Phil's
Armada & Universe Refute,
Micron Legend Sparklift
and
Micron Booster Clamp
Review


Refute

My original Hoist review contained the following "Refute rolls along with his jaws/arms/whatever opening and closing - he's got a geared gimmick and will connect with Cyclonus and work. "

Refute is the Minicon packed in with Armada Hoist. I've no idea what kind of vehicle he's meant to be ! In the Armada story Hoist is an upgrade of Smokescreen, whose Minicon was Liftor, a forklift truck. Refute may be meant to be something similar (and indeed may be an character upgrade of Liftor)

The main body of Refute is long and orange more racing car like than a piece of loading machinery - there's even four exhaust pipes sticking out the back ! The body is moulded in bright orange - different from the orange used on Hoist's shovel arm, waist and feet - and unique to the Minicon in this set. His rear wheels are the same brown as Hoist's legs and shovel (see Japanese information bellow) and his "claw", robot arms & upper legs are the same grey/blue as Hoist's bumper, left elbow and Minicon ports.

Refute's Minicon port is on his underside allowing him to be wrist mounted as a claw weapon. Alternately rotate him so his back is facing and use him as a quad cannon with the exhausts forming the gun barrels.

What's odd about Refute is that he has a gear gimmick just like the Destruction & Adventure teams. It is strongly suspected that hoist was meant to be the second toy that could power the gear gimmick, possibly through a port on the shoulder of his shovel arm where the Autobot symbol now is located. Roll Refute along and the claw opens & closes.

TF: Pull out the back of the vehicle, rotate at the waist and stand on the rear.

Robot has bending hips, rotating waist and bending elbows on arms that are far too thin. His claw is raised either side of his head Shrapnel style. The head itself is huge, far too big & tall for the robot which is itself amongst the taller Minicons (beaten by Rollout)

In Japan he was known as Sparklift and available in MC-11 with Supermode Grapple. Grapple's original Micron was called Lift so I think we can be sure that in Japan at least he's a powered up version of Lift (Liftor). Sparklift also has a small paint difference to Refute - his wheels are moulded in silver plastic matching Supermode Grapple's shovel & legs. They are also available in MS-07 with the Adventure team.


Universe Refute

Refute returns in the Universe "Battle in a Box" series as an exclusive to the Meijer and Kohl's stores in the USA. They were also released through the Entertainer in the UK. He's packed in with a Decepticon version of Hoist recoloured, slightly remoulded to remove the Autobot symbol and renamed as "Ransack". also in the box are Autobot recolours of Smokescreen & Liftor.

Refute's wheels stay brown matching Ransack's legs. His claws and robot arms & upper legs are now pale blue, again matching the bumper on Ransack. His body is cast in a bright green - a horrible car crash of colours.

I've long maintained that both of these rank amongst the worst repaints I've ever seen. This is what my original review of Ransack said: "Horrible. And as for the green Refute that just clashes badly with the rest of him....... "

But I've been thinking. What if the colours ended up on the wrong bits ? Move the green to where all the purple is on Ransack. Move Ransack's purple to his legs and Refute's wheels. Get rid of the brown or move it to Refute. You then get an eminently sensible Constructicon Scavenger with colours close but not exactly like the G1 originakl (scavenge and ransack aren't that far removed in meaning so you can see where they plucked the name from) packed with a Minicon you could have easily named Shrapnel for a second G1 hommage.


Micron Booster Clamp

In Galaxy Force in 2005 four Armada toys - Hoist, Sideswipe, Cyclonus & Blurr - were substantially remoulded to resemble older toys and to link their gimmick to a Galaxy Force planet key. These toys were then put in VS packs: Longrack (Hoist) came with Runabout (Sideswipe) and Blurr (Blurr) came with Buzzsaw (Cyclonus). What the toys didn't come with was the Minicons their predecessors had. By this time Fandom had worked out that the Minicons were (mostly) being made on the same parts trees as the larger toys and wondered what had happened to the parts for the Minicons. In due course these then showed up in Micron Booster V3.

Clamp is a repaint of Refute - Hoist's Minicon - and nominally is Longrack's partner. Clamp's a more sensible colour scheme than the last Refute repaint we saw with Ransack But teal green - why ? you have total freedom on his body colour as it's separate from anything in the main toy - and red (same as the excavator's hands) clash slightly. Gimmick still works which is a blessing.


There's a fourth version of Hoist out there - the Armada 2006 Dinobot. Somewhere out there they may be another new set of Refutes waiting to go with sandy coloured rear wheels and bright blue claws & arms ......


Email Philip

Phil's TF Review Page