All I'd be expecting is a pretty good figure, but the flaws you'd mentioned are things that drive me nuts about some other toys, so maybe I'll pass. Or maybe curiosity will win out and I'll pick it up. I dunno.JediTricks wrote:Skids may still be worth getting on its own merits depending on what you're expecting from it.
Anyway, I set out to write a review of the Goldfire toy I picked up this week, but it's kind of hard to do. The toy's pretty solid, I'm not disappointed in it at all. But it's also not a toy that's inspired a whole lot to say.
It's good, don't get me wrong. The robot mode is a pretty neat toy. The robot mode looks like a standard, if well done, Autobot car guy. The colors on this version look cool and evoke the original Goldbug toy. The gold on him is pretty streaky, though. And weirdly, both of the Goldbugs I saw in the store had almost identical streaking going. So that may be a thing to look out for if you're interested in this toy.
The transformation's fairly easy to figure out, you can tell where everything goes, and everything does click together like it should, even if you've gotta do a little finagling to get it all there. This may be as much my fault for not following the order of steps in the instructions, though. Once you do massage everything into place, though, you get a solid looking car. Not gappy or anything, but the panel lines are pretty clear.
The car mode is actually pretty cool. It resembles RTS Windcharger's fake Mustang car mode, with some odd touches like the techy details on the headlights. I guess the comic that came with this guy says the car mode is made in space by space robots that used parts that looked like an Earth car. And I can actually totally see that in the design.
The weapons this guy comes with are really kind of odd. They can be a pair of very blunt swords with short energy blades, or you can adjust the pegs to have them be a pair of blasters that are always firing. They can also combine to be one blaster that's always firing. They connect to the rear side panels of the car mode, so you could also have them serve as booster rocket things for the car. The energy blast bits on them don't come off, so you're kind of stuck with that look. I like the options that multi-purpose weapons like this give you, and I like that they did this instead of a spring-loaded missile, but they overall just look kind of okay.
So there we are with Goldfire. It's a kind of generic example of a pretty good toy. You could do a lot worse than buy this toy if, like me, you particularly like Goldbug. Or you could hold out for Nightbeat, who probably won't have the streaking issues in his paint.
Boy was I wrong. This thing is actually worse than the original. Sure it has SOME more movement, but not much and whatever he might have gained in the legs is completely negated by the fact that he can't stand upright. At least not without hunching forward like some sort of hunchback. Visually he's ok I guess, but he's basically just the same boring bot he was with an updated unimpressive alt mode to go with. 
