Stripmine

Allegiance: Minicon
Size: Mini-Con
Difficulty of Transformation: Easy
Color Scheme: Moderately dark blue, dull yellow, and some clear plastic, silver, metallic brownish gunmetal gray, and moderately dark red
Individual Rating: 6.6

    Stripmine's vehicle mode is a mobile mining drill vehicle. This mode looks very good for a a Minicon, with only a few, very minor extras-- namely, it's a tad obvious the treads are the robot feet, but even then it's easily overlooked, and not much can be done about it at this scale anyways. The color scheme of blue and yellow goes together pretty well, and the yellow, thankfully, isn't that bright. There's also a pretty good amount of mold detailing on this little guy, with the treads especially well-done. There's even a little flip-up satellite dish! What really hurts this mode (and the robot mode as well), however, is that there's almost no paint detailing on the entire figure-- only part of the drill, the robot chest, and the robot head visor are painted. And given all the mold detailing this guy has, he really could've used some more paint. There are a few other, more minor, oddities about this figure as well. For one, there aren't any moving parts in this mode at all, beyond the aforementioned flip-up dish. The drill can't rotate, and even the treads have no little wheels on the bottom of them! Also, the Minicon port is hidden between the leg-treads in this mode, but it also can't be powerlinked to a larger Transformer, it's so far in-- this is certainly odd, as this is the only Minicon who CAN'T attach to a larger TF in their vehicle mode, and it'll look pretty odd having him hang off a larger TF by his robot mode chest...
    Stripmine's transformation is similar to Armada Buzzsaw's, so the robot mode design is also rather similar, in that the vehicle treads become feet and the main parts of the vehicle mode split in half to become the arms. Because of this, Stripmine has no actual hands-- his left arm is a drill and his right arm is... a peg, which I guess should be a gun of some sort. The right arm peg-gun does look a little odd, but I have no problem with the drill-arm. The head design looks pretty cool, very Minicon-ish, and looks like a near-copy of Signal Flare's head. His articulation is roughly average for a Minicon-- he can move back-and-forth at the shoulders, hips, and knees.
    Stripmine is an above-average Minicon, with a decent vehicle mode and a very nice robot mode. He's got tons of mold detailing, and a good color scheme, but unfortunately his severe lack of paint detailing and lack of moving parts in vehicle mode do hurt him a bit.

Quickmix

Allegiance: Autobot
Size: Voyager (Mega)
Homeworld: Giant Planet
Cyber Key Code: ve37
Difficulty of Transformation: Medium
Color Scheme: Orange, dark charcoal gray, light gray, dull yellow, and some grayish white, slighly bluish silver, moderately dark red, moderately dark blue, metallic brownish gunmetal gray, and clear plastic
Rating: 8.0

    Quickmix's robot mode is a cement mixer, much like the rather obscure G1 toy of the same name. Overall, though this mode does have some good features, it has some pretty obvious extras and gaps in it. For one, the left robot arm is just RIGHT THERE on the back end of the vehicle, with very little attempt made to hide it, and the robot head on the backside isn't much more hidden than that either.. It's also pretty obvious where the upper robot legs are on the sides of this mode, and that one of the robot arms is connected to the mixing cauldron. The robot feet sticking out of the front side of the vehicle mode are also blatantly obvious and don't fit in shape with their surrounding parts at all, and there is a rather large gap below the mixing cauldron, though at least this makes the manual turning of the cauldron or the activation of the Cyber Key gimmick a bit easier to do. On the upside, there's TONS of mold detailing on this figure, which makes it easier to pretend that he's a massive Giant Planet figure. He also has a fair amount of paint detailing to go along with it, and his overall color scheme of orange, yellow, and gray, though not particularly outstanding, certainly doesn't clash either, and is appropriate for a construction vehicle. Quickmix has two Powerlinx ports accessible in this mode, one on the top of the cockpit piece and one on the back end. A much cooler way for him to interact with his Minicon, however, is to use the bucket assembly behind his mixer cauldron-- Stripmine can fit on this assembly in either robot or vehicle mode and "drive" Quickmix! Quickmix's Cyber Key gimmick is also really cool-- insert his Key into its slot on the side of the mixer cauldron, and the cauldron splits in half to reveal a missile launcher! Certainly not something you were expecting from a cement mixer, and it gives Quickmix some much-needed firepower.
    Quickmix's robot mode is definitely the better of the two modes, and like all of the "big" Giant Planet toys, is thoroughly awesome in this mode. For one thing, his proportions are spot on, with the sole exception of his fist, which is slightly bigger than it should be, but that's obviously easily overlooked. His detailing is just as good in this mode as it is in his vehicle mode, and the paint detailing on the chest creates a "sash" look that's pretty creative. The robot head is also has a very cool design to it, with the core design being a spruced-up version of Quickmix's G1 head, and the "radio communicator" mounted on the side of his head also looks pretty cool and adds a unique flair to it. Quickmix technically only has a visor, but the clear plastic making up said visor is segmented into what look like eyes, which is rather interesting. Quickmix's articulation is superb, as he's able to move at the head, shoulders (at three points), elbows (at two points), hips (at two points), knees (at two points), and ankles. And given that he's not back-heavy, there's not much of a limit on the amount of poses you can put this guy in. He also has two more Powerlinx ports accessible in this mode, both on his chest. The only problems I really have with this mode are A. The Minicon bucket assembly on the backside of his right cement mixer-arm doesn't really go anywhere and gets in the way of articulation a bit, not to mention it looks odd; and B. A more minor flaw is that the wheels on his back don't really click into place anywhere and stick out a bit from the back, but again, this is easily overlooked.
    Cybertron Quickmix's vehicle mode is a bit sub-par for a Cybertron toy, but it certainly looks like gold compared to the other Giant Planet characters, and his robot mode is almost as good as his other planet mates'. Thus, overall he's the best Giant Planet toy, in my opinion. Mildly recommended.

Review by Beastbot

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