Headrobots Drone

Prelude: Legal stuff first as always. This upgrade set for Hunt for the Decepticons Tomahawk is not a product from Hasbro or Takara-Tomy and thus not officially a Transformers product. It’s meant to turn Tomahawk into a homage to G1 Whirl, but can’t be called by that name for legal reasons.

Upgrade Set: The Drone upgrade set contains, among other things, a new head for Tomahawk that turns him into Whirl. Instead of the more or less humanoid face he had before he now has Whirl’s characteristic one-eyed, featureless noggin’. Simply pop off the old head and on with the new, simple. Not quite as simple: the new feet. You have to screw apart Tomahawk’s existing feet and put the new ones on. The skis are optional and are simply click-on.

Finally the upgrade features a number of new weapons to replace Tomahawk’s missile launchers. A big Gatling-type cannon and a multi-tube missile launcher can go into the hands or onto the forearms. Additionally there are two ‘Null-Boxes’, a little homage to G1 Whirl’s strangely named weapons “Null Ray Module” and “Paralyzo Box”, which go onto the legs.

All the parts also become part of the vehicle mode. The helicopter no longer needs his landing gear, he now has the skies to land on. The two guns go under the wings, the null boxes go on the sides near the tail. Not sure this thing could ever take off, seeing how heavily armed it is now, but it looks cool. So bottom line: good upgrade parts for both modes.

Remarks: I’m honestly not sure at what time exactly this upgrade set was announced, but it was about the time IDW started to feature Whirl as one of the main cast in its wildly popular “More than Meets the Eye” series. I do know that it was almost exactly two weeks after I bought this set that Hasbro announced that there would be a Generations Voyager-class Whirl figure in 2014. That’s how these things go sometimes.

That said, despite fully intending to get my hands on the Generations Voyager Whirl, I’m not sad about having bought this set to upgrade my Tomahawk. Tomahawk is not a bad figure, mind you, but I think the Whirl look really improves him quite a bit so if you have a Tomahawk lying around back home, you might want to give this set here a try.

Rating: B