Yo, if you've got any familiarity with the original Grapple toy, dang is EarthRise Grapple gonna feel like some dejavu!   In ways more than other retreads, he feels solidly like "this 1980s guy but with joints."  He transforms basically identically, but now there's knees.  And because Grapple's cartoon model was designed in 1985, he's gonna look pretty much just like his original toy, too!  Due to Circumstances, there is not a lot new here.

And generally, with Stege/EarthRise stuff, things just work so dang well -- executed so simply and flawlessly -- that even though there's (again) that feeling of dejavu, it's all cool!  ... However, Grapple has a big problem.

See, he's got some pegs at the back of his head/crane arm that plug into the back of the vehicle/his feet while transforming into crane mode.  But the connections between the pegs and the crane arm are kind of Not Enough and so there's a chance of plugging them into the pegholes for the first time and then ... them tearing off inside the pegholes when you try to untransform him.  Mine has not done this, but the problem was already reported and I was careful and it was still... an... ordeal to get them out.  Just, like, pulling on them as straight and outward as I could, very slowly.  Some folks sand the pegs or the peghole down, some folks just snip the pegs in half.  But this is still a pretty serious oopsie-doodle!  The default of "Stege/EarthRise is boringly G1 but executed really well so it's hard to be mad" has been poked in the eye by this feller.  

*DISTRAUGHT SHRUG*

I painted the helmet on my Grapple black.  The all yellow head look from the cartoon IS NOT GOOD.  I fixed it.  

Also I had to shave down the pegs on mine as a precaution.  

One of those things I shouldn't be expected to do with my stuff.  

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Here's "Grappel" with some Reprolabels on him.  I used most of them but not all of them, mostly leaving off the faction symbols since I prefer the ambiguity of the Rub Sign.  I also left off the tummy grill sticker since I thought the existing painted deco was fine, plus a few other things.  Some of the silver stickers on the side of the vehicle mode covered some horizontal grating lines, but I was able to keep that detail by running over it with a toothpick.

And finally, I finished the silver paint on the wrists with a silver Sharpie.  The factory paint only covers half of them, and I always thought that looked kind of off.

Some pictures, I guess.

This is the last of my six new guys from my Giant Box Of Awesomeness.  He was the only retool of a toy I already had of the bunch, so of course he was the least interesting to talk about, and that's why he's bringing up the rear.  His name...

...is Solar Storm Grappel.

Yes, that's right.  "Grappel."  Misspelled for some reason.  It can't be for trademark purposes, since, well, trademark doesn't really work that way.  Hasbro couldn't sell a toy named "Batmanne."  And usually the name prefixes like "Solar Storm" are appended onto common nouns that are hard for Hasbro to defend ownership of, like with "Special Ops Jazz" or "Turbo Tracks."  But "Grappel" isn't a word, much less a common one.  Except maybe, I guess, amongst drunken people.

So I assume this was the worst kind of typo.  Even if it wasn't, it's still horrible.

But, at least, this means I can start calling the guy who used to be simply "Grapple" the distinguished name of "Grah-PELL."  Y'know, pronounced all French-like or something.  Like "GRA-pell" was his commoner name and now that he's a famous arteeeest, he's known in the galleries as "Grahh-PELLLLLL."   This amuses me.

Grahpell is an extensive retool of Inferno, the fire truck.  They shared a toy back in 1985, and they do so again in 2011.  And by extensive, I mean they changed wayyy more than the water cannon, which would have been sufficient.  Grahpell has a new crane hook arm, obviously, since a crane is what he's supposed to be, but he also has a new head based on the original cartoon's character model for him.  He also has new forearms, new hands, and new feet.  The new hands are sculpted into an open position, but not the kind that still allows for him to hold 5mm peg weapons.  No, they're just open to look pretty.  They don't rotate at the wrist, either.  The new forearms do away with the previous version of the mold's ability to rotate the vehicle kibble higher up onto the arm and out of the way of the hands.  It's all one solid piece here.

The crane hook arm can extend in either mode, but it's kind of unwieldy in robot mode.  Since the wrists don't rotate, it always has to be slung under his arm, meaning the crane hook arm's hook has to always be hanging, uh, upwards, unless you want his arm to look broken.

A plus for this version of the toy is that it holds together much better in vehicle mode than either of the older versions I have.  The arm panels lock into his legs more securely.   This might be because of the loss of rotating arm panels or it might be plain ol' plastic tolerances, who knows.

And finally, because Grahpell's not gonna be left out, the little rungs on the tops of his shoulders have been widened so that they can interact with the whole C joint clip system that all the other current toys are a part of.  This, my friends, is sweet ass.