If there's anything we know about Transformer toys since Studio Series and War for Cybertron started, it's that robot height in animation is king.  Pull out those scale charts!  We're adherin' to them no matter what, unless you're Rattrap!  Did you think some characters were the same height?  Well, they weren't!  Were they actually always drawn the same height except for one two-second scene where one of them was taller?  Well, guess what?  That was actually the one time somebody paid attention the scale chart!  And that's what we're copyin'!  

So, hey, Kingdom Cyclonus.  You're tall.  We know we're getting a Galvatron from this line, and we haven't seen him yet and we don't know how big he is, but I wouldn't be surprised if Galvatron were shorter than this Cyclonus.  It'd match the scale chart.  Because Cyclonus is a big boy.  Galvatron pilots him in jet mode!  Ultra Magnus is his most common opponent in the cartoon!  He's just large.  

And, yeah, usually he's just drawn the same size as his often-partner Scourge, who's just Starscream-sized.  But on scale charts (and when he's countering Ultra Magnus) he's huge.

Guess Bombshell had a glo-up.

Since Kingdom Cyclonus is basically just a large version of the animation model sheet, his toy kind of feels like an oversized knockoff in your hands.  As if your eyes are cheating you.  It should be smaller!  But it is not.  And someone scaled it up, and there was no increase in sculpting detail, and it's just... large.  That, and also there's a budget spectrum for toys with one end labeled "SIZE" and the other "COMPLEXITY" and Cyclonus is at the SIZE end.  He's big, and so he will have less going on.  Remember how I mentioned that his wavemate Optimus Primal is relatively tiny and has a lot of flip-out stuff?  Same deal, but opposite.  

Also remember how I mentioned I scraped the paint off of one of Optimus Primal's thighs?  Well, my Cyclonus came with tiny little paint scrapes on his thighs.  (It's purple plastic under there.)  And the transformation involves.... shoving those surfaces just barely past the insides of his shins.  I have not yet actually scraped any paint off myself, but Optimus Primal gave me a complex.  This part of Cyclonus's transformation is not fun.  

The fun part of his transformation is telescoping like three or four layers of nosecone out of his torso.  He's a nesting doll in there.  

One thing I've noticed is that the panels that fold down on either side of the cockpit in jet mode don't... actually rest snug where they should?  They just kind of flare out a bit?  I checked images of other folks' Cyclonuses, and all others seem to have the same issue, and the official renders seem to suggest it's supposed to cling snugly instead.  I dunno.  

It's a big Cyclonus!

While I enjoyed the absurdity of Combiner Wars Cyclonus being a combiner torso for a giant Galvatron robot, there were a few things I disliked about the execution.  He was made by heavily resculpting Silverbolt, meaning the toy works from a foundation of a pretty stiff-looking robot.  Additionally, his reddish-purple -- nay, magenta -- color turned me off a little.  But he was rightfully huge enough to be Cyclonus, particularly for my More Than Meets The Eye shelf, and so I ignored these perceived flaws.

Unite Warriors Cyclonus fixes one of these problems!  TakaraTomy's extravagant redeco of that toy tosses out the magenta and returns to a more desaturated yet metallic lavender.  Indeed, TakaraTomy does their best to duplicate the colors Cyclonus has in the cartoon, and so their Cyclonus has a buttload of paint.  What's not paint is sparkly-fleck metallic plastic, and so he's kind of surprisingly pretty.  He's not exactly More Than Meets The Eye colors, but this is closer in many more ways than it departs.  

And what was already a great spaceship mode is moreso now, thanks to the hue shift and extra paint detail.  You wanna fly him around and make wooosh noises rather than use him to calibrate your CGA monitor.

The deco on the parts of Cyclonus that become the combiner Galvatron super robot guy is interesting to me as well, but I'll save talk of that for a later blogpost.  

Combiner Wars Cyclonus combines with any four Combiner Wars limbs and Viper to form Galvatronus!  Galvatronus's chest and head are part of the "reshelling" that Cyclonus got when he was retooled from Silverbolt.  And, yeah, this is pretty weird.  But it's a good weird.  I like good weird.  It's just something nobody expected, going into this Combiner Wars subline, that, y'know, we'd get a Cyclonus torso who'd combine with five other guys to form a Galvatron super robot.

According to the packaging bio, Galvatronus's deal is he uses mind control to steal the limbs from other combiners, which is awesome.  It also doesn't stop anyone on message boards from asking if he's going to get "real" dedicated limbs every five minutes.  C'mon, you guys.  He steals other people's limbs.  It's his deal.  Figure this one out.

Cyclonus and Galvatronus are not going to be involved in the Combiner Wars fiction in the IDW comics, which is something that made me sad when we learned it a while ago.  Sure, it'd make no sense -- why would Cyclonus transform into Galvatron?  The two are definitely not friends in IDW, in contrast to the syncophantic Smithers/Burns relationship the two have in the original cartoon which this toy reflects.  Additionally, IDW Galvatron is specifically against combiners, and spent some time in his distant past trying to genocide any iteration of them.

But that'd actually be pretty cool, storywise, don't you think?  You have this Galvatron guy who's super against combining because he thinks they're an ethical contamination of his species, and you also have this Enigma of Combination artifact that basically kablamfs Transformers into being combiners if you shine it at them.  It'd be like that Bloom County storyline with Oliver Wendell Jones and his Electro-Photo Pigment-izer.  And then, you know, it'd involve Cyclonus some how.  Two people who hate each other being kablamfed into being a combiner together, at least one of whom hates combiners.  That's just got story karma written all over it.

Anyway.

Galvatronus is weird and awesome.

Sure, I dig my new Aerialbots, Stunticons, and Protectobots, but what's really kept me engaged in Combiner Wars is the promise of guys who were never previously combiner guys now being combiner guys.  Optimus Prime doesn't really fulfill that promise, because Optimus Primes combine kind of frequently, but when we get to stuff like Combiner Wars Cyclonus, that's when I pay attention.  A Cyclonus that's now a combiner torso, oh, and also his combined mode is Galvatronus, a Galvatron super robot.  It's a nice melding of old with new.  I will take hundreds more like this, please.

(I will talk more about Galvatronus in a later blog post.)

Cyclonus is a "reshelling" of Combiner Wars Silverbolt, meaning large amounts of him are retooled.  He's got a new robot chest and head, an entirely new jet mode, and a new super robot combiner head.  Unfortunately, this means that, like Silverbolt, he transforms by wadding up his robot parts underneath his jet mode and hoping you don't notice.  On the plus side, it's a pretty good jet mode if viewed from the top.  It's certainly a better-looking jet than the old Universe toy from 2008, which was roughly 50% Cyclonus's bulbous calves, but folks always overlooked how crummy that vehicle mode was because of how perfect his robot mode was.  

This toy trades in that perfect robot mode for a merely acceptable robot mode in service of a better jet mode.   Silverbolt/Cyclonus in robot mode is kind of stiff.  He's got the usual joints, but he doesn't really look natural in any pose that isn't standing.  I also prefer the more desaturated indigo of the various versions of that 2008 Cyclonus to the more magenta-like purple of the 2015 Cyclonus.  I do, however, prefer the larger size of the newer Cyclonus.  Cyclonus is a tall guy!  A Deluxe Class toy isn't nearly enough height for him.  Voyager Class is better.  

An interesting alteration to Cyclonus's transformation, versus Silverbolt's, is that Cyclonus now has two tiny removable 5mm-pegged tailfins.  They wanted Cyclonus to have those little wings on his arms like Cyclonus tends to, but his transformation prevents him from being able to keep them on his arms, and so these new pieces were made.  You unplug them from his forearms in robot mode and then re-peg them back into his fistholes when he's in jet mode.  It's not the most elegant solution, but it's thoughtful all the same.  

There's just something about the face that reminds me more of the earlier Floro Dery design for Cyclonus before he got redesigned and homogeonized like everyone else for the 1986 animated movie.  I think it's the lips.  I think I would have preferred something that took more from more recent interpretations of the character, like in *everyone else repeats along with me, because I am so predictable* More Than Meets The Eye.

This past year, it seems Hasbro's been doing its darnedest to do mainline retail versions of guys from the BotCon 2009 set.  I talked about Kup a few days ago, there's a Banzaitron in stores (which I didn't buy because I preferred the BotCon version), and now here's Generations Scourge.   There's also Dirge, Thrust, and (soon) Thundercracker in stores, which replaces a chunk of the BotCon 2007 set, but that stings a lot less, 'cuz, hey, I've had those for nearly five years by now.  It hurts more when BotCon toys get replaced in what feels like a few months.

But hey, that's why BotCon should probably stay away from popular guys who are undoubtedly going to get new toys at some point, like Kup and Scourge, and why BotCon 2010's set is more valuable to me personally.  Hasbro's probably not chomping at the bit to make Rapido or G2 Breakdown so much.

That said, I'm pretty okay with getting a new Scourge.  I never thought BotCon 2009's Scourge, which was Cybertron Sideways with a new head, worked well as him.  He was a space jet, but beyond that the similarities weren't really there.  It did help that BotCon also offered a set of Sweeps that year, which helped the illusion that this toy was Scourge, via sheer number, and I figger I'll keep using those Sweep toys even with my new Scourge that doesn't match.  Hey, they're the only real, actual Sweeps toys!  I mean, you COULD buy multiple Scourges, but...

Despite being an entirely new toy designed to be Scourge from the start, Generations Scourge transforms into a very similar altmode to BotCon Scourge, albeit a more real-world approach than alien.  Either altmode is pretty different from the original Scourge's altmode, which was a flying bathtub.  I'll allow it.  The most important thing, I maintain, about this new altmode, is its undocumented feature.  In the original cartoon, Scourge could stick his head up out of the back of his flying bathtub form, an artifact of his preliminary design.  Well, dude, look who can really do that now?  And no, it's not just an accident.  His head pulls up an extra notch not needed for the transformation to robot mode, undoubtedly just to recreate this oddity. Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

There are a few annoyances with the transformation to robot mode.  Firstly, his wings like to pop off when you try to get them into the proper positioning.  There's a lot of friction back there with the parts surrounding his wings.  They're also kind of a bitch to put back on, since there's not much room given for the hinge to slip back into the socket.  The other annoyance is due to an opposite problem -- it's hard to get his feet pulled out of his legs.  There's no groove to get leverage, so you kind of have to try to wiggle them back and forth for a few minutes, hoping something gives.

Another undocumented feature from the instructions is that you can open his wings to create a more-accurate "caped" appearance.  Opening the wings also gives you a place to store his two guns in vehicle mode, which combine into a bigger gun via a C joint.  The combined gun looks a lot like Scourge's 1986 Targetmaster parter, Fracas, but it does not transform into him.  (Though since Universe Cyclonus's Targetmaster partner is basically Fracas already, and I have an extra, I can remedy Scourge's Nebulan-impairment pretty easily.)  The gun on Scourge's head is also C joint compatible so you can clip one of his handheld weapons onto it.

Overall, this Scourge is a much better companion for Universe Cyclonus than the BotCon version, which served as a helpful stopgap in the meantime.  I prefer the facial hair on my Transformers to be painted, after all, so you can see it better.

If you're fixing for a Scourge of  your own, TFSource has both the American and Japanese versions available for preorder.

Happy New Year!  I'm in Miami.

No sooner than I get my "Challenge at Cybertron" set than I find out that it's coming over here as "Battle in Space," minus Galvatron.  Normally, hey, who cares, but instead of Galvatron, there's an exclusive-friggin' comic book.  An exclusive-friggin' comic book that retroactively places Lugnut at the Battle of Autobot City during the animated 1986 Transformers film.  Aw, no.  I neeed that.

And so I have some nigh-identical figures.  The only differences are Rodimus and Cyclonus now have Rub Signs instead of tampographed symbols.  Which is actually preferable to me.  I'll ditch the old tampographed ones on eBay and keep the Rub Signed versions.  Also, woo, comic.  And woo, Matrix?  There's a die-cast Matrix of Leadership in here that no one can hold.  Well, no Transformer in this set, anyway.

Certain rulers of Apokolips can hold it.

Unicron may not fit into my lighting studio, but the lighting ain't so bad on top of our white table against our white wall at about... noon.  With fill-in lights.  And heavy use of Photoshop.

So, hooray!  I was sad because the normal-room-light photos didn't give you a good appraisal of his colors.  Now to transform this guy so I have photos for TFwiki.

Joining Rodimus in the "Challenge at Cybertron" set is Cyclonus!  Like Rodimus, he's supposed to be in colors that closely approximate his appearance in the television show, regardless of taste.  As a result, he doesn't actually look all that bad.  He's a bit too much of the same value, meaning he's gonna look like he's almost all the same color to some colorblind people, but he's not an assault on the retinas like Takara's attempt at the same thing.

The original American Universe Cyclonus (in the back of the photos) tried to spice things up by using a darker purple, a medium red, and some light gray.  It better-balanced these colors across the body by breaking up the torso into light gray and dark purple instead of keeping the torso entirely purple.  This bothered some people.  Those people are in luck 'cuz the "Challenge at Cybertron" version keeps the torso all purple.  And it decorates the drab purple with some more saturated purple that you kind of have to squint to see in nonoptimum lighting.  Again, most of his colors are all the same value.

And he comes with Nightstick again, who looks more like Nightstick since he now has silver legs.

I think I'm going to keep boy my Cyclonuses.  This new one can be Cyclonus proper, and the old Universe one can be Cyclonus's Armada.  Why him and not the original?  He looks more like he's in Skywarp's colors, particularly with the gray stripes running down his torso.  And, y'know, Skywarp became Cyclonus's Armada. So that works out!

Of course, old-Nightstick is becoming Krunix. Hell, that Nightstick was always Krunix to me.  Basically, it's nice to now have a Nightstick.

Geez, Cyclonus, you sure are a whole lotta purple.

lol it is me, Ravage!!!!  Cliffjumper is from a universe like yours and he says its backwards from ours??? like the decepticons are evil and the autobots are the good guys??? wts??

that is so weird

n e way, i can has trip in your universe for a bit??? yes??????  hooray!!!!

look at me!!! i am waving!!!! <3  i will be waving at you all week!!! and on the weekend too!!! i will see you on saturday and sunday and maybe on sunday two times!!!

hey look at my pal cyclonus.  huh well maybe he's not my pal because he totally shot up my boss!!!!  we'll see...

nibbles and scratches!!!!  gtg