Hooray! At long last, a biplane Transformer! And in vehicle mode is looks very good, too-- surprisingly believable proportions, given that it turns into a robot. The cockpit seat could be a little bigger, and the robot arms are a LITTLE on the obvious side on the underside of Ransack's wings. That's really all the negatives that I have to say about his design in this mode. It's quite amazing the detailing that's gone into this mode, from the little bolts 'n such on the exposed engines to the tanned "leathery" look of the wings to the spinning propeller (though you have to spin it yourself, there isn't a gimmick that allows it to spin by cranking something else up or anything). The color scheme is pretty realistic for a biplane, too, being a mostly rather dull brown/tan/gray coloration with some nice metallic highlights where they need to be on the engine and main body. The bright red stripes on the tail also help to give it a bit more "zazz". Ransack also has landing gear, though just like with biplanes, they can't retract.
    Ransack's robot mode, on the other hand... well, let's just say that it's clear the vehicle mode took priority when it came to the design. Part of Ransack's "skinny robot mode with lots of vehicle mode parts" look is to make him seem old and clunky, while I'm sure another large part of it had to do with getting a Transformer to become a believable biplane. However, visually Ransack is just a mess and doesn't really work all that well in this mode. His arms are ridiculously skinny, his chest sticks out a bit and he has a tiny "engine cap" head (which is either goofy-looking or charming, depending on your viewpoint-- I go with the forme), and his legs are skinny with more vehicle parts hanging off of them. The vehicle parts sort of form a "skirt" on his hips, which is alright I guess, though his tailfin makes for some pretty weak-looking feet. A lot of stuff seems to collide in particular around his torso-- you've got the wing bits that form the sides of it colliding with the landing gear (which really don't go anywhere), then there's the propeller that'll keep getting in the way of the aforementioned landing gear parts and the waist and skirt pieces to boot. And his head, skinny as it is, does a bad job at covering up some of the "holes" visible in his upper chest in this mode. I do like how the wings partially collapse and hang off his back like insect wings, though, and putting his double-barreled machine gun and cluster bombs on his wrists is definitely a good placement for his weapons. Ransack's articulation is fairly good in theory-- he can move at the neck (at two places), shoulders, elbows, waist, hips, knees, and ankles (at two points). Unfortunately, because of Ransack's aforementioned problem of pieces bumping into everything, in reality his articulation can get a bit restricted around the waist and legs.
    Ransack certainly has kitsch value at being a biplane Transformer, and one that has a really nice vehicle mode at that with an excellent color scheme and detailing. Unfortunately, it seems that all the design effort went into his vehicle mode, leaving his robot mode an overly cluttered, badly proportioned mess. If you're going to get him, get him because of the novelty of having a biplane Transformer-- but don't expect to be wowed by the engineering in robot mode.

Review by Beastbot

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