Name: Devastator
Series: Movie Tie-ins
Allegiance: Decepticon
Alternate Mode: N/A, Gestalt comprising High Tower, Long Haul, Mixmaster, Overload, Rampage, Scavenger & Scrapper
Thanks to Goktimus Prime for loaning me Devastator, making this review possible.
HIGH TOWER
Height: 15cm Length: 20cm Width: 10.5cm
A yellow crane with black treads, a black crane arm and grey hook. There's a grey cabin on the right side, with no obvious windows. Round out the simple colour scheme is a black stripe across the top with a Decepticon logo and "40777". It's a very bare colour scheme, and the lack of a window hurts.
As is something of a theme here, this is a very simple vehicle for the size. There's a strut on top that's meant to connect to pistons controlling the arm - but no pistons. So it just stands there, looking rather lost. There is some sculpted detail and the level of detail is okay, but the orphaned strut tends to grab your attention instead.
There is some play value here - High Tower rolls thanks to small yellow wheels under his treads. The crane arm and hook are hinged, while the useless strut is also on a hinge - but if you try to fold it down out of the way it'll pop off.
Overall this is a simple, underwhelming vehicle that just feels incomplete thanks to the strut on top.
SCRAPPER
Height: 8.5cm Length: 18.5cm Width: 10cm
A dark yellow excavator with black plastic tyres & grey machinery behind the bucket, Scrapper has black painted windows and a large white Decepticon logo stamped on this machinery. The colours here feel far more complete than on High Tower, thanks to the fact that the windows painted.
While this is a reasonably good shovel, the detailing is again simple for the size of this toy. Having said that, there's some excellent detailing here - especially the rails on either side. He's an odd mix of bland areas and great detailing. Other impressive aspects of the detailing here are the arms holding the bucket and the well sculpted teeth on that bucket.
Due to the nature of Scrapper's transformation into Devastator's arm, the bucket is fixed. So the only play value here is rolling wheels, which is disappointing.
While he doesn't do anything other than roll his tyres, Scrapper looks pretty good, thanks to some wonderful detailing and a good colour scheme.
MIXMASTER
Height: 11.5cm Length: 24cm Width: 9.5cm
A longnose cement truck in various shades of grey. Much of the truck is a dark grey while the drum and front bumper are a lighter grey. His windows are a light purple while the back end and much of the underside is black. He has six black plastic tyres, red taillights and a white Decepticon logo stamped as a hood ornament.
There's a better level of detail here compared to Scrapper & High Tower - but this is a larger vehicle. He's clearly out of scale with High Tower, who should be larger than Mixmaster. The details here include exhausts, bumper rivets, a slide at the back and side mirrors. The top of the slide isn't fixed and tends to slide tilt back and forward.
Mixmaster's play value is quite paltry - the wheels turn and that's it. There's no opening doors or turning drum (which is necessarily still because it becomes Devastator's head).
A very uninteresting vehicle and while the detailing is good, the colours are dull & the play value is non-existent. The colours were always going to be dull, but some play value here would have gone a long way to making Mixmaster's vehicle mode worthwhile rather than just a paperweight.
LONG HAUL
Height: 6.5cm Length: 12.5cm Width: 6.5cm
A dull green mining truck with four charcoal tyres, charcoal rails on either side of the cabin, which itself has charcoal painted windows. The headlights are yellow and there's a grey paint wash at the bottom of the tray's sides. Rounding out a decent paint job is a black Decepticon logo, stamped on the front.
This is one of the better vehicle modes in this set - so it's a shame that he's way off scale. This truck is one of the smallest is the set but should dwarf everyone else. The detailing is on par with Mixmaster, even if there's a little less detail (it's a much smaller toy). There's a rather unsightly grey post on the right side, which is where he attaches to Scavenger to form a leg, but otherwise this vehicle mode looks good. The play value is on par with Mixmaster - Long Haul does nothing more but roll.
A very static truck, but a good one thanks to good detailing and a nice paint job. It's another unremarkable vehicle, but it does enough to work, despite the scale issue here.
RAMPAGE
Height: 6.5cm Length: 12cm Width: 6.5cm
A dark yellow bulldozer, Rampage is the same colour as Scrapper. His treads are black while there;s a grey paint wash on the front of his blade and his cabin windows are painted black. There's a Decepticon logo in black on the front, nestled nicely amongst some black lines. This is probably the best paint job amongst the vehicle modes in this set.
Rampage has a great level of detail - again, probably the best in this set. The detail exceeds that of Mixmaster, and is easier to see in this lighter colour. The pistons on his sides don't attach to anything and look a little silly, but behind them is a lot of mechanical detailing and there are various exhausts on top. The blade is well sculpted and the treads are detailed. Like Long Haul there's a grey peg on one side (the left, this time), although this peg isn't as obtrusive as on the green truck.
The play value here is marginally better than some of his teammates, with the blade pivoting up and down a little while there are rollers underneath which he can roll along on.
Perhaps the best vehicle in this set, with good details & colours and no real shortcomings aside from mediocre play value (but then that's a feature of Devastator as a whole).
SCAVENGER
Height: 23.5cm Length: 34.5cm Width: 16cm
A red excavator with black treads & bucket, Scavenger is white on top - including the cabin on the left hand side and has white on the end of the digger arm. The windows are dark grey while the rails on either side are a mix of black & red. The red here is a "Cardinal" red - there's a shade of pink here. On either side there's a white painted stripe. On the left side this stripe incorporates "SCVNGR" and a Decepticon logo. I don't see why they shortened the name as is commonly done of Transformer number plates - there's plenty of room for the extra letters.
This vehicle is massive compared to every other member of this set, only Mixmaster comes close. The scale problems of this set are especially apparently when this guy is anywhere near Long Haul, but this guy's such an outlier that as a group it doesn't look right. The detailing is decent - there's plenty of room for sculpted features - but the back end is a mess and the treads are relatively low on detail for something this massive.
Scavenger has the best play value of the set, which you'd hope is the case given that he's as massive as the four limb guys put together. The digger arm has hinges at the base & in the middle, while the forward facing bucket is also on a hinge. There are small charcoal wheels under the treads, allowing him to roll.
Compared to most Transformers this massive, Scavenger is a disappointment - and given that Hasbro doesn't always do large Transformers well that's saying something. Aside from the obvious lack of a robot mode, Scavenger's play value isn't that crash hot and you'd expect some sort of gimmick or weapon in such a large vehicle mode - especially one that doesn't have to deal with a robot mode. The colours work well, even if the paint job is sparse for his size.
COMBINED MODE
Height: 30cm Width: 30cm
A fusion of all six vehicles, with Scavenger forming his torso and Mixmaster the head. Long Haul is the right leg while Rampage is the left, High Tower is the right arm and Scrapper is the left arm. He's a mix of red, yellow, dark yellow, green, white grey & black, with red & the yellow shades most prominent. His face is grey with green eyes while there are red horn-like protrusions above his head. These colours are nothing like those of the original Devastator, and aren't especially unified.
While there's a lot of detail here, there's not much that really qualifies as robot mode detail, aside from his face. the hands are digger buckets (weird on the right arm, which is a crane!) and the chest is a mess, really. So the detailing on his limbs, face and shoulders ends up kinda wasted. His torso is massive compared to the legs - Devastator is all upper body, really. I can't say I find this combined form visually attractive, and that's accounting for the alien look of movie Transformers. Devastator's proportions really hurt in this respect. This is a toy selling on sheer size - he's very large and awfully heavy, but not especially impressive despite the imposing size.
The play value here is fairly poor given the lack of play value many of his components have. The arms swing art the elbows, and they're long enough that he can knuckle drag. The head is fixed as there's no neck, but his mouth opens very wide, allowing Devastator to swallow all manner of stuff (and a lot of Transformers). The joints in his legs aren't strong enough to hold the massive upper body weight very well, so it's more case of find s stable pose than find a dynamic pose, and that's a frustrating game. The electronics nestled within Scavenger aren't anything new or impressive, so I don't think their contribution to his weight is offset by the now overused G1 transformation sound.
A poor combined robot mode which is definitely not more than the sum of its parts. The play value provides some swallowing-based fun, but the unstable legs kinda spoil that.
VARIATIONS
None that I'm aware of.
OVERALL
A poor set. While some of the individual vehicles work well enough, nothing here is exceptional and the robot mode isn't worth the price of admission (and he's an expensive toy). Of course the elephant in the room amongst everything I've covered here is the lack of individual robot modes - something the TakaraTomy designed Legends toy manages. Without much play value for the price (and bad stability in robot mode), and with a bunch of poor to mediocre individual vehicles, this set is just disappointing. The fact that the much smaller Legends version easily beats this one is a damning indictment of this set which doesn't display or play well. Get the Legends set instead of this one - 4/10
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