Review – Titans Return Slugslinger

Review – Titans Return Slugslinger (Transformers)

Made by: Hasbro

Faction: Decepticon

Price at retail: $25-$30

Scale/Class: Deluxe

Our second review looks at Slugslinger, the third of the original trio of Decepticon targetmasters. Like his brethren Misfire and Triggerhappy he’s been updated to a Titanmaster, and in his Hasbro guise he is no longer a Targetmaster (He’ll be getting a Targetmaster release from Takara, wearing his cartoon accurate paint scheme too).

Like Misfire, El Sluggo is rendered in a two tone scheme – his thighs, wings, feet, biceps and cockpit section are all moulded in a light grey colour, while the rest of him is done in what can be described as a restrained teal.

While his appearance as an individual can be somewhat uninspiring, as part of the Targetmaster trio his colours provide a nice offset to those of Misfire and Triggerhappy, and he definitely sits well in the late 1980s palette.

In terms of paint apps the Slugmeister has about the same amount as his buddies – a dash of white covering the middle of his chest, but nothing anywhere else. He does have a good amount of tampographs, one Decepticon logo on his chest and another two on the topside of his wings, plus detailing tampos on his shins, upper chest, upper arms and in front of the intakes on his wings.

His face sculpt isn’t the greatest, with his very thin red eyes being swallowed up by the blah style design of his helmet and face (One suspects by this point in the run the designers were starting to get a little bored).

One area that Slugslinger is ahead of his peers is his armaments – while Triggerhappy and Misfire carry dual blasters the designers seem to have actually tried to make it look like the Slugman is actually carrying a Targetmaster in his hands, by giving him two distinct weapons that use his two primary colours (it also gives him a nice asymmetrical look in flight mode)

Slugslinger’s transformation is identical to that of Misfire – you remove his head and pull his cockpit nosecone piece up to sit on his shoulders, swing his hip piece down, fold up his legs, and move his arm tabs down while folding his hands into his forearms. You will have to keep moving his wings during this process, as the gap that is cut into them isn’t wide enough to do the leg/arm transition in one clean go. Once everything is in place the wrists tab into the fight, and the wings lock down onto the arms.

His cockpit isn’t on either of his twin nosecone sections, but rather in the middle of his alt-mode – a blue rectangle of transparent plastic. Pop it up and slot the Titanmaster in to pilot him.

Should you buy Slugslinger? I would say yes – He’s appearing regularly on shelves now (check your local Kmart) and he’s an essential piece if you’re one of those fans that needs to have a complete subset in your possession. While he’s probably the weakest of the three Decepticon jets he’s still better than some of the other deluxe figures.