From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Age of the Primes Rant: wave 5

Herald of Unicron (Megatronus retool)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoP/LHerald

Wavemate is Megazarak, an Armada Megatron redeco based on an old BotCon exclusive that redecoed the original Armada Megatron to resemble the Masterforce villain. An easy skip for me.
This is not the first "looks like Unicron but isn't actually him, and turns into a tank of some sort" toy, but it's the biggest. Okay, to be fair the beetle/tank in Cybertron was described as a reborn Actual Unicron on the package and in his Cyber Key stuff, but the cartoon never touched this toy
and I've seen people treating that one as a Herald of sorts too (https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Cybertron/Deluxe8 for that review). A Japanese exclusive redeco was specifically an Acolyte of Unicron.

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoP/LMegatronus - Megatronus mold


CAPSULE

$60 price point.

Herald of Unicron: Original mold was mildly recommended in large part
due to stability issues in tank mode. This is much better in that respect,
and while the official tank mode is kinda meh, it's easy enough to make something better. Recommended, leaving aside price.


RANT

Packaging: Standard Leader-sized AotP window box. The box has the Blentron logo which was later repurposed to be a general "minions of Unicron" faction symbol, but I'm gonna keep calling it Blentron. :)


BLENTRON: HERALD OF UNICRON
Assortment: G2784
Altmode: Tank-ish
Transformation Difficulty: 30 steps
Previous Name Use: None as a toy
Previous Mold Use: AotP
Origin Universe: G1-ish

"Planet-eater Unicron can reformat Transformers bots to serve as Heralds of Unicron, creating a dangerous and destructive army to carry out the Chaos Bringer's will." - Hasbro Pulse page

The Acolytes of Unicron first appeared in the Marvel comic, unnamed Cybertronians who wore helmets inspired by Unicron's head. They were kinda just swarm-fighting mooks. According to promotional materials for this toy, the Heralds were created as an answer to the Thirteen.

Packaging: A double tie across the chest and four single ties hold the robot into the tray. The gun is held into the lower left by three ties, and
a baggie taped in the lower right has the sword and spear shaft (from Megatronus), but no trident end. Instead of flame pieces, there's four horn pieces that go on the shoulders and boots.

Color Swaps: Yeah, this one doesn't work out, there must've been several sprues of each color on Megatronus and not all of them carried over. It's
not even as simple as all the new parts being the same color. Gunmetal gray
is used on the outer shell of the forearms, the little wheels on the
underside of tank mode, the inner parts of the shoulder joints, the hip
joints, the base of the neck, and the hinged attachment peg on the cannon. Light gray plastic is used for the helmet horns (which can rotate down for transformation), the backpack spines, the four plug-in horns that came in the accessories baggie, the middle joint of the cannon, and the outer plates of
the boots that merge to form the rear tank deck...okay, all the light gray parts are new. Very dark brownish gray is used for the new guns, the bits on the top of the torso and down into the backpack, and I think the chestplate (which is mostly painted over, and it's harder to pick out subtle differences in almost-black when next to golden yellow). Regular black is used on the fists, sword, spear shaft, fists, buttplate, treads on the calves, and maybe some internal bits. The rest is golden yellow plastic, including the thighs which are painted over in gloss black, so I guess that was a limit of the
split sprues.

Paint Applications: As mentioned, the thighs are absolutely coated in gloss black paint, to the point I almost had to pull out a knife to find the underlying plastic color (a part stamp on the inner surface caused just
enough thinning for me to check non-destructively). The only other gloss
black is on some details on the backpack pieces (tank front fenders).
There's some paint on the pelvis front vents (other than the "fire grates")
and kneecaps that I thought was matte black until I used a powerful
flashlight and saw that they were matte dark purple. Much of the chestplate
is painted golden yellow, a bit lighter than the plastic color, and the paint covers some of the slots for stabilizing tank mode. This makes it a little difficult to get the fenders attached to the chestplate, but I guess it makes things more solid once you manage it. The screen-like feature on the center
of the chest is painted metallic light blue, with a yellow Blentron symbol printed in the very middle. There's also red gloss paint in some round not-nipple details on the chestplate. This gloss red is also found on the eyes, molded circles on the shoulder fronts and the fronts of the boot-side panels, as well as in the grate slits on the belt (but none of the other
slits left over from the Megatronus mold). The robot face is dark silver or maybe the same dark gunmetal that is used on the shoulder front L-shapes and most of the shin between kneecap and upper ankle.
The only paints really meant for the tank mode are on the backpack
fender pieces, the black bits already mentioned, silver blades, and red headlights or whatever the three rectangles on each fender are supposed to
be.

Mold Changes: Obviously a new head, which does look rather like an
Andrew Wildman-style organic-faced robot wearing a Unicron-homage helmet.
New chestplate, shoulderpads (which have the Unicron-style patterns on them
as also seen in the Acolytes in the Marvel comics), backpack/tank front
fenders (including articulated spines that can swing in or out as needed),
and the aforementioned panels on the outer faces of the boots. While the
hips still have the attachment points for the rocket pods, those have been
left off. The rear parts of the cannon remain, but the hinge between the
front and back has been replaced by a piece with a 5mm socket on either side and a 5mm peg on the end (which seems to serve no purpose). Less obviously, the inner parts of the torso are also new, which changes how the
transformation works a little.
The trident end of the melee weapon is omitted, as are the shoulder weapons (which have nowhere to go now anyway), the cannon barrel end, and all the flame effects. The four identical 5mm peg horns are patterned with the greebles characteristic of Unicron rings and wings, as are the backpack
spines and the helmet horns. There's two new guns that have a pair of 5mm
pegs on opposite sides that connect to the cannon core to make a sort of anti-aircraft cannon array, and they end in 3mm studs. The pegs are a little on the short side, so while the figure can hold the guns in its hands, it's really unstable.
Overall, there's a lot fewer 5mm sockets than on Megatronus, and four of the remaining ones are dedicated to the horns. Two on the forearms, two on
the inner faces of the backpack bits (not enough room to store both the sword and the spear haft at the same time), the hands, and the pegs and sockets on the cannon are left.

Other Notes: The instructions leave the removable horns on the boots,
just rotating them to be a little more out of the way, but this blocks the turret rotation, so I moved them to the front fenders in tank mode.
The gloss black paint on the thighs is laid on pretty thick, making it hard to get the transformation joint inside the thigh to work. I guess they didn't want any yellow visible inside the thighs.
Without the trident end, the combined weapon is more like a long-handled assegai. The instructions don't actually have them combine, the haft piece
is just repurposed as a forearm cannon.
The tank mode looks even LESS convincing, especially with the removal of most of the cannon, but in some ways this is an improvement...it's clearly
not even trying. Going for broke, I just rotated the turret 180 degrees and pointed the cannons in the new forwards, which makes it feel a little more
like a Trade Federation tank that's gotten Chaos-corrupted.
http://www.dvandom.com/images/HeraldTank.JPG is my best shot at making a better altmode, and some people I showed this to suggested it might have been closer to the original intent than what ended up in the instructions.

Overall: The bar is getting ever-higher for retools and redecos as
prices go up, but I think they put enough effort into this one that if you're still willing to pay $60 for a Leader in general, this is worth getting.


Dave Van Domelen, will probably go back to Cyberworld next.

--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2