The Human Alliance subline has been mostly a good thing. It has provided some really great larger scale toys of the movie characters. It wasn’t until Dark of the Moon that they decided to branch out with it and release a line of Basic scale toys that were also nominally triple-changers.
I say nominally because of nonsense like this.
It’s a hoverbike? With a chainsaw? Why? Why is it a hoverbike with a chainsaw? What possible strategic or tactical advantage could that have? So, strike one for Icepick.
Huh. Strike two. His face (yes, there is something of a face under that purple translucent mask) being hidden completely on that hockey goalie helmeted head with a mostly black and white body, he is just completely lacking in personality. The awkward angle of his elbows don’t help matters. So what’s it gonna be? Strike three?
Nope. Looks like he pulls out a win with his alt mode. Not that I have any particular attachment to snowmobiles but I really like this mode for this guy for some reason. Now, much like most of the other humans in the Human Alliance line, “Sergeant Chaos” (yes, Sgt. Chaos. I don’t know, maybe he escaped from the G.I. Joe cast?) in all his squishy human-ness is destined for the bottom of a box somewhere. Here he is on the left, next to “Master Disaster”, the… human(?) in Human Alliance Drag Strip.
There is no reference to Master Disaster being dead, so I can’t quite explain his ghostly translucence. Or for that matter why his outfit has Cyberglyphs written on it. Meh, box for him too. You know who is not going in a box even when the Dark of the Moon stuff is cleared to make way for upcoming lines? This guy.
I don’t care how many yawnfests with great alt modes like Icepick I have to go through if the line produces one great ‘Con like this. Obviously an homage to the original G1 Drag Strip, he both follows and deviates from the movie aesthetic. This gives him a very menacing robot mode despite being covered in bright yellow. He also borrows a little from Animated Drag Strip’s playbook by using blades for weapons.
He has traded G1 Drag Strip’s six wheeled racer design for a more traditional Formula-style racer, which has an inexplicably elaborate phoenix design on the hood area and again on the engine cowl.
Proving that he isn’t just going to leave it with a sinister robot mode and wonderful homage of an alt mode, he also shows up the rest of the Human Alliance Triple Changers by transforming into a shield for use by other Transformers.
Maybe if Megatron had a huge shield, he would have fared better in the movie...
Awesome G1 homage with just enough movie influences to keep him interesting and an actually useful third mode that reminds me a lot of the Armada Skyboom shield. This oddity of a sub-subline, just like the oddity that was the Power Core Combiners line, has produced at least one wonderous gem.
#1 by flywheels (@flywheels) on March 5, 2012 - 9:15 pm
Drag Strip was by far the best Human Alliance figure of the bunch.