Phil's
Cybertron Longarm,
TFCC Astro Hook
and
Boss Coffee Craydon
Review

Longarm

The name Longarm has been used for a Minicon before - Red Alert's partner. That was a crane too, but this Longarm is more a Micromaster combineresque crane with a hook at the rear and a grabber at the front. Both elevate and descend as well as rotate at their connection with the truck. The arms can be prised out of their pivots and swapped round but I wouldn't recommend doing this too often for fear of stretching the plastic on the pivots. Longarm uses three colours of plastic in vehicle mode - bright green, unique to him in the team, Decepticon purple for the grabber arms and grey for the wheels - common to both other toys in the team. The green and the purple together give him a Constructicon like appearance.

The minicon socket is halfway down the truck on the underside. Although as an add-on it looks like it's vehicle mode the two arms add something to the feel of the larger toy.

To TF: fold the back half of the crane down under the front half revealing the head. Fold the front of the cab up, then fold down the entire cab to become the feet. Rotate 90 degrees at the waist.

Nice robot mode has entombed the back wheels in the middle of the chest - nice touch. The grabber becomes his right arm and the crane hook his left. He's got bending knees & hips - separated by legs cast in dark blue like Overcast's body, a waist that turns and shoulders that turn & pivot to the sides.

Decent Minicon, oddly reminiscent of Bonecrusher from the Land Military team.

Longarm was sold in the Giant Planet Minicon team pack with Overcast & Deepdive.

Astro Hook

In 2007 all three Giant Planet Minicons return with Astrotrain (an Armada Jetfire repaint) and Starcatcher (Comettor repaint) as an exclusive for the Transformers Collectors Club.

The team reuses the names of three servants of Unicron in the original Transformers comic: Hook (Longarm), Line (Overcast) and Sinker (Deepdive) The name Hook is almost inevitable really for this mould, though it would have worked better for his original colours ! Green becomes yellow, purple becomes grey, blue becomes purple and grey becomes black. Now the yellow and grey here are very reminiscent of another member of the Land Military Team - this time the Dimension-X version of Wreckage, Shot.

Craydon

Craydon was available exclusively from Boss Coffee in Japan in 2008. He like Astro Hook he swaps green for yellow, but the purple becomes bright blue as does the dark blue. The grey on the wheels becomes green.

Nice repaint.again. Interestingly although Deepdive is also repainted for this promotion, Overcast isn't !

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