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Kitty got an upgrade.
After the Great War, Ravage is reformatted into a Predacon,
Covert Agent Ravage, and tasked with terminating the rogue Predacon, Megatron. But after the Golden Disk reveals a secret message from his long-dead Decepticon leader, he realizes where his loyalties lie. Decepticons forever!
I understand the reasoning of "a hard war but an easy peace" - that someone who is afraid they will be punished for fighting against you will fight longer and harder in vain hopes of avoiding that fate than will someone who believes they'll simply be accepted back - but as someone living in a country that's spent nearly 160 years trying to coddle the feelings of a bunch of treasonous losers, let me tell ya: maybe granting Decepticons amnesty wasn't the best idea the Autobots ever had.
This is the Ravage I said I wanted in the Shadow Panther review - Hasbro had a 40% off sale, and Ravage was in stock, so now he's mine! While I was expecting basically the same figure, there's really been a lot of retooling - and not just to move the cat head from his chest up onto his shoulders, which is the most obvious difference.
Really, the only parts that are definitely shared between the two figures are the shins and feet. The thighs have been redone with
ribbed panels in the front (homaging Transmetal Cheetor, the '90s toy that was originally repainted as "X-9 Jaguar"), the crotchplate is no longer flat and features a "belt buckle" in the center, the chest looks like a chest since it's no longer just a storage spot for a beast mode head, and the arms no longer have kibble hanging off the shoulders. It's fairly drastic if you put the two next to each other. He does still have kibble: his animal arms fit into slots in his back and his tail can hinge up, so they're at least not visible from the front; but for the ridiculously inflated price of this figure, they should have figured out a way to engineer those away.
Ravage is armed with two pistols,
just like on the show, and they can stow on his legs, also just like on the show. The figure moves at the ankles, knees, lower thighs, hips, waist, wrists, elbows, biceps, shoulders, head, and jaw. That's right, his mouth opens! The arm joints on mine are all very stiff, making it hard to pose those. Are they all like this? Maybe, who knows? Also, all his kibble gets really obtrusive when he's doing anything other than standing perfectly still.
Given how much the body has been changed, it's no surprise the conversion is different as well: fold the forearms to the outside and plug them into the biceps; open the chest; raise the head; tip the folded arms into the chest cavity; bring the panther legs forward; close the chest; drop the head on top of that; fold away the feet and extend the panther's rear legs.
This mold is broader across the shoulders than the existing mold, and all four paws have been redone to be slightly larger. This is not as seamless a panther design as before, with the robot's silver legs fully visible on the cat's sides, rather than hidden away somehow. Also, I'm pretty sure
the front legs have been assembled on the wrong sides: the elbows bend further back than they do forward, and since everything is on a balljoint, that would be an easy mistake to make. Also an easy one to fix. The robot's guns can plug into the legs in this mode just as easily as before, harkening back to the G1 figure's rocket pods (though they end up looking more like jet boosters here).
Despite his feline head, Ravage never changes into an animal in the cartoon: he spends almost all his screentime in robot mode, and the one time he does convert, it's into his old 1980s cassette tape mode. Yes, from this giant humanoid robot to a little black box. It was cool, just go with it. In honor of that, this set includes a rerelease of the G1 Ravage toy.
That's disappointing. Not because it's a tape, but because it's the literal Generation 1 mold. Why? Why would you do that? There are way better versions available. The one that came with Universe Hound, the Masterpiece... even the recent silly Siege one. Hell, give us the Titanium one, finally get some use out of those steel tools! Any of those would have been better choices than this janky ass 37-year-old piece that can barely even stand up by itself. The only bright spot? For the first time in its history, this mold has cassette tape paint apps on both sides, rather than just one. Minor victories?
The insert behind the figure in the box is pretty awesome.
It represents the bridge of Ravage's ship, as seen in the three-part Beast Wars arc that featured him. A pocket in the cardboard on the right side serves as the slot Ravage jumped into as he reclaimed his old altmode and his Decepticon heritage. So it makes sense they'd include a tape for him, we just wish it hadn't been this tape.
Originally planned as an SDCC exclusive, Covert Agent Ravage was instead offered as part of something called "PulseCon," Hasbro's replacement for the show. The set - which remember, features one Deluxe Class figure (which retails for ~$25 these days) and one reused G1 mold - was announced to cost $44.99, but appeared on Hasbro's site at an even more ridiculous $52.99. We're meant to believe Hasbro thinks a decades-old re-release and a clever cardboard design are worth $20? That's nuts. I'm glad he was still in stock when that sale hit, because $32 is a much more appropriate price for what you get. I've wanted this character since I learned about him from the official Alternators/Binaltech story, but wasn't going to pay twice his value to get him. It's fun to get such a pivotal moment in Transformers history represented in toy form, but that doesn't mean we should have to get cheated on the price.
-- 07/12/22
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