Another two for one this week. In another case of "I was waiting until at least the obvious repaint was coming", something that likely took longer due to the virus last year. Well, over a year since we first got the mould, it's time to look at Earthrise Grapple and Kingdom Inferno!
I'll start by going over the elephant in the room when it comes to the first release of the mould. People's common quality control issue was the pegs that connected Grapple's backpack to his feet in Crane Truck mode. This problem was something addressed in Inferno, where they made the pegs shorter. Still, the fix many people used, myself included, was to shave a bit of plastic off of the pegs before trying to turn Grapple into his vehicle mode to cut down on the friction connecting the pieces. If you're wondering which version of Grapple you have (assuming they've done a silent reissue that fixes the problem), gently try to push one of the pegs into the ports on the feet. If it feels like you're putting too much force into it, take it out before you go further, take a knife, and shave some plastic off of the sides of the pegs before trying again.
Starting in the vehicle modes, and right off the bat, we have their worst modes. On their own, they look fine, with a lot of lovely detailing. Though the ladder and crane arms could be longer on both figures, the biggest issue both have is the size. These two are meant to scale well with other figures in Robot mode, but due to the nature of their vehicle modes, to achieve that task, the vehicles look tiny compared to any other Generations vehicle. Scale isn't usually an issue for me; as long as vehicles and robots look good when together, I'm willing to look past the size issues. When there are some alternate modes like motorbikes, animals, dinosaurs, realistic firearms, and other similarly troublesome modes, it's hard for me to get worked up about things not scaling right. However, these two bother me. They never look good in vehicle mode when next to anyone other than each other. They're just too small!
I get why they needed to be small, and the ends justify the means when we get to robot mode. It's just an unfortunate side effect of the alternate modes. The retooling done to separate the two is minor, though effective. With Grapple getting a crane arm with an optional claw end, Inferno has something that loosely resembles a fire ladder, a nozzle on the end of it, and some fire hoses that peg onto what will be his robot mode shins. Grapple's claw has the best use of gimmick compatibility, with a clip in the middle of it that can connect to the road pieces used for your Micromaster bases. With it connecting via a 5mm port, you can plug anything onto the end of the crane so long as it has a 5mm plug. It's little things like that which add a lot of enjoyment to a figure, and it's a shame that they didn't find a way to replicate it for Inferno's fire ladder.
As I said, the reason for the small trucks is for better-proportioned robot modes. While the transformation isn't anything exciting (as is typical for Inferno/Grapple toys, everything tucks in behind the chest as you turn robots into logs with wheels), the robot modes do look great when you get to them. These are some of the best-proportioned Transformers I own, and because of that, people have been able to do a lot of exciting and hilarious things with them. However, for some reason, I don't get much enjoyment when messing around with them. They just come off as rather dull to me, though I'm not quite sure why because there's nothing objectively wrong about their robot modes. That's something I noticed a lot in Earthrise. While there were several toys in it that were objectively good for what they were doing, something didn't quite click with me about them. They don't feel like they had a presence to them other than being good representations of the characters like there's no life in them. I know that probably sounds weird to people that don't collect toys. It probably sounds strange to people who do. But to compare it to the last review a few weeks ago of Cobra Commander, that figure has no face and is only expressive through hands, yet it feels more lively than these two. Even their wave mates, Earthrise Starscream and Kingdom Megatron (for Grapple and Inferno, respectively), feel more alive than these two do, and one of them is a glorified upscale of a toy from 2006!
Tiny truck mode aside, these two are good toys objectively. They're just underwhelming for me. Maybe it's my lack of general interest in the characters. Perhaps it's the fact that they always transform the same way. Whatever the reason is, they just come off as a bit lacklustre to me. Both are readily available in stores if you're after them, Grapple more so than Inferno, thanks to how much leftover stock of Grapple there is lying around! If you get more out of them, then great! Feel free to tell me what I'm missing because even I'm not sure what exactly my issue is with these two.
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