Phil's Leadfoot & Pinpoint Review

[Philip Ayres]

Power Core Mini-Con Pinpoint

Pinpoint is the Minicon partner for Leadfoot. He's a mainly clear yellow Mini-con with black arms & upper leg and a painted silver block on his back. Mounted on the side of this block are two guns that can be swung over his shoulders in robot mode. There is a pegless Mini-con Port on the centre of his chest,meaning he will attach to any normal 5mm peg as well as Mini-con posts. His knees each have a Mini-con peg on them. The knees bend while the shoulders & hips are ball jointed.

Pinpoint's vehicle weapon mode is formed thus: Fold the arms back so the hands are behind the hips. Raise each leg so it's pointing straight out to the sides. Rotate each leg 90 degrees at the hip so the leg still points to the side but the Mini-con pegs point down. Fold each lower leg up onto the shoulder on it's sides with the peg on the shoulder locking into the back of the leg. Raise the guns so they point upwards over the head. Peg the hole in the chest onto a Minicon post on a vehicle to form a Powermaster like engine with added guns. The Powermaster impression is enhanced by the presence of air intakes on the back of the robot's arms that stick up when he's an engine. This mode works well with his partner Leadfoot's vehicle mode where he mounts on a peg that folds up from the nose.

Armour mode is nearly identical to the Powermaster engine mode except that when attached to the larger robot's chest you position it with the guns facing forward.

His weapons mode is, to be honest, pathetic. Straighten the robot mode out with the guns poking above his head. Peg into a robot's hand using the Mini-con pegs on the knee. It's a shame because the name Pinpoint evokes memory of Pinpointer, Crosshairs' Targetmaster Partner and he was a decent gun.

Robot and vehicle weapon are OK, but the armour mode is the vehicle weapon duplicated and the robot weapon isn't that good.

A mixed bag.

[Philip Ayres]

Power Core Combiner Leadfoot

Leadfoot, named after the Rotor Force Rapid Defence Specialist is an orange & white formula one racing car. The colours used on this toy are a nod towards Diaclone Mirage, while the front wheels of the car resembles those on the car mode of Cybertron Megatron. To top it off the moveable spoiler at the rear of the toy has the word Blackrock emblazoned on it, a reference to the comic character GB Blackrock. Projecting out from each side of the car are three silver painted air intakes, mirroring those found on the Powermaster like Minicon engine he comes with. All four of the Power Core Connector blocks are found on the rear of the car and it's easy to imagine them as some sort of propulsion boosters for the car. The car itself moves ok on it's wheels but if the scraping noise I can hear as I run it along my desk is anything to go by then there's zero clearance and something in the car body is on the floor!

Transform: Remove the Minicon and fold down the nose peg. Fold each front wheel under the car to create a futuristic looking hover car. Pull the back wheels down and away from the rear of the vehicle, which is then folded back and separated to form the legs. Fold the Power Core connector blocks back to become heel spurs. Stand on the back of the car with the top facing forward and fold the spoiler halves down as feet. Fold the front of the car onto the robot's back as a backpack revealing the head. The rear wheels are now obviously connected to the body by the arms and these must have their shoulder joint, mounted on a double hinged strut, moved up into the correct position. Fold the air intakes down to each form a three fingerers hand with the exhaust pipe from each side forming a thumb.

Leadfoot's robot mode is recognisably the car stood on it's rear with the nose missing but it works with the orange and the white blending nicely with the extra black that has appeared on robot parts like the head. Uniquely in the first two waves of Power Core Leadfoot's smaller robot head is lightpiped with the same clear yellow plastic as used for his Minicon Pinpoint. Leadfoot's robot can use Pinpoint's gun mode by plugging it into a 5mm port on the palm of each hand, but it's just not quite deep enough to hold Chopster's axe handle. He should however be able to hold the 5mm plugs on Backwind, Chainclaw & Throttler OK. The windscreen of the racing car fold down to reveal another fold out Mini-con plug for mounting armour on and you also have the option of mounting a piece of back armour/backpack weaponry on the one on the car's nose forming his backpack. His articulation includes bending ankles (the spoiler) and knees, universal hips, ball jointed elbows, a very stiff bicep swivel, a bending elbow and a turning head.

To form Leadfoot's torso mode start by removing any Mini-cons and folding the chest down, bringing the head with it. Swing the head round into the chest bringing the larger robot head up. Fold the chest panel back up and stand with the nose of the car (back of the small robot) facing you. Raise each arm up into the air and fold the shoulders down to mid chest level fold the rest of the arm up towards the head with hole on the side of the hand going over the orange tab behind the head on each side. Fold the Power Core connector blocks down on each shoulder. Fold each leg out to the side at the hips then rotate the diagonal cut joint at each thigh so the lower legs turn round but are now pointing downwards. Fold down the Power Core connector blocks. Attach drone limbs to the blocks, I'd use the Rallybots because A) they suit him and B) you won't be using them with Double Clutch (little sneak preview of the Double Clutch & Rallybot review there).

As with many of the Power Core Torso's there are some issues. The shoulders, formed from the robot's arms, aren't anchored quite properly to the body (but at least they stay in one piece: another Double Clutch preview). The cut joint to make the smaller robot leg a right angle is more inclined to turn than the hips on mine which makes posing it not so easy (especially when you have an uncooperative car drone on one leg). I can see I'm going to need to wiggle that hip joint about a bit to loosen it. And this is all a great shame as we've got a decent looking torso that's vastly different from the robot by virtue of using the back of the robot. We can still use chest armour by virtue of the peg found on the car's nose. The new head is larger with a T shaped lightpiped visor & mouth. The head turns as do the shoulders & hips while the knees bend with a swivel joint beneath them.

Very close as an overall package, let down a bit by the torso mode issues and (even though I've not mentioned them till now) some annoying joints connecting the robot's knee to the lower leg via a strut which seem to go the wrong way whenever I do anything with the robot's leg.

Recolours: Mirage. Drag Strip. Easy.

[Bogatan]

Having finally opened all but one of the 6 two packs from wave 1 and 2 I've decided Leadfoot is by some distance my favourite. I usethe larger combiner head though as I like the proportions of it with the rest of the body, plus its vaguely more like the G2 toy. I only tested the torso mode last night and was suprised just how different it is from the others. Sadly I only have the combaticons with non connecting leg to use so getting a proper sense of the combined mode didn't quite happen. The shoulders seemed fine on mine though, the only issue was positioning the hips so the legs instead of pointing straight down were pointing inwards a little. I think I solved that with some jiggling, but again because of the faulty leg it was hard to stand it to be sure.

Andy

[Philip Ayres]

Aug 20, 2010 20:07:49 GMT Philip Ayres said:

Power Core Combiner Leadfoot

Recolours: Mirage. Drag Strip. Easy.

Power Core Combiner Over-Run with Stunticons

Or at least it should be. Hasbro went the yellow and purple race car route which should automatically bat the name Drag Strip into play. Packing him with a bunch of Rallybot and Destructicon repaints and calling *them* Stunticons should ensure it. But no. When packaged samples surfaced in the far east, it was revealed that Hasbro's name for this toy was Spastic. Reaction could best be described as split, and generally on national lines. American fans generally went for "Woo! Cool Name!", while UK fans opted more for "Bwah? What the **** are they thinking?" and reached for their email to fire a missive off to Hasbro customer services. It turns out the word does not have the offensive connotations in the US as the UK. Hasbro UK's response was "We have no plans to release this toy in the UK". Hasbro US were silent for several days and then responded that the name of the toy was to be changed to Over-Run, one of Hasbro's go to names when they don't know what to call something and that existing stock would have the name Spastic stickered over. This didn't go down well with many US fans who responded with "You Brits got our toy cancelled" and "I'm going to peel those stickers off and here's two fingers up at you". In nearly twenty years of being a Transformers fan I've never seen a subject get so heated so quickly making "Truk not Munkey" and "Rumble is Red, Frenzy is Blue" look like a walk in the park. But at the same time I've never felt more proud of the measured response of the UK fans. Sadly the story did progress up the media chain somewhat ending up in the Daily Mail and discussed on BBC Radio 4!

I now have an Over-Run set in my hands. Those stickers are going to give nobody any trouble at all, a couple of the ones on my box were peeling when I got it and came off really easily leaving no mark at all. I've seen more adhesive price tags! The instructions inside, for once loose in the box, were also stickered in the appropriate places. The following colour swaps apply to Over-Run:

Yellow replaces Leadfoot's orange.
Yellow replaces the white used on the front wheels & limbs.
Grey replaces white on the robot limbs & car spoiler.
Purple replaces black on the robot limbs.
Solid purple replaces the clear yellow of the lightpipe.
Black is still used for the head and the tires.

To my eye the grey is one colour too many and should probably have been yellow or purple. I can't decide which. There's a small Deception symbol on the tip of the car's nose which is OK,but that then means there's a vast expanse of unmarked yellow plastic at the top of the chest in torso mode which just looks odd. It's broken up on Leadfoot by having the front wheel arches moulded in different coloured plastic and then painted: here they're the same colour and unpainted. The loss of the lightpipe is as usual a capital offence. Drag Strip's face was a pale blue so that might have worked, even if the colour is generally onlly used for Autobot eyes, and would have given Pinpoint's potential repaint a nice colour.

But as we've said Over-Run doesn't come with repaint Pinpoint or any other Minicon. He's been promoted to become the core of the Stunticon combiner made up of repaints of limbs from previous sets.

From the Rallybots the co-moulded Race Car Drone & Tuner Drone become the Drift Racer and Street Racer Drones. The following colour swaps apply to these two drones:

Purple replaces Orange
Off White replaces Blue
Black replaces Grey

Both drones dump their original colour patterns with the Street Racer drone aquiring a slanted silver Decepticon symbol while the Drift Racer drone gets a line of yellow & black quartered circles under each window and along it's bonnet. These symbols are generally associated with crash testing. Unlike the previous mix & match approach with the wave 3 5-pack repaints where we got an arm and a leg from each set, these drones each form an arm.

From the Destructicons the co-moulded Armored Junker Drone & Armored Truck Drone become the Junker & Rocket Truck drones. These formed the legs of the Destructicon combiner and have the same role here. Colour swaps:

Orange replaces rusty brown
Black replaces grey
Black replaces sandy brown

Gold paint is applied to several of the black pieces producing a similarly themed pair of legs. This puts them slightly at odds with the vastly different coloured arms and gaudy yellow plastic torso. Grimstone, the Dinopope, showed us how good a coherently coloured combiner could be. The combined toy holds together reasonably well, I've got no limbs trying to pop themselves off unlike on early PCC toys. However the issues with the Torso's shoulders staying attached and the cut joint on the leg moving rather than the hip remain from Leadfoot.

So so. I expect a bit more from a repaint and sadly this one doesn't go anywhere to correcting the flaws I could see on the original.

Over-Run is scheduled for an early 2011 release in the USA. In late 2010 Hasbro UK said they didn't intend stocking this toy.

Postscript: [url=http://tmukhub.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=toysmerch&thread=4873&page=4#99372>Hasbro UK suppliers are now offering Over-Run for order[/url]. It'll be interesting to see if the European boxes that the UK get are stickered or printed.