SCORPONOK

TRANSFORMERS KRE-O

I have no interest in collecting Lego but I am not immune to its cuteness.  I had a decent amount of Lego as a kid and focused mainly on Castle Lego.  Your options back then were pretty much Castle, Space or Town.  There may have been 1 or 2 other options.  My Lego building days were over long before someone got the brilliant idea to cross-merchandise Lego with other licensed properties like Star Wars and Indiana Jones.  If those had existed when I was a kid I can only imagine how many enormous bins of Lego I would’ve had.   My nephews are really into Star Wars Lego and I do get a kick out of seeing their Lego-ized versions of beloved Star Wars characters.  As cute as they are though neither Star Wars or Indy, or even Spider-Man were able to convince me that I needed to start buying Lego. 

But there is a new building block based product on the market that could put my bank account at risk, Kre-O by Hasbro.  I’m not sure how long Kre-O has been around but I first took notice of it when I started seeing the Transformers based sets on toy store shelves in 2011.  The thought of building up a big version of Optimus Prime using hundreds of small blocks didn’t hold a lot of appeal to me but I thought my nephews might dig it so I bought a few of the sets for them for Christmas that year.  It was only after I got them home and examined the packages more closely that I noticed that each set also came with a cute Lego-man version of the larger buildable character.  I personally would’ve been content with just the Lego man because who has time to build all that crap.  I hated the process of transforming my Transformers toys as a kid.  If I had to completely deconstruct and rebuild them every time I wanted to switch them from robot to car I think I would’ve lost my mind.  If only they sold the Lego-men separately.

Well it turns out they do.  In little “blind-boxed” packages.  I was tempted by these Transformers, just as I’ve been tempted by the similarly blind-boxed Marvel Lego-men I keep seeing at Walmart but I had managed to hold my ground.  It wasn’t until Hasbro unveiled their upcoming Kre-O G.I. Joe product that I thought I might really be in trouble.  The initial Joe offerings are vast and feature a ton of 80s inspired characters and vehicles.  Obscure Joe characters like Cutter and Kamakura as Lego men?  How could I possibly walk past those at the toy store?  I feared 2013 would be an expensive year.

 

Well just a few weeks ago when I was out Christmas shopping I came across some of the blind boxed Transformer Kre-Os for sale at a drug store for a mere $1.39 apiece.  I thought this might be a good opportunity to pick up a couple of these little guys to help me to determine whether I would be investing big dollars in the upcoming Joe sets.  This particular series of Transformers featured 6 different figures to collect.  I decided to grab 2 and I hoped to end up with Galvatron and Sunstorm.  I got them home and opened up the small foil bags to discover that I instead ended up with Scorponok and Waspinator.  At least they weren’t doubles.  I’m not uber-familiar with Waspinator but I believe he’s from the Beast Wars era.  Scorponok would’ve been my third choice of the six available characters because at least he’s a generation 1 character whom I’m familiar with even though I’ve never previously owned a Scorponok toy. 

I gotta say, this guy is pretty cool.  He’s got standard Lego man anatomy but with a few tweaks.  Instead of little yellow hands he has Scorponok appropriate giant purple claws.  He’s got larger arms than your average Lego man and he’s got a cool face with an orange visor which is reminiscent of the original toy.  The part that really separates this figure from your average block figure is the character specific helmet which fits on the head.  The two pieces allow the head to be both distinct as well as generic and swappable.  He has his signature Scorpion tail and his classic green and purple color scheme.  It’s as nice a representation of the character  as you’re gonna get in this format.  My only real issue with it is how top heavy he is.  His arms and torso have all of these add on pieces while his legs have nothing. 

The whole figure can be quickly broken down and rebuilt into his alt mode which is naturally a scorpion.  The scorpion mode is nothing to call home about but whatever.  I imagine this was probably one of the easier transformations to pull off.  I wonder how easily one of these Lego men can turn into a car, it seems like it might be tough to pull off.  This toy is definitely neat enough to warrant me picking up a few of the Joe figures, at least in blind packs such as this.  I doubt I’ll be buying any vehicles or play sets for myself.  But I think I know what all of my nephews may be getting for Christmas next year.  4 out of 10.