Phil's Human Alliance
Thunderhead with Major Tungsten
and
Crosshairs with Sgt Canhay Review

Thunderhead with Major Tungsten

Thunderhead is a much more chunky & substantial robot than Icepick, the first Human Alliance toy I reviewed and feels all the better for it. He's mainly grey, with orange upper limbs & head and black hands, feet, chest plate & face. He has what's obviously some sort of tank turret on his back which the barrel of can be levered free (honestly it can, but it might take some work) and held in his 5mm peg hole fist as a gun. On either side of the turret are attached a pair of grenade launchers by a c-clip which can be removed and clipped onto the bars above each elbow. The fists can be folded into his arms to give him tank treads over his wrists as a sort of attack weapon. The chest has a stylised face molded into it which resembles those found on the second, non UK distributed, series of Pretenders. Balance is maintained by sizeable heel spurs. Generally he's a decent robot, it's just there's on slight flaw and that's to do with his fists and the articulation. The legs swivel bellow the knee, bend at the knee & are ball jointed at the hip while the head turns. The shoulders raise up at the body while the joint with the arm is a ball. The elbow bends twice. And that's it. Which gives us a problem as the peg hole for the gun lies from side to side because the hand is moulded that way with no wrist or bellow the elbow swivel to turn it inwards. It looks odd, doesn't work and is a huge distraction. The 3mm bars at the back of the forearm hinder the elbow's ability to bend fully but that's minor compare to the above.

Transformation to vehicle mode: Turn the head round 180 degrees, fold it back and slide into the back of the turret. Attach the gun and grenade launchers to the turret. Fold the hands back into the wrists and the feet & heel spurs onto the front and back of the legs. Fold the arms up into the space occupied by the head. Swivel the legs bellow the knee 180 degrees then bend the knees. Bend the elbows. Fold each limb out so they form a cross pattern for the vehicle to rest on. Swing the turret through 180 degrees so it points upwards over where the head was and fold the front of the turret down. Fold the seat up behind the turret seating Major Tungsten in place so the hole in his back takes the peg on the seat and he can hold the handles of the turret.

The resulting "spider tank"/gunner station looks awfully like the Scrpametal drones seen in Cybertron with the addition of a chair on the back for his driver to sit it. Major Tungsten is a white suited figure wearing a beige flak jacket. He's got a small peg hole in his back, matching the peg on the seat, turning & bending elbows, hip & knees. I'm not 100% convinced that he's not meant to be Spike and they've put the wrong figure in, The "spider" has the robot leg articulation for it's rear legs, arms, for the forelegs and 2 hinges on the neck for the head.

The spider then can transform again: Fold the robot waist piece, between the rear legs, down 90 degrees under the spider. Straighten the robot legs out and unfold the feet & heel spurs. Fold the seat down 90 degrees so the back becomes the base and vice versa. Swing the turret round 180 degrees. Peg Major Tungsten into his seat and fold the spider's head down over him. Fold the hands out of the arms and pose.

The Mech suit mode isn't bad at all, integrating the human into the robot design and giving the mech suit almost all of the robot's articulation.

Far better than Icepick, Thunderhead's major minus point is the problem with the hands not facing forward in robot mode. There's no weapon mode for a larger robot to us here though. But still well worth a look when Human Alliance basics hit Argos as an exclusive.

Crosshairs with Sgt Canhay

Crosshairs is a repaint of Thunderhead swapping orange for green and grey for a beigey grey. His pilot becomes Sgt Canhay, a black repaint of the Sergeant Chaos figure shipped with Icepick who in turn get a repaint of Major Tungsten for his Flash Freeze assault repaint.

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