Phil's
Armada & Energon Dead End,
Micron Legend & Superlink Bug
and
Micron Booster Bug Drone & Bug General
Review
Dead End is the Minicon that comes with Unicron. He fulfils the role of Unicron's moon. He's roughly a sphere in size and is in may ways similar to
Eggbot ( see also Eggbird and Eggleo) His major deviation from a sphere is the large cannon built into one side of him that folds out - the cannon is painted silver. I'm wondering if the cannon was meant to be part of some abandoned action feature as both the pivot on the cannon and the base underneath have gear teeth etched into them. The two hemispheres of the toy can rotate in relation to each other round their core meaning that however you turn it the toy is always a sphere. There's a slatted circular pattern on each side of the toy broken in the middle by the toy's circumference. A 180 degree turn will make the pattern line up again on either side. The majority of the toy is moulded in dark grey plastic but there is some bright yellow visible similar to that used on Unicron's missiles.
He has one Minicon socket on the opposite Hemisphere to the cannon. There's no way round it, he looks like a ball mounted on a larger robot.
TF: Face the Minicon port towards you with the robot face pointing up. Rotate the tip of the cannon on his back so that points up. Fold the sides of the Minicon port hemisphere down to form the legs. Fold the yellow plastic at the bottom of the legs up and then turn in 90 degrees to form the feet. Fold the sides of the cannon hemisphere back and up 180 degrees so they and the cannon point up. Fold the cannon and the opposing piece on the other side out to the sides 90 degrees. Fold each side forward 90 degrees further to form the arms then fold each arm down 90 degrees at the shoulder leaving the flat surfaces on the shoulders facing up.
Dead end's robot mode is really rather good considering he's form from a ball. He's got ball jointed feet, bending knees & hips, turning shoulders with the arms that bend underneath and limited ball jointed elbows that rotate. The cannon's ended up on his left arm and can be moved from side to side or rotated to the side and moved up and down.
Decent Minicon. My only complaint is maybe they should have included a few more in different colours.
In Japan Unicron & Dead End were sold in Micron Legend as MX-00 Unicron with Bug
The Unicron of Light toy was a limited giveaway shown in the Transformers Generations book. The larger toy linked above is mainly in green & grey, but the smaller Big supplied with it is very similar to the original with a lighter shade of grey used.
Unicron returned recoloured at the start of Energon. Dead End becomes a pale grey blue, with the yellow becoming paler and a bit more sickly looking too. Don't like this, the two major colours clash too much. Why use the yellow ?
In Japan this was available in Superlink as Bug with the Unicron Power Up Version
My original review of Micron Booster V3 - which has two versions of Bug in it said "As far as I can see the Bug Drone is Unicron's minicon Dead End. No repainting at all."
It's moulding colours are identical but there is some additional silver paint on the previously mentioned side patterns.
Again from my original Micron Booster V3 review: "There's a chase version of this in this set in chromed blue for the grey and red for the yellow. If you have one spare contact me as I'm willing to relieve you of it ! "
Never did get one ! A silver chromed version of Corona Sparkplug, Chrome, appears as a generally available toy in Micron Booster V0. Chase figures were introduced in V2 with the blue chromed Sabre, a Thunderclash repaint, which wasn't available in every box. The theme was extended here with the good looking Bug General.
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