Toy Review: Combiner Wars Dead End

With wave 2 and 3 out in the country, I can finally start piecing in Menasor... but Motormaster sold out, and I have bills to pay, so I'll just tale my sweet time acquiring these. I only want the decepticons one. so I might skip the protectobots.

Anyway, here we are looking at, in my opinion, the best looking one among the Stunticons, Dead End.

if you quit playing dark souls, maybe you'd actually get more content here

1st off, instead of a card, you get a comic book. Since I don't read them they're kinda pointless to me. And the art has some light fade going on, de-saturating the foot.

Dead end is a red sports car . He is colored in a a lovely shade of maroon, with swirly metallic plastic. This is my favorite shade of red, so I am extremely biased here.

Ugh, car bore

He looks like a cross between the Ferrari 488 (front and rear) and the old McLaren F1 (side gills). There's an orange stripe across the car, and a giant decepticon symbol on his hood. And Painted rims!!

There's a bit of unpainted plastic on the side though, which breaks up the nice sleek red car look,.. but the Audi R8 has em, so it looks ok. Not sure if Takara will have their version painted. The grey breaks up the

He wants a shade of like this for his car

You can store his weapons in car mode... sort of. The pipe plugs to the side.. which looks ok.

Transforming him is simple. 1st you flip him over and open the leg panel.

flip the rear down and flip the open panels back. There is a slit in the knee that allows the legs to close in the correct position. Note that they just rest there and not peg or plug, but it's solid enough. Then rotate the waist 180.

Flip the windshield down (push on the roof panel).

The car hood has a double hinge that allows the car hood to sit correctly at the back. the head panel should stay put, there are soft detentes to help.

It should shit with the nose pointed up. Then simply flip the panel covering the face and tab it into the chest.

Flip the shoulders up, and flip the wrist out, and you're done. Simple!

For some reason, the wrist has faux ratchets. The knees have the same design but no ratchets.

Dead end has pretty good proportions. He is chunky and block with enough angles to give him definition. The chest plate is an excellent addition to bulk it out and give the chest some detail (compared to the exposed connectors from the aerialbots).

The only complaint I have is the foot, or the lack there of. It's just a stump. Drag strip has the car rear wing that balances it out, but Dead end's foot sort of ends at his shins.

ugh, please no puns any more

It's angled though, which gives him a pretty good A-stance. Still I wish he had a foot. Back kibble is expected, but it sits there nice and secure.

He has good details. Not too overly so, but the head sculpt is dead on, and the chest detail's pretty good. 

i will murder you if you put in more puns

He has some nice articulation: Ball jointed neck, waist swivel, ball jointed shoulders, 90 degree elbow, ball jointed hips, thigh swivels and a 90 degree knee joint.

He kneels pretty great actually. It's my favorite it of his articulation.

Accessory-wise. he comes with a hand-foot gun with a different design and an exhaust pipe... really.. an exhaust pipe! It looks like he broke a piece of Motormaster and used it as a weapon.

He can easily wield it... but the peg is too short for double handed action.

You can sort of fake a 2 handed pose, but overall it'll just be an optical illusion.

It's pretty convincing.. if you're blind

He can also wield his hand/foot gun of course.

He stands around the same height as drag strip, which is approximately 5 inches.

Being part of combiner wars, he can of course transform into an arm and a foot. I'll show the arm, as it is the most involved. From robot mode, rotate the waist 180. Noe flip the hands back up, and straighten the entire arm. There are slits in the backpack, where a peg in the arm sort of sits.

Flip the chest plate up, along with the head, sort of transform his upper body back to car mode. Then flip the entire thing to it's back.

Open the right foot, flip the combiner port and close it back up.

Then peg the foot together and peg the combiner hand in and you're done.

You can have it either the robot detail side up, or the car side. I prefer the car side, because it looks more cohesive, it pegs in better and it gives you a double jointed elbow. The leg joints on mine are a little loose, but not floppy.

your preferred girlfriend configuration eh

For foot mode, easiest way is to transform it into car mode, and flip the nose to it's back.

It kinda just looks like a bent car...

Tried fiddling with it to make it it look better, but I think this one is better as an arm.

Dragstrip has a better foot mode, despite the exposed head.

Overall, Dead end is an improvement. It's better in most aspects compared to drag strip. It has a chest plate that covers the combiner peg, which helps aesthetically. Only 2 faults: lack of a proper foot, and an average foot mode. But considering how good he looks, and how solid he is, I'd say he is my current favorite among the stunticons. You can even give him a sniper rifle and He'll look good wielding it.