TFC Cerberus

Prelude: Legal stuff first as usual. Cerberus is not a figure released by Hasbro or Takara-Tomy and thus not officially a Transformer. He hails from third party company TFC and is of course meant to be Jarugar from the Breastforce, but for legal reasons he can’t be called by that name. Instead he gets another name from Greek myth, Cerberus being the three-headed hell hound guarding the entrance to Hades (take what you will from that given that Cerberus forms the crotch of the Hades combiner).

Robot Mode: Cerberus is a black-and-white (actually dark grey and very light grey), very stocky robot. Apart from the wheels on his hips there is no real clue what he transforms into, as the recognizable vehicle parts are on his back. His stockiness is, of course, the result of being the lower torso of the Hades combiner, meaning his hip doubles as the much larger Hades’ hip as well. And if his legs remind you of TFC Blackbird (aka Silverbolt), well, that’s because they are almost identical.

Cerberus articulation is quite good, only slightly hampered by his wheel kibble and stockiness. He can still move with the best of them, no problem. His sole weapon is his breastplate, which becomes a gun (see below), though he does have small sculpted missile launchers on his hip as well.

The main problem of this robot mode, for me, is that it’s kind of boring. Cerberus looks pretty generic here, lacking any defining features. He is hampered, of course, by the necessity of becoming a combiner’s hip, but still: a very boring robot mode. Good with no real flaws, but oh so boring.

Alternate Mode: Cerberus transforms into a dark grey Baja-style racing buggy with a rear-mounted (non-firing) missile rack. Basically it’s the robot lying on his stomach, arms stretched out front to form the hood, the legs swinging up to form the missile launchers. The resulting buggy doesn’t exactly look all that realistic, but it’s easily recognizable for what it is and there are no visible robot bits … well, if you ignore the fact that the missile launcher has a hard time disguising the fact that it’s a pair of legs. But anyway, the vehicle mode works okay. It’s not in any way spectacular, but it does its job.

Partner / Add-On: Cerberus' chestplate detaches and transforms into either a hand-held gun (which can also be attached to the top of his vehicle mode) or into a small robotic jaguar. The animal looks good and is as well-articulated as it can be given the size. The breast-animal of Jarugar was called “Jaguarbreast”, the TFC version has no name of its own. Bottom line: a nice execution of a pretty silly gimmick.

Combiner Mode: Cerberus becomes the lower torso and upper legs of the Hades combiner. I’ll do a separate review of Hades once I’ve got the entire team together.

Remarks: Jarugar (or Jallguar, Jarugaa, or Jalga, there are quite a few possible Romanizations of the name) was a member of the Breast Force in the Japanese Victory cartoon and... yeah, that was pretty much the extent of it, he was a member of the group. His profile described him as the most serious of the bunch, a boring, unimaginative soldier who’s lost without clear orders. Most of the time he was just one of the crowd or a part of Liokaiser, nothing more.

Cerberus is the third member of the Hades combiner team to be released. The previous two releases, Minos and Thanatos, were pretty great figures even without the appeal of eventually combining into the towering Hades. Cerberus, however, is not. He is the bot you need because a combiner without a hip doesn’t really work. Apart from that, however, there is not that much appeal. Don’t get me wrong, he is not a bad Transformers figure as such, but given the price tag and the fact that the character has pretty much zero appeal, the only reason to get him is because, yep, he’s the hip. Can’t have a combiner without a hip. So buy Cerberus as part of the Hades combiner, but don’t expect too much from the figure as a stand-alone bot.

Rating: C+