Review – Fansproject Protector Armor

Thanks to one generous donation the new Transformers Protector Armor from Fansproject was waiting for me when I got home from San Francisco. This unofficial add-on kit for the Transformers Classics Rodimus* “transforms” the Hot Rod-styled toy into Rodimus Prime. I’ve bought a few unofficial Transformers toys over the past few years so when photos of this popped up I started thinking about grabbing the kit. Now that I have it, and have had time to transform it a few times, what do I think of the upgrade kit? I can sum up my thoughts in one line:

Neat idea, but a poor execution.

Trailer Mode

The toy comes packaged in trailer mode and attaching the trailer to Rodimus is pretty simple, with a few parts swung out so that the toy can be snapped in and the wings added to the trailer. It only takes a couple of moments to connect the two pieces together, but once connected it is not a lock and I wouldn’t recommend carrying the combined toy by one of the two pieces alone; gravity is not your friend and it’s not going to take much for the two parts to separate.

Rodimus’ weapon/flame component snaps into the back of the trailer and once the two parts are assembled it looks great; this is definitely an excellent design to transform Hasbro’s Rodimus toy into a modern Rodimus Prime. And despite the weak connection and lack of any real locking mechanism — if you look at the side of the trailer in the photo above you can see where Rodimus’ wing peeks through the trailer — the overall effect and appearance is fantastic. Rolling the toy around made me really start to love this upgrade kit, but after a little time in trailer mode it was time to transform the toy.

The photo below shows the Challenge at Cybertron* Rodimus toy connected to the Protector Armor and the Battle in Space* Rodimus side-by-side so that you can get an idea of just how much bulk the trailer adds to the toy. The combined toy is actually larger than I expected and the two versions look great together. But seriously, it’s now time to start transforming the toy.

Tank Mode

The first thing to go through my head when I looked at the Protector Armor instructions was: Who in the hell thought these were clear instructions? The Protector Armor photo gallery at Seibertron shows the booklet, but basically what you get are photos of the toy at various stages with vague arrows indicating roughly what you need to do to transform the toy. This might have worked, but the photos are so tiny — and in some instances just too dark — that I was straining to figure out what the hell to do next. Between photos online, the instructions, and a lot of time I eventually figured out how to transform the piece but the poor quality of the instructions put me in a bad mood as I continued playing with the Protector Armor.

This tank mode is a rolling battle platform that a small Transformer — such as the Sidearm Targetmaster-like toy also released by Fansproject — can ride. It’s an okay design, but I would have been a lot more excited if it had been designed so that either Rodimus on his own (or in the armor) could have used the tank. I have to admit that I didn’t play with this mode long and even though I’ve transformed between trailer and armor/upgrade mode a couple of times I haven’t changed back to this tank mode since the first time. It’s just not something that excited me.

Carrier

From tank mode the Protector Armor separates into a small vehicle — Carrier — and a battle station mode. The photos below show Carrier — a multi-wheeled vehicle that seems to fill the same roll as Optimus Prime’s wheeled vehicle, Roller — and it’s a cute enough vehicle but it really serves no purpose. If the original Rodimus Prime toy (see him at the Transformers wiki) had included a similar unit this would make more sense to me. I appreciate that Fansproject added a little something to the set, but for me this piece doesn’t add any value to the toy.

The next photo shows Carrier with Rodimus’ flame effect and the Sidearm figure (in weapon mode) attached to the unit. Nope, still doesn’t do it for me. It’s not bad or anything, but it’s also not exciting.

Battle Station Mode

Similar to the tank mode, this free-standing weapons platform is intended to emulate the Rodimus Prime mobile defense bay . . . except without the wheels we’ve lost the mobile side of the toy. I would have much rather Fansproject dropped Carrier and this mode and put their efforts into making the tank mode more like the Generation One mobile defense bay but we’ve got what we’ve got and its too late for changes to the toy.

I only shot a couple of photos of this piece because by this point I was seriously getting disappointed with the package. If you want to see more of this mode don’t forget the photo gallery at Seibertron. But enough of the extras; let’s look at the actual armor upgrade and how it works with the Rodimus toy.

Protector

Made up of seven separate pieces from the trailer — a rifle upgrade, each arm, each leg, the chest, and the head — the Protector upgrade snaps onto the Transformers Classics Rodimus* and actually looks pretty damned cool once you get all of the pieces in place. And the parts seriously bulk up the toy, increasing its height and giving you an impressive Rodimus Prime-like toy. But getting to this point can be a bit annoying.

Chest Upgrade – This piece snaps on easily and holds fairly securely. The photo below shows one of the cooler features of the chest piece — the flame design actually extends out when attached to the chest and adds some depth to the toy — and it took me a few moments to figure out just how this minor feature helps the part to connect to the toy. Overall a great start to adding the armor to the official toy.

The photo below shows the Battle in Space* Rodimus in front of the Protector and it gives you a great idea of how much the armor adds to the toy.

Rifle Upgrade – The first point of failure, the photos below show how the rifle connects to Rodimus’ weapon and then fits into the Protector fist. The photo below right shows the weapon as its shown in the instructions and you can see where the Rodimus rifle’s grip prevents the weapon from fitting nicely. A minor flaw with the toy that can be solved by . . .

. . . rotating Rodimus’ rifle and having the trigger and handle face to the sides. The photo below shows the combined weapon fits the toy much better after making this one simple tweak to the way the two parts connect.

Leg Upgrade – These two parts look fantastic once they are in position, but the clips that hold the leg upgrades to Rodimus’ legs are weak and have a tendency to pop off if you play with the toy a little too much. A bit of fussing and pushing and twisting snapped the pieces a bit tighter, but the instructions were almost no help at all when putting these parts on. Honestly, the poorly-presented instructions are almost the most frustrating part of the toy.

Arm Upgrade – These parts snap on over Rodimus’ wheels and are the weakest connecting parts out of the entire armor set. I found that positioning the toy can sometimes cause an arm to fall off, and no amount of snapping the pieces into place makes them secure enough to actually play with the toy with anything but the gentlest of touches. And it’s not just the weak connection that is annoying; Rodimus’ forearms hang down behind the Protector arms and the poseability is seriously restricted by the design. Using Rodimus’ upper arms as shoulders was a cool idea, but it doesn’t work perfectly.

Head Upgrade – And now we get to the most frustrating part of the armor upgrade. To put it simply, the head does not fit properly. In the photo below — and in this photo at Seibertron — you can see that the Rodimus chin shows under the Protector face. This is an inexcusable error and Fansproject should have never allowed this to be released until they fixed the mistake. For $80+ I expect better attention to detail than this; it was popping the head on and seeing this mistake that made all of the other flaws with the toy feel worse than they probably actually are. I suppose it is only a matter of time before someone offers a head to replace this one, but buying an add-on to fix an add-on just feels wrong.

Plastic and Paint

I can honestly say that the production quality of the toy is clearly professional and doesn’t feel at all like a garage operation. The paint is relatively clean and the plastic feels every bit as good as the plastic Hasbro uses for the official Transformers toys. And the assembly was clean with no loose parts or any issues with misaligned or damaged parts. It’s clear that a lot of time and money was put into the project, which just makes the flaws even more frustrating.

Closing Thoughts

The Protector Armor looked amazing in the photos online but in reality the upgrade kit has flaws that take it from fantastic to mediocre. I wanted to love this unofficial Transformers kit — hell, I even went so far as to attempt to collect donations to buy the toy — but the more that I play with it the more I feel I must suggest that everyone not buy this kit. The terrible instructions can be overcome, but the annoying way that the parts don’t stay on well and that awful head mistake just make me unable to recommend this toy to anyone.

And transforming the Protector back to the trailer was about as frustrating as any experience I’ve ever had with a Transformers toy. The fact that all of the armor parts snap off from the trailer into separate pieces means that reassembling the piece into the trailer takes some trial and error as you twist and pull the arms into various configurations while searching for the perfect fit. And with all of the snapping of hinges and pins it’s only a matter of time before one of these small connectors snaps off.

Larger and clearer photos in the instructions would have helped with the frustration of transforming the toy between modes, but even that won’t save those clips from snapping after they’ve been snapped off and on one too many times. I would have much rather seen the parts snap on by closing over the base toy’s arms/legs rather than the clips, and hopefully the next time a company creates an upgrade kit for a Transformers toy they’ll find a way to add the parts that doesn’t involve these thin clips.

The armor is available now at TFSource, Robot Kingdom, and Big Bad Toy Store, but think hard before ordering the kit. And don’t miss this video review for another opinion (and video of transforming the toy). The reviewer loves the toy a lot more than I do and is more forgiving of the annoying transformation and doesn’t see the head as much of a problem as I do.

I’m going to display the Protector next to Rodimus because as long as I don’t try to play with him the armor looks cool, but I have to say that this upgrade kit made me question my desire to order the Warbot Defender that Fansproject released (last mentioned here). If that toy’s instructions and flaws are as annoying as the Protector then do I really need the headache?

Philip Reed admits that he may have been a little harsh on this toy, but about $80 for an armor upgrade that doesn’t stay on tight and a head that doesn’t fit is ridiculous. Philip isn’t even sure what the hell he’s gonna do with the bits of the trailer that don’t connect to Rodimus; the tank and battle stations aren’t all that exciting and take up a lot of display space for something that doesn’t look neat.