Okay, so my Dumbing of Age buffer is at 8 months and 8 days today, a lifetime best, so maybe I have a moment to blather on about a new toy I got today.  Usually I expend all my new toy thoughts on Twitter and then don't have much of a reason to repeat them here in paragraph form!  And paragraph form is dumb.  If I liked long-form prose, I wouldn't be doing a daily comic strip.  

So here's Core Class Studio Series '86 Steeljaw.  The Transformers team introduced Core Class to Studio Series just long enough to get like two cassettes out of it (and a few Bumblebee Movie cubes) and then murder Studio Series Core Class in its crib.  But one of the last gasps seems to be Steeljaw!  

People really don't seem to like Steeljaw.  I think people expect.... a lot out of a toy that can't be any larger than your thumb.  Look, it's gotta fit into Blaster's chest compartment, even if barely.  That's kind of a built-in limitation.  You're not gonna get a great cat out of that.  Remember Stege Ravage?  A terrible cat.  As far as Cats In This Scale go, Steeljaw wins the Best Cat race by thirty billion miles.  

And yeah, that's even without adding the cat spine/wing attachment they give you to complete Steeljaw's cat mode.  Stege Ravage didn't have a tail, and he barely had a spine, and he didn't require wings, and measured up against an accessoryless Steeljaw he falls short.  Accessoryless Steeljaw doesn't have a tail, doesn't have wings, but he still looks like a competent, functioning three-dimensional cat, which is something Stege Ravage never really managed.

So if you hate adding parts onto a tape guy to complete it -- first of all, how are you even still here in Transformers -- you don't actually have to add it on.  It's as good as if not better than all the other tape guys without it.  But for those who want the wings and tail, it's there to complete the look.

Also there's a giant speaker accessory that's larger than Steeljaw himself, and it attaches to Steeljaw, sure (using an adapter that replaces the cat spine/wing attachment), but really it's to attach to Blaster's hand because he had that accessory in some episode.  Well, he had two of them, one on each hand.  Guess you gotta buy another Steeljaw.

Core Class toys are only budgeted three molds, and Steeljaw's all kind of have to be some manner of yellow or gold, so accessories are basically limited to things that are those colors.  (Steeljaw's three plastics are yellow ABS, yellow unpaintable PA/nylon, and gold unpaintable PA/nylon, btw.  That's why only one of his tape spools is painted -- one of them's on the unpaintable nylon half of his tape mode.)

Anyway he's a tiny little kitty.  Hasbro needs to redo Ravage.