Fans Project City Commander

Height: 17.5 x 7.5 x 10cm (Trailer Mode length/width/height)

Colors: Molded blue, white, red, black; Painted blue, red, white, yellow, bronze, silver.

Accessories: Mini-comic instruction booklet, optional sticker sheet.

Release Data: Released by FansProject to online retailers October 2008 at a price of US$76.99.

Gallery: 20 images.

Author: ExVee



You have to really step back every once in a while and just marvel at how far Transformers as a property has come. Major theatrical movies, massive marketing of licensed goods, and more official product output than any fan could have dreamed of seeing just ten years ago. For point of comparison, there were only twenty toys in the 1999 Beast Wars lineup, constituting the entirety of retail Transformers product in the United States for that year. Split the Movie, Universe and Animated lines sharing space in 2008, and we easily have at least three times that much product without even counting Robot Heroes, Bumper Battlers, or other secondary product lines.

But sometimes even that isn't enough. While the concept of Transformers-compatible replacement parts being cast by skilled fans is not exactly new, this is the first time that any fan group has attempted anything so ambitious or highly anticipated by the fan community at-large as the City Commander kit. While being extremely careful to not reference actual trademarked Transformers names, terms or images in any way, this set is designed for a single purpose: To attach to your Classics Ultra Magnus in a manner highly resemblant of the familiar trailer armor of the G1 toy and media adaptations.



Trailer Mode

If this was hooked up to a pickup truck, it'd look like a really fancy cattle trailer. Assuming Magnus is a relatively normal size semicab, I'd guess this would be a maybe 36-foot short container. While there isn't a whole lot to say about the trailer mode itself, here's some points worth covering. First off the color match between Ultra Magnus's blue plastic the blue comprising most of the trailer is absolutely perfect. The painted stripe along the side of the trailer is in a very similar style to the stripes on the cab, and the silver paint is nigh-identical. The trailer's two pair of wheels are similar to the wheels on the cab, but are slightly different, both in painted color, and the shape of the rims. Plus only every other space of the hubcaps is hollow on the trailer. The filled in spaces are probably the most immediately obvious discrepancy between the cab's wheels and the trailer wheels.

The trailer can hitch securely to Magnus, but not without issues. For reasons to do with engineering of the trailer as well as having to work around an existing object, the trailer is not articulated. It's a square socket on top of a square peg, so it's just not happening. Plus the trailer sits very close to the backside of the truck cab which would prevent turning anyway. The trailer does have a "gate" of sorts that can fold down, but there's not any significant amount of useful interior space. There's a hinged panel on the right side of the bumper meant to have a license plate sticker applied. The panel is hinged and can rotate so that the sticker may be hidden when the trailer is transformed.

The trailer is engineered very well. All parts hold together very securely and there is a minimum of panel lines, gaps, or open spaces visible. The most glaring elements are fists visible from the top, the undisguised chestplate, and the cod piece tacked onto the rear "gate". Considering what there was the work with I'm quite impressed at how much they did manage to disguise. The trailer has no real capacity to act as a car carrier. Some people have left out portions of the trailer to make it easier to pile one or two Autobot cars on it, but it still just looks like a car sitting on top of a cargo container. In keeping with the cattle trailer appearance, I suppose the next best thing would be using the limited interior space to maybe transport the Classics Mini-Con dinosaurs. The three of them might just fit in there. Might even nearly look cool if the gate actually folded down into any credible sort of ramp.


Transformation

One major caution that needs to be made here: This is NOT a Hasbro-engineered product, which means it doesn't have safety failure points. The wrong bit of excessive force in the wrong place carries a real risk of damage.

The mini-comic does a very capable job of describing the necessary steps to disassemble the trailer into its armor component pieces. It doesn't exactly provide for showing you where everything is supposed to go when rebuilding the trailer, however. You can puzzle it out from the instruction sequence, but it's still a good idea to pay attention to where the parts are coming from as you dismantle the trailer mode.



Armor Mode

The trailer separates into nine components: Two boots, one codpiece, one torso piece, two shoulder units, two gauntlets, and one ridiculously large handheld weapons system. Sadly for practical reasons the massive gun comprises the majority of the trailer's mass. But it also serves as the central block around which the rest of the trailer was built and thus stabilized. It's a recognizably necessary element of the engineering, but it's still probably the most disappointing part.

Most everything goes on and off of Ultra Magnus pretty easily, with one crucial exception: The boot pieces. They're designed to fit around the leg in some complicated and very exact movement, which is escaping most everyone. This is most problematic when trying to take them off, but in either direction you'll feel like you're putting a bad stress load on them. As far as I know nobody has broken a boot yet, but this aspect could really have been served better with an extra hinged panel. In my case, I found it works best to simultaneously pull up on the boot, push down on the leg, and twist to get it to come out of the armor. One neat bit in the boots is that the "soles" are hinged in such a way that the toy can be posed with slightly spread legs and still keep the bottoms of his feet relatively flat on the ground.

The pieces all fit on to Magnus securely, perhaps even surprisingly so considering the original toy never had any accommodation for additional parts. Nothing should decide to just fall off, but understandably the armor will restrict the toy's poseability somewhat. It's also unfortunately common to find that the joints in the arms simply are not strong enough to support the weight of the giant hand-cannon.

The super weapon is actually meant to be slightly transformable itself, though in the most basic way possible. The handgrip is on a hinged piece and can flip over into either of two positions. Each end of the weapon has different weaponry details sculpted in the surface. In one configuration the weapon is held as a (super-) giant rifle nearly 15cm in length. This is the mode that typically fails to be supported by the toy's joints. The mini-comic also portrays this configuration as an energy weapon, but to me it looks more like the ends of blunt missiles. The other configuration is identified as a rocket launcher mode, and the sculpting more readily agrees. This is held much more easily since almost all of its weight is placed behind the toy's fist. And while not identified as any functioning part of the weapon, I can't help but see the silver block on top as a small railgun, complete with the rails projecting past the front of the missile launcher. ...boy, that's a new one even for me! A bullpup railgun. All it needs is nuclear ordinance and we have the next great first-person-shooter game superweapon. Moving right along...

The shoulder pieces have some nice bits of consideration. The right shoulder unit has a recessed space that can fit the "magazine" of Magnus's small smokestack gun. The fit is extremely tight, so much that you'll think it doesn't actually fit, but if you work it in carefully it'll make it, and not fall out for anything. The left shoulder piece has a peg hole to attach the windvane rifle. This is challenged a bit more by both the end of the relevant peg on the rifle having an angled end, and the peg has to pass through a hole on a hinged piece before resting in the main block of the shoulder. In the end the hold won't be as solid as the smokestack gun, but it does work. The key with both is to just work with them and be patient while you find the way they fit. I also suggest doing this before adding the pieces to Magnus, since the armor pops on easier than the guns do.  Finally, both shoulder units have additional holes cut into them that are a perfect fit for your G1 Magnus's shoulder missile launchers. Launchers are of course not included, but it's a wonderful extra for those so inclined to be able to add the launchers.

The gauntlets only have a top and bottom, relatively speaking, and actually rely on the cab's side panels to finish closing in the arms. Pretty good compromise, under the circumstances. Possessing one of the few bits of articulation exclusive to the armor, the fists swivel at the wrist. These may need some coaxing before they actually move. In my case one was permanently fused in place, but thankfully my retailer was able to provide me a replacement. The fists are primarily intended to fit the rectangular grip on the giant gun, but in the middle they're also widened slightly such that standard 5mm pegs will also fit enabling Magnus to hold his original weapons or any other compatible gear.

The other element with it's own jointing is the torso piece, which includes the armor's head. The head is on a ball joint, but once again may need some gentle motivation to begin moving, most likely a result of paint fusion. The range is roughly identical to a simple swivel, except for the ability to look down, as the helmet and neck work to prevent looking up to any degree. The eyes are almost imperceptibly painted, the light, apparently metallic blue not having much difference from the silver paint of the rest of the face. Some say that the face sculpt is Animated-inspired, inasmuch as the apparent nose is an extension of the brow-ridge of the helmet. That interpretation is certainly valid, as is my own interpretation which is that it just represents armor over the face obscuring more traditional Transformer facial details. The face does not in any way look out of place among your Classics or Universe toys, so don't worry too much about it.

The chest piece has a hinged panel that some take to resemble the opening chest action from Transformers The Movie (1986). On the other hand since there's no room to put anything behind the panel, and the piece has to move during transformation to let the head out, I think people are just reaching a bit. But whatever makes you happy.

When armored, Ultra Magnus is boosted in height to be basically equal to a normal Ultra toy. Granted the actual mass is considerably higher, but in simple observation it's not unfair to say that adding the armor graduates Magnus from Voyager class to Ultra. He even makes a decent looking match for Onslaught. Of course, he ends up towering over the Universe representations of his traditional rival characters, Galvatron and Cyclonus. In fact, the gun has almost the same mass as Galvatron all by itself. Probably the greatest success of this upgrade is that it remains in the spirit of Classics and Universe by capturing the style of the toy it's emulating without being a slavish reproduction. This is unmistakably Ultra Magnus based on his original appearances, but basically every detail is different in some way to make this a completely unique representation of the character. This is an aspect that fails to be accounted for in many people's custom recreations of G1 characters from Classics or Universe toys, and I'm very impressed how well FansProject managed to keep in line with this really important design aspect.


Closing Remarks

"Garage kit" addon goods have been a staple of many model kit oriented hobbies for years, but this is the first of its kind for Transformers to feature such ambition and complexity while requiring absolutely no modifications to the original toy. We certainly acknowledge and applaud the time, effort and skill that went into creating this product and the comparatively limited resources available to its creators. However, while material quality and most of the engineering came out beautifully, I do feel the need to raise issue with the construction. Many people have reported some of the few joints being glued together, or other parts having been assembled incorrectly and breaking at no fault of the consumer.

My recommendation is to make sure the retailer you purchase from is willing and capable of providing replacement parts on the chance you get a set with a defective piece. These cautions aside, this set is probably not for everyone. The pricetag makes it a little hard to approach, but if you can manage the cost it makes a very impressive upgrade to Ultra Magnus, especially if you don't like your Magnii to be plain white clones of your Primes.

Just beware eBay, especially anything that may look like a particularly good deal. You might be about to inherit someone else's problems.

Overall rating: Very Good.

-ExVee, 12/04/2008