Mastermind Creations Spartan

Prelude: Spartan is not a figure released by Hasbro or Takara-Tomy and thus not officially a Transformer. He hails from third party company Mastermind Creations and is, of course, meant to be Impactor, leader of the Wreckers, but for legal reasons he can’t be called by that name.

Robot Mode: Spartan is roughly Voyager-class in size and has been lifted pretty much unchanged from the pages of IDW’s Last Stand of the Wreckers (more on that below). He’s got big, beefy legs with tank treads, a comparatively slim upper body and a head styled like an ancient Greek battle helmet (possibly a Spartan one?). The figure is nicely detailed and articulated and comes in the classic Impactor colors of purple and yellow with a bit of silver thrown in for highlights.

Spartan comes with numerous weapons. A shoulder cannon can be attached to either shoulder or held in hand. A small silver handgun is his to wield and Spartan can also remove either of his hands (or both, I guess) and replace them with either a harpoon or a drill. The harpoon can double as a hand-held weapon, too. Nice accessories and the fact that I just love shoulder guns gives him some bonus points as well, naturally.

Overall there is nothing bad I can write about Spartan’s robot mode. It looks exactly like it should, it features full articulation and quite a few weapons, just about the only even slightly negative thing I can think of is that he is just a tiny prone to toppling over backwards. Thankfully his big feet can easily balance that. So bottom line: very nice robot mode, nicely depicting Wrecker leader Impactor. Two thumbs up.

Alternate Mode: Spartan transforms into a futuristic looking tank. The shoulder cannon becomes the tank’s main weapon, Spartan’s upper body is the turret. The transformation isn’t terribly complicated, but fitting everything together just right so it clicks into place takes a bit of fiddling. The end result looks good, a nicely detailed Science Fiction style tank. Those two struts connecting the tank body and turret are a bit strange, as they look cool but prevent the turret from turning. Oh, and I only just noticed that I forgot something, as you are supposed to extend two tiny gun barrels from each foot where they rest on the sides of the tank. So overall a nice tank mode. Not revolutionary, but nicely portraying the tank mode that we saw in a single small panel in the IDW comics.

Remarks: Impactor was originally created as a one-off character for the famous “Target 2006” storyline in the Marvel UK comics. He was the original leader of the Autobot special ops unit The Wreckers, but was quickly killed off to make room for Springer (who actually had a toy on the shelves at the time) to step up and become Wrecker commander. He proved so popular, though, that he returned numerous times. First as a zombie in the Marvel UK comics and again much later in the IDW comic “Last Stand of the Wreckers”. Currently he stars in “Sins of the Wreckers” and shows no sign of disappearing again.

While there have been official Impactor toys recently, they were just repaints of other figures. Mastermind Creations instead took the figure directly from the pages of “Last Stand of the Wreckers” and gave it life as Spartan. They also included a comic book featuring Spartan where he fights his way through some sort of enemy base filled with creatures, killing them all in pursuit of someone apparently meant to be Jhiaxus.

So final verdict for this figure here? Pretty cool. He’s lacking that little something extra that would motivate me to give him an A-rating, but in terms of bringing the character from the IDW Wreckers comics to life? Mission accomplished. Recommended to all Wreckers fans.

Rating: B+

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