Toys Review - LG61 Clones

The short-lived Season 4 of the US Transformers cartoon introduced (or perhaps jammed in is a more accurate term) a slew of new characters in its 3 episodes. Notably very few of these characters had Earth modes and most of the new Decepticons were weird space animals, showing the direction the brand was heading in. Also new concepts were introduced in these episodes such as Clones.

Two of these characters were the Decepticon Clones Pounce and Wingspan, two of the few Western on-screen G1 toys I have yet to obtain. These characters got a far greater outing in the Japanese cartoon and it’s from Japan that I have obtained the new toy versions of them. So let’s have a look at the LG61 Clones – Pounce and Wingspan.

Pounce – Robot Mode

Now this is what a Clone should look like – not a hint of kibble anywhere to hint at what his alt-mode is (besides the big sticker which we will address later). Nicely proportioned, good colour scheme – quite nice really. Shame he has no guns.

Pounce – Puma Mode

Like many Transformers with a quadruped alt-mode, Pounce suffers from having oversized upper hind legs. Don’t know why this is – you can trace it all the way back to the G1 Predacons. Due to his arms adding a lot of bulk on the underside of his animal mode, he does not look particularly streamlined. I think his legs on the whole are an improvement on the sticks the G1 toy had though. His colour scheme is based on his Headmasters appearance rather than his G1S4 appearance, personally I think the Hasbro colour scheme is a bit better than this.

Wingspan – Robot Mode

The only kibble in evidence here is his alt-modes wings on the sides of his calves. However they are very thin and sit snug against the body so at least the kibble is very minimal. Like Pounce he looks pretty good as a robot overall.

Wingspan – Hawk Mode

There is a good wingspan on the hawk mode, which I guess one would expect considering his name, and the darker purple on them works well. The claws underneath have got decent detail and make it easy for him to balance, even if not very far off the ground.

The Clone Concept

One of the things that irritated me with the LG58 Autobot Clones was that with all the extra kibble that Fastlane was sporting they looked too dissimilar. The Decepticon Clones have done much better here, with only a tiny amount of kibble visible on Wingspan’s legs which you can ignore pretty easily if you try. However like the Autobot Clones, these two sport big stickers which show what their alt-modes are, kinda defeating the purpose of ‘the enemy doesn’t know which is which’ concept. The rubsigns on the original G1 toys was much better.

Overall

I am far more impressed with these two than I am their Autobot counterparts. They are good representations of the original characters and whilst I think Pounce’s Puma mode could have been better, it’s still an improvement on the original. These two will make fine additions to your Generations/Legends collection.