Allegiance: Star Seeker/Decepticon
Size: Ultra (comes in a 5-pack with Cannonball, Devcon, Ferak, and Ginrai)
Difficulty of Transformation: Medium
Color Scheme: Light pale green, moderately dark violet, bright orange, transparent light orange, and some light milky purplish gray, creamy off-white, silver, light pale red, dull green, and moderately dark flat blue
Rating: 9.4

(NOTE: Because this is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color scheme, and merely compares it to Energon Scorponok. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of Energon Scorponok here.)

    Boy, I'm surprised FunPub would use such a large mold again, after Double Punch. The color scheme for Scorponok this time has been tweaked by more pure "late '80s" goodness- i.e., brighter and more accurate to the original G1 toy. The main colors of light pale green and violet-- a moderately dark shade of the latter-- go together quite well, being a "Decepticon-y" color scheme and also oddly fitting for a construction vehicle, as the Constructicons have made clear. The pale-ness of the green helps offset the BRIGHT safety orange that is used on places like the robot waist, the hinges around the claws, and the jet mode cockpit. Thankfully, the transparent version of orange--used for all the transparent plastic on this toy--is still a light shade, but not as obnoxiously bright, which allows Scorponok to have a good amount of orange without things getting too eye-watering. There's also a fair bit of purplish-tinted light milky gray, used on a few places like the hip guns, the pistons on the soulders, parts of the lower claws, the middle of the toes, and a few other minor parts. Normally I'm not a fan of gray, but Scorponok's color scheme is so darned... well... colorful that a neutral color works well for everything else to bounce off of. The purplish tint also helps the gray fit in a bit with the violet, which also goes a long ways towards me liking the color. For a BotCon toy, Scorponok has surprisingly few paint apps-- there's a really nice shade of blue used around the Decepticon symbol molded onto his chest, along with some bright orange paint on the waist and the "scorpion" face, duller orange paint on stripes on the legs, and a bit of silver on the chest. There's also a titch of green paint on the orange parts flanking the chest-- oddly dull and noticeably darker than the green plastic. Otherwise, Scorponok is bereft of paint. Thankfully his mix of four major plastic colors (five if you count the solid and transparent orange as separate) helps to mitigate this in most respects, but still, some paint on the treads or on the claws really would've been appreciated. Also it is worth noting that, like with most large BotCon exclusives, the electronics for Scorponok have been gutted for this release.

    Of course, the big news about this toy was the most extensive remolding made to a BotCon figure up to that point; the toy has been retooled into a genuine Headmaster! This is quite impressive for FunPub. For the "base", the mold for Japanese Encore Spike Witwicky was used, but the face on the back of the Headmaster figure-- i.e., the face-- was replaced with a very G1-y Scorponok headsculpt. The identity of the Headmaster guy himself is apparently Olin Zarak, a relative of the original Lord Zarak, who was the original G1 Scorponok toy's Headmaster. The toy has the sculpt typical of a G1 Headmaster toy, being rather stiff and "old-school" in its look with a rather "exosuit" "look" to the Headmaster robot mode, with many square robotic details but things like curved abs and very human-proportioned arms sculpted into the toy. The purple of the appendages goes very well with the creamy off-white of the main body, and the face has a bit of silver on it. It should be noted that Olin can't QUITE fit in Scorponok's cockpit, but it's not like these two molds were made for each other, being separated by more than 15 years of time. For articulation in Headmaster mode, Olin can move back-and-forth at the shoulders, hips, and knees (the latter two at one point each, since the legs are connected together at said knees). It should also be mentioned that there's a small forehead panel on Scorponok's headsculpt that was used on the original version of this mold to cover up the face in Headmaster robot mode, but the new sculpt doesn't leave room for this panel to flip down, so Scorponok's face is quite visible on the back side of Olin-- which I don't mind, really, it would only make the fact that he's a head slightly less obvious. The neck of the Energon Scorponok figure has been remolded to fit in this figure in head mode quite snugly. As with most Headmasters the resulting head mode has some obvious "junk" behind the face and the face itself is a bit 2-D. The actual sculpted details are also a bit angular and not very expressive, though in FunPub's defense that fits right in on a G1 Headmaster. Although a really cool remolding job was done overall, the remolding means that Scorponok's head sits on a neck that looks a bit higher than it should be, and the head's ability to rotate has been taken away. (The neck piece also has to be folded away to transform Scorponok into either of his alt modes, just like the head did on the original version of this mold.)
    It's very impressive that FunPub was able to remold a toy in such a fashion as to make a fully functioning Headmaster out of a toy that was never meant to be one and an old '80s Headmaster mold for a completely different toy. The colors are also decent, if a bit wacky in that late '80s/early '90s fashion. However, though this toy is the most sought-after of the BotCon 2014 exclusives, its appeal is limited to me because, well... it's a remold of Scorponok as Scorponok. Different versions of the character, granted, but still, I would've liked this extensive molding done to some other mold to make it into a completely different character instead, honestly.

Review by Beastbot

Back to BotCon/OTFCC Exclusives Index