Transformers Bumblebee Cyberverse Adventures: Dinobot Sludge

Cyberverse is a series that I've not really followed, even though I picked up a few toys when the series first debuted a few years ago. However when new Dinobot toys are released do you really need an excuse to pick them up?

Sludge was released in late 2021 as part of the "voyager" assortment which feature the Energon Armor gimmick. Seeing how difficult it was to find select figures at local retail, I put this item on my Christmas list. On Christmas morning my mom laughed when she told me she couldn't remember if she ordered this for me our for either one of my nephews!

We'll take a brief look at his robot mode first since that is how he comes packaged. Growing up in the 80's Sludge is one of two Dinobots that I never owned, however the designers did a great job capturing the character's likeness. Sludge still has his famous "wings" on his back, along with the dino neck/head. With most of the figure being hollow he looks odd from the back, even a bit shorter if that's possible.

I was surprised when it came to how articulated the figure is. The head doesn't move at all, but that's due to the Energon Armor gimmick. The arms however are able to rotate a full 360 degrees and even swing out and rotate on a different joint thanks to the transformation. You've got an articulated waist, again due to the transformation. The legs attach via ball joints and give a good range of motion. Finally, the knees are on hinge joints.

For such a basic figure in terms of sculpt/paint apps, I'm pleasantly surprised with the overall outcome. The headsculpt alone is pretty fantastic. The paint apps are limited, but applied well on my copy.

I'm going to assume since the Cyberverse line is targeted at a younger demographic is why Sludge doesn't come packaged with a gun and rather his tail forms a spear. In the 80's each of the Dinobots came with a red sword alongside their gun, so I guess it's not that far of a stretch for this version to come with a melee type weapon. The dino tail has a handle that unfolds and allows it to be wielded by sludge. It looks a little odd to me, but again I'm not the target demographic here!

Personally I don't understand the Energon Armor gimmick, but I'm sure the 8 year old kid in me would have loved the spring loaded gimmick. Once you slide down the dino head/neck section in the back of the figure, the translucent blue armor pops out and up over the head and chest. The portion that covers the head has a skull like look...I tried to snap a photo that shows this off however it's hard to see.

Now we get to the bread and butter form of this toy...dino mode! As a kid I would have called this a Brontosaurus, but scientists now say that isn't a real dinosaur so we'll just stick with the generic term of "dino". I'm so glad they opted to keep the traditional G1 color scheme intact for this release...I always loved the gold, silver and red all mashed together.

The majority of the body is cast in a dull gray plastic with gold actuating the head and part of the tail. There is a touch of light blue paint applied for the dino eyes. On the sides of the body is a darker gray area with some horizontal red circuitry? lines. The upper portion of the legs feature an embedded cone shape that for no other purpose looks cool.

With many parts of the figure being somewhat hollow, the overall weight of the toy isn't much. If you hadn't bought a modern Transformer figure in some time you may even think this was a KO, but this par for the course these days. That's not to say that this is a bad figure as I think the dino mode looks great and will be how I display him amongst my collection.

Comparison time! To give you a little bit better idea of how this Cyberverse Sludge may scale, I grabbed the nearest two iterations of this character and snapped a few quick pics. Let's start off with the original G1 mold.

With Transformers collectors, scale can be a sensitive topic...after all it's over the place. While the Dinobots should be large, most of their toys, including the G1 molds are not. Here you can see that Cyberverse Sludge is just a hair larger than his G1 version.

I also just happened to have a 3rd party version of Sludge nearby, ToyWorld's Muddy. I recently acquired him to go along w/ Roar (Snarl) and I was surprised at how similar in size both Cyberverse Sludge and Muddy are. They are near identical in overall length, however Muddy is more chunky overall.

I'm not if I'll track down the other Cyberverse Dinobots (only other I have is Snarl), but I am satisified with this figure. While the Energon Armor gimmick isn't for me, it's well concealed in robot mode and doesn't detract from an otherwise solid figure. If you are a fan of the Cyberverse series, or Dinobots in general then I think you'll enjoy the latest official version of Sludge.

Loyal Subjects Transformers Action Vinyls (Wave 3): Swoop

Earlier on the blog I mentioned purchased two sealed blind packaged Action Vinyls from the 3rd wave from a local discount store. The first box I open had Rumble hiding inside and the second box had a Dinobot, particularly Swoop!

When I first looked at the box and saw the characters included in this wave, I knew I wanted Swoop as both the character and the original G1 toy were childhood favorites of mine. Little did I know I was about to get my wish when I took the two boxes to the checkout counter.

Being a blind packaged collectible the box they come in looks the same regardless of what character is found inside. For the 3rd wave the Constructicon Scrapper was featured on the front. The back gives you clues as to who the chase characters could be, while the sides of the box show the 10 main characters. The other Dinobot in this wave is Sludge.

Swoop was and still is my favorite of all the Dinobots, so pulling him out of the package was pretty sweet. Like with Rumble, he came disassembled with his wings, beak and sword being in a small sealed bag separate from the main figure. Each wing simply pegged into the back of the figure, while the small beak pegged into a small hole in the chest. The sword can be wielded in either hand, but it's a tight fit and not the easiest to get into his hand (or out of his hand for that matter).

Again the sculpting of the head is great. Swoop retains his classic "horn" look on his head, part of his dino mode, along with his visor in place of eyes. This is a direct carry over from the original G1 toy design as his animation model gave him eyes. Sculpted on the underside of his wings are his missile launchers. The added partial dino beak on the chest really help complete the look of the figure. Even if I wasn't so partial to this character, this is easily one of the best Action Vinyl Transformers figures I've seen.

Transformers 3rd Party: Justitoys - WST Dinorobots Commander (Dark Retribution)

It seems like long before the plethora of third party companies started making unofficial add-on kits and unofficial Transformers action figures, there was a company called Justitoys.  When Takara released their line of World's Smallest Transformers, they had a hit on their hands.  Well at least with a segment of the Transformers collecting community.  A lot of fans will say that Takara abandoned the line too early...enter Justitoys.  They decided to take the World's Smallest banner and run with it, starting off with the Dinobots...or Dinorobots as they are called for legal reasons.

Eventually the entire group would see release, alongside color variations that were exclusive to certain conventions or retail stores online.  Then in 2009 Justitoys created a box set of Dinorobots featuring black plastic and gold chrome bits.  They dubbed it Dark Retribution.  While I could afford to pick up the individually released regular Dinorobots, these new box set was a little pricey so I opted to sit this release out.  Later on I found a TFW2005.com board member selling a few of these Dark Retribution figures individually so I grabbed Grimlock and Snarl.

Justitoys did an excellent job with the scale of these WST Dinorobots.  They are larger than your standard Takara World's Smallest toy, yet right in scale with them.  After all the Dinobots were bigger than most of their Autobot friends.

The toy looks and transforms very much like the real G1 version of Grimlock.  I have to say the black and gold fits the toy nicely and I'm not always a fan of black repainted TFs.

Notice the blue waist piece?  Most TF collectors know that the G1 release of Grimlock featured a red waist, where as the pre-TF Diaclone version featured the waist piece in blue.  I'm not sure why Justitoys went with the blue over the red, but I actually prefer the blue.  It blends in well with the back whereas the red may have stood out too much.

Each figure in the Dark Retribution set came with their own G1 style instruction booklet, sticker sheet and a bag of weapons.  These weapons are smaller reproductions of the G1 weapons.  Rifle, sword and missile launcher w/ 3 missiles.

Justitoys did a great job with their WST Dinorobots...no matter what color they used.  They are built well and a fun to transform.  I can see how they may not fit into everyone's TF collection, but if you have a chance to pick one up for less than $20 I say buy it.

Transformers DOTM Mini-Con "Dinobots"

Today I bring you the latest Dark of the Moon exclusive offering in the form of "new" Mini-Cons! Before I start I have a confession. I'm a Mini-Con whore. I love these little TFs. I've got a butt load already and I have a hard time resisting buying more...even if I already own the molds 3 times over! When these were first announced as a shared online exclusive I couldn't wait. While the dinosaur Mini-Con molds may not have the best robot modes, the dino modes are quite fun. I still can't believe it took Hasbro this long to release these toys in G1 Dinobot colors. The inclusion of Catilla is a little puzzling, but I'll take it.

I can't say I'm too surprised that Hasbro chose to release these toys under the current Dark of the Moon (DOTM) banner. The packaging is really nice as it uses the Legion Class Cyberverse style. If you can get past the names you can see miniature versions of Grimlock, Swoop and Slag. 2 of the 3 names were just used in Animated so I'm surprised to see Hasbro didn't use the classic G1 names here. At least Catilla shares the name with the G1 Pretender big cat, Catilla.

   

 Dualor, or Grimlock if you will is the best of the bunch in my opinion. The paint apps on the figure are really nice. I was surprised to see that all of these toys have the old Armada Mini-Con faction symbol tampographed on them. I really wish there was a back story on these guys, but unfortunately there isn't any information given for the character outside the individual rankings. I should point out the tail on mine wants to come off really easy. My guess is this mold is starting to show some wear as it's been used several times between the U.S. and Japan markets.

   

 Rav, or Swoop is a great example of a great dino mode and a horrible robot mode. You can barely see the robot's face! The best thing going for this particular toy are the colors. G1 Swoop didn't have any gold, but it still looks good overall.

   

Triceradon, or Slag (or Snarl in Animated) also suffers from a crappy robot mode. The distance between the legs is just too much for me. He does appear to look strong with his wide upper body and fists.  I'll be displaying him in dino mode.

    

Catilla, the "extra" figure as I see it. I like this toy. The beast mode is great and while the robot mode isn't the best it works for me. Normally I don't like it when robots have a animal head/mouth for a hand, but like Beast Wars Megatron it fits pretty good here. I like how the lower jaw is painted silver as well as the little cannon inside the mouth. Overall the use of the silver paint really helps break up the gold plastic and gives a better robotic look. I also love the square shaped head as it reminds me of the G1 Scramble City toys (Combaticons, Stunticons, Terrorcons, Protectobots, Aerialbots). I thought my favorite version of this toy was Snowcat, but I'd have to put Catilla up there at the top now.

 The question at hand is should you buy them?For me the answer was easy for all the reasons I listed in the opening paragraph. $5.00 per figure may be a little pricey for what you get, but the colors are really nice and the G1 homage is probably enough to en tice some collector's to buy these even if they don't collect Mini-Cons. At the time of this posting you can grab the set via Amazon.com or Entertainment Earth for a little cheaper than what I paid so what are you waiting for?