Upcoming repaints...

Saw this link to the Chinese board ACToys the other day: Springer & Ratbat.



These two transformers are part of the upcoming "Universe" line that Hasbro is unveiling/reintroducing this fall. The nice thing about these particular two TFs is that you get two for the price of one. Both of them will be packaged together and sold as a Target exclusive for only $20 - the normal cost of the mold used for Springer.

Both molds are not new - they were introduced in the Cybertron line in 2005 - but neither has yet to be repainted. The green guy (Springer) is a character first introduced in the original animated Transformers: the Movie in 1986, and the purple guy (Ratbat) is one of the old "cassetticons" - the minions of Soundwave that transformed into his cassette tapes. Springer's mold was originally released as Evac, and was pretty universally praised as being one of the best helicopter TFs ever, largely because of the transformation of the helicopter's tail into robot wings, as opposed to the robot mode simply having a helicopter tail hanging off its back like most helicopter TFs have.

Ratbat was originally released as Sideways - an agent of Unicron who somehow managed to trick both the Autbots and Decepticons to believing that he was on their sides (twice!). What makes the use of this mold for Ratbat inspired is not just that the spaceship alt mode looks like a bat - and it does - but that the toy's gimmick is that its faction sigil can change. In the now-slightly-dated Dreamwave TF comics, Ratbat formed his own subfaction of Decepticons after Megatron's disappearance, name the Ultracons. The new Ratbat toy will reportedly be able to switch his faction from Decepticon to Ultracon. Wonderful! This also marks one of the very few times that the TF toylines have received a character sporting a unique faction sigil - the only other that comes to mind is the Titanium Series Fallen toy (who incidentally appears in the same comic that is included with this set).

Anyway, it's going to be hard to resist a deal like this. Two great molds with great new color schemes, and one of them is free.