Classics Series Onslaught

Height: 20 cm to top of head; 23.5 cm to top of cannons.

Articulation: 19 total points - Swivel neck; 5 points each arm: Universal shoulder, bicep swivel, hinge elbow, swivel wrist; 4 points each leg: Universal hip, mid-thigh swivel, hinge knee.

Colors: Molded blue-grey (metal-flake), grey, black, clear orange, clear-smokey, black; Painted metallic green, white, orange, silver, blue, black.

Accessories: Shield

Release Data: Released in third quarter 2008 at an initial price of US$24.99

Gallery: 21 images.

Additional Media: Cannon fire; Siren; Engine.

Author: ExVee


If Onslaught enters into direct combat, it's only because something has gone wrong with his battle plan. He prefers to remain on the sidelines of a fight, directing the action and revising his tactics second by second. Nothing gives him joy as much as a well-executed ambush, or the swift, organized destruction of an Autobot base. When he must get involved in a fight himself, he does so with cold fury, advancing meticulously across the battlefield with his fire focused on the most dangerous opponent. Every variable in a fight is taken into account in his mind, every possibility assessed, and every contingency planned for.

I've had a love/hate thing with Universe's Classics Series so far. A change in design ideal which was probably influenced by a year of designing toys for the movie, and the engineering to go with it ended up giving us a line that may have been in the same spirit as the original Classics, but felt like entirely different toys. Onslaught seems to be bridging that gap, bringing back some of the original simplicity that led to the old Classics being solid, fun toys. I know he's unlikely to be representative of what's still to come, but either way Onslaught makes for a nice change of pace and certainly helps me to remember why I enjoyed Classics so very much the first time around.


Vehicle Mode

He's an armored personnel carrier of indeterminate origin with police elements. Stylizing aside, Bulkhead is probably a little more credible as a police vehicle, and Onslaught looks fairly military. Fits his background, and the SWAT marks are the only stumbling point.

The turret contains all of the electronics, though one extra light is hidden in a different part. The turret can only rotate in a 180 degree arc from side to side. Since wires have to pass between the turret and the main vehicle body, intentional stops were added. A single button activates both sounds in sequence. Alternating between a machinegun burst and an odd half siren thing, with a specific set of lights accompanying each sound. Calling it a half siren might not be entirely accurate. I chose that description because to me it sounds like the short siren bursts police vehicles employ to get a subject's attention when they haven't approached with full lights and siren. Except that where those usually go in two to three cycles, this only goes once and stops. Meanwhile, the machinegun sound will run from three shots to infinity if you keep the button pressed. You almost have to wonder if something didn't end up backward, since the siren won't run continuously, and you can't chain it since the gun sound plays off the same button. Also some reports mention a burning smell if the machinegun sound is forced to keep playing for very long. Probably wanna not do that.

With the machinegun sound, a pair of red LEDs flashes behind the cannon barrels. There's a strip of foil placed in front of the LEDs to theoretically reflect the light and make it more easily visible, but it doesn't seem to do the job so well. A small light bar with two more LEDs glows red briefly as the half-siren sounds. In both cases the transparencies involved are a very pale orange plastic. At least for the light bar, and maybe the cannon lights as well, I think using a clear red might have helped intensify the glow of the LEDs. Animated's Leader Bulkhead helps prove out the theory behind such a move, anyway. Unfortunately the searchlight in the front of the turret does not possess an LED.

The shield can attach to the turret, mostly for purposes of parts storage. The small tab toward the front seems to commonly be ejected from the matching slot on the turret. But it works pretty well just using the slot as a guide and letting the lightbar do most of the work holding the shield in place. Besides the turret, the only meaningful moving parts in vehicle mode are the minesweepers in front. No, not the Windows game. They're hinged, and have just a millimeter or so of clearance to your tabletop, which might negate any mine clearing effect... When in storage mode, they double as reasonably effective looking battering rams. Interestingly enough, the little headlight bits are hinged pieces for no reason I can determine.

There's a pretty good amount of surface detailing, but isn't especially busy. There's a couple of hatches molded in the rear half of the body, though they tend to get lost easily with the color of the plastic and the fact that they're not raised very much from the rest of the panels they're on. Light has to catch it just right or you'll stop seeing one edge or another. The back can hinge open on transformation joints, but it's really not supposed to. The detailing doesn't even support such a suggestion, having a few smaller hatch panels sculpted on. The hatch on top is hinged for transformation, but can potentially be opened in vehicle mode. It's designed to snap down in place, in which case you'd need a probe of some sort to pop it back open since it's made to normally open during transformation. A Targetmaster or small Mini-Con fits in the resultant space pretty well. But you'll need something even smaller if all you want is a head sticking out. Overall, Onslaught hits an often difficult to find middle ground between overly heavy detailing, and large expanses of flat panels. A point of interest that'll come back later: There's a winch molded into the front end. From above you can see the cable spool (which oddly tapers toward the middle from both sides), and from below, there's a barely perceptible hook molded in between the minesweeper claws

One of the six wheels figures in to the electronic functions. It's actually pretty impressively executed, too. The middle wheel on the vehicle mode's left side is connected to a simple gear system, which catches on a small button up within the body. Turning the wheel a quarter-turn catches the trigger and activates... well, it's either a vehicle ignition, a really unconvincing engine-running sound, or ...a toilet flushing. Listen to the MP3 and decide for yourself. Anyway, while it's really clever how they pulled this off without having to have extraneous wiring throughout the toy, it ends up hampering the toy's ability to roll. The other five wheels are perfectly free-spinning. The middle pair have rubber bands glued onto them to increase the traction for activating the sound gimmick. I find the toy isn't really heavy enough to make it work on a smooth surface without pressing down on the whole thing a bit. Otherwise it just drags along, and usually makes it want to go in circles around that left wheel. Yeah... that one bit maybe could have been done better.

Plus, in a case of at least one robot part that had nowhere else to go, Onslaught has a ground-level cannon pointing forward that may or may not shoot the mine clearing claws if somebody isn't careful. On the whole, though, the vehicle mode is a very nice bit of work. You might not be able to send it rolling across a table, but it does an excellent job of hiding all its robot mode pieces, and holds together very very solidly. But I can't help but think of Cybertron Defense Hot Shot when I look at it.



Robot Mode


It's been a while since I enjoyed the process of transforming a toy this much. Compared to the Deluxe Universe Classics, Onslaught is much more traditionally engineered, and less like an Alternator Junior. Especially clever are the various maneuvers in collapsing the lower legs together. The best part is that while it all seems very novel and imaginative, it remains quite intuitive and just natural feeling. When "transformation is the gimmick", this is really the kind of thing I tend to look for.

The original Onslaught toy was one of the better aging among G1 toys. While clearly dated during its reuse in 2001, it still held up pretty decently against its new mold competition. So fitting, then, that the updating of that design shares much of the design sensibilities as the older incarnation. Onslaught is big, blocky, and downright powerful looking. Despite practically every detail being different, you can't help but see the incredibly strong influences taken from the old toy, combined with a goodly portion of animation model elements.

The head has the least liberties taken in design. It's basically a direct analog of the original head, but detailed up considerably. The only articulation is a swivel, but it moves without restriction. There's an LED in the head, which shines brightly when the button on the turret is pressed. Regardless of which sound plays, the light shines steadily. In a nice move, the clear visor is just tinted and just opaque enough that while the red light shines through, you can't easily see the LED when it's not lit.

The torso, instead of being home to the electronics themselves, is home to the battery case. It forms basically the "spine" of the robot mode, around which everything else is attached. Between that small reality and the way transformation works around it, waist articulation has gone off the plate here. Trust me, you'll never miss it. The turret is only vaguely held upright in order to keep the cannon barrels pointing skyward as is correct for Onslaught. A single flap is sat between the barrels which halts rotation. The downside is the barrels come off easily for safety reasons. So even with this means of keeping things on the up and up, it'll ultimately be self defeating if any particular force acts upon the turret.

Among the aforementioned animation model elements is the windshield on the chest. Most assuredly not an aspect of the original toy, and a holdover from some real weirdness with putting together the original cartoon models way back in 1985. Giving Onslaught the windshield chest helps to make the feel of power the robot mode has and benefits the style greatly. Plus in some way it's fun to see a nod to how screwed up the toy designs got when they were reworked to be easy to draw. As a double reference, it also pretty clearly resembles the sticker on Onslaught's chest plate. In a clever touch of design, there's otherwise superfluous elements of detail on the torso. Consisting of a spool of cable meant to resemble the one visible in vehicle mode, and two orange blocks that are meant to represent the (much lighter) clear orange headlights. Setting aside issues of how some bits are angled, it does an admirable job of making Onslaught's torso look like the front end of the vehicle mode with the green sides collapsed in to slim the shape a bit. While in the area, just to the side is the actual switch being manipulated by the clever tire gearing in vehicle mode. It still works in robot mode, but there's not much reason to have an engine start up sound for the robot, is there? ...unless... well, it does sound a little like a flushing toilet. Eep.

Onslaught has not inconsiderable shoulderpads. Much of the front 'point' of the vehicle mode, as well as the minesweepers simply sit atop the shoulders making no attempt to hide. Sadly these look a bit less intrusive from the back than the front. The front side allows you to see all the hollow interior space, plus drops the vehicle coloring. I think they'd have blended with the body much better if they at least retained the blue-grey coloring on this side. A large, purple Decepticon insignia is tampographed on the left shoulder. The poseability of the arms is really good. Adding the fist swivel makes for a bunch of possibilities. The right arm has a flipout cannon, replacing any handheld rifle. On mine, the cannon tends to sag a bit if left deployed while under the arm. The variety of swivels makes it easy and entirely natural looking to turn the forearm so the cannon is at the side or even on the top. The left arm has a hardpoint system for the shield. I'll go into more detail on working with that shortly, but suffice to say for now that you get a good range of options for what you can do. But ultimately what makes the arms for me is indeed the wrist swivel. Most of the time on toys with flipout fists, you're left without wrist motion just for the lack of space available. You don't even always get this on a Leader Class toy, so it's pretty impressive here, and truly makes all the difference.

The legs are a bit of an art unto themselves. Solid, blocky, big footprint. They're all a large toy needs. The ratchets snap tightly, giving you confidence in poses at the hip. The thigh swivels could be a little tighter, but they haven't gone anywhere without me yet. The upper legs are thin in comparison to the blocky "boots" of the lower legs, but are well in proportion to the torso. The hip joints are completely unrestricted as far as natural posing goes. A backflap from the vehicle mode hangs down stopping them going backwards. But I did say "natural" remember. As I mentioned earlier in the review, I just love how the legs come together during transformation. Everything pegs and slots together snugly. Once you've got it all in place you needn't worry about it springing back apart. There is no lower leg articulation of any measure. The loss is not especially evident; the feet are large enough to support many poses even without an ankle to account for odd angles. The balance of the toy likewise is managed excellently that you're not looking for topping in any direction under normal conditions. The only bad effect I can see for the lower legs being essentially static is that pieces are angled certain ways and part of that results in a noticeably crotch-thrusty pose for the robot mode. It's not a first, and not even close to being a deal breaker. But if that's the worst aspect I could come up with about how the legs are handled, it should give you an idea of how well it turned out in general.



Accessory


The shield is, as you might expect, a big sheet of plastic. There's a hinged panel at one end. It can alternately allow access to the button on the turret, or be used to press it by way of an extended tab on the inside of the panel. Vented slots and one central opening allow access to the lights in vehicle mode with the shield connected. In the interests of double duty, the middle opening is also used to connect to the hardpoint on the left arm. That and the tab inside the shield that fits a slot near the wrist makes for a snug connection in robot mode. In the intended orientation, posing options are a bit limited just because of the dimensions of the shield and short reach of the arm compared to the jut of the chest. However, it's possible to mount the shield upside down. It remains almost as securely connected, and gives you a little more freedom for posing. Ultimately it'll always be difficult to use the shield as an effective shield, but you can fake it a couple ways. Plus it's yet again a nice reference to the original design. Except this shield can't turn into a ramp for a "base mode."


Closing Remarks


It's taken a little while, but it seems like I've finally run across a new Classics Series toy that I really like without reservation. It may sound a tad cliche, but it's gems like these that keep me coming back to Transformers time after time. There's just a sense of enjoyment and indeed fulfillment when you get a toy that just works on so many levels, and the feeling is just so difficult to convey.

He's big, he's tough looking, and he's solid. He doesn't NEED to combine with four other guys. He can go Bruticus on your behind all by himself. He's also a living reference to a member of the fandom in the MONZO 12782 markings. Way to go, Monz!

As if there could be any other result, Onslaught comes in a strong Excellent. The only serious mistake? He doesn't ship in Wave 2. He'll come back in one of the revisions of Wave 3, but if you can help it, I wouldn't wait.

So... who do I talk to for a Mega-Octane recolor?

-ExVee, 9/1/08