I may be a jaded ol' Transformers fan, but warms even my cold heart to see Hasbro look at their Studio Series stuff and think, okay, we're taking great care to faithfully bring these live-action movie designs to action figures, so what if we extended that to other Transformers?  I mean, it's the sort of thing I'd assume I'd roll my eyes at -- and I do, at first, from a distance, but once in-hand it's hard to argue with the results?  

Maybe the important part is who I got my hands on first.  Scourge is pretty different from your usual early-years Transformers design.  His development process was animation design first, then toy, then new upgraded animation design based on that toy.  Scourge stands apart being this... muscular bearded vampire guy who transforms into a bar of soap.  There's always been a lot of compromise between those two modes, since they're largely incompatible.  But in Studio Series, its mission statement seems to be to try VERY VERY HARD to make it work, moreso than usual.  

This means he's got a nigh-perfect screen-accurate robot mode.  It feels like they started from that, made sure it wasn't compromised, and then built a vehicle mode around it.  Literally.  Scourge essentially has to be a shellformer, if you're doing any kind of accurate Scourge.  And he has big cape wings, which really says "Hey, I fold inside myself."  So, yeah, lean into that.  

Most of his transformation is getting his vehicle mode folded into his cape wings.  Usually Hasbro paints the wing shapes on the inside of the spaceship hull and calls it a day, but they tried to get the actual shape approximated as best as possible, here.  And I appreciate it.

I also appreciate the pink fingernail claws.  I feel like those are an important Scourge visual element that's not always remembered.  And there's this trapezoid on the front of his chest that's painted a slightly different blue than the plastic underneath.  It doesn't show at all in photography, so it's something you can only appreciate in person.  It's a paint operation you'd expect to be left out in the budget because it's an obvious thing to cut if you gotta, but it really adds some great color depth in person.  

Finally, there's no point in doing a Scourge toy if you can't have his head pop out of the top of the spaceship soap so he can fly around staring daggers at things.  And this toy can!  So we're all up in this.  

Studio Series '86 Scourge is running on all Scourge cylinders.  Even if he's not your particular kink, you have to respect the dedication to the kink.  They set out to make mothereffin' Scourge and by God they friggin' did.  

He's a very attractive rich milky blue, too. 

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.

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.

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.