Dave's Transformers Legacy Rant: Voyager wave 7

Trashmaster (Junkion garbage truck)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Legacy/VTrashmaster

The Junkion forces get a heavy hitter with the addition of Trashmaster,
who kinda looks like Legacy Bulkhead decided to dress up as a Junkion for
Halloween (but in a good way).

Note: the more recent QR codes haven't been working for over a month at
the time I post this, and the huge layoffs at Hasbro aren't going to speed
up the fixing of that problem. For now, I will speculate in parentheses in
some places and leave the rest blank.

CAPSULE

$35 price point.

Trashmaster: Good boxy robot and vehicle modes. The Evo-Fusion and "not
calling it Modulator anymore" features are unimpressive and the claw weapon
seems optimized for an undocumented combiner feature, but these are both
kinda bonus features. Recommended.

RANT

Packaging: Same as other Legacy Evolution Voyagers. The Evo-Fusion
inset shows the front end of Axlegrease replacing the front wheels of vehicle
mode for a sort of post-apoc Rodimus Prime, although obviously Scraphook's
front end would better match the color scheme.

AUTOBOT: TRASHMASTER
Assortment: F7209
Altmodes: Garbage Truck, Armor Pieces
Transformation Difficulty: 15 steps
Previous Name Use: None
Previous Mold Use: None
Function: (Battlefield Cleanup)
Special Unit: Junkions
Origin Universe: G1
Signature Weapon: (Wrecker Claw)
Evo-Fusion: Junkion Swappability

STR XX INT XX SPD XX FRB XX

Packaging: Two plastic double-ties and three plastic single-ties
(including one holding the backpack bits behind the tray) secure the robot to
the inner tray. A rather large bundle of what feels more like baking
parchment than tissue holds a bunch of vehicle bits (front wheel chunks, claw
weapon, trash bin arms) behind the tray.
The instructions include a seven-step page of "how to attach all those
bits of kibble that were in the paper wrap." They DON'T show how to use the
disassembled pieces as armor or accessories, just how to unhook the front
wheel pieces and attach Scraphook's or Axlegrease's front end. (If you get
all of the Junkions, there's a semi-official Junkosaur mode that's been shown
off, but instructions for that are unlikely to be officially released.)
Note, the front wheel pieces go on the buttcape and tend to get in the way,
but they're only pegged in place and can go on the top of the backpack
instead, which looks a little better and gets in the way less. Similarly, I
prefer to ignore the instructions and put the dumpster-lifter arms on the
sides of the boots rather than on the hip pads.

Robot Mode: Very boxy, lots of rectangular shapes with dull spikes and
crude-looking armor panels. As with the other Legacy Junkions, he's not
totally symmetric, but the asymmetry is limited to the shoulderpads. Each
has what looks like a plate bolted onto the front of it, three dull spikes on
the right shoulderpad, two on the left. The rest is symmetric. There's dull
spikes along the mohawk-like head crest, spikes for ears, a line of spikes
along the sternum, three spikes on each kneecap, and a mohawk-like row of
spikes on top of the claw weapon. The fists include a pair of short nozzle-
like blasters on the same molded piece as the fist, which can cause some
issues with getting the claw weapon attached. Leaving out the spikes, his
head has an Ironhide-style crest and the Bulkhead sort of oversized lower
jaw. In fact, the overall look does feel like last year's Legacy Bulkhead
dressed up in a Junkion costume for Halloween. They don't share any parts in
common, though, and Trashmaster is noticeably shorter than Bulkhead.
Just over 6" (15.5cm) tall in the usual Junkion colors of warm terra
cotta brown (almost a burnt orange), light gray, tan, warm brown, dark gray,
silver, and red. There was no attempt to do rust streaks in the paint,
although that's probably for the best considering how badly "Siege Splatter"
and Last Knight rust splats looked in practice. Terra cotta plastic is used
on the head, most of the upper torso, shoulderpads, forearms, pelvis front,
vehicle front end chunks on the bustle, and the top of the claw weapon.
Medium gray plastic forms the collar, the shoulder roots, the inner part of
the shoulder joints, the knee joints, the ankle joints, the weird horns or
whatever on the claw weapon, and the wheels. Light gray is used for the
biceps, abdomen, the trash container arms on the hip pads, the wheel hubs,
and the lower jaw of the weapon. Oddly, there's a darker gray that's only
used on the hands, I triple-checked to make sure they weren't painted. A
somewhat warm medium brown plastic is used for the hip sockets, boots, pelvis
back, and the bracket buttcape thing that holds the nose of the vehicle in
this mode (officially, anyway, I prefer it on the top of the backpack). The
back shell, hip pads, thighs, and feet are tan plastic.
Probably the most obvious paint is gloss red, which is used for the
visor, the patch-and-spike bits on the shoulders, the spike crest on the
helmet, the spike crest on the claw weapon, and the spikes on the knees. The
little bit of face visible is dark silver, as is the row of spikes on the
collarbone. The front end of the vehicle on the back is also dark silver.
Bright silver is used for the window slits (there's a sort of armor panel
louvre pattern on the chest windows), the forearm pistons, the chain-wrapped
armor panels on the undersides of the forearms, the molded fuel tanks on the
hip flaps, and the very short smokestacks at the back corners of the upper
back. Somewhat subtly, there's brown paint on the sides of the vehicle nose,
a good match to the plastic. Technically there's a visible red-printed
Autobot symbol in this mode, it's just upside-down at the top of the back.
The neck is a very restricted ball joint, barely able to wiggle outside
of simply turning. The waist is smooth, but all the junk on back along with
the fact that the hip pads are actually attached to the sides of the lower
abdomen restricts the range of motion. Hinge and swivel shoulders, bicep
swivels, hinge elbows, swivel wrists. Hinge and swivel hips, swivels just
above the hinge knees. The ankles have a front-back hinge at the top and
extremely stiff side to side hinges (which I initially didn't think moved at
all) at the bottom. The hip flaps are hinged, as is the buttcape.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, but because of the wide forearms and the
dual blasters mounted on the backs of the fist it can be difficult to get
anything in. There's two 5mm sockets on the underside of the forearm and one
on the outer face near the elbows. There's another on the back of each
shoulderpad (it's a screw hole, but they made 'em hexagonal 5mm sockets on
purpose). Every wheel has a 5mm socket, there's two sockets on the backpack
and two on the buttcape (one of these two pairs needs to hold the front end
of the vehicle). There's also a socket on the side of each boot between each
wheel, and one on the underside of each foot. There's another 5mm socket on
each hip flap. There's the usual 3mm socket on the back of the pelvis, but
it's pretty significantly obstructed by the buttcape, so they added another
on the tan back panel. Each of the bin-lifter arm pieces has a 5mm peg on
either end of the arm, on either face of the object. The peg that's on the
section of arm without molded pistons also has a 5mm socket opposite the
peg. It feels like they should be able to hold onto something while
connected in vehicle mode, but not that I could figure out. Finally, each of
the two short blasters mounted on the back of each fist end in a 3mm stud.
And that's not counting the fact that the above the knee swivels are
actually pegged connections, with the peg in the knee part. I suppose if you
got two Trashmasters, you could attach the legs of one to the soles of the
other's feet and make a stiltmaster.
The weapon is basically a claw evocative of a steam shovel's, with a
split shield sort of thing on the back that looks almost like beetle
mandibles of some sort. The dark gray mandible piece is connected to the top
back of the jaws via a pinned hinge, and it has two long 5mm pegs on the
underside close to the hinge. The lower jaw is light gray and just snapped
in place, if you open the jaw too much it pops out. The combination of two
hinges does let the jaw open up when held in one of the robot hands (lift the
top part on the pinned hinge, then fold down the lower jaw). There's another
5mm peg grip under the "chin" of it, and 5mm sockets facing outwards from the
hinge points of the jaw. The whole thing is about 3" (7.5cm) long when
flattened out for attachment to the robot's arm.
So many things about the weapon make me think there's supposed to be
more uses for it, more configurations or maybe even some ideas that were
dropped and so the mold no longer can quite do what was envisioned thanks to
missing one or two elements. The trash container arms don't have the right
connections to let them hold this in vehicle mode. You can sort of combine
it with the trash arms to make a sort of mecha-bunny drone? I suppose it
might be intended for the "we're not gonna get instructions" Junkion T.rex
combiner, some fan attempts have this as the head of the combiner with the
weird scissors thing as a frill. Well, here's my scraplet bunny pet for
Trashmaster: http://www.dvandom.com/images/scrapletbunny.JPG .