Beachcomber, as is usual for him, has a dune buggy for an alt mode. The front section of this mode looks pretty decent, with a pretty proportional front end and bars, as well as rather intricately-detailed headlights and shock springs above his front tires. The sides of the back half are a bit weak, however; the sides are pretty obviously his robot arms-- they don't really connect to the front portion like they should, and don't really "fit in" shape-wise with the parts around them. On the top back end, there's some fairly intricate engine details and some more spring details near the back above his rear tires. He doesn't really have a solid back end, however-- there's a big square hole in the back, in which is obviously the top of his head. There is space in the middle for you to sit a Titan/Prime Master, though (the bars can open up to allow the little toy to fit in easily). The wheels have some rather intricate treaded detailing as well, and some basic rectangular shapes are along the sides, as well as some angular mold details on the front end. There's even some intricate shapes inside the cockpit with some details like a wheel, and on the bottom of this mode-- on part that is covered up when transforming Beachcomber to robot mode-- there's some faux taillights and coils detailed in. Something totally unnecessary, but nonetheless appreciated. Beachcomber keeps his typical blue color-- slightly darker than a "neutral" shade-- and light gray is his other main color. The problem is, there's two different shades of it. The plastic shade of the color has a brownish tint to it, which fits a dune buggy but isn't all that great of a shade by itself, even it if contrasts against the blue. The gray paint-- used on places like the wheel hubs and on the upper back end-- is a more straightforward gray, and of a flatter shade because of the paint. I'm not sure why the paint shade is so obviously different from the plastic shade, as it seems to me they're at least MEANT to be the same color. It makes things look a bit off. There's also some silver paint on the top of the engine portions, and a bit of black paint on the sides-- sadly, the headlights are completely unpainted, a noticeable oversight in my opinion.
    Beachcomber's transformation isn't complicated-- separate the obvious arms from the sides, and then rotate the whole front section (including some of the bars) around and split them apart to become his legs, with the bar sections becoming his heels. Then you slide up the legs and the whole body, which automatically makes the head pop up, and you're basically done. The end result looks decent, but there's a couple of proportional oddities. For one, his head is a bit too small, particularly in comparison to his body and fist sizes. The biggest proportional malady here are his legs, though, which are definitely too short proportionally and definitely should have been lengthened, at least for the upper portions. The good news is that as far as kibble goes, there's a little section of his bars behind his butt, but that's it-- and they don't get in the way of articulation or really poke out much from a frontal view, so they're pretty minor. The wheels on the sides of his knees are a pretty minor extra as well, and the wheels on his shoulders actually enhance his silhouette, in my opinion. His mold detailing in this mode stays pretty good, with some excellent engine-like details on his chest, along with some more angular and circular details on his waist. His headsculpt is also spot-on, with an appropriately calm expression on his silver-visored face, with an otherwise square noggin with some minor circular bits on the lower sides. His fists are molded well enough, but I wish they had folded out of his hands or something-- having them just stuck onto the lower forearms doesn't look that hot, and the hollowness of the interior of the limbs also doesn't look that great either (though the wiring detailing in there looks nice). The color scheme in this mode is largely the same, with blue forming the "outside" of the mode-- i.e., most of the appendages-- while the two different shades of gray form the core. There's also a few other painted details on his chest-- a nifty mustard yellow/blue/light orange combo of paint apps on his waist, and a simple yellow/black/orange decal on his chest that looks like it's a G1 sticker, but is indeed painted on. I really wish this orange and yellow were used a bit more to help break up the colors a bit more in vehicle mode in particular, but they're still appreciated where they are. For articulation, Beachcomber can move at the neck, shoulders, elbows, hips (at two points), and knees. Given that he's fairly well-balanced and the bars on his heels make for some pretty solid feet, he can get in to some decent poses (though the lack of waist rotation does hurt him some).
    It's certainly appreciated that Hasbro gave Beachcomber a much-needed update to his G1 form after only receiving a (smaller) Legends-class update in relatively recent times, and with an alt mode that naturally lends itself to fitting in a Titan/Prime Master, as well. However, the very gimmick to which the alt mode lends itself also hurts the toy. The arms are obvious and out-of-place in vehicle mode, and in robot mode having his chunky fists merely molded inside his lower arm pieces is a bit weak as well. His robot proportions are also a bit off, most noticeably in his legs but also in his head/body as well. The two slightly different shades of gray are also weird-looking. Overall, though he's not a bad toy by any means, he's got enough weaknesses to be the lowest-scoring PotP Legends class toy.

Review by Beastbot

Back to Transformers: Generations Index