In today's review of Transformers: Dark of the Moon Crankcase, we told you all about how his fingers have been cut off. Well, it's possible to get intact figures without having to make international friends or order from Japan, and we're going to tell you how.
The folks on Seibertron.com's Energon Pub message board worked together to create a tally of which figures were broken and which ones were fine. Since you never know when a message board post will be purged from the archive, we're going to duplicate their findings here. The following list breaks down the numbers by the production stamp on the back of the card:
| Code | Intact | Broken |
| 03641 | 1 | 0 |
| 03651 | 15 | 0 |
| 10131* | 22 | 0 |
| 10531 | 4 | 8 |
| 10561 | 18 | 2 |
| 10601 | 3 | 35 |
| 10801 | 0 | 2 |
The one with the asterisk is the "international" one, with locations like Canada, Australia, Chile and The Netherlands. The rest? All USA, baby! My production code was 10601, so I can verify that number seems to be a loser. And now a remolded version, with complete (yet not dagger-like) fingers, has started to show up. To find it, you can look for code 111211.
In case you don't know what a production code is, it's the number pressed into the cardboard on the back of the card. Here's a picture:
Crankcase isn't really a bad toy, per se, but he has a lot of small flaws that add up to make him not worth buying...
You definitely want to try to get an unmangled figure, when some of them can have fingers this bad: http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/RAWPOWER95/1305596723569.jpg
holy crap, dude!
The worker who did the hack job on Monty Prime's robot is a dick! No rice for you!
Ha ha. That's very funny. Even got my wife to laugh at that one, although she added "that's awful."
Every Crankcase in my area that I looked at was either 10601 or 10801. I appreciate the warning, but despite your review I think he looks kind of cool. Still, I'm not buying him unless I feel there's a good chance he is completely intact.
Nice cheat sheet. I printed it, cut it out, and put it in my wallet. I still may wait on a mold tweak/repaint but this list will make the hunt more fun. I gotta re-read the review re: all the little flaws as the chopped finger bit was what bowled me over most.