Phil's
Cybertron Landmine,
Galaxy Force Guardshell,
Botcon Rhinox
and
Movie Grindcore
Review


Landmine

Landmine was first released as Galaxy Force toy GC-09 Guardshell which is how I reviewed the toyback in 2005.

There's a longer history of TF diggers. Sadly the last one (Armada Scavenger) was a shelfwarmer supreme in both it's colour schemes.....

Guardshell is a nice chunky mainly yellow and brown digger. Shovel is nicely articulated in a couple of places with some grey on the arms, and his cannon can be mounted on the back of the vehicle but looks odd - sort of like a raised pile driver. He's got a sort of vehicle attack mode - raise both rear wheels to the side of the toy, insert his Earth Planet Key (#dr94) into each and turn the top half of the wheel and out pop little blades. The wheels can be turned from the back of the vehicle.

To TF fold the undercarriage of the digger down and to the front of the digger to form the legs, rotate the wheels down and flip the feet out. If you haven't already folded the rear wheels out then do so and tuck them under the truck to where the legs were - you're best standing him up from this point. There's 2 grey piece on either side above his hips, fold these down to lower his waist piece in the middle. Separate the shovel, and fold each half to the sides to form the arm - the hands are on the same piece as is connected to the shovel so a little folding should reveal them. The smokestacks fold to the side and up.

Nice and chunky robot, pretty stable and quite posable. He's got knee joints, plus a swivel below each knee, ball jointed hips and shoulders, with an extra joint for sideways movement in the shoulder, ball joint elbows and a neck. Blade gimmick can be used in this mode too, and the wheel assembly bent up to behind his head. The folded smokestacks, head, and colour mix scream Energon Landmine at you, and I'm lead to believe that this will be Landmine when it gets released in the US. (as indeed it was - you can see how they got from Snowplough to Digger for Landmine's vehicle mode)

Much better than Thundrecracker, which was the Cybertron deluxe I bought.


Rhinox

In 2006 the Botcon theme was Cybertron modes for Beast Wars characters. Landmine was used as a base for Rhinox swapping the yellow for beige, brown for green and grey for black. It works, the robot mode looks Rhinox like and you could see Rhinox having this vehicle mode ( for one where it doesn't see Armada Hoist used as Dinobot)

Rhinox comes with a solid grey version of the Sideways/Unicron planet key with a gold circuit pattern printed on the face.


Grindcore

Landmine pops up again as Grindcore a Wave 1 Wal*Mart & ASDA Movie deluxe toy.

In many ways the Grindcore colours are similar to Rhinox's: Here yellow and brown become pale green and the grey becomes a darker grey. It's essentially using the G1 Constructicon colours (he'd be Scrapper). I've never got why the Constructicons were green - I'd associate JCB yellow more with construction vehicles - but given the original use of the colour I expect to see it used for a Decepticon rather than an Autobot, which is prevented here by the Autobot symbol on the mould. Yet when I consulted Generations 2009 v2 it claims he is based on an Autobot with colours similar to these - Micromaster Crush Bull who form the back & bottom of Sixbuilder. He comes with a clear red Cybertron planet key with a silver Autobot logo printed on it.


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