Trashmaster

Well who's this jaunty little fellow! Trashmaster is a powerful Junkion enforcer. He leads the way past enemy lines, smashing bots aside to clear the way. I did not even know this guy was going to be a thing. He just happened to show up at Target when I was looking for Tarn, and he seemed like he might be fun. I've enjoyed the other two Junkions they've made in the Legacy: Evolution line well enough (Scraphook more than Crashbar, but still), so why not add a third to the collection! Gotta support new efforts when those efforts actually get made. Trashmaster is a big, chunky bot who looks like he'd be right at home in Animated or back in the Unicron Trilogy. His head, in particular, with its ear-spikes, big, heavy jaw, and "mohawk" ridge with three small spikes near the front, feels like a throwback design rather than the kinds of heads everybody wants to design today. This is a Voyager class figure, so it's slightly larger than the other Junkions. The robot design is incredibly blocky, though it keeps the vibe alive by having spikes on its knees and shoulders. Junkions love spikes! Spikes aplenty! What's that you say? You've got an otherwise smooth surface? Well, best put some spikes on it! Boom! You're a Junkion now! You, with your guns on the back of your hands and your various small spikes and your gigantic piece of truck kibble hanging behind your butt. The robot's arms are meant to plug onto the sides of the chest, but the fit is loose, so they'll often come undone; luckily the hinges on those pieces are tight enough that he doesn't start flopping around. The figure moves at the head, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, thighs, knees, ankles, and feet. The rocker joints in his feet are very stiff, so you have to actively force them to move rather than just shifting when you give it a try. He's armed with a big claw weapon, but since it has two side-by-side 5mm pegs rather than a single handhold, it will always be off-center and never look right. Maybe he's supposed to hold it the other way around, with the claw in his hand and the rest of it acting like swords? Also, despite being larger than average, he's not as modular as his littler friends: only the legs and butt-kibble can be removed, not the head or arms. Well that's not as much fun, is it? To convert the robot, fold the head away and lift the roof over it; turn the hands palm-up, turn the arms to the outside, raise them forward to plug into the chest, then fold the entire things back and click them together; rotate the waist, fold the feet away, then hinge the upper body down to plug the halves of the vehicle together; tuck the engine into place, raise the arms on the sides, and put the claw weapon into the robot hands, hiding them away. Trashmaster lives up to his name, turning into a post-apocalyptic garbage truck. There are protective bars over the windows, an angled ram on the front, and chains at the back on the sides. Having the articulated lift arms is cool, but now they desperately need to make a TF who turns into a dumpster. It's not as much of an issue in this mode as it was for the robot, but the gray lower "jaw" of the claw thing is slightly too small to fit into the orange upper jaw properly, so it just drops out instead of hinging the way it should. Once again, the colors on Trashmaster match the other Junkions released this year: tan and grey and orange and silver. You can, in theory, do the usual parts-swpping that's made these figures so fun, but so few parts actually come off there's not a lot you can do. The instructions just show swapping the front end with the Scraphook mold, which is decent, but minimal. A toy this size, we should really be able to do more. It barely looks any different. So, Trashmaster. The size of him, the proportions, the way he carries his body... it all feels like a throwback. Demolishor! His head and chest make him feel kind of like Demolishor! The altmode is a lot cooler than the robot is, but even that's lacking due to the minimazed play feature. It's great getting something new, but there was more fun to be found here. -- 10/03/23

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