Revenge of the Fallen Springer

Allegiance: Autobots
Series: Revenge of the Fallen
Category: Custom Voyager
Year: 2010

An optimistic, good-natured adventurer, Springer is the kind of guy who cracks jokes in the middle of a fire fight and remains positive even when the odds seem hopeless. Having to abandon Cybertron did finally manage to get him down, though, and he carries a deep-seated rage against the Decepticons for turning his beautiful home into a burnt-out wasteland. Powered by a nuclear reactor and armed with concussion rifles and a light saber, Springer will make sure that his new home Earth does not share Cybertron's fate, even if he has to destroy every single Decepticon himself.

Robot Mode: Let’s start, as usual, with the various parts this custom robot is made from. The basis for Springer is Incinerator from the original Movie toy line. Modifications have been made to give him hands (which hail from Stratosphere), with which he can hold his weapons, which in turn hail from the hands of Protoform Optimus Prime (guns), Protoform Starscream (sword hilt) and Animated Leader Megatron (sword blade). The head, finally, was chopped off of a Sideways figure.

Now the basic color of the figure has changed from grey (or black in the Takara version) to a military green, as befits a character named Springer. There is a splotchy mustard yellow on the chest - where you can see a warning sign for radioactivity (Springer has gone nuclear!) - and shoulders. Color changes aside, though, the biggest difference everyone who knows the original Incinerator figure will notice is that the figure has hands. The rotors which replaced Incinerator’s hands now sit on a hinge, enabling them to fold sideways, leaving room to plug in hands. Now plug-in hands are a very G1-thing to do, but knowing that LimeWire despises all things G1, I won’t rub that in his face too much. ;-)

Now Springer has two hands to hold three weapons, which puts him in a bit of a jam, of course. Thankfully the sword can be holstered, sort of, in the space behind Springer’s head, leaving his hands free for his two rifles. Alternatively you can put the sword in his hand and put the two rifles on his shoulders, jamming the handles behind the shoulders and pushing them back. Not the most stable connection ever, but it works and I’m a sucker for shoulder-mounted weaponry. Springer retains the option, of course, of using his rotor blades for a slashing attack.

All in all a nice use of an existing mold that fixed the original’s one major problem (no hands) and added everything you need to make a Springer. Pretty good work here.

Vehicle Mode: Springer retains the transformation from Incinerator. Only slight modification here is that you have to unplug the hands (G1-style, couldn’t help myself) and put the rotor blades back into position, but other than that everything is as it was. The resulting Osprey is a different color now, of course, and Limey added some decals for details. Overall, though, not much in the way of changes here. Still a great vehicle mode and it fits Springer, so I’m glad it was retained. No place to store the weapons, though.

Remarks: Springer was originally intended to be part of the Revenge of the Fallen on-screen cast, which is why we saw a Legends and a Robot Heroes figure of him in the first wave of ROTF toys. He ended up not appearing in the movie, of course, so any other figures of him that might have been in the planning stages fell through. But seeing as his Legends incarnation is a repaint of the Incinerator Legends figure from the original Movie line, it seems natural to create a bigger version of him from the same character. And Springer, of course, fit the Transformers: 2010 motto for the C.O.N.S. 2010 custom contest, for which this figure was originally created (and where it tied for first place).

While I’m nowhere near as big a fan of the Movie style as LimeWire obviously is, he did create a pretty good ROTF Springer here, no doubt. If there was some way to store the weapons in vehicle mode and a better way to attach the rifles on the shoulders, he’d get a straight A from me. Even with those tiny little detriments, though: One cool Custom.

Rating: A-