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Saturday, 11 July 2015

Robots In Disguise 2015 (Part 10) - Legion Class Wave 4



Press on with the repaints! In truth, Hasbro need absolutely no encouragement to take a mould and recolour it umpteen times, and frankly that suits a crazed variant collector like myself, especially when the toys in question are tiddly little Legion class Robots In Disguise toys. What we have here are the Night Ops Bumblebee Legion class repaint and his co-release, Alpine Sideswipe - who bears a terribly strong resemblance to Red Alert, were he to have been a red & white Fire Chief repaint of Sideswipe as he was in Generation 1. These were sourced for me in Singapore recently where they had been sighted first, thank you Iain, you are a legend.



Here's the proof, cost and retail receipt from Singapore chain "Taka". It seems Night Ops Bumblebee had his card artwork repainted to match the toy (not always a given, see Legion clash Bumblebee's art vs deco here), but Alpine Sideswipe retains the regular red colour scheme. Whether this will be changed in time I don't know, as I understand there's a card variant for the Bumblebee where it too has unchanged regular yellow artwork. 






I mean, seriously, how much more Red Alert do you want? There are red paint dabs everywhere you'd expect Red to have them, the feet are red and in vehicle mode they resemble sirens. He retains the original version's tendency to not stand up as well as you'd like with feet perfectly flat against the ground. It's very pretty though, and I love the look of Sideswipe overall, so any variants are instabuys unfortunately. Notice that both have the battle mask on, as seems to be standard for the Legion class Autobots (except Bumblebee). Alpine Sideswipe scans fine into the Robots In Disguise app and is playable. A slight shame his faux robot chest doesn't have the blue paint for the headlights as regular Legion Sideswipe does. The scan sticker is actually not that bad on Alpine Sideswipe as it matches the overall deco perfectly.








It's really no surprise that counting released and upcoming Legion class RID toys, Bumblebee and Optimus have had the most repaints. Bumblebee thankfully is a lovely figure with more stability than Sideswipe and a fun engaging transformation. Completely surprisingly, the Night Ops repaint in predictable black and yellow is the nicest version of all. He even has a repainted helmet where Legion Clash just had a slightly different yellow to standard. The blue windscreen and yellow stripe on black really pop, it's a terrific looking Legion class toy. It does not, however, have the painted taillights of the first yellow deco, so it seems each one has some corner-cutting involved in its paint job. Yes, the scan sticker is a bit of an eyesore but if you're all in with this toy line, concept and cartoon, you stop noticing them if I am truthful. Night Ops Bee is also playable in the app.





As far as mini sportscars that are fun Transformers go, these two are perfectly serviceable repaints that are different enough from the originals to warrant a second mould purchase for fans of the toy line and fans of the show like me. I'm not trying to gather all variants of any other class but the Legion, because so far they've shown great commitment to the line at this size class, evidenced by upcoming Thunderhoof, Drift and Windblade Legion figures shown at SDCC. The white Sideswipe is possibly the more interesting concept as a repaint where Night Ops Bee was wholly expected, but the execution of Night Ops Bee is so good that it stands as my favourite of the two, especially because of the black robot helmet, they could so easily have left that yellow.

I'm totally in love with the RID 2015 Legion class line, and the SDCC reveals did not disappoint me the way they did a majority of fans. I expect my Legion to grow...



All the best
Maz




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