Monday 27 January 2014

One of the lesser known subgroups. The Triggercons and Triggerbots

These six aren't the most common figures in the G1 line. The mechanisms seem to be pretty easily broken on some of them. There is a theory that Windsweeper and Dogfight were faction switched. Which would go along with the mechanisms. The other two Autobots are spring loaded, while the Decepticons have the wind up.

Dogfight is a blue Grumman X-29 fighter jet. He's an extremely aggressive and skilled air warrior. When the trigger is pushed, the wings rotate forward and the guns end up on top.




The transformation is pretty simple. Effective enough for a toy of his size though.


Next up, we have Override, he's a pretty ambiguous as a motorbike. Not sure what kind it's supposed to be. When the buttons on each side are pushed, the guns flip out. He's very prone to chromewear. Luckily for me, I don't care too much about it. This came in the first lot from Scotland.


He's pretty probably the weakest of the six. But he does have pretty  good looking weapons.


Third of the Triggerbots. Backstreet. Twitchy and temperamental. He turns into a Porsche 962 Le Mans car. The trigger is on the back of the car  and activates the two gigantic guns.


His bot mode is very reminiscent of Wheeljack and the Battlechargers.


The first of the Triggercons set is Ruckus. A rolling pile of bolts. He turns into a fairly generic dune buggy. The purple trigger on the back of it activates the wound up guns, they have two settings, one for vehicle mode where they lift up slightly, and the other for robot mode where they rest on his shoulders.


His bot mode has the standard shoulder articulation. The mechanism is broken in mine, so he'll get replaced as soon as I find one for a good price, or figure out how to fix him. If fixed, then I'll add some new labels.


Second in the con line is Crankcase. He's happy when things are bad, and loves to complain all the time. He's also got the trigger on the roof that activates the wind up guns, his also have two settings. He was pretty hard to find in good shape, I ended up buying back my own from the last time I sold my G1 collection.


Transformation to bot mode is pretty simple like the others with a little twist of the roof doing a 180.


Lastly, we have Windsweeper. He was the hardest one for me to find. I bought him back with Crankcase. He's a meticulous and malicious. Attacks anything in the sky, even his own team. The triggers on his wings individually activate the spring loaded guns.


He seems much more Autobot like than Dogfight does. That, combined with the spring loaded instead of wind up weapons, makes for a pretty good argument that he was supposed to be the Autobot plane.


If you like the quirky gimmick ridden bots from the end of G1, these guys are pretty cool. They are pretty simple, but that's part of their charm I think. I would love an updated set of them. The movie 1 repaint of Cybertron Red Alert was a perfect match for Crankcase. Excuse the old pic.






8 comments:

  1. Just out of interest, how long had passed between selling the two of your own that you bought back and was there much of a difference in the price?

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    1. It was around three or four years, and no price difference. I actually bought most of the stuff he had bought from me back at the same prices. Trypticon, Superion giftset, Spinister, etc. Kind of nice to get a piece of that collection back.

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  2. I think these guys are superior to the Throttlebots, who were the "cheap ones" from the previous year. Also I have fond memories of Override from that one issue of GI Joe where G2 Megatron tears him in half. Why are those memories fond? I dunno, I was a kid and that overly violent comic book just stuck with me, I guess.

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    1. I agree with you there, The only thing I like about the Throttlebots is the hood feet. Too bad Toyworld veered away from that with Trace, made it easy to skip their line

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  3. I love the small subgroups like these. You need to spotlight the Firecons and Sparkabots in a future post!

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    1. Same here, I think the most fun I had collecting US G1 was finishing the subgroups, The Firecons, I don't like much, but eventually I will do one. I would like to find Masterforce Guzzle and Javil for them before I do theirs though

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  4. I can't beleive I havnt seen these before

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  5. I've been on the lookout to complete these guys, but I've had trouble finding a Windsweeper. I used to run across him all of the time, but now that I want one, it's become a very hard find. I've always loved the Trigger-guys.

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