Allegiance: Autobot
Size: Titan Master Set
Difficulty of Transformations: Very Easy
Color Scheme: Dark dull fuchsia, very light milky pale brown, very light glossy pale brown, and some light pale sky blue and red
Rating: 7.4

    Just like with Sawback, Shuffler is an homage to a very rare, obscure Japanese Headmaster toy that went right from elephant to robot head. For a Titan Master set, of course, things have been.... *ahem*... shuffled around a bit. In the Titan Master's robot mode, his mold detailing is done to make him look like a humanoid elephant. The actual main body details are pretty typical-- he's got normal fists molded into the ends of the arms, as well as a few minor rectangular and triangular details on his body, hips, and upper legs. His feet, however, have details molded in to look like elephant feet, which is ingenious. For his head Hasbro TRIED to give him a trunk, but with the Titan Master square proportions it doesn't really look that great. He's got two eyes and a little trunk that sort of goes from his nose down the bottom of his face in front of where his mouth would be. It looks pretty weird. (The rest of his head is pretty typical, being pretty square with some antennae molded into the sides.) Unfortunately, as is common in the line, the robot mode has no paint apps at all. He's got a dark dull fuchsia on the head and arms, and a rather blah very light pale brown on his body and legs. They contrast against each other pretty decently, but the complete lack of paint apps in particular hurts his facesculpt, as given how dark the plastic is it's quite difficult to make out those tiny unique details there. Like all Titan Masters, Shuffler can move at the neck, as well as back-and-forth at the shoulders, hips, and knees (the latter two as one for both legs, since the legs are molded together). In head mode, Shuffler's made to look like a better-proportioned version of his G1 toy's head mode. He's got a light pale brown faceplate with little etches on the sides, two angular red eyes, and the rest of his head mode is dark dull fuchsia, with what looks like a multi-pronged helmet over the rest of his head. The details on the forehead match that on the original fairly well, but are more proportional (the original Shuffler has some odd proportions in this mode), which is pretty darned cool. He's got some great, unique mold detailing overall because of this.
    As for the accessory, its primary mode is a robotic elephant who looks remarkably close to the G1 toy's alternate mode, just with better mold detailing. The body is a bit overly rectangular and a titch long, but otherwise the toy's pretty proportional overall, with a little peg-tail, thick legs, and a sloping forehead with a pretty decent-looking trunk with tusks molded into the side. The mold detailing on the toy is very well-done-- little segments on the trunk with what looks like dual ports for a gun at the end of it; little light sky blue eyes on the head; shoulder guns with some basic details near the back; very intricate tread and armor detailing on the legs; and quite a lot of ridged details on the main body. (The Titan Master shoves up into the abdomen and out of plain sight in this mode.) The color scheme is pretty basic, being the same dark dull fuchsia on the main body and head and light milky pale brown on the appendages. They contrast decently, but they're both pretty bland colors, and the only paint used on the toy is the aforementioned light blue on the eyes and then the shoulders are painted more of the light pale brown, though because it's paint it's more glossy than the milky shade on the plastic. That said, it IS pretty accurate to the source material. For articulation, Shuffler can move up and down at the tail, forward slightly at the top of each leg (though the front pair and back pair of legs each move as one), his head can rotate around where it meets the body, and the trunk can move up and down where it meets the head.
    The other main mode for the accessory is a tank, which is done by collapsing the legs so that the tread details are on the bottom and then moving up the head and rotating it around while pointing the trunk forward. Even though it isn't exactly completely different from the elephant mode-- pretty much all the mold details from that mode are visible here-- it still looks pretty solid. The legs make for nice treads, the main body works as a tank, the tail peg works as a front gun, and the end of the trunk also works nicely as a top-mounted dual gun. There's little pegs on the back end that can hold the Titan Master standing up there, "manning" the little tank.
    To transform the accessory into its weapon mode, the front legs are rotated back into their elephant position and the elephant head and tail peg are both pointed up. Then you just reorient the toy and there you go. I will say it's nice to have a weapon mode that actually looks substantially different from the accessory's other modes-- all of the revealed mold detailing on the front of the body, as well as some on the front of the legs, has "missile pack" details, making this a missile launcher weapon with those two little guns on the shoulders to boot. It's a pretty neat idea and actually reveals that some real thought went into this mode (as opposed to most other Titan Master sets' weapon modes, sadly). That said, it still has some definite downsides, the most obvious of which is that the elephant head just kinda hangs out there at the bottom without tucking out of the way or anything. It's a bit weird-looking. The rest of the mode packs up pretty well behind the front, and there's enough area around the peg for most Transformers to easily handle the accessory in this mode. I do really wish all those missile pack details had some paint on them, however, as it took me a second the first time I transformed this to realize what the heck this mode was supposed to be-- those missile details aren't nearly as obvious as they should be.
    Titans Return Shuffler is a remarkably solid Titan Master set. The Titan Master itself has a unique hook with some beastly details in its robot mode and a unique, obscure character sculpt done for the head mode. All three of the accessory's modes are also quite solid, with little downsides outside of having a dull color scheme and not nearly enough paint, the latter of which is sadly par for the course on all these Titan Master sets. If you get only one Titan Master set from this line, I'd make it this one.
 

Review by Beastbot

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