Bulkhead (Commander) [Prime]
Vehicle ModeRobot Mode
Allegiance: Autobot
Size: Commander
Difficulty of Transformation: Easy
Color Scheme: Military green, charcoal black, and some dark metallic bluish gray, silver, dark military green, light red, light sky blue, and transparent light pale blue
Rating: 8.0

    Bulkhead's SUV alternate mode, when it comes to overall proportions, is incredibly spot-on with the show model for a Cyberverse-scaled toy. All of the necessary mold details are here, like his headlights, car door outlines, the top "carrying rack", and even the rear exhaust pipes. Unfortunately, the paint detailing doesn't highlight quite enough for them for my taste-- his front grill is painted, as are his taillights and the area around his windows, but that's it. His top silver rack could really have used paint, and his rear side windows are just painted over with dark green paint instead of being individually painted, as well. Although it's not BAD, Bulkhead could've used a few more paint apps here. His overall color scheme of dark & moderate green complement each other fairly well, though I feel that the charcoal black-- used on some places like his tires, front grill, and windows-- would've looked better as a straight black in this case. (There's also a bit of dark charcoal black just jutting out in the middle of this mode due to how his sprues breakdown-- which is a bit of eyesore.) Also, despite his good proportions, Bulkhead has some pretty darn obvious robot parts sticking out underneath the bottom of this mode, well below what you would consider the normal "clearance" height for his wheels-- this is definitely the toy's biggest drawback. His feet under the front half are particularly obvious, though especially from the back end you can see his lower arms down there as well. Only from a top-down view does this kibble "disappear". For a weapon, Bulkhead has a little transparent version of his wrecking ball-esque weapon, which here plugs into the rather illogical area above and in front of his windshield-- so much for the driver seeing when it's attached, I guess...
    Bulkhead's robot mode here looks about as show-accurate as you could reasonably expect on a toy of this size. He's got a little extra kibble on his shoudlders and on the sides of his lower feet, as well as his rear wheels sticking up behind his back, which is definitely not show-accurate. However, this aside, the wheels do enhance his silhouette well, and I do love how well his hood folds up onto his chest on such a small scale. He has the usual Bulkhead proportions of rather short, stubby legs and bulky arms, which-- along with his excellent, well-detailed headsculpt-- really brings across his general personality well, and gives him more individuality as well. His colors are broken up a bit more by his gray and black pieces in this mode, so I think his distribution of colors and paint apps works quite well to make him visually interesting all over, here. For articulation, Bulkhead can move at the neck, shoulders (at two points), elbows, hips, and knees. I wish he had a bit more sideways movement at the knees, but most of his other joints are ball joints-- thus, given his pretty stable feet, he's fairly poseable for a Commander-class toy. Like the other 2012 Prime Commander-class toys, Bulkhead has his transparent blue plastic positioned in such a manner where-- if you hook up an electronic Cyberverse weapon to a position behind his lower neck-- light is supposed to shine through his chest. However, just like pretty much every other Prime toy with this gimmick, it doesn't work well (if at all), and is generally best forgotten about. Bulkhead can hold his ball-weapon, but he can also store it or other Cyberverse-scaled weapons at two points on each of his lower arms and at one point on each of his shoulders-- so if you have the weapons, you can really hulk this toy out.
    Prime Commander-class Bulkhead is generally a pretty nice recreation of the character at a smaller scale and with a simpler transformation than usual. He does have a bit of kibble in both of his modes-- particularly his vehicle mode, where it can be a bit of an eyesore-- and his robot body is completely hollow from a rear view. But, all things considered, Hasbro did a nice job with this toy. If you want a show-accurate Bulkhead that's either Cyberverse-scaled or is relatively simple to transform, you won't regret picking this former Wrecker up.



Bulkhead Bio:
FUNCTION: Heavy Munitions
Bulkhead means well, but being destructive is his nature. Everywhere he goes, he manages to crush something delicate under his huge feet. Of course, when he turns his destructive nature on the Decepticons, it's all over for the evil robots.
Strength: 10.0
Intelligence: 5.0
Speed: 4.0
Endurance: 9.0
Rank: 6.0
Courage: 8.0
Fireblast: 7.0
Skill: 5.0

Review by Beastbot

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