 Breakdown
Better than Combiner Wars, and Harder to Find (until a 2026 rerelease)
Transformers Legacy Evolution Deluxe
Item No.: Asst. F2990 No. F7190
Manufacturer: Hasbro
Includes: Spoiler, blaster
Action Feature: Transforms from robot to car, also combiner arm
Retail: $24.99
Availability: January 2023
Other: I got this in 2023, I forgot to write the review
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"Hard to find" barely begins to describe Breakdown, a toy whose distribution (like the last part of the G.I. Joe M.A.S.S. device set from about 20 years ago) is spoken of at campfires to scare young collectors. It stands as a monument to how good Hasbro Transformers toys are that the lack of distribution on this guy didn't make a bunch of people throw up their arms and quit, given how it was also kind of a hassle to find Motormaster. Of course, the other limbs would eventually find their way to markdown 2-packs or other discount channels. On one hand, you can see where Hasbro was coming from - they underserved the market. On the other, as a toy company, not completing a "collect them to build this thing" set is the sort of thing that a lot of fans won't and indeed can't let go. It's an actual gap in their collection, a missing arm on a big robot. Fans (including me) asked to bring this guy back from jump, and it took almost three years. There are many reasons why, and I'm not going to write about it here.
What matters is that after a "toy deco" figure in a boxed set in 2023 and a G2 deco in 2025, Hasbro eventually got around to just plain reissuing this guy so people can finish their set. I believe it is still available - it was, as of my penning this. Go get it if you missed it.
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It's a pretty great little toy. The G2 version is now much cheaper - it was blown out at Walmart in value-priced 2-packs for Black Friday - but you want this white one, with a red hood, the blue chest, and the lack of faux sticker adornment. Takara-Tomy and Hasbro clearly conspired to make something similar to the cartoon. You can tell, because the head has yellow eyes and not a visor, like the original toy. he doesn't have a purple Decepticon sigil on his chest though - and the white isn't quite as off-white. Still, the general swaths of color are the same and even though he doesn't have wheel shoulders, it gets the point across. Those wheels are on his backpack. I still like what they did, as it has a little more color than the cartoon model and has a fairly good range of movement for a guy whose main purpose is to be bisected and mounted on Menasor's arm.
Articulation will not amaze you, but it's reasonable for a $25 (now $28, thanks tariffs) deluxe toy. Hasbro slathered his chest and shins in paint, but didn't stop there. The face has a lot of pigment, and the white plastic blaster was painted black so it didn't look super goofy. His spoiler was left unpainted, and you can have it as some sort of handheld sword thing on his hand.
As some fans will not be satisfied until Hasbro perfectly replicates the original toy, or the animation model, there will always be room to discuss Yet Another Version. We got a really good Combiner Wars version about ten years ago, and to be honest I was pretty happy with it. This is better. I assume another new version will come in another 10 years, which will also be better. Will I have the desire to pay $35 or $40 for a deluxe limb at that point? Probably not. I'm pretty happy with this guy if he holds up to time.
The main reason to buy this toy is to have a Breakdown that's capable of being posed like your other super-articulated robots. There are no wrist joints, but you can see a lot of work that went in to this toy with at least four colors of plastic and a figure that took great pains to ensure that a simple transformation's appearance could be kept despite the toy being much, much more complicated.
Transformation is more not difficult, and getting him wadded up into a car won't be too hard. I admit I haven't changed him up since putting him in arm mode shortly after taking these pictures in 2023. He's happy there. The car is nice too, but it's not amazing. The front wheels have a lovely wheel sculpt, with the rear ones have an unsightly white pin popping through them. It would probably look fine if the pin were black, but it's not exactly pretty. The rest of the car looks superb, but this is almost entirely mooted because the bulk of adult collectors will leave this guy in robot mode (and never see it) or combiner mode (ditto.)
Nothing about this will amaze you, but it's good. The car holds together well, the robot mode is a very nice figure, and the combiner robot mode is perfectly nice. (I'd also say Hasbro could've sold two slug parts to clamp on Menasor's arm and you don't even need this guy, but that's not how they sell things.) I'm glad that this three-year saga had a happy ending where fans can get him for about $30, and not the sub-$200 price tag he was commanding on eBay and other marketplace. You could get the entire team (in toy deco) in a box set for about that, so it was a painful bit of math to do while waiting for this rerun. I hope your Menasor story had a happy ending, so grab one of these if they're available still. Unless it's 2036, in which case maybe you can tell me how modern version 3.0 turned out.
--Adam Pawlus
Additional Images
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