TFC Rhadamanthus

 

Prelude: Legal stuff first as usual. Rhadamanthus 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 Leozack from the Breastforce, but for legal reasons he can’t be called by that name. Instead he gets another name from Greek myth. Rhadamantus was the son of Zeus and Europa, a king and later on one of the judges of the dead. He was also related to Minos in some way, though how exactly differs in the various tellings.

Robot Mode: Rhadamanthus is easily recognizable as a jet Transformer (despite the fact that he doesn’t have the standard design of the cockpit forming the chest). He has the jet wings on his back, the smaller fins on his feet, and thrusters as feet. He is colored a light grey and turquoise (the exact same shade as the pants my wife wore when I unpacked him, interestingly enough) and has that adorable smirk on this face that clearly marks him as a sneaky bad guy.

Rhadamanthus is a tad bulkier that most jet-formers, mostly due to the fact that his big chest contains the helmet for the Hades combiner (which he can theoretically wear in single robot mode, too). Still, despite his bulkiness he is nicely articulated and can pose with the best of them, no problems.

His sole weapon is his detaching chestplate (see below), which turns into a handgun. Leozack in the cartoon also had some kind of spear weapon and the promo pictures of the finished Hades combiner see him wielding something similar, so I was kind of expecting Rhadamanthus to have something like that with him. Well, two more figures to go. Anyway, Rhadamanthus’ robot mode is pretty cool, has no flaws worth mentioning, and nicely captures the character of Leozack. So thumbs up here, no complaints.

Alternate Mode: Rhadamanthus transformers into an F-14 Tomcat fighter jet. Like most jet-formers he has a bit of an underbelly, mostly due to the fact that his chest needs to encompass the helmet of the Hades combiner. Apart from that, though, the jet looks very nice and smooth, everything clicks together nicely and the only visible robot bits are the arms underneath the wings. The jet has an extending landing gear, and opening cockpit, and the chestplate-gun can be mounted underneath the cockpit. So all in all a very nice, good-looking jet mode. No complaints.

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

Combiner Mode: Rhadamanthus forms the chest and head of the Hades combiner. I’ll do a separate review of Hades once I’ve got the entire team together.

Remarks: Every group of Transformers bad guys needs to have a Starscream, the devious second-in-command who betrays his leader at every opportune moment and dreams to take over command for himself. For the Japanese-exclusive Victory series, the Starscream was called Leozack, second-in-command to Deszaras and leader of the Breastforce. Like most Starscreams he never succeeded in actually becoming number one, and was mostly reduced to combining with his fellow into Liokasier as the series progressed.

As a toy Rhadamanthus is pretty good and nicely captures the character he is (inofficially) portraying. Thanatos remains my favorite of the Hades team members so far, but Rhadamanthus is pretty cool, too, and I would possibly consider buying him as a stand-alone figure, too. Given that he forms the head and chest of Hades, it’s not really an issue of course. You need him for the whole thing and he is well worth getting.

Rating: B+