Universe Strongarm

Prelude: Strongarm is one of those Transformers names that comes around every few years and usually never for the same character twice. And though it seems Robots in Disguise (2015) Strongarm now has a lock on it, she was not the first bot with that name. Way back in Energon we had a Strongarm, who was repainted and re-released multiple times. Today we are looking at that guy’s Universe (2003) incarnation. So let’s say go!

Differences: Seeing as I did a review for the first Energon Strongarm just over a year ago, just a few words on the differences. Universe Strongarm (who is completely identical with Strongarm’s Energon repaint within the Energon line) is a straight-up repaint with no design changes or different accessories. It’s a pretty basic colors swap. Yellow becomes blue, dark blue becomes grey, and beige becomes brown. Some new silver highlights on the thighs and a slightly brighter red for his Energon axe and we’re done.

That’s pretty much it, really. Still a good, solid Basic figure (today’s Scout Class) with excellent articulation, a very cool weapon, and a good alternate mode.

Remarks: The Energon line featured a number of repaints (as pretty much every Transformers line does) and used a pretty weird naming convention for them. They (mostly) kept the original name, just with an “Energon” prefix before it. So Strongarm became Energon Strongarm, Hot Shot became Energon Hot Shot, and so on. Of course that technically made them Energon Energon Strongarm, Energon Energon Hot Shot and so on, which is… yeah, let’s go with weird. Anyway, the original Universe line was still going strong at the time and quite a few of these Energon repaints found themselves in Universe packaging and back on the shelves. No changes to the figures themselves, just new packaging. The genesis of today’s “package refresh”, if you will.

Strongarm is a good, solid Basic class figure with a very cool weapon and whether you take the original yellow version, this blue one here, or the green repaint released in the Movie line is really a matter of taste. Personally, the original yellow one is my favorite, so a slight point deduction for this one, but again: pure subjective. Overall I can only say that Strongarm, whatever his color, is a figure worth having.

Rating: B