A Glorious Event

Whilst Transformers Animated played out mostly as a massive reference to Generation 1, the show was not afraid to introduce new main characters. Normally with a small cast the largest Autobot and Decepticon will be Optimus Prime and Megatron respectively, Animated turned this convention on it's head with the introduction of Bulkhead and Lugnut; large, powerful characters made to fill in the niche for dumb muscle. Both characters were well written and interesting, and proved popular with fans. Bulkhead had his fair share of toys in the Animated toyline, but Lugnut was always grossly under-represented. Luckily, Hasbro has siezed this oppertunity to introduce him into the G1 universe, and in the process give him the toy that animated never could.

Lugnut is a Voyager class figure, a size which in the Animated line gave him a tiny robot mode, a vehicle mode built to fit in too small a box and generally left him in the shadow of the larger Leader class figures. Thankfully, in the new 2010 style packaging, Lugnut is packaged in robot mode, and this combined with the fact that classics Ultras are rare and Leaders unheard of stands him in far better stead as the juggernaut he should be. There's more than a hint of movie Blackout in this design, the way the upper body and legs form are aestheticly similar. His shoulders are two massive jet intakes, whilst his arms are long yet bulky chunks of wing. The rear of his plane mode is visible on his back, whilst the front is split over his chest. The articulation is a huge improvement over his Animated namesake, with nice touches like jointed fingers, neck and even jaw. The headsculpt is unmistakable, and as a reference to his signature attack both arms have spring loaded punching attacks. There is a single missile launcher in his tail that can be used in either mode, but in all honesty its best left ignored, Lugnut has plenty of other, better features.

Lugnut's vehicle mode is proof that packaging voyager figures in robot mode is a good idea, the plane is enormous and there is no way it would have fit in a voyager box without some serious mistransforming. There isn't a single source of inspiration for this mode; rather it is an amalgamation of a variety of elements from both WW2 and modern bomber aircraft. The front of the plane features both a conventional and gunner's cockpit, complete with painted shark's teeth. The midsection is dominated by the massive engines and long wings, with LU6NU7 written across them in the sort of reference Hasbro is fond of. There are large turrets on either side of the cockpit and a smaller one at the end of the fuselage past the tail.

Some figures are events, figures that are so great everyone should own them. Recently it has become more and more difficult to tell these figures from normal 'good' figures, such has the overall quality improved over the past couple of lines, but I think Lugnut may be such an event.