Review – FansProject Warbot Recoiler Core

FansProject has made several third party Transformers toys over the years (Amazon.com search*) with their designs ranging from “I love it!” to “I hate the transformation of this toy!” Of course that’s just my opinion, but I’m happy to report that today I’m sharing a toy with an “I love it!” transformation design. And that’s a great thing; I’ve got a total of three different uses of this mold in my collection.

Almost Roadbuster

Warbot Recoiler Core is a retool and redeco of the FansProject take on Roadbuster. Released last year, their Warbot Revolver Core toy really does look like an updated Roadbuster and I know several collectors who were cursing circumstances once Hasbro unveiled an official Transformers Generations Roadbuster* at a much lower price point. Hey, you takes your chances with the third party scene; you never know what Hasbro will create next.

Articulation

As with many of the FansProject transforming robot toys (Amazon.com search*) warbot Recoiler Core has plenty of articulation to make the toy quite playable and fun. Running through the figure’s design we find:

• Head – Ball-jointed neck.
  
• Torso – Swivel waist.
  
• Arms – Swivel-hinge shoulders (more because of the transformation design than poseability design), swivel-hinge elbows, swivel wrists, and the hands swing out away from the body (again, because of the transformation design).
  
• Legs – Ball-jointed hips, swivel thighs, double-hinged knees, and rocker ankles.

Let’s a lot of articulation and getting Warbot Recoiler Core into cool combat poses isn’t challenging at all. Getting the toy to stay in those poses . . .

Problems Standing

I’m not sure if it’s because of how loose those ball-jointed hips are or what in the hell is happening, but Warbot Recoiler Core must be posed and not touched or else he will fall over. It isn’t a “I’ma always gonna fall overs!” situation, but bumping the shelf, table, desk, or whatever the toy is standing on results in a tumble about half of the time. It seems to happen most often when the toy is in a dramatic pose with the center of gravity off to one side, so maybe the answer is I pose him standing completely straight up.

Or figure out a trick to fix the looseness of those ball-jointed hips . . .

Who was that masked robot?

Above you can see comparison shots showing the Warbot Recoiler Core robot’s visor up and down. It’s a very simple feature, but that battle visor/blast shield/targeting thing/whatever is pretty neat and helps differentiate the toy even more from the other two in the series. I can’t decide if I prefer the visor up or down, but just having the option is good enough to make me happy.

Look at the little guy!

The below pic shows the Warbot Revolver Core microbot in robot mode. This little robot transforms into an engine of sorts, making this a FansProject Powermaster in my eyes. The small robot plugs into the primary robot’s back and is completely hidden, which allows for displaying the main robot and companion robot both together without any holes or weird areas of “hey, why isn’t there plastic there?” when looking at the front of Warbot Revolver Core. A simple idea, yes, but anything to bring Powermaster Transformers back is cool with me.

Closing Thoughts

At 6.75-inches tall the Warbot Revolver Core towers over many of the FansProject toys on my shelf. The sculpt is great, and the change in colors really helps the figure to look different from the Roadbuster-inspired Revolver that was released first (see pic, below). There have been FansProject toys in the past that I felt were too fiddly and annoying to transform, but Warbot Revolver Core is fun to transform making this one of my favorite of the FansProject releases.

Now if I can just fix those bad hips this toy would be near-perfect.