When I was a kid, I had this toy, or rather Skullgrin, and would let him flip his hands around for guns while still in robot mode to do extra carnage. It hearkened back to More than Meets the Eye, when robots would routinely replace their hands with tools and weapons. Skullgrin was probably my favorite Pretender toy as a child. (Favorite Pretender character: Bludgeon.) It was fun that Budiansky gave him a spotlight issue. I suppose my like for the character is pretty evident. I wrote a whole Monster from Mars riff into the first Allspark Almanac
(order it today!)
3 comments:
Super! Roll on more Japanese transformations...
I make that 125 Ark Addendums to date.
Martin
I also really like the emphasis on the face cover. Reminds me of the way we first see Cyclonus transform in TF The Movie. They also made a point to cover up his face in jetmode (which the toy could never do).
@Hans:
Say, what was the first toy that had a sliding face cover for that explicit purpose? Armada Megatron? The '87 Headmasters usually had that flip-down forehead panel...
Tweaking the model to obscure a TF's face in their alt mode seems common sense, but it often wasn't done in micro-continuities where artists only had toys and box art to work from. I recall Powerglide suffering that in a Find Your Fate book ('Decepticon Poison'?), and a weird pic in 'Jaws of Terror' depicting an aerial battle between Dinobots and Decepticons where Slag seems to be peeking out at the reader, though I think the artist was trying to show him from below, possibly in mid transform (Those Kid Stuff books in general were likely THE most deranged official TF fiction in all of G1, but that particular book's insanity it amplified by its attempts to tie into Marvel US #5-8)
I never had any of the '88 Pretenders, so thanks for sharing the memories Jim!
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