Legacy Evolution Kaskade

Prelude: Kaskade (whom you have probably never heard of) was a member of The Rise (which you probably don’t know), an extreme splinter faction of the Ascenticons (whom you might dimly recall), the precursor movement to the Decepticons (I’m sure you’ve heard of them). She was a sniper with a talent for blowing Autobot heads off and getting herself blown up, too, once her usefulness expires. Here is her one and only toy version. Let’s say go!

Robot Mode: Kaskade is a retool of War for Cybertron Siege Chromia, which is a very heavy retool (more like shared engineering, really) of Power of the Primes Novastar, whom I have previously reviewed. It’s been eight years, though, and the figures don’t have that much in common, so we can give this lady a full look of her own.

Kaskade is obviously intended as a female robot, having a rather slim and slightly woman-shaped body. As with many fembots, she carries the largest part of her vehicle mode on her back in the form of a big rucksack. Despite that, however, she can maintain her balance without problem and offers plenty in terms of articulation, including ankle tilt and a (slightly) twisting hip. The hip can twist a full 360 degrees in theory, but not when the rucksack is up. When bending her knees, you need to fold back those big wheel/fender pieces on her lower legs, otherwise you won’t get past 30 degrees or so. Her arms are nicely articulated, enabling her to hold her weapon (a sniper rifle) in several different poses, one- or two-handed.

Kaskade is pretty detailed, though she could use a few more painted highlights, as the mostly turquoise paint job doesn’t show the detailing to its fullest. A very nice head sculpt, though, including a targeting sensor / monocle over one eye. Nicely done.

Being a sniper, Kaskade has a sniper rifle as her main weapon, of course, which can be disassembled into three different pieces (barrel, scope, gun). She also carries two grenades (took me a while to figure that out, to be honest), which she can clip to the wheels on her rucksack. She cannot quite hold them in hand, as the 5mm part is a bit too short.

So bottom line: a nice robot mode, but we have seen plenty of fembots with his basic design before and apart from a very nice headsculpt, there is nothing that really makes Kaskade stand out from among them.

Alternate Mode: Kaskade transforms into a science fiction style car, mostly by unfolding the car chassis from her rucksack and draping it around her. When you look at the car from the underside, you can easily see most of the robot mode. Only the chest becomes an actual part of the car chassis, which you can easily identify when looking at the car from above.

The car itself looks good, though it has the same problem with the slightly too uniform paint job. You have painted headlights and you can use the grenades as exhaust stacks on the rear to add some detailing, but that’s not really all that much. Also, you can totally see the robot fists at the back of car. Another minus: the front wheels are on clips, something I am not a big fan of, to be honest.

Kaskade’s rifle can be mounted on top and that’s pretty much it. So bottom line: a car mode with no real flaws as such, but you cannot quite miss that it’s really a robot with a car chassis wrapped around herself.

Remarks: Kaskade came in the “Deadeye Duel” 2-pack along with Javelin. Said duel took place in the pages of IDW’s second Transformers comic book continuity and lasted for all of one page, I believe, before Kaskade blew up Javelin’s head with a single shot. Of course Javelin recovered from her injuries, while Kaskade and her comrades were blown up by Soundwave a few minutes later and spent the rest of the comic run as a vegetable on a slab somewhere. Her comrades, at least, became new host bodies for the Three-Fold Spark Exarchon, but no one had any interest in her. So I guess Kaskade lost the Deadeye Duel, at least long-term.

I really bought the 2-pack mostly for Javelin (and because it was on sale). Kaskade isn’t a bad figure, but by now she is eight figure using this mold (or at least this basic engineering), so while she does look good, there isn’t really anything special about her. Her relatively short in-media appearance won’t do much to increase interest in her, either. So bottom line: a good figure, but no more than that.

Rating: C+

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