I’m really, really bored at work if you’re wondering. Since nobody has been reviewing repaints and half of Energon is repaints I thought I’d try to fill in figures that I have. I originally bought this guy to sell on E-bay cause I just happened to find him and the Grimlock and Swoop set on the same day.
I know buying to resell on e-bay is evil to some but since Hasbro’s distribution sucks I thought I’d help the cause a little and make a few bucks for my trouble. I didn’t see enough of a profit margin to sell this guy so I just kept him to let him age a little. This guy is only a repaint so I’m not gonna make this as long as I did for Dreadwing, whom I like more.
Vehicle mode:
I guess it’s not a vehicle as much as it is a weapon on treads……
a tank with an oversized barrel. It’s not a real vehicle, just a mode they
came up with after designing the original Shockblast’s body as homage to
Shockwave. I’ve seen a similar cannon used by the Nazi’s in WWII,
a huge cannon on train tracks, but it was so expensive and unreliable that it
was rarely used and long forgotten about.
The colors are so bad…. Its not that they’re bad, but they’re
SO bad. They must use a series of dartboards or spinning wheels when deciding
on how to repaint a figure. This time the wheel stopped on flat mustard brown
and metallic purple instead of almost anything else and motif dart hit woodland
camouflage splotches instead of highlighting different details like Prowl and
the black Checkpoint Prowl. They did change the color of the tank treads, which
is good. There is also a little metallic red on the rear tread cover and a random
spot on the cannon barrel. The Energon parts are also red like the Onmicons energon
weapons.
Other Vehicle mode:
This isn’t much of a vehicle mode either. The instructions say space station;
I say military satellite. It could go either way really. The metallic gold on
the solar panels has been replaced with more red. If Shockblast was purple for
any other reason than Shockwave homage, like so he could blend in with the blackness
of space, then Six Shot’s colors say, “Here I am! Don’t crash
your shuttle into me!� Now that the final Star Wars has come out I can’t
help but think how cool it’d be to have a chromed out version like Padme’s
Naboo starship. It was almost invisible in space. I would’ve liked to see
some way of interaction between him and Jetfire also, like a docking port. Imagine
the story line that could be made there. Jetfire could use his landing claw I
suppose to tow him around. I like this mode better than the cannon. It’s
his true alternate mode rather than the contortionist robot cannon form.
Robot mode:
The form here is still the misshapen bot we’ve come to love; grossly oversized
left arm, gimpy right, and leg torso proportions that remind Smackdown fans of
Booker-T. No real surprises here except the red belt like detailing on the waist
where there wasn’t detail on Shockblast. Six Shot’s pants must fall
off more. The energon chest plate is now void of any painted on details. A new
problem is the light piping on the head. The plastic of the head is so light and
thin that the piping effect goes straight through the bottom of the head.
This is also the only form with a true hyper mode. The other two modes have an
official one that is simply moving the slider out and extending the vanes and
solar panels but since you must do this to fire anyway I don’t count them.
For the hyper mode you extend the solar panels from the backpack up and bam…
HYPER! The cannon doesn’t work well in any mode, it fires but getting it
to stay in after firing is a pain. The missile never wants to go back in on the
first 3 tries.
Overall:
O.k. I lied, this one was long too. The name Six Shot was borrowed from a Gen
1 figure that had, oddly enough, 7 forms. The 7th is listed by www.tfu.info as
being only used in Tf: Generations. One form was a handgun much like shockwave
so there is a little connection if you try really hard. Quick switch would’ve
worked just as well. Cosmos would be my favorite name for him. This fellow has
grown on me… I didn’t want Shockblast because of his arms and wouldn’t
have bought this guy without the intention of reselling but now I think I’m
gonna keep him just cause I like the satellite mode. Shockblast is still around
on most shelves so if you gotta have this mold get it, it’s probably about
to go on sale. It has the advantage of being a mediocre figure in homage of a
great Gen 1 toy and character; this guy has nothing but the mold of one and name
of another. The major weak points are the sacrifices that had to be made for the
crappy electronics. I did put batteries in to see what this guy sounded like and
it is a good sound effect but the one in my imagination was better and louder.
Reviewer | slugpitcher |
Date | May 23rd 2005 |
Score | (6 out of 10) |
Reads | 10453 |
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