Phil's Titans Return & Ravage Stripes review

[Philip Ayres]

Stripes

The name Stripes does has previous form, being used as a Ravage repaint, but the suspicion is that this toy is mean to be Steeljaw, as per the Fall of Cybertron Steeljaw, which was also the Fall of Cybertron Ravage remould. However the presence of Steeljaw as a major character in Robots in Disguise probably put paid to that!

Stripes comes packaged in plane mode. The plane mode falls into the "If you squint hard enough" category of Transformers alternate modes, usually seen on multichangers. It's got a plane node, wings and tail fins so it must be a plane, right? Even if the "tail fins" are evidentially a pair of his beast mode legs folded up!. Two Titanmaster footpegs top the jet and, if I'm honest, don't hole the Titanmaster in place terribly well unless you get him on just right!

To transform him into his tape mode fold the "tail fins" forward so the feet tuck under wing hinges. Since this is a somewhat tricky manoeuvre, it might be easier to fold the wings & plane side upwards, fold the legs in and fold the side & wings back down. Whichever way you choose you finish by bringing the wings together over the tape body and fold the jet nose under and into the tape.

I say tape but like his predecessor Buzzsaw he's more of an iPod type item, complete with a 3.5mm audio jack socket on the top. It'll get called a tape because they're all descended from the original tapes and fit into the Titans Return Blaster & Soundwave so tape mode it is.

To transform into beast mode start by folding the head out from the jack socket end of the toy, the other end to where the plane nose was folded in. Swing the wings right the way back and fold the tail up. Fold each wing section, and tape side, in so the wings are closer together and parallel. Fold the rear legs down and then fold the front legs down. Bend the shoulder section at the base of the neck up and pose.

Tape beast modes occasionally leave a bit to be desired. The FOC Steeljaw/Ravage mentioned above was a disaster but the original Ravage, used for the first Stripes is amazing. New Stripes falls somewhere between the two. I think the main problem is I can still see a rectangular block in the centre of the toy, an image created by the striped sides of the tape folding up beside the black central spine to form a tape sized width. There's lots of hints that they were going for a lion here, and more specifically Steeljaw, with the hints of a mane on the the head & neck and the swept back wings being reminiscent of a detail found on the original Steeljaw's weapons. Against that he's mostly coloured bright orange with stripes on his side which say Tiger. As well as the central core & neck base, all four lower legs & feet are coloureds black and these bend at the knee & ankle. The shoulders, connecting the forelegs to the body, are ball jointed yet the rear legs are connected by a joint that just turns and, worse, one that's limited and won't move back beyond straight down restricting the poses you can get out the toy. The tail & wings all pivot and, like the now concealed plane nose, are made of a yellowy gold plastic which would have been perfect for Steeljaw and seem somewhat out of place here almost making me think there was a late change in plastic colour which didn't get altered for this piece. The head pivots up & down, as part of the transformation, at the base of the neck but half way down the neck there's a point with round detail on each side that, like God Ginrai's elbows, looks like it should bend and doesn't!

You can still stand a Titanmaster on the beast mode back but it even harder to attach him with the sides restricting access so I'd recommend folding the rear legs forward, folding the sides & wings down, standing the Titanmaster and unfolding the sides & legs again.

The more I play with this I think it's Steeljaw. I don't think it's a good Steeljaw but it's a better Steeljaw than the FOC version so points there. For Stripes it probably needs the alternate Tiger head found on the Ravage repaint but as it is it's a better Stripes than a Steeljaw. The plane mode is a bit Meh and the beast mode could have been both better and a lot worse.

I await to see if Takara produce a Steeljaw in the original Steeljaw colours from this!

[The Doctor]

This toy caused me pain.

-Ralph

[Philip Ayres]

Me too, but I've cracked it now.

Storing the front legs in tape mode is a bugger.

[Pinwig]

Jul 16, 2016 10:01:54 GMT Philip Ayres said:

I await to see if Takara produce a Steeljaw in the original Steeljaw colours from this!

Ah!

<BWMegs>Yeeeessss...</BWMegs>

[Philip Ayres]

Ravage

Although expected as a Stripes repaint, our first look at Ravage came at a Toyfair Australia event. There was immediately some confusion as Ravage's Official Images showed him with Stripes' head but, as pictures from Botcon confirm, and you can see it in close up here, Ravage does indeed have a new, thinner head without the mane that closely resembles his original.

The same thing happened with Rumble: his official images showed Rumble with same head as Rewind but later images showed the correct head.

While Titans Return Laserbeak is too black, Ravage ISN'T BLACK ENOUGH! He is, bar the new head, a simple colour swap of Stripes: Orange and yellow become black, black becomes an off white grey. Unfortunately that makes a large portion of his body grey and that just doesn't look right in the pictures. I hadn't intended to buy it but in the plastic in looks considerably better, an almost metallic grey, but I still think the body needs to be black.

Ravage was sold in Titans Returns Legends Wave 2 where he was packed at 3 per case alongside 3 of Laserbeak and just 2 of Rumble. Rumble's the only one with a robot mode, so I find it odd he's the least packed one, all three are tapes and all three have similar black colour schemes. I didn't think this wave looked terrible good and, like the first wave, was likely to shelf warm so I'm quite grateful that, at time of writing, it's only showed up in small numbers in the UK which makes it more likely we'll get the desirable Wave 3.

[The Doctor]

I thought Ravage looked ok the one time I saw it on a shelf and almost bought it until I remembered how terrible Stripes is!

-Ralph

[Philip Ayres]

Dec 16, 2016 11:20:53 GMT Philip Ayres said:

While Titans Return Laserbeak is too black, Ravage ISN'T BLACK ENOUGH!

Legends LG-37 Jaguar

Fortunately Takara comes to our rescue with an all black Ravage which looks much more like what I want! If you were being picky then you'd say to look more like original Ravage then the lower limbs & feet need to be grey or better silver, but making the legs grey is what led to the grey body on the western Ravage.

Ravage comes with Bullhorn, a repaint of the Terri-bull who was previously called Horri-bull. Terri-Bull's grey chest & lower legs and blue everything else becomes a black chest & lower legs with grey arms & upper legs. The shoulders are painted black with a blue large robot head and the portion of his face not covered by his faceplate done in silver as is his forehead. Every time I see the Titanmaster from the rear I keep thinking the face is on the wrong way up and the silver forehead should be the faceplate! Apart from that the only problem I have with Bullhorn is I just don't see his connection to Ravage!

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Future Repaints

I fully expect to see the Stripes version of the toy released in Japan under the name Steeljaw with the correct yellow colour and paired with the Sawback (Lione) head due to the lion connection between the two toys.