Hunt for the Decepticons Sea Spray

Robot Mode: First thing first: Seaspray (or Sea S.P. Ray, if you will) is vastly bigger than the figure he’s homage to, G1 Seaspray. Much like other Minibots turned giant his reincarnation in present times includes a vast increase in size, as he’s now a Voyager-class figure. The general look of the original figure has carried over, what with the turbines on his shoulders and the front of the hovercraft forming his legs, but of course this vastly larger figure has a whole lot more in the way of detailing.

Unlike his predecessor, who could only move his arms at the shoulders and nothing else, this new Seaspray is very posable. His bulky body design hampers him but slightly, he can easily pull of multiple poses, including the Kung-Fu kick. In certain poses he does have some stability problems, as his feet are rather small compared to the rest of him. He does have heel spurs in the form of the blue panels flipping down from his lower legs, but they are rounded, so balancing on one foot is kind of difficult. Unless, of course, you activate Seaspray’s hidden feature: the flippers (no, not the band!) Seaspray can unfold blue flippers from his feet. Truth to tell it looks pretty ridiculous to me, but it does give him added stability.

Seaspray carries two missile launchers that can either clip to his forearms or held in his hands. The translucent blue missiles are shaped somewhat like harpoons, which fits his naval image. Speaking of hands, Seaspray has very nicely sculpted hands, not the usual fist-with-a-hole, but because of the arm design he can’t turn them fully at the wrist despite having a wrist joint.

So bottom line: A very nice robot mode that pretty much checks all my boxes for excellence.

Vehicle Mode: As he did in days of yore Seaspray still transforms into a hovercraft. The design is a bit different this time, though, as the new Seaspray more resembles the kind of ferry that’s used to bring cars or equipment from the main land to a nearby island. He’s got a big cargo space taking up the rear two-thirds of his length, including a loading ramp on the rear end that can be lowered to allow Scout-sized vehicles (or smaller) to drive up. G1 Seaspray easily fits into that space with room to spare.

Seaspray’s missile launchers can remain in the same spot where they were in robot mode (clipped onto the forearms), which leaves them on the sides of the hovercraft, ready for firing. The rear turbines are mounted on joints, too, so you can easily reposition them in multiple ways (same goes for the robot mode, of course). So the bottom line here is: A very nice and solid vehicle mode that offers interactivity with other toys. What more do you want?

Remarks: Seaspray was kind of the odd-bot out in the original G1 cartoon series. He was the Autobots’ Naval Combat Expert (Megatron himself deemed him such), but seeing as 99% of all missions and battles in the cartoon took place on land, in the air or in space, Seaspray never had much to do (I think there were more sea battles in the cartoon’s first season, before Seaspray appeared, than in the entire series afterwards). His most (in)famous appearance is probably the episode “Sea Change”, where he fell in love with a mermaid and was temporarily transformed into a merman (one of the silliest G1 episodes ever in my mind). With that as Seaspray’s main claim to fame, it’s no wonder many feel that the little Minibot was vastly underappreciated (see here). But no longer ( here be proof).

This newest incarnation (only the third-ever toy called Seaspray and the first in 17 years) might not have any in-media appearances under his belt, but there is no denying that he’s a pretty great toy. The ROTF line and its follow-up Hunt for the Decepticons keep bringing out top-notch Voyager-class figures and while I wouldn’t put Seaspray at the top of that list, he’s definitely in the top ten in my book. Oh, and despite being nominally part of the Movieverse, he’s going on my Classics / Universe shelf. Recommended to all Transformers fans that enjoy a good homage to a classic character or feel, like I do, that there aren’t enough seafaring Transformers around.

Rating: A-