasbro version too )
Takara's Micron Legend figures often had better colours over their Hasbro counterparts (and also being more show-like since the cartoon was based on the Japanese toys). I didn't like how the Hasbro toys started off with the lazy paint apps on the insignias where they just "blotched" them in red and purple without avoiding filling in the gaps. It's as if they were coloured in by a preschooler (because that's exactly how my preschooler colours in pictures! ). Takara on the other hand only coloured in the raised parts.

Logos aside, toys that had significantly/notably better coloured Japanese versions IMHO were:
+ Dark Sabre - as aforementioned.
+ Shockwave>Tidal Wave - as mentioned in previous posts. Although I prefer the Tidal Wave name.
+ Hot Rod>Hot Shot - that "hurt your eyes" day-glo yellow on Hot Shot was replaced with a lovely deeper cadmium yellow. Also it had a functioning "Laser Rod" gimmick that Hot Shot didn't (making it cooler when wielding transparent Star Sabres ).
+ Rampage>Wheeljack - Wheeljack's colours aren't bad, but Rampage's are much nicer and make him look more 'badass' to me. Having said that, I bought Wheeljack (but later received Rampage as a freebie). Rampage is also free of that silly name debacle. (allowing Takara to name Energon Downshift Wheeljack, which he clearly was meant to be!)

Overload's Headmaster Mini-Con gimmick is incredibly cool.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

I liked Overload, but I don't think it was that great of a toy. I never really saw it as a headmaster gimmick as such, more like an exosuit for a Minicon which kind of worked well considering how the body became the trailer. But even then he was pretty big for a minicon. I did like the transformation sound when you plugged him in. The robot was a brick and was a kind of weird looking trailer too, although I saw it was an ammo trailer. I also was a bit sad that he didn't form a convincing weapons platform by himself. Sure he worked fine as over shoulder cannons for Super Pants, but with only a few changes he could have worked well as an artillery cannon by himself, or for the Minicon.

I remember he only showed up twice in the cartoon and they called him the wrong name once. Poor guy.

[GoktimusPrime]

A lot of the Autobots and Decepticons were bricky in Armada.

I never really saw it as a headmaster gimmick as such, more like an exosuit for a Minicon which kind of worked well considering how the body became the trailer. But even then he was pretty big for a minicon.

I think that was part of the Ultra Magnus homage in the design of this toy; the idea of the "true" robot being the smaller cab unit who combines with the trailer to form the 'super robot'. The shoulders also evoke G1 Magnus. Overload was called Ultra Magnus in Japan, and of course Hasbro did repaint Overload as Energon Ultra Magnus. (which as nice as it looked, I skipped cos I just couldn't justify getting a second version of this mould -- had I not gotten Overload I probably would've gone for UM)

The thing that I really like about the "Headmaster" gimmick is how Rollout works as a functional Transformer toy in his own right. He has a robot mode and autonomous vehicle mode. If you look at any other Headmaster toy, the head unit is pretty much useless as a Transformer without the 'Transtector' body, but not Rollout. That's pretty cool.