Revenge of the Fallen Springer

Robot Mode: Given his strong resemblance to Incinerator, one has to wonder whether the mold for Springer might not have originally been intended to be a Legends-class version of that Decepticon. Whatever the case, though, Springer does have one advantage over the much larger Voyager-class figure he so resembles: hands. While he still has the twin rotors of his alternate mode on his arms, they flip over to unveil hands.

Articulation is as good as you can reasonably expect from a Legends-class figure, so Springer can at least adopt a walking pose (somewhat) and point his rotors forward for imagined slashing attacks. The detailing on the small figure is quite good. There is little resemblance to G1 Springer, but apparently being a green helicopter bot (not really a helicopter, mind you, but with rotor blades) was enough. So bottom line: a nice robot mode, fully sufficient for this size class.

Alternate Mode: Springer transforms into a V-22 Osprey helicopter / plane (the Osprey being a hybrid between the two). He’s got the number code 5PR1N6ER printed across his wingspan (I hope I do not need to spell the “hidden” message, do I?) and overall the little vehicle looks pretty good. A real Osprey can, of course, twist his rotor blades from forward to upward position and while there is no such “articulation” in the wings themselves, you can still flip up the actual rotors to simulate this, though you flip out the robot hands in the process. Overall a nice little vehicle mode, perfectly fine for a Legends-class figure.

Remarks: Springer was a bit of a surprise in that he got two toys in the initial waves of the ROTF toyline, this one here and a Robot Hero, despite not appearing in the ROTF movie. Why did this happen? Simple, because he was supposed to be in the movie. Plans changed, though, but the toys were already in production. So despite appearing only in the British ROTF comics from Titan, he has more toys than on-screen characters like Scalpel.

I’m not a big collector of Legends-class figures normally, but considering that this is the only transforming Springer toy in the ROTF line, there really wasn’t much choice. Given that real Ospreys are relatively large vehicles, this toy is actually almost in-scale with Legends Devastator, if you want to stage some battles there. Bottom line: a nice little toy for fans of Legends-class figures and Springer.

Rating: B

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