Transformers Legacy Evolution Deluxe
Item No.: Asst. F2990 No. F3035 Manufacturer:Hasbro Includes:Targetmaster pal Action Feature:Transforms from robot to car, and blaster to robot Retail:$24.99 Availability: January 2023 Other: A remake of a remake!
A few years ago I got super excited any time we got a new Targetmaster toy remake, because it mean two robots! Sometimes, three! But for some reason Pointblank and Peacemaker didn't push my buttons when he got announced - I vaguely remembered him from the 1980s, kind of a nobody on the cartoon and the toy didn't look as cool as some of the others. I just got Targetmaster Hot Rod instead back then, but newer Targetmaster toys were usually fun and weird. This one is weird.
This is the unusual toy that I think may have benefited from being simplified - there are lots of moving parts to twist and turn in the right order, lest something pop off. As a kid, I might find this fun - as someone who was here for G1, I want toys to be easy to transform. I'm not going to spend hours playing with these things anymore, at best they'll get a few transformations and hopefully I'll remember how to do it in a few years if I pick them up again... which is an increasingly depressing sentence to write. While opening this toy, taking pictures, and transforming him I got the feeling that he's headed for the back of the shelf until some day I get the urge to purge. If you had the original as a kid, you may want it, but just as a new toy of a sort of a nobody I'd say save your money. What, I have to write more? Crap.
The robot mode is a decent modern-looking version of the old toy. Due to costing reasons, there are no swivel wrists but you do get tilting ankles - I could do without the ankles. The shoulders swivel and you get some interesting joints around the biceps, but not swivels. He's a little stiff, able to stand and to a limited extent, pose a bit. Pointblank has a perfectly nice head and good color scheme, but some of his kibble seems to get in the way of his elbows bending and there's not much here that isn't done better by other toys in the line over the years. I actually think this might be a better toy at a lower cost - a simpler transformation with fewer parts might have resulted in a more fun toy. They made what I assume to be the best figure they could given the level of complexity they put into most figures, but maybe less is more here. Having his missing spoiler gun accessory may have been a better feature than the clear plastic sprue for the chest. I will say I really like the head with its bright blue painted visor - it pops nicely and looks great in his big silver face.
Peacemaker is a simple bot-to-gun who folds at the middle and has a rotate-out barrel do he can be pointed at things. As targetbuddy figures go, he's pretty good.
Transformation is not my favorite here, and I don't like the car mode as a toy either - but it looks like a fair update of the original. The arms are surprisingly complicated, and there's some torso flaps you have to rotate properly. I just kind of hate playing with it. The gun buddy Peacemaker is a snap, but getting all of the Pointblank parts in place resulted in some popped-off bits and the clear window, I don't know why they did that. The original didn't have it, and it's going to show fingerprints since you have to fondle it a lot. Things more or less massage in place but even then, it doesn't feel right.
As something that sits on a shelf, it's acceptable - the new toy doesn't have the flames or Autobot logos from the original, but the general parts are there. The removable spoiler blaster intake thing is gone, but you can mount the blaster on the back of the car there - it looks almost sensible, but it's also pointing right at the glass. His wheels have black tires and blue caps, and it looks a lot like the original. It also has the weird little car bumper mandibles. Much (bot not all) of the original car detail is replicated here, but there's so much junk under it that it scrapes along if you wheel it on a flat surface. After getting it in car mode, my reaction was "I really don't think I want to touch this again." It's not as bad as all-time stinkers like Universe Galvatron from 2008, but it's not fun and it's a nobody character - which certainly feels like it's encouraging me to buy less of these.
Normally I give a bunch of "if you like this" or "if this doesn't bug you" statements, but I think I can flat-out say I'd take a refund on this one if it was easy to do. I just don't like it, despite it being technically better than a lot of toys from the early 2000s. It's not garbage, but it's not fun either - it's a tightly-packed, nicely-articulated update of a character I don't care for with a chore of a transformation. I'd suggest spending your hard-earned money in this era of price increases on something else. I realize I also write that I think the Hasbro Authentics toys are pretty neat, but even at $5-$10 this one gets in its own way as far as fun goes. Go get Scraphook, or Hot Shot - having articulation that's hindered is a lot less fun than having unarticulated robots.
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