Night of the Living Baseheads

Ok, so it's not actually baseheads we're talking about but Transformers repaints, I just like the word "basehead".

Basehead, basehead, basehead.

There. I'm better now.

Despite the fact that I'm not big on Transformers repaints, I recently picked up both Rescue Ratchet and EVAC. Rescue Ratchet is Ratchet from the movie, just painted in red and white to look like an ambulance. He is awesom, and I love him. The original Ratchet was an ambulance, so this color scheme makes sense, plus Ratchet was my favorite of all the Voyager (20 buck) movie toys, so I'm not upset with buying him twice. Usually I don't like repaints as part of the joy of buying a new toy is learning the transformation for the first time. While Rescue Ratchet's transformation is no longer new to me, it's still fun, so he gets added to the collection.

EVAC is a different beast altogether. Even though he's a repaint of Blackout, he's an Autobot, and a damn nice looking one at that. He's all orange and white, done up to look like a Coast Guard rescue chopper. My Blackout was disappointing in that his arms would never stay where they were supposed to. Blackout's arms don't attach to his torso, instead they attach to this harness thingy that then hooks into his torso. If the harness doesn't click in correctly, the harness moves every time you try to pose him. Tres annoying. EVAC, on the other hand, has no such issues as his harness locks into place nice as can be. This, along with the new color scheme and the new head sculpt make him a very fun toy. The only thing I don't like about him is that he comes with a life raft which he can drop while in helicopter form. The raft then becomes a gun when he's in robot form. I'm all for him dropping a raft to help people out, but to then make them plunge into the icy waters just so that he can pack heat is kind of mean.

With all of this repaint madness going on, I passed on the G1 repaint of the Voyager class Optimus Prime as well as the off road repaint of Ironhide. Ironhide was a fairly disappointing toy, and it's not worth spending 20 bucks just so I can have one with a little mud painted on him. I can do that for nothing. The G1 Prime repaint is just unnecessary. Movie Prime's flames are bad ass. I wouldn't change them for anything.

Now all I need is Incinerator and I'll have all of the new Voyagers that Hasbro has seen fit to tell us about. Then it's nothing but clear sailing until the Classics 2.0 line comes out and the Transformers Animated toys come out.

Whee!