Review – Impossible Toys’ Spike and Sparkplug

You know, I never did completely understand why Hasbro didn’t give us Sparkplug and Spike toys back in 1984/1985 when the first season of the Transformers cartoon* was on the air. After all, these two human characters were instrumental in several episodes and there’s no doubt that we all (well, me at least) would have loved getting tiny little Spike and Sparkplug action figures to ride around in the Autobot cars.

Well, leave it to the crew at Impossible Toys (tagged) to bring us the toys of our dreams — over twenty years later.

Packaging

A simple tiny clamshell with an insert, these two toys have packaging that’s basically exactly what we saw used for Impossible Toys’ Kremzeak toy (review here). Unlike the Kremzeak toy this is a package you’re gonna want to keep; it’s the one safe place to store the near-microscopic accessories.

Tiny Toys!

Coming in at about an inch tall, these little figures fit perfectly in a lot of the Transformers Generation One toys. I dropped my Spike and Sparkplug in the cab of Optimus Prime (photos below) and both of them look like they were designed specifically for the seats hidden inside the cab. And with the articulation on each figure they sit right down without any problems at all.

Well, except for the one huge problem: Wow, these are ugly little figures.

Sculpt and Paint

Both are poor, with just enough detail in the sculpt and paint to make these vaguely resemble the animated characters. And while the toys do come with tiny helmets (which are fairly decent sculpts), no matter which way I twisted and turned the helmets I just couldn’t get them to fit neatly on the figures’ heads.

The faces are blobs of plastic with splatters of paint; when looking at the large photos keep in mind that the toys are only about an inch tall so the disturbingly ugly faces aren’t as bad as they look in the pics but they’re by no means perfect representations of the animated characters.

Maybe I’m being unfair, but I really can’t get past just how ugly these toys look. And at $15 for the set (I bought the pair on clearance at TFSource) I expected a much higher level of detail and quality. After all, the Quintesson toys I’ve got by Impossible Toys are significantly better than these ugly chunks of plastic.

Stop Losing Your Legs!

And the ugliness of the toys isn’t the only problem. Spike’s legs fall off every time I move him from sitting to standing. Pop. Right off. And these are terribly tiny legs so the chance of a leg vanishing into thin air is really high. At a clearance price of $7.50/figure — which is a lot for a one-inch figure — I expect the legs to at least stay on the toy.

Closing Thoughts

It’s cool that Impossible Toys gave us Spike and Sparkplug figures that fit in my Optimus Prime, but for the quality of the work the price should have been significantly lower. It’s frustrating that these two are such poor toys — Impossible Toys’ Quintessons aren’t the greatest toys ever but they are much better than this — because I had high expectations. At the very least I expected to be able to fit the helmets on the figures’ heads. And I expected the limbs to stay in place.

I cannot recommend these toys to anyone. My Spike and Sparkplug are going to live in Optimus Prime’s cab — the accessories are staying in the clamshell packs — but if I had been able to play with these before buying them I would have skipped the figures.

A Transformers fanatic may want these for his collection, but casual fans and collectors should run fleeing if they spot these priced at anything over $5 for the pair.

*Affiliate link: Orders using this link earn battlegrip.com cash, which is applied to buying toys.

Philip Reed now wishes he had a couple of Generation One Dinobots to stick these figures in. Hey, the Insecticons also had spots for tiny figures. Is it time to open that box of Insecticons?