Today's Scourge is a lot like yesterday's Blurr in several ways:

1. Guy I already had a good Generations toy of.
2. Hasbro deco was so bland that I basically shrugged off the idea of buying the toy entirely.
3. Then TakaraTomy was all "hey look, colors" and I was then all "oh hey there"
4. Extra head transformation step where you pull up the forehead thingy.  

I guess #4 seems out of theme for that emotional journey of consumerism, but it's true, both Blurr and Scourge, out of the entire rest of the line so far, have that one forehead-yanky thing in common.

But seriously, Hasbro, what the what.  Why is your Scourge robot entirely blue.  Sure, his altmode kibble is a very light teal, but other than that stuff which in robot mode is shoved all in the back, you've got a solid blue robot from head to toe.  Like, not even his thighs or fists or feet are a different color.  And with that slightly waxy blue his plastic is molded in, he looks like someone carved him out of a bath bomb.  

Anyway, TakaraTomy broke his deco up with some gray and he looks presentable.  The blue of their toy is surprisingly attractive.  It's this milky blue that I just want to touch or maybe eat.  Other than adding some parts to his robot mode that are not blue, my favorite part about this deco on the toy is that the arms of the little head dude aren't the same blue as the rest of Scourge's face.  This creates negative space behind Scourge's head, bringing out the actual shape of Scourge's head, which is not a block but a skinny trapezoid.  It makes him look a tangible percentage more like Scourge.

Unlike the previous Generations version of Scourge, this new toy is not a real-ish Earth vehicle, but something much closer to Scourge's original 1986 altmode, which was... a flying space bar of soap?  I dunno.  Some kind of space boat.  The transformation to robot mode isn't very involved, as half the job is just unfolding his hull into his robot mode wings.  Surprise, there's a robot torso and arms under there!  The legs manage some real transformation, requiring you to pull them both down from the torso on a slider, flip them open, reconfigure them, and then push the legs back up on the slider into place.  

Of course, Scourge's head transforms into a little dude, and that dude can fit into the windowed canopy of the vehicle mode or into Scourge's double-barreled weapon.  

An undocumented feature of this toy, one that is carried over from the previous Scourge toy, is that you can stick Scourge's head up on the back of his altmode so that he's a flying soap ship with a head on top.  Believe it or not, this ridiculous configuration is part of the early model sheets, and it's goofy and so I heart it.  Mind, the previous toy achieved this through a transformation step, while on this guy you just plug the head into the 5mm port that remains when you remove the vehicle's weapon.  

I keep thinking, hey, I should get some of the Hasbro Scourges to be my TakaraTomy Scourge's Sweeps, but whenever I see the domestic toy at Target, I remember how much I dislike its deco.  Like, why am I buying MORE of the one I thought was unattractive enough to skip entirely in the first place, just to troopbuild?  Man.  When I'm unwilling to get more toys, you know something's going wrong.  

Overall, Scourge is a pretty conventional Deluxe-sized toy.  Not as fun to play with or to transform as Blurr, but not terrible.  I think my favorite attribute of his is his milky blue.  It's just a great blue.  I'll try not to lick it.