Post by Philip Ayres on Aug 21, 2011 14:06:11 GMT
Phil's
Transformers Armada & Micron Legend,
Energon & Superlink,
Universe, 2010 & Generations Unicron
Review
Transformers Armada & Micron Legend,
Energon & Superlink,
Universe, 2010 & Generations Unicron
Review
Unicron toys: An Unproduced History
Unicron is introduced in 1986's Transformers: The Movie as a giant robotic planet eating planet that in no way was inspired by Marvel Comic's Galactus. At the end of the film he surprises everyone by turning into a planet sized robot and attacking Cybertron. For a character that features so strongly in the Movie it was something of a surprise when, like Arcee, no toy was made of Unicron. It later emerged that Hasbro had tried to make a Unicron: a prototype for this toy was first exhibited 10 years later at Botcon 1996. Later a Takara version of Unicron was pictured in a book showing a new colour scheme and additional features such as a moon.
Fast forward ten years to 1999: Unicron features in the Beast Wars Neo cartoon and a new detailed prototype is developed .... which was then cancelled before release. Howls of protests from fans who, to this day, would love to own this version in the plastic. The grey monochrome prototype is the only one known to exist. An extensive gallery of it can be found at Transformers at the Moon while a fan attempt at colouring the toy can be seen here. Gauntlet's Guide to Ten things you probably didn't know about Unicron has a picture of this Unicron with Micromaster Rodimus which will help give you some idea of the scale of the toy - smaller than you might think.
For more pictures of the unproduced Unicron toys you are urged to buy Transformers Generations 2011 Vol. 2, which also has some really nice Fortress Maximus prototype pictures.
Unicron has had plenty of statues & non transforming toys. We're concentrating on the ones which transform, or are sold with those that transform, here. If you want to take a look at some of the others then TF Wiki have an extensive listing.
Armada Unicron
Unicron finally makes it into plastic as transforming toy during Transformers Armada, in who's cartoon he also features.
Straight out the box, is in robot mode but he needs some assembly. The wings, formed from his ring system need to be attached as they will have to be each time you get him from storage. The wings are unique: the catch to lock them onto the back of the shoulder is different so it's important to make sure you get the correct one on the correct side. Don't worry if you don't: they can, and will, come off. At the base of each wing is a letter code AR or AL. Turn Unicron's back towards you. The wing labelled AR goes on the left, with AL on the right. Now the planet shell pieces need attaching: still looking at Unicron's back rotate the pegs near the base of the wing so they face you and point out to the sides. The planet shell pieces are a mirror image of each other, and I've not found any letter labelling yet on it, but one has an extra square of dark grey plastic. This attaches to wing AL on your right with the inside face of the shell facing you. The other shell connects to the other wing again with the inside of the shell facing you.
Now we need to look at the planet mode:
Rotate the horns on the head down and fold the head back. Stand Unicron up straight, bringing the legs together and peg the sides of the feet into each other. Rotate the foot so the claw toe points up. Fold the heel spurs under the toy and forward so the feet recess into them. Fold the feet up over the front of the legs. Rotate the panels on the side of the leg so the flat face points back. Fold the waist panel down. Straighten the arms with the cut out on the lower arm for the elbow joint facing you. Next fold the fingers on each hand into a fist, with the thumb folded over the index finger & the wrist rotated so the thumb points towards you. Open the panel on the front of each forearm, fold the hands back and close the panel concealing them. Rotate each arm in 180 degrees at the bicep so the spikes point forward from the sides of the arm. Raise each arm 90 degrees at the shoulder so the front of the wrist points out. Pull the top of the shoulder away from the toy and fold down to the sides. Fold each arm in across the lower chest plugging the wrists into each other. Move the wings out the way and fold the legs back at knee & hip so the lower legs end up on the robot's back with the Minicon posts resting in the screw holes on Unicron's back: Be careful not to catch the legs on the tops of the shoulders at this stage! By now a wing part or missile will have come off so you'd better reattach them. Swing the planet shell parts round & lock together so they cover Unicron's head. Fold the wings out so each forms half of his ring system. Look for the peg on the inner edge of one of the ring tips: that should be beside the feet. Fold the tips of each half ring down and push them together to form a tower. Peg the bottom tower in between the legs and slide the top tower into the gap between the clear & orange parts at the top of the toy. At this point Phil realised he'd assembled his wings wrong and had to remove them to correct it. The front of the wing system, the same side at the mouth, should be solid, with the open side at the rear. Rotate the claws forward.
The first time I saw the Unicron toy in planet mode my automatic reaction was "that's not the right way round". Unicron is pictured in the film with his ring system and mouth facing towards you. Here they face up. There's no way of positioning the Unicron toy in the more tradition position without buying one of the third party stands available. Looking towards the top of the toy he does look like the traditional Unicron: we have a clear purple surface, a mouth, claws and a ring system attached by four towers to the planet.
There now follows some planetary science so you may want to skip to the next paragraph! Ring systems, like Saturn's normally form round a planet's equator which means they are traditionally pictured edge on. However Uranus has been knocked onto it's back and that positions the ring system towards us like in the Transformers Movie which would then make the mouth the planet's North or South pole. But having seen Transformers the Movie so many times (most recently last Friday at Auto Assembly 2011) I think of the top of the planet as pictured there as North, which is where one of the tower's attaching the ring system to the planet are on the toy. This is reinforced by Unicron's movie version having a defined equator formed from a ring of spikes that's missing from the toy. The claws round the mouth are on this visible equator line. So I think we need to accept that the mouth is on the equator and the rings, despite their Saturn like orientation on the toys, surround the planet from pole to pole.
Unfortunately immediately beneath the mouth is a massive gap in the purple surface enabling you to see parts of the feet and, from the right angle, the robot's head. We'll define this as being towards the south of the planet. The claws can sit in an opened position to the side or pushed up slightly. If you push them up completely as far as they can go they mouth will close bringing the jagged teeth together. To the south east & south west of the mouth are missile banks of three yellow missiles. These are a little trigger happy on my model and have been known to fire when jogged, but since this is an Armada toy they're designed to be fired by Minicons: a single trigger is found on each missile bank. The rings are the main area for attaching Minicons with an inactive Minicon post placed at regular intervals round the ring. Each quarter ring section between each tower has three Minicon posts on top and underneath the ring making a total of twenty four posts. A further post can be found just north of the mouth recessed into a crate which is specifically designed to hold Unicron's Minicon/Moon Dead End but you might be able to place certain other Minicons with rear facing ports into the same socket. The rear of the planet is more blocky than the front of the planet, which it needs to be for the planet to rest on but there's no obvious big gaps like there are on the front of the planet.
So the planet mode captures some of Unicron's vital features which enforces it's identity but it's not quite spherical enough and the surface is continuous enough for it to look like a planet. Given two years further work Hasbro would produce a much better planet mode when Cybertron was made as Primus' alternate mode.
Now to return to robot mode....
Pull the towers out at the poles and fold the north ring halves down so they're inside the south ring. Fold the hemisphere halves out to the sides. Fold the head forward and raise the horns. Separate the arms, fold out to the sides, and fold the shoulders up into place. Rotate each arm out to the side 180 degrees at the bicep. Open the forearm, fold the hand out & extend it's fingers then close the forearm. Fold the legs down from behind the toy. Fold the waist panel up. Fold the feet & heel spurs down separating the two and rotating the foot so it faces down. Rotate the legs panels so the flat side faces forward. Fold the wings out to the sides and position the hemisphere halves to your taste.
Straight off the robot mode for this toy looks like Unicron. It's shaped right, the colours are generally in the right places, with the majority of the toy being orange plastic and varying shades of grey used for the lower legs, feet, upper arms and left hands. Clear plastic substitutes for the expected grey on the body and right hand. It's a pretty good job which stands up well now as can be evidenced by the minimal tweaking done for a recent re-release. Unicron is one of the largest Transformers toys issued since the demise of the original toyline and is the first Supreme class toy to be a new character. Supreme Cheetor may be taller but it's thinner and Unicron doesn't keel over when you look at. If yours does then you've probably not for the feet positioned right: the black foot needs to be flat with it's longest surface facing down. There's other ways of positioning the foot but they destabilise the toy. I'm in favour of removing leg articulation if it helps stabilise the toy but here most of the joints are used in the transformation and the toy is reasonably stable: The ankle turns out to the sides as well as moving back & forth, there's a swivel bellow the bending knee and universal joints at the hip. The waist, head & shoulders turn, the arms swing to the sides at the shoulder, turn at the bicep and bend at the elbow. The wrist turns, the thumb folds out to the sides and the remaining hands are articulated at the first & second knuckle. These fabulously poseable hands, easily the best on any Transformers toy too date, give you a toy capable of sticking fingers up at you.
There is a downside to the the hand articulation though: it means that he doesn't have a 5mm peg hole in the middle of his fist and thus that he's incapable of holding any of the Minicon weapons like the Requiem Blaster, Skyboom shield or Star Saber. Not being able to hold this last toy is especially problematic as Unicron is one of two Armada toys with a light up fist: push the fist towards the hand to get it to light up. I'd have got round this problem by having 5mm holes moulded into the top of each hand. Although it won't help Unicron use the Star Saber's light up gimmick, the add on handles supplied with Cybertron Wing Saber give you enough additional handle for Unicron to hold the weapons. Unicron does have a hidden method of using Minicons here though: if you fold both of the hands back into the forearm you'll find that the right arm has two Minicon posts on the right wrist and two opposing 5mm peg holes on the other wrist. Minicons with holes in their rear, like Skyblast or Ransack will work well on his right wrist while any 5mm weapon, especially bladed ones, will go well on the left wrist.
In addition to the light up hands pressing a button on the back of the head causes the eyes to light up. Both of the light up features use a red light. There's other action features on the toy, but since this is an Armada toy you'll need a Minicon to activate these. On the side of each leg is a portion of the planet mode that can be rotated forward to point the three missile banks, also found on the planet mode, forward. As we stated above these can be fired using a Minicon to trigger them: push the Minicon onto the post and pull forward. The three missile array on each leg is a design feature inherited from the unproduced Beast Wars Neo Unicron. A further active Minicon post can be found on Unicron's back. Attaching a Minicon causes the clear panels that form Unicron's chest to open, splitting down the middle & folding out the the sides, firing a missile from the cannon contained within to fire and his eyes to light up. There's also a slot above the Minicon post which will let you manually trigger the missile firing weapon with a screwdriver or similar.
The top of each shoulder is flat, in between two raised & detailed rubber sides on each edge - the bits that catch on the legs when transforming. On each flat strip is a turntable, picked out in black, with a Minicon socket on one edge. The Minicon sockets, fine I can see why you'd want them there. But the turntables? Put a Minicon on the socket then try to turn the turntable: You can't it's restricted the raised sides. So effectively all they can be used for is to reposition the socket to either the end of the shoulder. Being able to move a Minicon, especially one of the Military team with their missiles, from pointing to the sides to pointing forward would have been a nice touch. Most of the images I can find of Unicron show him with flatish shoulders so I don't think it would have hurt the toy that much to loose those sloped raised sides.
While the designers may have made an error with the Minicon compatibility on the shoulders they have managed to include plenty of hidden compartments for concealing Minicons in. The forearm panels, which conceal the hands in planet mode, might not have enough space underneath them for a Minicon to be hid in but they are large for one to stand in. A larger compartment can be found behind the panel forming the lower chest which is enough space to conceal many Minicon vehicle modes. Another compartment can be found in each lower leg: the front folds forward revealing a ramp with what looks like a moulded missile array at the back.
The real problem with the robot mode is the wings & the planet surface shells attached to them. The base of the wings *looks* like it should clip into the back of the shoulders here but it's impossible to get everything else in place if they're attached here. Instead the the wings need to be inclined back a little but even then the pieces of planet surface just hang there and there's no defined place for them to sit.
At the time this toy came out the main problem fans had with it was it wasn't the Beast Wars Neo Unicron. But looking at it now it's a fine translation of the cartoon robot into toy form. My main problem with the robot mode is that it can't hold the 5mm Minicon weapons but that's a fault it shares with many other Armada toys. Blurr, Cyclonus, Demolishor, Hoist, Scavenger, Smokescreen, Thrust & Tidal Wave all spring to mind as having that fault and that's a reflection on poor design on the Armada toyline that lots of the toys can't utilise one of the main gimmicks in the line. The robot has decent articulation, will stand ok and the weapons systems have decent interaction with the Minicons. Yes, the planet mode has some more obvious problems, orientation, holes and not having a completely round surface, but creating a round planet that turns itself into a robot with mainly straight lines was always going to be a difficult task. For me I like the toy: It's Unicron and I don't think we're going to see anything much better than this representing the character.
Ha ! We know Unicron is neither Autobot or Decepticon. The TFU.info entry for Unicron has the Blendtron logo for Unicron, the Blendtron's being Unicron's agents in BW Neo.
Unicron was released with his Minicon Dead End as an Armada toy in the USA and the UK in 2003. In Japan he & Dead End were released as Micron Legend toy MX-00 Unicron with Bug. Unusually for a modern Transformers toy the original Armada Unicron has has 2 unaltered re-releases. The first was effectively a continuation of the original release when Armada Unicrons were sold in Energon Unicron boxes which were then later replaced by the Energon coloured Unicron. Several years later in 2008 Unicron & Dead End were re-released in a Universe box as a ToysRUs exclusive.
A multicoloured prototype of Armada Unicron & Dead End exists which shows quite well which parts are moulded with which. It's an odd thing to look at as there's lots of grey in there with other parts picked out in jarringly bright colours!
Micron Legend Unicron of Light
The Unicron of Light was a glowing green Unicron assembled from all the Minicons at the conclusion of the Micron Legend/Transformers Armada TV Series. It was translated into toy form as a competition prize for the Transformers Micron Legend Yearbook 2003 where only 10 were made. All the pieces coloured orange and darkest grey are swapped for green ones.
Yessss..... it's an interesting colour scheme but I can't get that excited about it. Which is a good job because this toy, due to it's very limited production run, falls firmly into the "you'll never own it" category.
Energon Unicron
Unicron was sold from the start of Transformers Energon but initial shipments of the toy were just the Armada version in a new box before being replaced by a recoloured version. The vast majority of the orange on the toy is swapped for black as is much of the greys. The orange of the upper legs and lower arms becomes a very dark grey. The wings stay grey, albeit a darker shade. The clear hands, eyes, chest & wait are exchanged for clear orange whereas the planet surface become a clear dark green. I've read that the colours are inspired by a Japanese promotional display for the 1986 movie.
The problem I have with this version of the toy is the colours: they don't say Unicron to me. Unicron to me is predominantly orange. Oddly what this version probably need is more black/dark green to give a more cohesive colour scheme. The grey and the clear orange here break the black up too much.
Energon Unicron was sold in the US and the UK during 2004. Amusingly the situation with the box in Japan was a mirror image of what happened in the USA: the newly coloured Unicron shipped from the start of the Superlink toy range but in the same Micron Legend box as the original Unicron.
Cybertron Unicron
Transformers Cybertron, the last part of the so called Unicron Trilogy, following Armada & Energon, did not feature a full scale Unicron planet. Instead we had two slightly different versions. Firstly early versions the Cybertron Supreme Primus came packaged with a damaged Unicron head. An odd pack in you might think but, as we saw at the end of Transformers the Movie, after his destruction Unicron's head ends up orbiting Cybertron as a new moon. Less explainable is the Deluxe Unicron where he becomes a futuristic looking tank, which I review here. Maybe it's some sort of drone that Unicron could use to interact with the smaller Transformers. With the right repaint it might make a good Cybertron Bumblebee or Warpath.
Transformers 2010 Unicron
A few years after Cybertron the Armada Unicron was re-released without alteration as a Universe toy in 2008. Two years later Unicron was re-released in Japan as part of their Transformers 2010 campaign, 2010 being the Japanese setting for the fourth year of the Transformers Cartoon. This Unicron features some significant recolouring including the legs & planet surfaces becoming a very dark grey, the waist panels & chest become grey and wings/ring system become orange. Over the entire toy the orange becomes much more consistent. Unicron also gets a new, smoother & more rounded head.
It's a fabulous repaint but sadly this toy has become notorious for having a faulty mouth on the planet mode. Many, but not all copies of the toy, come with two of the same piece of jaw instead of matching pieces.
Generations Unicron
Following the Japanese version released at the end of 2010, hope rose that it would be released in the west. At Botcon 2011 the Generations Unicron was unveiled with a new colour scheme swapping the dark grey for a grey blue and the orange for a yellowy orange to produce a colour scheme reminiscent of that used in the comics. The Dead End in this pack is renamed Kranix, after the last survivor of the planet Lithone who is eaten by the Sharkticons during Transformers the Movie. This has led some to allege that the original Kranix in the film is an agent of Unicron and survived the Sharkticons, a view we shared loudly during the showing of Transformers the Movie during Auto Assembly 2011. If you were sitting near me & Ralph and your appreciation of the film was impaired then we are sorry.
This new Unicron is an exclusive to Amazon and, at the time of writing, we don't know if it's exclusive to Amazon.com or will be available through other Amazon sites internationally.
Future Unicron Repaints
Two ideas occur to me for future repaints: an all black repaint symbolising his dark nature and an all red repaint playing on the resemblance, especially with the horns on the head, between him and a traditional representation of the devil.
