The sixth and final toy of BotCon 2012‘s box set has been revealed. We’ve known for some time that it was Metalhawk. We saw a blurry picture of him on the registration page. We saw control art for the toy. But BotCon has finally revealed the toy in full.
Metalhawk was a Japanese-only Pretender released in 1988, and for the longest time he was one of Transformers fandom’s Holy Grails. He was unlike other Pretenders as Metalhawk had a removable helmet, had a full face, and most importantly, he was made of die-cast metal. But now he’s been reborn as a Transformers Timeline exclusive.
Image via BotCon.com
Let’s look at the jet mode. As a blue jet with red and white highlights, it re-imagines the deco of the original jet toy extremely well. It’s not a direct copy of the deco, and it uses white instead of grey, but on the whole it looks good and brings to mind the original toy. Some yellow on the jet might have been a good complementary color as well as bring to mind the gold undercarriage of the original toy, but as it stands, it’s got the blue and the red, a good look.
Image via BotCon.com
As for the robot mode… this is where it gets weird. This obviously attempts to recreate the Pretender shell and not the original robot toy. And it does it quite well. The chest especially gets the deco right — red with yellow. Blue shoulders, white and blue legs — check and check. It’s when we examine the head that things are a bit… off.
Image via BotCon.com
First off, I think my own design aesthetics would prefer a bit of a sunken face to make the helmet portion stand out better. Plus, a bit of red on the crest would do wonders as well. But the thing that gets me the most is how small the head seems in comparison to the rest of the body. Transformers fan awa64 commented that because it’s a human face, perhaps we expect human proportions, and a robot face can get away with different proportions. I think he’s right. It’s not that the head on this Metalhawk is bad. It just looks off by a bit.
Is this the homerun I was hoping for? No, not quite. A bigger head — or even a bigger helmet — might have made the toy a four-bagger. As it is, though, it’s still a solid toy. Some might say the colors are bright and garish, but so was the 1988 version.
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