Cliffbee.com Turbomaster Toy Review

Individual Review




Name: Turbomaster
Series: "European" Generation 1
Allegiance: Decepticon
Function: Aerial Marauder
Alternate Mode: Helicopter

Thanks to griffin for loaning me Turbo Master for this review



HELICOPTER MODE
Height: 6.5cm Length: 19cm Width: 9.5cm

   A purple and lilac chopper with crimson and green painted areas, this is one of the bizarrest looking helicopters you'll ever see. This is basically a robot belly up with wings and rotors attached. The colour combination is awful at best - the bright green painted windows over the lilac cockpit looks dreadful. There's one Decepticon logo sticker here, which is upside down on one shoulder. Rounding out this ridiculous colour scheme, one of the two cannons under the cockpit is purple and the other is... yellow.

   As I said, this isn't much more than a belly up robot. There are two lilac wings attached to his shoulders and two lilac rotors on top of his hands. The wings, rotors and also the tailfins on the outsides of his ankles are all add-on pieces, making this even less credible. While Action Master Elites transform, Turbo Master barely transforms, what with all these add-on parts.

   There's some play value here, but it's minimal. Pressing in the yellow cannon underneath will cause the rotors to spin, although they turn more than they spin. There are no wheels underneath this vehicle mode.

   To be honest, this vehicle mode is bit of a joke. I try to avoid referring to robot mode parts in vehicle mode, but considering that this looks more like a robot on his back than anything else, it's difficult to avoid. The colours are awful and even with the add-on pieces, this is incredibly ill-defined.

TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE

   Detach the add-on pieces, straighten the legs, flip up the feet, swing down the arms and rotate the head. Attach the rotors on the outsides of his shoulders, plug the tailfins into the outsides of his ankles (on the opposite sides now), and plug the wings into his hands as blades.

ROBOT MODE
Height: 11cm Width: 8cm

   A purple robot with a crimson chest, crimson wrists and elbows, lilac on his hands, head and boots. The eyes are blue and there's a hint on green on his chest. The Decepticon logo is on his left shoulder, rounding out a colour scheme that's just as horrible now.

   The sculpt of his head and chest - along with the mismatched cannons on his back - are a clear tribute to Bruticus, even if the colours aren't anything like that character. The add-on pieces aren't trying (failing?) to define this mode, if anything they're actually tacked on simply because they have to go somewhere. The wings can plug into either hand or you can plug them into the top and bottom of one hand. Pressing the yellow cannon down now will cause this hands to turn, making this double-wing a blade weapon - again it doesn't spin, rather it just turns, and the weight of the weapons make this gimmick unimpressive.

   While it's a clearly defined robot mode, making this his stronger mode, Turbo Master's robot mode has awful colours and a failed gimmick. It's one of the weakest Actionmaster robot modes, and this is compounded by such a misfiring tribute.

VARIATIONS

   None that I'm aware of. Turbo Master was only released in Europe and Australia.

OVERALL

   With amazingly bad colours, a laughable vehicle mode relying on add-on pieces for a "because we say so" helicopter mode and a really poorly done tribute, this is a very poor Transformer. Turbo Master is rare, which is probably the most notable thing about him. He's the weakest of the Actionmaster Elites - 1.5/10

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