Drift

Height: 14.5cm (vehicle length)

Articulation: 24 total points - hinge + swivel neck; 7 points each arm: "Clavicle" joint, double-jointed shoulder, upper arm swivel, double hinge elbow, ball joint wrist; 4 points each leg: Ball joint hip, mid-thigh swivel, hinge knee, hinge ankle.

Colors: Molded white, brown, clear blue, grey; Painted red, gold, silver, metallic blue, white, brown.

Accessories: Swords - 2x small, 1x large

Release Data: Released in July, 2010 in the United States at a retail price of US$11.99

Author: ExVee

(more...)



Y'know, Dreamwave invented a character for Transformers. He was The Fallen. And for everything else Dreamwave may have been notable for, The Fallen was at least an idea that seems to have been good enough to stick with the brand longer than the company that introduced it. I imagine the fact that he's magically on fire forever helped with that.

Now, IDW has added a new character to their version of G1. Dude, he's this totally awesome street racer samurai and he's got swords and does all this cool Japanny stuff just like on that Naruto! ...is how I imagine the pitch for Drift happened. In any case, he's totally the writer's self-insertion character. Other writers are perfectly fine taking existing characters and radically modifying their behavior to become basically self-insertion. Rarely in such a place does it descend to the level of making up your own to satisfy your purpose.

Someone totally needs to send IDW some old Echowarrior fanfics, I'm telling you...

The great thing about toys, however, is that nothing is forcing you to acknowledge the official fiction that may support them. And in rare cases, a toy might be so truly fantastic that the fiction ceases to matter because the toy has redefined itself as something completely independent.


Vehicle Mode

Drift is a heavily modified Nissan GT-R. ...which has subsequently been heavily modified-ER to look like a street racer. True story, I know someone who actually put one of these ridiculous spoilers on his white car. Dumbass. The body is also marked with several red racing stripes, including stylistically curved lines down the side panels that I'm inclined to think are supposed to evoke a sense of Japanese styling. Or maybe it's the huge Kanji tattoo on either door. Art of the character long prior to the toy being revealed showed Drift having katakana to spell his own name. In this case he just has the Kanji for "samurai". I haven't decided which idea seems more dumb.

Just like the new car molds in Universe before it, Drift's vehicle mold is really solid. There's a bunch of separate panels which of course betrays that this thing is going to split apart later to become something else, and especially in the case of the hood there will be considerable separation between the panels. It's not really something you can expect to correct with more careful adjustment of pieces or anything, it's just a result of the way things are designed to work together. But for as fragile as parts of the front end look, I haven't had any case of things splitting themselves apart, so clearly something is being done right.

Amazingly, Drift rolls well over a smooth surface, even with the big sword carried under the car. And he even has what looks like it just might be street-legal ground clearance at scale. Talk about unusual for a Transformer vehicle mode! Just to look at Drift, he might seem a little oversized compared to 2008's Autobot Cars, and it is true that he's longer and a little taller. But the neat part is that it's all fairly accurate to scale. The GT-R is taller than the relatively short Lamborghini Gallardo, and longer than both it and the Nissan Z-series. There's some possibly wonky proportions, but it's pretty cool to me that the basics of the scale have been adhered to with toys from separate lines two years apart.



Transformation

To start, you'll probably want to remove the large sword prior to transforming, even though it's not strictly necessary to do so. Like most cars now have a pretty well set starting point, Drift is no different. You have to open the door/side-panel pieces to "unlock" the rest of the parts that have to move.

The big thing to keep in mind is that the back end of the vehicle is held together with an L-shaped tab and slot arrangement that CANNOT be separated until the section is completely unfolded into legs. It might feel like an unacceptable level of excessive force is needed to initially straighten the legs, but it's the way the toy is designed, and you'll find that as soon as you do that step, the legs will pretty much separate by themselves. It's reasonably elegant when you remember how it works. It's also part one of one of the more excellent leg transformations for a car. The feet can be a little non-intuitive (and a biut scary, since the mold breakdown means relevant moving parts here are cast in clear plastic!) but slide right into place when you realize where the toes need to point. Ultimately the result of this reminds me of the appearance of some Diaclone car legs (especially Jazz with the car-surfaces facing backward) but updated to a modern level of complexity.

Another small L-tab holds the front end closed, meaning there is exactly one way to split the hood without breaking things. Compared to the legs, the arms are an exercise in practiced ease and natural unfolding. Overall Drift's transformation manages to be enjoyably complex and missing all of the frustrating elements regardless which direction you're going.


Robot Mode

Somebody had fun doing this.

I mean, I can only assume that someone took some kind of twisted pleasure in making a character so generally vilified by the fandom for his self-insertiveness into one of the best designed toys to come along in quite a while. But man, they totally did it.

Drift has had a LOT of attention paid to being able to pose effectively with swords. There's a great deal of flexibility in the shoulders that simulates a good bit of the mobility of a human clavicle, most notably lacking an immediate forward-to-back motion. This is somewhat made up for by the ball joints that make the shoulder joint itself, but still leaves the figure unable to cross draw its hip-carried swords. However, the articulation is more than adequate to not just grip the large sword on the back, but actually simulate the movement of pulling it out of its holder.

The elbow is a full double hinge which can bring the forearm flush against the upper arm - and in fact this is a required movement for transformation. The forearms carry the front wheels of the vehicle mode, and without a forearm swivel, these will sometimes get in the way of posing. But I can just about forget that because of the wrists. Ball jointed wrists themselves are not a new innovation, but in this case they're applied in such a way that the toy gains a very natural added degree of movement. Now the opening of the fist can point forward with the arm at full extension. Quite a necessary thing when using swords. It's very natural that this extra axis of movement only goes in one direction, at least judging against human standards.

There's also an upper arm swivel, but at this point that's like the boring part of the arm. The way the arms can pose is somewhat flexible within this layout of joints. The car hood chunks on the shoulders can tilt to different angles. The main effect is changing the angle the shoulder ball joints can move, but a secondary benefit is the ability to get the hood halves out of the way of the head so the arms can also move a bit farther. My memory is a little brief at the moment, but if this isn't my very favorite arm construction on a Transformer, it's sure high on the list.

The legs, outside of the way they transform, are comparatively less special. In fact, having no functional ankle joint hurts them a bit, though the somewhat large footprint from the Diaclonesque "boots" can make up for it in some cases. What I really miss here is adequate range of motion to allow for a proper kneeling pose. Non-standard on TFs for sure, but pretty much a job requirement for a samurai.

The head is managed well. Thankfully free of characteristic smirk, there's a great hinge joint for up and down movement, and a basically unrestricted swivel. I say basically because you will need to tilt the head up to get the chin over some of the shoulder bits. The eyes are made for lightpiping, but it's a mixed bag. The inlet is a tiny square on the top of the head, which is aesthetically nicer, but makes room lighting generally inadequate for proper glowyness. Get a good flashlight over there, though, and they shine right up. By some means or another they actually made there be slightly darker spots in the middle of each eye to resemble pupils. An interesting effect to be sure. I think it might be hollow channels in the clear plastic since the darker region becomes larger unless viewed exactly straight-on. Some people also call out a resemblance to Tigatron (or more accurately, the original Cheetor mold family as a whole) in the general shape of the head. They are not altogether mistaken.

Drift has no waist joint, but to be honest I have not found myself absently going for one either in all my time posing with this toy. I think it gets by just fine without. Drift's door panels are jointed in a way similar to the shoulders, so they can be moved around enough to not interfere with posing. They're also about the only part on the toy that particularly makes you think of a samurai design. I guess this neutral styling is what will make this work as Blurr in a few months.


Accessories


-Big Sword of Awesome Huge Coolness

If you've read my review of Bludgeon from some months back, you might recall some attempts at identifying and then rationalizing a classification for that toy's large sword. I'll spare you most of that process in this regard and just go ahead and say I've decided Drift's large sword is a Dotanuki, which is described as a "long handled sword ...made to slice through a target with just a single cut." Loathe as I am to acknowledge the official fiction for Drift, that sounds like a fairly solid match to Drift's large sword which must never be used but in the most dire of circumstance. Or something. I don't really read any of that crap.

The main deal with this sword is that it's made of a sadly bendy variety of plastic. If the sword isn't warped right out of the package it probably will be before too long just by accident. It's a little too easy to get the end of the blade caught up in the spoiler bits on the backs of the legs when stowed on the figure's back. The upper clip is cleverly hinged to help reduce this risk, but even if you angle to sword away from the back adequately it's not hard to push it back inward in the course of normal handling. I mean, total points for engineering a workaround for sword-warping, but you have to exercise unusual care to make sure it keeps working. (incidentally, I'm not asking for a perfectly rigid sword. My review of Susanowo a while back featuring my genuine fear of stabbing myself with one of its rigid katana demonstrates my understanding and even desire for flexible blades. But a *little* more stiff would probably be nice here)

Inscribed along the length on both sides of the blade is "tenka musou" or "peerless under heaven." I figure it's pretty much equally terrible whether it refers strictly to the large sword, or Drift himself.

Oh, and most likely not designed to work like this, but you can also have Drift carry this sword at his side by opening the hinged window piece just enough to allow the blade to slide in. It looks completely natural, but I don't think it offers any extra protection against bending the blade.


-Smaller Swords of Only Slightly Lesser Coolness

I was attempting to nail down a type for these when I figured out the identity of the large sword. I'm calling these as Kodachi rather than wakizashi because I'm pretty sure they're not portrayed as being functionally paired to the larger sword in Drift's case. Either that, or the Ninjato which did not actually exist outside old ninja movies. That also would be thematically appropriate.

These swords are a good bit safer than the dotanuki since they store in fully enclosed sheathes in the door panels. For purposes of vehicle mode, the grips are hinged to fold back along the inside of the doors. The hinges are pretty solid, though, so no worries about blades dropping off to the side during posing. Notably, these swords only store in one direction, with the blade edge-up, so there is an exactly right way to keep them and plenty of ways to do it wrong. Mostly the result would be the blade not sliding all the way in, and/or the handle being unable to fold down.

The blades of these swords are wider, and are painted silver. They're molded in the same type and color of plastic as the big sword. With short grips, these swords can't be used in any cool double handed poses, but still take good advantage of the figure's well laid out jointing for sword-friendly poses. Unfortunately, there is not any effective way of making the toy hold all three swords at once due to the unusually shaped fist holes.


Closing Remarks

I'm really glad that they announced a recolor of Drift at the same time as Drift, more or less. I've enjoyed Drift so much that I'm eagerly looking forward to Blurr and how the design will get along with a set of guns. Nothing is free of any complaints, and the ones I have for Drift are comparatively minor. What it comes down to is that we were lucky enough to get a truly excellent new mold in the first wave of Generations with no significant drawbacks. Let's just hope that this is a model of things to come rather than an example that everything else fails to live up to.

By now you should have a good idea that Drift is an Excellent toy without me saying so directly.