So, after buying just two figures from the first movie, Jazz and Brawl, I gave up on the toylines entirely. Between Jazz having no real arms to speak of and Brawl not holding together properly in robot mode, I decided I was done with movie toys early on. I ended up giving Jazz away, and I've only held onto Brawl for possible kitbash fodder down the line. When ROTF figs started showing up in stores, my wallet breathed a sigh of relief, knowing I wasn't going to be buying many Transformers for a while.

Anyway, on a visit to TRU last night, I spotted that ROTF deluxes were on sale for $9.95 ($6 off!) and realized it was a good time to pick up a figure I need for a planned kitbash I'll be starting in a few weeks. Mudflap. Now, I never saw ROTF, so I don't know anything about the character besides the bio blurb I read on the instruction sheet. But geez... what a crummy toy! I struggled with this thing for 45 minutes last night, trying to get it to look right, and never did manage to quite get there. He seems to transform by exploding into a mess of parts, then folding back up into... something.

Granted, Alt Grimlock does pretty much the same thing, but at least his parts peg and snap into place and he ends up looking like the picture on the box at the end of the day.

With Mudflap, I'm pretty sure there's no real way to snap everything in place to make a reasonable looking robot. I mean... I figure he's supposed to look like some kind of polio-ridden hunchback, what with the mismatched limbs and half a car hanging off his back, but at least his bits could fit together! I don't know if I just got a bad sample, but nothing on mine lines up into place to make anything like a solid robot.

Mudflap is easily the worst Transformer I've bought since... well, that I can ever remember, really. I'm just glad I only bought him to harvest him for parts.

Skids is the slightly better toy of the two, in that his parts peg together more intuitively.

However, I haven't had much issue with Mudflap. Although I find that the variant with the nametag license plate is easier to clip together, and holds more solidly in robot mode, than the one with the "BEAT" license.

Although, as a tradeoff, his missile doesn't seem to slide in as far anymore in vehicle mode, jamming at about half length and refusing to budge.

BUY RANSACK.

BIPLANE. WIN.