I guess I should talk about "Rust In Peace Cliffjumper," another of SDCC's Transformers exclusives.  RIP Cliffjumper (seen on the right) is a toy of when Cliffjumper was a Dark Energon zombie, so of course I was interested in it.  Because, you know, Transformer zombie.  (Zombies actually have a pretty storied history in Transformers, but we don't get many toys of them.)

RIP Cliffjumper is a retool of the "First Edition" Cliffjumper, which didn't get sold here in America as planned (but it will later this year).   I've been told by everyone who got one that it was amazingly awesome, so maybe that put my expectations a little high, but I was kind of disappointed in the toy.  While the Cliffjumper we got was pretty simple (if full of fake kibble), FE Cliffjumper's mold can be pretty frustrating to me.  Getting him into car mode was a chore.  Not fun.  I mean, it's nice that all his car parts actually become the correct corresponding robot parts, but he kind of cheesed me off.

On the other hand, zombie.  So even if this toy was the devil, he's still better than the more-fun-to-transform non-zombie one.

And  he came inside a package that looked like his own head, and the head-package comes inside a box that looks like his chest.  He's a Cliffjumper turducken.

The second Transformers Collectors' Club exclusive this year was Shattered Glass Drift.  I was not expecting him to sell out nearly as fast as Runabout, but he sure did.  I mean, he's Drift, who most folks seem to hate, and he's Shattered Glass, which is kind of a marginalized universe.  Folks like their a) G1 characters who they b) remember from their childhoods, and Drift was neither of those things.  Yet he went in a couple of days.

It's possible it's because his toy kicks that much ass.  It really does.  Despite your feelings on the character, the toy itself is amazing.  It has all these swords and they can stow everywhere and everything about it feels top notch.  SG Drift even comes with extra weapons, the pair of smaller guns that his retool, Blurr, came with.  They can't fit in the hip storage in the Drift version of the mold, but there they are just the same.

(Some Drifts were packed with two of the same gun rather than one of the "right" guns and one of the "left" guns.  It doesn't really matter if you have a mismatched pair since it's not the Blurr version of the mold, 'cuz there's no large gun for them to attach to and no way to store them, but that's a problem some folks have noticed.  I got a correct set of small guns.)

Drift's colors are striking, but I think I'd find them more striking if he didn't arrive in the same shipment as Runabout, who's also red and black.  Red and black are pretty safe colors to use.  I wish they'd been a little more bold with them.

I also wish they'd been a little less weird with the symbol they put on his hood.  Apparently it's a character that can mean "decided," in that "your fate is already decided," in that "he has already killed you."  They only arrived at this character after wanting to put a character that means "a doom" on his hood, but that didn't exist, and so apparently "decided" was the closest match?  I don't know.  It's just... I dunno.

He also has Arashikage stripes on each of his swords.  You know.  Snake-Eyes stuff.  Huh.

But what really attracts me to him is his function.  I couldn't care less if he's supposed to be "Transformers Deadpool" or not.  I just like that his job is hunting down folks who cross universes.  If you've been paying attention to this blog for any amount of time, you know I'm big into Transformers multiversal stuff.  And so I imagine he's probably out there looking for Cliffjumper, who's a G1 guy stuck in the Shattered Glass universe.  And probably also now SG Ravage, who we know because of certain comics drawn by certain people has been to a Marvel Comics universe, is on his list.  And judging by this year's BotCon box set theme, imminently a buttload of other folks as well!

Yay, more guys for SG Ravage to play with.  And/or avoid being assassinated by.

First of all, Prime "Robots in Disguise" deluxes are hitting Targets.  Plug your zip code into this link to see if there are any in your area.  You'll probably have to ask them to get some out of the back.  That's what Graham and I did this morning, anyway.

There's very little chance the "First Edition" Cliffjumper's gonna make his way into American stores any time soon, if ever, and there's an even remoter chance of the later-wave totally awesome zombie version, so I decided to get the "RID" version today.  I don't care that much about Cliffjumper, so I'll take the cheapest option when it comes to him.  We're talking a cool $13 instead of the $30-40 it'd cost to import him.

I was more enamored with the "First Edition" mold, which is different from this one.  FE Cliffjumper had a completely different transformation that resulted in less fake vehicle mode parts in robot mode.   The car roof on his chest actually became the car's roof.  The rear bumpers on his shoulders actually became the car's rear bumpers.  That's the sort of thing I generally prefer.  Cliffjumper, on the other hand, takes a different approach.  The car's roof folds up on Cliffjumper's back and the car's rear bumpers become his ankles.  Meanwhile, there's a fake sculpted car roof chest and fake sculpted car bumper shoulders.   There's even fake sculpted wheels on the backs of his thighs, even though his four real wheels are plainly visible.

I don't think there's any obvious car kibble in his robot mode's character model that becomes actual car parts.  There's some real car parts in robot mode, of course, since it can't aaaalll pile onto his back, but none of that stuff exists on the cartoon's character model.

That said, it's not a bad toy.  There's a lot of twists and turns, but none of them make me want to murder anyone, and it's surprisingly unfrustating and expedient to get him from robot mode back into car mode.  It's almost kind of fun, really.  That makes up for a lot.  Other than his odd elbows, he's fun to pose in robot mode, as well.

He is, however, pretty tiny by Deluxe Class standards.  Of all of the Prime deluxes I have so far, he's the shortest.  That may have to do with the large axe he comes with, I dunno.  (The axe can plug into his car roof or the side of his car as a cannon.)  It's a little unfortunate because Cliffjumper's partner was Arcee, who's the second-tallest Deluxe (after Starscream).  And so Arcee is taller than him by a large margin.  These are definitely not their relative heights on the cartoon.

To sum up, if you don't care about fake kibble or relative scale, he's a fantastic toy.  I'm pleasantly surprised by him.