From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transforming Toy Rant: Metal Cardbot

Pirate Bulldozer Bluster Gale (Bulldozer)

Permalink: https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/misc/Cardbot2

See https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/misc/Cardbot1 for general information on the line.


CAPSULE

This is sold separately as the lone Mega Class figure of wave 1 for $28, or part of a full wave box for $213, from Agabyss.com.

Bluster Gale: This tries to match a somewhat cheaty show model without
the parts budget to pull it off, which wouldn't bother me so much if there
were actual photos or renders of the toy on the box, instead of the animation model. That makes an otherwise decent toy with some fun features look like a cheap knockoff of what's on the box. Mildly recommended (it has some minor problems independent of "not looking like the box render").


RANT

Packaging: Same style as Blue Star, but slightly bigger at 8.5" (22cm) tall, 7.5" (19cm) wide, and 3.5" (9cm) deep. Mine was missing the
instructions sheet, I used the contact form at agabyss.com and they sent me a scan a couple days later.


PIRATE BULLDOZER: BLUSTER GALE
Altmode: Bulldozer
Transformation Difficulty: 23 steps for Bluster Gale, 7 for Bluster Gatling Card Gear: Bluster Gatling
Motto: "Making things work and making things right aren't the same thing."

Part of Steel Hook's pirate crew, he was later bound to a card and I
guess became a productive citizen or something.

Packaging: Same dual blister style as Blue Star. His wrench gun is in
the lower right, and the card along the bottom. Oddly, the packaging shows
him with eyes in the visor, but the toy has just a blank visor. The sticker sheet does include eyes for him, though, in addition to the vehicle mode eye options.
The vehicle mode render on the box is a poor match for the actual toy. Before I got a scan of the instructions I wondered if maybe part of the
problem was that I'd missed a step or two (like I had for Blue Star), but
nope. The toy has the smokestacks pointed forwards while the render says backwards, the engine hood of the actual toy is basically just the robot
elbows while the render has a proper cover, and then there's the thing I knew
I hadn't gotten wrong...the render has a seamless dozer blade while the
actual toy has an obvious seam with a couple of big clips down the middle
since the blade splits in two for robot mode. There's also some paint apps present in the render that are missing in the toy, but one can hardly expect Hasbro to be unique in that problem.

Robot Mode: Bulky and covered in altmode kibble, the general theme seems to be construction worker or general contractor. The head has a sort of baseball cap look with ear protection, goggles, and a filter mask. Really,
no hint of a pirate theme here. The bulldozer blade halves are attached to
the undersides of the wrists and can't really be moved out of the way, which
is a bit irritating. The vehicle mode cabin just sort of hangs off the back like a rigid hoodie hood. While the instructions don't call this out as a separate robot mode thing, they do have it flipping over the head as the
first step in transformation...which ends up looking like he put on a hazmat helmet or something over his regular head. There's even a faceplate molded
in the back of the cabin that reminds me of Moltar (Space Ghost) or those
1930s robots made from boiler parts. Of course, if you do this, he literally ends up with eyes in the back of his head as well, thanks to the "eyes in the windshield" motif. Heh, just noticed molded panels on the backs of the boots with "WARNING" over an exclamation point in a triangle.
A bit over 6" (a little under 16cm) tall in a mix of "John Deere" green and yellow, black, white, and bright turqoise. Kind of a busy color scheme. Green plastic used for the outer parts of the head, torso, shoulders,
forearms, and the roof of the vehicle cabin/hazmat hood. The face-cover part of the hazmat hood is clear bright blue plastic. The respirator mask is
bright turquoise plastic, as are the dozer blades, the front panel of the pelvis, most of each boot, and the core of the non-card weapon. The barrel
of that weapon (or the grip when used as a wrench) and the other wrench parts are back plastic, which is used for the sides of the hood, the exhaust pipes
on the shoulders, the shoulder roots, some panels on the sides of the upper toros, elbows, fists, pelvis, hip joints, knees, lower shin panels, toes, heels, and vehicle treads on the outer faces of the boots. Interestingly,
the face behind the respirator mask is white plastic rather than painted
white, and white plastic is also used for the biceps and thighs. Bright
yellow plastic is used for the helmet crest/stripe on top, the hip pads
(molded like tool pouches), and kneepads. Overall, a surprising number of plastic colors.
Despite all the plastic colors, there's still plenty of paint apps. There's gloss black on the ear covers, the center of the respirator mask, the lenses of the goggles, pipes on top of the torso, the fronts of the
shoulders, details on top of the shoulders, some details on the center of the chest, much of the outer faces of the dozer blades, and most of the front of the hazmat hood faceplate. There's yellow paint on a lot of the torso front, details on the shoulder fronts, the border of the goggles, the vent in the center of the respirator mask, belt-like details on the front of the waist
(but not the back), straps on the thighs that connect to the hip pouches,
wrist cuffs, double-ended arrows on the forearms, stripes across the lower shins, and details on the tops of the toes.
Like Blue Star, his neck is a ball joint with the socket in the torso.
And like Blue Star's head, it pops out a little too easily. The waist is a soft-ratcheting swivel (45 degrees at a time). The shoulderpads are on soft- ratcheting swivels 15 degrees per click, while the arms lift up within the shoulderpads on hard ratchets, 10 degrees per click. There are smooth
swivels above the soft-ratcheting elbow hinges (15 degrees per click). No wrist articulation. The dozer blades are on smooth hinges with only a little wiggle room. The hips have 15 degree hard ratchet swivels, and out to the sides 10 degrees per hard ratchet click although the hip pads only let them move about 5 clicks. The knees are hinges with three stable positions 45 degrees apart, but bending them opens up a big gap. The transformation
hinges on the ankles allow a little forwards/backwards motion, but the tread pieces flanking the feet end up becoming the supports instead. The hazmat
hood is connected to the back by a smooth hinge, and its faceplate lifts up
on a smooth hinge. There's a slider atop the knee that lets the boots move slightly for transformation, but it also gives you choices for how the legs look. It's not actual articulation otherwise, though.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, as can the belly button screw socket (which is used to hold the weapon grip in vehicle mode). The chest has a pair of roughly 2mm diameter rods for the Bluster Gatling to clip onto. Still, more Transformer compatibility than I was expecting.
The wrench-gun looks like someone took a monkey wrench and strapped it into a gun housing. The black plastic parts are mostly molded as a wrench except the end of the handle is molded as a blaster barrel. The turqoise housing has a molded trigger guard and trigger, plus a long 5mm grip. The barrel is also 5mm in diameter, so Bluster can hold it either as a gun or as
an awkward wrench with a rod sticking out in front. The barrel is on a hinge to fold down 90 degrees, this is for vehicle mode storage (the barrel goes
into the belly button socket, and the pelvis panel folds down to reveal a gap the gun grip can rest in). There's round bits on the housing that are
painted yellow. Of course, on the animation model shown on the box, there's also extensive green paint on the core of the gun, and turquoise paint on the adjustment part of the wrench.

Card Gear: The Bluster Gatling. Same basic design and card front as
with Blue Star, but a bit thicker at 17mm. The card front is green plastic, but not the same green as on the main toy, it's a slightly warmer shade. The gear itself is made entirely of clear amber plastic with some silver and metallic blue paint.
It folds up into a chestplate with rotary cannons on struts that rise
from the sides. The cannon barrels and the center of the chestplate are painted silver. Lots of metallic bluye paint on the front of the right and left chest and a bit under the center. The ammo boxes sticking out behind
the rotary cannons are painted metallic blue on their outer faces, but not
the inner hollows. It attaches to the chest via those 2mm rod tabs, and technically can be attached in vehicle mode if you leave the wrench gun off.
If you just fold up the center of the chestplate, it looks sort of like
a hovertank.

Transformation: Put up the hood. Then fold the arms back on transformation struts and rotate them so the fronts face down. Move the forearms so that the dozer blade halves can connect, and fold the smokestacks up. The warning panels on the backs of the boots open up so that the feet
can fold up inside the shins. Rotate the treads 180 degrees (soft-ratcheting swivels), snap the boots together, and then bend the hips so that the arms
end up on top of the boots. The dozer blades snap into the fronts of the tread, and then a little massaging to get the knee sliders in the right place and everything else aligned. Unfortunately, as near as I can tell, the knee sliders five you two options: big gap between the shoulders and the boots, or
a chassis that tilts uphill. The gap version matches the instructions and
the box render, for what it's worth. Finally, pull down the pelvis front
panel and attach the folded up wrench gun so it looks like it's meant to
scrape out a furrow behind the vehicle.
Going back to robot mode, I needed to use a knife to get the feet out of the shins and the toes and heels folded back out, things are just too
smooth. With a little more work on a later try I managed to get just enough purchase to pull a toe out, and then that was the handle to get the rest of
the foot out.

Vehicle Mode: Well, it's a bulldozer with its smokestacks pointed
forwards and the front hood being basically just exposed robot elbows. The
top of the chassis is mostly green and yellow in a likely intentional John Deere reference, while the underbody is turquoise and black. The windshield eyes have a somewhat angry expression to them.
Not counting the weapon sticking out the back, it's just under 5" (about 12cm) long, while the weapon in back brings the total length to 6" (15cm).
The front window of the driver's cab is clear bright blue plastic attached in front of the black plastic of the rest of the cab sides. That's really the only plastic not mentioned in robot mode. The side windows of the cab are painted a slightly desaturated sky blue, the visor of the windshield is
painted gloss black to look like angry eyebrows, and the iris rings of the
eyes in the windshield are painted white and also molded on the outer face so
a sticker might not do well there. In the render, the lights molded on top
of the cab are clear blue, but they're just unpainted green plastic on the
toy. There's no paint at all on the treads, but the upper bit of the dozer blade is painted gloss black.
No wheels, just little nubs under the treads in the place of tiny
wheels, so it can sort of slide along. The dozer blade has no meaningful
range of motion, and there's no other articulation of note. If you want to paint the smokestacks, by the way, you'll need to disassemble the shoulders,
at which point it's worth seeing if the smokestacks can be swapped so they point backwards in this mode.

Overall: As with Blue Star, one should make some allowances for being an early design by this team. Plus, it looks like they were handed an animation design that cheated a lot, and would've needed several extra joints and a partsformer panel or two to be animation-accurate in both modes. The card
gear is decent, though.


Dave Van Domelen, should get back to reviewing some Transformers for a
bit before doing more Metal Cardbots.


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