Cliffbee.com Garboil Toy Review

Individual Review




Name: Garboil
Series: e-Hobby exclusives
Allegiance: Decepticon
Function: Information Control
Alternate Mode: Microcassette



CASSETTE MODE
Height: 3cm Length: 5cm Width: 0.5cm

   A cobalt blue cassette, Garboil is a repaint of Buzzsaw, which means he shares his mould with Laserbeak. His colours are based on the Microchange cassette that inspired the two black condor cassettes, which was itself a bright blue, rather than the more tasteful cobalt blue of Garboil. This cassette mode isn't much to look at from below, from the topside Garboil is a blue Microcassette (60mins) with silver & green stickers and features the Autobot schematic sticker in the centre that reissue Buzzsaw has - the tape window sticker of the Microchange toy is absent on Garboil. There are holes for spools (complete with teeth) and a rubsign underneath the schematic sticker. He's side "A", which is indicated on the top right corner, while the bottom right indicates that he's a 60 minute tape. The bottom left indicates he's metal position.

   Turn him over and he's black, blue and stickered. In other words, don't look at the other side.

   A nice tape mode, which fits nicely into Soundwave or Soundblaster, the latter's red window working better with the schematic sticker. The biggest drawback of this tape mode is its heavy reliance on stickers for it's definition - if he's missing stickers he's going to look bad. And they do have a habit of peeling & curling, being metal foil stickers.

TRANSFORMATION TO CONDOR MODE

   Fold out the sides of the cassette to form the legs (and on the other side, twin tails). Swing out the sides of the "B" side to form the wings, and pull out the head. Add weapons.

CONDOR MODE
Height: 3.5cm Width: 5cm Wingspan: 10cm

   In this mode, Garboil is blue with a die cast metal black backplate and silver backpack weapons. There's a purple Decepticon symbol atop his head, and gold eyes painted onto either side of his head. Unlike Buzzsaw, Garboil has silver wing stickers (Laserbeak's, in fact), which are covered by red and yellow details.

   It's a pretty good condor considering it was a cassette a moment ago. The silver with their dual lasers, rockets and fins look cool, and he's able to swing his wings back & forth, as well as having two neck joints so he can move his head up & down. The colours aren't as nice as those of either Laserbeak or Buzzsaw (my favourite of the trio), and it's obvious to see why they went with black for the Transformers in 1984. Still, the cobalt blue used here isn't a bad colour by any stretch, so Garboil still works - I'm glad they changed the shade of blue.

VARIATIONS

   None as such, although he's co-packaged with Howlback, and sold in limited numbers only in Japan. If by some chance yours is bright blue with a tape window sticker, you have the Microchange toy (or a rip off of that toy).

OVERALL

   While it's easy to see why they used black in place of blue on this mould in 1984, the cobalt blue used on Garboil is quite nice and a definite improvement on the original Microchange toy. The condor mould is a good mould and if you're a fan of the cassettes I'd definitely recommend the Cobalt Sentry set if you like cassette Transformers - 8/10

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