Impossible Toys Alicon

Prelude: Legal stuff first as always, Alicon is not an official Transformer from Hasbro or Takara-Tomy, but rather a figure produced by third party company Impossible Toys. It's clearly meant to resemble the Quintesson guards seen in the third season of the G1 Transformers cartoon, but it's not officialy sanctioned.

Robot Mode: Let's start with what is - for me at least - the greatest thing about this figure: it looks like it was released in 1986 as part of the G1 season 3 toys, right alongside toys like Wreck-Gar and Kup. He has a very G1-like feeling to him and looks very much like the Quintesson henchmen from the cartoon series. Very nicely done, it warms my G1-fanatic heart.

Despite looking like a typical G1 figure, though, Alicon has the articulation of a modern-day (non-official) Transformer. Okay, due to his bulkiness one would never call him a contortionist, but he has all the necessary joints and despite being a bit back-heavy, he can pull off quite a few nice poses. One little downside: his head tends to slip downward into his torso sometimes, as there is no solid connection to keep the plate where it's on in place, but that's just a minor thing. No other downsides I can think of.

For a weapon Alicon carries two spears that can combine into one long spear via a connecting piece that's stored inside the mouth of his beast mode. Seeing as the toy came without an instruction manual, I had to look that up online, by the way. At first I thought they forgot the connecting piece with mine. Anyway, the spear looks good, very much like the weapon the Quintesson guards carried in the cartoon. So bottom line, a very nice robot mode with a very nice G1-feel to it.

Beast Mode: The Alicon transforms into a robotic beast that looks like the love child between an alligator and Trypticon. It's basically a huge alligator head with a tail, skinny arms and stubby legs. It sure doesn't resemble any natural beast I know, but it's not supposed to, either. It's supposed to look like the big robotic beasts the Quintessons used to execute whatever sentients displeased them and it does that job very well. The beast can open and close its mouth, the skinny arms have shoulder and elbow joints, and the legs (basically just the lower legs of the robot mode) still retain some articulation as well. Also, you can bend the long tail at numerous places (upwards only).

Only two slight downsides to this mode. One, you have to remove two of the spikes on the robot's shoulders in order to transform him into beast mode. Those spikes can be put on the other end of the two spears (with the connecting piece going back into the Alicon's mouth), but this leads to the second downside, that there's nowhere to store the spears. You can put them into Alicon's hands in beast mode, too, but that looks kinda strange to me. I'd have preferred to store them in his back somehow, but that doesn't work. Then again, this is pretty much a new G1 toy and G1 toys usually had left-over parts in at least one mode, so I can let this one go for nostalgia reason. No other complaints, an awesome beast mode.

Quality: Remember the last Impossible Toys figure I reviewed, the TRNS-01 Valkyrie aka Not-Arcee? Remember how the quality of that toy was truly abysmal? Well, you can rest easy. While I wouldn't call Alicon the sturdiest or best-made toy ever, he's a far cry from the fragile mess Valkyrie was. I wouldn't hand him to a small kid, but then again, I wouldn't hand any of my TFs to a small kid. So what I'm saying: the quality is fully okay here. No problems at all.

Remarks: In many ways the Quintessons were the main bad guys of the third season of the original Transformers series, with the Decepticons reduced to a minor terrorist threat. And since the Quintessons never did much fighting themselves, they had henchmen for that. One type, the Sharkticons, got a toy in G1 named Gnaw. The other type, though, which never got a proper name in the cartoon (only referred to as Quintesson Guards) never did, though. It was only in the Dreamwave comics that they got a name, Allicons, and it took third party provider Impossible Toys to finally give them a toy. And make no mistake, it's a G1 toy through and through.

Which brings me to the main thing you need to keep in mind when you consider buying this toy: it does not fit among Classics / Universe / Generations figures. It needs to be among G1 toys. So if you are an old-school G1 fanatic like me, go and buy it! If you are not, then you might be better served leaving this one on the side.

Rating: A-