When I first started collecting, I couldn't tell you what mode Breakdown was supposed to be. Becoming familiar with these characters are sometimes a blessing and curse b/c when Hasbro flubs something like the alt mode it takes away from the fun of the figure. I can't help but think Hasbro was adamant on not spending the extra money on new tooling b/c they would have sold every Breakdown regardless.
I'm usually not cynical when it comes to the chug figures (I never expect much) but I have to agree with you here. Breakdown should have been called Letdown. If not for the fact that he was part of a combiner team, I would have passed. As a side note, while I don't expect much from mainline figures, there were very few figures that I wasn't happy with in the WFC trilogy. Almost all of those, with a few allowances from Earthrise, were terrific. Legacy, in my opinion, has been a mixed bag for sure. Great review, as always.
You can tell when he was first revealed that Mark was NOT happy about how he turned out. He wants to give us the best of the best, but Corporate probably stopped them from making a new mold for Breakdown and did some major cost-cutting. And as a result, we have ourselves the WORST Stunticon. Doesn’t help that I think he’s the most expensive of these Deluxe Stunticons.
You can see that from his behind the scene post as well where he was just like “he was originally gonna be much worse”. They barely have anything good to say about this toy.
Fun fact, back in the day that spoiler was so expensive, it was referred to as a "Hyundai Wing". Since the replacement cost the same as a higher-end Hyundai of the day, which honestly was pretty low impact in LOL I know this, because my dad was working on a Lamborghini countach for a customer, and the garage door fell on the wing, and he had to replace it for around $6,000, in 1987
Honestly i feel the same about them possibly saving Breakdown till last so people would get invested in the rest of the team beforehand, it just makes too much sense. About the only real compliment i can give this guy is him having true weapon storage in car mode. We dont really get that anymore for non beast bots so its kinda appreciated.
I decided to cut my losses with reviews from last year, but someone suggested I do an overview for the third wave to cover what I missed. I'm thinking I'll go that route for time's sake.
He was always going to be a partial of wild rider like dead end is of dragstrip. The issue was they ran out of the budget to remold the front of the car sadly. Other figures in the wave apparently needed the budget more. But I still like him well enough, his bot mode looks good and he makes a fine leg lol.
@@TFCollector yeah the transformation is pretty damn spot on to one another. Slight variances and the leg bots was always going to be the same because of the way they had to attach to menasor. However they stopped brake downs reshelling half way....I'm guessing due to the over all waves budget running short and what they could skip....because they have already admitted to budget being per wave instead of per figure. I don't think they ran out on the figure itself but rather brake down took the hit for other deluxes in the wave.
@@TFCollector yes I agree 💯 if they reshelled both the front and back it would be fine, but they stopped halfway to save on budget and ended the stunticons on a bit of a drag, I still like them overall though, i think they are a huge upgrade over cw stunticons and make a nice cartoon menasor. I've thought of painting the bars on the windows but idk he really is fine over all and the front can't be fixed 😂
This is what I think: they were in a rush and were in danger of being over budget and had to make a quick decision. I think a year or two down the road they'll do a proper breakdown with proper accessories through generation selects - and it'll come with a larger menasor sword so they can charge 49.99. And if I were to be honest, I would say I'm surprised only one of the menasor figures is a lame re-tool - hasbro combiners usually run out of steam well before the fifth figure.
Some people have said that Dead End is also a retool of Dragstrip. I kinda get what they're saying, but I'll have to verify that when I get the chance. If he is a retool, he's a very good one because I didn't even notice.
@@TFCollector It appears to be a retool, but an extensive one- seemingly more extensive than combiner wars retools. Plus the obvious difference is dead end looks like it should while breakdown doesn't.
Dragstrip and Dead End are the same molds too...just heavily retooled. Also I think they didn't get the license for the Lamborghini. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker looked close enough to them without getting a license... but they couldn't have spoilers. They made Breakdown an ambiguous model to give him the spoiler.
I got mine yesterday & finally fished Menasor & got the DNA upgrade kit & he looks so much better with the kit & now bigger then Jetfire! Does it suck he isn’t his own mold yes but for me they are staying In combined mode!
He's the last piece I need for Menasor, but I can't find him online for less than $100. For me, he is just a leg for Menasor. The big guy looks weird without him.
The “Ax” is post to be held with the other white peg instead of the gun barrel that’s why it’s not painted, but it’s you’re figure do what ya want lol , he looks different enough in robot and Car mode
It still amazes me the g1 fans hypocrisy when they always complain about the beast era because it has too much partsforming but at the same time they for some reason forget that most g1 toys had way more partforming (seeker mold hands were accesories) and most of them love this Menasor that somehow acomplishes to inceptionize partsforming (combiners themselves are partformers) by converting the limb bots into just parts of the limbs of an already complete "combiner"(insert Jackie Chan's exploding brain meme here). And the leg bots are not even accesories to complete Menasor, they are just stored behind the sheen instead of being the actual sheen, I gues you can say they are the calves hahaha. Anyway, I really hope for a revision of Tripredacus and Magnaboss, and I hope they just improve the old designs rather than trying to do the same they did to this menasor, maybe a combination of 2 Voyagers and a Leader would be needed to compensate for the lesser number of members. But I digress, my point is that partforming is not bad, I actually like it and think that it works if the parts are integrated in both modes, but in this Case Hasbro and all the people that like this Menasor are just cheating calling it a "combiner".
I'm disappointed. I didn't realize it was a redeco of Wild Rider's Ferrari until after I opened and transformed it. Sad day for a Lamborghini bot collector. Would it have been terribly difficult to at least do the countach windows? Or the countach hood/headlights? I mean there's at least 14 other bots they could've taken the hood or windows from. Just REALLY lazy.
Rumor has it that his design was the result of some late stage cost-cutting on the corporate side. I believe the design team fully intended to give him his own mold, or at least have more extensive retooling.
Great review, yes unfortunately it's a re-issue but it's hasbro... he's integral to complete Menasor so we can overlook that as he's gonna be part of the leg. And he's a hard one to find surprisingly.
Unless Hasbro and 3P companies pull out some pure garbage, this is definitely going to be one of the biggest transformers disappointments of 2023. It's a minor retool of an already subpar mold, but it pulls everything off in the worst ways possible. It breaks up the pattern of the other limb bots, not being a new mold and not having 2 guns. Truly a shame that Hasbro dropped the ball when they've been doing so well in the past 2 years.
Also the reason that spoiler is so damn stupid, is because they had to shoehorn in the "fusion" gimmick. So he becomes the only one, other than the big guy, that doesn't have twin weapons. Yeah I guess, thanks Hasbro?😊
so, look a little more closely at one of the wfc autobot lambos, and tell me it'd not have made much more sense to use one of them here, as opposed to the dollar general ferrari. Seriously, the $1 menu ferarri as the base, and the filet and lobster lambo are the same mold, but it's geared more towards the mcferrari with cheese, than the hottest car of the 80's? Nah son, that won't do. Respect btw, for knowing why this sucks, and what the cars are supposed to be. But the lambos, throw on that upgrade kit, make that hood break go 240 degrees instead of 180, and that's a far better fit, still looks good with the team, but is his own charecter....ish, along with his like 8 mold mates lmao
Bro, I can hear the disappointment in your voice and it pains me. I enjoy your content and everything. As a fellow bot brother, please, please, please, don’t make yourself suffer with the lackluster laziness of HASBRO. Get on the third party train and get upgrades for every HASBRO Transformer you own. I promise you won’t be disappointed. HASBRO’s cheap lazy ways no longer fret me because third party has got me covered. They have upgrades for all the Legacy STUNTICONS as we speak. I would also recommend Toyhax decals. Because not having proper faction insignias irritates me too. LOL
@@scottdoesntmatter4409 nah, it’s a very good idea, homer. Some of us are not sycophant fanboys of HASBRO, and venture into other avenues so as not to stay confined in a short sighted box of so called “official HASBRO”mediocrity 😒🤨🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🙄🙄
@@tchallaomoro8281 First off, being insulting is not going to get you a positive response. Second, I have experience with 3rd party figures, and I find the products to be of random quality, and very easily too damned fragile to last long. I would rather have durability and decent design, then upgrade them with various kits.
If you’re going to complain this much about a $25 kids toy, you should go OS KO of the legends version, which will get you bots on the front of the legs or go upper tier 3rd Party.
Do you have a metric for that assertion or just your own personal experience? The majority of the comments on this video and the Menasor one are in support of the toy-based play style. So, my anecdotal experience is that more people prefer toy-style updates.
When was the last time you had a Hasbro combiner with 4 out of 5 original molds? Combiner wars devastator maybe? Before that, G1 seacons. With that said, I live to shred hasbro. But I'm just gonna say it , I haven't been this happy with a Hasbro combiner since G1 ABOMINUS. I mean once be real combined or worse was the laziest bunch of garbage ever. They literally tricked everybody into buying the same figure over and over and over. Every limb almost was a minor retool or repaint. But they finally start to put effort into it , and you get disappointed with one minor remold /repaint, so much so that you are contemplating why you bought the figures in the 1st place? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. I mean it's mainline dude. What did you expect, a masterpiece level toy? I honestly hope they redo all the combiners like this, so that I can take all the combiner wars junk off my shelves and melt them down with a giant magnifying glass. I'm kind of contemplating unsubbing.u
Combiner Wars was a very different time. John Warden and his team were operating on a shoe string budget and had to make a bunch of combiners happen with very little resources. Were now in a time where Transformers is one of Hasbro's hottest brands. They're given much more room to invest in figures compared to where they were. My problem with Breakdown isn't even that he's a retool. It's that he's a half-baked retool that isn't even good in his own right. On a side note, if disagreeing with someone's take on a figure is enough for you to unsub from a channel, I'm not sure I'll miss you very much. You don't sound like tue kind of person I'd want hanging around anyway. 🤷♂️
I think they went into this thinking “people are just gonna use this as a menasor leg”
Great review TF Collector!!! Breakdown looks fine for being a retool of Wildrider, but I still enjoy his CW figure. lol Keep on being amazing.
The poses in the thumbmail lol
Looks like there dancing
I was going for the other Lambos turning their backs on Breakdown. I guess I didn't get that across very well. 😅
When I first started collecting, I couldn't tell you what mode Breakdown was supposed to be. Becoming familiar with these characters are sometimes a blessing and curse b/c when Hasbro flubs something like the alt mode it takes away from the fun of the figure. I can't help but think Hasbro was adamant on not spending the extra money on new tooling b/c they would have sold every Breakdown regardless.
Now we know where Tarn's budget came from!!!
I think the only solution to this is that a company makes a ko with the lambo parts.
I am not happy with the sacrifices this design team has taken to save money on the budget.
Neither are apparently the designers, they said that they wanted to make a new mold for him but couldn’t because their budget was significantly cut
I don’t car for repaints. If I do get this, then he would be the 2nd Stunticon (except G2 Dragstrip) in my collection
Great overall take on this figure!
I heard that apparently Breakdown’s vehicle mode here actually resembles a Lamborghini Jalpa.
There's a running change for Breakdown's instructions. My copy came with vanilla "Legacy" instructions that also include the Menasor leg mode.
Interesting. 🤔
I'm usually not cynical when it comes to the chug figures (I never expect much) but I have to agree with you here. Breakdown should have been called Letdown. If not for the fact that he was part of a combiner team, I would have passed. As a side note, while I don't expect much from mainline figures, there were very few figures that I wasn't happy with in the WFC trilogy. Almost all of those, with a few allowances from Earthrise, were terrific. Legacy, in my opinion, has been a mixed bag for sure. Great review, as always.
Thumbnail: There's an Imposter Among Us.
I'm glad someone got it! 😃
You can tell when he was first revealed that Mark was NOT happy about how he turned out. He wants to give us the best of the best, but Corporate probably stopped them from making a new mold for Breakdown and did some major cost-cutting. And as a result, we have ourselves the WORST Stunticon. Doesn’t help that I think he’s the most expensive of these Deluxe Stunticons.
You can see that from his behind the scene post as well where he was just like “he was originally gonna be much worse”. They barely have anything good to say about this toy.
@@jacliffh9221 with good reason. The designers are great guys. They really love their craft. The corporate side? Money money money
I got mine today and I'm definitely cutting the spoiler in half as soon as I get him out the box.
Fun fact, back in the day that spoiler was so expensive, it was referred to as a "Hyundai Wing". Since the replacement cost the same as a higher-end Hyundai of the day, which honestly was pretty low impact in LOL I know this, because my dad was working on a Lamborghini countach for a customer, and the garage door fell on the wing, and he had to replace it for around $6,000, in 1987
That's insane!
Honestly i feel the same about them possibly saving Breakdown till last so people would get invested in the rest of the team beforehand, it just makes too much sense. About the only real compliment i can give this guy is him having true weapon storage in car mode. We dont really get that anymore for non beast bots so its kinda appreciated.
That is true. I did the guy a disservice by not at least giving him props for the weapon storage.
@@TFCollector By the way, are you going to have time to catch up review Dead End or go straight to Menasor?
I decided to cut my losses with reviews from last year, but someone suggested I do an overview for the third wave to cover what I missed. I'm thinking I'll go that route for time's sake.
@@TFCollector Sounds good. Looking forward to it
He was always going to be a partial of wild rider like dead end is of dragstrip. The issue was they ran out of the budget to remold the front of the car sadly. Other figures in the wave apparently needed the budget more. But I still like him well enough, his bot mode looks good and he makes a fine leg lol.
I had no idea Dead End was a Dragstrip partial. 😮
@@TFCollector yeah the transformation is pretty damn spot on to one another. Slight variances and the leg bots was always going to be the same because of the way they had to attach to menasor. However they stopped brake downs reshelling half way....I'm guessing due to the over all waves budget running short and what they could skip....because they have already admitted to budget being per wave instead of per figure. I don't think they ran out on the figure itself but rather brake down took the hit for other deluxes in the wave.
He honestly wouldn't be that bad if they reshelled the whole vehicle. Well, that and fix that stupid spoiler accessory...
@@TFCollector yes I agree 💯 if they reshelled both the front and back it would be fine, but they stopped halfway to save on budget and ended the stunticons on a bit of a drag, I still like them overall though, i think they are a huge upgrade over cw stunticons and make a nice cartoon menasor. I've thought of painting the bars on the windows but idk he really is fine over all and the front can't be fixed 😂
This is what I think: they were in a rush and were in danger of being over budget and had to make a quick decision. I think a year or two down the road they'll do a proper breakdown with proper accessories through generation selects - and it'll come with a larger menasor sword so they can charge 49.99. And if I were to be honest, I would say I'm surprised only one of the menasor figures is a lame re-tool - hasbro combiners usually run out of steam well before the fifth figure.
Some people have said that Dead End is also a retool of Dragstrip. I kinda get what they're saying, but I'll have to verify that when I get the chance. If he is a retool, he's a very good one because I didn't even notice.
@@TFCollector It appears to be a retool, but an extensive one- seemingly more extensive than combiner wars retools. Plus the obvious difference is dead end looks like it should while breakdown doesn't.
Dragstrip and Dead End are the same molds too...just heavily retooled. Also I think they didn't get the license for the Lamborghini. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker looked close enough to them without getting a license... but they couldn't have spoilers. They made Breakdown an ambiguous model to give him the spoiler.
I got mine yesterday & finally fished Menasor & got the DNA upgrade kit & he looks so much better with the kit & now bigger then Jetfire! Does it suck he isn’t his own mold yes but for me they are staying In combined mode!
I've must buy the Legacy version
He's the last piece I need for Menasor, but I can't find him online for less than $100. For me, he is just a leg for Menasor. The big guy looks weird without him.
Just wait for the Toyhax decals to come out, you will GET your taillights!
What annoys me is the exposed pegs on 2 of the wheels in alt mode.
Ditto. Exposed pegs always kill it for me, especially when I can't see any reason they had to be there.
The “Ax” is post to be held with the other white peg instead of the gun barrel that’s why it’s not painted, but it’s you’re figure do what ya want lol , he looks different enough in robot and Car mode
They knew everyone had already bought the others, so they'd buy breakdown too.
That's what I think.
I'm Okay With This Figure and I'm Getting Him Including The Three Members Of The Stunticons Team.
It still amazes me the g1 fans hypocrisy when they always complain about the beast era because it has too much partsforming but at the same time they for some reason forget that most g1 toys had way more partforming (seeker mold hands were accesories) and most of them love this Menasor that somehow acomplishes to inceptionize partsforming (combiners themselves are partformers) by converting the limb bots into just parts of the limbs of an already complete "combiner"(insert Jackie Chan's exploding brain meme here).
And the leg bots are not even accesories to complete Menasor, they are just stored behind the sheen instead of being the actual sheen, I gues you can say they are the calves hahaha.
Anyway, I really hope for a revision of Tripredacus and Magnaboss, and I hope they just improve the old designs rather than trying to do the same they did to this menasor, maybe a combination of 2 Voyagers and a Leader would be needed to compensate for the lesser number of members.
But I digress, my point is that partforming is not bad, I actually like it and think that it works if the parts are integrated in both modes, but in this Case Hasbro and all the people that like this Menasor are just cheating calling it a "combiner".
I'm disappointed. I didn't realize it was a redeco of Wild Rider's Ferrari until after I opened and transformed it. Sad day for a Lamborghini bot collector. Would it have been terribly difficult to at least do the countach windows? Or the countach hood/headlights? I mean there's at least 14 other bots they could've taken the hood or windows from. Just REALLY lazy.
Rumor has it that his design was the result of some late stage cost-cutting on the corporate side. I believe the design team fully intended to give him his own mold, or at least have more extensive retooling.
Great review, yes unfortunately it's a re-issue but it's hasbro... he's integral to complete Menasor so we can overlook that as he's gonna be part of the leg. And he's a hard one to find surprisingly.
yeah, i preordered mine from entertainment earth. Still haven't gotten it. Ebay has Breakdown for exorbitant prices.
Unless Hasbro and 3P companies pull out some pure garbage, this is definitely going to be one of the biggest transformers disappointments of 2023. It's a minor retool of an already subpar mold, but it pulls everything off in the worst ways possible. It breaks up the pattern of the other limb bots, not being a new mold and not having 2 guns. Truly a shame that Hasbro dropped the ball when they've been doing so well in the past 2 years.
Also the reason that spoiler is so damn stupid, is because they had to shoehorn in the "fusion" gimmick. So he becomes the only one, other than the big guy, that doesn't have twin weapons. Yeah I guess, thanks Hasbro?😊
😂 I just received all these figures too.
They're taking so long I already lost Dragstrip someplace in my house.
Noooo! 😱
so, look a little more closely at one of the wfc autobot lambos, and tell me it'd not have made much more sense to use one of them here, as opposed to the dollar general ferrari. Seriously, the $1 menu ferarri as the base, and the filet and lobster lambo are the same mold, but it's geared more towards the mcferrari with cheese, than the hottest car of the 80's? Nah son, that won't do. Respect btw, for knowing why this sucks, and what the cars are supposed to be. But the lambos, throw on that upgrade kit, make that hood break go 240 degrees instead of 180, and that's a far better fit, still looks good with the team, but is his own charecter....ish, along with his like 8 mold mates lmao
I mean they retooled the back of breakdown. Who cares instead of the back, they should have retooled the front to look like a lambo
Bro, I can hear the disappointment in your voice and it pains me. I enjoy your content and everything. As a fellow bot brother, please, please, please, don’t make yourself suffer with the lackluster laziness of HASBRO. Get on the third party train and get upgrades for every HASBRO Transformer you own. I promise you won’t be disappointed. HASBRO’s cheap lazy ways no longer fret me because third party has got me covered. They have upgrades for all the Legacy STUNTICONS as we speak. I would also recommend Toyhax decals. Because not having proper faction insignias irritates me too. LOL
that, homer, is a really bad idea! 3rd party tends to vary wildly in quality, usually being damned fragile to say the least.
@@scottdoesntmatter4409 nah, it’s a very good idea, homer. Some of us are not sycophant fanboys of HASBRO, and venture into other avenues so as not to stay confined in a short sighted box of so called “official HASBRO”mediocrity 😒🤨🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🙄🙄
@@tchallaomoro8281 First off, being insulting is not going to get you a positive response. Second, I have experience with 3rd party figures, and I find the products to be of random quality, and very easily too damned fragile to last long. I would rather have durability and decent design, then upgrade them with various kits.
I hope they redo Breakdown. They have done it before. He is meh.
If you’re going to complain this much about a $25 kids toy, you should go OS KO of the legends version, which will get you bots on the front of the legs or go upper tier 3rd Party.
I'm a toy reviewer. I talk about the pros and cons of every toy I review. If you'd rather have an advertisement, watch a Hasbro fan stream.
This might surprise you, but animation accurate is king among collectors. Excessively negative review.
Do you have a metric for that assertion or just your own personal experience? The majority of the comments on this video and the Menasor one are in support of the toy-based play style. So, my anecdotal experience is that more people prefer toy-style updates.
@@TFCollector If that were the case, you wouldn't see so many animation accurate Transformers coming out from Hasbro.
Hasbro isn't always good at reading the room. This is the same company that thought people wanted to bring back foil stickers.
@@TFCollector Possibly. But remember, we already had your scramble city versions in Combiner Wars, and nobody wants those.
When was the last time you had a Hasbro combiner with 4 out of 5 original molds? Combiner wars devastator maybe? Before that, G1 seacons. With that said, I live to shred hasbro. But I'm just gonna say it , I haven't been this happy with a Hasbro combiner since G1 ABOMINUS. I mean once be real combined or worse was the laziest bunch of garbage ever. They literally tricked everybody into buying the same figure over and over and over. Every limb almost was a minor retool or repaint. But they finally start to put effort into it , and you get disappointed with one minor remold /repaint, so much so that you are contemplating why you bought the figures in the 1st place? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣.
I mean it's mainline dude. What did you expect, a masterpiece level toy? I honestly hope they redo all the combiners like this, so that I can take all the combiner wars junk off my shelves and melt them down with a giant magnifying glass.
I'm kind of contemplating unsubbing.u
Combiner Wars was a very different time. John Warden and his team were operating on a shoe string budget and had to make a bunch of combiners happen with very little resources. Were now in a time where Transformers is one of Hasbro's hottest brands. They're given much more room to invest in figures compared to where they were. My problem with Breakdown isn't even that he's a retool. It's that he's a half-baked retool that isn't even good in his own right.
On a side note, if disagreeing with someone's take on a figure is enough for you to unsub from a channel, I'm not sure I'll miss you very much. You don't sound like tue kind of person I'd want hanging around anyway. 🤷♂️
Well, that was melodramatic