Name: Crosshairs
Series: Movie Tie-ins
Allegiance: Autobot
Alternate Mode: Dune Buggy
Thanks to Pulse for donating Crosshairs for this review
DUNE BUGGY MODE
Height: 6.5cm Length: 10cm Width: 6.5cm
A beige beach buggy style with a transparent grey crane arm, dark grey front bumper and seats along with some brown on the sides and rear fenders. There are squiggly brown camouflage lines on this buggy while this tyres are dark grey with silver hubcaps. Crosshairs is a repaint of Strongarm, who draws no inspiration from his G1 namesake, as far as I can see. I like the basic idea of this repaint - the beige, brown and dark grey interact well, but there are some unfocused finer aspects which bring this one down. His headlights are yellow, but the indicators outside them are... red. There are some splashes of a mid blue paint on the sides and behind the seats, which don't fit into the theme at all. There are hinges in front of the windshield which are painted an awkward glossy beige, which is much brighter than the understandably dull beige of the rest of the toy. The end result is a repaint which is good in theory but ends up slightly disappointing.
His windshield is transparent, as is the spare tyre on the back. The neutral grey colour of this plastic makes both work well enough, however the grey crane arm is a stretch on a beach buggy. I should mention that the hook is overshadowed by the barrel/handle, so this ends up looking a lot like a cannon (and if you turn it over, it becomes one). The cannon is a nice enough idea, but the crane is silly. It's very much a case of "give him bits that can be an Energon weapon", rather than giving him good weaponry - although it works much better in grey than Strongarm's did in red. I prefer to leave off the arm, although I leave the spare tyre on his back since leaves a gap if it's absent. He also comes with a grey Energon chip which covers his engine block, but again I prefer leaving it out.
Once you get past the superfluous grey bits, this is actually a very decent buggy. The seats are clevery the back of the robot thighs, and between them on his... backside... are moulded gearstick and handbrake! On the left side of the engine block is a raised, unpainted Autobot symbol, flanked up a black S7 logo. The right side has a light grey post onto which the arm attaches. In front of the engine is a light grey rollbar.
The crane arm can swing around, and its post is on a hinge so it can lift up and down. His tyres are ridged and while they roll on soft surfaces, and they roll better on a hard surface than those of my Strongarm do. He has an Autobot spark crystal in the middle of the engine block which you can cover up with the Energon chip if you like.
This is a good buggy mode, even if the crane arm makes no sense. The repaint is great in concept, if held back by some bad paint choices. The paint job isn't skimped on, which I'm happy about.
TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
Flip over the front to form the robot legs, twist them 180° at the waist. Swing out the arms from underneath the vehicle. Remove the spare tyre, you can either clip it onto one shoulder, split it and place the halves on either shoulder or just set it aside. Turn the head around, fold down the rollbar to become the groin and attach the shoulder cannon if you feel inclined. Stand him up and straighten his feet up so he's not leaning backwards.
ROBOT MODE
Height: 10.5cm Width: 8cm (no weapons)
A beige and brown robot with light grey forearms, Strongarm has a dark grey head with a silver face and blue eyes. There are a few outbursts of blue doing their damage here, again. The S7 logo ends up on the left side of his chest. Strongarm has dark grey thighs and transparent red feet (the windshield halves).
The spark crystal located in the middle of Strongarm's chest is a nice centrepiece, even if it is flanked by more of that shiny beige paint. I'd recommend covering it with the Energon chip, since he's meant to be loyal to S7 rather than the Autobots (you can't don much about the unpainted Autobot logo, mind you). As mentioned, the big arm can be a shoulder cannon in this mode, or he can hold it as a giant club in either fist. If you attach the spare tyre halves, it's a giant (and probably impractical) battleaxe.
The poseability is okay, but not fantastic. His head rotates, the shoulders swivel, his arms can swing out to the sides and his elbows are hinged. The waist can swivel, but both the groinplate and the armour skirting formed from the buggy doors prevent it from doing more than jiggling. The hips are ball joints, which can move everywhere except backwards, where the seats get in the way, and of course hips don't move that anyway. The knees are hinged, but the location of the hinges is about 1/3 of the way down the calves, so bending the knees too much results in very odd looking legs. His feet can fold up and down.
This is a decent robot mode, overall. The colour scheme has the same issues as his buggy mode, but the idea is again a solid one. The lower legs being the car bonnet is a nice touch. The weaponry is unspectacular, but at least now you can do away with it all without there being any gaps left behind. You can also leave the spare tyre on his head as a hat, if you're in the mood for something silly.
VARIATIONS
None as such, although as mentioned he is a repaint of Strongarm from Energon.
OVERALL
A good idea that's dragged down by the tacked on Energon weapon bits - although they work better here than in Energon. The repaint itself is a good idea held back by some ill-conceived paint choices. The mould _is_ a good one, wit his buggy mode is the better of the two modes while the robot mode's poseability is a little limited. It's not really any better or worse than the original, so I wouldn't recommend Crosshairs if you already have the mould, but if you can't grab Movie Strongarm or the limited Fallback, he's worth it for the mould alone - 7/10
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