Cliffbee.com Movor Toy Review

Individual Review




Name: Movor
Series: Robots in Disguise
Allegiance: Decepticon
Alternate Mode: Space Shuttle



SPACE SHUTTLE MODE
Height: 5cm Length: 10cm Width: 6.5cm

   A white space shuttle, which may seem obvious, but Blast Off wasn't white. Anyway, he has a black nosecone, black wings (with white paint on the topsides), a silver cockpit window and purple Decepticon logo on each wing. There is also some sprayed on green, meant to resemble re-entry scorching, on the topside, although it's not very convincing. this green is a lot subtler on Shuttler, the Japanese version. I actually removed this paint by covering it in hobby cement for a few seconds and then wiping it off (but bought a second to keep sealed so I have an undamaged one. Scorchmarks aside this is the best colour scheme yet for this mould.

   He's got three wheels, two just below the wings, one below the cockpit. He can roll freely, but he can't fly. He has two guns which can attach on the back (into the jets) and wrap around the sides, to form an attack shuttle mode. There actually are the three jets you see on real shuttles on the back, though they're cylindrical, not conical, and the top one is significantly smaller than the two lower ones. Still, it's a nice touch that they put them in at all. Oh, and they're flat which allows him to stand upright in launch position. Ok, so this is necessitated by his leg mode, but it still adds to the vehicle mode.

   The most glaring thing about the shuttle mode is that it's a space shuttle. When was the last time you saw a military attack shuttle? I _like_ this mould, but this particular toy is really out of place amongst the set. I assume they avoided a plane mode simply because it was originally released at the same time as the Aerialbots. Still, they could have avoided that problem by making him a bomber of some sort - since all the small Aerialbots are fighters.

TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE

   Fold up the wings, extend the rear section. Extend the front section, split it into halves and bring each half down to his sides to form the arms, and twist the nosecone halves to form hands. You can give him the handgun, but you can also attach the shuttle guns to the sides of the lower legs, although they look a tad out of place.

ROBOT MODE
Height: 8cm Width: 5.5cm

   The white and black continues into the robot mode, with a reddish-orange chest. He has white arms with black hands, black lower legs and white thighs, a white head with purple eyes and a purple mouthplate. The reddish-orange covers his chest and groin, his waist is painted a shiny black.

   Like Rotor, Movor has swivel joints at his shoulders, allowing for very poseable arms. He's also got hands that can swivel. Not great by modern standards, but fantastic for a toy of this size in 1986. The fists are nothing more than the insides of the two nosecone halves, and look a tad strange, but at least he has dedicated hands, which is more than many Scramble City components have. The biggest downfall of this mode is the fact that his lower legs are one solid piece, and it's black, so despite the moulding of two legs on it, it looks like a lump of black. The back half of this piece has the tailfin, which is why I suspect they made it one piece.

   A good colour scheme, and fairly useful (for the time) robot mode. About average as Combaticon moulds go, and IMO this set is better than a lot of other G1 Combiner sets.

VARIATIONS

   The Japanese version, Shuttler, which actually preceded this toy by two years, which has much subtler scorchmarks.

   There are Arctic and desert camo versions, from the respective Ruination giftsets.

OVERALL

   A pretty good square-peg style combiner limb, although it's a stretch to have a combat space shuttle. The robot mode is poseable, albeit the lower legs are somewhat disappointing. The shuttle mode's nice for the size. Somewhat dated, but he's in the RiD Cartoon, so some people will get him for that reason alone, and of course you need him to complete Ruination - 6/10

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