Review – Mech Ideas Piston

After the Mech Ideas Gauntlet (review here) it only made sense to dive in and share his moldmate, Piston, with all of you. Unfortunately, Piston suffered catastrophic damage in the transformation/play of the toy and he is now headless. Damn. Here’s to hoping that I can return this to BBTS for a Piston that doesn’t snap his neck within the first 15 minutes of life in the wild.

Not-Crankcase

Piston is an homage to a slightly obscure Transformers Generation One character from the eighties. While the design doesn’t work quite as well as it did for the Last Stand of the Wreckers* Ironfist, this mold makes a decent enough Crankcase that I can accept it.

You’re not familiar with Crankcase? I’m not surprised, because the 1988 Triggercon (see the TFWiki) isn’t exactly one of those toys that everyone talks about and searches for. To make this design work even better as Crankcase I think that Mech Ideas should have changed up the colors way more than they did, but at least the face sculpt looks pretty spot on. Colors? Yeah, the colors needed work.

Unfairly Harsh

I just know I’m being mean to Piston here, but the little guy has got to expect some abuse when he loses his head so very quickly. I mentioned in the Gauntlet review that the head on the design was going to be a problem, but I never once expected that Piston would lose his near-instantly. The issue is the clearance for the head during transformation is too tight, and one wrong move when transforming the toy will snap the neck post right off the body. Broken toys suck. Toys that break during the first transformation really suck.

Cool Guns

One way in which Mech Ideas really helped the mold to work as Crankcase was the addition of the two small guns that attach just over the shoulders. If you check the Crankcase entry at the TFWiki you will see that the original toy from the eighties had two shoulder cannons, and as the above pic shows the two cannons Mech Ideas included with Piston really pull off the look wonderfully.

Those colors, though, just aren’t quite right. And we won’t even mention the broken head again . . .

Closing Thoughts

How the broken toy is handled by BBTS will have a serious impact on my final opinions of Piston, because if I can get a replacement without any problems then (hopefully!) I’ll have a toy who can keep his head during the transformation process. And a little companion to Gauntlet (review here) would be fantastic.

The design is cool, but this is one more in a growing line of examples of why toy designers need to think through the transformation process of their transforming robot toys. These toys need to be toys — playable and able to withstand the act of transforming between modes — and in this case we have a toy with a playable design that is just a little too tight in one place. Plastic cannot stand the stress of twisting and bending to fit, so just a little more clearance would have solved this problem completely.

I’ll let all of you know what happens with my attempt to get a replacement toy. BBTS was great the last time I ended up with a busted toy (see “Mugan Vox Defect and Great Customer Service”) and I’m hoping that the service is as fantastic this time as it was then.