Mohawk

Huh-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug!! Knife-wielding, nimble Decepticon with a taste for mayhem. Alternative form is a motorcycle. Fiercely loyal to Megatron, Mohawk is a deadly foot soldier. You remember this guy: he was one of the Decepticons introduced alongside Nitro Zeus in that Planet of the Earth scene that blatantly ripped off Suicide Squad, because there was no more popular and well-respected movie in 2017 than the Oscar-winning Suicide Squad. "Suicide Squad was certainly not an embarrassing mess hated by everyone," audiences raved, "give us more of that!" And Michael Bay's "brain trust" team of a dozen writers delivered! (It'd hardly be the only unrelated script they ripped off.) Mohawk isn't the smallest Decepticon to ever be in the movies, but he's certainly the smallest from this movie. He's got eyes bulging out the sides of his head, like some sort of lizard - a comparison not dissuaded any by the fact his nominative mohawk wouldn't work as just a series of individual spikes on a toy this scale, so is instead done like a solid fin. This is a very skinny little robot, with a rough, uneven surface. In the film, he had all sorts of things strapped to him, like cutlery and spray paint cans and a baby doll's head, but that's beyond the capability of a toy at this size class and pricepoint to depict. They could have given him some better paint, though - the spots of light green on his chest, hand, and one eye are a good start, but we need shadows in the low parts of the sculpt to keep him from looking so flat and bare. Heck, his mohawk should be green. And what about his gold teeth! The digital renders for this character had his wheels on his upper arms, but this toy has to put them up above the shoulders. That, like the entirely undetailed back of the robot, is something we're willing to overlook since the toy isn't even 4" tall. He moves at the ankles, knees, hips, elbows, shoulders, and neck, then also has a hinged jaw that make the top of his head move, because he was such a chatterbox in the movie. If the head pulls off while you're playing, don't worry, that's on purpose: about the only thing Mohawk actually does in the film is get decapitated, so the designers specifically opted to make the head compatible with blast effects. They also gave him a knife that only existed in his concept art, not the movie proper. He can hold that in his hand or carry it on the small of his back. As a Core Class release, Mohawk is fairly easy to convert: tip the head back, straighten out the wheels, bend the arms up and tip them into place, and wrap the legs around the body to form the seat. It's a pretty clever way of doing a motorcycle Transformer, and a unique way of dealing with the legs. Mohawk's altmode in the movie was a hand-built model known as the P51 Combat Fighter, a bike that looks like it was designed for Terminator Endoskeletons to ride. The toy duplicates its weird and distinct shape very well, though there's no kickstand to keep it upright in this mode. The robot's knife can be stored on the side of the bike though, and it will serve the same purpose. Mohawk was one of only two Decepticon underlings in Trans5mers who were even remotely memorable, so it's wild it's taken him the better part of a decade to get his first toy. Thank goodness for the Studio Series. -- 04/02/24

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