Toy Review - Titans Return Voyager Alpha Trion
Series – Titans Return
Size/class - Voyager
New/remould/redeco - New
Wave - 2
Released here – August 2016
Growing up I was fascinated with Alpha Trion, for a simple reason: I was damn curious about what he actually transforms into, (and same goes to all the Cybertron-based bots really) and I liked the Gandolf-ish design. So since he was revealed I've been looking forward to getting him in hand.
LION MODE:
His unicorn lion mode is imposing and has a little techno-organic feel to it. I love the color scheme: it's a very nice magenta, and the painted silver looks really nice too, with the translucent orange canopy and tail to break it up.
The lion head sculpt is fantastic, with almost a regal feel. The robot fists make up the lion jaw, which doesn't look as bad in person as some the early photos made it look. He's by no means lacking in paint, but I really wish the eyes were not painted the same purple as the eye brows.
Everything tabs together very securely. The back of the canopy assembly has two tabs that fit in the groin cloth to lock the waist in place (in robot mode the waist doesn't lock into the bottom of the purple double hinge, so you can get a little bit of ab crunch out of that.)
The articulation in this mode is actually not as bad as I thought it'd be. The front legs actually have dedicated "bicep" swivel. The robot feet on the hinbd legs however are tabbed in place which prevents getting the full bend out of those robot knee joints. And the sculpt on the lion feet limits the forward movement.. This photo is about the best I can get him in a feline walking pose.
The claw gun has slots that tab in on top of the canopy. It is a nice feature but the view of the pilot gets completely blocked, so I don't like putting is there in cruiser modeThere's 5mm holes conveniently located to get him properly armed up, G1 Predacon style.
He's decently sized Voyager which makes for some great action poses with Wheelie the jungle boy.
SPACE CRUISER MODE:
I don't think we've ever had such a contrast between a triple changer's two alt modes, and it actually kind of works. Although this mode is basically just the robot lying face down, it manages to hide most of the organic lion details and hard mechanical edges become prominent. The lion head splitting apart and flipping inside out is quite a simple yet effective step to accomplish that. I have to say the Takara designers have been absolutely brilliant at coming up with simple and effective engineering.
There's a PVC stabilizer/landing gear that flips out to support the front half the ship
It looks like it's meant to be a carrier of some sort.
The gun can peg right in front of the canopy. Where it pegs in becomes the robot's butt and you can leave it there in robot mode so Alpha Trion has a butt flap. The sword can only peg on the left side of the ship due to a tab exsting on the right side, preventing the sword from pegging all the way in.
There's four pegs on the deck area for the head dudes and two 5mm holes on either side of the ship.
TRANSFORMATION:
Again, simple and effective. Transforming to lion mode is more involved whereas as mentioned before cruiser mode is really simple. The transformation to cruiser is really similar to Sentinel/Astrotrain which basically involves tabbing the legs together and flipping some panels. I think with TR Voyagers the designers have found a good balance between complexity and playability. The alt modes are distinct from each other enough, and the processes are not frustrating.
TITAN MASTER
His head dude is based on Vector Prime's mini-con. Although lacking paint, he has three plastic colors that manage to make him not look bland
ROBOT MODE
The robot mode has a very unique design. Instead of the the aged mage that was G1 Alpha Tron, he now is a heavily armored Viking bruiser. I understand a lot people won't like this look, but I just think of him as a younger Alpha Trion, when he could kick some serious a$$.
I believe Hasbo/TakTom were designing the triple-changing voyagers in this line with at least two characters in mind, and I'm not talking about the good ol' "designing a new head in the same mold after everything is done to milk some re-deco potential out of it" approach. Take Sentinel Prime/Astrotrain for example, although everyone thinks the mold is first and foremost Astrotrain, I believe the designer had the two characters in mind from the very beginning. The heavily armed train mode fits better with Sentinel; the shuttle mode has an Autobot vibe to it, and the head dude is clearly based on IDW Sentinel and then given a new Astrotrain face. With that in mind, I'm still not 100% sure if Alpha Trion was one of the characters that this mold was designed to be. The two alt modes make absolute sense for Alpha Trion, but the robot mode which he was always in in all of the media, doesn't scream Alpha Trion to me. My theory is this mold was designed as Vector Prime (prominent robot mode features, cruiser mode, mini-con homage) and Lio Convoy (lion head on shoulder, a double homage to Big Convoy with the horns in bot mode). But if we don't see a Lio Convoy further down the line, AT may well have been one of the intended uses of this mold.
In contrast to say Sentinel, the bot mode features copious paint to pick out the majority of the molded details. It's just a beautiful deco to look at. Although designed within the same budget structure, some figures do get more love than others.
The head sculpt is fantastic. He looks to be aged in between "War Dawn" A3 and "The key to Vector Sigma" Alpha Trion. Still in his prime, not be messed with. The eyes are molded in a translucent piece which have some light piping effect.
The very Vector Prime-ish circle on the chest is the trigger for the spring loaded horns, which are on a rotating assembly . Mine is very touchy and the horns don't lock properly so they pop right out easily. I'd have to take it part to have a closer look, but for now rotating the assembly to one side makes them stay down.
The sword is pretty impressive and is one of best Transformer swords I've seen in a while. Too bad there's no good place to store it in bot mode.
Articulation is okay. The head is a bit wider than average so when the horns are up, there's no wiggle room for the head, so you get only about 45 degrees rotation out of the rotating disc. He does have ball jointed wrists, which is always good for a sword welding character, but due to the bulky torso he can't hold the sword with both hands. The knee bend is only 90 degrees which prevents a convincing keeling pose. I'm not a big fan of those platform shoes but they make him pretty stable.
The lateral joints on the hips have molded ratchets but for some reason they don't click at all, so that's something to look out for. On the other hand, the front/back rotation on mine is incredibly stiff.
He's a good half head shorter than Sentinel, but more stocky.
I think this mold will make a decent Lio Convoy.
OVERALL:
The alt modes are both decent, with lion being the stronger one. Kudos to the designer for pulling off the two alt modes that couldn't be more different from each other. He may not be the intended use of the mold, but he's pretty much the only character that can justify having a lion and a space ship mode.
I like the robot mode design but can see how it may put people off. Very good color scheme and paint apps. I'm happy with the first retail Alpha Trion.
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). I think I'll stick with my BotCon Alpha Trion, but I'd be interested to see if they retool/repaint this mould as Lio Convoy and/or Big Convoy.
Originally Posted by i_amtrunks
