DE 
EN 
Series: Legacy United
Allegiance: Decepticon
Categories: Deluxe
Year: 2024
Prelude: Remember back in the 1990s when Hasbro released the Stunticons in extreme 90s colors? Well, one of them anyway. Breakdown, the eternally paranoid Decepticon who thinks that everyone and everything is watching him, got a new turquoise and purple paintjob (so of course everyone is watching him). Thirty years later, he once again sports these colors for Legacy United. Let’s say go!
Robot Mode: Breakdown here is a repaint of Legacy Breakdown, who himself is a retool of Legacy Wild Rider. This is my first experience with this figure, though. Breakdown is a Deluxe-class robot with a rather slim body, big chunky boots, and quite a big backpack, too. Roughly two thirds of the entire car chassis hangs off his back, something I am not too big a fan of, to be honest. The figure adheres to the current level of articulation, meaning he can move very nicely. No twisting wrists, but otherwise there are few limits.
Breakdown wears his classic G2 colors of purple and turquoise with some silver accents. I was a bit surprised to find that he has light piping in his head, something I haven’t seen in many recent figures. I quite like it. He comes armed with a turquoise gun and the rear spoiler of his car mode, which he can use as some sort of boomerang, I guess, or combine with the gun into a kind of hatchet. The gun can be stored on his legs, but there isn’t really a good place to attach the spoiler when he’s not using it, sadly.
Nothing much more I can write here. A nice robot mode, sporting a wonderfully nostalgic paint job, but with an oversized backpack and I think the spoiler weapon could have been improved a bit.
Alternate Mode: Breakdown transforms into a combination of a Ferrari 308 and a Lamborghini Countach, probably just close enough to get away with not paying any licensing fees. The transformation is not complicated, the only thing I really don’t get is why the made the hood separate into three different pieces. It’s not really a transformation requirement and doesn’t made the backpack in robot mode any smaller, either. Oh well. The resulting car suffers from the same problem many other Transformers cars suffered in recent years, in that the colored plastic does not quite match the color on the painted transparent plastic that forms the roof. Not as bad as it looked on Earthrise Sunstreaker, though (who can apparently attach Breakdown’s spoiler in his car mode, just saying).
The paint job is mostly turquoise here in this mode with the hood painted black with a big G2 Decepticon symbol on it. A nice detail: a small rectangle is “cut” into the black on the hood near the windshield. That’s a callback to the original toy, which had a hinge there. Sadly, while the hood looks great, the car mode omits the painted details on the doors, as well as the blood splatter on the roof. Can you have a G2 Breakdown without blood splatter on the roof? I am not sure you can.
The car itself looks nice, though I have to wonder why the rear wheels have visible turquoise clips, while the front wheels have proper rims. The gun can store underneath the hood and there are no visible robot parts here, so bonus points for that. So bottom line for the car mode: nice overall, but they really skimped on the painted details here.
Combiner Mode: Breakdown can combine with the other Stunticons to form Menasor. And by combine I mean that Breakdown’s care mode attaches to the skeleton made from Motormaster’s trailer as a left or right thigh. Have I mentioned recently that I am not a fan of these skeleton-type combiners at all? I have no intention of getting the rest of the G2-colored Stunticons, so barring unexpected gifts I will probably not write a review of Menasor anytime soon.
Remarks: Breakdown is actually THE Generation 2 Stunticon, seeing as his toy was the only one actually released during Generation 2 as a Botcon exclusive in 1994. Hasbro had initially planned to release the entire team for G2, but none of the other four ever made it into stores. It wouldn’t be until Combiner Wars twenty years later that the entire Stunticon team saw a G2-colored release. Breakdown once again wore these colors for a Botcon exclusive figure in 2010.
Breakdown was a gift from my buddy James, so many thanks to him. That said, I fear that the Legacy United Breakdown is a bit of a letdown as far as the paintjob goes. The upcoming New Legends version features a lot more painted details from what I’ve seen. Also, while there is nothing really wrong with the figure as such, there are quite a few small things (tire clips, weird rucksack, color mismatch) that simply add up. So bottom line: a nice figure to get as a present and some bonus points for the G2 nostalgia, but not something I’d have bought in the store at retail price.
Rating: C
Picture Gallery:
