Articulated Discussion Bootleg Tuesday - April 27th

Bootleg Tuesday - April 27th

Last week, we looked at knockoffs of the Air Defense Team: a trio of Mini-Cons that combined to form the mighty Star Saber. In today's feature, we'll also be looking at knockoffs of these Mini-Cons... but given their size, you might find that their official size group no longer applies!

Bootleg Tuesday - April 27th

As is often the case with Bootlegger King Boss, making direct knockoffs of the Air Defense Team in horrid pastel colors simply wasn't enough to satisfy his evil desires. "NO!" he shouted, "we must also make them... larger." And so, under the ubiquitous banner of Agglo's Space Warriors line, these upsized Mini-Cons were released!

Is a Mini-Con still mini when it doubles in size?

Here we see an oversized version of Runway, along with the official Hasbro release for size comparison purposes. As you can see, he's bloody huge! The two figures are also joined on the left by an oversized Wreckage, who shared the same sculpt as Runway with the exception of a serrated spacecraft shape stuck to the robot's back. Giant Runway's yellow color notwithstanding, they're pretty faithful to the originals.

United States Air Force, baby!

And here we have Hasbro's Jetstorm and his oversized bootleg counterparts. As before, one is a fairly faithful recreation of the original toy, but the other... well, we cannot say. It shares some similarities with Scattor, but in many ways this alternate mode appears to be an Agglo original -- it's even got "United States Air Force" printed on the plane. While bootlegs may be kinda shady, at least this one is on our side! Well, if you're in the US or a country we like. If not... well, you might want to take cover if you ever look to the skies and see a folded-up robot bolted to the bottom of a translucent yellow plane thingy.

KABOOM guess who stepped in the room
Watch it, sonny... we've got bad hips

And here are the oversized knockoffs with their original versions in robot mode! We'll get to the most noteworthy things about the robot modes in a second, but aside from that there's not all that much to report here -- size and army green color notwithstanding, they're pretty faithful recreations. Do take note of the hip pegs on the Jetstorm knockoffs, however. The oversized toys don't fit together quite as precisely, such that properly forcing them into plane mode puts undue stress on that area -- and since the toys are packaged in this mode, they shipped all the way from Bootlegger King Boss's secret base in the bowels of China in this rather painful configuration and were left with highly visible stress marks as a result. This is some pretty tough plastic, so I'm not worried about them breaking anytime soon, but still. If the plastic on either figure ever does snap, I imagine the event will be accompanied by a deafening boom and shockwaves that will shatter glass over a radius of several blocks.

March of the Optimi

The most noteworthy features of these oversized knockoffs in robot mode, of course, are the heads -- since, rather than simply upsizing the heads of the original Mini-Cons, Bootlegger King Boss saw fit to gift these bootlegs with the noble visage of one Optimus Prime. Does this make them heroic Autobot drones or evil Decepticon clones? It's up to you!

I cry Energon tears

Admittedly, I knew that they came with Prime heads before I got them. This fact alone seemed so delightful to me that I had to have them, but I was even more excited about securing them because I hoped to create an oversized Star Saber... or Energon Saber, for the sword topped with Wreckage. However, because Agglo never released any oversized Sonar or Skyboom bootlegs (at least to my knowledge), my upsized bootleg Sabers will forever remain incomplete.

You have no idea how sad that fact makes me. :(

__________

Want to see even more bootleg toys? Find past and future editions of Bootleg Tuesday right here.

Bookmark and Share

Comments (7) | Tags:
Author: Wes

Comments