Hi guys! Sharp-O back once again for another toy review and this time I’m taking a look at a downright dastardly duo of DUOCONS! Battleslash and Roadtrap are Legends-class figures from the Power of The Primes line that combine together to form the G1-homaging BATTLETRAP!

Powerglide has always been a firm favourite of mine since I was a kid, you can blame a very well-loved VHS tape with The Girl Who Loved Powerglide on it. As such, when I saw that the new Transformers Combiner Wars line was going to be featuring one of my favourite ‘Bots, I jumped at the chance as soon as I saw him in-store!

The new Legends scale packaging for the Generations line is slick as hell! It’s crisp and stylish and I kinda dig it. What I don’t dig are the Collector Cards that are bundled in with every figure now. We get it, Hasbro, you need to get your money’s worth out of all that Transformers Legends artwork you paid for…

Powerglide transforms into a stylised A-10 Thunderbolt II and it’s entirely serviceable. What do you want, he looks like a better version of his original version? Okay, the back end on my figure likes to bend where his conspicuous knee-joints are but it’s not that bad. And his fins are loose as hell… And his fuselage is wonky. Okay so it’s not GREAT. Like I said, serviceable.

The new moulds in the Generations like are pulling double-duty as either components to their thematic Combiner or, in Powerglide’s case, as Targetmasters. Yes, Powerglide adds triple-changing into his arsenal by becoming a gun so heft that only five guys combined into one can wield him! It’s not a bad form to be fair.

Powerglide’s robot mode is what I bought this guy for because he is spot-on, tip-top, G1 awesomesauce! The delicious red, the huge Autobot symbol, that FACE. Mmmm, perfic’! He has a decent amount of articulation, pulling off all the poses you’d want him to but I’d have loved a bicep swivel so he could pose hands-on-hips.

Powerglide is a fantastic little figure but your mileage may vary but I love him and he’ll fit in right alongside his Minibot update brethren.

After that we move onto the Next Generation movies. In this episode we cover Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact. We also talked about the GS Ball from Pokemon. Remember that thing?! Biggest let down of my childhood!

Nightbeat has been a firm favourite of mine since childhood when I read the Marvel stories The Big Shutdown! and Bird of Prey. While other Transformers were just soldiers, this Autobot was a detective first and foremost and I really latched onto the idea. In the more recent IDW run, this characterisation was built upon and now he’s a member of the Lost Light crew in the ongoing title More Than Meets The Eye. Some of the more recent offerings from Hasbro’s Generations line of figures has focused on IDW characters and this is no exception so let’s take a look at Transformers Generations: Nightbeat. (Massive shout-out to my buddy Dawfydd Kelly selling me one!)

The American releases of this sub-line all come with reprints of IDW storylines and Nightbeat’s wave (and maybe a couple others) all feature parts of the recent Dark Cybertron storyline. Now there’s a few problems with this. Firstly is the cover, featuring Nightbeat rendered in the body of the 2010 Jazz toy. Early preorders also showed the figure like this but this is obviously not the toy we got. Secondly, the issue that comes with Nightbeat BARELY features him!  Dark Cybertron being pretty awful artwise is bad enough, but they didn’t even pick a good issue to showcase the character.

Nightbeat, as he was released, is using the recent Bumblebee body and it looks pretty good on him. The vehicle form is chunky and looks like the kind of muscle car a hard-boiled detective might drive. His paint scheme is a slavish homage to his G1 roots, even down to the flame deco on his doors. The paint is crisp and clean, picking out some great details in silver and yellow.

His dual blasters can plug into the rear of his vehicle mode as both front-facing weapons or maybe even some Star Trek nacelles!

Unfortunately, Nightbeat’s robot mode chest doesn’t sit flush and really hampers the rolling ability of his car form.

Transformation is incredibly simplistic but is also intuitive enough to not feel boring. There’s some clipping issues that spring up when going from robot-to-vehicle but nothing major.

The robot mode is pretty cool. It has good proportions and casts a good silhouette but there’s some unsightly streaks in his metallic blue plastic that you should be aware of. His head sculpt is spot on but it feels a tad small. only swivels side-to-side and his red visor appears to have been chipped, which REALLY damages him for me.

‘Beat can pull off an okay assortment of poses but nothing spectacular. His shoulders are especially bad, because they move along with the rest of the arm, leaving a lot of poses out of the question.

Nightbeat’s forearms have a light wash applied to them, resulting in some pretty nice panel-lining which was a nice surprise. The dual blasters can be combined for one big gun, two seperate guns or pegged into the ports under Nightbeat’s arms for two underslung “claws”.

Compared to the RTS Jazz mold that he was intended to be, Nightbeat comes off all the lesser. While his vehicle mode looks fantastic, the robot mode suffers from the lack of articulation and build quality that the Jazz body had and the Bumblebee body just feels… bad. It looks closer to the Nightbeat we know but it suffers from bad articulation.

Ultimately, am I happy with this figure? Little bit yes and a lot more no. Am I happy to have a new Nightbeat for my Lost Light shelf? Yes, I am. Am I happy that his sub-par articulation and numerous QC issues will mean that he’ll do nothing but stand in line? HELL NO.

I’m really disappointed with how this figure turned out and can’t recommend it and that really sucks to say.