Name: Trickdiamond
Series: Unite Warriors
Allegiance: Destron
Alternate Mode: Sports Car
Thanks to tha phantom for loaning me Trickdiamond for this review
SPORTS CAR MODE
Height: 4cm Length: 13cm Width: 6cm
A black sports car with silver windows, yellow rear fenders & back, a yellow spoiler and yellow engine cover at the rear along with yellow skirting at the front. Her windows and headlights are painted silver along with the rims. The spoiler is actually yellow plastic & the rest is painted. She sports a purple Decepticon logo on the top right corner of the hood. It's a good colour scheme - the aposematic choice of black and yellow make her look quite threatening in a yellow jacket wasp kind of way.
She's a retool of Breakdown and while most of the retooling is in the robot mode, the silver front bumper has gaps on either side - a side effect of the retooling of the robot mode chest. The same chestplate also wont lock right into place due to her head underneath the hood. Very minor issues, but I mention as they're the retools that affect this mode. Unusually fo a Takara toy, the yellows of the plastic and paint don't match too well - the plastic is more a lemon colour while the paint is more of a cadmium yellow.
Play value here is about what you'd expect - the wheels roll and her scarab-beetle shaped weapon can be attached to a hole on the roof or one at the back. It's not an especially useful weapon in this mode.
While the weapon is a waste of time, this is a nice looking vehicle mode. The retool causes some very minor issues, but they're quibbles, really. The mismatched yellows annoy me, but they're not enough to ruin a good colour scheme.
TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
Unclip the halves of the rear, pivot them out and back to form her legs. Fold the halves of her spoiler down as heelspurs, and similarly fold down her feet. Fold the front of the car up and back, unclip the sides which will become her arms. Unclip the front bumper - the bottom edge of the chestplate - and fold down as that chestplate - revealing her head. Swing the arms up so that the shoulders lock her head & chestplate into place. Position her arms, place her weapon in her hand and you're done.
ROBOT MODE
Height: 14cm Width: ~7cm (depending on pose)
A mainly black robot with yellow feet, hands and thighs. Trickdiamond has a silver face and silver around her waist. Her eyes are red along with two outbursts on the chest. Unusually, she has a Decepticon logo on her right shin. Again it's a good colour scheme, and the different yellows aren't as obvious now as there's no area where they sit next to each other here.
The chest, hands and head have been retooled... her head looks almost droid like and her chest protrudes. It's not really a bosom, thankfully, but it kinda alludes to it. I'm not a big fan of the look of her head - it's quite detailed - but it just looks too... innocent... with her big eyes for a Decepticon in black and yellow.
Trickdiamond's quite poseable, and doesn't quite fit into standard Combiner Wars poseability thanks to some atypical joints. Her waists rotate while his neck, shoulders, elbows and hips are all ball jointed. She also has hinges in his elbows (for transformation) and pivots in her hips (again, for transformation) making her more poseable than most Combiner Wars deluxes. Her knees are hinged with rotators while the transformation hinges in her feet can allow some posing as well. Really, the only thing I'd ask for is ankle tilts - which was not standard in Combiner Wars anyway. His weapon can fit into her hand... it's not well defined, but it looks like a club of sorts.
Trickdiamond has a good colour scheme and clever colour placement. I'm not a fan of the head resculpt, but it's detailed at least. Her weapon is... unusual but not a failure here like in vehicle mode.
VARIATIONS
A repaint of, Jumpsteam, herself a retool of Breakdown. Sunstreaker, Wheeljack, BotCon 2016 Ravage & Tigatron, Subscription Service Counterpunch and Unite Warriors Lightspeed are also retools of Breakdown. She was sold as part of the Megatronia giftset.
OVERALL
It's a good mould, and her colour scheme is a really nice idea. The yellows on the vehicle mode don't quite gel, but that's fairly minor. I'm not a fan of the retooling here - it causes the vehicle mode to not quite clip in properly in vehicle mode and the head just doesn't work for a Decepticon. Her colours are well laid out in both modes, so the repaint itself is good. If you like the idea of Megatronia, then she's part of the deal, but I find her remoulded aspects work against her - 7/10
|
