Transformers 3rd Party: Vecma Studios - Head Warrior Wolfman VS-02

It seems that over the past few years the focus on 3rd party companies making Transformer related items has shifted from "masterpiece" scale over to "legends" scale. I for one am OK with this as generally the prices are more affordable and the figures are easier to pick up and fiddle with versus the more expensive and larger figures.

Vecma Studio appears to be yet another new company on the 3rd party Transformers scene, however I would not be surprised if it's an offshoot of another existing company. I don't know much about them, but Wolfman is the second purchase of theirs I've made and I'm quite impressed and happy with their work. Whether these are essentially KO's of Unique Toys' Palm Collection I'm still undecided, but the resemblance is uncanny.

One thing I like about these Vecma releases are the packaging. The box is made of a thick, glossy cardboard and features the classic Headmasters packaging from the Japanese Takara releases from the 80's. I know some people no longer keep packaging, but this presentation is just too nice to toss away. With the nice artwork on the front I'd love to find a way to display the box with my other vintage Japanese G1 boxes.

The contents are housed in a black plastic tray with a clear lid. The instructions are a simple folded, full color sheet. Wolfman comes with 3 accessories/weapons along with what appears to be a tiny power loader from the Alien movies. I still don't understand the inclusion of this so I'm basically ignoring it.

Once I got the figure out of the packaging I was impressed. I did notice that the right toe had a slit in the plastic that the other toe didn't. Then I realized the uneven symmetry of the legs. Once I flipped the figure over I understood the reason for the legs as I could see the "cockpit" on the backside of one leg and the rear wolf legs on the backside of the other leg. This was my first clue of the rather clever transformation this figure had.

Overall Vecma did a good job at capturing the likeness of the character. The yellow and dark turquoise used match the original Generation One toy. You'll see this first hand once we get to the comparison section of the review. 

The Headmaster gimmick is still in play!

This figure is well articulated, however you may not be able to tell that from my horrible posing ability. The area where the head plugs into is part of larger circle piece. This allows the head to be fully rotated which is something that I did not expect. The arms are on ball joints and allows for a full 360 degree rotation. The upper torso has a swivel joint to allow the top half to be rotated 360 degrees. The legs are attached to the hips via ball joints, as are the needs. The upper thighs have a swivel joint as well. The fists and feet do not have any type of joint to allow movement.

Wolfman comes with his dark turquoise gun and sword/tail as the original G1 toy. He also comes with an identical gun case in the same light gray plastic as the wolf head.

In wolf mode this figure reminded me of how the Titans Return/Legends figure of Weirdwolf. He's very slender in this form which is a drastic difference over the original G1 toy. The robot arms double as the wolf's front legs so you still have a pretty good range of motion. However the back hips peg into the body so they do not move. This does limit the poses you can pull off with the rear legs. The wolf head does rotate a full 360 degrees as part of the transformation.

Speaking of the transformation, I rather like what they did here. Earlier I mentioned how I found the symmetry of the robot legs to be off. This is because the right leg splits in half. Before you split the leg, you rotate the top half at the waist 180 degrees. Split the right leg to form the rear of the wolf. Very ingenious. The only down side to this is it does leave a few small gaps in the center of the wolf's body. Viewing the toy in beast mode from an angle doesn't expose these gaps, but from a side view they are noticeable.

You can lift up the metallic red painted cockpit to reveal an area behind the wolf's head where his Headmaster trainer, Albite can sit (or stand if you prefer).

All the joints were nice and tight straight out of the package. Thankfully they weren't so tight it felt like anything would snap during posing or transformation, but they were tight enough to hold certain poses.

Comparison time! I was able to reach into my glass case and grab out my vintage G1 Weirdwolf for the side by side shots. Wow, I haven't messed with this figure in years. While he was my favorite Decepticon Headmaster I have to say that if I'm being honest this figure really isn't that great. Once I got the two side by side you can see just how chucky the G1 version is. It is amazing however to see how far the engineering of transforming robot toys has come.

   

Here we can see the differences between the two Headmaster trainers, Albite and Monzo. For being such a small figure, I was surprised at how well he was resembled Monzo. Albite's arms are on the same peg so when you lift one arm, both arms raise. 

In head mode there are some liberties taken with the face, but I'm OK with this. A darker metallic red paint was used for the eye visor and looks great. The other noticeable difference is the absence of the flat pieces of plastic just in front of the tiny robot head/peg that effects the tech spec reader built into the body.

I do have to admit that I'm not a fan of Wolfman's chest piece featuring a hinge on the top. Of note the tech spec ratings are the same as Weirdwolf's.

 Here you can see the aforementioned gaps in the body.

This is Vecma Studio's second release thus far, with the first being Chivalrouser VS-01 aka Chromedome. While I found that figure to have less flaws than Wolfman, that does not mean that this isn't a good figure. Personally I think the robot mode is the stronger of the two forms. The flaws are so small however that they shouldn't deter you from picking up this figure if you have a budding legends class collection. It's well made and a lot of fun and will display well however you wish.

KO Korner: Poison Dragon - Transformers G1 Skullcruncher KO

To kick off the 11th year of Random Toy Reviews, let's take a trip back to the KO Korner. Ever since I created an Instagram account I've seen a lot of great vintage G1 KO toys posted. Most of these come from countries in the east. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone as copyright laws are more lax outside of the U.S., especially 30 years ago.

Everytime I'd see one of these awesome G1 KO toys I'd always wonder just where that person found them. Was it a recent acquisition from a store in some other country? Was it old stock that was recently found? Or has this been sitting on someone's shelf for the last 20-30 years? Whatever the case, most of the oddly colored KOs I've never seen for sale. If I would happen to come across one on eBay, usually the asking price was far outside my comfort zone.

Luck would finally be on my side as I ran across a listing on eBay for Poison Dragon, an obvious KO of the G1 Transformers Headmaster Skullcruncher. The price was much more reasonable than I thought so I bit the bullet and made the purchase. Then the waiting game had to be played as the toy was coming from Malaysia I believe. Man, I think the last time I bought a Transformer from Malaysia was when I bought a complete, MIB Transformers Blue Bacchus for $50. True story, I swear...but that'll be for another time.

When Poison Dragon finally arrived at my doorstep, he was crammed in a small box with a little bit of newspaper padding inside. The backing card is cheap cardboard and had already shown some wear. However what I didn't fully realize before I made the purchase was that the bubble (which was very close to cracking apart) had started to lift from the backing board. At some point someone stapled a portion of the bubble back down, but not before the gun must have slipped out. Bummer.

The back of the blister card seems to have been lifted straight from the actual instruction booklet that was included with the legit Skullcruncher toy. The back of the packaging even refers to Poison Dragon as "Skullcruncher" and the Headmaster "Grax". Best that I can tell there was never a label sheet or tech spec decoder included.

Once I was able to carefully fish Poison Dragon out of his flimsy packaging, I could immediately tell that the quality of this KO was rather good. That's the thing with KOs, especially toys as old as this. You never know what the build quality is. Will it be shampoo bottle quality plastic or the good stuff? 

Poison Dragon features a similar color scheme to his G1 counterpart, however where Skullcruncher had green this one features blue. The pink sections are similar and even the shade of pink used is very close to the G1 toy. As far as I can tell, there are no differences in the mold. Even the factory applied stickers (minus the rub symbol on the gator's head) are the same as it's G1 counterpart. One of the main differences that you can easily spot is the addition of some gold (or is it copper?) paint applied to the ridges and notches alongside Poison Dragon's gator back. Being as old as this toy is, I was surprised to see that some of this paint has already started to wear off.

Where as Skullcruncher came with his Headmaster trainer, Grax, Poison Dragon comes with this "Headmaster" figure. He's not named and he's not a 1:1 KO of Grax or any other Headmaster figure that I recognize. 

This nameless Headmaster figure still retains the ability to ride inside the mouth of Poison Dragon if you so choose to. The figure seems to be just a smidge taller than Grax so I had to slide him down a little bit to get the gator mouth to close all the way.

Once I really started to inspect the Headmaster figure I could tell the same quality that went into the main figure was not used here. This plastic felt cheaper, almost slick to the touch. I had to shave off a few plastic spurs on the feet just to get him to stand up in robot mode. If you look at the right knee joint, you can see that it's bulging out a bit. I was worried when I transformed into head mode that the lower leg may pop off. Since I don't plan on transforming him much (if at all) I guess I shouldn't be too worried.

I gotta say this has to be the happiest looking Deception Headmaster I've ever seen! The facial expression really doesn't match the toy, let alone the red and yellow used. Ah, gotta love KOs is all I can say!

The transformation is spot on to the vintage G1 toy. Transforming Poison Dragon from gator to robot was one of the scariest things I've done in awhile. He was far tighter than my original Skullcruncher. The hinges of the tail section that splits apart were so tight I didn't think I was going to get them to split and fold down. Once I got them moving, I just knew something was going to break. I noticed what appeared to be small, flat excess pieces of plastic just above and below the hinge. I thought these were adding to the resistance so I took my pocket knife and carefully jimmied them out. I don't think it really helped loosen up the hinges, but it couldn't have hurt to remove them. The upper half of the toy seemed to transform just fine. I did find that the arms were a little loose, but nothing too bad.

If you remember both the Autobot and Decepticon (large) Headmaster toys had a gimmick where you could see partial stats of the robot once the head was plugged into the body. Not surprisingly this play feature was removed on the KO. The flip down chest plate is still there, but as you can see where the meter once was is now a solid piece of plastic.

As I mentioned earlier, the gun was missing from the packaging however he can wield the tip of his tail as a sword just like his authentic counterpart. I did notice the holes in the fist were a little tight. This made it a minor challenge to fit the peg on the underside of the tail piece into the fist hole.

On it's own this is a great KO. I love the colors (minus the Headmaster) and it reminded me of just how awesome this mold is. Now it's time to get the KO alongside the authentic toy for some comparison shots.

As great as Poison Dragon is, I love seeing these two side by side. They compliment each other so well. I may eventually try and pick up another Skullcruncher gun just to complete the look.

Last, but not least I was curious if Poison Dragon was compatible with his G1 self. Without any issues I was able to swap the heads just fine.

With the notches on the bottom of the KO Headmaster being different lengths than on Grax, when you plug him into Skullcruncher's body you get different ratings in the Speed/Strength/Intelligence categories. 

If you are a big G1 Transformers fan such as I and you enjoy a good quality KO TF then I highly recommend this bootleg toy. While I've seen several packaged and loose pictures of this toy before, I've never seen one for sale until I ran across this one a few weeks ago. I know Chromedome was KO'd in a similar fashion, as well as Highbrow (in an awesome Sprite "lemon & lime" color scheme!), but I don't know if any of the other larger Headmasters received KOs. I know for one I'll be on the search. Pictures will probably surface on Instagram at some point!