Crankcase
(Movie) [Wal-Mart Exclusive]
(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 the original Cybertron Red Alert. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of the original Cybertron Red Alert here.)
Crankcase here is an
homage to the G1 character of the same name, given that the mold has a
similar alternate mode and the exact same "shoulder flip-out guns" gimmick.
Obscure homages are always nice, though I think they could have added a
bit something more to Crankcase here. Particularly in vehicle mode, but
also to a lesser extent in robot mode, he's just rather... dull. The dull
blue isn't too bad of a color, but it really needs something to contrast
against it really well. The only colors in Crankcase's repertoire that
do a decent job of that are the silver stripes on his vehicle mode and
the yellow bits in his robot mode. The yellow bits are-- quite righly--
only accent colors, as they'd look rather horrid being a main color, and
whereas the silver would have made a genuinely good secondary color-- if
it was used more. However, only milky light gray plastic is used "in place"
of it in the robot mode, though this was obviously done for budget reasons
(and probably to prevent the silver paint from chipping on those tight
joints, as well). The light gray plastic is also a boring shade, however,
and the only other significant colors-- black and transparent amber-- don't
provide a whole lot of agreeable contrast, either. Still, at least his
robot mode is broken up by a fair number of paint apps-- I particularly
like the metallic bluish silver paint apps used on his chest, they go well
against the black. His vehicle mode looks incredibly boring, however, to
the point that it barely stands out at all in its already-blue package.
They really should have added more than a Hazmat stripe on the side.
No mold changes have
been made to Crankcase, though the mold's Earth Cyber Key has been replaced
with a standard transparent purple Decepticon emblem one found on most
of the Movie Cybertron repaints.
Crankcase is a decent
homage to the character, and obscure homages always get big props in my
book. Too bad he's duller than chalk. He's not ugly, by any means, and
his colors don't clash, he's just very dull. My least favorite out of the
three paint jobs this mold has gotten.
Review by Beastbot