Transformers Legacy Bulkhead Review

So most of England's spent the last two years in various stages of Covid lockdown. During this time I got into rereading the old Transformers Marvel comics in my spare time. Sure enough I was soon back into collecting the toys themselves. At first I was purchasing the old 1980s toys secondhand from eBay but soon moving to whatever looked good to me or ones I’d not been able to buy back when I was a foetus. This naturally brought me up to speed with the Transformers franchise as it stands today. I even watched Netflix’s new cartoon designed to advertise their latest toyline. It was quite bad, but that’s not why I’m posting today.  

Getting back into Transformers soon get me interested in future releases as they were announced, leaked, stolen factory samples making their way into the hands of enterprising youtube reviewers and as 2021 drew to a close retail listings were leaked for the latest sub-line of the Transformers expected to debut in 2022. 

So for a bit of a change of pace and riding that new toy clout (this toy was originally scheduled to release in July but in a bizarre inversion of Covid delays the UK has had copies available since the end of February, go figure) here’s a toy review of one of the first releases of the new Legacy line: ‘Prime Universe Bulkhead’. 

So a quick bit of terminology for the uninitiated: 

• G1 - The original run of the Transformers franchise beginning in 1984 and largely concluding in 1991. This includes the original Marvel comic, the 1984-1987 Sunbow cartoon and the 1986 theatrical film and all media released in between. Since 1991 there’s been large amounts of G1 based merchandise including rereleases and reprints of vintage media as well as ‘new’ media in continuation or reinterpretation of the classic G1 canon like the soon to conclude IDW-published comics. This includes new toys designed to homage or reinterpret classic characters in new toylines. This includes…
• CHUG - An fandom-coined acronym formed from the names of four retail toylines featuring said retro characters in this case 2006’s Classics, Japan’s concurrent Henkei! Henkei! and 2008’s Universe and 2010’s Generations toylines. Most new sublines now release under the Generations handle however the CHUG term remains in fandom discussion. The aesthetics for CHUG were initially inconsistent ranging from repaints of contemporary toys to all-new moulds either inspired by or slavishly devoted to replicating G1 aesthetics, the IDW-published character models, or anywhere in between. Since the 2018 brand unification between Hasbro and TakaraTomy this has largely turned to the G1 cartoon in general aesthetics. This in turn leads to…
• Geewun - a derogatory term for the Generation 1 (or G1) iteration of the brand, most commonly used in conjunction with Hasbro’s present adherence to this part of the franchise. Noted proponents of Geewun (often considered old fogeys by younger fans) are often dubbed Geewunners and form a small but vocal part of the Transformers fanbase. 

So CHUG’s current approach of releasing retail versions of the 1980s cast in highly accurate and affordable guises has led to most of the original cartoon and movie cast getting new toys with modern engineering standards at an affordable price. As this well of characters runs dry (as of 2022, the only named 1984-5 cast members yet to have post-2015 toys announced are Shrapnel, Bombshell, Gears, Buzzsaw, Snarl and Swoop). So it would make sense for Hasbro to cast about for fresh material to reinterpret. After all you might be able to sell a new Optimus Prime or Bumblebee toy next year, but a new Grapple? Perhaps not. 

So when Legacy was officially announced and we got our first look at some proper non-G1 characters reimagined in new toy forms, Prime Universe Bulkhead and Arcee attracted flak for their designs. Bulkhead in particular received criticism for not looking like Bulkhead at all.  

I'm in awe of the size of these lads. Absolute units. 

But does this CHUG-ification give us a mess of compromises for a toy as the budget is stretched and results in a failure on all fronts? Does marrying the chunky designs of G1 and the sleek stylings of Prime result in some unholy case of design incest or some equally tortured analogy? Well, let’s start with who Bulkhead is…

Voiced by Bill Faggerbake (Patrick Star) in 2007’s Transformers Animated, Bulkhead quickly established himself as a fan favourite character being introduced as something of a strong but clumsy goofball character before revealing hidden talents for both art and space bridge technology. By 2010 Bulkhead had made enough impression with Hasbro and the fanbase to merit a (Kevin Peter Hall-voiced) reinterpretation in the acclaimed Transformers: Prime as more of a straight bruiser with a spark of gold, now being a member of the Autobot’s crack team of commandoes the Wreckers. Both versions true to their name were bulkier than their castmates.

As we reach the 15-year anniversary of their character’s ‘proper’ debut (a minor character from 2004’s Energon anime shares the name but little else) it would only seem fitting that Hasbro would begin casting about for fresher sources of nostalgia. 

So Legacy ‘Prime Universe’ Bulkhead (hereon named ‘Bulkhead’ for simplicity’s sake) takes cues broadly from both previous famous versions and alternate mode resembling that of Hound from the final two Michael Bay-directed live action films (who was also a round green boisterous bruiser type, so closer to Prime Bulkhead over any Hound beforehand). From the outset it’s apparent that this £26.99 (now £29.99, but I chose to preorder this chap) toy is spinning quite a few plates for the sheer amount of homages as well as having to fit into Hasbro’s increasingly restrictive budgeting plans. (That’s not even mentioning currently unverified rumours of Bulkhead potentially being a pretool of Optimus Prime’s Beast Hunters form).

Now with 100% less 'Romeo & Juliet' scenes.

But anyway with that out the way let’s have a look at Legacy Bulkhead in vehicle mode. And sure enough like AOE Hound Bulkhead is a military APC and upon first transforming him to vehicle mode I was surprised by how compact this mode was. Everything tabs together neatly and there aren’t any obvious cues to his robot mode here. All six wheels are on mushroom pegs as opposed to pins as a cost cutting measure but he rolls well enough and the wheels feature 5mm pegs allowing for some weapon-mounting opportunities but first there’s the transformation to get into… 

Quick size comparison with the Siege Sideswipe and Kingdom Inferno moulds.

Now, transforming converting Bulkhead’s pretty interesting as at first glance he appears to follow the usual car front-as chest approach but there are a couple of engineering cues that set him apart from other recent truckformers. His chest is in fact one hollow piece allowing his arms to tuck inside while in vehicle mode while his legs open up to reveal fuel canisters that tab his legs to the cab part and the whole thing fits together really solidly. There’s a considerable amount of size changing involved in this conversion, something that really shows off the inventiveness of the design process and I think the designers had fun showing off what they could do here engineering-wise. It’s fun to perform and there’s a lot of big pieces to be moved about and the whole thing tabs together solidly and all the joints are solid and tightly-toleranced. In robot mode the chest can untab and might need a little filing of the peg hole but my copy seems fine so not too sure on that front. 

Argh, the pain!

Compared with the Grapple/Inferno mould it’s a more ambitious conversion as the rear of the alternate mode doesn’t form as obvious a collection of robot limbs at the rear. This is in no small part to the tarp covering the back of the APC mode. So now we’ll go into some of the issues:

In comparison to more egregious examples of parts forming being emblematic of a sacrifice in engineering (Earthrise Cliffjumper also pictured below being a particularly infamous case as the ‘shield’ advertised was quite clearly the rear of his car mode) the tarp is at least clearly a separate piece from the rest of the APC mode in the first place and looks a good deal more like a riot shield than Earthrise’s attempts with Ratchet and Ironhide. Bluntly put though, this is still parts forming so if you’re against that, Bulkhead can keep the tarp in place while he transforms and it can splay out across his back as a sort of cape giving him a bulkier silhouette if you like. The transformation is a little more complex than other recent voyager class toys but nothing hair-pullingly here.  

Partsforming! Egads!

To play devil’s advocate partsforming has been a part of the Transformers franchise since the series inception, almost every toy had parts left over at the end of every transformation whether it was robot mode fists or a gun. Personally I think the tarp here works pretty well as it assists with weapons storage and covers everything up quite cleanly. No more sticking the gun on top of the vehicle mode unless you want to. 

New Pokéball variant reveal.

Bulkhead’s other accessories are a wrecking ball that snaps around either hand for some melee action and a small minigun moulded in clear plastic as part of Legacy’s ‘Energon-infused’ weapons gimmick. The ball is also covered in 5mm ports so you can cover this in extra weapons or blast effect pieces if you feel like it. Bulkhead himself is peppered in weapons ports, on his forearms, calves, all six wheels and his back carrying over the weapons play patterns from the previous lines. The tarp also has a couple of Mini-Con compatible pegs in case you had any of the old Mini-Cons lying around and fancied adding them to the fun. All his weapons are 5mm compatible so can be swapped around with most modern Transformers toys. 

UNLIMITED COMPATIBILITY!

Next issue is one that’s lead to some major durability concerns in the fandom circles I’ve been speaking to over the last few months, that being the use of clear painted plastic as key structural parts of Transformers toys. Clear plastic is generally more brittle than the opaque stuff, so using it for parts that undergo regular stress such as joints or parts that require flexing for transformation is a potential recipe for disaster. 

Studio Series 86 Jazz, Earthrise Datsuns and Kingdom Tracks all feature this choice of materials and subsequent horror stories about toy breakages aren’t hard to find online. Legacy Bulkhead’s chest is clear plastic however it requires very little plastic flexing during the transformation with the only point of concern being the connecting peg for the robot mode which is already showing slight stress marks. Thankfully the plastic used is much thicker than previous attempts but whether it will stand up in the long term is yet to be seen. 

Clear plastic gang.

Another criticism noted was the fact that Bulkhead’s legs appear relatively plain. There is some nice mechanical detailing and a silver painted kneepad breaks the green up but I can agree that the legs are relatively ordinary looking especially when the back of box render shows silver foot paint that was removed likely due to budgeting. If you’re tired of truckformers that just have parts of the truck sides and wheels on the legs then this won’t be anything new to you. Indeed it might be a turnoff particularly when Legacy has been much touted as a refreshing of the brand and presentation in recent marketing material. Getting his feet opened back up from vehicle mode can be a hassle if they don’t move as designed as there are no easy parts to get a fingernail underneath. 

And in general, this Bulkhead does look less like previous Bulkheads due to his more athletic silhouette and bluntly put, lack of bulk (so just head?) After War For Cybertron’s obsessive focus on accuracy I totally understand the frustrations for Prime and Animated fans, as soon as it comes to their ‘turn’ so to speak there’s a sudden stylistic swerve away from the 1:1 accuracy we’ve had since 2018 and I can see why one would feel let down upon seeing this guy as the new Bulkhead and he is a fair bit more ‘geewun’ looking. But here’s a counterargument… 

Now in 2010 there was a similar release of a well-loved powerhouse character in Animated in the CHUG aesthetic. Just like Bulkhead, this character was sporting a considerably more athletic physique than his namesake for the sake of fitting into the G1 template. This was Voyager Class Lugnut under the ‘Reveal The Shield’ imprint of the then-new Generations line. In this case Hasbro went a step further and Lugnut began appearing in multiple new G1 properties including the IDW comics and the 2019 reboot, and far more prominently than Bulkhead’s fleeting IDW cameos. And Lugnut here is the reason that I can’t fully agree with the evergreening concerns going round ever since he was unveiled last October. Before him there was Lockdown in the Revenge of the Fallen toyline, a clear lift of Animated’s design albeit with additional spikes who served as the eventual basis for the G1 version. 

Please ignore the Bumblebee in the corner. 

Bulkhead to me feels like the next step in that direction of taking fan favourite designs and running them through into this CHUG styling. Leakers talking about Legacy prior to the reveal likened it to a return to pre-2015 Generations stylings. As someone who has some of their favourite Transformers toys be more about capturing the spirit or feel of the character as opposed to 1:1 accuracy this seemed like a welcome return but I understand the pushback. 

His more genericised look means he fits in nicely in a variety of group photos, whether it’s next to his gritty Prime brethren or as part of a general CHUG display. Part of Bulkhead’s appeal was his nonstandard character design and this large rotund chap. Even in the very spiky looking Prime, Bulkhead stood out as this round and approachable looking character. 

Every Prime fan during November 2021's reveals.

At this stage Prime fans are reaching an age where they have the disposable income to pick up representations of their own favourite characters like collectors before them. And Legacy Bulkhead is not Prime Bulkhead. His much slimmer stature, relatively lanky legs and relative lack of bulk puts him in closer comparison with the likes of Grapple and Inferno from the previous years’ War For Cybertron Trilogy. He’s still a friendly shade of green and his athletic look does look both approachable and imposing and he does fit the powerhouse role quite nicely. 

More like Sergeant Cope amirite?

However a fair question would be “If there can be accurate Beast Wars characters in Kingdom why not Prime ones for Legacy?” and the answer to that question can only be answered by Hasbro themselves. Is it a concern with keeping even new releases ‘on-brand’ with the rest of collector’s shelves? The assumption that younger fans won’t care as much for accuracy? A genuine artistic desire to reinterpret fan favourite designs for a new audience? An exercise in testing engineering ideas for future toys? All of the above? 

At the end of the day it would be reasonable to assume that Bulkhead here is Hasbro testing the waters for interest in non-G1 characters. And at the end of the day the main indicator of interest in a product will almost always come to the bottom line. So if like me you’re hoping for more non-G1 representation in mainline voting with your wallet is going to be the way to go. That aside I’d still recommend Bulkhead for what he does as a toy on his own and as part of an ensemble cast. If you’ve got a load of weapons and accessories lying around you’re going to get the most out of him but even on his own he’s an enjoyable experience. 

I’d give him an A-, as the issues I do have with him pale in comparison to the fun factor and play value I’ve gotten from him in the last month. This guy has not left my desk and I love the presence he brings to any photography session. So go get him! 

Cold

Demo excerpt

https://youtu.be/MBxx0JIaxo4?list=PLlwOKKwuiQWyMKqkI79ohqa3dbMjWSAz4&t=129

Album Version

https://youtu.be/ykfz93M_3ac?t=408

Over the last two decades entire swathes of the entertainment have successfully wired themselves more to the cyclical nature of nostalgia than ever before. The 2010s became a garish monument to eighties styles and sounds, overlooked in part by discount versions of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. 

The likes of ‘Uptown Funk’ and ‘Get Lucky’ dominated the airwaves with liberal throwbacks to the likes of R+B hitmakers like Prince and Chic (the latter track even recruiting Chic mastermind Nile Rodgers on guitar and songwriting) and while former chart stalwarts are rarely seen on the UK top ten this is as much down to customers moving away from operating in circles easily surmised by one or a dozen sample sizes as it is changing cultural tastes. 

In an age of seemingly perpetual crises we appear to be drawn further to existing comforts whether that be entertainment choices (helped by the rise of streaming) or one’s voting inclination (see the rising tide of populist movements partly spearheaded in part by a yearning for ‘the good old days’).

As an established rock act, the changing market offers simultaneously more and fewer options to the maturing artist. You can play the nostalgia circuits, roll out the hits to sell-out stadium crowds and pepper the setlist with the obligatory smattering of new material. You can avoid that as well, see the recent reunion of Rage Against The Machine which was marked not by new material but controversy over alleged ticket price gouging. 

You can take the legacy to the arenas (Pink Floyd performed the entirety of The Wall during a series of 2010s shows, Kraftwerk have spent the last twenty years almost exclusively touring their classic material) or if the act is disbanded (or deceased) you can work the back catalogue route with elaborate reissues of career-defining albums or eras. The estates of the late David Bowie and Prince have favoured this approach recently, often favouring the most lucrative physical format: vinyl.

As record sales continue to haemorrhage, vinyl has become the most relevant physical format. Every other back catalogue announcement is another forgotten piece of music history being given a vinyl pressing, sometimes for the first time. Audiophiles may swear by the format’s superior fidelity, and I can understand the appeal behind a prestigious version of your favourite albums. Vinyl often has more expansive liner notes, sometimes a reordered track listing with new or exclusive material. We used to have bonus tracks on CDs to get us to speed up vinyl’s obsolescence, over thirty years later we have bonus tracks on vinyl to get us to reinvest in the very same format. 

‘Cold’ is one of these vinyl exclusive songs, offering a third possible format for Savage. The standard edition has ten tracks, the deluxe CD adds ‘If I Said’ before ‘Broken’ and the vinyl places ‘If I Said’ as track eight and adds ‘Cold’ as the closer. My personal choice of tracklist would put ‘If I Said’ before ‘What God Intended’ and ‘Cold’ after to keep the longer and slower numbers split up. 

Seemingly born out of an early ‘My Name Is Ruin’ demo, ‘Cold’ appeared destined to be a minor track although anything after the uniquely structured curtain-closer ‘Broken’ would be underwhelming. Taken on it’s own merits Numan offers a suitably burnt-out vocal atop one of the more organic instrumentals on the record. The first chorus has the instruments fall away leaving Gary’s vocal “and you feel so cold” hanging in the air like breath fogging in the winter. Even as the track builds, there’s a sense of things not quite hanging together, like something could give at anytime. Eventually something does, by Gary’s final few lines the bulk of the arrangement is shed, leaving a horn reminiscent of ‘Pressure’ fading out.

‘Cold’ was exclusive to the vinyl pressing of Savage and has yet to make its live debut.

Top: Gene Takovic considers his situation. Publicity still from Better Call Saul (Season 2 Episode 1: Switch), 2016.

Bottom: Tweet by Gary Numan on September 19, 2017; "Really loving the Savage picture disc vinyl format :)"

When The World Comes Apart

Where Will You Be (When The World Comes Apart) / Pledge Demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_a3GGo-D98

Album Version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9qWI5_QZJs

Single Edit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5E6RTDA7oc

Live At Brixton Academy 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=078XBIiT10A

Live 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DobG_bWx948

Live 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfUwd2DdCOA

A couple other bits before this next post. 

A very late Happy Birthday to Gary Numan. Been a fan since age sixteen and look forward to the new material. 

The latest Making Music update was a bit concerning and all I can really say is I know a lot of people, myself included, are happy to wait as long as it takes. Gary Numan has put material knowing it to be subpar before (Machine + Soul) so I can understand why he’d not want to repeat the same mistakes again. Not that the material I’ve heard so far is that bad but I think what matters most is the artist being satisfied with their own work before it goes out into the world.

The timing for this track couldn’t be better could it? In the midst of a global pandemic, with my country’s government woefully out of step with the rest of the world in halting the coronavirus’s progress, let’s have a quick look at our obsession with crisis.

Since at least 2016 there’s been a mounting feeling of things reaching a breaking point of some cataclysmic breakage in the world order. Some of this can be chalked down to the usual suspects, newspapers and media sites need to shift copies and clicks and few things sell as well as a good tragedy. 

But it feels like as people we’ve become more dissembled, more unfeeling and unsympathetic over the last decade or so best exemplified by two of the more infamous world leaders currently playing on the world stage. Boris Johnson and Donald Trump’s post-truth regimes posited themselves as the populist candidates against ‘the establishment’ and won big at the polls for their efforts. 

It’s pretty perverse to say so but in light of the coronavirus pandemic their narratives are fraying a little. Johnson has moved to block scientists who opposed Brexit from receiving peerages and stuffed his offices with proponents of alternative facts and eugenicists, and proposed a nonsensical ‘herd immunity’ approach to the pandemic. Trump on the other hand provided one his most infamous and telling quotes from his tenure yet; “I don’t take responsibility”. Both leaders have defined their premierships thus far by pushing the envelope, testing the limits of the political framework whether it’s proroguing parliament under questionable circumstances or forcing a government shutdown over the latest budget. Both play the parts of political strongmen, governments at war with themselves. To see the bluster and braggadocio fall limp before a genuine crisis as the consequences of decades of inequality make themselves known is about the only positive one can get from this pandemic. To steal a quote from Chris O’Leary, “It’s life in the early 2000s, when even the villains lack stature”.

Back to the news though. William Burroughs regarded The Word as a virus and in his essay ‘Feedback from Watergate to the Garden of Eden’ he shows how to utilise this virus using the cutup method to destabilise and destroy an individual’s composure:

“Viruses make themselves real. It's a way viruses have. We now have three tape recorders. So we will make a simple word virus. Let us suppose that our target is a rival politician. On tape recorder 1 we will record speeches and conversation carefully editing in stammers mispronouncing, inept phrases... the worst number 1 can assemble. Now on tape recorder 2 we will make so a love tape by bugging his bed room. We can potentiate this tape by splicing it in with a sexual object that is inadmissible or inaccessible or both, say the senator's teen age daughter. On tape recorder 3 we will record hateful disapproving voices and splice the three recordings together at very short intervals and play them back to the senator and his constituents.

This cutting and playback can be very complex, involving speech scramblers and batteries of tape recorders but the basic principal is simply splicing sex tape and disapproval tapes in together. Once the association lines are established they are activated every time the senator's speech centres are activated which is all the time; heaven help that sorry bastard if anything happened to his big mouth.”

There’s something of Burroughs’s ideas of using cutups to create torture and psychic displacement in meme culture and shitposting, which occasionally surfaces in some comically bemused articles. Regardless, the technique has in fact been fully embraced by almost all news outlets already. 

Take a look at your local shop’s newspaper section. There’ll likely be a CRISIS HEADLINE IN BIG BOLD LETTERS near the centre of the page, covering either a new crisis or the latest episode of an ongoing one. If it’s the latter there may be an accompanying logo in the corner like a television channel watermark. Then you’ll see adverts for freebies, discounts and deals for holidays, phones or Nectar points. 

The cluster of stories and items all disparate in nature are akin to a collage painting. Indeed, when Brian Gysin was pioneering the cutup technique he had aimed to achieve this with the written word, believing the form to be fifty years behind painting. 

Burroughs used a similar method to curse London’s first espresso bar in 1972, irked by the city’s rising rental rates and looking for a target. Drawing upon his experiences with Scientology and the occult, Burroughs would take photographs of The Moka Bar and record the surrounding ambient noise and play it back days later at the site to pull the bar out of it’s time position. The process apparently worked; The Moka Bar closed for good that October. 

And in 1978, a twenty-year-old ex-punk going under the pseudonym Valerian was recording his debut LP and rifled through Burroughs’s Dead Fingers Talk and Naked Lunch for phrases to use as springboards to collect his own disparate thoughts. The next record ‘Replicas’ would crystallise this technique into a dystopian nightmare and hit number one joined by a single about a robotic prostitute. Mankind has built a supercomputer to improve their quality of life and it naturally realises the ideal solution is to do away with it’s creators, the outcome of many a Troughton-Pertwee Doctor Who episode.

Fast forward to 1997. Gary Numan writes almost the entirety of Exile based on the premise of God superimposing Heaven and Hell upon Earth simultaneously, like an author displacing a nearby espresso bar. Mankind’s fate is taken out of their own hands and we become the playthings of a higher power. 

Fast forward again to 2017, Gary Numan is recording his twentieth (or so) album and returns to the manmade future. The machines have rocked, the world’s come apart, all that remains is a scorched earth. 

“Every time I read the latest scientific report, it’s worse: things are going to happen sooner rather than later, it’s getting faster… People say, ‘It’s a natural cycle.’ Is it fuck! “ - Interview with Classic Pop, 2019.

It begins with sheer power, music briefly becoming a force of nature for all of the first twenty seconds. Some faux-Moog countermelodies creep in soon after and threaten to calm the track down but before that happens a manic goth disco beat kicks in. When the fledgeling Valerian pressed a key on a rented Moog in Spaceworld Cambridge one can easily imagine this is what he heard.  

One of the more aptly-titled tracks from Savage, ‘When The World Comes Apart’ features several trademarks of Gary’s modern sound. You have a powerful pre-chorus with a lot of bottom end, the track then reboots come the chorus with some extra percussion loops unique to this track on the album, a kind of typewriter beat runs at a faster tempo over the relatively steady main beat. 

Lyrically, Numan changes the wording of the final chorus from “when my breath is the wind / where will you be” to “when my breath is the wind / I will find you”. What this achieves is it allows the track to retain its anthemic nature while giving a sense of progression. 

With the title there’s also a brief callback to ‘Magic’s lyric “I’ll be there for you / when the world comes apart”. One of the most danceable tracks on the album, it makes Savage’s exclusion from the Billboard dance and electronic chart all the more peculiar.

‘When The World Comes Apart’ was released as the second single in edited form and did not chart. 

Top: '170811-F-XJ834-039' by U.S. Department Of Defence. "U.S. Air Force firefighters battle a controlled fuel burn during exercise Patriot Warrior at Sparta / Fort McCoy Airport, Wisconsin, August 11, 2017." 

Middle: William S. Burroughs, 1985. Photograph by Gottfried Heinwein. Pictures are public domain.

Bottom: Outtake from the Savage photoshoot.